Friday, May 10, 2024

In Conversation with Allan Crockford

A little while ago I reviewed the new Galileo 7 album, ‘You, Me and Reality’, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was very happy to get a message from Allan Crockford from the band thanking me, though he was intrigued I found it such a positive album considering the subject matter of several of the songs. […]

Hoyt Curtin and his Cartoon Songbook

There’s every chance that if you’re of a certain age, you spent as much time listening to Hoyt Curtin songs as you did by The Beatles. Such were the memorable qualities of Curtin’s works that in any other field he’d doubtless be crushed under a pile of Grammys and hailed as a rival to Lennon, […]

The Galileo 7 – ” You, Me and Reality”

As is required by any band operating out of Kent, England, The Galileo 7 have released a preposterous number of albums and singles. They’re not fiends in the Billy Childish category you understand, but nevertheless, ‘You Me and Reality’ is their eighth (it might be their ninth – they’re that kind of band) long-player in […]

God Awful – The Appalling Musical Output of L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard was many things – none of them good, though his musical output is understandably overlooked. Over the course of a handful of albums, Hubbard attempted to combine the ideology and in many cases the direct text from his Scientology teachings, entrancing his devout followers but, thankfully, ignored by pretty much everyone else. […]

Les Baxter – Exotica Absolute

With recent collections springing up covering Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, it’s no surprise that Righteous now turn their attention to Les Baxter. So, where does Les fit into the exotica landscape? Well, Les is the exotica landscape. He started it, built the roads it still travels on and wrote many of the themes which […]

The Return of British Psych to Vinyl

When The Alarm Clock Rings – A Compendium of British Psychedelia 1966-1969 The impression you get from talking heads and social media is that “if only such-and-such were released on vinyl, I’d definitely buy it”. The truth, as many labels saddled with even modest runs of niche (and sometimes not so niche) boxes of unsold […]

Glam Warfare – The Chaos of The Rubettes

The Rubettes – The Singles 1974-1977 (Cherry Red Records) As of mid-2023, The Rubettes have had a total of 32 band members, putting them on a par with the funk conveyer belt, Funkadelic. To make sense of their lineage would be an article in itself and would be a miserable experience for all involved, not […]