Johnny Cash sometimes described himself as a “C+ Christian”. Robert Hilburn, in his wonderful biography of Cash, observes:
Most thought this American icon was just being humble. To those who’d been close to him at various points, it appeared he was being a bit generous with his evaluation. But there was no question Cash believed. He wasn’t using his religion as commercial strategy.
Cash was a flawed man, and he knew it. His honesty about those flaws were part of his greatness. He made a gospel song, even one which was perhaps a bit twee, meaningful precisely because of that.
This is one of those songs. The arrangement could be better. No need for the backing vocals! Simple, spare would suit the song. But Cash’s voice carries it. It is the voice of a common sinner, the C-grade Christian, asking for forgiveness. Again.
Just listen.
Artist: Johnny Cash
Album: Hymns of Gold (compilation of various artists)
To dare question the might and majesty of AC/DC in Australia is to risk being pelted to death with empty bourbon bottles.
They are an iconic, much-loved band, titans of popular music. They are Australia’s most successful international act, for decades. Not just success: AC/DC has street cred as well. They have a lane-way in Melbourne named after them. Bon Scott, lead singer in the band’s glory years, has a bronze statue in Fremantle. People come to see it, and all. The hip and young as well as the plump, middle-aged and nostalgic love them.
Notes TripAdvisor: “Great statue of Bon. Was surprised it was a bit small … Not sure what Bon would make of the seagulls landing and pooping on his head though.
Now. I am happy for AC/DC that they followed their dreams and made a lot of money and in course of doing so thrilled millions of fans. I am sad for Bon Scott that he drank himself to death. I remember when they burst onto the scene with “Long Way to the Top” and a surfie’s panel-van-full of other hits. I quite liked them then. But I was eight years old then. I have moved on.
Not that they need me. Their early records are valuable collectors’ items. I have this track only because it appeared on Explosive Hits ’75, one of those compilations the record companies used to put out each summer. This LP makes for strange listening now: Al Martino, the Bay City Rollers, Frankie Valli … and AC/DC! This is their take on the blues-rock classic “Baby Please Don’t Go”. Me, I think they make a meal out of it. A Jim Beam bottle flies overhead, shattering on the wall behind me. But this is Planet Vinyl. Ignore me, and just listen!
Artist: AC/DC
Album: Explosive Hits ’75 (compilation of various artists)
Reg Lindsay was one of the giants of Australian country music. Unlike a great many country singers, in his day, he was a real stockman (which is what we call a cowboy, in these here parts). He only thought about a musical career after being injured while riding a bull at a rodeo. While convalescing, he spent a lot of time listening to country music on the radio, and was inspired to enter a talent contest. Some successful recordings won him a radio show, and later a television program, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the face of country in Australia.
Image: Curly Fraser (State Library of New South Wales), via Wikimedia Commons
In my country, “country” means, first and foremost, Slim Dusty. Reg Lindsay was his contemporary, semi-rival, and brother-in-law (their wives were sisters). Reg was, no getting around it, by far the better singer of the two. Yet Slim’s Aussie twang and his songs of the outback are remembered and loved, while Reg’s smoother baritone is increasingly forgotten.
This should not diminish Reg Lindsay’s achievement. His best-known song was “Armstrong”, about the Lunar landings. Not the most obvious theme for a country singer, but appropriate in a way. Reg Lindsay was the first Australian artist to perform at the Grand Ol’ Oprey, in 1968, and is now honoured with a plaque on Nashville’s “Walkway of Stars”. Such recognition, to a stockman listening to country radio while recovering from a rodeo accident, would have been unimaginable.
Lindsay was a pioneer, first Australian country singer on the Moon.
Here he is on a much more down-home, ordinary-life, country-music-staple theme. Hello blues!
Artist: Reg Lindsay
Album: Country Music Comes To Town
Track: A1 “Hello Blues”
Format: 12”, 33⅓ rpm, vinyl
Label: EMI
Made in: Australia
Catalogue: OEX-9647
Year: Unknown (mid-1960s?)
Many of the records featured on this blog, and hundreds of others, are for sale via Discogs
There was a man, a German soldier. It was the First World War, and he had been captured by the army of Tsarist Russia. Then there was a revolution, and the Tsar was overthrown. Then there was a civil war. All the while the man remained a prisoner, in Siberia. But a Russian woman fell in love with this enemy alien, and the two married and, in 1920, they had a child. The father was able to take his new family back to Germany, and there the child, Rita Streich, was trained in music. She became a promising soprano.
The tide of history meant that Streich, born in the Soviet Union, made her professional debut in the Germany of the Third Reich, in 1943. The Nazi regime ceased to exist two years later, but Streich was still able to sing, and did so on both sides of what became the Iron Curtain.
She was most famous for her operatic roles, but Streich was also a master of the romantic lieder of the 19th century.
This is a recording of a song written by Franz Schubert, “Die Liebende Schreibt”, which roughly translates as “the lover writes”. I have mused elsewhere about the troubled, mixed up, messy life of Schubert. He, too, was a survivor of war and turmoil. This song was written in 1819, when Europe had been bled white by the wars of Napoleon.
Perhaps it is only fitting that Rita Streich, herself the product and survivor of war and turmoil … what is the right word? Lives. Inhabits. Just is. I don’t know, but there is a communion here. Two artistic souls who have known trouble come together in a short song which carries in it the beauty and the sadness of the world.
Richard Strauss. Heard of him? Somehow, I got it into my head that there was a Strauss family, headed by Johann Strauss, he of “The Blue Danube” and many another waltz. And that Johann was the genius, and Richard the honest trier. A worthy but lesser Strauss, like Leopold Mozart, or Hank Williams Jr, or Julian Lennon. And so, I never paid Richard Strauss much attention.
Why I love Planet Vinyl is that my preconceptions are so often debunked. Richard Strauss was in no way related to the waltz-meister. Nor was his music anything remotely like the fine Hapsburg confections of Vienna’s golden era.
You probably know “Also sprach Zarathustra”, the building, booming trumpets and timpani which ushers in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey? Well, that was Richard Strauss. And he did so much else besides, including this challenging, haunting, alluring work: An Alpine Symphony.
This monumental piece of music is not a symphony at all: rather it is a long series of impressionist tone poems. Taking about 50 minutes to perform, it tells the story of setting out into the mountains at dawn, climbing to the summit, and being caught by a fierce storm, before descending to safety as the sun sets. There are 22 sections, which all bleed into one another without a break. There are few dominant tunes, and the music ebbs and flows and different motifs (there are about 60) play over the top of each other. There is no way on God’s good earth that the whole sprawling thing should work. But it does!
I knew nothing about this piece when I randomly chose this record, and played it on headphones while reading a book. I soon put the book aside, and just listened to the whole thing, entranced.
Here is an excerpt. It is one of the more peaceful sections, in which the climber passes through a high meadow where cattle are grazing – you can hear the cow bells – and then gets lost in thick bushes before finding open air above the treeline. Unfortunately, An Alpine Symphony, is one of those large works for which an excerpt, to invert the usual formula, is less than a fraction of the whole. Try this out, but if you are interested in music, and its ability to wordlessly tell a story, please: find a full recording, close your eyes, and just listen.
Composer: Richard Strauss
Performers: Rudolf Kempe, conducting the Dresden State Orchestra
Album title: The Orchestral Music Of Richard Strauss, Volume 4
Track: Extract from “Alpine Symphony, Opus 64”.
Format: 12”, 33⅓ rpm, vinyl, stereo
Label: World Record Club
Made in: Australia
Catalogue: S/5626
Year: 1974
First performed: 1915
This recording: 1971
Many of the records featured on this blog, and hundreds of others, are for sale via Discogs
There once were things called flexi discs. They were records, and you could play them on a turntable, but they were made of a thin sheet of vinyl. So thin that you could roll them up. Unrolled, they would still play. They were cheap to produce, and often included in magazines as a novelty. The Beatles put some out, for fan club publications, and these are now worth a mint. But the sound quality is not fantastic, and usually flexi discs were gimmicks, promotional materials of one sort or another.
Here is one of those. It dates from the late 1970s, and promotes bus tours of New Zealand. It is, shall we say, a little try-hard. There are many excellent reasons to visit New Zealand. But the hub-bub of traffic in Auckland? The exciting modernity which is colour television? These are not what marketing folk call unique selling points.
This “sound journey through New Zealand” has its moments. Some nice Maori singing, the blub-blub of hot mud pools, the roar of a rugby crowd. And sheep. Yes, we are tantalized with the prospect of witnessing “the wizardry of sheep shearing”.
The disc does get one thing right: New Zealand genuinely one of the most beautiful and interesting places in the world. Among other things, there are an astonishing number of many fine artists, writers and musicians. Go there, do. Though maybe not on a bus tour.
Artist: Unknown
Title: Colonial Coachman: A Sound Experience of New Zealand
Format: 7”, 33⅓ rpm, vinyl flexi disc
Label: Ambassador Records
Made in: Australia
Year: Unknown (1970s)
Many of the records featured on this blog, and hundreds of others, are for sale via Discogs
They are the Pinocchio of pop music, The Monkees. The four members were brought together by the producer of a television show. They were hired as actors, to play the roles of members of a fictional band. The show, and the music in it, became enormously popular. In the late 1960s they were seriously likened to The Beatles. Some wit dubbed them “the Pre-Fab Four”.
Pinocchio-like, there was some deceit involved. In the first two albums credited to The Monkees, the members of the “band” did not actually play the music – they sang the vocal tracks, but that was all. They wanted to play, but weren’t allowed to. That came later – this artificial creation, this made-up pop group, won artistic control.
Pinocchio-like, they were transformed into a real band.
You can understand why The Monkees wanted to be free, but their early, semi-artificial records stand up well. Okay, mostly. Hearing Davey Jones reciting sentimental poetry is like being having luke-warm treacle poured over your head. Twenty seconds gives you the picture …
But mostly, it is great – bouncy pop, with the odd harder rocker and some hints of musical theatre. Here is a fun track from their second LP, all about the complexities caused when the object of your affections has, annoyingly, a family.
Artist: The Monkees
Album title: More of the Monkees
Tracks: B3 The Day We Fall In Love (extract); A5 Your Auntie Grizelda
Format: 12”, 33⅓ rpm, vinyl, stereo
Label: RCA
Made in: Australia
Catalogue: COS 102
Year: 1967
Many of the records featured on this blog, and hundreds of others, are for sale via Discogs
This is one of those songs. The arrangement could be better. No need for the backing vocals! Simple, spare would suit the song. But Cash’s voice carries it. It is the voice of a common sinner, the C-grade Christian, asking for forgiveness. Again.
Not that they need me. Their early records are valuable collectors’ items. I have this track only because it appeared on Explosive Hits ’75, one of those compilations the record companies used to put out each summer. This LP makes for strange listening now: 
