I feared for Aimee Mann. She was the lead singer, bass player and chief selling point of ‘Til Tuesday, a band which was, in the mid-1980s, the Next Big Thing. Until, suddenly, it wasn’t. Another casualty of the star machine? ‘Til Tuesday was a Boston synth-pop outfit with a hint of punk, which burst onto […]
Category: Pop
There is an entire continent of Planet Vinyl called Neverquite. This is where we find the recordings of those honest toilers in the vineyard of song who “never quite” made it big. There is sadness here, but less than you might expect. There are those who were crushed along with their dreams, and whose ghosts […]
The strangely-named “The RAH Band” burst onto the scene in 1977, with a UK top-ten hit, a bouncy dance track called “The Crunch”. Who were they, this peculiar ensemble, with their strange-sounds? The music industry newspaper Billboard provided the answer: Billboard assumes its industry-savvy readers knew who Hewson is, and fair enough. You know his […]
I am not often lost for words – just ask my wife and children – but it does happen. As here. The Planet Vinyl shuttle has taken us to meet Frank Sinatra. Nothing bad about that. Except, what do you say? I could write a lot. But this is a music blog, where brevity is […]
There are times when putting on a record whisks you though time and space, and places you down in an achingly familiar yet strange world. Suddenly you are watching Sunday television sitting on a beanbag in a shag-pile carpeted lounge-room. It is 1973. The theme music from the shows of this period is distinctive, evocative. […]
Five things I did not know about Ella Fitzgerald She was born in 1917 in Virginia, but moved with her mother to New York State as a child, part of the Great Migration of African Americans seeking a better life in the northern states. Her mother died in a car crash in 1932, when Ella […]
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 […]
It is our national day, here in Australia. Imaginatively called “Australia Day”, 26 January is the anniversary of the proclamation of a British penal colony, New South Wales, in 1788. The date is becoming increasingly contested. Indigenous people resent it, calling it “Invasion Day”. There are more prosaic reasons for wanting a change. Australia is […]
It was a year of miracles, 1989. The Iron Curtain which had divided Europe for 40 years, which seemed as permanent and indestructible as the pyramids, was swept aside. Communist regimes, ruthless police states all, collapsed like portable picnic tables hit by a car. And the most amazing thing? Scarcely a shot was fired. People […]
We make a bit of a hash of New Year’s Eve in Australia. There is a tradition that on this night, you go out, drink heavily, and watch fireworks. No different to many places, I know, but here in the southern hemisphere, it is high summer. The day is often hot, and lots of people […]
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