Journey Through The Past 13 : The Rolling Stones - Rolled Gold and Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street

My first real contact with the Stones' music was hearing Angie on the radio in 1973. That should have been enough to turn me off the Stones for life - fortunately it wasn't.

Before that my earliest recollection of hearing anything about them is Dad reading out a Sunday Times Story about the murder that occurred while the Stones played at the Altamont Festival.  For some reason I remember that well, we had stopped in Taihape on what must have been  a break driving to or from our Christmas Holiday in 1969.  To me Dad usually only read out things from a newspaper when the articles aligned with his world view which in this case must have been something to do with the decadence of the Stones and the associated breakdown in civilization.

Such was the impact of Angie and the equally awful title single off the next album It's Only Rock and Roll that I did not really dig my toes into their music for another 4 or 5 years when I eventually bought Rolled Gold a great collection of singles from the early 60s through to Wild Horses in 1971.

Terry bought a copy of a mixture of live and studio tracks called Gimme Shelter.  That was an inconsistent collection which appeared to have no thematic base to it.  It did however have a great live version of Midnight Rambler.  That lead me to picking up a copy of Let It Bleed and my growing appreciation of how good the Stones were.  I guess what made Let it Bleed so good was that you could almost hear the band working out what their next steps would be as they grappled with the increasingly erratic Brian Jones.  Tracks like Gimme Shelter, You Can't Always Get What You Want and Midnight Rambler really took them well and truly away from a singles band and I think was one of early landmarks of album rock.

I had been lent a copy of Beggar's Banquet when I was about 15 and I did not connect with it at the time, apart from Sympathy for The Devil.   If you like the song and have not read The Master and Margarita I strongly suggest that you give it a go - it shows how Jagger was really trying to update that book in song.  I still find the rhythm for that song engrossing - and was probably Jones' last significant contribution as he introduced the drumming and percussion of The Master Musicians of Joujouka that he picked up on an ill fated trip to Morocco where his relationship with Keith Richards probably effectively came to an end.
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Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street are now the two Stones' albums I play the most.  I find Sticky Fingers their most complete work as I find myself only skipping over Sister Morphine. It has two of my favourite Stones' tracks in Sway and Bitch.  However you can't argue with the grace of Wild Horses, the swagger of Brown Sugar and the power of what seems to me to be the Santana influenced jamming of Can't You Hear Me Knocking?

I eventually picked up a copy of Exile on Mainstreet in the early 90s.  I was immediately impressed at its breadth and how cohesive it is even thought there is not what I would call a single standout song. Somehow its sloppy, drugged out feel holds it all together.

So slowly but surely I became a Stones' fan.  I never forgave them for Angie though. 

I don't know much about Jazz but I like .......... Dexter Gordon's Go

Go is another CD that Chris persuaded me to buy on the you pay for it, I'll copy it and then you can have it deal. How could I resist such a sweet deal?

I particularly enjoy the lively version of Love for Sale which certainly has a bit more life than Chet Baker's.  Nice listening when you have  a sunrise like this after an almost perfect view of the lunar eclipse the night before!!

My Long Journey Into Sound 1 : 1960 - 1975 The Radiogram

The first records I heard were played through a walnut Radiogram.  It had a Garrard Turntable that you could pile up both 45s and lps on a stacker mechanism.  It had this dinky little arm thing that could detect the size of the record and so when different records dropped it would line the needle up correctly.  Simple effective technology.

It could also play 78s, 45s, 33s and something called 16s which I still have never even seen.   After a bit of searching on the net the closest I could get to what our Radiogram looked like is the photo below - although this one is a bit more modern.

For as long as I can remember until I started buying records the radiogram had the same records in it.

An eclectic mix of Mantovani 10"s, The Dean Martin 45 Volare, some Mario Lanza, Doris Day's Que Sera Sera/Sentimental Journey 45, Sea Shanties by the Robert Shaw Chorale, Some Kingston Trio, Where are you by Sinatra,  A pile of old 78's including more Mantovani and one that really intrigued me even then Charlie Chaplin's Theme from Limelight.

We also had the great Bonanza Pondarosa Party Record which somehow seems to be the sole survivor from that era.


Many of the records were not the original pressings and covers but ones from the World Record Club with different covers to the original and a pink whirly label.


The Radiogram was a big piece of furniture and so doubled as a sideboard with vases and other ornaments frequently stored on top of it.  To play something you had to take whatever was on top off and then carefully place the records on  the turntable in what was something of a well. It kind of made playing music difficult and in the whole time we had it I can not remember Mum and Dad ever buying a new record.





Rightly or wrongly I then concluded that most of the records probably came with it.

Journey Through The Past 12 : Rod Stewart : Every Picture Tells A Story

Every Picture Tells A Story is the only proper Rod Stewart album I own.  I do not think I will buy any more as I also have the excellent Storyteller 4cd/7lp set in both formats (both bought for incredibly cheap prices). I was always an admirer rather than a fan, thought he was an occasional exceptional writer, a superb interpretive singer but not someone that quite did it for me.

I first heard him singing Maggie May on 20 Solid Gold Hits Vol 1 probably the only song on that album still worth a spin or 3 minutes of your time.  At school Atlantic Crossing (now I know it was recorded in Muscle Shoals I should probably give it another go) and Tonight's the Night were ubiquitous and that may have been part of the reason I resisted.  Eventually I relented and got this record.

A terrific collection of both original and cover songs played more or less by The Faces at a time when he could not make up his mind whether he was a solo artist or a Face.

Along with Maggie May you get Tomorrow is Long Time, Mandolin Wind and perhaps the definitive version of Tim Hardin's Reason To Believe reviving an almost forgotten song.  Stewart became excellent at picking out forgotten or overlooked gems of songs and repeated the feat a few times notably with Danny Whitten's I don't want to talk about it, Cat Stevens' The First Cut is The Deepest and years later even covering The Faces own Ooh La La.

I don't know much about Jazz but I like ....... John Coltrane's A Love Supreme

A while ago I asked my son Chris who his favourite musician was and without hesitation be said Coltrane.

So in another example of the Son teaching the father I started listening or listening closer.

A Love Supreme is his most revered work and from my limited exposure to his work, which includes Blue Train, Giant Steps and the recently released Carnegie Hall Set he did with Thelonious Monk.

Playing it now I have decided that it is better late night Jazz than early morning.  But that may be that I am still getting over this bad headcold! 

Journey Through The Past 11 : Joe Cocker : I Can Stand A Little Rain

Terry gave me I Can Stand A Little Rain for my 14th Birthday.  It remains a favourite album and definitely MY favourite Joe Cocker album apart from greatest hits collections.

A great selection of songs (the only bum note being Joe's own shot at writing).  It also introduced me to songwriters like Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Webb and Randy Newman (although I later found out I did in fact already know many of their songs). While You are So Beautiful got overplayed,  played again after some years it regains its original simple attraction.  However the highlights for me include
Harry Nilsson's Don't Forget me
Randy Newman's Guilty
Allen Toussaint's Performance and
Jimmy Webb's The Moon's a harsh mistress (although I think Glen Campbell's version may be even better)

So if I did not say thank you sufficiently at the time Terry - thanks for this great album.

My Long Journey into Sound 2 : My First Stereo 1975 to 1980

Until Christmas 1975 the radiogram had become almost my own personal Jukebox. However as I bought more and more records its clunky mechanisms, heavy tonearm and old needles were doing more and more damage to my new records.  This got particularly bad as the oil shock hit and records became thinner and thinner.  So I made my case to Mum that we needed an upgrade to the music system.  I must have done a pretty good job as I got my own system for Christmas 1974.

Dad had tracked down a second hand stereo separates system for what I was told was $100 at the time.  At the time I think it was the most expensive gift any of us had received.  I was rapt and remain forever thankful as that was a huge investment at the time.  

However it quickly became apparent that the new machine was incompatible with a family of the six who were then still living in a 1100 sq ft 3 bedroom house.

I soon persuaded Mum and Dad to let me set it up in the family caravan which was was parked adjacent to the house with an extension cord poking through from the laundry window.  By that stage the caravan was not being used as much as it had been.  The practicalities of the six of us fitting into seemed to limit its use to being the extra bedroom when my Grandmother came to stay.

So there I was out of the house and free to play as much air guitar as I wanted!