rock/metal rewind
Not Forgotten: Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of the Worlds
Imagine for a moment the pitch for this album to Columbia Records in the mid 70s. A guy best known for advertising jingles and writing light-weight pop-rock hits turns up at the office one day, saying he wants to record a musical version of H G Wells’ science fiction classic, War of the Worlds. He …
Not Forgotten: Smashing Pumpkins – Adore
Smashing Pumpkins were undoubtedly one of the key rock acts of the 1990s. Lumped in with the grunge movement, they stood apart from the Seattle trio of big hitters, and they were on a completely different level to the movement’s rank and file foot soldiers. Up to Adore’s release in 1998, each Smashing Pumpkins album …
Classic Album: Small Faces – Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake
By and large, there are some albums that transcend the era of popular music they were recorded in, and then there are some that remain forever tied to the culture and attitudes of the era. There is a very small group of albums that manage to do be both, or neither. Released in 1968, Small …
Classic Album: Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells
I used to listen to Tubular Bells endlessly when I was about sixteen. Back then it seemed like some the most exciting music ever made, two massive suites of throbbing instrumental prog recorded by one bloke, a few mates, and one of the great British raconteurs as Master of Ceremonies. Two dozen years later my …
Classic Album: Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind
As Backseat Mafia’s ongoing series of Buyers and Beginners Guides demonstrate, picking your way around a discography of a well established musical act can be full of pitfalls and delightfully distracting cul-de-sacs. Even those well versed with the vagaries of music fandom can fall foul of not starting off with the right albums, or getting …
Not Forgotten: AC/DC – Powerage
It’s hard to consider that AC/DC could have an album that could be overlooked, but Powerage, slotted between 1977’s Let There Be Rock, the album that first saw them achieve a measure of international success, and the live, If You Want Blood… You’ve Got It, it seems to be an album which gets oddly overlooked …
Not Forgotten: Hawkwind – Space Ritual
There are some acts that have survived only to prove that drugs really do not work. Hawkwind are perhaps the most enduring of all the drug casualty groups, causing a world shortage of acid since the late 60s, a bewildering output of dozens of official and unofficial albums, and an even more bewildering array of …
Not Forgotten: Rainbow – Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll
The artistic success of Rainbow’s first two albums had emboldened an army of bootleggers to try and capture the live thrills Ritchie Blackmore’s quintet of hard rockers. This had in turn prompted Blackmore himself to make the rather questionable decision to release an official live album, effectively to scupper the bootleg market for Rainbow live …
Not Forgotten: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – You’re Gonna Get It!
You’re Gonna Get It! finds Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers in a darker, slightly more sinister mood than their debut. Production wise, it remains in the same ballpark, and the songwriting is of a similar level, but it’s just a little more narky and unsettled. It’s actually a really smart approach to differentiating between the …
Not Forgotten: Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Nightingales and Bombers
The sixth and final album recorded by the original Manfred Mann’s Earth Band quartet, Nightingales and Bombers was also released prior to the new line up’s cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” pushed them towards greater commercial acceptance. Despite the change of vocalist from Mick Rogers to Chris Thompson and the addition of …