theGoods ’
Books
104 John King, James Kelman
Comics
106 The Escapist
Records
106 PJ Harvey, Charlatans
RECORDS BEST OF/RE-ISSUE ROUND UP
h music, sweet music. Samuel Johnson A was right when he called it the ‘only
sensual pleasure without vice’. But sometimes you don’t want to trawl through those 35 Fall albums that you own for a ‘Rowche Rumble’ or a ‘Mr Pharmacist’. Thank God then for 50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong (Sanctuary 0000 ), the first collection from Manchester’s finest to have been compiled with the full support of Mark E Smith. Mocked up to look like the Elvis album of the same name, this is an absolute joy; 25 years of misanthropy, dadaism and consummate musicianship with a band that is and was constantly on the point of imploding, is time well spent in anyone’s book.
David Bowie’s apocalyptic, deeply pretentious 1974 album Diamond Dogs gets a re-release this fortnight. Diamond Dogs: 30th Anniversary Edition (EMI 0000 ) is a double CD release with the first disc featuring the original standard album which sounds great. The second disc features a mix of bonus tracks from 1973
Games
1 09 Transformers
DVD
TV
1 1 1 Pavarotti, Omagh
1 10 Richard Pryor, Wild Geese
.0... Excellent 0... Recommended 000 Good
.0 Flawed
0 Poor
Travel
1 1 2 Islay
Food&Drink
1 1 4 Supermarkets
Last Word
128 Edwyn Collins
‘THE FALL ARE AN ABSOLUTE JOY: 25 YEARS OF DADAISM AND CONSUMMATE MUSICIANSHIP'
(‘Dodo’/ ‘Growin Up’ / ‘Alternative Candidate’) which are typically accomplished but a little too
upbeat to fit the darker hues of the album proper.
It’s let down by a couple of remixes of ‘Rebel Rebel’ which are just unnecessary knob twiddling and a semi-unplugged warbling from last year. This is one for the Bowie completist.
ELP The Ultimate Collection (Sanctuary .0. ) is an interesting collection from this progressive rock supergroup. Trawled from the ashes of Nice, King Crimson, Atomic Rooster and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Emerson Lake and Palmer were a band constantly trying to push the boundaries that divided classical music and rock. Amongst all the flummery and keyboard stabbing, there is some great stuff here. It is really nice to see ‘Tarkus’, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Peter Gunn’ make it onto this album. But things do get a bit migraine- inducing by the time you make it to their more whimsical tunes (‘Pirates’, ‘Great Gates of Kiev’).
Something of a disappointment is the remastered reissue of Jeff Beck’s Beck-Ola (EMI 000 ). Notoriously difficult to work with, Beck was always a man who couldn’t decide what type of music would best suit his phenomenal guitar playing. In this, his second major LP, originally released in 1969, he was getting his teeth into rock and blues with the help of Rod Stewart on vocals and the ever manipulative Micky Most as producer. Even in this pumped up form, Beck-Ola really hasn’t travelled that well at all. Apart from the rockin’ down home ‘Plynth’, this is really only of interest for its raw extras culled from a live recording made in the De Lane Lea studios on 19 November 1968.
The real must buy out of this lot is undoubtedly
WWJ-pakner
the ultirmte collection
Terry Reid’s Super Lungs: The Complete Studio Recordings (EMI 00000). Most famous for
. ~ turning down the lead “a,” vocalist Job In Led
Zeppelin, Reid had a voice of an angel but the musical grace of a demented, soul music devil. This is basically Reid’s first album, Bang Bang I’m Terry Reid, which only ever received a US release, and his second album, Terry Reid. They are both superb but he was to leave them standing with his 1973 Buckleyesque masterpiece, River. Tunes ‘This Hand Don’t Fit the Glove’, ‘Bang Bang’ and ‘Silver White Light’ really need to be heard to be believed. This is cult Tarantino shit, friend. Finally, two compilations from differing ends of the musical spectrum, which are both worth owning. Papa Loves Mambo: The Very Best of Perry Como (BMG 0000 )— boy can this man swing. Who would believe that he had a V-neck Pringle tattooed on his own flesh? Meanwhile, The Taste of TG: A Beginner’s Guide to Throbbing Gristle (Novamute 0000 ) is as potty as a loo brush but it places TG in a timeframe of anarchy, madness and outsider art. (Paul Dale)
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'i\.rl.i. l.” 3'. THE LIST 103