My Record Collection 45

Tim Buckley This was Jeff Buckley’s father, though he died when Jeff was a small boy.  Tim was a singer songwriter in the mid-sixties; he never really achieved fame, but he was around.  He died of a heroin overdose in 1975.  I only have one record  – Goodbye and Hello from 1967.  Strangely for a 1967 record it sounds more dated than the Beatles and the Byrds records.  But I still like it; naïve and gentle and angry by turns it still sounds good. Best songs…’No Man Can Find The War’, ‘Once I Was’ and the psychadelic ‘Phantasmagoria in Two’.  A sweet record.

Jake Bugg For those of you who may feel that I have yet to move into the current Century, I do, quite regularly, try out new artists.  One such was Jake Bugg; and really he is quite good; very much in the singer-songwriter vein – this record could have been released any time in the last sixty years.  It is remarkably lyrical and gentle.  But…somehow it hasn’t made me jump up and go straight onto Amazon to buy more – I have the one self-titled album.  Not that there is anything wrong with it – just that my playlist (ever-changing) is full of new stuff by established artists, as well as re-listening constantly and in alphabetical order (no-one ever said I wasn’t anal) to my old favourites.  Best songs ‘Lightning Bolt’aand ‘Simple as This’.  But the name is stuck in my back-boiler mind and while whiling away time in charity shops if I come across any others of his I may well snap them up.

Buffalo Springfield – Well, this was the band that many people think started it all.  The country-rock thing, which has turned into Americana.  But the Byrds (see B soon) were well down this road too; the truth is always more complicated.   The band was just one of those emerging out of California in the mid-sixties.  But it did have Neil Young and Stephen Stills in it.  I have a collection (they only made three records, and Neil had left by the last one), called Retrospective.  It is pretty good, but Neil’s songs really stand out; best songs – ‘For What it’s Worth’ ‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing’ and ‘Broken Arrow’ – but it is all quite good really. Just over two years and the band had split – the rest is History.

Eric Burden – again a charity shop purchase.  Of course I knew him from the Animals. I s aw the CD and thought I would see what he was up to…it is a live album and quite good, very bluesy, and he does a few Animals songs too.  But this was simply a touch of nostalgia on my part.  An excellent version of Tobacco Road too.

Kate Bush – just how many fantastic Artists flourished and flowered in the fertile soil of the Sixties and early Seventies?  Kate was just one more precocious teenager who sung like an angel and had the classic English rose looks too.  I have only her greatest hits (and Red Shoes on cassette) but have always meant to buy others of hers.  Her debut single ‘Wuthering Heights’ has hardly been bettered, even by Kate; it is preposterous and crazy and quite wonderful.

Bernard Butler – he was the guitarist with Suede, one of the Britpop bands of the mid-nineties, not one of my favourite groups – but sort of okay.  The record, Friends and Lovers is alright, I quite like it.  But not enough to buy anything else by him.  So it goes…