August 2021 Vinyl Spin Challenge Thread: Summer Loving

[jamieanderson1968]

9th August - International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!
Play an album that highlights those people that are often overshadowed and bring them to the attention of more people. Doesn’t necessarily need to be a particular group of people, but perhaps an overlooked group/genre/person of cultural significance or interest.
Zoon - Bleached Waves
“While Bleached Wavves continues the path set out in its intro — featuring textured guitars that glide and crash in a collage of reverb and delay effects — it also blazes new trails in shoegaze, particularly in the way it implements sounds from traditional First Nations music, an inventive mixture Daniel Monkman cheekily calls "moccasin-gaze."

 

[jamieanderson1968]

9th August - International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!
Play an album that highlights those people that are often overshadowed and bring them to the attention of more people. Doesn’t necessarily need to be a particular group of people, but perhaps an overlooked group/genre/person of cultural significance or interest.

Zoon - Beached Wavves

Going digital today at work (and because my order of this one on vinyl hasn't shipped yet)... here's some self-proclaimed "mocassingaze," by Ojibwe musician Daniel Monkman.

Damn you!! Oh well it such a wonderful record it deserves 2 mentions back to back. Ordered the vinyl this past Bandcamp Friday

 

[LeSamourai]

Damn you!! Oh well it such a wonderful record it deserves 2 mentions back to back. Ordered the vinyl this past Bandcamp Friday

I got that in just in the knick of time! But, yes, this album really is a wonderful way to spend half an hour!

 

[Selaws]

9th August - International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!

Nahko And Medicine For The People - Hoka (SideOneDummy Records, 2016 First Orange Pressing)

Nahko and Medicine For The People always write their songs to shed light on the often downtrodden. Really interesting songs that always flow incredibly well. The band is superb and mix a variety of styles together in a unique way.

 

[D Jilla]

Day 9 - Day of Indigenous People

This is a new age album based on the Aboriginal music Roach heard while in Australia. It features Aboriginal artist David Hudson playing didgeridoo on several tracks.

 

[Wes C. Attle]

9th August - International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!

Link Wray - Link Wray



Link Wray was Shawnee and his family was frequently targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. I always forget how much I like this album until I play it again.

 

[Rip_City]

9th August - International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!
Play an album that highlights those people that are often overshadowed and bring them to the attention of more people. Doesn’t necessarily need to be a particular group of people, but perhaps an overlooked group/genre/person of cultural significance or interest.

Les Filles de Illighadad - At Pioneer Works



One of my favorites from this year, brought to my attention thanks to the Outer Sounds vinyl subscription. A group of Tuareg ladies from Niger of the Sahara Desert, their artistry focuses on a raw interpretation of desert blues, featuring the distinctive hand drums and raw vocals of traditional Tende music. There is a solemn, hypnotic aura that permeates through their music and is quite lively and irrefutably organic.
So many treasures in world music, I can't even begin to pontificate what lies out there.

 

[Rip_City]

10th August - It's Been A While…
Play an album that you haven’t played in ages. The longer the gap between its last play and now the better. Tell us why its been sitting on your shelf for so long and how you feel about it after a listen.

CHVRCHES - The Bones of What You Believe



Haven't spun this one in what's felt like over a year. Honestly, I don't think this album has aged well to my ears. I find myself still enjoying Every Open Eye, so they are not a lost cause for me. Was a fun concert, but their music has not been doing anything for me since then; I view them as the Imagine Dragons of synthpop.
Looks like this is headed to the record store for a few bucks or the PIF thread in time.

 

[Atvinyl]

9th August - International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!
Play an album that highlights those people that are often overshadowed and bring them to the attention of more people. Doesn’t necessarily need to be a particular group of people, but perhaps an overlooked group/genre/person of cultural significance or interest.

A perhaps overlooked genre of cultural significance at least in the Western world is Chinese music. We have K-pop, J-pop and World Music is often African, Latin, maybe Indian music but I don't see much Chinese music out there. With 1.3 billion people on the planet, perhaps Chinese music should feature more as Chinese art is already well known in the art world. Of course, living in Singapore, we do have many Chinese LPs in stores here but as I don't understand Chinese, I actually possess only 2 Chinese language records.

But as this one has such great sound quality and her vocals is simply exquisite, I would recommend Taiwanese singer Tsai Chin to anyone wanting to explore this genre. She sings a lot of traditional ballads which evoke the atmosphere of Chinese music parlours of yesteryears.

Because I can't read Chinese, I don't even know what the title of this album is but you can stream some of her songs from Spotify and explore the rest of her discography. If you google, you probably can buy her albums on line from some Taiwanese or Hong Kong record stores.

Here's a compilation of some of her songs ---> on Spotify

 

[Atvinyl]

10th August - It's Been A While…
Play an album that you haven’t played in ages. The longer the gap between its last play and now the better. Tell us why its been sitting on your shelf for so long and how you feel about it after a listen.

I think I haven't played this album for more than 20 years. You can see the outer sleeve has even disintegrated. McEvoy is an Irish folk singer and there is nothing wrong with this album.

The reality is that I keep buying records at a rate faster than I could listen to, so I have to admit 90-95% of my collection just sits on the shelf never to be touched again. This one just happens to be one of my earliest purchases - in 2001.

How do I feel after listening to it? Haha, I don't feel anything - it's all right, maybe forgettable - I don't have much recollection of listening to it for the first time.

Eleanor McEvoy - Yola

 

[cul8er]

10th August - It's Been A While…
Play an album that you haven’t played in ages. The longer the gap between its last play and now the better. Tell us why its been sitting on your shelf for so long and how you feel about it after a listen.

I've been collecting vinyl for only about 5 years now. My first record club subscription was VMP and I think this was the second or third month of my subscription. It was one factor that got me hooked on this hobby because of the music discovery (or FOMO, depending on how you look at it

Anyway, it's been a while since I spun this. I still like it. It's very interesting and worth more spins.... and since then I have improved my system and it really does pop a little more!

The Books - The Lemon Of Pink

 

[Selaws]

10th August - It's Been A While…

Pink Floyd – Animals (Harvest, 1977 First Pressing)

I can't even remember the last time that I played this but it's certainly several years now. Back when I first started buying records I was able to pick up Pink Floyd records at carboot sales and charity shops for a quid at a time. As a result, I have quite a few of their albums despite only being a very casual listener. The one album that I really enjoyed was Atom Heart Mother, so whenever I see Pink Floyd on the shelf and decide to play an album it's almost always that one, so Animals has been sat gathering dust. Having now listened I imagine its one that I will play more, I actually really enjoyed it and might even dig into the others I have at the weekend.

 

[avecigrec]

8th August - Now THAT'S a cool story!

Scott Cook - Tangle of Souls


Way back in 2004 a buddy and I were cutting our teeth as performers and hosting an open mic in the Canadian Rockies. One evening we had a band show up on an off-night of their tour. They were a group of guys who taught English in Taiwan all year then came and toured Canada as The Anglers in the summers playing rootsy reggae folk vibes. The night they came and played our open mic became quite the epic evening when the owner of the bistro decided to stay open an extra 3 hours as the music and the beer flowed - the whole thing came to an end with the bistro owner jamming so hard on his own 17-minute long song that the pearly white face of his Ovation guitar was splattered in blood and a couple tiny chunks of his thumb. Needless to say we had a blast. In no small part thanks to The Anglers, fronted by one Scott Cook. When the band made their way back through the area a month or so later we delayed a roadtrip by a day to be sure we could catch their show.

Fast forward a year later: my buddy and I were both now living on Vancouver Island and planning our first tour. We reached out to Scott Cook for some venue advice and he hooked us up with a very comprehensive list of venues and contacts that would prove invaluable for years to come. We even managed to catch The Anglers play again in Banff on one of our own off nights.

Fast forward to 2007 where my buddy and I reunited with Scott Cook in northern Alberta at the North Country Fair - an absolute highlight of which was joining Scott onstage for a very psychedelic jam with Damo Suzuki during one of the festival's workshop sessions!

From then on Scott and have seen each other a few times a year, mostly at festivals and trying to catch each others gigs whenever we were home for them. It's been a beautiful and inspiring friendship and I remain a steadfast fan of his music. In fact, his album Further Down The Line was the very first thing I listened to with my son when he was a couple hours old. Now, four years later, it's one of his most requested albums in the car.

Scott himself is an incredible storyteller. His Hobo Travelogue newsletter, while slow since Covid, has long been one of my favourite musician newsletters for the amount of stories and detail he manages to pack into to each one. He's also been engaged in a friendly liner note war of attrition with fellow storyteller and songwriter extraordinaire Corin Raymond - each having moved up to books for their liner notes. Accompanying this album (and housing the CD version) is a 240-page hardcover book around the dimensions of an oversized CD case!

After twenty years of being a professional musician Scott finally put out his first vinyl release last year, and I hope to heck it isn't his last!

 

[TenderLovingKiller®]

Day 08: Now THAT'S a cool story!
Play an album that has a great story linked to it

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

The stories behind this album is fairly well known. There is the music biz story that will forever be attached to this album almost any time a music critic or arts journalist writes a piece about YHF. The consolidation of labels under the AOL/Time-Warner banner led to the the ousting of longtime Reprise President, and Wilco fan Howard Klein. The new President, David Kahne didn’t get YHF, and didn’t hear any “radio hits” but Tweedy refused to change the album and as a result the band was let out of their Reprise contract and as a bonus was allowed to keep the YHF master or free. Afterwards, Wilco leaked the album online and created quite a bit of buzz which resulted in multiple labels bidding to sign Wilco and put out YHF exactly how Tweedy intended. The winning label, Nonesuch was also a subsidiary of AOL/Time-Warner, meaning Warner music essentially paid Wilco twice for the opportunity to release YHF.

The other big story that was attached to this album regarded the actual recording process. Coming off the release of Wilco’s previous LP, Summerteeth the band had developed kind of a co-leadership position between singer/songwriter, Jeff Tweedy and multi-instrumentalist, Jay Bennett. As the recording process for YHF began Bennett and Tweedy were on very different pages on how they wanted the record to sound. Their battles became the primary focus of the documentary, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, that was filming the creation of YHF. The butting of heads ultimately led to Bennett being dismissed from the band. If you haven’t seen the documentary you should seek it out as it’s one of the best Rock Documentaries ever filmed.

 

[TenderLovingKiller®]

Day 09: International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!
Play an album that highlights those people that are often overshadowed and bring them to the attention of more people. Doesn’t necessarily need to be a particular group of people, but perhaps an overlooked group/genre/person of cultural significance or interest

Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison

Johnny Cash has always been a voice for the downtrodden and forgotten people. His prison albums are a great example of this. Another excellent example was his version of “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” (a song that I don’t have on wax unfortunately). This song was originally written by folk singer Peter La Farge but was popularized by Cash when he chose to release the song as a single in 1964. The song tells the story of Ira Hayes a Pima Indian who, in spite of the poor treatment his people received from the US government, would join the Marines during World War II. Hayes fought valiantly for his country and was one of the 6 Marines who iconically raised the American Flag on Iwo Jima. He would initially return home a hero but eventually he’d fall on hard times and alcoholism, which resulted in is death. It’s sadly a familiar story, one felt by many veterans and native people.

 

[TenderLovingKiller®]

Day 10: It's Been A While…
Play an album that you haven’t played in ages. The longer the gap between its last play and now the better. Tell us why its been sitting on your shelf for so long and how you feel about it after a listen

Aldous Harding - Party

My “problem” is I just have too many damn records and not enough hours in the day to listen to them all. This album was my introduction to the talented Kiwi. It’s a record I enjoy quite a bit but It’s also on that has got a bit lost in the shuffle. I don’t think I have spun it since I picked it up from VMP back in 2017.

…and since I don’t own Break The Cycle (a Staind Joke. Anyone? Anyone? No? Okay!) I figured I would go this route.

 

[avecigrec]

9th August - International Day Of The Worlds Indigenous People!

The Jerry Cans - Echoes


The Jerry Cans go electric!

Last years album was a bit of a departure from the folkier leanings of this Iqaluit quintet's previous releases and further into the realms of rock - adding prog, post punk and synth-pop sounds to their trademark bilingual (Inuktitut and English) blend of folk, rock and Inuit throat singing. Some music critics were not on board, offering up middling reviews, but I think it's their most exciting album yet.

 

[Turbo]

I'm going to dig deep when I try to catch up in a few days. Both the cool story and indigenous challenges look pretty tough and you guys made some excellent choices (and @TenderLovingKiller®, you scooped one of my ideas with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot).

 

[jamieanderson1968]

10th August - It's Been A While…

Play an album that you haven’t played in ages. The longer the gap between its last play and now the better. Tell us why its been sitting on your shelf for so long and how you feel about it after a listen.

Bedhead - Live in Chicago

I had no idea what to play for this, so I just hit random in Discogs and this came up. Cannot tell you when I last played it, easily 3 years ago. Since I have played Codeine and Bedhead so far this month, I will need to play Duster I guess.

 

[TenderLovingKiller®]

10th August - It's Been A While…

Play an album that you haven’t played in ages. The longer the gap between its last play and now the better. Tell us why its been sitting on your shelf for so long and how you feel about it after a listen.

Bedhead - Live in Chicago

I had no idea what to play for this, so I just hit random in Discogs and this came up. Cannot tell you when I last played it, easily 3 years ago. Since I have played Codeine and Bedhead so far this month, I will need to play Duster I guess.
View attachment 108302

Some Low would be good too.