'67 Album Cover Art

This will be a long scroll, if interested...

Being able to access this site here [and you can change the year] I was expecting to see much more in the way of psychedelic art work - with the musical significance of this year - but that isn't, surprisingly, the case. Though I'm sure there are more, and depending on your definition, there are around these four:

The preponderance of 'psychedelic' album covers at this time were more in the way of floral features - by far the most common - and in the pop-psyche fonts. Otherwise, it is a lavish use of colours, and/or the bands/an individual dressed in 'hippie' fashion or, as with the Rolling Stones, outlandishly. There is also a 'genre' of cartoonish ones, but I don't particularly like these [though the Beatles get posted because of the font, and the music!]. This is just a snapshot, but it demonstrates the actual focus of this time:

Car Music 33

Steve Buckley at the Blue Vanguard Jazz Club, Exeter, 22nd February, 2018

Impressive

Another excellent night of music at the Blue Vanguard Jazz Club in Exeter with saxophonist Steve Buckley playing a great set of distinctively interpreted standards along with house band Craig Milverton – keys, Al Swainger – bass, and Coach York – drums.

It all bopped along wonderfully [including rumba and Caribbean rhythms/beats, often layered superbly by CY] but there were also two sweet ballads performed, one of these the Sammy Cahn / Jule Styne Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry, and both displayed some fine delicacies of playing, Buckley setting the moods with feeling and touch.

Buckley described jazz from all eras and played anywhere as an ‘adventure’, and he linked this to turning up to play with a band [trio here] with whom you’d never played before and the similar spirit of this. As one of my fellow attendees described, it’s the ‘language of jazz’ and these guys played as if they had conversed together for a lifetime: impressive.

Shoe Music 8

Andy Sheppard Quartet - Romaria, album review

Peacefully Panoramic

Seeing Andy Sheppard and band in Bristol play much from this album certainly prompted keen anticipation for its release, and hearing opening track And a Day immediately rekindled the experience of mellowing to its atmospheric tone and pace, Elivind Aarset’s guitar soundscapes emerging in wafts of soft to fuller sounds over which Sheppard plays his characteristic breathy melodies. This is echoed in following track Thirteen, Seb Rochford's still muted drumming setting a processional beat, and here Sheppard playing with more distinct and crisp notes on the rise and fall of a simple but pretty melodic line. Aarset continues the ebb and flow of the guitar’s electronic pulsing, Michael Benita bringing the bass runs more to the fore. It is a beautiful, calming start. The third and title track introduces a wider palette both in terms of pace and all the instruments increasing in complexity, Sheppard’s soprano sax here dancing delightfully. Next Pop is another sweet melody, Aarset strumming chords and accompanying the melodic line so stepping out of the panoramic platforming of earlier. I do like the riff in sixth With Every Flower that Falls. For more energetic – a relative term – sax runs, penultimate All Becomes Again provides these, the tenor-dips into lower notes punctuating these with their gusto bursts. Closer Forever returns to the opening reflective style, though more expansive in the sax runs, and it rounds off a whole that is a peacefully caressing sound from a sublime quartet.

Fruit Music 2

My Funny Valentine

Behold the way our fine feathered friend,
His virtue doth parade
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend
The picture thou hast made
Thy vacant brow, and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent
Thou noble upright truthful sincere,
And slightly dopey gent

You're my funny valentine,
Sweet comic valentine,
You make me smile with my heart.
Your looks are laughable, un-photographable,
Yet, you're my favorite work of art.

Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?
But, don't change a hair for me.
Not if you care for me.
Stay little valentine, stay!
Each day is Valentine's Day

Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?
But, don't change a hair for me.
Not if you care for me.
Stay little valentine, stay!
Each day is Valentine's Day

Songwriters: Lorenz Hart / Richard Rodgers

My Funny Valentine lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Imagem Music Inc

Fruit Music