On the afternoon of Saturday, 17th August 2013 I was drinking a cocktail on the balcony of my friend Wendy’s flat in Brixton. It was a humid, sunny day. The trees were heavy with dust. I reflected on summers past. I felt that sweet melancholy that comes at the end of the season. The cocktail …
Rob Chapman, Voyageur Press. 2016 That Old Black Magic AgainThe Barbarians were always more of a myth than an actual band. Rumors and whispers of a Rolling Stone’s tour without their lead vocalist plagued WRIF-FM “Home of Rock’n’Roll” in my hometown of Detroit. The core of the New Barbarians centered around the 70’s tour-alumni of …
Can you hear me wanking on my stereo? On this third Vinyl Wankers installment, we’ll have a look at the species of audiophile snobs. These are people who spend a ridiculous amount on high-end audio equipment and original pressings because they cannot enjoy music otherwise, people who likely clean their records with the four-times-distilled sperm …
On June 15, 1979, a totally unique, enigmatic and disturbing album was about to see the light and leave its mark as one of the best albums ever made. Unknown Pleasures is the debut album by the English band Joy Division. Today, the album continues to receive constant praise from the critics and the public, …
Vol. 2 (Night Trips) 1. “Contact” (Brigitte Bardot) Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris. She was an actress in many famous French films and became an internationally renowned sex symbol in the 1950s-1960s. During her fleeting love affair with Serge Gainsbourg (1967-1968), she also briefly began a career as a singer. …
Vol. 1 (Day Trips) 01. “La Ragazza Con La Pistola” (Peppino De Luca) Peppino De Luca was born on January 5, 1936 in Rome. In the 1950s, he played in the Roman New Orleans Jazz Band. In the 1960s, he turned his skills to Italian motion pictures and television. This is the title track from …
Arcadia was an idyllic paradise, a rural sanctuary, that was longed for even in the days of ancient Greece and Rome as urban life dominated and pastoral life disappeared. Arcadia was a mystical, mythical realm for medieval Europeans. During the Baroque era, the Italian artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (known as Guercino) created a painting named …
The story behind Bob Dylan’s masterpiece, Blonde On Blonde, is one of the most iconic in all of popular music. Dylan, coming off of touring for the equally magnificent Highway 61 Revisited, took some of the Hawks, his touring crew, and went into the Columbia Studio in New York to create his next musical work. After frustrations …
After the Brexit in 2019 the Great British Empire’s citizens had voted for me as their new leader. As first official act I had sent Teresa May and the rest of the parliament into Gulag and replaced them with my relatives and friends. On Christmas Eve’s Teresa was allowed to go out and serve us …
The Verve were a British band that were at the outset lumped into the shoegaze circle. They had all of the trappings of shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine – a strong reliance on guitar effects and other electronic devices that could alter the sound of the traditional rock instruments. The Verve, however, had something which …
