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bobby gillespie

  • ill be your mirrorI’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground & Nico – Various Artists (Verve)

    Tribute albums usually have their fair share of lowlights bordering on the "what the fucks". Worst still, their highlights usually rank at a mere meh.  At best, someone will pull off a single worthy take of something and rescue the whole project from being a waste of time. 

    The first Velvet Underground album is now an unquestioned classic seen as a cornerstone of modern rock.  It does this because of, not in spite of, its "dangerous" themes and avant-garde sound.  Even the "pretty" songs seem to arrive from another world, twisted by low-fi audio recording.

    Sir George Martin was not at the mixing desk. And that is why the first Velvet Underground album rules.  Oh, that and genius players and songwriting.  That didn't hurt.

  • andrew innesPrimal Scream is back in Australia for the first time in six years this month, on the back of recent albums "More Light" (2013) and "Chaosmosis" (2016) but focussing on their 30-year back catalogue.

    Co-founding member and guitarist ANDREW INNES spoke to the I-94 Bar's EARL O'NEILL this week and expounded on a handful of topics that are close to his heart...

    My First Records

    My mum used to come home with a big pile of seven-inch singles that were a bit beaten up. I think they were ex-jukebox; all sorts of things, Beatles and Stones but strange country and western records, comedy records...so I was exposed to wide spectrum of music. Apparently before I could read I could tell which song it was by the colour of the label and the shape of the words.