I've been collecting records for as long as I can remember, and sometimes it's easy to skip over things, and forget what you've got. I'm going to start listening to things in alphabetical order, it give me a chance to look through my collection again, and give me an opportunity to share things with other music lovers, and vinyl collectors.
The rules are simple, I will start at A, and choose an artist from my collection beginning with that letter, next day I move on to B, then C, etc.
A is for... Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier
I've just finished an audiobook called 'Solid State' which is primarily focussed on the Abbey Road album, so this album seemed an obvious choice for me. The book is an eye opener for me, going into great detail about the technology used on the album, it being the first Beatles record recorded on a 'solid state' transistor desk as opposed to the previous albums recorded using valve desks. The use of 8-track tape combined with this enabled them to get a much cleaner and sophisticated production than had gone before.
There's also quite a lot of Moog synthesiser used on the album, which George Harrison had discovered in LA. He liked it so much he bought one, and you can hear it in quite a few places on the album. Ringo is also playing his new drum kit, with a couple of extra toms, so get bigger drum fills and a solo towards the end.
It's a shame that this was the last album they recorded as a group, although they were going through a break up there's some fantastic moments on the album, for me Paul's vocal on Oh! Darling, and George's songwriting on Something are pretty special. I guess all good things come to an end.
And so on to the record. I'm lucky to own an original pressing of this record, which sounds pretty good, now over 50 years later! For those of a technical disposition this is the version with the revised cover, the very early verions having the Apple logo misaligned on the rear of the sleeve (YEX-749 2 / YEX 750-1).
So here's a few images of my copy...
And a few tracks to enjoy...
