Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969–1971 is the latest retrospective collection of Beach Boys albums which features new track remasters, rare tracks and outtakes from a specific time frame. This time round, the focus is on the two Beach Boys albums that ushered in the Seventies viz. Sunflower and Surf’s Up.
(more…)
All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary) is a reissue celebrating 5o years of the release of George Harrison’s debut solo album in 1970. It is amazing to think that it seems like yesterday that we were reviewing the 30th anniversary reissue of the album twenty years ago. Times flies!
(more…)
A Robyn Hitchcock interview to promote Moss Elixir back in 1996. Originally conducted for BigO magazine, this is the full transcript.
(more…)
Wingspan: Hits and History is a greatest hits compilation album by Paul McCartney released in 2001. The contemporaneous review follows :
(more…)
A review of U2 The Best of 1990 – 2000 published in 2002.
(more…)
What follows is a 2006 review of Bee Gees Studio Albums 1967-68 boxset. This review was published at one of the previous incarnations of Power of Pop.
(more…)
Best Genesis songs (with Phil Collins) is a listicle idea that has been stuck in my head for a while now. There is a common misconception amongst progressive rock fans that when Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, it was all downhill from that point. This perception has hardened against the band especially in the 1980s when Genesis (Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford) become a genuine commercial success.
(more…)
Rene Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. Magritte is one of my favourite artists of all time. He is famous for creating a number of thought-provoking, incongruous images. Rene Magritte depicted ordinary objects in an extraordinary context, the premise of his work being the presentation of things that do not belong together. This unique ability is borne from Rene Magritte’s fecund imagination.
(more…)
The Best David Bowie Songs of All Time. Now it does not get more poignant than this one. Bowie’s birthday is 8th January. He would have been 74 years old this year. The fact that he passed away two days later five years ago is still heart-wrenching. It’s no exaggeration to declare that Bowie is one of my favourite artists and his art will certainly live forever.
(more…)
Station to Station is the opening track on David Bowie’s classic 1976 album of the same name. Clocking in at over 10 minutes, Station to Station is Bowie’s longest studio recording and is seen as a pivotal landmark in Bowie’s musical development in the 1970s. That decade was a seminal epoch for many influential rock genres and Bowie had his finger on the pulse of most of them!
(more…)
All Right Now is the ultimate British expression of the blues-rock explosion of the late 1960s and the hard rock movement of the early 1970s. Arguably, All Right Now is also the signature tune of Free, consisting of Paul Rodgers (vocals), Paul Kossoff (guitar), Simon Kirke (drums) and Andy Fraser (bass).
(more…)
BANDS THAT SOUND LIKE THE KINKS. A list of bands that might possibly be more famous, more well-known than The Kinks. BUT probably owe their success, nay, even their very existence to the brilliance of The Kinks.
(more…)
Prima facie, an article about THE BEST KINKS SONGS OF ALL TIME would seem like a piece of cake. But the opposite is true. The trick was despairing over the songs I had to omit from THE BEST KINKS SONGS OF ALL TIME. In the end, while twenty tracks seems just about right – not too little and not too much. Which is to me, an indication of how much I value Ray Davies as a songwriter.
(more…)
The Who. What more is there to say about The Who? Probably the most influential rock band of all time? And I do mean ROCK! A seminal band in every sense of the word. Think of all the rock sub-genres that have emerged in their wake, and it would be impossible not to trace The Who as the source. So doesn’t it make sense for me to make up a list of THE BEST WHO SONGS OF ALL TIME???
(more…)
Diehard fans of the legendary Neil Young will be more than keenly aware of the vast number of unreleased material that the singer-songwriter still holds in his vaults even after over 50 years of recording and releasing music. Thus, Neil Young Archives II is a much-anticipated release after the well-received first volume came out over a decade ago in 2009.
(more…)
John Lennon would have been 80 today. Of course, it’s almost 40 years since Lennon’s murder in 1980. I have always felt that Lennon’s solo output was under-appreciated. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that he actually went on hiatus for five years to be a house-husband! But that’s Lennon – ever the iconoclast. Let’s celebrate the 80th anniversary of his birth with a list of the best John Lennon songs of all time. (In alphabetical order)
(more…)
Bohemian Rhapsody is a 2018 biographical musical drama film that focuses on the life of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the British rock band Queen, from the formation of the band in 1970 to their 1985 Live Aid performance at the original Wembley Stadium. (Wikipedia)
(more…)
Review By Yong Shu Hoong of 2001 : A Space Odyssey (IMAX)
Watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey 50 years after its original release, I was surprised how well it has aged. True, some of the special effects may feel somewhat underwhelming by today’s standards, but none of it comes across slipshod, and there’s no denying how far ahead of its time this classic was in 1968.
(more…)
Mention Styx online and chances are you are going to be trolled. But for a time, the pop-rock quintet were one of the biggest bands on the planet.
(more…)