As we head into another week of isolation, Real Gone offers you another contribution to our new “Sessions” column. Denny Smith, head honcho of The Great Affairs has kindly performed a stripped down version of his solo track, ‘I Will’.
A number originally written for piano and transposed to guitar, it works well in a light acoustic take and Denny’s no frills approach also brings out the heart of the song.
Not to be confused with the Hong Kong rap artist who released his fourth album ‘2019’ at the beginning of 2020, this Little Albert is a project helmed by Albert Piccolo, a musician best known for fronting Italian doom metal act Messa. Albert takes a sidestep from the heaviness for his first recording as “Little Albert”, choosing instead to apply lots of dark and fuzzy guitar to six pieces of dirty blues music.
During Real Gone’s first decade, our website managed to pick up a lot of supporters. From keen music fans, to labels and bands who loved what we did, every year seemed to gain momentum. Among it all, between the famous bands, the DIY artists and labels, there had been an unsung hero.
David Horton, a keen music fan from the US, supported our site from somewhere close to the very beginning. At a time when we wrote articles about albums we felt were overlooked and threw in the odd review for a new release, at a time when we only had support from a handful of regulars, David was there.
1972 was a particularly fruitful year for rock and pop music. That year saw The Rolling Stones release their critically acclaimed ‘Exile On Main Street’; Yes explored deep sonic textures on their indulgent ‘Close To The Edge’; Alice Cooper achieved worldwide acclaim and a massive hit single with ‘School’s Out’; Deep Purple gave us ‘Machine Head and Bowie introduced us to ‘Ziggy Stardust’. That might have been enough to make it great, but in addition, Steely Dan made their debut with the brilliant ‘Can’t Buy A Thrill’; Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’ was a massive success and Roxy Music‘s debut album sounded as if it were beamed in from another planet. The year also spawned T. Rex’s ‘The Slider’, Lou Reed’s ‘Transformer’, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Talking Book’, Joni Mitchell’s ‘For The Roses’, Elton’s ‘Honky Chateau’ and Van’s ‘Saint Dominic’s Preview’. With several dozen essential albums, 1972 had so much to give…and often feels like one of those years that keeps giving.
It was also the year that Jim Capaldi released his solo debut. It wasn’t something the Traffic multi-instrumentalist and songwriter had necessarily planned; it came about through a cruel twist of fate. Towards the end of 1971, Traffic were riding high with their fourth studio album ‘The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys’, but disaster struck when Steve Winwood suffered an appendicitis and subsequently became very ill with peritonitis, forcing the band to take a break. Rather than rest, Capaldi took the time to quickly record a selection of his own material during December, and that appeared on record shop shelves as ‘Oh How We Danced’ in March ’72. Kick starting what turned out to be a successful solo career, it had been a serendipitous twist in the Traffic saga.
Throughout their forty year career, Motörhead became renowned for their no nonsense live shows. There are a vast amount of official live recordings in circulation, with the 1979-80 period especially well served on CD and various later period shows on DVD (including the excellent ‘Everything Louder Than Everything Else’, a show capturing Lemmy & chums promoting the excellent ‘1916’ album.