Greetings from Laurel Canyon!
Sous aucun prétexte / Je ne veux / Avoir de réflexes / Malheureux / Il faut que tu m’expliques / Un peu mieux / Comment te dire adieu
Mon cœur de silex / Vite prend feu / Ton cœur de pyrex / Résiste au feu / Je suis bien perplexe / Je ne veux / Me résoudre aux adieux
Je sais bien qu’un ex-amour n’a pas de chance, ou si peu / Mais pour moi un explication vaudrait mieux
Can you guess where I am?
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sundazed Music will release The Way to San Quentin, a career-spanning collection of gritty prison songs recorded by and largely written by Pacific Northwest rockabilly cult hero Bobby Wayne, on September 11. Available on LP and CD, the collection brings together largely unissued material showcasing Wayne’s unmistakable bass-baritone across stripped-down tales of outlaws, killers, gun-slinging women, and life as public enemy No. 1. The album is now available for pre-order.
Though widespread stardom eluded him, Wayne never lost the spark that first drew him to the music. Preserved on reel-to-reel tape, the recordings collected on The Way To San Quentin capture an artist with a natural affinity for rockabilly’s most dangerous characters and darkest stories. From the title track and “Yuma Prison” to “Kill At The Lawyers,” “Public Enemy No. 1” and “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” Wayne inhabits a world of crime, punishment and hard luck with a voice built to tell the tale.
Born Robert Wayne Snyder in Spokane, Washington, in 1936, Wayne was an early force in bringing rockabilly to the Pacific Northwest, armed with a deep, resonant voice often compared to Johnny Cash and a sound that fused hard-driving rock ‘n roll with country storytelling. On The Way To San Quentin, that combination comes into sharp focus through a collection of murder ballads, prison laments and outlaw tales steeped in the darker corners of the American songbook.
Wayne was just 15 when he first picked up a guitar and 16 when he formed the Rocky Mountain Playboys. By 17, he had already ventured to Los Angeles in pursuit of a music career, only to be told by local clubs to head back home. Undeterred, he continued performing and recording, working with producers and country musicians while chasing the breakthrough that always seemed just beyond reach.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | The first-ever vinyl pressing of Sheryl Crow’s GRAMMY Award-winning self-titled sophomore album joins UMe’s acclaimed Vinylphyle reissue series, available to order today exclusively via uDiscover Music.
Making its vinyl debut, Sheryl Crow has been cut from new vinyl masters assembled specifically for this release using a carefully executed digital/analog hybrid process. The album is presented as a deluxe 2LP edition pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at RTI. Produced to Vinylphyle’s premium audiophile standards, the release features a tip-on wrapped gatefold jacket in a satin matte finish, printed on clay-coated board, archival poly sleeves, and a four-panel insert with source tape scans, rare archival imagery, and new liner notes. Order the Vinylphyle edition HERE.
Released on September 24, 1996, Sheryl Crow arrived at a pivotal moment in its creator’s career. While Tuesday Night Music Club established Crow as one of the most compelling new artists of the decade, her self-titled follow-up fully cemented her reputation as a songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and artistic force. As the album approaches its 30th anniversary, it remains one of the defining singer-songwriter statements of the 1990s and a cornerstone of Crow’s remarkable career.
Produced by Crow and engineered by Tchad Blake, the album embraced a broader and more adventurous sonic palette than its predecessor, weaving together roots rock, folk, country, blues, pop, and alternative influences into a confident and deeply personal statement.
Celebrating Robbie Grey on his 69th birthday. —Ed.
When people think about Modern English, the band that was formed in Colchester in the early eighties, it’s invariably their 1982 hit “I Melt With You” that comes to mind. It was dreamy, irresistible, and impossible to avoid. But before “I Melt With You,” to wit, on their 1981 debut LP Mesh & Lace, Modern English showed a far more raw and dissonant face to the world. Mesh & Lace made no comparisons with Duran Duran because it was an uncompromising slice of droning noise, bordering at times on chaos, and had far more in common with Joy Division and PiL than, say, Simple Minds.
Not everybody liked it, that’s for sure. Yo La Tengo’s Ira Robbins, writing for Trouser Press, sneered at Mesh & Lace, calling it “a load of monotonous droning and shouting by a precious art band oppressively weighed down by its self-conscious 4AD pretensions.” Precious they may have been, and droning to boot, but Mesh & Lace is anything but monotonous. Rather, it’s an adventurous foray into the heart of darkness by a band that would soon enough undergo a sea change that led to the synthpop of “I Melt With You.”
I’d have never known had it not been for a review comparing noise vandals Clockcleaner to Modern English. This struck me as akin to comparing GG Allin to the Partridge Family, because, like most sentient humans, I knew nothing more about Modern English than “I Melt With You.” “Balderdash!” I cried. But I’ll be damned if Mesh & Lace wasn’t one fearless foray into the precincts of noise for noise’s sake. Manic drumming, long drones, chanted lyrics—these guys took Joy Division one step further by sacrificing their melodies to the exigencies of total desperation. Mesh & Lace doesn’t sound like affectation to me; it sounds like a fatal bludgeoning by Ian Brady, the Moors Murderer.
Robyn Hitchcock is a songwriter who has spent nearly five decades treating the surreal as ordinary and the ordinary as suspect.
He came up with The Soft Boys in Cambridge in the late seventies, out of step with punk and closer to The Doors and Syd Barrett than anything happening around them. Underwater Moonlight went nowhere at the time but became one of the most influential records of its era. He has been prolific ever since, solo and with the Egyptians and the Venus 3, writing about insects, weather, death, and the small absurdities of life with a sharp eye and wit.
The Confuser arrives July 24 on Tiny Ghost Records, his 25th studio album and first collection of all-new songs in close to four years. He recorded it in Nashville with Brad Jones and Jordan Lehning, backed by session players including guitarist Jeremy Fetzer, bassist Todd Bolden, and drummer Eric Slick. Kimberley Rew, his co-founder in The Soft Boys, plays on four tracks. Gillian Welch sings on “Ghost in Sunlight.” Johnny Marr heard the single “How To Feel Alright” and called it Bo Syddley, which is about right.
Robyn kicks off an extensive UK and EU tour in October including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. Dates, records, books, ideas at robynhitchcock.com.
Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer, and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.
The fix is in. How else to explain how the Rolling Stones’ overly long new album with the hilariously hideous cover–to say nothing of sad cliches of sad cliches of better Mick and Keith songs from decades gone by—has been receiving laudatory review after laudatory review? Payola? If so, where’s my bulging envelope of filthy lucre?
Look, we all owe the Rolling Stones an enormous debt of gratitude for years of meritorious service. But how many years are we talking about exactly? When was the last time a new Rolling Stones album actually mattered? The late Seventies? We’re closing in on fifty years here. You could buy their last truly good LP on 8-track.
They’re down to three members—time waits for no one—but still they bang their drum across the rock world like an Energizer Bunny with a walker, catering to their aging contemporaries who keep hoping the Stones will deliver on some of their old black magic.
They’re also attracting the types of unimaginative people who only buy albums by bands they’ve heard of, and there’s barely a human on the planet who hasn’t heard of the Rolling Stones. And then there are those for whom the Rolling Stones still (inexplicably) carry the whiff of the bad boy about them.
2026’s Foreign Tongues is just the last in a long succession of Rolling Stones albums that bring to mind that Medical Alert Bracelets commercial where an old woman lying on the floor cries, “Help! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”
UK | More than half of men and a third of women have collections on the go—survey. Books, jewelry, watches, and vinyl records were among the items that people said they collected, NFU Mutual said. More than two-fifths (44%) of people consider themselves to be collectors, with Gen Z adults particularly likely to have a collection on the go, a survey suggests. Men are more likely to be collectors than women, at 55% compared with 33%, according to NFU Mutual. Books, jewellery, watches and vinyl records are among the items that people said they collect, with some also saying they collect cryptocurrency, the research found. Seven in 10 (71%) Gen Z adults (born after 1996) and more than half (51%) of Millennials (born from 1981 to 1996) said they collected items highlighted in the survey, making them more likely to do so than the 35% of Gen X (born from 1965 to 1980) and 29% of Baby Boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) surveyed.
Leeds, UK | New electronic music record store opens in Leeds: Leeds has welcomed a new destination for electronic music fans with the launch of a specialist record store dedicated to dance music culture. The new space is a collaboration between vinyl retailer Plant & Deck and local institution Peppermint Records, bringing together carefully curated new releases, second-hand records and community-focused events under one roof. Located on the top floor of Doghouse Bar and Bagel Shop on Kirkgate, directly opposite Tribe Records, the store aims to become a hub for vinyl collectors and DJs alike.
Point Reyes Station, CA | Loose Joints Records spins into fifth year: Dylan Squires drops the needle onto side two of Albert King’s “Blues at Sunrise,” an album perched atop a small wooden shelf with hand-painted sky-blue lettering that reads: Playing Now. When customers are in his record store, he says, there is never any dead air. At Loose Joints Records, the Point Reyes Station shop he co-owns with Brian Ojalvo, two turntables are always spinning; when one record fades out, another disc starts up immediately. Audiophiles instantly appreciate the gear humming behind the counter. A vintage Altec tube amp paired with a set of sought-after Klipsch speakers pour out warm, three-dimensional tone as if a band is playing in the room. Finely tuned details and a carefully cultivated atmosphere have been the focus for the business partners since they opened in 2021 as West Marin’s first and only record shop.
Manchester, UK | Inside the new Northern Quarter cafe where you can test vinyl before you buy it—sip on espresso or natural wine as you browse: Onsite Records combines a barista station with custom listening booths, letting customers sample everything from dubstep to disco over a flat white. A new space combining a record store, coffee shop, and wine bar has opened in the Northern Quarter. Started by two friends, Onsite Records is designed as a hybrid hangout for music lovers, featuring dedicated listening stations where visitors can test records on turntables before deciding to buy them. The shop stocks a wide variety of vinyl across multiple genres, including dedicated sections for drum and bass, dubstep, downtempo, and disco.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mute have announced the long-awaited remastered reissue of CODE, Cabaret Voltaire’s eighth studio album: out of print for many years, it remains a fan favourite. The 1987 album will feature new in-depth sleeve notes, focused on the production and legacy of the album, and be available on limited edition “CODIFIED” marble vinyl and as a deluxe triple CD set featuring two bonus discs of remastered remixes from the time, plus unreleased remixes discovered in the archive.
CODE launches with influential producer, writer, and musician John Robie’s dub remix of “Thank You America,” originally earmarked as the third single from the original release. CODE captures the band at the height of their commercial and creative powers, marking the point that Richard H Kirk and Stephen “Mal” Mallinder signed to EMI exposing them to a world of bigger budgets, but no compromise on their unique vision.
The album became their most commercially successful with two singles —”Don’t Argue” and “Here To Go”—breaking the UK Official Singles Chart, and, explains Mal in the new sleevenotes, “This album captures a very interesting moment in time where we were moving into a technological world. Probably more than anything else Richard and I made together, CODE was a political record that we didn’t have to directly articulate as political, mostly because of what was going on in the background at that time.”
Ever prescient, CODE tapped into an increasingly uneasy relationship with technology, computers and programming that was creeping into all aspects of life, unpicking the codes of control to expose them—a preoccupation that would continue in Cabaret Voltaire’s work.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours turns 50. A landmark new book reveals the untold stories behind the album that continues to define generations.
Minneapolis-based music journalist Andrea Swensson—author of the best‑selling Prince and Purple Rain: 40 Years and Deeper Blues—returns with a definitive, deeply informed chronicle of one of the most influential albums ever recorded. Fleetwood Mac and Rumors: 50 Years (Motorbooks, October 27, 2026) explores the creation, context, and enduring legacy of Rumours, the masterpiece that transformed Fleetwood Mac into a global phenomenon and remains one of the best‑selling albums of all time.
For fifty years, Rumours has been a cultural constant—an album that defined its moment and continues to captivate new generations. From its chart‑topping debut in 1977 to its viral resurgence in 2020, it has repeatedly surged back into the spotlight, driven by timeless songwriting, emotional candor, and the band’s unmistakable chemistry.
Its reach extends far beyond music, inspiring novels, television adaptations, viral moments, and renewed fascination with the band’s story. With more than 40 million copies sold worldwide, Rumours remains one of the best‑selling albums of all time.
Celebrating Blair Thornton on his 76th birthday. —Ed.
I always wanted to be a speed-eating, eighteen-wheeling, gearjamming truck-driving man. A long haul, chicken-lights-blazing, hammer-down cowboy with a fat load and nothing to lose on the look-see for plain wrappers, Tijuana taxis, local yokels, and everything in between. Alas, my vision’s on a par with that of Jose Feliciano, and I can’t see Jack Shit without a pair of corrective lenses approximately the thickness of that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Give me weed, whites, and wine, and show me a sign, and I will run over that sign, and flatten a couple of Volkswagens for good measure. I’m pretty much deaf to boot, which is why I make such an excellent music critic.
But hey, if you can’t be a real trucker, you can always listen to trucker music, and when it comes to trucker music, ain’t nobody on the road can beat Bachman Turner Overdrive. True, nobody took BTO seriously; I certainly didn’t take BTO seriously, and I actually liked ‘em. But the cold, hard fact is that their bland looks, complete lack of charisma, and zero hipness factor conspired against them, as did their weak good-to-bad song ratio. Over the course of a long and busy career, they were able to fill but a single-LP greatest hits, and just barely at that. Indeed, it’s hardly a credit to their post-1976 output that 1976’s Best of BTO (So Far) is a much stronger LP than 1986’s BTO’s Greatest.
A brief history: Randy Bachman was a member of Winnipeg, Manitoba’s Guess Who, left to form Brave Belt, and took on C.F. Fred Turner as a vocalist at the suggestion of fellow Canadian Neil Young. The big-voiced Turner led the struggling band in a harder-rocking direction, but they remained at a loss to secure a record label, being rejected 26 times. This was actually more times than girls rejected me who I asked to the senior prom.
History has a habit of overlooking the records that helped define a scene without ever quite breaking through. Bomb Romantics, the long-lost debut from The Blood Arm, is one of those albums.
Originally self-released in 2004 in a run of just 1,000 CDs before disappearing into collectors’ hands, it has spent more than two decades existing largely as indie folklore. Its arrival on streaming services for the first time finally gives this gloriously scrappy debut the audience it always deserved.
Listening back now, Bomb Romantics feels like a fascinating time capsule of the early-2000s indie underground, but one that has aged surprisingly well. Long before the term “indie sleaze” became shorthand for a generation’s soundtrack, The Blood Arm were already blending wiry post-punk guitars, dancefloor rhythms, and knowing lyrical wit into something that felt both effortlessly cool and slightly unhinged.
There’s an irresistible looseness to the record. Recorded over a single weekend in a garage studio, its rough edges aren’t flaws to be polished away but part of its identity. The production remains refreshingly unfiltered, allowing the band’s chemistry to take centre stage. Every track feels as though it might fall apart at any moment, yet somehow always lands exactly where it needs to.
Celebrating Andy Mackay on his 80th birthday. —Ed.
Bursting onto the scene 50 years ago, Roxy Music’s blend of glam rock and art rock proved highly influential while being impossible to imitate, as the music of singer Bryan Ferry, synthesist Brian Eno, saxophonist Andy Mackay, guitarist Phil Manzanera, and drummer Paul Thompson was simply drenched in personality. Virgin/UMe’s vinyl reissue program of the band’s eight studio albums began with the debut Roxy Music and its 1973 follow-up For Your Pleasure, both half-speed mastered at Abbey Road Studios by the engineer Miles Showell. Bluntly, these four sides of wax are indispensable to any collection of 20th-century rock music.
Looking back on it, it feels wholly appropriate to describe Roxy Music as coming out of nowhere in 1972. Their debut LP arrived sans any pre-release singles, with “Virginia Plain” b/w “The Numberer,” the band’s first 45, cut just short of a month after Roxy Music’s release, a short enough span that its hit A-side was added to nearly all later pressings of the album (on the subject, please note that Virgin/UMe’s release retains the sequence of the UK first edition).
The nature of the band’s arrival is nicely encapsulated by Roxy Music’s opening track “Re-make/Re-model.” After a passage of what might be intended as dinner party ambiance (shades of Ferry the pure sophisticate to come), Roxy explodes forth, maximally but methodically, and by song’s end it’s clear that in this particular outfit at this point, nobody was taking a back seat (well, except maybe bassist Graham Simpson, who exited after the LP’s release, with Rik Kenton stepping in for “Virginia Plain,” only to be quickly replaced on For Your Pleasure by John Porter).
US | Vinyl sales growth outperformed by CDs in the US during first half of 2026: Electronic music also experienced the biggest growth among genres in the US. The growth of CD sales overtook that of vinyl records during the first half of 2026. According to Luminate’s 2026 Midyear Report: Trends in Music, Television & Film, CD sales in the US rose 16%, with 16.3 million units sold between January and June this year. For comparison, vinyl sales grew by just 2.3%. Interestingly, much of the surge is attributed to the rise in collectable culture among younger consumers, according to the report, which also found that around half of the Gen Z and millennials who purchase CDs do not actually own a CD player. The report suggested that “price accessibility” could be a factor behind the trend…
Baltimore, MD | Celebrated Summer Records Has Been Ready for People to Go Analog for 20 Years: For two decades, owner Tony Pence was told the future of music would be online, with the final blow drawn by Gen Z. But those 14-to-29 year-olds are now the ones turning vinyl records into a billion-dollar industry. It’s a few minutes before Tony Pence’s record store opens on a Friday morning in Hampden, and before the clock strikes noon, a few young men are already milling outside, waiting to get in. “It’s wild to see,” says the 53-year-old owner of Celebrated Summer Records. For the last two decades, he’s been told that the future of music would be online, with the final blow drawn by Gen Z. Yet those 14-to-29 year-olds are now driving a rapidly growing “analog economy,” turning vinyl records like those stacked all around this Falls Road shop…
Ogletown, DE | New store offers a space for record collectors to connect: Hot Wax Records opens in the Shops at Red Mill. Alex Rash has been collecting records since high school, often spending hours in record stores with his friends discovering new music. “Me and several of my friends would hang out at record stores and gunk up right in front of the register until we became a problem,” Rash said. Record stores gave him a place to connect with other music enthusiasts and develop his hobby of collecting records. Now he hopes to create the same inviting atmosphere for the next generation of record collectors with his own record store, Hot Wax Records, which opened July 1 in the Shops at Red Mill in Ogletown. Hot Wax Records carries a lot of used classic rock records, cassettes, CDs and 45s.
Richmond, VA | Nine’s Lives: Celebrating 45 years, Plan 9 Music listens back at Hardywood. The number 45 is very meaningful to Jim Bland. “We treat 45 as a pretty big one,” says the co-founder and owner of Plan 9, the venerable Carytown music store celebrating four decades and a half of business this year. “That’s because it resonates with what we do and how this started.” Bland and his staff will commemorate the store’s birthday on Saturday with an all-day anniversary concert at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. …The store, which has been housed in five different locations of various sizes within the same two blocks of Carytown, never gave up on vinyl, and withstood music industry attempts to kill it off in favor of compact discs and, later, streaming. “Records eventually came back, and now CDs are doing the same. People are now buying both.”
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Analogue Productions announces an expansive new series of definitive audiophile reissues from The Who, spotlighting four of the band’s most essential recordings: My Generation, Live At Leeds, Tommy, and Who’s Next. Spanning the explosive early years of what would become one of the most celebrated bands of rock ‘n’ roll, these releases present each album in its highest-fidelity form across multiple premium formats, including 180-gram 45 RPM vinyl, Hybrid SACD, Ultra High Quality Record (UHQR) editions, and Ultra Tape reel-to-reel.
Sourced from the original analog master tapes and meticulously mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering (with SACD editions mastered to DSD), each release is pressed at Quality Record Pressings and housed in deluxe Stoughton Printing Old Style tip-on gatefold heavyweight jackets with scuff-resistant matte finishes, ensuring both sonic and physical presentation meet the highest audiophile standards.
My Generation (1965) The Who’s explosive debut remains one of the most ferocious opening statements in rock history. Peaking at No. 5 on the U.K. charts, My Generation captured the raw energy of the mid-’60s mod scene while introducing the band’s classic lineup: Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon.
Featuring era-defining tracks like “My Generation,” “The Kids Are Alright,” and “The Ox,” the album’s aggressive sound and power-chord attack helped lay the groundwork for hard rock and punk. Now available as a 180-gram 45 RPM 2LP set, Hybrid Mono SACD, and Ultra Tape reel-to-reel edition, these new versions unlock unprecedented dynamic range, transient attack, and low-end depth—bringing the band’s raw, volatile energy into startling focus.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | It may be hot outside, but the folks at Jazz Dispensary are staying cool with their latest Top Shelf series offering: a fresh reissue of 1973’s Song of Songs from influential trumpeter Woody Shaw.
A brilliant release from his early years as a leader, the four-track album showcases Shaw’s talents as a composer, arranger, and soloist. Returning to its original format for the first time in over 50 years, Song of Songs features all-analog (AAA) mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing.
As with all releases in Jazz Dispensary’s album-centric Top Shelf series, the LP comes in a stylish tip-on jacket that faithfully reproduces its original Contemporary Records design. Arriving September 4 and available for pre-order/pre-save today, Song of Songs will also be reissued on streaming platforms in standard and HD audio.
A virtuosic trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, Woody Shaw (1944–1989) was a pioneering figure in modern jazz, revered for his unique harmonic approach and innovative technical abilities on the trumpet. The New Jersey native showed early musical promise, soon capturing the attention of Eric Dolphy, Willie Bobo, and Bud Powell—all of whom he performed with. After a stint in Europe, Shaw returned to the US, where he worked alongside such forward-thinking musicians as Chick Corea, Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Joe Henderson, who inspired him to push the limits of his artistry.
