Look, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.
Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.
It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus, offered without comment, TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged.
When it comes to who can lay claim to being rock’s most dapper dandy and consummate lounge lizard, Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry simply has no competition. A jaded Casanova who still harbors a torn shred of belief in true love in his cynical heart, Ferry has been crooning about finding something beyond sex in the discos and singles bars of his decidedly unsentimental imagination since the early seventies. With Ferry, the tension has always been between disco Lothario and true love seeker, and the game for the listener has always been to parse out exactly which Ferry is singing at the time.
Clear-eyed as only a realist can be, Ferry was declaring love a dangerous and addictive drug long before his doppelganger, Robert Palmer, came along to tell us the same thing. It’s something to be sought in the dark, in the red light districts and discos of our soul-weary cities, where everyone is lonely, desperate, and on the prowl. But as I’ve mentioned, there was also a believer in true love in Ferry somewhere, and the only problem I ever had with Roxy’s conflicted take on sex and romance was the fact that they spread all their best songs amongst nine LPs, one of them a great live album, naturally leading one to hanker for the very best in one bite-sized form. One of the compilations available to do just that is 2004’s The Collection, which includes most of the songs I really crave, but also includes some late period songs I could do without. Its chief advantage is its brevity; 12 tracks, no fooling around, and no “Jealous Guy,” which I never liked and don’t want on no compilation in my house.
You could say The Collection gives short shrift to the early Eno-era Roxy, and you’d be right; besides the great “Virginia Plain” and the even better “Do the Strand,” there’s nothing else from 1972’s Roxy Music or 1973’s For Your Pleasure. The lack of the brilliant “Re-Make/Re-Model” is particularly galling. As for “Virginia Plain,” it swings, plain and simple, although not as hard as “Do the Strand,” a great song about a new dance that you’ll surely want to do if you are, as Ferry is, “tired of the tango.” The tune boasts lots of great saxophone by way of Andy Mackay, some extraordinary forward momentum thanks to Phil Manzanera on lead guitar, and never slows down long enough to let you sit down, sip your Cosmopolitan, and stare surreptitiously at the beautiful woman at the next table, who could very well be a man. “The samba isn’t your scene?” asks Ferry. So “do the strandsky” instead!
Old Street Records launches with pizza, cocktails and vinyl on the menu: Old Street Records, which officially opens on June 30, is collaborating with two record labels, Fiction Records and Caroline International, to sell their releases. This will mean vinyls (“Vinyls” is incorrect. —Ed.) from artists including Iggy Pop, Tame Impala, Nick Mulvey, The Maccabees, Ian Brown, Mystery Jets and Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes will be able to be bought from the bar. The Shoreditch site will also serve pizzas along with cocktails and craft beers, and it’s not all about vinyl — the bar will also have live music six nights a week, with an eclectic programme of soul, funk, jazz, rock and pop.
Why record stores mattered: This Saturday, Other Music—the tiny, beloved, and outré record shop on East Fourth Street—will cease its retail operations. No longer will sealed Belle and Sebastian or Boards of Canada LPs be tentatively placed on its counter. The headline of a Times article last month announcing the store’s finish read, “Other Music Record Shop, Yielding to Trends, Will Close.” What “trends” means in this context is startlingly self-evident. The prevailing trend of our time is, it seems, a disburdening of the past. Things that once appeared immovably vital are now relics to be examined, mourned, and recast as affectations.
Store keeps groovin’ on, T.O. record shop spins into 20th year: Record Outlet has been around for years and is the only record store in Conejo Valley, providing fans of analog media a source for used and new vinyl plus CDs, DVDs and tapes from 8-track to cassette. The store celebrated its 20th anniversary on June 19. Kc Staples, who owns and operates Record Outlet, said part of the appeal to owning vinyl is actually having something to touch and see—especially for people used to downloading their music.
Oh Wonder, the London-based alt-pop duo made the 9:30 Club the DC stop on their current tour, bringing with them the brilliant dream-pop sounds of Los Angeles’s own LANY in tow.
Oh Wonder consists of bandmates Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West who since 2014 have been touring extensively to promote their debut self titled release which was delivered one song at a time for one year. In tandem with their fluid electronic beats and rhythms, the unique vocals are the center point of this band and it’s easy to get swept away in the band’s sound and music.
LANY, a three piece unit was surprisingly energetic and seemed to have an instant rapport with the audience. Paul Jason Klein, lead vocalist in the band, humbly admitted his love for DC and that it was an honor to play the 9:30 Club. It was a pleasure to hear the combination of natural instruments with the electronic keys and waves of generated sounds. Touring to promote their newest single “Yea, Babe, No Way,” the band has finished their fourteen day stint on the road with Oh Wonder. They have two EPs available on vinyl here.
Look, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.
Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.
It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus, offered without comment, TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged.
Keyboardist Charlie Dennard is going back to the circus and he has invited a number of his musical friends to wish him bon voyage and jam out one last time on the Brazilian and soul jazz music that is his passion. The show is Friday night at Chickie Wah Wah.
Regular readers will remember when Dennard returned to New Orleans after over ten years on the road with Cirque Du Soleil. The homecoming was reported elsewhere as well and during his second tenure in the city he recorded two well-received albums and played a bunch of gigs.
But the circus has called him back, literally.
He will become musical director of the show Mystere in Las Vegas following the abrupt departure of the previous bandleader. For the show at Chickie Wah Wah, expect to see an all-star ensemble and some special guests as well. Dennard promises two keyboards will be set up to encourage the jam.
“When I was little I used to steal my mom’s Walkman, so my parents bought me a toy cassette player. I used to record my own lyrics over tapes I found around the house, and I’m sure that somewhere in the detritus of my parents’ attic are tapes full of a five year old’s heartfelt songs about cats recorded over 1980s guitar solos.”
“Eventually my parents started giving me the tapes they didn’t want any more, and I loved having a collection of my own. I’d bring it to daycare to show it off alongside my tin of Pokémon cards, and was aghast when the teacher refused to play my Madonna cassette because she had deemed it inappropriate.
By the time I was 12 I had started to amass my own CD collection, but by then IPods had stepped onto the scene. I got an IPod shuffle for Christmas that year and loaded it up with all of my favorite tunes. My disappointment at not being able to easily select a song, let alone a whole album to listen to kept me going back to my CD player. I also liked being able to see the stack of CDs and cassettes on my dresser, a disorganized display of the evolution of my musical tastes.
Part two of the TVD Record Store Club’s look at the new or reissued wax presently in stores for June, 2016.
NEW RELEASE PICK: Spain, Carolina (Glitterhouse/ Diamond Soul) For his sixth LP as Spain, Josh Haden cites a turn toward Americana/alt-country, and that’s indeed a tangible thing; check the pedal steel-infused “In My Hour” for evidence. But along the way the style branches out farther than one might expect, with “Apologies” providing a highlight through assured soulfulness of voice. In no way has Haden forsaken his established “slowcore” direction, so those digging the old stuff should like this just fine. But neither is he stuck in a holding pattern, and he’s got Danny Frankel and his sister Petra on board. A-
REISSUE PICK: The Scenics, In the Summer (Studio Recordings 1977-1978) (Dream Tower) Highly worthwhile collection of Toronto-based punk-friendly melodic-rock that’s intermittently injected with an era-appropriate nervousness nearer to Ubu than The Feelies. A lot of these late ’70s punkish reissues present bands best suited as local openers for out-of-town headliners, and that’s cool. However, The Scenics were strong enough that had circumstances been different they could’ve toured the continent’s clubs. This album came out in 2015, but it’s getting a fresh push through Light in the Attic. A-
Ben Lukas Boysen, Spells (Erased Tapes) Merging programmed piano pieces with live instrumentation, specifically drums, cello, and harp, Boysen’s second album (at least under his own name, he’s got a bunch more as an electronic producer under the moniker HECQ) should appeal to those with a minimalist inclination, though it consistently avoids the pitfall of background. First single “Golden Times 1” combines an electronic aura with a chamber classical vibe, while “Nocturne 4” works up a sturdy rock-ish beat connections to Boysen’s previous album. Consider me intrigued. B+
James Brown & His Famous Flames, Try Me (Rumble) This is Syd Nathan using Brown’s follow-up hit to “Please Please Please” as a potential sales hook, and the results basically document the bandleader in search of a consistent sound. Try Me is dominated by straight R&B, excursions into rawer blues and unsurprisingly given the nature of the title cut, shades of doo wop; a few strands of formative soul do emerge in the mix. With a few exceptions this isn’t classic Brown, yet the selections still cohere into a strong whole in part because the tunes haven’t been overplayed. It’s a vivid snapshot of 1959. B+
Vinyl is not just for hipsters as it regains popularity: It’s often been described, erroneously, as a comeback, what with music stores liberally stocking them these days. Vinyl records, actually, never really went away. Labels might have stopped reissuing them in the 1990s and early noughties, but new releases, and reissues, are coming thick and fast once more. While the culture in Malaysia may still be at novelty level, the situation in a metropolis like London, is entirely different.
The best (remaining) record stores in New York City: June 2016 marks the end the end of the road for two NYC record stores that served vinyl enthusiasts for over 20 years. The East Village’s Other Music and the West Village’s Rebel Rebel Records, like many other independent and chain music stores before them, are both shutting down thanks to the combination of rising New York City rents and the internet’s effects on the industry.
Service Converts SoundCloud Tracks to Vinyl: Vinylize.it is a new startup from the QRATES team. The service hasn’t yet launched, but it would allow users to choose songs or playlists from SoundCloud for custom-pressed records, FACT reports. Records would only be made available following artist approval and after users “share and rally support” for each record. There’s currently no information about the sound quality of Vinylize.it records. All SoundCloud tracks are transcoded to 128kbps for streaming playback.
Avid vinyl collector buys first record player: Despite never having the basic equipment to play a single record, Young still sees himself as a true connoisseur. He encourages others who are interested in this type of pretension to seek out local record stores and talk to the person with the biggest beard, as they are undoubtedly the store manager…“I spend hours talking to my guy, Skyler. He’s actually getting into wax cylinders. He tells me that you haven’t heard Eddie Cantor until you hear him coming out of a hand cranked gramophone.”
There is a steadiness and reliability to The Jayhawks’ music—melodic, often wistful, with jangly guitar, keening harmonies, and a solid beat. While frontman Gary Louris is fiddling more with his guitar’s effects panels, there was no worry that their show at DC’s Lincoln Theatre Saturday would explode into any kind of frenzy—except the kind triggered by intense nostalgia. A lot of their songs have a real lasting power.
It could owe to a loyal audience that is, like the band 30 years older, that Louris had to pretty much suggest that people could get up from their theater seats and move around in the encore. Which is a bit like Jeb Bush saying, “Please clap” at a campaign stop.
But for all its intense personnel changes and acrimony that has chiefly resulted in the permanent departure of Mark Olson who co-wrote most of the songs in the early days, nothing much gets the group rattled these days. Even when the Vari-Lites briefly freaked out during the second song, flipping around and finally plunging the theater into darkness, band members merely smiled and shrugged. “That fits perfectly with the next song, in fact,” Louris said, before going into the planned “Stumbling Through the Dark.”
Musically, the band is solid as ever. Louris began the show with a big snarling guitar workout to introduce “Waiting for the Sun.” He and Chet Lyster seemed to switch off on each song on which one was playing acoustic and the other electric. Lyster also turned to pedal steel at key moments.
Look, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.
Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.
It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged. Contact’s the fact.
Before there was Joan Jett, there was Suzi Quatro, the ballsy Detroit kid who moved to England, hooked up with impresario Mickie Most and the legendary songwriting team of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, and crashed the all-boys Glam Party in full leather regalia, winning the hearts and minds of kids, primarily of the English and Australian persuasion, while she was at it. Quatro was a glitter queen and proto-punk all in one, to say nothing about being a precursor to The Runaways, and she scored a series of big hits in her adopted country, even if she never quite caught on here.
She was always her own woman; as she explained later, she spurned Elektra Records, who wanted to make her the new Janis Joplin, while hitching her star to Mickie Most, who “offered to take me to England and make me the first Suzi Quatro—I didn’t want to be the new anybody.” She added that if Most had “tried to make me into a Lulu, I wouldn’t have it. I’d say, ‘Go to hell’ and walk out.” That said, she wasn’t completely her own woman, being as she was part of the Chapman-Chinn songwriting monolith, although not to the extent of, say, Sweet; on her self-titled 1973 debut on RAK Records, only 3 of the 12 songs are Chapman-Chinn contributions. The rest are oldies or compositions by Quatro and her guitarist, Len Tuckey.
Chapman and Chinn more or less dominated the pre-pubescent wing of the Glam Movement, and it’s obvious why when you hear Quatro’s opening tune, “48 Crash.” Cool percussion, a great climbing riff—this one is simple as ABC but as catchy as a Venus flytrap, and the perfect song (as were most of their compositions) to sing along with. Meanwhile Quatro sings like a punk while bashing away at the bass, the backing vocalists repeat the title, and Tuckey plays some more than respectable guitar. And there’s no beating the great scream Quatro lets out in the middle of the song. Meanwhile, Quatro and Tuckey’s “Glycerine Queen” demonstrates that they were quick learners, not that the Chapman-Chinn formula was exactly rock science. Still, this one is stripped to the basics, rocks hard, and boasts a riff that brings to mind T. Rex. Once again the guys in the band repeat the title in the chorus, and if the teen in you doesn’t respond to this one, you’re not as glamtastic as you think you are.
Outblinker’s “The Remains of Walter Peck” EP is an abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music recorded and co-written with Ben Power of Blanck Mass and Fuck Buttons. It’s a project with confident fuck you attitude and style.
Quoting from the press release, “Fame is just so fucking futile. That’s the thing about being an outsider. You accept your fate. You know that 50 years from now a bank won’t be butchering your work to flog mortgages to suckers. You make your noise and you watch it echo for a bit then dissipate. Like our protagonist, Walter Peck, your ashes are gradually diluted by a planet of dirt and your music even more rapidly subsumed by the white noise of the world…”
First track “Walter Peck” is an up tempo, industrial banger full of anguish, mystery, and volatility where dark synth tones are the focus. The second track, “Farrokh Bulsara,” generates its ambience with a more soothing approach, and the third, “Ernest Becker,” is the most sinister of the EP’s three songs—developing ominous tones throughout the intro, building with harmonies, and growing at its own pace toward an 11 minute crescendo.
“The Remains of Water Peck” EP is in stores now via Stabbed In The Back Records.
The Vinyl District’s Play Something Good is a weekly radio show broadcast from Washington, DC.
Featuring a mix of songs from today to the 00s/90s/80s/70s/60s and giving you liberal doses of indie, psych, dub, post punk, americana, shoegaze, and a few genres we haven’t even thought up clever names for just yet. The only rule is that the music has to be good. Pretty simple.
Hosted by John Foster, world-renowned designer and author (and occasional record label A+R man), don’t be surprised to hear quick excursions and interviews on album packaging, food, books, and general nonsense about the music industry, as he gets you from Jamie xx to Liquid Liquid and from Courtney Barnett to The Replacements. The only thing you can be sure of is that he will never ever play Mac DeMarco. Never. Ever.
Until recently it’s fair to state that only heavy-duty fans of Cleveland’s subterranean musical history recognized the name Robert Bensick, but with the emergence of French Pictures in London as the latest volume in Smog Veil Records’ Platters du Cuyahoga series, his modest profile is set to change. Combining 14 tracks into a potent avant-pop brew, the results, once thought lost, are fascinating and on occasion startlingly effective. Featuring a lineup sprinkled with future Ohio punk all-stars, the Robert Bensick Band’s sole outing deepens the already labyrinthine rewards of its region and rescues its namesake from footnote status; it’s out June 24 on vinyl, compact disc, and digital.
The arrival of French Pictures in London concludes Series 1 of Smog Veil’s Platters du Cuyahoga initiative, and after time spent it registers as the most necessary (if not by extension the best) of the three albums; it’s preceded by X__X’s Albert Ayler’s Ghosts Live at the Yellow Ghetto and Mr. Stress Blues Band’s Live at the Brick Cottage 1972 – 1973.
Actually the second installment in this initial Platters du Cuyahoga run but the last to see completion (series 2 is reportedly in preparation now), French Pictures in London is very much its own thing; with this said it eventually gravitates nearer to John Morton’s art-punk convulsiveness than it does to the no-frills bar-band blues action of Mr. Stress Blues Band.
However, Bill “Mr. Stress” Miller and Bensick did basically evolve from the same fertile late ‘60s scene. By ’66 the latter had been recruited from his first band the Back Group (originally The Coachmen) to play drums for The Munx of Sandusky, OH. Specializing in essentially innocuous vocal harmony-infused guitar pop, they issued a couple of 45s. By ’68 Bensick had bailed for more lively creative environments.
