Monthly Archives: November 2017

VIA PRESS RELEASE | D.O.A.: A Right Of Passage is the ground-breaking classic rockumentary about the origin of punk rock. The film will be coming to select theaters in mid-November, and will also be available in a collector’s edition Blu-ray and DVD package.

“High Times is pleased to finally uncover and restore this extraordinary, vintage film – D.O.A.,” said High Times owner and CEO Adam Levin. The vision for the film can be attributed to two people: Tom Forcade (the founder of High Times magazine) and filmmaker Lech Kowalski (East of Paradise). The production centered around the Sex Pistols 1978 tour of the US, which ended with the group breaking up. Forcade and Kowalski followed the band with handheld cameras through the clubs and bars during their seven-city U.S. tour.

Mixing this with footage of other contemporary bands, trends in the fashion capitals, and punks of all shapes and colors, the film makers captured a grainy, stained snapshot of the punk movement at its peak (which includes the now famous footage of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in bed) along with rare interview and concert footage of the late seventies punk rock music scene.

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PHOTO: JESSIE ENGLISH | For the first single from her upcoming album, Nashville-based singer/songwriter Kate Tucker goes both back in time and forward.

In the unexpectedly upbeat “In Your Arms,” which we’re proud to debut today at The Vinyl District with its free download below, Tucker and her co-writer Kenny Childers take inspiration from one of the deadliest and suppressed chapters in American history, the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots. What ended with the death of 300 people, the burning destruction of more than 35 blocks of the wealthiest black community in the nation, and more than 6,000 African-Americans jailed for more than eight days, was left out of history books and not discussed by survivors.

It was only at the 75th anniversary of the event that a state commission was formed to study it; its report didn’t come out until 2001, concluding that the city had conspired with a white mob against the black community, and that reparations for the survivors and their descendants were recommended.

As huge as the event became, it all began with a Memorial Day elevator ride that involved a 19-year-old shoeshine and a 17-year-old female elevator operator. The interaction between them was never determined. “We were in this phase where we were mining stories from 20th century American history that had been for various reasons, obscured,” Tucker says. “We tried to write within the narrative of what we were discovering. What would it have been like to have been the girl or the guy in the elevator in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 31, 1921?”

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The early work by African Head Charge was reissued by On-U Sound last year, and now the first four albums from Dub Syndicate are getting the vinyl treatment. That means debut The Pounding System, the full-band dub of One Way System, the team-up with melodica player Doctor Pablo on North of the River Thames, and the assured advancements of Tunes from the Missing Channel. Additionally, there’s the compilation of unreleased versions Displaced Masters, and for those still luxuriating in compact discs, everything’s included in the 5CD + 24-page book Ambience in Dub 1982-1985; it and the LPs are out now.

Dub Syndicate is often simply credited as the joint endeavor of Adrian Sherwood, justly celebrated as a dub-obsessed studio wizard and the chief operator of On-U Sound, and Style Scott, previously noted as a drummer for Roots Radics and Creation Rebel, but alas, it’s far from that simple. 1982’s The Pounding System was completed prior to Scott’s involvement with Sherwood assisted by members of Creation Rebel, African Head Charge and Jamaican saxophonist “Deadly” Headley Bennett.

In the liner notes to that set’s 1998 CD reissue, Steve Barker quotes Sherwood’s assessment of The Pounding System as “one of those quick ones.” The album emerged early in the label’s existence, cataloged as On-U LP 18, and as such, was shaped by non-musical factors, prominent amongst them a lack of money; rhythm tracks were laid down at The Manor (owned by Richard Branson), where the time was either cheap or free, and the mixing was done in a single day at the Berry Street studio run by Dennis Bovell.

However, The Pounding System doesn’t sound rushed or scattershot, instead just connecting like a solid slab of dub reggae, and from the opening title track forward, there are flashes of weirdness that assist the LP in standing out. Dub and weirdness are no strangers of course, but the blending here is noticeably distinct from the Jamaican template that served as Sherwood’s inspiration, even as Headley adds beneficial flavor to what’s essentially a bass and drum foundation.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Daniel Miller and Anton Corbjin will be at Rough Trade East on Tuesday, November 21 to launch Thames & Hudson’s Mute: A Visual Document, a 320 page hardback book, available November 28. They will be joined by friends of Mute for a panel and Q&A, to discuss Mute’s celebrated visual history. Further details and tickets here.

Mute: A Visual Document is packed with artwork and photography, conceptual artwork, rare ephemera and equipment—much of it previously unseen—from the Mute Archives and from Daniel Miller’s own collection. The book features comprehensive discographies, a family tree of Mute artists, an extensive introduction and commentary by Daniel Miller as well as anecdotal and photographic contributions from key figures in the label’s story. A selection of contributors includes Moby, Alison Goldfrapp, Anton Corbijn, Bleddyn Butcher, Brian Griffin, Jon Spencer, Barry Adamson, Ivan Novak (Laibach), Angus Andrew (Liars), Adrian Shaughnessy, and Tom Hingston.

Mute was created by Daniel Miller, the son of refugee actors from Vienna, who grew up in North West London and went on to release his debut single as The Normal, “Warm Leatherette” / “T.V.O.D”, in 1978. The label quickly grew and established its reputation. Through the music of its community of artists—ranging from Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, Moby, Can, Diamanda Galás, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds to Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure, Laibach, Liars, and Ben Frost—it has had an incalculable impact on popular music for four decades.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Verve Records and UMe will close out their year-long celebration of jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald’s centennial with the ultimate present for her 100th birthday—a completely unreleased live album. More than 60 years after it was recorded, Ella At Zardi’s will finally be released on CD and digital on December 1. WBGO, the global leader in jazz radio, premiered the album’s opening track, “It All Depends on You,” both on the air and at WBGO.org, with an accompanying article. The song, popularized by Doris Day, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, was never released on any of Fitzgerald’s albums, making this a truly rare performance.

Recorded on February 2, 1956 at Zardi’s Jazzland in Hollywood, Ella At Zardi’s features the entirety of the evening’s two-set, 21-song performance, which captures an inspired Fitzgerald, backed by a stellar trio composed of pianist Don Abney, bassist Vernon Alley, and drummer Frank Capp, singing and swinging in front of an animated, adoring crowd, just days before she’d go on to record the album that would catapult her to stardom. The concert was originally recorded by Norman Granz to celebrate the creation of, and Fitzgerald’s signing to, Verve Records, which Granz founded largely to give Fitzgerald the attention that he felt she wasn’t receiving at her then-current label, Decca. Ella At Zardi’s was planned as the label’s inaugural release but shelved in favor of the now-classic studio album Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Song Book, which kicked off a best-selling, signature series of Song Book releases. The Zardi’s tapes languished in Verve’s vaults for six decades.

Ella At Zardi’s captures the brilliance and inspiration Fitzgerald’s performances embodied at the time. As veteran jazz journalist Kirk Silsbee observes in the album’s liner notes, “We can hear a fluid and joyous singer who operates with almost giddy authority. Ella manages to find a way of swinging almost every number, no matter the tempo. She anticipates her studio songbook albums with Duke Ellington’s ‘In A Mellow Tone,’ Cole Porter’s ‘My Heart Belongs To Daddy,’ the Gershwins’ ‘S Wonderful’ and ‘I’ve Got a Crush On You,’ and Jerome Kern’s ‘A Fine Romance’… Ella uses her intelligent phrasing and rhythmic sense in inventive and exhilarating ways. Her repertoire was vast and she didn’t always remember the correct lyrics of a song. But the way she spontaneously redesigns the text in the most musical of ways is Fitzgerald’s signature.”

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Minneapolis indie rock heroes The Replacements went from snot-nosed “let’s get drunk and puke on the ceiling then fall down on stage” punks to power pop legends on the strength of the deceptively effortless songcraft of Paul Westerberg, and Westerberg reached his peak on 1984’s audaciously titled Let It Be. Taking on the Beatles takes cojones, especially from a guy who once sang, “I hate music/It’s got too many notes.”

Let It Be hardly marked the end of their “too shitfaced to play” ethos, but it was, as Westerberg would note, “the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles.” “I Will Dare” is a bona fide slice of pop genius; “Unsatisfied” is “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” with more heart and more soul than the jaded Mick Jagger could summon up if you tossed him into a pile of cocaine and supermodels and let him stew until unhappy. But Westerberg hadn’t lost touch with his inner punk; songs like “Gary’s Got a Boner” and “We’re Comin’ Out” would have been right at home on 1982’s puke punk classic Stink.

Let It Be is the sound of a punk growing up just to learn that growing up isn’t all that much fun. But grow up you must, as John Mellencamp could have told Paul Westerberg if he’d been willing to listen. “Everything drags and drags,” sings Westerberg on the doleful coming of age tune “Sixteen Blue”; “It’s a boring state/A boring wait, I know.” You try to call your girl and all you get is her answering machine and what does that mean? It can’t be good. And what can you really expect from the future? “Everything you dream of/Is right in front of you,” sings Westerberg, “And everything is a lie.”

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Friendship hail from Philadelphia, and on their second full-length they’ve made considerable strides, in part by enhancing their alt-country bedrock with electronic instrumentation. If that tactic reads as suspect, the results are strikingly effective, but just as important is the heightened sharpness of Dan Wriggins’ vocals and lyrics. On their prior output his stuff was solid; these eight new songs strongly suggest he has greatness in him. Shock Out of Season is out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Orindal Records.

Conversational as a descriptor for recorded vocals can encompass numerous bushel-baskets full of talkers talking, but the term is especially appropriate to Friendship’s Dan Wriggins. It’s all right there on Shock Out of Season’s opener “If You See My Beloved”; not only does he favor a speaking, or better said, relaxed oratorical style, over a conventional singing approach, but he enunciates with such natural clarity that it was essentially impossible for this listener to not absorb every line.

In addition to Wriggins’ voice and guitar, Friendship includes Peter Gill on pedal steel, Mike Cormier on drums and drum machine, Evangeline Krajewski on synthesizer and flute, and Jon Samuels on percussion and drum machine. This unique blend of instrumentation makes the foregrounding of Wriggins’ manner of address doubly impressive.

The blending of trad instruments and electronics is nothing new, and when it’s done well it can bring a caboodle of good strokes, but too often, once the novelty wears off, the combination is beset by shallowness. By avoiding overplayed tropes, wielding a collective light touch and radiating the impression of being more interested in pleasing themselves than straining to impress others, Friendship succeeds.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In the firmament of rock ‘n’ roll’s first-generation creators, no artist looms larger than Chuck Berry. In a consistently innovative recording career that spanned more than 60 years, the iconic singer-songwriter-guitarist, who passed away on March 18, 2017, laid much of the groundwork for modern rock ‘n’ roll, while creating some of rock’s most distinctive and enduring anthems, from “Johnny B. Goode” to “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Rock and Roll Music” to “Reelin and Rockin’,” and many more.

Geffen/UMe will pay tribute to the immortal spirit of Chuck Berry, who would have turned 91 last month, with the ultimate vinyl version of his landmark greatest hits compilation, The Great Twenty-Eight, as it celebrates its 35th anniversary, with The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition. On December 15, the album will be released as a limited edition five-disc box set on “Chess Blue” vinyl, limited to only 500 copies worldwide and available exclusively via UDiscoverMusic.com. A wide release standard black vinyl edition will be available next year on January 26, 2018.

Housed in a textured box, the Super Deluxe Edition will complement the original two-LP, 28-song compilation with an additional LP, More Great Chuck Berry, containing 14 more hits, rarities, and B-sides missing from the original, as well as a rare live album, Oh Yeah! Live in Detroit, available on vinyl for the first time. The collection will also include a newly created bonus ten-inch EP “Berry Christmas,” featuring four holiday-themed classics on “Rudolph-Red” vinyl, with one song on vinyl for the first time as well. Pre-order The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition here.

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