Monthly Archives: May 2018

“What happens to messages and acts of protest when they end up packaged and sold at grocery stores?”

“As a child I was more interested in the artwork and packaging on my parents’ records than the musical content. I wasn’t allowed to play records, but I could familiarize myself with various bands’ music through my Dad’s 8 track player in the car. In the early ’80s I would ride in the car between my parents up front and in the middle, sitting atop a storage case between their seats with no seat belt. We went everywhere this way until I grew too big and had to move to the backseat with my brother. My Dad had a few great 8 track tapes. The one that stood out and often led me back to the record collection to investigate further was a Creedence Clearwater Greatest Hits compilation.

C.C.R. may be the greatest Anglo-American band of the ’70s. Of course there is also ZZ Top, but in my perspective ZZ Top were an ’80s band, as I came to know them through their ridiculous ’80s videos, whereas C.C.R. just seemed to typify an era that I missed (and can therefore magically create in my own idealized way).

They were finished by the time I heard them. The band had no painful years in the ’80s. The Creedence compilation my Dad owned has a typically bad band photo on the cover. This is a budget collection that he most likely bought either after seeing a TV commercial or on a trip to the supermarket. He has never frequented record shops, but I remember clearly that records and CDs were often bought at the grocery store checkout line or later, Wal-Mart. Much of his collection then, are Greatest Hits compilations from different eras. I think he has about four copies of the Eagles’ Greatest Hits.

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I saw Kansas once. What a waste of a state. And the band is even worse.

That said, the one time I saw Steve Walsh, Kerry Livgren & Company live I had a wonderful time, although that could be attributed to the fact that I smoked PCP by mistake. Brought a whole new meaning to “Dust in the Wind.”

And to be fair–I went to see them way back when because I liked them. “Carry on Wayward Son” was fine by me, and I was a total sucker for their sound, which basically involved Robbie Steinhardt’s violin chasing Steve Walsh’s organ around the stage while Kerry Livgren was doing whatever it was he did on synthesizers and Rich Williams was trying his hardest to be a complete nonentity on guitar. And those lyrics, man. Deep!

Kansas is a young person’s band in the same way that Thomas Wolff is a young person’s novelist; they sounded pretty great to this dumb teen, but if you’re still cranking them up at 40, well, I have to wonder about you.

For one there’s the question of the lyrics; Walsh and Livgren are collectively even more lunkheaded than Rush’s Neil Peart, although to be fair to the boys it must be said that at least they’re not trying to ram Ayn Rand down your throat. I direct your attention to “Portrait (He Knew)” off the band’s 1977 masterpiece Point of Know Return. The “He” in question is Albert Einstein, and Livgren does some very insightful thinking about the great man along the lines of, “Never said much to speak of/He was off on another plain/The words that he said were a mystery/Nobody’s sure he was sane.” It’s a PhD thesis in rhyme, it is.

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To burnish the label of throwback when writing (or simply gabbing) about music is often, if not an act of derision, then quite likely a gesture of diminishment. But there are exceptions, and Gene Turonis aka Gene D. Plumber is one of them. However, his new CD All the Pretty Girls, while assuredly suggestive of earlier, less harried times, is ultimately just a warm, good-natured and timeless affair. It’s out now through his hometown label Bar/None Records.

Regarding Gene Turonis’ alternate handle, he is indeed a plumber, having worked at the trade since the ’70s. If people need electrician perth, they can click here and find out! This may seem gimmicky, but just as the great Atlanta bluesman-songster Barbeque Bob dished no tunes about cooking meat or working at Tidwells’ Barbecue, there are no tracks on Turonis’ new disc relating to leaky faucets or burst pipes.

Not a gimmick, but rather a way to illuminate the simultaneous plying of craft and honing of musical skills, and it takes just one listen to absorb All the Pretty Girls as the byproduct of an experienced singer-guitarist. Had the choice been made to release this set solely as Gene Turonis, one might gaze at that cover photo and wonder where exactly the guy’s been over the years; the extra moniker simply clarifies that he’s spent a significant portion of time underneath sinks.

With his band D. Plumbers, he’s performed in Hoboken since the ’70s, navigating scene changes while raising a family, and it’s clear that he’s persisted at music out of love. And it’s just as apparent through Turonis’ deft handling of the guitar and the distinctive addition of Charlie Giordano’s accordion in All the Pretty Girls’ opening title track that this is no amateurish undertaking.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Swans’ Soundtracks for the Blind, their last studio album released in 1996 prior to their 2010 reformation, will be released for the first time on vinyl by Young God Records on July 20th 2018.

Much requested by Swans fans, the vinyl package will consist of four LPs in jackets enclosed in a box with a poster, insert and download card. The box set will be a limited edition of 4,000 copies worldwide and once sold out will be followed later in 2018 by a gatefold LP version. The album will also be reissued on CD featuring a repackage of the original digipak for the 1996 Atavistic release plus a bonus disc of the contemporaneous “Die Tür Ist Zu” EP (a German language version of some of the material from Soundtracks that also includes unique material) recently released for the first time on vinyl in the USA for Record Store Day 2018.Outside of the USA “Die Tür Ist Zu” EP will be released as a limited edition companion piece double vinyl set, also on 20th July.

“This album has everything in there – all the ideas from Swans’ initial 15 years of work. There’s some contemporary recordings of the band as it existed in ’96/7, with Larry Mullins on drums/percussion, Jarboe singing and playing keyboards, Vudi playing electric guitar, and Joe Goldring playing bass and electric guitar, and me singing and playing electric and acoustic guitar, but there’s also a huge amount of sounds and recordings that Jarboe and I collected over the years.

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“I did not own a record player until I was about 25. I grew up listening to CDs, often one album (and sometimes one song) over and over and over and over again until I knew every little lilt.”

“When digital music became the thing, I started making playlists on my computer because it was easy to do. But, I’m grateful to have grown up back when one’s attention span was not turned off by the idea of listening to just one artist for 30-45 minutes. My attention span has probably diminished now that so much variety is available, it somehow seems like more of a challenge. And that to me is a big reason that vinyl is so important. Listening to records is for me to centre myself, stay still, play out a mood, and of course, have a little reverence for what an artist is trying to say or play as opposed to just listening to the hit(s) and never really digging into the catalogue.

I first got into records when I started hanging around a store called Flash and Crash in the annex in Toronto, which is gone now but was the beginning of my love for vinyl. I ended up living with one of the guys who worked there, and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century music. He’d been working in record stores all around Toronto for year. For Christmas one year I alphabetized his record collection and it took 5 whole days, just to give you an idea of the span and size of music.

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Once populated by a few astute, diligent individuals, the territory of neo-classic soul has, in a pleasant turn, gradually increased in number, and one of the current strongholds in the field is ATA Records. Based in Leeds, UK, the label’s discography is still slim enough for folks just getting clued-in to catch up on, though waiting around is not advisable. On May 25, The Magnificent Tape Band, featuring ATA owner-operators Neil Innes and Pete Williams, unveils The Subtle Art of Distraction on LP, CD, and digital, this debut full-length benefiting from a deep, fruitful collaboration with crackerjack vocalist Rachel Modest and a desire to extend possibilities rather than merely replicate the glories of yore.

If you’re picking up a retro-futurist/ BBC Radiophonic workshop/ ’70s Penguin paperbacks cover design vibe from the sleeve art for The Subtle Art of Distraction, that’s right on the money, as a stated objective of Neil Innes and Pete Williams is for The Magnificent Tape Band to combine the richness of psychedelic soul with aspects of British library music, though the mingling of the two is much subtler than the LP’s jacket might suggest.

Those familiar with the self-titled 2015 album from The Sorcerers will be familiar with Innes and Williams’ adroitness of touch, as they not only wrote and produced the whole thing but played bass and guitar across the album. In the process, they successfully tapped into the spirit of Ethio-jazz, enough so that Mulatu Astatke is a fan.

Similar to the conception of this record, The Sorcerers additionally dug into ’60s-’70s Euro horror soundtracks for inspiration, and a general aesthetic (if not specific sound) carries over to the work of The Magnificent Tape Band. The biggest difference is vocal, for The Sorcerers, at least on their debut, exist as an instrumental affair. Throughout The Subtle Art of Distraction, Sheffield-born Leeds-based singer Rachel Modest is front and center.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Z Records continues its commitment to unearthing the obscure and long forgotten tracks from the last 40 years with the much-anticipated follow-up to Backstreet Brit Funk. Volume 2 has been eight years in the making and continues to showcase the best of the genre from the late ’70s to early ’80s, compiled once again by Joey Negro.

Brit Funk is perhaps one of the UK’s most under-appreciated genres. Emerging in the late ’70s and taking influences from jazz, funk, reggae, and pop, by the early ’80s it had spread all over the UK. Chart-topping mainstream bands like Wham!, Spandau Ballet, and Haircut 100 tapped into the style and sound to help launch their careers, whilst Linx, Level 42, Light of The World, The Cool Notes, and Hi Tension were all Brit Funk acts who troubled the UK top 40 with their own singles.

Brit Funk was essentially the UK’s answer to underground disco, with musicians at first imitating and eventually developing the sounds they heard on the US imports that made it across the pond. And like disco, the Brit Funk scene was significant in reducing racial boundaries in the clubs and raising the profile of black and white musicians who worked together.

Back in 2010 Joey Negro compiled the first volume of Back Street Brit Funk: a collection of obscure and forgotten gems of the scene that found favour across the board.

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