VIA PRESS RELEASE | Grammy® Lifetime Achievement Award recipients and Rock & Roll and Gospel Hall of Fame inductees The Staple Singers are an American musical treasure. Omnivore Recordings will reissue four 1970s releases by the group—the Curtis Mayfield-produced Let’s Do It Again: Sound Track and Pass It On on June 5, 2020, and Family Tree, produced by Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett, and Unlock Your Mind, produced by Chicago soul giant Eugene Record, on June 26, 2020.
In the ’50s, The Staple Singers were among the greatest of the post-war gospel groups. The ’60s found them recording for a variety of labels like Vee-Jay, Riverside, Epic, and ultimately Stax, pioneering the “soul-folk” sound. By the end of the decade they were soul music superstars, with hits like “I Know a Place” and “I’ll Take You There.” During the ’70s, they had 13 singles on the U.S. Pop chart and 20 on the U.S. R&B chart. Besides recording, touring and chasing songs up the charts, the group also found time to not only appear in music-related motion pictures like Wattstax (1972) and The Band’s The Last Waltz (1976), but they also contributed to the Sidney Poitier-directed film soundtrack Let’s Do It Again, with music produced by Curtis Mayfield. This, their first post-Stax effort, sent the title track, “Let’s Do It Again,” to the number one spot on both the Pop and R&B charts.
Though the hits slowed after the mid-’70s, the Staples did have a #5 dance chart hit with a cover of the Talking Heads’ song “Slippery People” in 1984. Mavis Staples had been releasing solo albums dating back to 1969’s self-titled effort on Stax, but started to pick up the release tempo and carry the family business forward with a pair of albums for the Paisley Park label under the direction of Prince in 1989 and 1993. She continues performing and releasing albums on Anti- Records to this day, working with artists and producers Ry Cooder, Jeff Tweedy, Arcade Fire, Gorillaz, and Ben Harper, among others.
Canberra, AU | ‘Frog’s’ a softy for the romance of record stores: Record Store Day is normally the busiest of the year for Brian “Frog” Harris and his Weston Creek store – Songland – when long lines of vinyl lovers snake through Cooleman Court Shopping Centre, from as early as 5am, eager to snag something special. But this year, like most everything else in the world today, it’s going to take a little longer to get your hands on those rare, vinyl treasures because the April event has been postponed until at least June 20. Harris, who has successfully navigated his bricks-and-mortar record store through the ups and downs of independent retailing, remains positive about the future of the one-day sale, from which he 
Long Beach, CA | Returning the Favor: Indie Band Donates COVID-Inspired Song to Help Record Store Through Crisis: When Rand Foster opened unselfconsciously hip Fingerprints Music in 1993, Amazon was only a South American river, and the first digital download (Duran Duran’s “Electric Barbarella,” says Billboard) was still four years away. And streaming, what the fuck is streaming? Since then, while brick-and-mortar mainstays like Virgin Megastores and Tower Records have gone to watery graves from the sea-change brought by Amazon, Walmart, and the digital revolution, Fingerprints has managed to stay afloat, providing music-lovers with physical product and a broad array of in-store experiences. Foo Fighters, Sparklehorse, Jack Johnson, and Yo La Tengo have graced the stage, while luminaries like of Brian Wilson and Lou Reed have done in-store signings. The Flaming Lips Wayne Coyne spent no less than 12 hours with fans ― and enjoyed the experience enough to spend 45 minutes afterwards with staff…In the midst of searching for partial answers from a litany of possible loans and a new, full-service online store. Foster was buoyed by a touching gesture from De Lux, a post-disco dance-punk DIY five-piece who have played Fingerprints in support of each of their three albums. On April 1, De Lux released the COVID-19-inspired ““Dancing Is Dangerous in L.A,” with all proceeds earmarked to help Fingerprints 
NEW RELEASE PICKS: Bad History Month, Old Blues (Exploding in Sound) Before releasing Dead and Loving It: An Introductory Exploration Of Pessimysticism as Bad History Month in 2017, vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Sean Sprecher was half of Fat History Month with drummer Mark Fede. This is his second album on his own, and it attains a level of introspection that has been tagged, at least once, as emo, though the songs here exude the quality of being well read that borders on the intellectual, and certainly literary, so that I’m reminded more of David Berman and Bill Callahan (plus, anybody who cops the name of a Mel Brooks movie for an album title is on to something more than the dour self-seriousness/ self-absorption that mars so much emo).
Lewsberg, In This House (12XU) The second LP from this Rotterdam, Netherlands-based band is the first to get a US release. Anybody into art-punk/ post-punk should investigate its ten tracks with haste, for they cohere into a stone killer. Utilizing the tried-and-true lineup of dual guitars (Arie van Vliet, Michael Klein), bass (Shalita Dietrich), drums (Dico Kruijsse) and vocals (Klein sings lead save for one track and Dietrich handles the occasional backing except for her turn up front), In This House is the latest in a long line of examples that underscore the inexhaustible inspiration of the Velvet Underground, although as in the finest prior instances of this influence, the Velvets are largely employed as a foundation rather than as a full-on template. I say largely because “Cold Light of Day” is a slice of VU action that’s completely, some might say flagrantly, undisguised, and an utter gem in the category of how to do it right.
Los Angeles, CA | This Hollywood book and record shop hangs by a thread, waiting for federal help: Counterpoint Records & Books, serving the Hollywood Hills since 1980, is in danger of closing its doors for good. In normal times, that wouldn’t count as news anywhere outside the store’s Beachwood Canyon neighborhood. But millions of mom-and-pop businesses have gone dark around the country to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus. Many are just as spooked as Counterpoint Records & Books co-owner Susan Polifronio. With no customers or revenue, with bills still to be paid and debt piling high, the possibility grows every day that many won’t be able to reopen. The federal government was supposed to help, but its $349-billion small-business-loan program was exhausted in days, with some of the money going to major corporations that include national restaurants and at least one coal mining company. Millions of small businesses that sought loans have yet to see any money, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, which surveyed its members Friday and found that 
Jason Isbell Supports Indie Record Stores With Early ‘Reunions’ Release: Performer’s new album with the 400 Unit will be available one week before its originally slated May 15th release. Good news for fans eager to hear the new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit album, Reunions: There is now a way to get it early. On Wednesday, the singer announced plans to release the album exclusively to independent record stores in the U.S. and Canada on May 8th, one week ahead of its official street date of May 15th. Isbell and his label Southeastern Records made the decision as a 
Be Bop Deluxe put out a miraculously good debut LP, 1974’s Axe Victim, which suffered due to circumstances beyond its control. To wit, it was a glam record released at around the same time as David Bowie’s final stab at glitter rock, Diamond Dogs. This shouldn’t have been a big deal; England was awash in glam bands at the time, many of them enormously successful. No, what really did Nelson and Be Bop Deluxe in was the fact that Axe Victim bore a more than passing resemblance to the work of Mr. Bowie, which led critics to lambast Be Bop Deluxe as mere copycats.
