Monthly Archives: June 2020

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Third Man Records is excited to announce vinyl reissues of that dog.’s seminal LPs Totally Crushed Out and Retreat From The Sun, to be released on July 24, 2020. These reissues arrive just in time for the 25th anniversary of the original release of Totally Crushed Out and mark the first vinyl pressing of either album. Pre-order Totally Crushed Out here, and pre-order Retreat From The Sun here.

​Totally Crushed Out | Conceived as a loosely-based concept album around the idea of crushes and young love, that dog.’s sophomore album Totally Crushed Out is a touchstone underrated classic in line with of-the-era releases like the Breeders’ Last Splash and Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. From the Sweet Valley High-reminiscent illustrated album cover, to the A minus rating given by the dean Robert Christgau, to the Jenni Konner songwriting credit (long before she was the showrunner for HBO’s Girls) this album is quirky, smart, well-written and most of all… enjoyable.

that dog.’s touring behind Totally Crushed Out found them sharing stages with Foo Fighters, Weezer, and Teenage Fanclub, their songs being covered live by Pearl Jam, collaborating with Beck, and the vid for “He’s Kissing Christian” achieving sub-Buzz Bin status on MTV.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Blue Öyster Cult have announced another special live release from their archives. 45th Anniversary–Live In London will be released on August 7, 2020 on CD/DVD, Blu-ray, and 2xLP. The performance, captured in London at the O2 Indigo at the Stone Free Festival, includes a full performance of their legendary debut album, plus more cuts from their storied catalog. The band is also nearing completion of their new studio album, The Symbol Remains, which will be released in October via Frontiers Music.

​In 2017, the mighty Blue Öyster Cult celebrated their 45th Anniversary with a run of festival and headline dates across the UK and Europe. The band’s appearance in London at the O2 INDIGO at the Stone Free Festival on June 17th started with a performance of BÖC’s first album in its entirety, a celebration of the 45th anniversary of its release. In addition, the band added special select cuts from their catalog to the set. The full show was filmed in 4K UHD and is another one of a kind archival release which fans of the band cannot miss.

Hailing from New York, Blue Öyster Cult have garnered huge critical acclaim and a dedicated fanbase built on their studio albums, tracks like “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” “Godzilla,” and “Burning For You,” and their awesome live shows.

“Having grown up on CDs with no family records to inherit, my love for vinyl sparked in my late teens, when I moved to London from Greece. I found myself digging through record stores in Soho, in awe of the amount of different music available to purchase, and so I was hooked on discovery. I spent my early years exploring my parents’ CD collection, creating my own amalgamations of what I considered to be the best mixtapes ever made… ignorance is bliss!”

“I grew up with a love for the likes of Tracy Chapman, Nina Simone, Toni Braxton, Erykah Badu, Alicia Keys, Ms Lauryn Hill, and Mary J. Blige who would blare out of my parents’ speakers on a daily basis. The common denominator for a lot of my favourite childhood music was clearly female singers playing the piano. I learned the piano from the age of 7, leading me into a career of songwriting and singing—and I can only thank all the amazing female voices I heard everyday, giving me the confidence to pursue writing and performing music myself.

When I first arrived in London, I remember going to see James Blake live one night and needing to buy something at the end of the gig as a memento. The way the sound traveled through the venue, especially that of the piano, gave me chills and I needed something to remember that feeling with. I distinctly recall looking at the vinyl at the merch stand and the excitement of taking it home for its first spin—this purchase marked the beginning of my vinyl journey.

My record player came shortly after, and I immediately became obsessed with the way the mechanism works, going back and forth to Soho, adding a new record or two each time I got paid. The needle fascinated me and to this day, I sit in awe of the way the sound is created, the way it travels through the air, and the texture of the sound we hear. Whenever I come back from a gig, it’s with vinyl in hand. I will stick it on as soon as I’m home and relive the magic.

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Although some have managed to expand upon his groundbreaking intensity and flights of abstraction, Albert Ayler is one of the few sui generis figures in the history of jazz. An uncompromising player with only a small following in his lifetime in music, he cut a record in 1968 that initially seemed to satisfy nobody except for (perhaps) Ayler himself. That LP was New Grass, lambasted as a sell-out by those who favored his prior work, while less adventurous listeners weren’t buying. The album has been reevaluated since however, and Third Man has given it a vinyl reissue that’s available now. In the label’s storefronts and select indie shops it can even be found on coke bottle clear 180-gram wax with opaque green wisps.

I’ve been contributing to this column for over eight years, but until this piece, I haven’t delivered a full review of a record by Albert Ayler, who’s one of my favorite jazzmen, though I have included him in this site’s New In Stores column and in at least one group review. As this omission is remedied, I feel it should be immediately qualified that the term jazzman isn’t necessarily a tidy fit for Ayler’s brilliance.

Albert Ayler was certainly a man whose work falls inside the boundaries of jazz, so calling him a jazzman isn’t in error, but it still might give those unfamiliar with his work the false impression of a figure, sharply decked-out in a classic tailored suit maybe, who excelled at extending, through live gigs and studio sessions, the core tenets of Modern Jazz.

While innovators are surely jazzmen and vice versa, Ayler remains one of the ever-evolving form’s major freedom-seeking iconoclasts. In short, he’s best placed in the avant-jazz category, which means that for long stretches after his death in November 1970 (presumably by suicide, as his body was discovered in the East River of NYC) his music was difficult to obtain. This was especially true at the end of the 1980s, which is when I first learnt of his existence.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Twenty years ago, Joe Bonamassa took the music world by storm when he released his debut solo album A New Day Yesterday, though he’d already been on the scene for years as a child prodigy and even opened for B.B. King at the age of 12.

​The album launched a career that, two decades later, has seen Bonamassa rise to the top of his field with most recently being named Guitar World’s #1 blues guitarist in the world. Today, the blues-rock titan announces a revamped version to be released on August 7th via J&R Adventures. It has been completely re-sung by Bonamassa and remixed and remastered by long-time producer Kevin Shirley. The first single “Cradle Rock” is out today as part of the celebration. Fans can pre-order the album now.

In custom Bonamassa fashion, Joe has shared a personal message to fans, straight from his “Nerdville” home. “The reason we went back and remixed it, and re-sang it, and pulled from the original masters was because I never felt like I deserved a guy like Tom Dowd to produce my first album,” he confesses. “I was an infant as far as being an artist. Tom saw a little pebble in a stream, that could travel down and eventually become this nugget of gold, if you want to call it that, and he had a vision for me that I didn’t see. I appreciate that and I wanted to pay tribute to him as a man who mentored me through that time. I hope you enjoy it.”

He continues, “Tom Dowd was a master of everything he endeavored on. There was no second rate, there was no compromise on quality of absolutions and results. I wasn’t developed enough as a musician myself to rise to his level. I certainly gave it my all and rose to the occasion grading on the curve of the musician I am today, the musician Tom always knew was inside my soul. I decided to enlist the help of another producer and mentor that has significantly impacted my life both on a personal basis and professionally, Mr. Kevin Shirley to help re-mix, re-sing and finally pay tribute to Tom as I tried to so hard to when he was alive.

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Suzi Quatro knows exactly who she is and what she wants. That’s the impression she gives, even on a crackling Skype call across the Atlantic. I spoke to her in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, before either of us had any idea just how crazy the next six months would be. “It’s pretty scary,” she said, when I asked her how she was staying sane back in those early days. “I’m trying to be creative, I’m working on the next album with my son right now… and taking a six mile walk [with him] every day.” As she and the people who know her best readily attest, she’s always raced through life at a breakneck pace, and at 70, she shows no signs of slowing down.

In addition to working on a new album with her son, Richard Tuckey, she’s planning to put out another book, maintaining a presence on social media, and even cleaning up after herself. “Of course my cleaner can’t come so I’m going against my religion to clean it myself. I have to have music on when I clean so I’m dancing around to my Motown,” she says. “That just makes it a little quicker, when you can do the Temptations, you know? I was cheerful for about the last two weeks but that seems to have gone away…”

We chat about her other musical influences and what’s stuck with her since the Sixties: Otis Redding, Billie Holliday, Bob Dylan, and (of course) Elvis Presley. “The music that you listen to as a teenager really stays in your heart forever,” she says. “I saw [Elvis] on TV and knew I was going to do what he did.” Her preferred medium? Vinyl, of course. “Nothing quite like it. The old days you’d go and flick through the sleeves and hold it in your hands… just fantastic. There’s a whole new vibe in vinyl. It’s beautiful in its imperfection.” The same might be said of Quatro’s whole career.

She talks about her favorite tunes with the same electric energy that made her a household name in the music business in the 1970s, singled out for stardom by Mickie Most. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t… getting up and doing a number,” she tells me. “I was always a performer, always, from a little girl. And in fact that’s what I put on my first passport [with the Pleasure Seekers]. I was the only one that put down ‘entertainer’ as profession… It says a lot about my mindset back then.” This, in her own estimation and that of the friends and family who populate her upcoming rockumentary, Suzi Q, is the leitmotif of her life: uncompromising ambition. Suzi Quatro was determined to be a star.

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Alice Cooper, 1971; it’s almost enough to break your heart. Alice put out two LPs that year, Love It to Death and Killer, and both include a handful of incredibly great hard rockers combined with their fair share of duds, including a boring nine-minute workout on Love It to Death (“Black Juju”) and the equally coma-inducing eight-plus minute “Halo of Flies” on Killer. I know bands were often contractually obligated to produce two LPs per annum back then, and that may or may not have had something to do with the limited number of fabulous tracks on both LPs. But imagine, just for a moment, had Alice Cooper put out just one album in 1971, an album containing the best songs from both LPs. The finished product would have been brilliant, and one of the best rock LPs of all time.

Alas, you can’t turn back the clock—if you could, I’d move it back to the glory days, when I could smoke tons of pot and not get paranoid—and we’re stuck forever with two woulda-coulda been tremendous albums marred by too many weak tracks to be called great. As for the band, they got their start in Los Angeles on Frank Zappa’s Straight label, but following the disappointing sales of their sophomore LP (1970’s Easy Action) they up and moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where they fit in perfectly with bands like the Stooges and the MC5. Cooper himself blamed the band’s failure to make a mark in LA to drugs; “L.A. just didn’t get it,” he stated. “They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else.”

It was LP #3, Love It to Death, that turned things around for the band, which consisted of Vince Furnier aka Alice Cooper on vocals, Glenn Buxton on lead guitar, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar and keyboards, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Neal Smith on drums. It didn’t hurt that the band was winning mucho notoriety for their elaborately macabre stage antics and androgynous attire. The kids in the concert halls ate it up, and turned the single “I’m Eighteen” into a teen anthem to boot, and Alice Cooper never looked back. The image of Cooper in garish face make-up, boa constrictor wrapped around his neck, has become part of our cultural heritage, and every bit as important as Abraham Lincoln signing the Declaration of Independence, or Lee Harvey Oswald shooting Jack Ruby.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Eric Clapton and B.B. King first performed together in NYC in 1967. Over 30 years later, in 1999, the two longtime friends joined forces to create a collection of all new studio recordings of blues classics and contemporary songs. The resulting album Riding with the King would be released in June 2000 and go onto sell over 2 million copies in the U.S. and win the GRAMMY Award® for Best Traditional Blues Album.

​To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this classic album, two additional previously unreleased tracks have been added: The blues standard “Rollin’ and Tumblin” and B.B. King’s “Let Me Love You.” Both tracks were recorded during the original sessions and were produced and mixed especially for this release by Simon Climie, who produced the original album with Clapton. The original tapes have been remastered by Bob Ludwig and is finally available again now in expanded form via Reprise Records.

The 14-track collection will be available in all formats including a 180-gram black double vinyl package. A limited edition 180-gram blue vinyl double LP set will available exclusively in Eric Clapton’s official online store and at indie retailers. The vinyl was mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Los Angeles.

The original album features four B.B. King originals, plus a selection of covers from writers as diverse as Isaac Hayes & David Porter (“Hold On I’m Coming”), Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen (“Come Rain Or Come Shine”), and William Broonzy & Charles Seger (“Key To The Highway”). John Hiatt wrote the album’s title track.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Waxwork Records, in collaboration with Back Lot Music and Hollywood Records, is proud to present the debut film score vinyl release to M. Night Shyamalan’s Eastrail 177 Trilogy. Composed of Unbreakable (2000), Split (2016), and Glass (2019), the Eastrail 177 Trilogy is a visionary comic-book film series written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

​Unbreakable, about a security guard named David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who becomes the sole survivor of a train wreck, posed the question of what would happen if superheroes were real. At the insistence of a mysterious, rare-comic-book collector named Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who suffers from a medical condition that makes his bones shatter on the slightest impact, Dunn comes to believe that he has super strength and is impervious to injury or illness. Not only that, he has the ability to see or sense the evil deeds of others simply by touching them.

The Unbreakable score, by James Newton Howard, was the second collaboration between Shyamalan and Howard, following their work together on The Sixth Sense. The Unbreakable score experience was unlike any the composer had had before. “Night sat there and storyboarded the whole movie for me,” Howard said. “I’ve never had a director do that for me. He wanted something that was very different, very distinctive, that immediately evoked the movie when people heard it.”

Howard and Shyamalan chose to simplify the score, and minimized the number of instruments (strings, trumpets and piano), with limited orchestrations. Some compositions were recorded in a converted church in London. “You could have recorded the same music in a studio in Los Angeles, and it would have been great, but there is something about the sound of that church studio,” Howard said. “It’s definitely more misterioso.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Newly remastered double LP beautifully repackaged gatefold sleeve with new artwork and expanded liner notes with a second disc that includes Mad Dog Studio sessions from 1991. An essential Giant Sand album featuring Victoria Williams, Rainer and country veteran Pappy Allen.

​A firm fan favourite, Giant Sand’s essential 1991 album Ramp was the second of three revered albums the band released in the early ’90s. Now set for a remastered special indie store exclusive, the new edition released on 17th July comes beautifully repackaged in a gatefold sleeve with new artwork and expanded liner notes from MOJO’s Dave Henderson. Ramp is a magical trip with a host of guests including Victoria Williams, Rainer and Pappy Allen.

“One of Giant Sand’s strongest and most complete albums.”
—The Quietus

Featuring piano lounge music for an off-world colony interrupted by an onslaught of guitar when needed. Reverb on, fuzz friendly. Up to 11, it’s light and dark and the better for it, a musical journey on a road less travelled. All sounds are welcome; banjo, dobro, pedal steel, plaintive harmonica, whistling all wrap themselves around the flow of consciousness; those truly memorable words. The Tucson sound at its very best.