Monthly Archives: August 2020

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Artists from around the world will come together using Public Enemy songs, legacy and history as an inspiration to create unique and original art pieces for the first time ever at The Terrordome.

​Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Public Enemy’s iconic third album Fear Of A Black Planet, the show will feature one-of-a-kind artwork from Shepard Fairey, Vhils, Faith47, Anthony Lister, Okuda Public Enemy frontman Chuck D and many more. The show goes from September 5 – October 3, 2020 at Black Book Gallery (3878 S Jason St, Englewood, CO 80110). A sneak peek at original work from How & Nosm, WK Interact and CYCLE can be seen below, and limited edition original prints created by Ludo, Okuda, Emek and Ferris Plock will be available August 29 through the Black Book website, in advance of the opening. Look for a full list of participating artists and additional artwork soon.

The Terrordome art show was conceived and curated by Chuck D and Lorrie Boula who have been working closely with their partners at the Black Book Gallery, Tom Horne and Will Suitts. “Bringing visual artists and music together has always been important to me because it’s who I am,” notes Chuck D. “I was an illustrator and graphic designer long before I ever grabbed a microphone. We’ve been working hard at bringing together an amazing array of artists for the show, and look forward to people coming through to see their work.” The gallery will be practicing COVID-19 safety precautions for those in attendance including limiting the capacity of the event. Details on tickets for the opening will be announced shortly. Additional information on the show is here.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The producers of Outside Lands, Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly, and Starr Hill Presents, announce the artist lineup and programming details for Inside Lands, a free virtual festival celebration taking place this August 28-29 on Twitch. The event will feature iconic archival sets, exclusive live musical performances, interviews with artists, plus features with the festival curators, producers, fans, small businesses and community that make Outside Lands truly one of a kind.

​Among the artists confirmed for Inside Lands performances are Gorillaz, LCD Soundsystem, J. Cole, Jack White, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Above & Beyond, Haim, Major Lazer, Leon Bridges, Louis the Child, alt-J and Cage The Elephant, as well as artists that are part of the Outside Lands 2021 festival lineup, including Kehlani, ZHU, Beach House, Brittany Howard, SOFI TUKKER and Sharon Van Etten.

The virtual festival will be streamed exclusively on Twitch. Twitch’s live streaming service offers an unparalleled level of interaction and connection to enhance attendees’ experience at the virtual festival. With its massive, vibrant community and unique engagement features, Inside Lands on Twitch will bring the best parts of an in-person festival online. Fans can tune in to the streaming broadcast for free each day at twitch.tv/sfoutsidelands.

“This is an opportunity for Outside Lands to relive and share some of our favorite festival moments with fans both old and new, in addition to showcasing some of the talented artists confirmed for our 2021 festival with exclusive live sets, interviews and past performances,” said Allen Scott, Head of Concerts and Festivals at Another Planet Entertainment and Co-Producer of Outside Lands. “By incorporating a live host as well as enabling direct communication between fans and festival producers plus surprise guests via our Twitch channel, we look forward to offering a free virtual festival experience that is both collaborative and compelling for our audience.”

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Quite a number of years back, the TVD First Date feature was inaugurated to introduce new talent to the site and to follow an artist’s development while getting to know their own music via their record collections. ’twas a nifty idea earlier on, however over the course of a decade some more than well-established artists have lent their time to the feature to shed a light on what brought them to their first stages and into our own consciousness—and we’re resharing a number of our favorites this week. —Ed.

“Hey, did you ever go to the Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill Gate? I can still picture it, long and narrow, stacks and stacks of old records and really nice people behind the counter right at the back of the shop. They were older, a bit hippyish.”

“I always seemed to be in there at a crucial junction in my life. There was the time I took about twenty of my records, (Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Donovan that kind of thing) to sell before Sid Vicious came round to my place for our first band meeting when we were forming The Flowers of Romance —that was so funny, we rehearsed the whole summer of 1976, the hottest summer on record—in Joe Strummer’s basement and emerged in September with white faces and no songs. We’re still famous thirty years later for that band, never played a gig either. That’s true punk.

The next time I can remember being in the Tape Exchange was a couple of days after the Slits split up, I was living in a basement flat and was burgled. They took my guitar and all my records. I went straight to Record and Tape exchange to see if the thief had brought them in and he had. You always got your records back for free when that happened, they were very good about that.

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Liberty DeVitto is known in the music industry as the “songwriter’s drummer,” his resume deftly proclaims his rockstar cred: he’s performed on 13 platinum albums which have sold over 150 million copies and recorded and arranged the drum parts for 22 of Billy Joel’s 23 top-40 hits. 6 of those recordings went on to win Grammys.

However, Liberty’s new book, Liberty: Life, Billy and the Pursuit of Happiness makes clear that while his years with Billy Joel were outstanding, the other elements of the story of his life and ascension to the highest drum throne in the land are just as captivating. In fact, it’s possible to get so caught up in the early parts of Liberty’s autobiography that one forgets that a career in rock and roll superstardom is on its way.

Here, Liberty and I discuss vinyl, Billy Joel, The Beatles, why Ringo is so great, recording with Paul McCartney, growing up on Long Island, and the rock and roll wisdom that Liberty has learned along the way. Please welcome one of the most successful rock and roll drummers of all time and one of my musical heroes, Liberty DeVitto.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Sharp Notes each Saturday evening at 6pm and TVD Radar on Sundays at 5AM on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

The Grateful Dead isn’t a band–it’s a petri dish for fanatics. There are four kinds of people out there. 1. Those who don’t care anymore about the Grateful Dead than they do the waste disposal manager two towns over. 2. Those who hate Dead because their music sucks and their fans are filthy hippie burnouts. 3. Those who love the band but possess the critical faculties necessary to discern a good Dead album from one that blows. And 4. Those who own some 950 Grateful Dead bootlegs and can (and will, at length) tell you which one of those 950 Grateful Dead bootlegs includes the gnarliest version of “Me and My Uncle.”

Comparing the people in Category 3 to the ones in Category 4 is like comparing your average Episcopalian to a clay-eating, rattlesnake-handling Southern Baptist tent revival preacher. I myself belong in Category 3. But let’s pretend for a moment that I fall into Category 4, and prefer listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs to such unessential life activities as eating, sleeping, bathing, screwing and mastering rudimentary social skills. Which would be my choice of best live Grateful Dead recording?

First I would have to establish some completely arbitrary criteria. I have my peculiarities, as do you, and I stand by mine.

1. The concert must be top notch. This would appear to be self-evident, but the Dead were an erratic live act, which is only to be expected given they played some 2,300 concerts over the course of their 30-year existence.

2. The concert must have been recorded between 1971 and 1974, because the former don’t include many of my favorite songs and the latter tend to include material recorded after From the Mars Hotel, the last Dead album worth owning. Call me petty, but “King Solomon’s Marbles” makes me lose mine.

3. The concert cannot include a song longer than 20 minutes.

4. The concert must include four or more of the following: “China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider,” “Brown-Eyed Woman,” “Bertha,” “Deal,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Wharf Rat,” and “Jack Straw.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Verve Records announces the release of a never-before-heard stellar live recording from the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald. The Lost Berlin Tapes were recorded – incredibly in both mono and stereo—at Berlin’s Sportpalast on March 25, 1962 and finds Ella at the top of her game with a trio led by pianist Paul Smith, Wilfred Middlebrooks on bass, and Stan Levey on drums.

​There was just something about Berlin that brought out the best in Ella. In February of 1960, she gave a concert at the Deutschlandhalle, which became one of her best-known and best-selling records, Mack The Knife: Ella in Berlin. The album won her 2 Grammys, it went on to be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Two years after that historic concert, Ella returned to the city at the height of her career, in the midst of her most extensive European tour to date. Flanked by her stalwart rhythm section including pianist Paul Smith, bassist Wilfred Middlebrooks, and drummer Stan Levey, Ella delivers an energized, top-of-her-game set a month before her 45th birthday.

Ella Fitzgerald The Lost Berlin Tapes is a jewel in the treasure chest of impresario and Verve Records founder Norman Granz’s private collection. As Ella’s manager, he had a habit of recording Ella live—sometimes for radio broadcast, sometimes for later release, sometimes just to have. This particular recording was amazingly done in both mono and stereo—and on this March evening at Berlin’s Sportpalast, Ella delivered, singing some lesser-known gems as well as the hits.

One of those hits was “Mack The Knife.” Ella famously flubbed the lyrics in the known 1960 recording, and two years later, nails them. But—she forgets the name of the town she’s in. On the recording, she charmingly says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m so embarrassed. This is where the first time I sang ‘Mack The Knife’ and when I got to the part of the town, I couldn’t think of it!” The audience is enthralled, nonetheless.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Real Gone Music is releasing the 1970 Groovie Goolies album for the first time ever on CD and for the first time on LP since its original release.

​When Filmation Studios landed a late-‘60s hit with the Saturday morning cartoon TV show The Archies, it wasn’t long before it started looking for more “sugar” with a similarly music-themed follow-up. Inspired by the success of such shows as The Munsters and The Addams Family, penned by a couple of writers for Laugh-In, and featuring the voice of F-Troop’s Larry Storch, Groovie Goolies first aired in September 1970 as a pairing with the Archies spin-off Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

Though it only lasted 16 episodes, the Groovie Goolies cult lasts to this day (even inspiring the name of the S.F. punk band The Groovie Ghoulies). Why? One guess—the music. Just like The Archies did with Andy Kim, Ron Dante, and Jeff Barry, Groovie Goolies brought A-list talent to the task of composing and performing two songs for every episode, including Dick Monda and, for this album, Sherry Gayden and Janet Martin a.k.a. Richard Delvy and Ed Fournier of the surf-rock band The Challengers (that’s Fournier dressed as Wolfie on the back cover). And playing in the band: legendary guitarist Larry Carlton and Elvis Presley bassist Ron Tutt.

The whole record has a very Archies vibe with some very groovy, er, groovie touches, like the fuzztone guitar on “Save Your Good Lovin’ for Me,” the wah-wah on on “Frankie” and even some sitar. Little wonder, then, that original copies of this 1970 record trade for big bucks…our first-ever vinyl reissue of Groovie Goolies comes in Franken-Green vinyl limited to 500 copies and a Pumpkin Orange vinyl edition exclusive to independent record stores and also limited to 500 copies, while our first-ever CD release includes liner notes by Bill Kopp featuring an interview with Dick Monda.

Do you know what a pain it is to write an entire record review only to realize you got it wrong? Such was the case with Jarvis Cocker’s new band Jarv Is and their debut LP, 2020’s Beyond the Pale, on which the former Pulp front man abandons the scathing commentaries on England’s caste system and squeamish-making mini-dramas about sex that made Pulp the angriest–and most intellectually rewarding–of Britpop’s angry young bands.

Abandoned for what, you ask? Evolution. Evolution! What, did Jarvis run into Charles Darwin on the streets of Sheffield? Find himself locked in a room for six months with nothing to read but On the Origin of Species? I couldn’t tell you, but what he have on our hands here is a concept album on our single-celled crawl from the primordial ooze to the perpetual doubt machines we’ve become. Needless to say I hated the damn thing. If this was Cocker’s idea of musical evolution, thought I, give me Devo.

The LP’s title is apt–we’ve left behind our Paleolithic past, and our staggering maltreatment of the planet we live on is definitely beyond the pale. But what I loved about Pulp were Cocker’s sleazy character studies and critiques of England’s upper crust. And it’s not only the subject matter that have gone the way of the dodo.

On Beyond the Pale Cocker and Company give up on their patented brand of disco-infused pop rock in favor of a species of world-music influenced art rock that brings the solo David Byrne or–god help us, Peter Gabriel–to mind. “Save the Whale,” for one, sounds like Leonard Cohen singing to a ham-fisted reggae beat at a benefit concert for narwhals organized by the Indigo Girls and Sting. “Common People” come home!

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Mark E Smith’s group of psychedelic post-punks rank as one of the most visionary, singular British bands of all time.” —The Guardian

​Beggars Arkive is excited to announce the upcoming reissue of The Fall’s 10th studio album, 1988’s The Frenz Experiment. Available as an expanded edition on 2XCD, 2XLP and digital, the releases contain the original album, plus singles and B-Sides. The CD + digital versions also include a previously unreleased 4-track BBC session and “A Day In The Life” Beatles cover rarity, plus a 24-page booklet with new interviews. The LP version contains extensive sleeve notes with new interviews. The notes included with both formats contain brand new interviews conducted by Daryl Easley in May.

We are also happy to share a brand new animated music video for the first track on the album, “Frenz,” directed by Sabrina Nichols and Craig McNeil.

In 1987, The Fall scored their first UK Top 30 singles chart position with their cover of the Northern Soul standard, “There’s A Ghost In My House,” and supported it with a series of career-best shows. “Hit The North,” one of their much-loved anthems, followed in October and then, finally, The Frenz Experiment—which contained these songs, was released at the end of February 1988.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | When asked “How does it feel to be the best guitarist in the world,” Jimi replied, “I don’t know, why don’t you go and ask Rory Gallagher.”

​Following the commercial and critically acclaimed success of the recent albums Blues (2019) and the three-week running No.1 album on the Billboard Blues Chart Check Shirt Wizard – Live in ’77 (2020), UMe is pleased to present a new Rory Gallagher collection entitled The Best Of Rory Gallagher on Friday, October 9, 2020. The album is now available to preorder here. The comprehensive compilation includes Rory’s most iconic songs compiled from across his recording career, including tracks from Rory’s seminal first band Taste (1969) through to his final studio album Fresh Evidence (1990).

The Best Of Rory Gallagher will be released as a 2CD set featuring 30 tracks, including a previously unreleased collaboration with Jerry Lee Lewis. The album will also be released on 2LP black vinyl, limited-edition 2LP clear vinyl available only at uDiscover Music and The Sound of Vinyl, a 15-track single CD, as well as digital HD and digital standard.

Unearthed from the Rory Gallagher Archives is a special bonus track “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction [Alternate Version]” by Jerry Lee Lewis featuring Rory Gallagher – a rare outtake taken from Jerry Lee Lewis’ famous 1973 London Sessions featuring Rory singing and playing the Rolling Stones’ classic alongside the legendary Jerry Lee Lewis. The previously unreleased rarity is featured on the 2CD version and digital versions of the album, and as a limited-edition 7” vinyl single available only at uDiscover Music and The Sound of Vinyl online stores.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Chris Hillman is arguably the primary architect of what’s come to be known as country rock. After playing the Southern California folk and bluegrass circuit, he joined Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark, and Michael Clarke as an original member of The Byrds. He went on to partner with Gram Parsons to launch The Flying Burrito Brothers, recording a handful of albums that have become touchstones of the Americana genre.

​Hillman then embarked on a prolific recording career as a member of Stephen Stills’ Manassas, as a solo artist, and as a member of several groups that he insists sound more like law firms than bands: Souther-Hillman-Furay with acclaimed songwriter J.D. Souther and former Buffalo Springfield and Poco member Richie Furay; McGuinn, Clark & Hillman with two of his fellow former Byrds; and Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pedersen with Tony Rice, Larry Rice, and longtime collaborator and duo partner Herb Pedersen. As a songwriter, he appeared on the Billboard singles charts in four consecutive decades, and his songs have been recorded by a diverse range of artists, from Steve Earle to Patti Smith to Roy Rogers.

In the 1980s, Hillman launched a successful mainstream country group when he formed The Desert Rose Band with Pedersen and John Jorgenson, scoring eight Billboard Top 10 country hits. In the midst of his country success he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with the other original members of The Byrds. He has since released a number of solo efforts, including 2017’s highly-acclaimed Bidin’ My Time, which was the final album produced by Tom Petty with executive producer Pedersen.

In Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother and Beyond, due out November 17, 2020 via BMG Books, Hillman takes readers behind the curtain of his quintessentially Southern Californian experience. Raised in San Diego County’s then-rural Rancho Santa Fe, Chris grew up in an idyllic 1950s environment that was filled with TV cowboys, horseback riding, exploring the outdoors, surfing, discovering girls, and falling in love with music.

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