Monthly Archives: October 2020

Jennifer Castle, Canadian doyenne of contemporary folk, has released six full-length records since debuting in 2006, originally recording as Castlemusic, a handle that became the title of her third album as she began using her birth name. Monarch Season is her latest, its nine tracks notably constituting the first truly “solo” set she’s released, featuring her (and only her) singing and playing guitar, piano, and for the first time on record, harmonica. Gentle without faltering into the insubstantial and offering sustained passages of beauty that avoid the ornate, the music’s intimacy is a strong suit. It’s out digitally October 16, with the vinyl + songbook and CD following on November 20 through Paradise of Bachelors.

Regarding Jennifer Castle, there is no shortage of contemporary musicians of similar comportment; Paradise of Bachelors makes no bones about this, offering a long list of names (as is their way) that strikes me as astute. I’ll resist simply regurgitating them here, but will add that mid-way through, the comparisons shift to artists a generation or two (three, even) older than Castle, which is in accord with a sound that is flush with singer-songwriter folk rudiments while still managing to sound fresh.

But the opening instrumental “Theory Rest,” infused as it is with glistening fingerpicking and a tangible yet subtle layer of the ambient, establishes that Castle is after more than the standard strumming and emoting. While this attribute is recurrent across the album (notably, the vinyl and CD “include lengthier ambient segues of onsite environmental recordings between songs”) it doesn’t overtake Castle’s thrust as a current folkster; to the contrary, the next track “NYC” bursts out with the aforementioned harmonica, Castle citing Kath Bloom as her inspiration for playing the instrument.

The mention of Bloom (long a fave of discerning folk listeners) only reinforces Castle as the real deal, though it’s the strength and gorgeousness of her voice in “NYC” that should settle the matter. The prettiness of her singing extends to “Justice,” which features gentle tones that don’t falter into the fairylike, partly through urgency directly related to her lyrics, words it’s worth mentioning that are a cut above the norm, in how they strive to communicate emotions and ideas rather than impressing the listener with how they are communicated.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | 70 years ago this month – on October 10, 1950 – 19-year-old college student Jac Holzman started a record label in his dorm room. He decided to call it Elektra after a Greek demigoddess, and turned an M on its side to create the signature E for the label’s first logo. With that, one of the most pioneering, revered, and influential companies in music history was born.

​To mark the occasion, Elektra today revealed a special anniversary logo that embodies Holzman’s original design and will be used on all Elektra and Elektra/Rhino releases through the end of 2021. The label will be celebrating the anniversary throughout the coming year, including: limited edition Elektra70 merchandise; a special limited edition Record Store Day box set; playlists curated, created, and marketed by Topsify; and extensive coverage across press and social media.

Elektra Co-Presidents Mike Easterlin and Gregg Nadel said: “As Elektra enters its eighth decade, we celebrate Jac and all the remarkable people who worked with him and came after him to make this label the special place that it remains today. With his impeccable taste, intelligence, and passion, Jac taught us to always follow the music and to serve and believe in our artists. We are honored and proud to carry on his incredible legacy.”

Jac Holzman noted: “With the 1946 launch of the LP, I sensed an opening and opportunity for new, independent labels to meticulously record and offer music the majors were not likely to touch. Over the years, every Elektra label head has brought with them different tastes and capabilities, which have kept the company healthy and fueled with the best of music over seven decades.”

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1989 was an outstanding year for hip-hop. Classics in the rapidly developing genre included EPMD’s Unfinished Business, the Jungle Brothers’ Done by the Forces of Nature, and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. In fact the list is so deep that worthy items are bound to be overlooked. A recent reissue of Special Ed’s Youngest in Charge will certainly keep the Brooklynite’s enduringly striking wordplay in the discussion, with the LP housed in a gatefold sleeve sporting notes by estimable hip-hop scribe Brian Coleman. 

Of Jamaican descent, Edward Archer is the youngest of five brothers and the only one born on US soil. As a rap obsessed teen from the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, he quickly became a battle rhyme specialist, employing a variety of handles before settling upon Special Ed. The initial chapters in his story are approximate to the beginnings of numerous local legends; the difference is Ed’s realization that breaking on a larger level required a key collaborator.

Enter Howard Thompson; English-born and also of Jamaican descent, he’s better known as Hitman Howie Tee. Ed was 14 when he first met the older and more experienced Howie, his future cohort having been a member of CDIII, an electro-rap trio who cut a pair of singles on the Prelude label in ’83-‘84. And while uncredited, in ’84 he contributed production to UTFO’s rap smash “Roxanne, Roxanne.” The next year he worked on Whistle’s “(Nothing Serious) Just Buggin’.”

Suffice it to say Ed and Howie knew each other from the neighborhood. Once properly introduced, the producer was struck by the rapper’s sidestepping of the Jamaican angle for what can be described as a New York-based approach. He was furthermore impressed by the maturity in his execution; Youngest in Charge’s title references Ed’s age, 16 at the point of the album’s making, but the LP is in no way the prototype for Kris Kross or Lil Bow Wow.

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I catch Adam on the phone on a Monday morning, which seems like an inauspicious time to ring up a rock and roller (his manager’s suggestion, not mine). But to call Adam Weiner a rock and roller feels reductive; after an hour on the horn we’ve talked about everything and everyone from the GOP and Atlantic City to the rodeo circuit and Jerzy Grotowski. Adam himself is best known as the frontman of Low Cut Connie, whose fans range as widely as our conversation—they’ve made the favorites playlist with Rolling Stone, Elton John, and Barack Obama, to name just a few.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, the band’s famously rambunctious live shows have even been transformed for a remote audience known as “Tough Cookies,” who tune in every Thursday to Adam’s living room instead of the news. Judging by the chatter in the sidebar when I join them for the landmark 50th show, many have made Low Cut Connie a part of their weekly routine. It’s not hard to see why; in the course of an evening, Adam and guitarist Will Donnelly not only play new hits, old favorites, and fresh covers, but make up songs, eat tacos, take questions, and pull records from the shelves to share with their fans. DJ sets are dutifully accompanied on the cheese grater, Tupperware, and air guitar. It’s the closest to a house party you’re probably going to get before the year is out—defiantly joyful and deeply cathartic.

That Adam is so generous with his fans comes as no surprise. He’s always been in it for the people. “I’m from New Jersey, but I’ve lived in New York City, Philadelphia, Montreal, Austin, Memphis, and I’ve traveled throughout the US, Canada, Europe, with my music, with some measure of success for the last few years, and with a of measure of no success for many years. And that allowed me to kind of meet people eye to eye,” he tells me. “I’d play anywhere that would have me. Nobody knew me, I didn’t have any fans. If an anarchist punk squat house on a college campus would have me and feed me I would stay over.” His songs are populated by characters at once larger than life and too real to be denied—drag queens and evangelists and everyone in between. “I always feel like I want to talk about the people in my songs with a sort of fascinated and sympathetic eye from how they’re living. I get that as much from movies and literature as I do from music.”

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Welcome to the first all music episode of Radar which you can listen to right here at The Vinyl District, but also on WFDU, 89.1 FM on your actual radio in New York City! While Radar strives to bring you interviews with current movers and shakers in the entertainment industry, we’d like to also have an opportunity to share all of the great new music that is released every week. While there is much new music to be heard, there are also heaps of reissues and re-releases that we’d like to share as well. Of course, we’ll play you the vinyl copy whenever possible.

For instance, on this week’s episode, you’ll enjoy some reissues from Prince, The Supremes, Richard and Linda Thompson, Lou Reed and more, but we’ll also hear brand new music from Bob Mould, Bette Smith, Sad13 and Joe Wong. We also get to some rarities, Omnivore will reissue two albums by Van Duren who was a contemporary of Big Star in the 1970s Memphis scene. We’ll also take Plantasia out for a spin: you’ve certainly seen the iconic album cover if you’re a record collector, but have you ever really listened? Brooklyn’s Sacred Bones is reissuing this very difficult to find album. It’s scarcity lies in the fact that when it was originally released you could only receive it with a purchase in a plant store, or with the purchase of a Simmons mattress. I’m not kidding.

There’s more to hear in this episode, so I won’t give away all the goods. Consider these shows a sampler: just click play to hear the best of what’s been recently released, then create your own adventure and track down the things you like most to explore them more deeply. And don’t forget to let us know what you like!

In fact, we’d like to hear from you so much that we’ve set up a special hotline to do just that! Simply call 862-239-5885 and leave a message telling us how you feel about something that you heard, or educate us as to a music release we should look into, or, just tell us about the weather in your neck of the woods. It’s your opportunity to be on the radio in NYC, so go for it.

We’ll also look into offering giveaways and contests, but first, the music. Always the music first.

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.

What to say about the passing of Eddie Van Halen? Sad? Tragic? Heartbreaking? If the words are trite ones, it’s because death is the mother of a vast brood of cliches. What I’ll carry with me forever is his impish grin in the video for “Jump.” Can a smile sum up a man’s life? It’s the smile of a show-off making it look easy when you know damn well it isn’t, but there’s nothing smug about it. He’s simply bequeathing us a gift, the giving of which makes him happy. As for the fireworks he produced with his guitar, they speak for themselves.

I fell in love with Van Halen as a result of that video, which many–including my lovely other half–view as a sell-out. But the song’s sheer exuberance won me over, and led me to do something I would never have done otherwise–go back and listen to, and fall in love with, the band’s earlier albums.

One of said albums is 1980’s Women and Children First, which I put in third place in the Van Halen discography behind their self-titled 1978 debut and 1984’s 1984. On Women and Children First Pasadena’s greatest ever metal band pulverize the competition–Eddie shows off his hair-raising chops while David Lee Roth does his patented Borscht Belt shtick, and drummer Alex Van Halen and bass player Michael Anthony make like a steamroller with swing. In short, it’s business as usual.

The LP’s two opening tracks are its best. “And the Cradle Will Rock” is one of the heaviest songs in the Van Halen catalogue–less blitzkrieg than juggernaut, it boasts (as do the other songs) a guitar solo I’m sure has led many a lesser guitarist to take up the tuba, and a message (“Well, they say it’s kinda frightnin’/How this younger generation swings”) that’s resounded the whole way back to the origins of rock ’n’ roll and beyond.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Third Man Records and Columbia Records will release The White Stripes Greatest Hits on December 4.

​The first-ever official anthology of recordings from the iconic rock duo, Jack and Meg White, is an essential career-spanning collection highlighting 26 previously released songs – from late Nineties flashes of brilliance through early 2000s underground anthems, masterful MTV Moon Man moments, Grammy-grabbing greatness, and worldwide stadium chants…the songs here are as wide-ranging as you can imagine. The album is available for pre-order on CD, 2xLP 150-gram black vinyl, and digitally (streaming & download) HERE.

A deluxe limited edition and ONLY colored vinyl variant of The White Stripes Greatest Hits is also available as part of Third Man Records’ Vault Package #46. Not leaving out a crucial component to the story of The White Stripes and Third Man Records, information about added value items for release week album purchases at independent record stores will be announced at a later date.

Twentysome years ago, a brother and sister climbed into the third floor attic of their Southwest Detroit family homestead and bashed out a primitive cover of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” sparking something in both of them and leading them to take their simple guitar-drums-voice approach to a local open mic night on Bastille Day.

In what feels like a whirlwind, they record and release two 7-inch singles for a local indie label. A not-so-local indie offers to put out a full-length album. They start touring. Another album. More touring. Another album. Folks REALLY start to pay attention. Crazy touring, more albums, accolades, wildest dream after wildest dream coming true. “World-renowned” becomes an appropriate descriptor, as does “long-building overnight sensation.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rock N’Roll renegades Motörhead continue the 40th anniversary celebrations of the dirtiest, meanest, toughest album of them all, Ace Of Spades, with a new podcast mini-series called Motörcast, telling stories from the recording studio, on the road, behind the scenes and of Motörhead’s phenomenal growth in popularity following the release of this seminal album.

​Told through interviews with a selection of guests who were in the midst of the Motör-machine during 1980 and 1981, the Motörcast series will reveal all the tales, warts and all! The teaser trailer for the Ace Of Spades Motörcast is available now on all podcast platforms here. Episode one will go live next week, with subsequent episodes released every two weeks. Make sure you subscribe to the Motörcast series!

In addition to the previously announced expanded editions of Ace Of Spades and the deluxe collectors box set, the album will also be released digitally in 360 Reality Audio – a new immersive music experience utilising Sony’s spatial audio technology that will let listeners hear this behemoth like never before.

The 360 Reality Audio content will be available on Deezer and Tidal and can be enjoyed on any headphones and also on Amazon Music HD, playing on the Amazon Echo Studio. For additional details visit the 360 Reality Audio official website.

We remember Reverend John Wilkins via the archives from just one month ago. His brand new release is in stores now. —Ed.

Reverend John Wilkins can be described as a specialist in the sanctified blues, but that’s really only the tip of his stylistic iceberg. As the son of noted pre-war bluesman (and also ordained minister) Robert Wilkins, there is a firm North Mississippi root in his work, but more prominent is the sound of soul and even a well-integrated turn toward country gospel. Although he has been playing music and preaching for decades, Trouble is only Wilkins’ second album, but it’s an assured one, cut at Royal Studios in Memphis, TN with family and friends and engineered by Willie Mitchell’s son Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell with production by Amos Harvey. It’s out on vinyl (300 blue, 500 black) and compact disc September 18 through Goner Records.

To start, we should shed light on the achievements of Reverend Robert Wilkins, first as a blues singer and guitarist for the Victor and Brunswick labels from 1928-1936 including such major sides as “Old Jim Canan’s,” “Rollin’ Stone” (an influence of Muddy Waters’ later bombshell of the same title), and “That’s No Way to Get Along,” this last one likely better-known in its later gospel version, reworked, extended and renamed by Wilkins as “Prodigal Son” (covered by The Rolling Stones on Beggars Banquet).

If reliably placed in the country-blues category, Robert Wilkins is more aptly classified as a songster in his pre-war days, with the breadth of his talent well expressed by Yazoo’s compilation The Original Rolling Stone. This is all worth mentioning in relation to his son John (one of seven children), as Trouble thrives on diversity while keeping a firm grip on Southern gospel tradition with an underpinning of Hill Country blues (Wilkins has been a pastor at Hunter’s Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Como, MS since 1983).

What is Hill Country blues, you might be asking? In short, it’s a rhythmically driving, often hypnotic style from the North Mississippi region that’s distinct from the sound of the Delta; its celebrated exemplars include Fred McDowell, R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Robert Belfour, and Jessie Mae Hemphill. The North Mississippi fife and drum bands (Sid Hemphill, Othar Turner, Napoleon Strickland) are closely related to the Hill Country style.

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Eric Carmen wanted a Number One hit record. Badly. He said as much in “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)” from his band the Raspberries fourth and final LP, Starting Over. But “Overnight Sensation” didn’t come close to topping the pop charts, and following the Raspberries’ dissolution he considered his options. He could keep trying to woo music fans with power pop, or conquer the world with shlock. He went with the shlock.

The result was the strings-drenched “All by Myself” from his debut solo LP, 1975’s Eric Carmen. An exercise in mock-classical piano and maudlin self-pity, “All by Myself” marked a radical departure from the Raspberries’ oversized Beatles and Beach Boys-influenced sound. It become the official anthem for lonely teen bedroom weepers everywhere, and I’m ashamed to admit I was one of them.

Eric Carmen is the vexingly uneven work of a man flailing around. Carmen expands his range of influences, mostly in the wrong direction. Why else cover the done to-death “On Broadway,” or take things one step further with the show tune in search of a show that is “Great Expectations”? Eric Carmen is the record of a disheartened artist; if the world’s greatest power pop anthem “Go All the Way” failed to put him on the cover of Rolling Stone, desperate measures were in order.

But Eric Carmen has is share of small pleasures, thanks to Carmen’s uncanny ability to shuffle through the used record bins in search of additions to his list of musical inspirations. Shameless apery, I suppose you could call it. But that’s half the fun–Carmen’s skill has always lay in mimicry and his specialty is the homage.

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