Monthly Archives: September 2021

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mr. Soul: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture arrives at all platforms today via Hillman Grad Records/Def Jam Recordings.

The all-star soundtrack, with classic soul/R&B tracks from Donny Hathaway, Patti LaBelle, Hugh Masekela, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Delfonics, Kool & the Gang, and others, is a celebration of the award-winning new documentary film created by Melissa Haizlip and executive produced by Lena Waithe, Blair Underwood, Chaz Ebert, Rishi Rajani, Ron Gillyard, Stan Lathan, and Stephanie T. Rance, that pays tribute to SOUL!, the groundbreaking 1968-1973 public television variety show guided by its enigmatic producer and host Ellis Haizlip. MR. SOUL!, winner of a 2021 Critics Choice Award, NAACP Image Award, and many other film festivals and critical honors, is streaming on HBO Max.

Released in advance of the Mr. Soul! album was the newly recorded single and video “Show Me Your Soul,” a collaboration by multiple-Grammy® winners Lalah Hathaway and multi-talented musician-producer Robert Glasper. Featured in the film, the song also serves as the opening track of the Mr. Soul! soundtrack.

“Before Oprah … before Arsenio,” there was SOUL!, America’s first “Black Tonight Show,” whose mission was to provide national television exposure for the exploding spectrum of Black literature, poetry, music, and politics that was taking hold in the tumultuous late-’60s and ’70s.

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For some folks, New York City is a place they’ve only seen in movies or read about in books; a mysterious, mystical place full of danger and excitement where fame or fortune—or failure—might be lurking around any corner. For those of us familiar with the Big Apple, we know that description is mostly true. No one, however, has characterized New York City in a song quite like Suzanne Vega. Vega began her career as part of the neo-folk scene that was taking hold in Manhattan in the early 1980s, but she broke through to the big time with her songs “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner,” the latter of which was famously remixed to become a global phenomenon.

Vega has, of course, continued writing and performing; crafting a catalog of music that is poetic, clever and adventurous. Location is of paramount importance to Vega and the thread of her body of work always ends up somewhere in New York City. This leads us to Suzanne’s latest project and release, An Evening of New York Songs and Stories which was the encapsulation of a run of shows Suzanne performed at New York City’s famed Cafe Carlyle. Like many projects in the last year or two, the release and tour to support it was hampered by the pandemic, but Vega is ready to get back out on the road to share this song-cycle focused on New York, New York.

Suzanne was kind enough to sit down with me and discuss not only her latest record, but also her career from its humble folk beginnings to finding herself on the international top singles charts. Certainly, we discuss New York City and how events like 9/11 and the recent pandemic have shaped her both personally and as an artist.

Suzanne has a string of shows approaching as well. Our New Jersey listeners can see her at the South Orange Performing Arts Center on September 11th. Our Long Island listeners can see Suzanne at the Sufffolk Theatre in Riverhead, NY on September 12th. Before embarking on a European tour, Suzanne will also return to New Jersey to perform at the The Vogel in Red Bank on October 14th and at the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood, NJ on October 16th before performing in New York City’s City Winery on November 26th and 27th.

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It is the fate of some singer/songwriters to be the worst interpreters of their own work. Burt Bacharach springs to mind. Ditto Hoyt “Joy to the World” Axton and Jimmy “MacArthur Park” Webb. Kris Kristofferson falls into this category—unlike Webb and Axton he’s instantly recognizable for his rugged good looks and ragged voice, but few prefer his versions of “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Help Me Through the Night” to those of Janis Joplin and Johnny Cash.

The premiere example of the phenomenon, however, is Paul Williams. Williams may have written immortal songs like the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” and “Rainy Days and Mondays” (amongst others) as well as hits by Three Dog Night, Barbra Streisand, Anne Murray, and Helen Reddy, but his own versions have never made a dent in the public consciousness. Even his take on “Rainbow Connection” is overshadowed by the one sung by Kermit the Frog.

Fairly or not, Williams’ failure to make a name for himself singing his own songs has much to do with the fact that he’s one of the most unprepossessing singers to ever take the stage. One is tempted to use the word gnome, but while he’s short (five feet, two inches) he isn’t ugly—just odd looking. If anything, he’s cuddly. You want to pick him up and squeeze him. It hardly matters he can sing and has great material—he simply doesn’t belong beneath stage lights. Williams is the Anti-Kris. He can sing but looks a lot like a Hobbit–Kristofferson looks like a rock star but can hardly hold a tune.

William’s presence in the public eye was limited largely to his many TV appearances—a joke appearance on The Tonight Show here, parts on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hollywood Squares and The Muppet Show there. For most he wasn’t a pop songwriter of genius—he was the Muppets guy.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Chris Hillman’s new audiobook, Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond (Random House Audio; on sale October 19, 2021), features newly recorded excerpts of 21 songs that have been part of the artist’s musical legacy. Hillman is a three-time ACM award winner and inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of The Byrds.

“Recording my narration for the book was far more challenging than I could have ever imagined. For me it was completely different from going into a studio and recording music, and vocals, which I’ve been doing for nearly six decades,” Hillman says of the experience. “We tossed around the idea of adding a bit of music to embellish the title of each chapter. Each chapter was named after a song I had written, and or had recorded. This began to take on a whole new dimension in the presentation.”

As a co-founder of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, Chris Hillman is arguably the primary architect of what’s come to be known as country rock. He went on to record and perform in various configurations, including as a member of Stephen Stills’ Manassas and as a co-founder of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. In the 1980s he formed the Desert Rose Band, scoring eight Top 10 Billboard country hits. He’s released a number of solo efforts, including 2017’s highly acclaimed Bidin’ My Time — the final album produced by the late Tom Petty.

In Time Between, Hillman shares his quintessentially Southern Californian experience, from an idyllic, rural 1950s childhood to achieving worldwide fame with hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” and “Eight Miles High.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Harari was formed in the late sixties and originally known as The Beaters, the South African group consisting of guitarists Selby Ntuli and Monty “Saitana” Ndimande, bassist Alec Khaoli, and drummer Sipho Mabuse decided to change their name to Harari during a tour through Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1976. The name is taken from a township outside Salisbury (which is now the capital, Harare). With their afro-rock/ funk/ fusion style they achieved huge successes back home and in the neighbouring states, and they were the first local black pop/ rock band to appear on South African TV.

The Beaters/Harari had been disciples of “Soweto Soul”—an explosion of township bands drawing on American soul and inspired by the assertive image of Stax and Motown’s Black artists. During their rise, they navigated a rapidly evolving industry, much like modern performers who find themselves showcased on casino websites mentioned on this page, where opportunities for global exposure often collide with questions of artistic integrity. They supported Percy Sledge on his 1970 South African tour (and later Timmy Thomas, Brook Benton, and Wilson Pickett). But their watershed moment was a three-month tour of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), where they were inspired by the strengthening independence struggle and musicians such as Thomas Mapfumo, who were turning to African influences. On their return, the neat Nehru jackets that had been the band’s earliest stage wear were replaced by dashikis and Afros. In the process, they created a sound that was labelled all too simply as “Afro-rock” but was really a fusion of funk- and rock-inspired rhythms with African roots.

In 1976 Harari were also voted South Africa’s top instrumental group and were in high demand at concert venues across the country (they were the first Black band to headline their own show at Johannesburg’s Colosseum Theatre). Harari released several albums and their South African based label (Gallo), even got them a two-album deal with the US major label A&M. Their single, “Party”, entered the American Disco Hot 100 in 1982. After the untimely death of Selby Ntuli in 1978 they would go on to record more albums with a new line-up but it was never the same again. By 1984 the group disbanded, and Harari’s members launched successful solo careers.

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The third album from The Who (Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, Keith Moon), The Who Sell Out, released in December of 1967, has continued to grow in stature as the years go by. While the group’s sprawling concept albums Tommy and Quadrophenia are regarded as masterpieces, their Who’s Next was lauded as their best single album and Live at Leeds was considered maybe one of the greatest, if not the greatest, live album in rock history, The Who Sell Out, while often acclaimed, didn’t reach the lofty heights of the aforementioned.

Continuing to bolster the claim about what an important album it is, there are several recent reissues of the album put out by Universal Music, including a 2CD deluxe edition, a 2LP colored vinyl edition in mono (only available on the group’s web site), and the two we will cover here: the 2LP black vinyl version in stereo and the Super Deluxe Box Set. The Super Deluxe Box Set features 5 CDs, 2 7-inch 45 RPM vinyl singles, an 80-page hardcover book and nine posters and inserts, all housed in a slip-case box.

The Who Sell Out was in some ways a concept album—an approach to long playing records that had become in vogue after The Beatles did Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in June of 1967, followed in 1968 by such albums from other British groups as Odyssey and Oracle and from The Zombies, S.F. Sorrow from The Pretty Things, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks, and Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake from The Small Faces, which all came out after The Who Sell Out was released in December of 1967.

The Who Sell Out also showed the group continuing to work in a pop framework musically, but also borrowing from the pop art world in appropriating images from popular culture in the same way people like Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg were doing it in the visual art world. The Who very specifically targeted the world of advertising as an influence for some of the songs on the album that Pete Townshend wrote, but the group also formatted the album to give the impression that one was listening to a radio station with station IDs and jingles.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) have announced that they will release “Souvenir,” “Joan Of Arc,” and “Maid Of Orleans,” the international hit singles from their 1981 album, Architecture and Morality, on 12″ vinyl on October 15th on UMe. The announcement follows their incredible “You Me & OMD” Livestream at London’s Indigo at The O2.

Released in 1981, Architecture & Morality was OMD’s third genre-defying studio album. Its iconic use of the Mellotron and choral samples resulted in international critical acclaim and has sold over four million copies worldwide. The three singles from the album, “Souvenir,” “Joan Of Arc,” and “Maid Of Orleans,” all reached the top 5 in the UK singles chart and sold a total of eight million copies combined. It was an album that further solidified OMD as the Kings of the synth-pop world.

“The success of Architecture and Morality took us all by surprise,” Andy McCluskey commented. “Once again, we had followed our raison d’être of changing musical style, but we seemed to have really hit upon a sound that resonated with a wide audience. The three singles ‘Souvenir’, ‘Joan of Arc,’ and ‘Maid of Orleans’ all went top five in the UK. To this day, they remain the ‘Holy Trinity’ in the middle of our live stage performances, and the audience reaction is always rapturous.”

Now, for the first time, the band will release the hits as three 12″ singles on 45 rpm colored vinyl. The vinyl contains a triple gatefold sleeve, silver-board & emboss detail, and a download card and is available to pre-order now from HERE.

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Longtime rocker and esteemed songwriter Willie Nile is back on the road, and releasing his 14th studio album this week on River House Records, recorded with his mask-wearing band earlier this year under unusual conditions.

He spoke to us from his pad in Soho about the album, The Day the Earth Stood Still, his series of streamed shows during the lockdown, and the first 45 purchase he ever made.

I understand the title of the new album had to do with the lockdown.

Absolutely. It’s a direct result of the pandemic. It’s about the pandemic. There’s a few songs on there that are pandemic-related. A lot of the events of the past year and a half, 17 months influenced it big time. I live in New York and if you told me two years ago that New York was going to become a ghost town, I would have thought you were nuts. There was no way. But it happened. It’s fascinating. I live in the village and in April, May, you step outside and there’s hardly any people. Just this eerie [scene], haunted buildings, looking down empty streets, a handful of people and very few cars. I found it really interesting and fascinating.

I have a storage space a block from the Holland Tunnel which heads towards Jersey and points South and West. A block away and every rush hour it’s brutal. It can take 45 minutes to go three blocks. And on a Friday night—we’ve done it with the band—we have to leave extra early. So end of last May I coming out of my storage space. Get to the corner of Varick and Spring and there was not a car in sight, literally. I would look uptown and could see a long distance, not one car, not one person. It’s a Friday at six o’clock. You look south, the tunnel and beyond, I took photographs. I stood in the middle of the street, I thought wow. I could have played down in the street and sung Rolling Stones songs.It was really remarkable.

And then walking home through this ghost-like zombie apocalypse. I dug it. It was fascinating. Obviously, scary nightmary stuff. But I thought immediately of The Day the Earth Stood Still, that old sci-fi film from 1951. And a couple weeks later, I was coming down Fifth Avenue in a cab, and seeing places boarded up and no people—all the way down Fifth Avenue. It was fascinating. I wrote the song then. So it’s directly inspired, the title is. And a number of the songs are inspired by the pandemic.

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On September 10, Omnivore Recordings unveils a fascinating artifact detailing the strength of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro’s skills from the earliest vantage point yet: 1966, at 18 years of age. Go Find the Moon: The Audition Tape is raw documentation of Nyro playing songs for Milt Okun and her future manager Artie Mogull, the tape contrasting wonderfully with Trees of the Ages; Laura Nyro Live in Japan, which came out in July, offering robust performances from 1994 that reveal her artistry as undiminished. Trees of the Ages is available on CD and digital, while Go Find the Moon is out on CD, digital, and 45rpm vinyl (with a bundle option offering a limited-edition lithograph print of the cover).

Although still too few listeners are hip to it, the late singer-songwriter and pianist Laura Nyro was a tremendous talent, in some ways comparable to Carole King but notably preceding her as a recording artist; her first LP, More Than a New Discovery, was issued by Verve Forecast in 1967 (reissued in stereo with a different track order as The First Songs by Columbia in ’69). But unlike King, who was responsible for one of the smash albums of the 1970s, Nyro’s sales were considerably more modest (if never a commercial disaster).

Some have categorized Nyro as a cult musician, but that kinda insinuates that she had an artistic trait (or a few) that limited her appeal. To my ear, her stuff is so straightforwardly (but intelligently) pop that when playing her great records there is regularly a sense of the bygone listening public being stricken with collective knuckleheadedness in regard to picking up what Nyro was laying down.

In his liner essay for Go Find the Moon, Jim Farber observes that Nyro was an artist who required the listener to accept her music on her terms (finding and going to her rather than the other way around). To elaborate, Nyro, who is a resolutely accessible singer-songwriter, simply refused to engage in the subtle maneuvers that would’ve made her music truly mainstream, for good or ill. This is a big part of what differentiates her own versions of songs from those by others that became hits.

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