Monthly Archives: January 2022

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Richard Thompson’s 1976 album of (at the time) career-spanning retrospective unreleased recordings – (Guitar, Vocal) A Collection Of Unreleased and Rare Material 1967-1976 – will be reissued on double 180-gram vinyl March 25th via Island/UMe in celebration of its 45th anniversary.

The album, which features tracks from his time with the Fairport Convention, music recorded with his ex-wife Linda Thompson and as a solo artist, is available to pre-order now. (Guitar, Vocal) A Collection Of Unreleased and Rare Material 1967-1976 was originally released in 1976 after Richard and his wife Linda announced their retirement from the music business. As the album’s title suggests, this is a collection of unreleased recordings made over an eight-year period which spans Richard’s early years recording with the Fairport Convention as well as the time he spent performing and recording as a duo with wife Linda.

Thankfully, this did not transpire to be Richard’s final piece of recorded work, but did become an essential record to fans of Richard’s work giving an alternate perspective on his early career. Following an almost two year hiatus, Richard and Linda returned and released ‘First Light (Richard and Linda Thompson album)’ in 1978 and Richard has remained a prolific songwriter and one of the most respected British folk artists of all time releasing, to date, 22 studio albums and 14 live albums.

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Celebrating Charlie Musselwhite on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Though their number continues to gradually dwindle, a few severe sticklers do persist in maintaining that the blues up and died when its essence got plugged into an amplifier. This hard-line stance is an easy one to shrug off, but there is also larger numbers of folks subscribing to the notion that the 1960s initiated the electric blues’ long slow decline. A quick fix for this faulty line of thinking is to cozy up to a copy of Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite’s South Side Band.

By 1967, deep Chicago blues was in a dual position of having established an inextricable connection to the popular sounds of the day (student Stones sitting at the feet of teacher Howlin’ Wolf on Shindig, assorted garage rock covers of “Baby Please Don’t Go,” the growing popularity of Eric Clapton) while simultaneously being in commercial remission, with the blues’ core audience ditching the stuff in droves and heading for the climes of increased sophistication. At least that’s what some music history books tell us.

To clarify a bit, the Chicago blues continued to thrive as live club music, and where a national company like Chess was scrambling to contemporize their marquee stars Wolf and Muddy Waters for the swelling consumer market of the rock generation, there were also far more humble and sensible labels like Chicago’s own Delmark and the wide-ranging folk-oriented imprint Vanguard, with both stepping up to promote the undying oomph of unadulterated Windy City sounds.

Still a few years away was Alligator Records’ unleashing of the amazing Hound Dog Taylor, but in 1967 (some reports insist 1966) Vanguard was wise enough to wax up Stand Back! It serves as the long-playing debut from Memphis’ Charlie Musselwhite and also as one of the most fully formed first efforts of its decade; along the way the label roped in blues scholar Sam Charters as producer, commissioned liner notes from the estimable Pete Welding, and then made sure to misspell Musselwhite’s first name on the cover. And it’s a bummer that far too few current listeners know the guy by either variation.

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Jacob Plasse is the producer of—and a musician in—the critically acclaimed Cuban big band, Orquesta Akokán and he is my guest on this episode.

Jacob and the group found great success with their first self-titled, Grammy nominated album and they have returned with another electrifying set of tunes highlighting and elevating their love of Cuban music, specifically within the mambo genre. The new LP is titled, 16 Rayos.

Jacob tells us about the dedicated cast of characters involved in this project and he takes us on a deeper dive into what mambo really is. We also discuss how Plasse captured the authentic mambo sound that was so prevalent in pre-revolution Cuba and what it was like recording this album on location in the country’s famed and state-run, Egrem Studios.

It’s curious that in our day and age, a time when we have immediate access to so much culture, that most of us stay focused on the same old familiar performers and genres. When was the last time you really challenged yourself to listen to something out of your comfort zone, perhaps something in another language? Exercises like this are important for any music lover, so if you’re due for such a foray, then Orquesta Akokán might be just what the doctor ordered. And if that’s what your doctor ordered, then you’ve also got a pretty cool doctor.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

The finest band to ever escape Planet Earth on a mammoth guitar-shaped spaceship topped with a snow globe of the Boston skyline, Boston took the solar system by storm with their eponymous 1976 debut, which boasted more hits than Joe DiMaggio. With songwriter, guitarist and MIT-trained musical inventor Tom Scholz at the helm, Boston was the epitome of corporate rock—buffed to a fine sheen, overblown, but catchy as a Red Sox center fielder.

Two long years passed before Boston released Don’t Look Back, amidst legal squabbles with Epic Records and Scholz’s legendary perfectionism. One gets the sense that, had he had his way, Don’t Look Back wouldn’t have seen the light of day until 2078. Anything less than one hundred years, in Tom’s view, and you were listening to a demo. As it was, the follow-up to Don’t Look Back, Third Stage, wouldn’t see the light of day until 1986, and something tells me the LP had to be pried from his fingers as he screamed, “There’s a note on track three I’ve been working on for two years and still can’t get right!”

But Scholz’s perfectionism cost the band plenty. Two years were a long time in an era that saw the advent of punk, and by 1978 many of the band’s fans had moved on to newer, edgier sounds. I loved Boston, but come Don’t Look Back I’d forgotten all about them. They may as well have been a fossil in a natural history museum.

And it’s not as if Scholz’s fussiness paid off in a masterpiece. Sure, the title track is as good, or better, than just about every song on Boston, but it failed to distract listeners from the fact that the songs on Don’t Look Back simply aren’t as good as the ones on the band’s debut. But lately I’ve been wondering—is Don’t Look Back as great a disappointment as I’ve always thought? Or rather a top of the line slab of vinyl with zero chance of surpassing the band’s unsurpassable debut?

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In 2007, record stores were told that they were over, relegated to a footnote in the history of modern music.

Instead of reading their own obituary, a bunch of record store owners decided to throw a party with their friends, some of whom happened to be among the greatest musicians and bands around. In the past fifteen years, that party has grown, exponentially and worldwide, becoming the largest single-day music event in the world, and accidentally relaunching the vinyl format, a physical medium that, in 2021, saw its greatest sales in three decades, and challenges streaming services for supremacy with music fans. How did that happen? Who were the people behind it? Why did they succeed beyond all odds?

Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century tells this story in the voices of the artists who love them, the people who founded Record Store Day, and the people who make up a record store: those who run them, those who shop in them and those who make the music they love in them. Written by Larry Jaffee, a New York-based journalist, editor, and teacher at Mercy College and the New York Institute of Technology, and Conference Director for the Making Vinyl series of conferences.

Hardbound and trade paperback editions are available at indie record stores, bookstores and other booksellers starting April 12, and a limited edition Think Indie x RSD + Vinyl edition, a hardback book packaged with an album of tracks recorded at record stores around the US (featuring Paul McCartney, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Billie Eilish, Brandi Carlile, Imagine Dragons, Jason Isbell + the 400 Unit, Justin Townes Earle, Regina Spektor, Frightened Rabbit, Mudhoney, and Jose Gonzalez) comes to record stores on April 23.

Sure, there’s Detroit’s Motown, Los Angeles’ famed music scene, and we know all about the great records that were recorded and produced in New York City. However, during a certain, special period of time in the 1970s, Philadelphia reigned supreme. Philadelphia International Records was founded in 1971 by songwriting and production team Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff and their partner, Thom Bell. During their heyday, the label produced 170 gold and platinum records, many of which still remain radio mainstays.

Philadelphia International had its signature sound: slick and professional, full of angelic voices, lush strings and solid bass which was recorded at Philly’s famed Sigma Sound Studios. Two of the men who were behind the mixing board during many of these sessions were Arthur Stoppe and Jim Gallagher. They both join me for this episode to discuss two beautiful box sets recently released by United Soul and Philadelphia International Records. The first is The Sound of Philadelphia, Volume 1: Get on Board the Soul Train and the second is The Sound of Philadelphia Volume 2: Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Arthur and Jim let us in on some secrets related to these historic records, how they really feel about analog and digital recordings, and what was in the water in Philadelphia during the 1970s where all of this musical magic was allowed to happen. I don’t know if you’re hungry, but this episode might be served up best with your neighborhood’s finest cheesesteak; go ahead and order, just hit pause first. We’ll wait here.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

Growing up I listened to the sort of mainstream rock that can be summed up in one word: Boston. The New York Dolls, the Velvet Underground, the Ramones—never heard of them. Iggy and the Stooges—you’ve got to be kidding. But Boston? I smoked my very first joint listening to “More Than a Feeling.” In fact it’s safe to say I smoked my first ten joints to “More Than a Feeling.” I still catch a whiff of low-grade reefer when I hear the song.

It’s for this reason that Fever Dog hit me where I live. The Palm Desert, California trio sound like they spent their formative years listening to the records I loved when I was fifteen. Any band whose songs evoke the sounds of Styx, the Sweet, T. Rex, and Gary “Dream Weaver” Wright is my kind of band. Fire a bullet in their direction and I will throw myself in front of that bullet. Gladly.

Haters of 2021’s Alpha Waves will no doubt argue that populist MOR rock is no longer popular, but a thing of rock’s Pleistocene past. They will then point out–correctly–that scientists recently discovered its tusks beneath 12 feet of permafrost in the Russian Far East. But I knew elitist punks like this growing up. They’d have sooner gnawed their own ears off than be caught listening to Kansas’ Leftoverture.

Yet, those of us who thought the synthesizer intro to Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” was the spaciest thing to come along since Atom Heart Mother. Except we didn’t know Atom Heart Mother existed. Our knowledge of Pink Floyd extended to Dark Side of the Moon, who just happen to be another one of Fever Dog’s influences.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “When I first heard Indian music, I just couldn’t really believe that it was so great, and the more I heard of it, the more I liked it. It just got bigger and bigger, like a snowball.” —George Harrison

Post Summer of Love, in 1968 the world’s most popular rock and roll band, The Beatles had achieved mass fame and fortune yet were searching for deeper meaning in their lives. Under the spiritual guidance of Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles took a trip to Rishikesh, India to study transcendental meditation and set out on a path of deep enlightenment that would change the world.

Slated for release on February 15 via BritBox in North America, the streaming service from BBC Studios and ITV, the award-winning feature documentary, The Beatles And India (Silva Screen Productions, Renoir Pictures) examines how Indian music and culture shaped the music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo and in turn, explores how The Beatles served as ambassadors of this pioneering World music sound and cultural movement.

Drawing together an expansive archive of footage including contemporaneous locale shooting in India, recordings, photographs, and compelling first-hand interviews, The Beatles And India exhaustively documents this East meets West touchstone in pop culture history. Purloining inspiration from Ajoy Bose’s book Across The Universe – The Beatles In India, the documentary is produced by British Indian music entrepreneur Reynold D’Silva and directed by Bose (his directorial debut) and cultural researcher Pete Compton. The Beatles And India has been awarded Best Film Audience Choice and Best Music at the 2021 UK Asian Film Festival “Tongues On Fire.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | New four disc box set newly remixed by David Thomas. Includes Why I Luv Women, Long Live Père Ubu!, Lady From Shanghai, and Carnival Of Souls. Fans can purchase an early copy of the box set at the Canterbury Tales live show 11th February ft. David Thomas & Two Pale Boys, Bob Holman, and Rats on Rafts.

Rewriting the history of music, Pere Ubu continue to confound convention and shift personnel. Nuke The Whales traces the innovative process between 2006 and 2014; turning possible pulp fiction into art, providing a musical adaptation of the 1896 play that gave them their name, scoring the 1962 film Carnival Of Souls and re-inventing the very concept of recording music on Lady Of Shanghai. Nuke The Whales is a nod of respect to a couple in Cleveland who would daub such messages over the big news stations’ advertising boards.

All four albums have been remixed by David Thomas in 2021; the renamed Why I LUV Women originally released on Glitterhouse in 2006 bore the line, “This is an irony-free recording,” it gains its first vinyl release. David Thomas says “I did an album of love songs. I studied the question of why I love women and I was concerned of people not accessing the deeper level on the songs, so I threw in the John Thompson-esque title to throw people off—or on to—the scent. It ended up in garbage bins in radio stations despite a full explanatory press release. You need me to spell it out? I spell it out for you on this release.”

Long Live Père Ubu! was originally released on Cooking Vinyl in 2009, and Lady From Shanghai, their Fire debut for Fire in 2013 and its follow up Carnival Of Souls released the following year, complete the set.

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