Monthly Archives: February 2023

Think about the “what if” scenarios in your life. Not really regrets. Not things you wished had gone differently, but situations in which—because of circumstances beyond your control—you’ll never truly know what could have been or where the road might have led. However, every so often, we get lucky. We get the opportunity to remove the detour from the pathway and we are offered a second chance at taking the road that we didn’t take.

Nearly 30 years ago, way back in the mid-90s, Vanessa Downing was in a Pennsylvania based rock and roll band called Samuel. They were good, they played a lot of gigs, and then things started to get serious. The band was courted by A&R reps and were slated to record their debut with indie/punk engineer and musician Bob Weston (Mission of Burma, Volcano Suns, Shellac). However, as you’ll learn in this interview, decisions were made and the band’s momentum was halted.

While they released a few 7-inches and a EP during their day, recently, the thought was floated among the band members who had continued to keep in touch. What if we revisited some of those old songs? What if we added a few new ones? What if we engaged the flux capacitor and recorded the album that we would have recorded back then?

So, here they are—slightly rebranded as Samuel S.C. with a new album called, High Places (ORG/Art Monk Construction). Vanessa joins me on this episode to explain the rise—and fall—and rise again—of the band and point out some of the sights along the road not taken.

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.

You love a band, you lose touch with said band or they get lost in the never-ending parade of new bands, and then you happen upon them again and they remind you why you loved them in the first place. Such is the case, for me, with Britpop’s Cornershop, who once upon a time stood high atop the pops thanks to the 1997 smash hit “Brimful of Asha” and the albums Woman’s Gotta Have It (1995) and When I Was Born for the 7th Time (1997).

But they reinserted themselves back into my consciousness with 2020’s England Is a Dream, which comes very close to matching anything they’ve ever done. Cornershop has always stood apart due to British Asian band co-founder/singer-songwriter Tjinder Singh, who takes defiant pride in his Indian heritage in the face of being called a wog on public streets. Indeed, he’s flipped the script by using that “wog” in more than one song title (e.g., “First Wog on the Moon”). And Indian music has informed his work; one of the finest cuts from Woman’s Gotta Have It is “6am Jullandar Shere,” which he sings in Punjabi. He also sang in Punjabi on Cornershop’s cover of “Norwegian Wood.”

Cornershop’s LPs have always been shambolic affairs—not lo-fi exactly, but hardly slick studio affairs. This has lent the band’s albums an immediacy you won’t find otherwise amongst the bands on the late nineties’ Britpop scene, and such is the case with England Is a Dream. Unlike the band’s old Britpop contemporaries Cornershop would sound as home playing in your living room as they would at Glastonbury. Cornershop’s shoes may not shine, but they make for very pleasant walking.

England Is a Dream opens with the infectious pop garage rocker “St. Marie Under Canon,” a Hammond organ-drenched drum stomper that recalls both The Monkees and Bob Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn”—which Cornershop has covered. If this one doesn’t make you giddy you’re a real git, and it’s followed by “Slingshot,” a lazy and altogether pleasant number that fronts the flute and Singh’s distorted vocals, with the organ and electric guitar wandering in later to add additional color.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Tenor saxophonist Ben Webster (born Kansas City, 1909) needs little introduction, Webster is regarded as one of the three foremost swing era tenor saxophonists—the two others being Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. His ballad playing and sound inspired such later fellow saxophonists as Archie Shepp, Sonny Rollins, and John Coltrane. Webster became famous for his unique sound, quick tempos, his solos that contained great virile rhythmic momentum, a rasping timbre and an almost brutal aggressiveness filled with growl, while his ballad playing was breathy, tender and sensual.

The list of his collaborations is long, Ben Webster worked, recorded and played with legends from the likes of Art Tatum, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Roy Eldridge and Dexter Gordon—but a dream came true when he was offered a permanent job in Duke Ellington’s orchestra where his personal style matured. Webster stayed with Ellington until 1943, after which he formed his own groups and played with other small ensembles. From 1952 on he spent his time between Los Angeles and New York playing, freelancing and recording with a variety of soloists, among them high-profile singers like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, and Frank Sinatra.

Despite excellent reviews of his albums, it was difficult for Webster to find steady work in the US during the early 1960’s, and when in 1964 he got offered to play for a month in London he accepted and sailed to England. Webster never returned to the United States. In Europe he found plenty of work, playing residences in Scandinavia, settled in Amsterdam (1966-69) and then in Copenhagen (where he even has a street named after him). He toured frequently, playing in clubs and at big festivals with local bands or with visiting American musicians.

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Founded by Gabriel Roth a.k.a. Bosco Mann, Penrose Records is a subsidiary of the Daptone label that digs into the fertile Southern California souldies scene and with a focus on 45s. On February 24 Penrose is adding five more to their discography, one each by Jonny Benavidez, Los Yesterdays, The Altons, Vicky Tafoya, and Thee Sacred Souls, all covered below.

The SoCal souldies experience is a Chicano scene based in a deep love of pre-Beatles soul, R&B, R&R, and doo wop, styles that sound positively exquisite blasting from the speakers of a souped-up low rider sedan. Souldies is an unabashedly throwback and utterly analogue undertaking that’s a perfect fit for a Gabriel Roth-funded label, and one distinctive from Daptone proper.

Proudly throwback but with subtleties and urgency that elevates the music far beyond the limitations of a mere time capsule, these Penrose 45s broadens an already bountiful cotemporary classic soul scene as documented not just on Daptone but on such labels as Big Crown of Brooklyn, Colemine of Loveland, OH, and Timmion of Helsinki, Finland.

It’s Timmion in fact that co-releases the Jonny Benavidez 45 under consideration here, where the San Diego native and NYC-based singer is paired with Cold Diamond & Mink, the Timmion house band. A-side “Someday” sets the vocal group template, Benavidez smooth but sturdy in the lead as the backing hits all the right spots. Additionally, the guitar is clean and sharp, the drumming crisp, and the bass large but limber. But it’s the trumpet that puts it over the top, with the horns crucial to flipside “Slow Down Girl,” where the tempo picks up and the thrust exudes an early ’70s feel, with a hint of Philly in the mix.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Oriental Beat by Hanoi Rocks gets the redux treatment, officially mixed and revived from the original sessions, and released on March 17th on deluxe vinyl, CD, and digital formats. Dubbed the “re(al)mix,” this 40th anniversary edition was mixed by Petri Majuri at E-Studios in Finland in collaboration with the band. Vocalist Michael Monroe calls this release “the longest and slowest album recording project ever,” stating that “40 years in the making, it’s not just a remix, but the REAL MIX supervised and approved by Hanoi Rocks.”

Recorded in London, UK in 1981, for 200 pounds a day, Oriental Beat was made during the height of the British punk and New Wave movement, when the band was hanging out with everyone from Phil Lynott to the Damned. Hanoi Rocks drummer Gyp Casino says of Oriental Beat, “Back in the days we gave heart, soul and a bit of pain to make this record something else” but the sound of the album, originally released in 1982, did not match their efforts at the time. Bassist Sami Yaffa called it “the worst sounding album of our career” and Michael Monroe said that “the producer of the album didn’t have a clue what the band was about, and his mix of the album was horribly wrong.”

Oriental Beat’s original engineer Peter Wooliscroft was not a rock producer, and according to Hanoi Rocks’ manager Richard Bishop he “tried to mix the album to sound like Spandau Ballet.” Released before the band could remix or rerecord it as the label had run out of money and the master tapes had gone missing, the band has always considered the original mix of Oriental Beat to be a “disaster.” With the tapes mysteriously showing up in the Universal vault recently, the band was finally able to mix and resequence the album the way they wanted it to sound.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Jazz Detective, the label founded in 2022 by GRAMMY-nominated archival producer Zev Feldman, will release Blue Room: The 1979 VARA Studio Sessions in Holland, a superlative, previously unreleased set of studio performances recorded in Holland by legendary trumpeter Chet Baker, as a limited two-LP set on Record Store Day April 22. The package will be issued as a two-CD set and digital download on April 28.

The collection—co-produced by Feldman and Frank Jochemsen and released in partnership with Elemental Music—comprises a pair of brilliantly played dates cut for Dutch radio KRO-NCRV in Hilversum, the Netherlands, by producers Edwin Rutten and the late Lex Lammen in 1979: an April 10 session with pianist Phil Markowitz, bassist Jean-Louis Rassinfosse, and drummer Charles Rice, and a November 9 session with pianist Frans Elsen, bassist Victor Kaihatu, and drummer Eric Ineke. Both occasions found Baker playing (and, on three tracks, singing) in exceptional form.

Blue Room’s extensive booklet includes an overview by Dutch journalist Jeroen de Valk; essays by Feldman, Jochemsen and Rutten; interviews with sidemen Markowitz, Rassinfosse, and Ineke; and tributes from trumpeters Randy Brecker and Enrico Rava and pianist Enrico Pieranunzi. The collection is illustrated with photos by Veryl Oakland, Jean-Pierre Leloir, Christian Rose and others. The package was mastered for vinyl by the great engineer Bernie Grundman and Dutch engineer Marc Broer.

The album succeeds Jazz Detective’s inaugural offerings, two volumes of widely-praised live performances by pianist Ahmad Jamal, issued as Emerald City Nights on Record Store Day’s Black Friday last year. Feldman—who produced the Chet Baker Trio’s Live in Paris for Elemental Music last year for label partners/executive producers Jordi Soley and Carlos Agustin Calembert—previously joined with Jochemsen to explore the Dutch archives for Bill Evans’ Behind the Dikes (Elemental Music, 2021) and Another Time: The Hilversum Concert (Resonance Records, 2017) and Sonny Rollins’ Rollins in Holland (Resonance Records, 2020).

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This is a most welcome reissue of an album that may not rank as one of the biggest or most important albums of the 1970s, but one worthy of some serious re-evaluation.

Ten Years After (brothers Alvin Lee and Ric Lee, Leo Lyons, and Chick Churchill) was one of the many groups or artists to first emerge out of the 1960s British blues and R&B boom, to become part of the fabric of British rock that dominated in the mid-to-late 1960s and most of the 1970s. Hailing from Nottingham, the group’s heavy blues music quickly morphed into a more psychedelic sound on its self-titled debut album in 1967 and on its next two albums, Stonedhenge and Ssssh, both released in 1969.

1969 was a key year for Ten Years After, as the group’s incendiary performance at Woodstock, highlighted by “I’m Going Home” featured in the Woodstock film, put it on the musical map. Through 1970s Cricklewood Green and Watt, the band didn’t completely shake off its heavy blues rock and psychedelic sound, but the former in particular showed the group to be capable of making a great album.

With A Space in Time, released in 1971, the group went beyond the promise of Cricklewood Green and made what is perhaps its best album. The album included the track “I’d Love to Change the World” that perfectly captured the times, lyrically and musically. The album was one of the group’s most diverse and showed lead guitarist Alvin Lee just as adept at acoustic guitar work as he was as a blazing hot electric player. There are even a few prog and orchestral touches giving the album a little more of the feel that the title suggests.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | UMe proudly announces the release of Paul McCartney and Wings’ Red Rose Speedway as a limited edition half-speed mastered vinyl LP. The 50th Anniversary pressing will be available from April 22 for Record Store Day 2023, days before the actual anniversary of the album’s original April 30, 1973 release date.

The first Paul McCartney and Wings album to top the US album chart, Red Rose Speedway kicked off a run of #1 albums that included Band On The Run, Venus And Mars, At The Speed Of Sound, and Wings Over America. The album’s sole single, “My Love,” was received with similar warmth, becoming Wings’ first #1 single in the US, as well as a staple of Wings and Paul shows.

Red Rose Speedway has steadily grown in stature amongst fans, critics, and fellow musicians since its April 1973 release. Album opener “Big Barn Bed” has been cited as one of Paul’s greatest underrated tracks by the likes of Guitar World and Ultimate Classic Rock, while “My Love” has spawned a staggering array of cover versions by artists including Tony Bennett, Brenda Lee, Nancy Wilson, Cass Elliot, Johnny Gill, Cher and many more.

More recently, “Little Lamb Dragonfly” was singled out in 2022 by USA Today as “enchanting,” and by Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott in Stereogum’s 80 Artists Pick Their Favorite Paul McCartney Song… roundup: “You know a song has made an impression if you can rewind to a place and a smell and the weather and you get these phantom images of where you think he played the song. For an acoustic type of song, it has everything.“

Born in Walsrode, Germany and currently based in Brooklyn, New York, the composer-musician-producer-analog synthesizer specialist Faten Kanaan is releasing her fifth album Afterpoem on February 24. It’s her second for Fire Records, and it extends the broad and artfully unpredictable nature of her work to highly satisfying ends.

Lots of folks who utilize analog synthesizers as their instrumental foundation flourish in one or two stylistic modes, and sometimes that’s exactly what makes their music worthwhile. However, Faten Kanaan’s output is harder to pin down as her influences span from early music and baroque forms to modern minimalism to the drifting textures associated with ambient.

A lack of vocals solidifies Kanaan as a classically minded composer rather than a pop songwriter practicing her craft in the sphere of electronics, and her general avoidance of samplers and embracing of cyclical motifs increases the difficulty of placing her work in the contemporary landscape, although she’s clearly unwilling to indulge in a throwback sensibility.

Kanaan’s work can also be appealingly fragmentary, as is the case with Afterpoem’s two-minute opener “Fin août, début septembre,” which conjures a swirling atmosphere that’s a bit like wandering around a deserted carnival while in the grips of a hallucinogenic drug. Cool. Then “Trenchcoat,” nearly as succinct, takes a sweet left turn down an alley betwixt a cathedral (organs) and a chamber (some harpsichord-like sounds), and that’s even cooler.

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