Category Archives: The TVD Storefront

Remembering Jon Hassell in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

Originally released in 1981 on Editions EG, Jon Hassell’s Dream Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume Two was a groundbreaker in its merger of ambient, experimental, and global sounds, but as the decades unfurled it came to be inexplicably overlooked, in part due to a lack of reissues since getting placed on compact disc in the late-’80s. Well, that scenario has changed, as it’s been given a LP and CD release courtesy of Glitterbeat Records’ new sub-label Tak:Til; that its often surreal yet meticulously crafted rewards are back in the bins is a fine circumstance indeed.

Regarding Jon Hassell’s early catalog, 1980’s Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics is much better known, even before it was reissued by Glitterbeat in 2014, largely because it has Brain Eno’s name on the cover. Eno plays on and mixed Vol. Two as well, but co-billing eludes him, specifically due to Hassell’s distress over his partner running with the Fourth World musical ball and spiking it directly into David Byrne’s backyard.

Hassell apparently viewed Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (’80) and the Eno/ Byrne collab My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (’81) as part of “a full-scale appropriation.” This may sound like an atmosphere of hostility, but Hassell actually contributed to Remain in Light, and as said, ol’ Bri wasn’t locked out the studio for Vol. 2; in retrospect, Hassell has said he “probably under-credited him.”

If a bit harsh at the time, Hassell’s caution over the usurping-weakening of the Fourth World, a concept expanded upon by Hassell as “a viewpoint out of which evolves guidelines for finding balances between accumulated knowledge and the conditions created by new technologies,” wasn’t exactly unjustified, as a stated goal was to imagine a musical landscape where assorted global musics, with Hassell citing Javanese, Pygmy, and Aboriginal forms as examples, had been as influential as the Euro-classical tradition.

Read More »

When two artists, a label manager, and a PhD in chemical engineering (who is also one of the artists) start a vinyl pressing plant in Pittsburgh and call it Hellbender, it’s pretty cool.

On this episode of Radar I sat down with Pittsburgh native Jeff Betten (Misra Records) and musician/ entrepreneur Matt Dowling (SWOLL, bassist of Burial Waves) who recently opened up a new vinyl plant in Pittsburgh, PA. They both have interesting backgrounds in music, business, and science which are uncommon combinations. They are keeping things artist-friendly at Hellbender by pressing smaller quantities of records and engaging the community by hosting events such as live shows, listening parties, film screenings, and more at the plant.

For more information go to hellbendervinyl.com where you find out more about pressing with them and upcoming events.

Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer, and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

Remembering Vivian Stanshall, born on this date in 1943. —Ed.

I am tempted to call The Bonzo Dog Band (or the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, take your pick) the greatest group in the history of rock. And this despite the fact that they only occasionally got around to playing what could be called a rock song. They were too far too busy cracking themselves up with their hilarious, brilliantly surreal, and utterly deranged wit. If Monty Python had turned to music full-time, they might—although I honestly doubt it—have been as funny as The Bonzo Dog Band.

The genre-hopping mobile insane asylum that was The Bonzo Dog Band might throw anything at you: trad jazz, oldies covers, bizarre street interviews with perplexed normals, and parodies, heaps of parodies—of thirties songs, music hall songs, fifties songs, blues songs, hard-rock songs, psychedelic songs—you name it. And they were excellent musicians—when they wanted to be—with a genius for arranging songs. Your average Bonzo tune may sound anarchic, but you can be certain it was put together with an exacting eye for detail, and every detail is in its right place.

There’s really no one to compare The Bonzo Dog Band with except Frank Zappa, and the comparison is a poor one. Zappa’s humor was sneering and juvenile; his Brit counterparts favored an intelligent and good-natured Dadaism. Just check out “The Intro and the Outro,” a parody of a band introduction that grows stranger and stranger as it goes on, with the announcer snazzily saying, “And looking very relaxed on vibes, Adolf Hitler… niiiice” and “Representing the flower people, Quasimodo, on bells.” No yellow snow here.

Formed in London in 1962 as a trad jazz band, The Bonzo Dog Band’s core line-up included the mad and brilliant Vivian “Ginger Geezer” Stanshall on trumpet and lead vocals; the equally demented Neil Innes on piano, guitar, and lead vocals; Rodney “Rhino” Desborough Slater on saxophone; Roger Ruskin Spear on tenor saxophone and assorted mad sound-producing contraptions, including the trouser press and “Theremin leg”; Dennis Cowan on drums and vocals; and the legendary “Legs” Larry Smith—the tap dancer extraordinaire who played one of rock’s few tap solos on Elton John’s “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself”—on drums.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Wewantsounds continues its extensive Meiko Kaji reissue program—in partnership with Teichiku Records and Kaji herself—with the release of Yadokari, her third album from 1973. This marks the first time the album has been reissued on vinyl, featuring its original artwork and newly remastered audio.

Renowned for her iconic 1970s films (Lady Snowblood, the Stray Cat Rock series) and admired by Quentin Tarantino, Meiko Kaji also released a string of outstanding albums on Teichiku, blending Japanese pop with cinematic grooves. Yadokari, is reissued here with its original deluxe gatefold sleeve and OBI plus a two-page insert featuring new liner notes by Hashim Kotaro Bharoocha. As a special bonus, this edition includes a 7″ EP single featuring “Shura No Hana,” famously featured on the Kill Bill soundtrack.

Japanese actress Meiko Kaji, born in Tokyo, has become a worldwide cult icon, partly thanks to Quentin Tarantino, who heavily based his Kill Bill films on the 1973 revenge classic Lady Snowblood, one of Kaji’s most famous roles. Renowned for her performances in the acclaimed Stray Cat Rock and Female Prisoner Scorpion film series, Kaji was one of Japan’s most iconic exploitation film actresses of the early 1970s.

Beyond acting, she was invited by film studios to perform theme songs for many of her films leading to revered music career. Between 1972 and 1974, she recorded five albums for Teichiku, which have since become highly sought after.

Read More »

Remembering Jerry Reed, born on this day in 1937. —Ed.

A guitar picker extraordinaire and redneck comedian whose songs could almost be called funky, the late Jerry “Alabama Wild Man” Reed is one of my favorite country artists. Me, I’d love him if he’d never cut anything but “East Bound and Down” (the theme song of Smokey and the Bandit!), “Amos Moses,” and “The Preacher and the Bear,” a hilarious tale of an unfortunate meeting in the woods between a preacher hunting on the Sabbath and a grizzly bear that ends with the preacher up a tree and praying to his Lord, “I mean/Look at how he’s lookin’ at me/Does the word ‘fast food’ mean anything to you, Lord?/Oh, he’s hairy/And he’s still thinkin’/And he’s lookin’ at me like I… smell good!”

The man’s usual mode was high-spirited, and he had a knack for what you could call novelty tunes, but he was also capable of singing about the more lugubrious aspects of life; you know, broken hearts and all that. But I much preferred him at his wildest and woolliest, as did Robert Christgau, who called him “a great crazy,” and said apropos his more saccharine tunes, “He couldn’t sell soap to a hippie’s mother” and “RCA should ban the ballad.” Me, I hadn’t listened to him for years when my girlfriend gave me a truly terrible ‘70s compilation CD redeemed only by R. Dean Taylor’s great “Indiana Wants Me” and Reed’s fantastic swamp tall tale, “Amos Moses,” which is one of the songs on the 2000 best-of compilation, Jerry Reed Visits Hit Row.

Fiddle-driven opener “East Bound and Down” is a bootlegger’s anthem and smooth as Jim Beam Single Barrel bourbon, and includes a great solo by Reed. It speeds along like an 18-wheeler on the run from Smokey, and if you think it’s a bit slick, well, all I can say is all those thirsty boys in Atlanta don’t agree. “Amos Moses” is a funky tune about a Cajun alligator poacher, mean as a snake on account of his old man, who used the young Moses as alligator bait. He’s got one arm on account of a hungry gator, most likely killed a sheriff trying to track him down in the bayou, and the only thing cooler than his biography are Reed’s righteous guitar picking and distinctive voice, which are as good old boy as you can get.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Celebrated guitarist and songwriter Mike Campbell’s (Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Fleetwood Mac) highly anticipated new memoir Heartbreaker, written with Ari Surdoval, is out now via Grand Central Publishing. The book is already the subject of extensive critical acclaim from Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Guitar Player and many more; order Heartbreaker HERE.

In celebration of the book’s release, Campbell is appearing at a number of events including the powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn on March 20 and The Strand in New York on March 21. Additional events will be announced shortly. Campbell is also on tour with his band The Dirty Knobs this summer, playing a pair of dates with Chris Stapleton before heading out on a co-headlining tour with Blackberry Smoke and opener Shannon McNally.

Mike Campbell was the lead guitarist for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers from the band’s inception in 1976 until Petty’s tragic death in 2017. Campbell’s iconic, melodic playing helped form the foundation of the band’s sound, as heard on definitive classics like “American Girl,” “Breakdown,” “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” “Learning to Fly” and “Into the Great Wide Open.” Together, Petty and Campbell wrote countless songs, including some of the band’s biggest hits: “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” “You Got Lucky” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” among them.

From their early days in Florida to their dizzying rise to superstardom to Petty’s acclaimed solo albums Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers, Petty never made a record without Campbell. Their work together is timeless, as are the career-defining hits Campbell co-wrote with Don Henley (“The Boys of Summer”) and with Petty for Stevie Nicks (“Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”).

Read More »

Remembering Lee Scratch Perry, born on this date in 1936. —Ed.

Of records, legendary Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry has released a ton; setting aside the singles and EPs, his non-compilation album total is hovering near 100, and for an artist outside the jazz realm, that’s a considerable achievement. Of course, the number of individuals who own a copy of every one of those full-lengths might fit comfortably into a four-door sedan, a possibility illuminating that Perry’s prolificacy doesn’t equate to his prime. 

When you make as many records as Lee Perry has, they can’t all be brilliant. Hell, the majority of them are unlikely to resonate with more than moderate levels of personal investment. I say unlikely because I’ll confess that haven’t listened to more than half of his output; Discogs lists 87 full-length albums and 97 comps, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion there are scads of releases that haven’t been logged, plus beaucoup stray singles and EPs (to say nothing of the dodgy gray-market stuff).

Succinctly, after hearing a fair portion of Perry’s later material I realized I should cease investigating those more recent progressions and just hang with the canonical stuff. If all this seems poised to besmirch the guy’s rep as a dub innovator-auteur, I will counter that fluctuating personal investment isn’t the same as lacking a recognizable stamp; if the majority of his post-’70s work is far from essential, I’ve never heard anything that faltered into anonymous hackery.

Lee Perry very much fits in with certain cineastes from the early days of auteurism. Specifically, like numerous directors who worked under studio contracts and would begin another film almost immediately after their last one was finished, Perry has created, if not incessantly, then at a clip that has insured a diminishment in his masterpiece percentage, a downward plummet to what some folks might consider journeyman levels had the man’s achievements not been integral to the growth and longevity of Jamaican music.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Legendary singer-songwriter Chris Rea is marking the 40th anniversary of his acclaimed album Shamrock Diaries with a special reissue on 1LP green recycled vinyl set for release on 16th May 2025. Released in 1985, the album remains a fan favourite and a testament to Chris’ enduring musical legacy.

Shamrock Diaries was a deeply personal and introspective work, drawing inspiration from Chris’ Irish heritage and his own life experiences. The album’s raw honesty and emotional depth resonated with listeners, solidifying Rea’s reputation as a master storyteller.

Chris Rea’s time in Ireland inspired the material for Shamrock Diaries. In a recent interview included in the 2019 deluxe version, Rea noted the similarities between Dublin and his hometown of Middlesbrough, which had a significant Irish population. Further, Chris has familial connections to Ireland. Two of the album’s most popular songs, “Stainsby Girls” and “Josephine,” were written for his wife Joan and daughter Josephine, respectively.

After his mother passed away, Chris returned to his hometown of Middlesbrough. He told Q magazine that upon his return, he found his childhood home had been demolished. The experience of finding his childhood home missing, after three years of extensive touring in Europe, was so disorienting that it felt like a scene out of a science fiction movie, and inspired him to write “Steel River.”

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Following a spectacular 2024 that saw him reach the top of Billboard Hot 100 with his single “Too Sweet,” 2025 sees world-renowned singer-songwriter Hozier celebrate 10 years of his 4x Platinum certified self-titled debut album with a very special vinyl repack. The release will come May 16th on Legacy/Columbia Records.

Featuring his landmark breakthrough mega hit “Take Me To Church,” which is RIAA certified Diamond in the US, the critically-acclaimed record also includes fan favourites “Work Song,” “From Eden,” and “Someone New.” One of the most impactful debut albums of the last 10 years, the record put Hozier on the map as one of the most exciting artists in the world and saw him pick up a GRAMMY nomination for Song of the Year for “Take Me To Church.”

The anniversary reissue will arrive on a selection of vinyl variants including x2 LP custard vinyl, a limited edition x2 LP baby blue vinyl—only available from Hozier’s store, a US Amazon exclusive x2 LP on olive green, and a very special x2 LP evergreen vinyl exclusively available in Ireland. As well as presenting the album in its glorious original form, the release will feature bonus tracks “In The Woods Somewhere,” “Run,” “Arsonist’s Lullabye,” and “My Love Will Never Die” on vinyl for the very first time. The standard album will also be reissued on cassette.

Read More »

Along with Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair with their multi-volume Paul McCartney biography books, Luca Perasi is becoming one of the foremost chroniclers of the life and music of Paul McCartney. While Perasi has written some books in Italian, he has also written several books in English. There was Paul McCartney: Recording Sessions 1969-2013 and Paul McCartney Music Is Ideas: The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol. 1) 1970-1989.

In 2024 he came out with two more books: Paul McCartney Music Is Ideas The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol. 2) 1990–2012 and Paul McCartney & Wings: Band On The Run (The Story of a Classic Album), all from L.I.L.Y. Publishing. It was only a matter of time before someone wrote an entire book on the Band on The Run album. It is easily McCartney’s best album and one of the best releases of the ’70s.

Perasi covers the album from every imaginable angle and seeks to set the record straight on some of the contradictory stories about the conception and recording of the album. It’s also a beautiful book filled with rare photos in black and white and color, along with other research information. Perasi gives a detailed account of what Wings were up to before the making of the album right through to the post-release legacy of the album. These short books give a fulsome account of the making of an album not found in career-spanning biographies and this album, with its major importance and page-turning story, was made for this format.

For Paul McCartney Music Is Ideas The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol. 2) 1990-2012, Perasi primarily follows the format that he used for volume one. Every album and single from this volume, Tripping the Live Fantastic! through the Kisses on the Bottom releases are covered here. Each entry features the song listing for an album, recording information, a detailed essay, and sources cited throughout the pages, rather than in a footnote compendium at the end of the book. Each song includes a short essay, a shorter recording information box, and a box on the musicians who contributed to the given track. This is a beautiful, over-sized, hardcover book.

Read More »

Remembering Paul Atkinson, born on this day in 1946. —Ed.

With three enduring hit singles, the last of which derives from a classic album that’s as redolent of its era as any, The Zombies aren’t accurately classified as underrated, but it’s also right to say that the potential of much of their catalog went unfulfilled while they were extant. Since their breakup, subsequent generations have dug into that body of work, which has aged rather well, and right now nearly all of it can be found in Varèse Sarabande’s The Complete Studio Recordings, a 5LP collection released in celebration of the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For anyone cultivating a shelf of ’60s pop-rock vinyl, this collection is a smart acquisition.

The Zombies began cohering as a band around 1961-’62 in St Albans, Hertfordshire UK. By the time they debuted on record in ’64 the lineup had solidified, featuring lead vocalist-guitarist Colin Blunstone, keyboardist Rod Argent, guitarist Paul Atkinson, bassist Chris White, and drummer Hugh Grundy. That’s how it would remain until their breakup in December of ’67. Rightly considered part of the mid-’60s British Invasion, The Zombies’ stature in the context of this explosion basically rests on the success of two singles, both far more popular in the US than in the band’s home country.

Those hits, “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No,” each made the Billboard Top 10 (the former all the way to No. 2) and respectively open sides one and two of the US version of their first album, a move suggesting confidence on the part of their label Parrot that, as the needle worked its way inward, listeners wouldn’t become dismayed or bored by a drop-off in quality.

That assurance was well-founded. While “She’s Not There” is an utter pop gem, thriving on perfectly-judged instrumental construction (in its original, superior mono version with Grundy’s added drum input) and emotional breadth that’s found it long-eclipsing mere oldies nostalgia, and “Tell Her No” a more relaxed yet crisp follow-up, their talents were established beyond those two songs, even if nothing else on The Zombies quite rises to the same heights of quality.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Shimmy-Disc shares the posthumous reissue of Bruce Haack’s 1975 album This Old Man (Shimmy-2029). This is the second Bruce Haack LP that Shimmy-Disc has re-released, following Captain Entropy (Shimmy-2019), in August 2023. This reissue is the first time This Old Man has been released on vinyl since 1975, originally via the artist’s own label, Dimension 5.

Bruce Haack (1931–1988) was a Canadian composer and electronic music pioneer whose creative output from the 1950s through the 1970s has been tragically under-appreciated. Now considered to have been decades ahead of his time, Bruce Haack forged his music from glittering “new” computer landscapes of his own invention, long before the world was aware that such things were even possible. Welcome to his beautiful crucible of electronic sounds, wherein he illuminated his myriad of interests in science, the wonders of childhood, and the human condition, woven into a musical tapestry that shimmers like an exploding sun.

Alongside the vinyl reissue, Shimmy-Disc is sharing a video for the single, “Thank You.” Bruce Haack’s greatest genius resided in his humble vision combined with a ferocious curiosity and idiosyncratic approach to musical experimentation. The directness of his prose and his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve is never more apparent than in this sweet apparition of a song. He means what he says, and he knows you know….who You are.

Most of the music on this album was programmed on a polyphonic music computer built by Bruce Haack from surplus parts furnished by Ver-Tech Radio of Philadelphia. The machine was made in 18 months—without diagrams or plans (Bruce Haack has never studied electronics) and will produce up to twelve simultaneous voices in changing sequence via a memory holding over four-thousand bits of information. It will also compose at random.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Art Pepper An Afternoon in Norway: The Kongsberg Concert, a blazing, previously unreleased live recording by the great alto saxophonist captured at the titular 1980 festival in Norway, will be issued LP on May 9 by Elemental Music. The collection will be available as a two-CD set on May 16.

Co-produced by Zev Feldman, the award-winning “Jazz Detective,” and Elemental partner Jordi Soley, the hard-hitting 1980 quartet date features Pepper, then in the middle of a late-career renaissance, backed sympathetically by the brilliant Bulgarian pianist Milcho Leviev, bassist Tony Dumas, and drummer Carl Burnett. The hastily booked appearance came less than 24 hours after Pepper and his band concluded an engagement at Ronnie Scott’s London club.

Elemental’s typically expansive notes for the limited-edition 2-LP set (to be issued on 180-gram vinyl and mastered by Matthew Lutthans at the Mastering Lab) includes recollections by the musicians wife Laurie Pepper (who co-authored his candid 1979 autobiography Straight Life), Dumas, and Burnett; detailed notes by acclaimed author/journalist Marc Myers; appreciations by saxophonists John Zorn and Rudresh Mahanthappa; and an archival interview conducted with Pepper at Kongsberg.

On Black Friday Record Store Day last November, Elemental released Bill Evans In Norway: The Kongsberg Concert, a trio date by the pianist captured in 1970. This new release marks the label’s second archival set from Pepper: Live at Fat Tuesday’s, recorded in 1981 at the New York club, was unearthed in 2015.

Read More »

Remembering Wilson Pickett, born on this day in 1941. —Ed.

Hear ye hear ye: I am going to begin this review of Alabama native son Wilson Pickett’s 1969 LP Hey Jude by stating right off that the title cut is one of the most phenomenal songs ever recorded, and is in fact so great I would probably give this album an A even if every other song on it was a jingle for a cereal commercial.

Pickett, whom I consider the best screamer in the history of soul and R&B, if not rock too, lays into “Hey Jude” like somebody just chopped his foot off with a hatchet, while the horn section kicks ass and Duane Allman, who was just beginning his career as a session musician, tears off one of the most brilliant and in-your-face guitar solos you’ll ever hear. It’s a bravura performance, “Hey Jude,” and supernatural in its greatness, and if I die tomorrow I will die having heard a sound so pleasing to God that he decided (I’ve talked to him about this) to push the date of the Last Judgment back a hundred years or so.

Fortunately Pickett fills out the album with a bunch of other songs that, while they can’t (what could?) compare with “Hey Jude,” are excellent in their own right. His voice is a miracle, his screams make Joe Cocker sound like a pee wee leaguer, and in short he turns in a whole slew of superb performances, demonstrating his mastery of phrasing and the wild scream even on those songs (his unfortunate take on Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild,” the gospel-flavored but not very exciting “People Make the World,” and the funky but unhappily titled “Toe Hold”) that don’t quite measure up to the rest of the songs on the album.

Putting Pickett, Allman, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (the so-called Swampers), and some great horn players together in the studio was a stroke of genius on Atlantic Records honcho Jerry Wexler’s part, and it paid off in a royal flush as the bunch of ‘em simply could not fail to turn an okay song into a great one.

Read More »

Celebrating Bill Frisell on his 74th birthday. —Ed.

Michael Gibbs is a musician of many facets, chalking up credits as a composer, conductor, arranger, producer, and instrumentalist on trombone and keyboard. However, much of his adult life has been devoted to teaching, a role that contributed to a relatively trim discography and a fairly modest profile. Amongst his students was Bill Frisell; subsequently, their association blossomed into friendship and collaboration. For evidence one need look no further than Cuneiform Records’ superb CD, wherein Michael Gibbs & the NDR Bigband Play a Bill Frisell Set List.

Engaging in a discussion over worthwhile contemporary creative guitarists will find the name Bill Frisell rolling off tongues sooner rather than later. But when the talk turns to active composer-arrangers Michael Gibbs could easily get neglected, and as his career in jazz spans over half a century undeservedly so.

Born on September 25th, 1937 in Salisbury Southern Rhodesia, Gibbs moved to Boston in 1959 to attend Berklee College of Music. He studied there with Herb Pomeroy, but just as importantly received a full scholarship to the Lenox School of Jazz in 1960; the short-lived program started by the Modern Jazz Quartet’s John Lewis brought Gibbs into contact with such major compositional figures as Gunther Schuller, George Russell, and J.J. Johnson.

Gibbs’ “Fly Time Fly (Sigh)” turns up on his fellow Berklee alumnus and longtime friend Gary Burton’s second LP for RCA Victor, Who is Gary Burton? By ’64 Gibbs had relocated to London, his talent on the trombone proving very much in demand; an easy point of inspection from this period is Deep Dark Blue Centre by the Graham Collier Septet from ’67 on Deram.

Read More »