Category Archives: The TVD Storefront

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Limited 48 page souvenir photobook by rock n’ rollin’ author/ artist/ photographer/ journalist/ bon vivant John Mendelssohn, who was tapped to meet up with an unknown longhair from London named David Bowie on his first trip to the US on a press junket for the just-released Mercury album The Man Who Sold The World.

John met up with DB in San Fransisco with his camera in tow, and started snappin and yappin. This book includes John’s original story from Rolling Stone, his revelations and jubilations on (and of) the topic of DB, plus we have Paul Gorman writing brilliantly about the origin and influence of the man-dress, as created by bespoke tailor Mr. Fish of London… and we have the photos, one roll of film that captured both Mr. Fish man-dresses—the luxe, flowing, floral that appeared on the UK cover of The Man Who Sold The World and the sublime blue-gray raw silk number that graced a special edition collection, presented in a newspaperly dot screen reminiscent of the Rolling Stone print methods of the day.

Graphic designer Tommy Bishop has outdone himself in creating this first edition for what we hope will become a series of small books that make all aspects important—subject, author, images, and design. Go Tommy! Also, with this photobook comes a wee fragrance called simply, Peculiar. It is a refined scent, reminiscent of old London, with a hint of lavender, suitable for all persuasions. Concocted from organic Canadian floral waters and contained in a lovely souvenir bottle. The fragrance is a limited free holiday bonus with the book supplies last.

Remembering JJ Cale, born on this day in 1938. —Ed.

Folks take things pretty slow down in Tulsa; they ain’t in no particular hurry to get anywhere, and see no good reason to talk real fast like your Northern city slickers either. Ain’t nothin’ can’t be put off ‘til tomorrow, and that includes this here record review, which I intend to write at a slow shuffle. The late JJ Cale, who epitomized the laid-back Tulsa sound better than anybody–without even trying, natch, because trying is hard work and not how they do things down in Oklahoma–probably would have wanted it that way.

Cale inspired the likes of Eric Clapton and Neil Young, wrote a handful of songs like “Call Me the Breeze” and “Cocaine” that have entered the popular music lexicon, and in general left a faint but indelible mark on the American sound with his mellow blend of blues, country, rockabilly, and jazz. Call his music what you will (Americana, swamp rock, country rock, Red Dirt–the list goes on), the important thing to remember is that Cale was relaxed. Relaxed as dirt, relaxed as that raccoon sauntering at his leisure from your overturned trash can (keep hollering, he doesn’t care), relaxed as the oldest bluesman to ever pick out a song on yonder shotgun shack porch. Hurry just wasn’t in his vocabulary; take a potshot at him, and he’d have probably flinched slow.

In 1972 Cale, then in his thirties, finally got around to recording his first album, Naturally. Eric Clapton had just made a hit out of Cale’s “After Midnight,” and intrigued by the idea that he might be able to make some actual pocket change by being his laid-back self Cale found some time in his anything-but-hectic schedule to record 12 songs before, I don’t know, taking a long nap. Nobody would call the results electrifying, but in their own small way they changed the course of history.

I’ll say one thing for JJ–he simply refuses to be hurried. Hell, he even sings slow on the fast ones, and there aren’t that many fast ones. He’s content to shuffle along like an old dog to his supper, which isn’t going anywhere anyway. And this is both Cale’s genius and his downfall. If you’re a fan of laid back you probably love him. If you’re not a fan, like me, you find yourself wishing he’d chug a couple of cans of Red Bull and top them off with some NoDoz. Robert Christgau wrote of Naturally, “Push a little, fellas, it’ll feel so good.” I can’t help but agree with the guy.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | In the winter of 1974, WAR were already a half-decade into their career and fresh off the success of the #1 Billboard best-selling album of 1973, The World Is a Ghetto. Following months of touring throughout the US, and then nearly thirty shows across Europe, WAR arrived in Japan for the first time ever, to perform a series of live shows in Shizuoka, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kobe. Now, recordings from these performances have been rediscovered and meticulously restored for Live In Japan 1974, the first live album to feature all seven original members in 50 years.

With the release of a Japan-exclusive CD set for January 29th, 2025—featuring a custom obi sleeve and liner notes by local music journalists—Live In Japan 1974 will get a global release on February 7th, 2025. The collection will be available in 2LP and 2CD sets worldwide, as well as digitally, and includes a variety of live recordings of classic WAR tracks like “The Cisco Kid,” “The World Is A Ghetto,” and “All Day Music.”

The liner notes, written and edited by Cory Frye, feature an in-depth interview with founding band member Lonnie Jordan and WAR’s longtime producer Jerry Goldstein, wherein Lonnie shares, “It was a fun, exciting experience because we’d never gotten that amount of people loving what we did, especially during that time.” Jerry adds, “They knew all the songs. It was pretty exciting, getting the vibe that everyone knew and loved what we were doing. They gave us a lot of standing ovations, and we did lots of encores.”

The liner notes also reveal the story behind the creation of yet another iconic WAR song, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?,” inspired by the band’s interactions with locals during their debut tour of Japan.

Read More »

Both in songwriting circles and in the oft harsh arena of departed personalities that never got their just due, the late Townes Van Zandt has grown into a mythic figure. Widely celebrated today for his very personal blend of smart country-folk expression, for the majority of his life Van Zandt was a frustratingly unknown entity. There exists numerous worthwhile entry points into the man’s rich body of work, but the best doorway is provided by his exquisite self-titled third LP from 1969, a record inching toward its forty-fifth year of existence with all of its artistic power undiminished.

Townes Van Zandt was one of the true bittersweet troubadours of American Music. The woeful obscurity that afflicted him during a life too short and rife with trouble (dead of a heart attack shy of his 53rd birthday in 1997 after many years of drug and alcohol addiction) is hard to reconcile with the nude beauty of his music.

The Velvet Underground’s now legendary lack of popularity while extant was basically tied to their being so defiantly ahead of their time, Big Star’s elusive sales figures were directly related to how they harkened back and revitalized the tidy appeal of ‘60s pop-rock in an era that greatly preferred excess, and Don Van Vliet was a kingpin of cult status mainly because he was such a blatant weird-meat, but Townes Van Zandt was just a powerful singer and brilliant songwriter whose early recordings should’ve been, if not huge, than certainly substantially bigger than they actually were at the time of their release.

From ’68-’72 Van Zandt recorded six albums that slowly solidified his reputation as a true rough diamond in the oft-problematic category of singer-songwriter, and it can be speculated that the guy’s natural blend of folk and country was perhaps a little bit urbane for the C&W hardliners of the time and maybe too tough for a folk-set that was preparing to turn the corner into the mellow hell of James Taylor etc. But at worst this should’ve somewhat limited Van Zandt’s appeal, not kneecapped it outright; it’s far easier to surmise that lack of promotion from the small Poppy label led to his misfortune as a musician’s musician.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sacred Bones & Back Lot Music release the physical & digital release of Robin Carolan’s original motion picture soundtrack for Robert Eggers’ forthcoming film Nosferatu. The soundtrack is available for both physical purchase and to stream digitally following the release of the first two singles, with the film set to hit theaters nationwide on December 25th.

Robin Carolan’s latest soundtrack for the highly anticipated Nosferatu is a haunting, gothic-infused, and meticulously crafted work that draws from a vast palette of sounds, instruments, and inspirations. Following their successful collaboration on The Northman, Carolan reunites with Eggers to bring the legendary tale of Nosferatu to life, infusing the film with a score that is as complex and nuanced as the story itself.

With Daniel Pioro, one of Britain’s most exciting young classical musicians, at the helm as the orchestra leader and first chair for a vast majority of the recording, the soundtrack for Nosferatu features a vast orchestration, including 60 string players, a full choir, various horns and woodwinds, a harpist, and two percussionists. This orchestral richness brings a profound depth to the score.

“From the get-go, it was important to me that I not just write something you’d solely think of as a ‘horror score’,” Carolan explains. “I wanted to really lean into the melancholy, tragic aspect of the tale, and even make room for something akin to romance, albeit a very warped kind of romanticism.”

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan announces Lookaftering – Expanded Edition, a reissue of her legendary second album, out on February 7, 2025 via FatCat Records. 

Marking the occasion of 20 years since the first release, and coinciding with Vashti’s 80th birthday, the new expanded edition features the original studio album along with a second LP / disc of demos, an alternate take, and a live performance version. This edition also comes with reflective sleeve notes from Vashti, producer Max Richter, Devendra Banhart, and FatCat’s Dave Howell, as well as a 16-page lyric booklet featuring a collection of paintings by Vashti’s daughter Whyn Lewi—paintings that they both say have closely, and coincidentally, reflected the lyrics of the album.

Originally recorded between 2001 and 2005, the demos were created by Vashti at home, accompanying herself on electric and acoustic guitar, and experimenting with synth instrumentation—accordion, piano, strings, pipe organ, harmonium, recorders. The collection of demos offers a more stripped back sound compared to the finished album, and the live version of “Lately” recorded at an early “comeback” gig in L.A. in 2006, orchestrated as on the record, is absolutely pitch perfect.

Read More »

Beginning in 1966 with the self-titled debut album from Cream, the supergroup became a rock phenomenon that, even in an age that now seems to signal the end of the significance of rock bands, is still with us. The early era of the rock supergroup was primarily dominated by British groups other than Cream, such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer and another group like Cream that also included Eric Clapton, Blind Faith, among others.

Mixing one British artist (Graham Nash) and two Americans (David Crosby, Stephen Stills), Crosby, Stills and Nash released their self-titled debut album in March of 1969, establishing them as the American supergroup of the day. The album was a runaway smash and the group had created an entirely new sound that defied description.

As loaded with talent as CSN was, in mid-August they added yet another superstar to their lineup, Neil Young. Young had played with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield. Interestingly enough, Crosby had previously played with Stills, when Young decided not to play with the Springfield at the Monterey Pop Festival way back in May of 1967. CSNY became an even bigger supergroup.

In 1969 CSNY set out on tour and began writing music and performing some of the songs that would make up their debut album Déjà vu, which would be released in 1970. CSNY was short-lived and other than a tour in 1974, the group wouldn’t work together in any capacity until they released their second album American Dream in 1988.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs is a Martin Phillipps passion project. A dedicated reimagining of his earlier unreleased songs that became his artistic farewell, a lasting legacy, and a reminder of his huge, underappreciated talent.

As the subject of an undulating life and times movie—The Chills: The Triumph And Tragedy Of Martin Phillipps—Chills’ singer, songwriter and main motivator, Martin Phillipps spent the last decade releasing studio and live albums while careering into his sixtieth year with typical gusto.

Amid such momentum, Martin was stilling digging through old tapes, searching for the foundations that resulted in global rapture in 1987, an overnight success that took a mere seven years to ignite. These early songs and musings were revisited, revised, and finally put to record. As such, Spring Board is the final chapter of The Chills’ immeasurably significant output.

“The album seemed like an easy option,” mused Martin, but breathing life into tunes that were penned by a twenty-something hopeful wasn’t as simple as it sounded. Cassettes fragmented, memories were hazy. “All of the songs needed varying degrees of rewriting; a 60-year old man couldn’t just stick to the lyrics of those formative years. And some of the songs were just vague recollections, incomplete, only blossoming during recording.”

Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs is alarming, personal, brittle and at times hopelessly upbeat. This is a man casting his mind back on an esoteric career that led to nothing short of cult status; someone rediscovering his roots, his innermost thoughts, hopes and fears.

Read More »

In the annals of jazz, tenor saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins is simply incomparable. A man without a creative weakness, he is equally celebrated as an innovator and for his sublime transformations of jazz standards and classic American song. No record gets to the core of Rollins’ greatness better than Way Out West. Originally released in 1957, it comes out in a fresh 180 gram vinyl edition this week via Craft Recordings as part of the label’s Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series, remastered from the original tapes by Bernie Grundman and tucked into an utterly swank tip-on jacket.

Having debuted on record in 1949, backing hipster jazz vocalist Babs Gonzalez in his band Three Bips and a Bop on a 10-inch 78 rpm disc for the Capitol label, Sonny Rollins played and recorded extensively and by the mid-1950s he was the top tenor saxophonist in jazz. After cutting an LP a year as a leader from 1953-’56 for Prestige, Rollins exploded onto the marketplace in ’56 with a half dozen albums, all for Prestige, including what many consider his greatest recording, Saxophone Colossus.

After exiting his Prestige contract, Rollins became something of a free agent across an equally productive stretch, cutting three albums for Blue Note and one record for Riverside, plus half of a split album shared with the Thad Jones Ensemble for the Period label and the record under review here, all released in 1957.

Of the studio albums, Way Out West stands out for it’s lack of piano. On Rollins’ trip to California (hence the title and its accompanying cover motif, which was reportedly Rollins’ idea), he was joined by bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne in a foray into what the saxophonist described as “strolling,” which in short means improvising in a band that lacks a chordal instrument (e.g. piano or guitar).

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Steely Dan’s sophisticated jazz pop fourth album, 1975’s Katy Lied, with such standouts as “Black Friday,” “Bad Sneakers,” and “Doctor Wu,” will return to vinyl for the first time in more than forty years on January 31, 2025, via Geffen/UMe, continuing the extensive reissue program of the band’s classic ABC and MCA Records catalog.

The series, which began in November 2022 with the Dan’s legendary debut LP, Can’t Buy A Thrill, is being personally overseen by founding member Donald Fagen, and returns the group’s first seven records to vinyl, most of which haven’t been available since their original release. The series will close out with 1976’s guitar-driven The Royal Scam (“Kid Charlemagne,” “The Fez”) in mid-2025.

Katy Lied has been meticulously remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog tapes for release as a limited edition premium 45 RPM version on Ultra High-Quality Vinyl (UHQR) from Analogue Productions, the audiophile in-house reissue label of Acoustic Sounds. Analogue Productions is also releasing this series of titles on Super Audio CD (SACD). UMe’s standard 33 1/3 RPM 180-gram version has been remastered by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound from high-resolution digital files and pressed at Precision. They will be housed in reproductions of the original artwork.

Read More »

Celebrating Ozzy on his 76th birthday. —Ed.

Ozzy Osbourne almost bit my earlobe off during an interview once. One minute we were talking about Master of Reality and the next he was lunging across the table to take my left ear—an easy target seeing as how I suffer from Meniere’s Disease, which causes radical enlargement of the earlobes—and shaking it, while growling like an angry Rottweiler. It was like a scene straight out of Dostoevsky, to be precise the moment in The Devils when Nikolai Stavrogin bites the governor’s ear. Anyway, I cried “Mercy!” as he literally lifted me out of my chair and led me around the room, my earlobe clenched in his slavering mouth. He finally let go and apologized afterwards, but offered no explanations. Then again, what can you expect from the guy who once said, “Off all the things I lost I miss my mind the most.” I consider it an honor.

Okay, so the above never happened. (I feel obligated to say this because in another article I swore my adolescent skull secreted sperm, that’s how horny I was, and a few folks actually wrote to tell me this was impossible. Duh.) But the Ozzy earlobe biting could have occurred. He once ate the heads off two live doves, and famously bit the head off a dead bat on stage, an act that led him to quip, “I got rabies shots for biting the head off a bat but that’s OK—the bat had to get Ozzy shots.” And then there’s the time he thought it would be a good idea to snort fire ants. In short, in Ozzy World, biting off a journalist’s earlobe would be child’s play.

I love Ozzy’s work with Black Sabbath, but have always avoided his solo stuff, although I love “Crazy Train.” Why? Because after being fired by Black Sabbath in 1979, one would have expected Ozzy to continue in the grand Sabbath tradition of releasing records filled with songs so monolithically slow and heavy they sounded like mammoth King Tiger tanks grinding up unlucky Poles. But Ozzy took a radically different path. His solo albums were lighter, in fact almost dainty; compared to the relentless eardrum-pummeling crunge of Black Sabbath they sounded spritely, bouncy even. In short, he gave up mastodon metal for regular old metal, which in that time and place was as much about hair spray as it was gargantuan guitar wank. If Sabbath’s albums are pig iron, Osbourne’s solo LPs are aluminum, and I for one wasn’t crazy about Ozzy’s transformation from Iron Man to Tin Man.

Read More »

Monk’s Music was the fifth Thelonious Monk LP released by Riverside Records across a strong mid-1950s stretch. It helped to increase the pianist-composer-bandleader’s visibility on the scene and repair an undeservedly formidable reputation, but even after it was selected for inclusion in the Original Jazz Classics series of reissues, it’s become one of the less celebrated masterpieces in Monk’s extensive discography. But a fresh mono edition by Craft Recordings should help raise the profile of an immensely pleasurable session with an august supporting cast. It’s available now on 180 gram vinyl, mastered from the original tapes in an attractive tip-on sleeve.

It might seem strange given Thelonious Monk’s secure position in the jazz pantheon, but the first two records he cut for Riverside consisted solely of standards, with his debut for the label entirely devoted to compositions by Duke Ellington and the second offering a blend of well-known selections from the American Songbook. Both hit stores in 1956.

Thelonious Monk debuted on record as a leader in 1951 for the Blue Note label with two 10-inch discs, each titled Genius of Modern Music. In 1956, those volumes were expanded into LPs with additional material from the original series of sessions Alfred Lion organized from 1947–’51, plus one more date from the following year. Those two albums, further expanded in the CD era, are the logical place to begin a solid Monk collection, but they didn’t a cause retail firestorm. The five records Monk cut for Prestige from ’52–’54 saw no curtailing of creative momentum but befell similar the same commercial fate.

In 1957, Riverside’s Orrin Keepnews pivoted with Brilliant Corners, which featured all Monk tunes save for one. Later in the year Thelonious Himself, a more balanced mix of originals and standards, was released. As the title suggests, Himself is a solo piano affair, with the exception of closing track “Monk’s Mood,” where tenor saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Wilber Ware are added.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “I give something extra every time I do Montreux Jazz. In ’23 it was deep cuts like ‘Mass Production,’ ‘Endless Sea,’ ‘Five Foot One,’ and a hell of a lot of sweat.” —Iggy Pop

On January 24, 2025 Iggy Pop will release Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 via earMUSIC. The album is an essential Iggy Pop live album, celebrating a career, a catalog and a performer that only gathers more raw power throughout the years.

On July 6, 2023 Iggy Pop made a triumphant return to the Montreux Jazz Festival. It marked Iggy’s third appearance at the festival and his performance was recorded and filmed by the Montreux Jazz Festival team. Backed by a seven-piece band he thrilled a filled-to-capacity Stravinski Auditorium crowd with a career-spanning set that including tracks from his time with The Stooges, his Idiot, Lust for Life, and New Values albums, as well as songs off his most recent release Every Loser.

Iggy Pop Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 will be released as a Blu-ray+CD digipak, 2 LP gatefold, and digital download on January 24, 2025—pre-order the album HERE. With the album’s announcement earlier this week, Iggy also released the first single, “Five Foot One (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023).”

Celebrating Ted Bluechel Jr. on his 82nd birthday. —Ed.

The Association didn’t exactly win friends and influence hippies with their square-john antics in the mid- to late sixties; they may have been the first band to perform at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, but most of your smirking counter-culture types considered them about as authentic as a cheap plastic peace symbol.

But hey–as that great philosopher Huey Lewis pointed out it’s hip to be square, and all of your REAL swinging girls and boys know The Association are the Nazz. So what if they flunked the Acid Test and would have been more at home at Tricia Nixon’s wedding than a Human Be-In? The Association rose above it all, producing a rapturous dream pop that Tricky Dick himself might have tapped a toe to.

And you can hear The Association in all their vocal glory on the 2018’s Anthology: Just the Right Sound. Its 51 songs are a definite case of overkill–and I’ve docked it a half-grade accordingly–but it’s worth the purchase price (and more!) if you want to hear not only the songs that melted your heart but such berserker numbers as “Pandora’s Golden Heebie Jeebies,” to say nothing of a couple of cuts off 1972’s justifiably neglected Waterbeds in Trinidad!

Just about everybody knows their big ones. “Windy” is a sunshine pop classic about a girl with stormy eyes; its opening guitar riff and superlush vocals are for the ages, and I die a little every time I hear that flute. And then there’s the motorvatin’ “Along Came Mary,” with its handclaps and badass (by Association standards) vocals. And who could forget the moon-eyed “Cherish,” which makes the perfect mate for the lovely “Never My Love,” both of which say I’m going to love you forever by means of those perfectly pureed vocals that were The Association’s bread and butter.

Read More »

Acid rock comes in two flavors—good trip and bad trip. The former evokes images of Woodstock, big day-glo flowers, beautiful naked people doing blissful, ecstatic dances in the wonders of nature. The latter evokes images of Altamont and the flowers of evil. As for the beautiful naked people they’re the Manson Family, and they’ve come to your house to do the devil’s business.

Austin, Texas’ The Black Angels play bad trip rock. They’re the house band at 10050 Cielo Drive, the real Death Valley ‘69, and they are not groovy. Forget the Grateful Dead’s sunny “China Cat Sunflower.” The Black Angels sound features indecipherable and incantory lyrics buried alive in a fuzz and feedback-drenched drone underlaid by a drum pummel that will not make beautiful naked people want to do blissful, ecstastic dances. It will make them want to barricade themselves in a closet somewhere.

This is drug deal gone fatally south music, the sort of thing you’d expect from a band that got their name from a Velvet Underground song and included Edvard Munch’s “Illness, insanity, and death are the black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life” on the inner jacket of their 2006 debut LP Passover. As for their 2008 follow-up Directions to See a Ghost, it surprises me not a whit that the History Channel saw fit to include some of its songs on their 2009 documentary Manson.

But here’s the thing about acid rock bad trips—some people love them. Especially when a band like The Black Angels are handing out the brown acid. Guitars, lots of them. Effects pedals out the wazoo. All producing a chaotic, wall-of-sound drone drenched in reverb, feedback, rogue electric sitar, and ghostly vocals, all nailed to the world of the living by the drum bash of one Stephanie Bailey, modern psychedelia’s answer to Maureen Tucker.

Read More »