Category Archives: The TVD Storefront

Remembering Nat King Cole, born on this day in 1919. —Ed.

Nat King Cole’s enduring renown derives from his skill as a vocalist, but he’s also arguably the most underrated of jazz’s great pianists. The seven CDs or ten LPs comprising Hittin’ The Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943) do a stellar job of highlighting Cole’s keyboard prowess while documenting the growth of his superb trio with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince first, and later Johnny Miller. There are also brief visits from the great saxophonists Lester Young and Dexter Gordon and a ton of singing, though the approach lands solidly in a hot and often vocal group zone. 

Back in 1991, Mosaic Records issued The Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio, an exhaustive limited-edition set spread across 18 compact discs or 27 vinyl records. It was obviously produced for hardcore jazz nut collectors, the kind of listener who would know that Cole had worked extensively as a musician prior to his career-defining move to Capitol (an association he would maintain throughout his superstardom until the end of his life) but with very few commercial records detailing said period.

Hittin’ The Ramp features jukebox-only discs, private recordings, and a slew of radio transcriptions along with the handful of sessions that resulted in discs that were available for retail purchase, with the vast majority of the selections here officially released for the first time. There is a smidge of overlap with the Mosaic collection, but it doesn’t arrive until LP eight (or CD six) with “Vom, Vim, Veedle” commencing a smattering of cuts for the small Excelsior and Premier labels which were later purchased by Capitol and serve as the kickoff to the Mosaic set.

This repetition isn’t likely to bother owners of The Complete Capitol Recordings one bit, as it’s a miniscule percentage, specifically ten tracks out of Hittin’ The Ramp’s 183. Yes, that’s a lot of music, but slim compared to the behemoth decades-of-discovery scenario presented by Mosaic’s presentation of Capitol’s holdings, though in its vinyl incarnation Resonance’s achievement is also a limited edition.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino proudly announces a 50th anniversary reissue of the GRAMMY®-nominated album Barretto, the genre-defining salsa classic from legendary conguero and bandleader, Ray Barretto. The album, which returns to vinyl for the first time since its 1975 release, marks Barretto’s first recording to feature the renowned voices of Rubén Blades and Tito Gómez and includes such enduring hits as “Guararé,” “Ban Ban Queré,” and “Canto Abacuá.”

Set for release on May 9th, Barretto was mastered from its original analog tapes by Dave Polster and Clint Holley at Well Made Music and pressed on 180-gram vinyl and housed in a replica of its classic jacket, including a die-cut flap on the front cover that opens up to album credits and the original cover notes written by Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman. A limited-edition “Yellow Smoke” 140-gram color vinyl variant (limited to 300 copies), with an exclusive bundle option that includes a classic Fania Records T-shirt, is available at Fania.com. Additionally, the album will make its debut in hi-res (192/24) digital on May 9th.

In 1975, celebrated bandleader Ray Barretto (1929–2006) was enjoying one of the most triumphant periods of his long and influential career. For more than a decade, the Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican musician had enjoyed his status as one of the foremost names in Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms. He had become the go-to conguero in New York City, playing alongside such jazz greats as Wes Montgomery, Cal Tjader, Kenny Burrell, and Dizzy Gillespie. As a bandleader, meanwhile, Barretto achieved stardom with his 1963 hit, “El Watusi,” later becoming a foundational figure in the soulful boogaloo movement and, at the end of the decade, was at the forefront of the emerging salsa scene, releasing such popular albums as 1968’s Acid, 1971’s The Message, and 1972’s Que viva la música.

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Robert Christgau once wrote, in the midst of a think piece about one of California’s chief 1970s exports, “Another thing that interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them.” I hate them too, but what’s more interesting is that I hate them while liking (or even loving) some of their music, which seems downright perverse. You’re supposed to LIKE the bands who make music that you like. That’s the natural order of things. The Eagles force you to do the unnatural, and doing the unnatural makes you uncomfortable.

If I had the same problem with the Red Hot Chili Peppers I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I’d jump off a bridge.

This is why 1978’s The Long Run is the perfect Eagles album. It’s their worst album, for sure, an abomination in fact, but at long last Eagle haters such as myself found their hatred of the Eagles themselves—and Glenn Frey and Don Henley in particular—in perfect alignment with their hatred of the Eagles’ music. I loved Hotel California, and talk about your cognitive dissonance—I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.

The Long Run I loathed, and I finally knew peace. It was easy to loathe The Long Run, because it’s a bad, bad album, full of songs that made it starkly apparent that the Eagles—the most arrogant and reptilian frozen noses in an LA scene full of arrogant and reptilian frozen noses—had finally run their long course.

There are several decent songs on The Long Run, but none of them come within Lear jet distance of their best work. I’m don’t listen to them. And there are songs on The Long Run that defy description. Throwaways like “Teenage Jail” and “The Disco Strangler” plumb abysses of utter suckitude that even the band’s biggest detractors never dreamed the Eagles had in them.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Eli Paperboy Reed is celebrating 20 years of making soulful music with the re-release of his very first album, Sings Walkin’ And Talkin’ And Other Smash Hits! The set was originally recorded in a basement studio in Allston, Massachusetts, all live to analog tape in mono and pressed as a limited run of 300 CDs in 2005.

This self-released CD was mostly sold while Reed busked on the streets of Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass in his early 20s. The first disc of the newly remastered double LP reissue will contain the original tracks from the album, plus four additional tracks recorded the same December day in 2004. The second disc contains a session recorded for WHRB radio at Harvard University in 2005. The single deluxe CD will contain all of the songs featured on the deluxe LP.

This deluxe set presents Reed’s humble beginnings in Boston by way of Mississippi and Chicago, playing his own rough and ready interpretations of down-home blues, R&B and gospel. With this 20th anniversary release and the celebration of two decades of legendary live performances, Reed cements himself as an elder statesman of the genre. To further mark the milestone, Reed will be touring with a full band playing music from that first album in addition to his vast catalog.

The first single from this set is “Stop Talking In Your Sleep (Radio Session),” a raw and raucous amalgamation of inner city gospel and the primordial rock ‘n’ roll of Little Richard.

Remembering Lightnin’ Hopkins in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

Lightnin’ Sam Hopkins remains one of the crucial figures in the annals of the blues. By extension, he recorded a ton, and owning all his music will require diligence and a seriously long shelf. However, there are a few albums that are a must even for casual blues collectors, and his self-titled effort from 1959 is one of them. Recorded by historian Samuel Charters in Hopkins’ apartment while he played a borrowed guitar, it served as the door-opener to years of prominence. A highly intimate gem of nimble-fingered deep blues feeling, Lightnin’ Hopkins is available through Smithsonian Folkways, remastered from the source tapes in a tip-on jacket with Charters’ original notes.

To call Lightnin’ Hopkins the byproduct of rediscovery isn’t inaccurate, but it does risk stripping the contents of its unique story. Unlike Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, and John Hurt (all from Mississippi), Texan Hopkins had only been inactive for a few years when Samuel Charters found and recorded him in Houston, and if he’d been playing since the 1930s, he was still very much in his musical prime.

Hopkins debuted on record in 1946 for the Aladdin label of Los Angeles in tandem with pianist Wilson “Thunder” Smith, the partnership bringing him his sobriquet. From there, a solid decade of studio dates (and some R&B chart action) commenced; his additional sides for Aladdin fill a 2CD set, and the sessions for Gold Star take up two separate CD volumes. Additionally, there were worthy recordings for Modern, Sittin’ in With, and majors Mercury and Decca. 1954 brought a massive spurt of wild, highly amplified material for the Herald label; it contrasts sharply with the one-man circumstance of Lightnin’ Hopkins.

If commercial recording industry prospects had dried up by ’59 and Hopkins’ guitar was in hock, there was no trace of rustiness from inactivity, though the comfort level does increase as these songs progress (the bottle of gin Charters bought likely had something to do with it). What’s shared with his prior electric band stuff is a recognizable, eventually signature style based in the conversation between rural blues verve and more citified boogie motion (in this he shares much with John Lee Hooker).

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PHOTO: GODLIS | I recently spoke with Cynthia Sley, the iconic frontwoman of Bush Tetras, the legendary NYC art-punk band that helped define the downtown underground scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Cynthia’s distinct image and half-spoken, sharp delivery have undeniably influenced current artists like Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning.

The band’s overall sound—blending funk, punk, and No Wave with elements of dub and groove—has echoed through every era of post and art-punk revival. Bush Tetras blazed the trail with this sound that can still be heard today.

Cynthia and I discussed her journey from Ohio to New York, the electric energy of the late-’70s East Village where art thrived with no limits, and the evolution of Bush Tetras up to today. For more information, upcoming show dates (when announced), and vinyl, visit Wharf Cat Records.

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 Phil Lesh in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

How many Deadheads does it take to change a light bulb? Six hundred and one. One to score the acid, and the other six hundred to stare slackjawed at the dead bulb and say, “Looks lit to me, man.” I know, it’s a shitty joke, but there’s some truth in it. The chief problem with Deadheads has always been their lack of quality control. They see no difference between 1970’s brilliant American Beauty and 1978’s execrable Shakedown Street, and lack the discernment to recognize that the light of creative genius that illuminated the Grateful Dead at the dawn of the seventies had long since flickered out by the time Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995.

Drug burn-out was the culprit, that and the natural order of the rock creativity; virtually no one continues to make great album after great album—shit, by my accounting, even Bob Dylan did his best work between 1965 and 1967, and that’s if you count The Basement Tapes, which weren’t released until years later.

As for the Dead, I think they did their best work between 1969 and 1972, when they released the lackluster Wake of the Flood, which a true fan, Robert Christgau, described as “capturing that ruminative, seemingly aimless part of the concert when the boogiers nod out.” As for when their live concerts finally settled into equal parts boredom and cult worship, I have no opinion, although I will say that the three shows I saw in the eighties were perfunctory and the Dead appeared to wish they were somewhere else.

Ah, but at their best they were sublime. My personal favorite is 1970’s Workingman’s Dead, but that same year’s American Beauty is a close second. On both LPs the Dead abandoned their free-form extended jams (1969’s Live/Dead had two sides with one song on them, and one side with two songs on it) for real songs, and on both they proved that they had plenty of great four-minute songs in them. As for American Beauty, it was prettier than Workingman’s Dead—a folk-rock LP that eschewed the doom-laden songs on its predecessor for songs that were, for lack of a better phrase, sunnier and more pastoral.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | An expansive and revelatory inside look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life in Greenwich Village in the early 1970s, One to One: John & Yoko delivers an immersive cinematic experience that brings to life electrifying, never-before-seen material and newly restored footage of John and Yoko’s only full-length concert. Featuring mind-blowing music newly remixed and produced by Sean Ono Lennon, the film is a seismic revelation that will challenge pre-existing notions of the iconic couple.

On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono. Oscar®-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald’s riveting documentary takes that legendary musical event and uses it as the starting point to explore eighteen defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. By 1971 the couple was newly arrived in the United States—living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television.

The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the screen: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons. As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest—ultimately leading to the One to One concert, which was inspired by a Geraldo Rivera exposé they watched on TV.

Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the NYC apartment the duo shared, One to One: John & Yoko offers a bold new take on a seminal time in the lives of two of history’s most influential artists.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Legendary hard rock guitarist Pat Travers’ acclaimed series of archive live performances has already served up some exhilarating performances. But the latest, Statesboro Blues (Live In Baltimore 1982), is sure to be ranked among the greatest yet, and while we await its April 4 release, the title track peels off as a thrilling new single.

Of course Blind Willie McTell blues was long ago proclaimed a classic, with the Allman Brothers having already granted it an incendiary work-up at the dawn of the ’70s. It was Travers, however, who made the song his own, and this version illustrates why. Musically, Travers was truly in his prime. “I’d added some people to my live band and recording band,” he explains. “I had a keyboard player and another guy who sang backing vocals so I had a five piece band behind me.”

“I was trying to do something a little more sophisticated,” he continues with a laugh, and his then-latest album, Black Pearl, bore that out. “For me, that was one of my best records with the playing and the production.” Its opening number, “I La La La Love You” (included here, of course) was a smash even before it was included in the cult movie Valley Girl.

By the time this show was recorded, in Baltimore just three weeks before Christmas, Travers and the band had been on the road for most of the year, a back-breaking outing that had long since been aptly nicknamed The Steelworkers Ball.

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Celebrating Greg Norton, born on this day in 1959. —Ed.

Lookee here; I didn’t become the world’s foremost rock critic (in my mind, baby, in my mind!) by keeping my crackpot opinions to myself. No, I share them with everybody, because the way I look at it, why should I suffer for my art when you can do it for me?

Anyway, I’ve been listening to Minneapolis hardcore kings Hüsker Dü for the first time in several decades, and it is my infallible critical opinion that the trio of guitarist Bob Mould, drummer Grant Hart, and bassist Greg Norton (of the great handlebar mustache) commenced to go downhill the moment they ditched legendary SST record producer Spot—who got a bad rap, in my opinion, for his murky productions—in favor of handling the production duties themselves.

Sure, they cleaned up their sound and made it more pristine, but I loved Spot’s murk, because it lent every album he produced an aura of post-punk primitivism and disdain for the sparkling productions of every artist not part of the hardcore community. His was the DIY sound of the hardcore underground, and I am of the opinion that the three albums Hüsker Dü produced after giving poor Spot his walking papers (i.e., 1985’s Flip Your Wig, 1986’s Candy Apple Grey, and 1987’s Warehouse: Songs and Stories) are polished to the point of sterility. Not for nothing did I stop listening to Hüsker Dü after their high-water mark, 1985’s Spot-produced New Day Rising, which was about the time they were poised to break through big time thanks to their heavy presence on college radio.

Me, I’m still attached to their “Metal Circus” EP, on which Hüsker Dü first began to differentiate themselves from hardcore’s fast and hard ethos. Nobody ever played it faster and harder than they did on their 1980 debut, the appropriately titled “Land Speed Record” EP, but by the time they released 1983’s “Metal Circus” they were introducing harmony and melody into their tunes, especially on the Grant Hart contributions, “It’s Not Funny Anymore” and “Diane.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Thames & Hudson are delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of Iron Maiden: Infinite Dreams – The Official Visual History, to be published globally in hardback in autumn 2025. A magnificent visual celebration of the first 50 years of Iron Maiden, this new book chronicles the evolution of heavy metal’s most prestigious band, with unparalleled input from band members and management.

A truly spectacular and beautiful book, featuring never-before-seen items and photographs, which have been curated with enormous attention to detail over a number of years, it celebrates one of Britain’s most influential and biggest-selling bands, who have become arguably the biggest metal band in the world.

Organized chronologically, Iron Maiden: Infinite Dreams tells the story of the band from their first pub gigs in 1975 and their first record deal in 1979, through the recording and reception of groundbreaking albums, including their self-titled debut, 1982’s global breakthrough The Number of the Beast and the stadium-conquering Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, to 2021’s hugely acclaimed double-album Senjutsu and the forthcoming Run For Your Lives World Tour.

The book traces the evolution of their iconic Eddie mascot, alongside exclusive comments from his creator Derek Riggs, and documents the band’s spectacular and complex stage productions and extensive live tours, including the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour of 2008, which made international headlines as Bruce Dickinson piloted the band’s very own Ed Force One 757.

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As The Fall’s constant fount of creativity, vocalist-songwriter Mark E. Smith has attained a rare position in the rock pantheon, with the man and his band exhaustively covered in print form. And so, the publication of Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall might seem an inessential item. However, the objective of editors Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley isn’t biography, but is rather to assemble between hardcovers a series of ambitious essays plus photos of front and back album covers, flyers, correspondence and much more. 

Norton and Stanley’s objectives for Excavate! are admirably bold, but it still feels right that the book’s final piece is a eulogy, by Richard McKenna, that was published on January 30, 2018, six days after Smith’s death, for the website We Are the Mutants, of which McKenna is senior editor. It’s also fitting that his opening line functions a bit like tripwire for writers covering this hefty tome who might not have finished the text or indeed even bothered to begin: “Mistrust all eulogies containing the words ‘contrarian,’ ‘curmudgeon’ and ‘national treasure’: these are inevitably the work of hacks.”

It’s pretty clear the author was referring to those either choosing to or fulfilling the given task of eulogizing Smith in the period shortly after his passing, so that hopefully the next sentence in this paragraph will escape McKenna’s harsh judgement (but if not, them’s the breaks). If by now so well-established as to be considered clichés, in the admittedly short interval since his passing, “contrarian” and “curmudgeon” (we’ll set “national treasure” aside for a bit), along with an unquenchable thirst for booze, remain dominant aspects of Mark E. Smith’s persona.

Norton and Stanley’s book doesn’t refurbish his reputation but instead complicates the issue by delving into the outside forces that helped shape Smith’s perspectives and his art. That means the man isn’t always front and center, with the shift of emphasis onto influences artistic, cultural, and environmental driving home that Smith’s antagonisms weren’t kneejerk or for the sake of just being difficult (well, mostly), and that his grumbling and grousing ultimately stemmed from the same complex worldview that shaped his art.

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PHOENIX, AZ | The Florida-based rock band Flipturn made a Phoenix appearance on their Burnout Days tour, headlining the Van Buren. Supported by Krooked Kings, Flipturn is beginning to level up.

The last time Flipturn played Phoenix they played a much smaller venue that holds much fewer than the Van Buren. They are touring in support of their sophomore album Burnout Days, and have been on a successful track since their first release, playing prestigious bills like Lollapalooza, Governors Ball, and SXSW.

The night was kicked off by indie rock band Krooked Kings. Building upon their own momentum, they have built a loyal fan base through a committed touring schedule. The band has been on the road perfecting their craft, and they have been busy recording new music and mixed in a little bit of everything to their opening set. They are dedicated to their artistry, but more importantly, the fans took the time to hang out by their merch table after their set. They’re booked through the end of March and then I am excited to see where this year takes them.

Touring on their sophomore album, the Flipturn 21 song setlist features fan favorites from other albums such as “August,” “Sad Disco,” and “Glistening.” According to Spotify, the most popular song on the newest album is the title track, “Burnout Days.” This song was featured second in their set.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “This is an excellent and well-made documentary that even those who don’t know a lot about Hopkins will find interesting.” —Aaron Badgley, Spill

This 90-minute documentary tells the story of the legendary pianist Nicky Hopkins, dubbed rock and roll’s greatest session man, who played on over 250 albums and on some of the most iconic rock tracks ever recorded. Amongst his stand-out achievements, Nicky contributed to records by The Rolling Stones (14 albums), The Kinks, The Who, and The Beatles, but he also appears on solo albums of all four Beatles, most notably, John Lennon’s Imagine.

The list of interviewees in the documentary is impressive and includes Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman, Peter Frampton, Dave Davies, and Pete Townshend, each giving their unique take on what it was that made Nicky so special and the magic he brought to every track he appeared on.

The Session Man was originally released in the US on November 5, 2024 on Amazon (TVoD), and by popular demand, it is now being released on DVD from March 18, 2025.

One of the albums that John Lennon released with Yoko Ono that has become part of his official discography is Live Peace in Toronto, released in December of 1969. The live album recorded in Toronto in September of 1969 when The Beatles were still officially together is one of the few live documents of Lennon outside of his time with The Beatles. It is sometimes overlooked in Lennon’s non-Beatles discography. How the concert came about is a fascinating backstory.

That story and the story of the concert itself are told in entertaining detail in Revival 69: The Concert That Rocked the World. The film tells how an oldies festival concert in Toronto became the unlikely venue for the first-ever live concert by the Plastic Ono Band. The band, the brainchild of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, also featured longtime Beatles inner circle musician and artist Klaus Voormann on bass, Alan White on drums, and guitar god Eric Clapton.

John Brower, one of the concert promoters of the event, is the main narrator of how Lennon and Ono and their band came to play the festival, but there are also new interviews with others who were there such as Voormann, Alice Cooper, Robbie Krieger of The Doors, Geddy Lee of Rush who was there with his friends and was just another young Canadian music fan, Anthony Fawcett, John and Yoko’s assistant at the time, and various behind-the-scenes eyewitnesses. In addition, there are plenty of archival audio and video interviews.

The main performers were a veritable who’s-who of rock ‘n’ roll pioneers, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, and Gene Vincent. Lennon and Ono’s participation in the concert came about in the 11th hour. When the promoters were having trouble selling tickets, they enlisted Los Angeles rock scenesters Rodney Bingenheimer and Kim Fowley. While their initial participation yielded few results, Fowley suggested to the promoters to contact Lennon and Ono in London.

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