VIA PRESS RELEASE | On March 19, 1957, Louis Armstrong and His All Stars performed before 1,200 fans at Highland Park High School, 27 miles north of Chicago, at a concert raising funds for the Highland Park Reform Temple. Nearly 70 years later, that performance is being released for the first time as One Night in Highland Park. The first single from the album is the joyfully energetic track, “Ole Miss,” a piece Armstrong had been playing since his teenage years in New Orleans.

Armstrong was at a high point in his career. Beloved around the world as America’s “Ambassador of Goodwill,” he was enjoying the success of his 1955 hit “Mack the Knife,” the album Ella and Louis and the film High Society. Just two days before Highland Park, he had performed two shows at the Chicago Opera House. Yet Armstrong continued to play high school auditoriums and other venues across the country as part of a demanding schedule of one-night engagements.

For Armstrong, these performances were about reaching his audience. “I play them because I love music,” Armstrong explained in 1957. “I don’t mind traveling and that’s where the audiences are—in the towns and cities—and that’s what I want, the audience.”

The Highland Park concert might have remained simply another date on that schedule if not for Joel Goldstein, who was serving as student Stage Manager for Armstrong’s visit. He decided to record the performance for himself, hanging two Telefunken microphones from a batten and recording the show on an Ampex reel-to-reel machine. Goldstein kept the tape, preserving a night that otherwise might have been lost.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Florence + The Machine announce a live recording of her critically-acclaimed tour, the Everybody Scream Tour Live album available digitally on November 6 with vinyl available for pre-order now. Alongside the announcement, Florence’s live performance of “Which Witch” is available on all streaming platforms. Pre-order the album HERE.

Following the North America, UK, and Europe legs of the Everybody Scream Tour earlier this year, Florence + The Machine bring the live experience to listeners worldwide. The North American run included sold-out New York shows at Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center, along with two sold-out nights at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum.

Across five albums—2009’s Lungs, 2011’s Ceremonials, 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, 2018’s High As Hope, and 2022’s Dance Fever—Florence has become one of the most monumental artists of a generation, with multiple US and UK #1 albums and countless awards.

Known for her earth-shattering live show and singular, iconic voice, Florence has sold out shows and headlined festivals the entire world over. She has collaborated and shared stages with icons—The Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift among them—and published a book of lyrics, poetry and drawings, Useless Magic.

Celebrating Chris Difford on his 72nd birthday. —Ed.

From England’s green and pleasant land, an unprepossessing and pleasant band—Squeeze aren’t out to change your life, just to provide you with friendly and understated pop gems, domestic and romantic tableaux of the sort that won me over even when I was at the height of my Anglophobia.

The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau more or less summed up my sentiments when he wrote of Squeeze’s 1982 compilation Singles – 45’s and Under, “They’re so principled in their unpretension, so obsessed with the telling detail, that their lesser moments are passively minuscule—not unfine when you squint at them, but all too easy to overlook.”

People are always talking about Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook as if they’re the McCartney and Lennon of the early eighties, but back me against a wall and the only Squeeze songs I can name are “Tempted,” “Pulling Mussels from the Shell,” and “Black Coffee in Bed.” And I considered myself a fan. Not a huge fan, but I saw them live on a pier in New York City once. Pity I was three sheets to the wind and almost fell off the pier.

But just because I don’t remember most of the songs on Singles – 45’s and Under doesn’t mean they’re not worth hearing. There’s a real warmth to Squeeze’s music, even if Difford and Tilbrook are rather cool customers. They’re Apollonian formalists, and pure popcraft is their strong suit. I’m talking immaculately put-together songs with smart words about heartbreak and occasionally irresistible melodies.

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When it comes to labels that specialize in the revitalization and growth of traditional roots styles, Free Dirt Records has been one of the most consistently interesting. The Long Memory: 20 Years of Free Dirt Records, a new anniversary set featuring unreleased demos, B-sides, and live cuts from a diverse range of the label’s acts, reinforces Free Dirt’s success in its worthwhile mission. The vinyl and digital are out on November 6.

It took two decades to get to the occasion that inspired this album. That’s a very long time for a record label to survive. Free Dirt hit this milestone by focusing on the work, so let’s do the same. Nashville-based Liv Greene opens the album with “I Can’t Know Now (Demo),” offering just vocals and guitar, warm and resonant, the strings boldly strummed, the singing pretty but powerful. It’s the kind of demo that can make one wish for a whole album of the same.

The St. Louis-based Rum Drum Ramblers are next, teaming up with another guy with St. Louis roots, the mandolinist and singer Pokey LaFarge for “Brick by Brick,” a sturdy and nimble tune halfway between hokum and the sort of contemporary string band flair that knocks them dead at summer festivals.

Durham, NC-based Viv & Riley (that’s Vivian Leva and Riley Colcagno) join with Nashville’s Rachel Baiman for the next selection. The three have recorded a whole album as kissing other ppl; for “The Long Game” here, the sound is country-inflected indie folk with robust vocal harmonies, crisp banjo and edgy guitar licks. It all goes down quite nicely.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Demon Records are proud to be releasing a live version of Teenager Of The Year, the incredible second album released by Frank Black, on 27 November 2026.

Released exclusively for Record Store Day Black Friday 2026, Teenager Of The Year – Live will be available at participating stores as a stunning 3LP set pressed on gold, green, and red vinyl, as well as a 2CD edition.

“In 2025 I toured with my 1994 band, the same group who were the principal players on a record called Teenager Of The Year . This record documents that tour, which was a kind of 30-year birthday for the original double LP. Each of the 22 tracks is, to my mind, quite different from each other; but I think rather than a lack of cohesiveness, they are joined beautifully in a crown of royalty, each retaining its individual charm while contributing to a sum that is greater, almost perfect, like 10 toes and 10 fingers and also an extra finger.

Teenager Of The Year was the only award I’ve ever received (back in high school), and you can smell that teen spirit resurrection on TOTY, and I hope 30 years later some of that funk remains.” —Frank Black, September, 2026, Los Angeles

The album originally released in 1994 is often described as “The best album the Pixies never made,” Teenager Of The Year is captured here in a thrilling live performance recorded during Frank Black and his band’s 2025 30th anniversary tour, which saw them perform the album across the USA and Europe. The tour culminated in a spectacular final show at the London Palladium, which was recorded for this release.

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Remembering Bert Jansch, born on this day in 1943. —Ed.

By its very nature, instrumental music is a study in form, and frequently to such an extent that listeners nurturing vocally focused comfort zones can feel left out in the cold. Bert Jansch’s non-vocal debut Avocet is well-poised to overcome this obstacle; a trio effort of welcoming beauty devoted to the glory of British birds, the whole stands amongst the lauded Scottish guitarist’s most fully realized achievements. 

The making of Bert Jansch’s twelfth LP transpired in February of 1978, a point on the calendar roughly coinciding with the nasty storm of punk rock, and wherever the eye of the squall traveled across the landscape of the UK, it can be safely surmised Avocet was elsewhere. Over time, the guitarist would come to be revered by a heaping dogpile of alternative-indie figures with creative DNA directly traceable to the punk upheaval, but it’s well established that the late ‘70s proved to be a tough stretch for practitioners of non-clamorous sounds, not limited to veterans of the Brit-folk scene.

Of course, it’s not all so simple. As related in Colin Harper’s excellent notes for Avocet’s reissue, Jansch’s prior set A Rare Conundrum, released in the UK in ’77 on Charisma, had been well-received by the Brit music press in part because it was viewed as a sort of homecoming affair after two full-lengths cut out California way (those would be ‘74’s L.A. Turnaround and ‘75’s Santa Barbara Honeymoon).

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Pianist Matthew Shipp and double bassist William Parker are among the most vital musicians to have hit the scene in any genre in the last half century. It is easy to argue that, on their respective instruments, there is no one better. On November 6, two releases by this duo make the case for their exceptional qualities. One is Zo, an explosive set originally released in 1994 and reissued by ESP-Disk on vinyl for the first time, along with compact disc and digital. The other is the astoundingly communicative A Whole System Of, a brand-spanking-new encounter available through TAO Forms, also on LP, CD, and digital.

Over 30 years have passed since Matthew Shipp and William Parker first entered a studio to record Zo as a duo, and if so much of the world has changed during that period, and not for the better, with the arrival of A Whole System Of, there is at least the reliability of Shipp and Parker’s creative cyclone stirring things up with so much dexterity. That’s not to infer that the partnership is static. Recognizable, most certainly, but predictable, no.

Shipp and Parker had played together a fair amount prior to Zo. There is a pair of earlier Shipp LPs, Points (a quartet) and Circular Temple (a trio), both recorded in 1990 and released in ’92 by the Silkheart and Quinton labels respectively. They were also in the band of saxophonist David S. Ware for four discs on Silkheart and DIW issued between 1991 and ’93.

The association exploded after Zo, but there were only two more duo recordings in the stretch leading up to A Whole System Of. The first was DNA, released in 1999 by Thirsty Ear, and the third Re-Union, released by Rogueart in 2021. Those two other duo sessions were documented: DNA five years after Zo, and Re-Union five years before A Whole System Of, reducing much of the aura of special occasion that might surround the latest duo team-up and replacing it with the reality of perseverance and growth.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | UK synth-pop outfit Blancmange’s first three studio albums: Happy Families (1982), Mange Tout (1984) and Believe You Me (1985) are to be reissued by London Records on LP and CD, revisiting a landmark period in the history of British electronic pop. Each album features freshly restored artwork and will be available on vinyl (new 2026 vinyl cuts, faithfully following the original track listings), and on CD, each featuring bonus tracks including B-sides, extended versions and remixes.

Originally released within a remarkably prolific run of four years, the three first Blancmange albums capture Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe at their most inventive, combining infectious synth-pop melodies with restless experimentation, distinctive rhythms and influences that reached well beyond the conventions of mainstream pop, and would go on to inspire a slew of artists including the likes of Moby, John Grant, and Honey Dijon.

Blancmange signed with London Records in February 1982 and, with their first flush of early global success of “Living On The Ceiling,” embarked on one of the great Imperial Phases of synth-pop. Their singles were Radio One hits secretly nourished by the likes of Can and Captain Beefheart, buoyed by off-the-wall videos and wrapped up in surreal sleeve iconography.

Described by Classic Pop as “a fine record featuring razor-sharp production, whose impressiveness only improves with age,” 1982’sHappy Families is reissued on transparent orange vinyl. The CD version features studio B-sides, some BBC session tracks and contemporary remixes of “Living On The Ceiling” by Roman Flügel and Richard Norris, both available on CD for the first time.

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Celebrating Bobby Dall, born on this date in 1963. —Ed.

I finished this review only to discover–much to my chagrin-that I wrote one 3 years ago. Just more proof, as any was needed, that I have the memory of a house fly. In any event, this new review is 150 times better than the old one. Besides, all self-respecting music critics should return to this hair metal masterpiece every couple of years. It’s that great.

Judging by the Punky Meadows look-alike on the cover of their 1986 debut and the twin sister of Gene Simmons on their second, these Mechanicsburg chest waxers couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be Angel or Kiss, so they went ahead and bested both of ‘em. Glam metal idols in the days before Kurt Cobain placed former hairdresser Rikki Rockett’s skyscraper ‘do on the endangered species list, Poison packed enough hair to stuff a mattress into their metal and by so doing lubed the loins of a million girls itching to steal their makeup.

Had Poison been nothing more than a pretty pooch, they’d have gone the way of Cats in Boots, and poor C.C. DeVille would have had to scuttle back to Three Mile Island with his poison blue Flying V guitar beneath his legs. But Poison had the skills to pay their thousand-dollar spandex bills and come Open Up and Say… Ahh! only Guns ‘N’ Roses had more powder in their pistol.

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