In 1993 Victoria Williams gained a wide audience through Sweet Relief, a star-studded covers disc intended to aid in paying her mounting medical bills related to multiple sclerosis. In ’94 she hooked up with a gaggle of high-profile help to cut Loose, which stands as her best-known studio album, and a year later she took the songs out on tour with the Loose Band. Recordings were made, and earlier in 2017 Fire Records put Town Hall 1995 on vinyl for Record Store Day. Copies of the LP are still available, and on July 28 it’s out on compact disc and digital.
Like most people, I guess, I passed on checking out Victoria Williams’ debut Happy Come Home when it was released by Geffen in 1987, and did the same when Swing the Statue! trickled into store racks via an ailing Rough Trade in 1990; the label’s (temporary) demise through bankruptcy insured a lack of promotion when the artist really could’ve used it, but through a variety of activities (playing with Giant Sand, acting in Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues) she continued plugging away into the early ’90s, prior to the diagnosis of MS delivering a severe setback.
Today, it’s common knowledge that Williams triumphed over the disorder, but upon Sweet Relief’s emergence in 1993 matters weren’t so certain. Celeb benefits regularly ooze a self-satisfaction that can breed a lack of urgency and listener cynicism, but the motivation behind Sweet Relief felt right, even if the performers assembled, which included alternative heavyweights Pearl Jam, Soul Asylum, and Evan Dando, varying strains of alt-country in Lucinda Williams, Giant Sand, and The Jayhawks, and the aging cool of Lou Reed, ranged in one’s personal esteem.
This fact only reinforces the worth of Williams’ songwriting, which flowered even further on her breakthrough album Loose; released by Mammoth in the afterglow of Sweet Relief, the label also rescued Swing the Statue! from consumer purgatory during the same period. As stated above, akin to the almost ludicrous lineup producer Anton Fier assembled for her debut, Loose is loaded with guests; amongst a mess of session cats, there’s half of R.E.M., Dave Pirner, the Tower of Power Horns, Rose Stone, and arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, who also assisted on her debut.
Pasadena, Whittier bookstores, record sellers are enjoying a Millennial-led resurgence in sales: Young people are leading to the retro trend, experts say. David Sax, who wrote “The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter,” said millennials, who grew up on digital technology, crave products offering a tactile experience. They also might just be bored with looking at screens, Sax said. “For many of them, especially as they get younger, digital technology is not anything new and magical — it is kind of the norm,” Sax said. “
Putting The Record Straight: Of all comebacks, none is as sonorous as this. Veteran ‘vinylhead’ Jaydeep Joy aka Jazzy Joe, hums a happy tune as his fingers flip through the scores of records lining the racks at 
Electric Fetus’ Bob Fuchs on the vinyl revival: Start being sorry you gave away all your vinyl records (if you ever had any), or didn’t want your parents’ or grandparents’ collection, or don’t have a turntable. Vinyl is back. In fact, vinyl records are so popular that Sony, the biggest of the Big Three record labels, recently announced that it will start pressing them again, as soon as March 2018, in a new factory near Tokyo. The last time Sony made a vinyl record was 1989. Bob Fuchs knows more about the music business locally than anyone. The general manager of the Electric Fetus, a 
The Smiths announce deluxe The Queen is Dead vinyl box set with unreleased recordings: The Smiths are releasing a deluxe version of their 1986 album The Queen is Dead on 20 October 2017. 
