WORDS AND IMAGES: TODD JUDD in HARRISBURG, PA | Three acts, one sold-out room, and a night that had absolutely no chill from start to finish. Tobyraps set the tone early—a rapper doing push-ups mid-verse will do that—before Artikal Sound System locked down the room with thick riddims and Logan Rex’s powerhouse vocals, leaving the crowd in disbelief. Then Ballyhoo! did what Ballyhoo! does best: delivered their signature chaotic, high-energy party that reminded everyone in the building exactly why live music is worth every penny.

The night’s music kicked off with Tobyraps (real name Ryan Tobbe), and I’ll admit I hadn’t heard his music before. That quickly changed. Toby is a rapper, songwriter, and motivational artist from Cleveland, Ohio, known for his upbeat, community-focused music and freestyle skills. His style has been described as Lil Dicky meets Watsky, and that comparison fits well.

He had the crowd engaged from the start—dropping push-ups, sit-ups, and sprinting across the stage while delivering his verses. His energetic performance and playful flow made him the perfect warm-up for what would become a great night of music.

Next up was Artikal Sound System (A.S.S.). Chris Montague, Fabian Acuña, and Christopher Cope came running onto the stage with a hilarious, choreographed dance to the cheers of the crowd. At the same time, Adam Kampf stepped behind the drums and Logan Rex strolled onstage as the band launched into “Self Sabotage.”

I’ve seen A.S.S. twice before, both times at festivals—Cali Vibes and Reggae Rise Up—so I was excited to experience them in a more intimate venue like XL Live. The question was whether their high-energy festival performance would translate into a smaller room. It absolutely did.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | After wrapping a sold out fall tour with his band, the acclaimed post-hardcore art rock pioneers Shudder To Think, musician Craig Wedren has announced the release of The Dream Dreaming Deluxe on April 10 via his Tough Lover imprint.

The new release from the acclaimed frontman and prolific film & television composer—known to TV audiences as the composer behind the wildly popular series Yellowjackets, among many other projects—is an expanded version of his acclaimed 2024 album which includes the original 11-song album, 5 unreleased tracks, and another 5-song acoustic EP with string quintet, recorded live at the legendary Henson Studios (now Chaplin Studios) in Los Angeles. Today, he also shares the first tease of the deluxe with “Nothing Bad” alongside the official video for the single directed by Craig Wedren, Shon Hedges, and Frank Barrera.

Wedren shares: “Increasingly, we have multiple “at-bats” when putting out a record—the initial release, the deluxe version, plus whatever other clever variations evolve from there. A lot of deluxe releases are bloated and boring, of course. But some of my favorite recent albums have been weirder, redux mutations of the initial, ‘definitive’ product.

I like having access to all of the bonus material that comes with an artist’s output in our current age—it can make an album feel like a dynamic, living thing, rather than a frozen moment in time. I’m happy to sacrifice a little of the mystery that used to be de rigueur for artists, in exchange for insight into process, inspiration, and backstory. That said, the THING is still the music, and if your record sucks, why waste anybody’s time with all the rest of it.

Read More »

Remembering Lightnin’ Hopkins in advance of Sunday’s birthdate. —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).

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | A decade on from its initial appearance back in 2016, one of the most in-demand of all Todd Rundgren live albums is being reissued—in complete form, for the first time—on vinyl and in a special 2 CD + DVD package on March 20.

Recorded live at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, CT on December 15, 2015, this incredible concert experience includes some of Todd’s best known songs including “Hello It’s Me” and “Bang On The Drum,” plus fan favorites that haven’t been performed live in decades! In addition, several songs here are new to the CD release—“Love Science,” “Soothe,” “God Said,” and a dynamic soul medley were all omitted from the original issue.It’s a sensational show, opening with a triumphal “I Saw The Light” and, to the surprise of many fans, all but ignoring his most recent album, Global, to deliver an oldies-heavy show instead. But he does not seem to be doing it willingly—indeed, early in the show, Rundgren all but castigates his audiences for ignoring his last few decades of work, and clinging only to the old, old favorites.

Not that he made things easy for his band, either. Joining Rundgren on stage were John Ferenzik (keyboards, guitar), Jesse Gress (guitar and vocals), Prairie Prince (drums), and Kasim Sulton (bass and vocals), and rehearsals for this tour saw them expected to learn some 50 different songs, while Rundgren kept each evening’s set list to himself until right before the gig. But the ploy worked. Two weeks into the tour, and the musicians sound as fresh tonight as they might have at the very beginning of the tour.

Celebrating Greg Norton on his 67th birthday. —Ed.

Hard and fast rules so let’s dispense with the long instrumental intro and get right down to the nitty-gritty; on 1985’s New Day Rising, St. Paul, Minnesota power trio Hüsker Dü permanently set themselves apart from the hardcore pack by leavening the genre’s speed freak aesthetic with increasing dollops of real melody.

The results are still bracing, but New Day Rising is friendlier than most hardcore, and more welcoming too. Parts of it are even nice, nice in the way that the iconic album cover (two dogs, one beautiful body of water, a sunrise) is nice.

Most of the “nice” comes to us thanks to drummer/vocalist Grant Hart, who was the Jekyll to Bob Mould’s Hyde in what amounted to a schizophrenic division of band labor. Hart provided the melody, sweetness and light. Bob Mould provided the buzz saw guitar and angst; he may not have doing the fashionable by spitting bile at Reagan’s America, but his personal life sounded a hot mess. As for Greg Norton, he had a very cool mustache. And he played bass guitar.

New Day Rising is a sonic world away from Hüsker Dü’s 1982 debut Land Speed Record, a landmark in speedcore that more than lives up to its bragging title. But like their SST label mates the Minutemen and Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü soon chafed against the formal constraints of hardcore.

Unlike said bands, however, Hüsker Dü didn’t abandon hardcore altogether. Instead they set themselves to the business of expanding hardcore’s horizons by employing catchy riffs and hooks, and the results are to be heard on such sweet (and bordering on silly) Hart-penned cuts as “Books About UFOs,” which features a piano of all things. Betcha Ian MacKaye didn’t see that one coming.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Trafalgar Releasing is proud to announce Power to the People: John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory and Special Guests – Live at the One To One Concert, New York City, 1972 is coming to big screens worldwide this spring. The film is produced by and released in partnership with Mercury Studios.

Representing the only full-length concerts John Lennon, with Yoko Ono, performed after leaving The Beatles, Power To The People: John & Yoko Live in NYC is a multiscreen concert film of two massive Madison Square Garden live shows. This is a film restoration twenty years in the making, with every frame physically and digitally cleaned by hand. This definitive version has been newly restored, re-edited, and remixed by the Lennons’ seven-time GRAMMY® Award-winning team, led by Sean Ono Lennon.

Tickets for Power To The People: John & Yoko Live in NYC go on sale Friday, March 20—coinciding with John and Yoko’s 57th wedding anniversary. Fans can visit powertothepeoplefilm.com to purchase tickets. Audio will be in 5.1 Surround or Dolby Atmos® at select locations. Visit the official event website now and sign up for the most current information and event updates.

John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory and Special Guests performed these now-legendary sold-out One To One concerts on August 30, 1972, to a combined audience of 40,000 people, raising over $1.5M (equivalent to $11.5M in 2026) for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi), the leader in high-fidelity audio reissues, is proud to announce the audiophile release of two cornerstones of the progressive-rock canon from British supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP): the 1971 live masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition and the 1972 studio gem Trilogy.

The albums, which arrive on March 13, follow MoFi’s October 2025 reissue of the band’s 1971 prog staple, Tarkus, and the September 2025 release of their seminal self-titled debut. Each is presented as a numbered-edition 180g 33RPM LP (limited to 3,000 copies) and a numbered-edition Hybrid SACD.

Sourced from the original tapes (1/4” / 15 IPS / Dolby A analog copy to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe), the vinyl editions are pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing and housed in premium Stoughton gatefold jackets. These definitive reissues bring the visionary depth and virtuosic musicianship of Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer to the fore with spectacular dimensionality, breadth, and clarity.

There is a reason Greg Lake deemed Trilogy “such an accurate record” when looking back at it decades later. The trio’s third studio album teems with exacting arrangements and multi-hued colors that showcase the band’s willingness to experiment. Expanding by distilling the power of their debut and the epic leanings of Tarkus into a more accessible whole, Trilogy stands as the most representative example of the ensemble’s trademark styles.

Read More »

Celebrating Steve Harris on his 70th birthday. —Ed.

Children of the Damned, heed my warning: Iron Maiden offers terrifying proof of why it’s a bad idea to mess with the Dark One. No, bassist and chief songwriter Steve Harris didn’t find himself scuttling around the studio ceiling during Iron Maiden’s recording of 1982’s landmark The Number of the Beast, nor did lead singer Bruce Dickinson get raped by a succubus with the body of Scarlett Johansson and the face of Gene Simmons. And no one in the band was fatally impaled by a flying mic stand while they were laying down “Hallowed Be Thy Name.”

It was worse! Lights reportedly turned themselves on and off in the studio! Equipment, which fails all the time, inexplicably failed! And what was producer Martin Birch’s punishment for meddling in the dark arts? He was involved in a traffic accident involving a mini-bus sardined with real live nuns. Papal penguin punishers! Who probably had to be restrained from ruler-whipping him to death! And the cost of repairs? £666! And he didn’t have collision insurance!

That’s some scary shit, and totally true, but it was worth it—The Number of the Beast is revered as a classic in the heavy metal genre, and no doubt there are lots of fifty-somethings out there who owe their very survival to it because how else would they have gotten through their awful teen years? Their parents sucked, school sucked, the pot was shitty, they were never going to get laid (it was a mathematical impossibility), but at least they had “Hallowed Be Thy Name”!

And it’s still saving lives today. The joke was on Satan! The album is a lifeline, and not a one-way ticket to suicide and the Pit, no matter how many little Christian idiots saw fit to burn it or beat it to death with hammers (they were afraid the fumes would drive them insane!).

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Eagles’ 1975 studio album, One Of These Nights, was a milestone album for the band, earning them their first GRAMMY® Award and becoming the first of four consecutive #1 albums. Rhino will release a Deluxe Edition of the album on May 1, in advance of the band’s headlining performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and upcoming stadium dates as part of The Long Goodbye, Act III.

One Of These Nights (Deluxe Edition) will be available as a 3CD/Blu-ray set featuring a new mix of the original album, an unreleased, 16-song 1975 concert at Anaheim Stadium, and new Dolby Atmos and high-res stereo mixes. A 3LP version, released the same day, will include the new album mix and the full concert recording. The lacquers were cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. Pre-order here.

Produced by Don Henley, the CD and vinyl editions include a new mix of the album by Rob Jacobs. Originally produced by Bill Szymczyk and recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami and the Record Plant in Los Angeles, One Of These Nights achieved quadruple Platinum certification and the single “Lyin’ Eyes” won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

The unreleased live recording captures the Eagles’ performance at the Sunshine Festival in Anaheim on September 28, 1975. Recorded at the end of the tour for One Of These Nights, the show features Henley, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, and Don Felder. Their set blends songs from that album (“Lyin’ Eyes,” “Take It To The Limit”) with hits from the group’s first three albums: “Take It Easy,” “Witchy Woman,” “Already Gone,” and “The Best Of My Love.”

Read More »

Born in Moscow in 1986 and currently based in Berlin via Tel Aviv, Mary Ocher is the daughter of Jewish-Ukrainian parents and a fiercely committed musician who’s been on the international scene for 25 years. With her new album Weimar, she shifts gears from her art-punk foundations to deliver an album of considerable intensity and beauty. It features Ocher in truly solo mode. It’s out March 13 on 130-gram 10-inch vinyl and digital through Underground Institute.

Mary Ocher has amassed a sizable discography, but she’s also a prolific collaborator. The folks she’s grooved with creatively include King Khan (producer of her 2013 LP EDEN), the drum duo Your Government (co-credited on her eponymous 2016 LP and other releases), Die Tödliche Doris and Felix Kubin (guests on her 2017 LP The West Against the People), Julia Kent (cellist on a sweet cover of Robbie Basho’s “Blue Crystal Fire” on her 2017 10-inch Faust Studio Sessions and Other Recordings), and pianist-composer Roberto Cacciapaglia and Mogwai (on her 2023 LP Approaching Singularity: Music for the End of Time).

But with one exception, Weimar is just Ocher singing and playing a piano she purchased during the pandemic after she left her now ex-husband. As track four on this concise but powerful LP (released on heavy 10-inch vinyl to maximize the sound quality) is titled “Divorce,” it’s clear this collection of compositions is quite personal.

The record does include two new versions of piano-based songs from Ocher’s discography, “(As Free as) the Great Outdoors (revisited)” (originally from EDEN) and “On the Streets of Hard Labor (revisited)” (first recorded on her debut CD, 2011’s War Songs). The EDEN recording of “(As Free as) the Great Outdoors” hit a sweet spot between Lotte Lenya-style torch songs and crafty avant-pop. The revisit here ups the torchy quality by leaning into a zone reminiscent of Diamanda Galas, but mildly so.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | A new album from David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) entitled, Tracks From the Attic Revisited is confirmed for release on May 22 from Independent Project Records (IPR) and will be available in black or gold colored vinyl, CD, and all digital formats and can be pre-saved here. The first single from the album, “If Muzak Be the Junk Food of Love,” will be available April 15.

Reshaped, sometimes rewritten, and now reinterpreted with a full band, the ten tracks that make up Tracks From the Attic Revisited are culled from the 37(!)-track home recordings on Tracks From the Attic released in 2024, also from IPR. These new, fully fleshed out versions are an arresting distillation of David J’s eclectic taste which includes late ‘70s New Wave, a lifelong love of classic country music, and Nick Drake-like romanticism.

“The 2024 demos tracks that became Tracks From the Attic were like neglected little seeds that had been set aside, or fallen on fallow land,” said David J. “They’ve since been gathered up, nurtured, tended and brought back to life as little buds for Tracks From the Attic Revisited. Now this is the bloom.”

When he first went digging through boxes of old tapes, David J didn’t yet know that he was about to embark on a long, fruitful conversation with his own past, present, and even future self. As he uncovered demos recorded over some four decades, he noticed that some songs were asking him to get reacquainted with them. He eventually complied, approaching material that sometimes he had no recollection of having written as when producing another artist’s music.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | George Michael Entertainment has announced in partnership with Mercury Studios, plans for a worldwide theatrical release of a brand-new, never-before-seen film titled George Michael: The Faith Tour, set for release this year.

Shot at the iconic Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy during the European leg of the Faith Tour in 1988, the film captures a turning point that transformed George Michael from a global superstar into a singular, era-defining artist, whose influence continues to reverberate across music, fashion, and culture today. George Michael: The Faith Tour invites audiences to experience the tour as it was meant to be seen and heard.

Directed by longtime collaborators Andy Morahan and David Austin, this once lost film has been meticulously restored and remastered, revealing George’s original vision with breathtaking clarity and power. The result is an intimate yet explosive glimpse of an artist in complete command of his voice and stagecraft.

A triumph in archival filmmaking, the film transforms rare footage assembled from a 14-camera shoot captured on 35mm film over two nights, into an extraordinary cinematic event. George Michael: The Faith Tour is a celebration of ambition and fearless artistry at its peak, and a moment when the then 24-year-old George Michael changed the course of his career. This global theatrical event invites audiences to rediscover the power and joy of George Michael in full flight.

Read More »