VIA PRESS RELEASE | 50 years ago this year, the placid seas of British and American rock were disturbed—if not destroyed—by a tsunami of sound arising from the streets of New York City and London.

It wasn’t called punk rock yet, just a bunch of bands, disparate in nature and unique in sound, but seemingly bound together by a single common cause. Something must change. Everything must change. And we’re the people who are going to change it. What happened next remains among the most dynamic and drama-filled interludes in rock history. Cleopatra Records was not around for punk rock. But, over the last 30 years, the label has done as much as anyone to preserve and advance the first wave of punk rock giants.

From The Damned to Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, and ex-Runaway Cherie Currie to late Sex Pistol Sid Vicious; from Eater and The Vibrators to The Dickies and The Germs, brilliant new releases and precious archive treasures alike have lit up the shelves, and later this year will see both a major punk rock sale and a very special 50th anniversary edition of the podcast Pirate Radio Cleopatra.

To kick everything off, however, Cleopatra’s long relationship with Cleveland’s legendary Dead Boys hits a savage new peak with the launch of The Dead Boys Bootleg Series, an ongoing collection of live recordings capturing Stiv, Cheetah, Johnny, Jeff, and Jimmy at their absolute peak. The first two albums in the series, Down On The Bowery (recorded in 1977) and From The Sleaziest Catacombs (1978) will be with us on May 22, across two all-encompassing CDs and a raucous double vinyl collection.

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Celebrating Chaka Khan on her 73rd birthday. —Ed.

When it comes to great pipes, Chaka Khan is hard to beat. Songbirds, and I’m talking your top-notch mellifluous as all hell songbirds, fall suddenly silent when she walks into the room. Because they know they can’t compete. They’re beat. It’s time to go home, sit in front of the television with a fifth of vodka, and sulk.

Khan, as everybody in the universe knows, got her start with Rufus, a multi-racial funk band of extraordinary merit. She shared singing duties with Ron Stockert on the band’s eponymous 1973 debut, but by 1974’s Rags to Rufus she had, with some not so gentle nudging by ABC Records, more or less become the whole show, a move that led Stockert to up and split halfway through the sessions for From Rags to Rufus.

Khan was more or less a force of nature, and her singing and scanty attire won her favorable comparisons to both Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin (she was nicknamed “the wild child” and “Little Aretha”). She also had balls, as Stevie Wonder, who contributed the smash hit “Tell Me Something Good” to the band, found out when Khan, only 20 at the time, turned down another of his compositions for the band, “Come and Get This Stuff.”

Khan may have become the band’s chief draw, but it would be a tragic mistake to ignore the musical talents of Rufus, who produced some of the most vitamin-fortified funk of one very funkified era. It’s apparent from the opening of the first track of Rags to Rufus, “You Got the Love,” which was written by Khan and Ray Parker Jr. and features Al Finer playing some of the coolest chukka-chukka guitar you ever will hear, to the accompaniment of what I assume is one barbarically heavy bass riff.

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There is a particular kind of violence that Exodus has always dealt in—not the theatrical, fog-machine menace of lesser bands, but something that feels genuinely unsanctioned, like a fight that started in the parking lot and ended up inside.

Since Bonded by Blood tore through the Bay Area in 1985, they’ve been the thrash scene’s permanently aggrieved outliers—Kirk Hammett’s former band, Gary Holt’s moonlighting gig, the almost-Big-Four stalwarts who somehow kept showing up with blood on their knuckles and a grudge to settle. Their story is one of constant turbulence: lineup churns, vocal swaps, and a decade-long loan of their own guitarist to Slayer.

Goliath, their thirteenth studio album, isn’t just a record—it’s a reckoning. Arriving five years after Persona Non Grata and marking the return of Rob Dukes behind the mic for the first time since 2010, it feels less like a comeback than a reclamation.

The production, handled by Mark Lewis in his first time at the board for Exodus—ending a thirty-year run with Andy Sneap—is muscular and clear without being sterile. Jack Gibson’s bass sits right up in the mix where it belongs, warm and rolling under the relentless twin-guitar assault of Holt and Lee Altus. Tom Hunting’s drums hit with the kind of tactile clarity that makes you involuntarily tense your shoulders. And Dukes? He sounds like he spent the last fifteen years storing up everything he needed to say and is now saying all of it at once.

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West Yorkshire–home of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, BBC personality and infamous sexual predator Jimmy Savile, professional wrestler Rampage Brown and the Rhubarb Triangle (don’t ask)—is as good a place as any to spawn one of the rarest of all things, an English noise rock band.

They’re called The Shits, and I don’t get the idea they want to be your friend, which makes the title of their new single, “Thank You for Being a Friend,” such a hoot.

Noise rock—or the best noise rock anyway—is largely an American, and more particularly an American Midwest phenomenon. Cows, Killdozer, the Jesus Lizard, Big Black, and experimental noise rockers U.S. Maple all hailed from Fly-Over Country. But England? I can’t think of a single noise rock band, although Gnod can pass if you’re the “Big Tent” type.

Or so it went until the Shits came along, producing an ugly din on two LPs (2020’s Punishment and 2023’s You’re a Mess) and some singles. And they’ve released two 2026 singles in advance of forthcoming album Diet of Worms, which, if the singles are any indication, promises to be their most uncompromising and remorseless full-length yet.

And that’s saying something. The title track of “You’re a Mess” is a piledriver mounted on a rocket sled, and vocalist Callum Howe sounds about as nice as the football hooligan in Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs who literally sucked an eyeball out of some unfortunate fellow football hooligan. And he looks the part.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | From their record-breaking 50 States in 50 Dates Tour in ’81 to their current tour, The Baddest Show on Earth, George Thorogood and the Destroyers have always given 100 percent on stage.

Now, as the legendary blues rockers celebrate more than five decades together, Craft Recordings shines a spotlight on their high-octane concerts with The Baddest Show on Earth: Greatest Hits Live. Spanning 1978–2024, the brand-new collection showcases some of the band’s most electrifying live performances—many making their debut on record—including such enduring crowd pleasers as “Who Do You Love,” “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” “Bad to the Bone,” and “Move It on Over.”

Arriving June 12, The Baddest Show on Earth will be available on LP (featuring four previously unreleased tracks), while the expanded CD and standard/hi-res digital editions include eight previously unreleased performances. Both physical formats feature new liner notes from GRAMMY® Award-winning producer and blues musician Scott Billington. In addition to black vinyl, fans can pick up a Translucent Yellow vinyl pressing exclusively at Barnes & Noble and Blazing Red Smoke vinyl exclusively through GeorgeThorogood.com and on tour.

For more than 50 years, George Thorogood and The Destroyers have remained one of the most consistent—and consistently passionate—progenitors of blues-based rock. And no one knows that better than the millions of fans who’ve seen them live. Formed in 1973 by guitarist, singer, and songwriter George Thorogood and drummer Jeff Simon, the Delaware-based band honed their sound on stages across the Northeast, building a devoted word-of-mouth following through their high-energy performances and blistering grooves.

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Remembering Jerry Reed, born on this day in 1937. —Ed.

A guitar picker extraordinaire and redneck comedian whose songs could almost be called funky, the late Jerry “Alabama Wild Man” Reed is one of my favorite country artists. Me, I’d love him if he’d never cut anything but “East Bound and Down” (the theme song of Smokey and the Bandit!), “Amos Moses,” and “The Preacher and the Bear,” a hilarious tale of an unfortunate meeting in the woods between a preacher hunting on the Sabbath and a grizzly bear that ends with the preacher up a tree and praying to his Lord, “I mean/Look at how he’s lookin’ at me/Does the word ‘fast food’ mean anything to you, Lord?/Oh, he’s hairy/And he’s still thinkin’/And he’s lookin’ at me like I… smell good!”

The man’s usual mode was high-spirited, and he had a knack for what you could call novelty tunes, but he was also capable of singing about the more lugubrious aspects of life; you know, broken hearts and all that. But I much preferred him at his wildest and woolliest, as did Robert Christgau, who called him “a great crazy,” and said apropos his more saccharine tunes, “He couldn’t sell soap to a hippie’s mother” and “RCA should ban the ballad.” Me, I hadn’t listened to him for years when my girlfriend gave me a truly terrible ‘70s compilation CD redeemed only by R. Dean Taylor’s great “Indiana Wants Me” and Reed’s fantastic swamp tall tale, “Amos Moses,” which is one of the songs on the 2000 best-of compilation, Jerry Reed Visits Hit Row.

Fiddle-driven opener “East Bound and Down” is a bootlegger’s anthem and smooth as Jim Beam Single Barrel bourbon, and includes a great solo by Reed. It speeds along like an 18-wheeler on the run from Smokey, and if you think it’s a bit slick, well, all I can say is all those thirsty boys in Atlanta don’t agree. “Amos Moses” is a funky tune about a Cajun alligator poacher, mean as a snake on account of his old man, who used the young Moses as alligator bait. He’s got one arm on account of a hungry gator, most likely killed a sheriff trying to track him down in the bayou, and the only thing cooler than his biography are Reed’s righteous guitar picking and distinctive voice, which are as good old boy as you can get.

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PHOTO: DANNY CLINCH | I recently sat down with Ani DiFranco to talk about her new book, The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music, and Freedom, out March 3, 2026 on Akashic Books. Written with Lauren Coyle Rosen, it’s a series of conversations tracing DiFranco’s creative process, spiritual life, and decades of work as an artist and activist.

Our conversation covers all of it and what it means to make art from a place of deep spiritual grounding. If you want to catch her live, she’s on the road this spring and summer for the Spirit of Love tour, kicking off April 22 in Jackson, MS and running through August. You can also find her at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 24, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on May 1, and a New York-area stop at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester on May 10.

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.

Everybody hates a mystery. Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill Kennedy? What became of Amelia Earhart? Did D.B. Cooper survive his immortal parachute jump, and who was he, anyway? And so it goes with the 1966 LP LSD Underground 12, recorded by an anonymous band of musicians and so mythical and hard to find that people questioned whether it even existed in the first place.

Well, it does exist, even if the writer Byron Coley wrote for Forced Exposure, “Virtually nothing is known about who, why, or how the album was created.” Well, the why is easily answered. Right on the very cool black-and-white cover, it says, “Music composed and played by LSD-influenced musicians the only record of this type available!”

Well, that “the only record of this type available!” is debatable—several LPs featuring people on LSD were released before this one, but they were mostly acid jibber-jabber with some music thrown in. Think Ken Kesey’s March 1966 LP The Acid Test or Alan Watts’ 1962 LP This Is It. And there’s strong evidence to support the notion that John Coltrane’s classic quartet (with the addition of Pharoah Sanders and two other sidemen) recorded the 1965 LP Om on LSD, although it’s never been fully corroborated.

Like Om, LSD Underground 12 is music and all music, and just as freaky-deaky as you’d expect. Not as free form as you’d expect—the musicians don’t just make random noises and go off on weird individualistic head-trip tangents. Or play like their faces are melting and their instruments along with them.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | UMe announces a suite of new physical and digital releases celebrating the 50th anniversary of Marvin Gaye’s No. 1 album, I Want You, out now.

The first highlight is a Vinylphyle premium vinyl reissue of the original album, the latest entry in a series of critically acclaimed audiophile releases which launched at the end of last year. As with all releases in the Vinylphyle series, lacquers were cut from the original analog tapes and pressed at 180gm at RTI, with the jacket, featuring its now-iconic cover by Ernie Barnes, a tip-on gatefold with reproductions of the original tape boxes and a new essay, this time a conversation with producer/ songwriter/ entrepreneur Salaam Remi. (More on him below.) Order HERE.

In tandem, UMe will unveil I Want You 2, a special 2LP set featuring bonus tracks, alternate takes, rarities first issued on CD in 2003, and now on vinyl for the first time with an additional new mix of the title song. Pressed on 180g vinyl, the packaging houses an exclusive lithograph, introductory liner notes by acclaimed Cincinnati-born R&B artist and sought-after songwriter Arin Ray (Chris Brown, John Legend). Order HERE.

Also arriving today is a stunning and spirited new digital remix of “Soon I’ll Be Loving You Again” by GRAMMY® Award-winning producer Salaam Remi (Nas, Amy Winehouse, Alicia Keys). “I’ve been listening to I Want You repeatedly in different ways for most of my life and have gotten a perspective of it over time,” Remi writes in the Vinylphyle release’s liner notes. “I realized this album is when I realized my adulthood… [it] gives me all the things I look for in music.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Eighties techno-pop band Vivabeat announced today the release of their first-ever live album, Wild World (Live in Los Angeles 1980-84), on Friday, March 27, 2026, via Liberation Hall Music. The album is available for presave and preorder here.

Fans of Vivabeat will be thrilled to learn that two never-before-released tracks, “Glisse le Rat” and “I’m Right,” appear on this new package. The 14 songs were recorded at three live shows in Los Angeles over a four-year period and capture different stages of the band’s career. The Whisky a Go Go date was one of Vivabeat’s earliest shows and features its original lineup. The Lhasa Club was a mid-career performance, and FM Station was the band’s final show ever.

The band’s co-founders, keyboardist and vocalist Marina (del Rey) Muhlfriedel and bass player and primary songwriter Mick Muhlfriedel spearheaded the live project after first reissuing their debut album Party in the War Zone and The House is Burning on Rubellan Remasters in late 2023, followed by expanded editions of Party in the War Zone Expanded and another incarnation of The House is Burning with Liberation Hall Music in 2025.

“I had doubts we could make a live album work given the primitive quality of the recordings,” said Vivabeat’s Marina Muhlfriedel. “I’m so glad to have been proven wrong. The live tracks on Wild World capture a wilder, edgier energy than our studio work, bringing me right back to who we were at the time.”

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Remembering Paul Atkinson, born on this day in 1946. —Ed.

With three enduring hit singles, the last of which derives from a classic album that’s as redolent of its era as any, The Zombies aren’t accurately classified as underrated, but it’s also right to say that the potential of much of their catalog went unfulfilled while they were extant. Since their breakup, subsequent generations have dug into that body of work, which has aged rather well, and right now nearly all of it can be found in Varèse Sarabande’s The Complete Studio Recordings, a 5LP collection released in celebration of the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For anyone cultivating a shelf of ’60s pop-rock vinyl, this collection is a smart acquisition.

The Zombies began cohering as a band around 1961-’62 in St Albans, Hertfordshire UK. By the time they debuted on record in ’64 the lineup had solidified, featuring lead vocalist-guitarist Colin Blunstone, keyboardist Rod Argent, guitarist Paul Atkinson, bassist Chris White, and drummer Hugh Grundy. That’s how it would remain until their breakup in December of ’67. Rightly considered part of the mid-’60s British Invasion, The Zombies’ stature in the context of this explosion basically rests on the success of two singles, both far more popular in the US than in the band’s home country.

Those hits, “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No,” each made the Billboard Top 10 (the former all the way to No. 2) and respectively open sides one and two of the US version of their first album, a move suggesting confidence on the part of their label Parrot that, as the needle worked its way inward, listeners wouldn’t become dismayed or bored by a drop-off in quality.

That assurance was well-founded. While “She’s Not There” is an utter pop gem, thriving on perfectly-judged instrumental construction (in its original, superior mono version with Grundy’s added drum input) and emotional breadth that’s found it long-eclipsing mere oldies nostalgia, and “Tell Her No” a more relaxed yet crisp follow-up, their talents were established beyond those two songs, even if nothing else on The Zombies quite rises to the same heights of quality.

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