We’ve closed TVD’s HQ for our annual summer break. While we’re away, why not fire up our Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores?
Perhaps there’s an interview, review, or feature you might have missed? Catch up, and we’ll see you back here Monday, 8/10.
Greetings from Laurel Canyon!
Well, I got up feeling so down / I got off being sold out / I’ve kept the movie rolling / But the story’s getting old now / Oh yeah
Well I just looked in the mirror / And things aren’t looking so good / I’m looking California / And feeling Minnesota / Oh yeah
So now you know / Who gets mystified / So now you know / Who gets mystified
Show me the power child, I’d like to say / That I’m down on my knees today / Yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away / ‘Til I’m up on my feet again
Our summer heatwave is here and so are my “summer lazies.” Last week I was so knocked around I couldn’t even spit an Idelic minute, let alone an hour.
Ultimately, LA is the coolest city to spend the summer in. The humidity is low, making summer nights relatively comfortable. As I flipped through my crates of melting vinyl, I felt urges for grunge, ’70s punk, oddballs, and a few new bits.
WORD AND IMAGES: MATT MARTINEZ IN LONG BEACH, CA | The return of Vans Warped Tour in 2025 brought together Warped Tour veterans and many bands that would have sharpened their teeth as performers on these stages, had Warped Tour never gone on hiatus. With the success of this mixing of bands last year, Kevin Lyman has continued that ideology with this year’s lineup. We have some returning fan favorites and a slew of bands that have never graced the Warped Tour stage until now.
The Vans and Off the Wall stages were the biggest on-site and hosted some of the most legendary bands in Warped Tour history, giving them some of the longest set times of the day. Some other favorites included: Mayday Parade, Taking Back Sunday, Third Eye Blind, The Used, and Papa Roach.
The Ghost and Beatbox stages hosted many bands that built their careers at Warped, as well as up-and-coming bands leading the charge for the new Warped Generation. Featuring bands like: The Academy Is…, Drain, Silverstein, Hawthorne Heights, and many more.
The Verizon, Doordash, Rex, and Octopus stages were a mix of genres, with pop punk bands, metalheads, hardcore kids, and everything in between. If you want to experience some new music for yourself, you could find it here. Featuring bands like: Daisy Grenade, Origami Angel, Jiluka, The Paradox, The Ataris, Meet Me @ The Alter, Hot Milk, Save Ferris, and so many more bands playing tight 30-minute sets.
Now that the festival is 30 years old, there’s a feeling of passing the torch, as you could see plenty of parents bringing their kids to experience a festival that has always held such a strong place in their hearts. Many of these kids seem to have been born after Warped Tour first ended in 2019, but their parents introduced them to music that will live on through them.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sony Music Vision is proud to announce that Queen Budapest, the first Western stadium rock show to take place behind the Iron Curtain, and the final filmed Queen live performance, will be presented in cinemas and IMAX worldwide beginning October 7 through Trafalgar Releasing.
Queen Budapest will be released to mark the 40th anniversary of this pivotal moment in the band’s history, and the film has been meticulously restored in 4K from the original filmed 35mm footage by Sir Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production facility in New Zealand, with newly remixed audio from the original multitrack recordings to deliver the most immersive presentation of the performance to date.
Captured on July 27, 1986, at Budapest’s Népstadion, during the band’s “The Magic Tour,” the concert was a groundbreaking moment, as Queen became the first Western rock band to perform behind the Iron Curtain during a period of profound cultural and political change. In addition to 80,000 tickets selling out, an estimated 45,000 people listened to the group outside, and some fans had travelled from as far away as Russia and Poland to see the concert.
The show was professionally filmed on 35 mm movie film by 17 of Hungary’s best cameramen. The gear employed included 17 cameras and 25 miles of film, which was all that was available in the country, and the Hungarian government approved the entire operation, which was a first for a Communist State.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Soon has been a long time coming. The new album from Scott Fagan has been some 55 years in the making. Its songs, all drawn from the 1971 Broadway rock opera of the same name that Fagan conceived and wrote with songwriting partner Joe Kookoolis, were originally intended as the follow-up to his classic 1968 debut, South Atlantic Blues, but fate intervened.
A radical call-to-arms against the complacency of the modern world, and a tone poem about art, radicalism, commerce, and corruption, the rock opera told an age-old story of an artist forced to make a devil’s bargain between their principles and success. It drew on Fagan’s own experiences in the music industry, and featured him in the lead role, alongside Richard Gere, Barry Bostwick (later the lead in Grease and The Rocky Horror Show), Joe Butler (of Lovin’ Spoonful), Vicki Sue Robinson, and Peter Allen.
The original Broadway production, subject to creative meddling that compromised its creators’ vision, closed the day after its opening. A year later, it was restaged in Los Angeles for a brief two-week run. Then Fagan’s opus was lost to time. The album was shelved, never to be recorded or heard. Until now.
Recorded over seven days in July 2025 at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, a hallowed studio that has hosted Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Alex Chilton, and The Cramps among others, the sessions found the now 80-year-old singer-songwriter working with a crack Memphis rhythm section—drummer Terence Clark (Brandi Carlisle, Keith Urban), guitarist Steve Selvidge (The Hold Steady, North Mississippi All Stars) and keyboardist Rick Steff (Cat Power, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Lucero).
Celebrating Kenny Burrell on his 95th birthday. —Ed.
In March of 1958 producer and Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock organized a session with two up-and-comers in a very fertile scene. Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane was the result, pairing one of the most consistent guitarists in Modern Jazz with the now long renowned tenor saxophonist. It took over five years for those recordings to hit the retail racks via the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz, but the contents have been reissued numerous times since, reinforcing the high level of play.
Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane is certainly a notable album. While Coltrane had played with guitarists before, this set is the only studio album to feature him leading (in this instance, co-leading) a band with that instrument (Wes Montgomery did join Coltrane’s sextet featuring Eric Dolphy for some West Coat live dates in 1961, even playing the Monterey Jazz Festival, but any tapes of those performances have yet to surface).
That this album sat in the vaults for half a decade will understandably lead some to assume it’s a lesser recording, but Weinstock had amassed quite a bit of Coltrane studio material while he had him under contract, sessions methodically issued as the saxophonist’s star continued to rise, often with Coltrane posthumously designated as leader.
To expand a bit, Coltrane and Burrell do play together in a sextet for three tracks on The Cats, a 1957 recording released in ’59. Issued as a leaderless date (sometimes credited to the Prestige All Stars), it sure sounds like it was conceived as a Tommy Flanagan session; the other two tracks feature the pianist in trio with bassist Doug Watkins and drummer Louis Hayes (trumpeter Idrees Sulieman completes the sextet).
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi), the leader in high-fidelity audio reissues, is proud to announce the definitive audiophile reissue of Michael Jackson’s 1987 album, Bad.
Marking the fourth chapter in MoFi’s ongoing quest for sonic perfection across the King of Pop’s legendary catalog, this landmark album will be available August 21, 2026, as an UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP Box Set, strictly limited to 6,000 numbered copies (pre-order HERE). The label will also reissue the album on numbered-edition Hybrid SACD complete with mini-LP-style gatefold packaging.
Sourced from the original masters (Mitsubishi X-80 16-bit/48kHz digital master to analog console to lathe), housed in a deluxe slipcase, and pressed on MoFi vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, MoFi’s UltraDisc One-Step box set delivers this 11-times-platinum smash in audiophile quality for the first time. The set notably includes the bonus track “Leave Me Alone,” which was left off original vinyl editions.
Rendered on this reissue with enhanced balance, presence, physicality, imaging, and weight, BAD showcases Jackson’s signature vocals with lifelike detail and dimensions. This collectible set plays with a level of energy, crispness, and smoothness that throws into relief the innovative technology and instrumentation that help provide the foundations for Jackson’s brilliant compositions.
Strike one up for the funny guys. I think it’s an incontrovertible fact that most people prefer serious bands, bands like U2 and the Police and Nirvana and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Bands with a wild sense of humor? Most can’t take them seriously, and that’s the kiss of death.
So what are the odds that Minehead’s Getdown Services—the rock/disco/funk duo of Ben Sadler and Josh Law—are being called “Britain’s best band”? And not just by me. By fans, critics, fishmongers, and the pooch that gets played like an electric guitar on the video of “Doggy Dribble.”
Getdown Services have been described as “genre agnostic,” whatever that means. I suspect it means they’re all over the place—the duo has described their sound as “disco and eighties and like seventies infused groove-based music,” as well as classic rock.
One of my favorite Getdown Services moments is their cover of AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock,” which they recorded double time (with the Bug Club) for the Humm Sessions. You owe it to yourself to gape at the band’s rock and roll savvy.
Ben Sadler on Getdown Services: “You see blokes who seem to have absolutely no dignity or self-worth at all, chucking mushy peas at a load of kids? I think we touch a similar sort of thing.” Josh Law on Getdown Services: “When we started playing live early on, it became quite obvious that this was a thing about us trying to make each other laugh, really.”
Oshawa, ON | More ‘sweet,’ less bitter as Oshawa gives proper send-off to music scene’s biggest booster: The community came out this month to thank a true community builder in downtown Oshawa and say goodbye, though the object of all that affection insisted he’s not going anywhere. Can a business be called ‘iconic’ if it has been in the same spot for just three years? Maybe not, but the crusty Irishman with the heart of gold who runs the place—or did until a week or so ago—certainly fits the description, 42 years since arriving in Canada to stake his claim as a writer, music historian, record store manager and old-fashioned denim-clad community builder.
Orlando, FL | Park Ave CDs: Orlando’s hidden gem: Founded in 1984 and located at 2916 Corrine Drive, Park Ave CDs has served and supported the Orlando community for more than 40 years. …Founded in 1984 and located at 2916 Corrine Drive, Park Ave CDs has served and supported the Orlando community for more than 40 years. Park Ave CDs sells vinyls, CDs and cassettes for music lovers. They also sell books, DVDs, VHS, Blu-rays, T-shirts, posters, specialty sodas, toys, Japanese candies, buttons, stickers, greeting cards and unique gift items you won’t find anywhere else. The wide variety Park Ave CDs has to offer beyond vinyls is enough to keep customers coming and to open its audience to new people who might have not considered shopping or browsing here.
Hayward, CA | Hayward’s Mighty Delrokz brings lo-fi nostalgia to ‘Jackin’ My Beats.’ Teacher, DJ and record-store owner Gabe Dela Cruz delivers a laid-back instrumental album inspired by hip-hop, community and late-night Adult Swim memories. …I’ve yet to formally meet Gabe Dela Cruz, but we’ve orbited around each other as people active in their community often do. Between starting up The Stacks Record Shop, performing DJ sets at local businesses like Buffalo Bill’s and supporting youth walk-outs at Mt. Eden High School, Gabe’s investment in Hayward is as robust as anyone’s. From what I’ve seen at his shop, with jazz records alongside hip-hop albums and sidelines including MF Doom action figures and retro NES games, Jackin’ My Beats brings a number of those influences into a 12-song set that will have listeners bobbing their heads, possibly before they realize it.
West Ashley, SC | Weezer fans can hear the band’s new album before it’s released by visiting this SC record store: You can “Say It Ain’t So,” but only one South Carolina record store is hosting an official listening party for Weezer’s new album. The band posted a list of participating U.S. record stores on Instagram on July 29, along with a promise that those who attend the events will hear the band’s upcoming album, “Weezer,” commonly known as the “Gold Album,” before its official release date on Aug. 21. “The time for gold is approaching. Those who gather on August 15th and 16th will hear Weezer first,” the caption on the post states. Monster Music & Movies in West Ashley is the only record store in the Palmetto State hosting a listening party, according to the list.
WORD AND IMAGES: MATT MARTINEZ IN LONG BEACH, CA | There is no more famous festival than the Vans Warped Tour. Started by Kevin Lyman in 1995, the festival aimed to give a stage to punk, ska, hardcore, metal, and alternative bands. It quickly became a household name as the biggest summer traveling festival, and after 24 years, Warped Tour came to an end in 2019.
However, in 2025, Warped Tour was brought in a new format. It was now a two-day festival with only three locations. After the success of its return last year, Warped Tour announced it will return in 2026, maintaining the two-day format and now including shows in Mexico and Canada. Southern California has always been a fan favorite, and Warped Tour invaded Long Beach, CA, where fans showed up to show their love for this festival.
Walking through the gates of Warped Tour was like walking through a time capsule. On the other side of security were a plethora of fans throwing it back to their high school days, with all the older emos bringing back their dyed hair, raccoon-tail hairstyles, and black-and-white checkered clothing as far as the eye could see.
You even saw the new generation of kids and teenagers going full scene-kid looks, showing that this style can still work across generations. You also had the punks showing up with liberty spikes, many people wearing costumes, and battle vests showing off fans’ favorite bands. This was a melting pot of counter culture, and we had music to unite us.
Like usual, Warped Tour does not announce the set times before the show. At 11 AM, fans gathered around the Warped Wall as Kevin Lyman dropped the curtain on the legendary inflatable that holds the schedule of the bands for the day. Fans mobbed the site to take pictures of the set times while they frantically planned their day on the spot.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Trafalgar Releasing and Rhino Entertainment are proud to announce the return of a beloved annual tradition: the “Grateful Dead Meet-Up At The Movies.”
Screening in select territories worldwide, this year’s highly anticipated event will take place on Saturday, August 8 and Monday, August 10, beginning during “The Days Between,” the annual period honoring the band’s legendary frontman, Jerry Garcia, from August 1 (his birthdate) to August 9 (his passing). Tickets for “Meet-Up At The Movies” are on sale now at MeetUpAtTheMovies.com.
This can’t-miss global cinema event will see Dead Heads around the globe gather to celebrate the complete, historic June 17, 1991 concert from Giants Stadium, featuring Jerry Garcia, Bobby Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and with Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick on keys. Opening with a shocking “Eyes Of The World,” the Dead were firing on all cylinders from the opening notes of the show, mixing beloved classics like “Truckin’” and “Uncle John’s Band” with rarities including “Saint Of Circumstance,” “Might As Well,” “New Speedway Boogie,” and “China Doll.”
But the real standout was the recurrence of “Dark Star,” which wove in and out of the setlist, making no less than six distinct appearances and teases during the show. The Dead capped off the spectacular night with a perfect song to send the crowd on its way—The Band’s “The Weight.”
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Oh Boy Records—which celebrates its 45th Anniversary in 2026—has announced the October 9th release of Found Dogs, a newly curated John Prine archival release celebrating the 30th anniversary of Prine’s 1995 LP, Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings.
Assembled from the original recording sessions and demos from the era, Found Dogs collects alternate takes, acoustic solo performances, and five previously unreleased Prine originals, offering listeners an intimate look at his songwriting and studio process during a pivotal era of his career. Initially previewed in April as a limited-edition run of 2000 LPs for Record Store Day, Found Dogs will be widely available physically and digitally on October 9th, a day before what would have been Prine’s 80th birthday on October 10th.
Out today, the single “World Without Love” is accompanied by a lyric video featuring never-before-seen Super 8 film footage of Prine on a family vacation in the early 1970s. An outtake from the Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings sessions, “World Without Love” is one of five previously unheard, original John Prine songs in the set.
In addition to the release of Found Dogs, Oh Boy Records and the Prine family recently celebrated the release of John Prine: Live at Old Town School of Folk, a collection of 28 tracks captured during his headline performance at Old Town’s annual “Blue Jean Gala” benefit concert and fundraiser in his home city of Chicago, IL.
And it’s a giveaway!
Here at The Vinyl District, we’re big on protection—not of the firearm variety, but smart common-sense measures to protect our vinyl investment(s), which is why we’re delighted to introduce you to ClearKeep Premium Collectible Storage Sleeves—quite literally the finest sleeves we’ve ever wrapped around a record.
What struck us first was the thickness of the sleeves—3.5 mil, which may sound like in-the-weeds stuff, but truly makes a difference in protective strength and stability. Second, as the name implies, they’re crystal-clear—no hazy plastic here. Our records literally shine in these gems. Lastly, and they really don’t make mention of this but we will—they ship flat, not folded—so there are no awkward folds or bends when you get down to the last few in the pack. It’s a nuance we really appreciate.
So, we said to the ClearKeep folks, “Let’s put these on readers’ radar!” And as such, we’re happy to sponsor this giveaway to introduce you to something Clearly needed by any serious collector or those just getting the vinyl bug. First up, though, some official background:
ClearKeep has announced the launch of its premium vinyl record outer sleeves, designed to address common frustrations that collectors and record stores face with traditional record protection products.
Many vinyl record sleeves on the market are thin, cloudy, prone to splitting, or diminish the presentation of the albums they are meant to protect. ClearKeep was created to offer a premium alternative focused on clarity, durability, and collector presentation.
Designed for both vinyl collectors and retail environments, ClearKeep outer sleeves are engineered to be crystal clear, thicker, and stronger than standard record sleeves while helping preserve album covers and improve shelf presentation.
Celebrating Jeffrey Hammond on his 80th birthday. —Ed.
Despite their much-vaunted reputation for producing ambitious concept albums of enormous heft, Jethro Tull are bearable only as a singles band. Sure, Tull’s 1971 concept album Aqualung is a classic, but I’d sooner be hit with a brick than listen to the following year’s concept album Thick as a Brick, and the only passionate feelings I can summon up for 1973’s concept album A Passion Play (yes, they hit the trifecta!) can be summed up with the words “Turn it off.” But “Bungle in the Jungle” and “Living in the Past”? Count me in!
Ian Anderson has always been an entertaining and exasperating crank—stand him on one leg like a deranged flamingo and hand him a flute and he will tie your mind into sailors’ knots with his folk-rock swoops, loops, and other assorted paradiddle, that is when he isn’t spouting folksy wisdom and moralistic sermons of the sort you’d expect from the stewed Diogenes permanently welded to the end stool in your local pub.
I disagree with The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, who wrote of old flamingo leg, “Ian Anderson is one of those people who attracts admirers by means of a principled arrogance that has no relation to his actual talents or accomplishments” for the simple reason that Anderson is talented—he has simply misused his talent for evil. Thick as a Brick is ample proof of this fact.
But it takes a real genius to fritter away all of one’s talent, and Anderson isn’t that sort of real genius. Seemingly, despite himself, he has produced songs that don’t happen to be almost forty-four minutes long. And I’m talking pithy and unique songs, the best of which made seventies FM radio a happier place. But eccentric that he is, he didn’t manage to come up with enough radio-ready classics to fill a greatest hits compilation, which is at least in part what makes 1976’s M.U. – The Best of Jethro Tull so interesting.
