VIA PRESS RELEASE | Making Vinyl ’23 keynoter Nabil Ayers is President of Beggars Group US and author of the 2022 memoir My Life in the Sunshine. In Minneapolis, Nabil will discuss his years as a musician, record store owner, and label group president, as well as vinyl’s importance in Beggars’ release strategy for its roster, including many GRAMMY Award-winning artists.

The vinyl record industry will congregate in Minneapolis at the Lowes Minneapolis Hotel on June 7-8, 2023, with enhanced evening events to include live music and exceptional networking. Marking our sixth year, Making Vinyl Minneapolis will focus on the business aspects of sustaining profitable growth amid rising prices, considerable supply chain issues, and raw materials shortages. Registration is available here.

2023 also marks the 75th anniversary of CBS Labs on June 21, 1948, officially unveiling the Long-Playing (LP) record. The conference also coincides with the July 7 birthday of Minneapolis native Prince, who died in 2016. Prince would have been 65 years old. His records—catalog and vault revelations—continue to be big sellers on vinyl.

All aspects of the vinyl comeback will be explored to keep the retail and e-commerce supply chain teeming with new releases and reissues of previously released material. Vinyl’s current popularity—15 years of double-digit growth—defies all technological and economic logic in the digital age.

Yet, given the immense expense of mounting such an operation continues to attract new financial investment, as the undeniable appeal of such a deluxe product shows no signs of slowing down. Find out on June 7-8, 2023, in Minneapolis from the experts who will share their secret formula to success.

Celebrating Brian Downey on his 72nd birthday. —Ed.

You wanna hear a miracle? I lived for almost five-and-a-half decades without ever hearing Jailbreak, or any other Thin Lizzy album for that matter. Here vocalist/bassist and chief songwriter Phil Lynott and his Irish compatriots put out a truly tremendous LP in America’s Bicentennial Year, not to mention a parcel of other great LPs, and what was I doing? Listening to Elton John and John Denver and England Dan and John Ford Coley, any band basically with a guy named John in it. If Debbie Gibson’s middle name been John, I would have listened to her too.

I would love to be able to say I simply wasn’t into hard rock back then, but I owned albums by Bad Company, UFO (UFO? Me? Inexplicable!), Robin Trower, and Foghat, so that’s sheer bunk. But there’s no point in crying over guilty milk, and it’s never too late to make up for past mistakes, that is unless you’re Lee Harvey Oswald or that chimpanzee (name: Travis) who ripped a woman’s face off in 2009, and I’m neither of those personages.

So here I am making up for atoning for my inexplicable oversight, and listening to Jailbreak which mixes tremendous twin-guitar hard rockers with sweeter fair, all of which I love with the possible exception of “Cowboy Song”—in which Lynott, a black Irishman, plays rodeo cowpoke.

But I take that back. “Cowboy Song” may start slowly, but its guitar solos are tremendous and Lynott’s vocals are impassioned (especially when he sings, “It’s okay amigo/Just let me go/Riding in the rodeo”) and the jam at song’s end is a bono fido guitar marvel. Turns out I love the damn thing! Just as I love everything about the LP, except for its cover. Too sci-fi for my decidedly earthbound tastes.

Thin Lizzy was founded in 1969 in Dublin by two former members of Van Morrison’s Them and two members of the band Orphanage (which reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s quip about orphans, to wit: “To lose one parent is misfortune; to lose two parents is sheer carelessness.”). The band moved permanently to London in 1971, and recorded their eponymous debut LP that same year.

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Modern music listeners enjoy creating personalized playlists containing their preferred musicians and genres, but there’s one thing lacking: the expertly guiding hand of a radio station’s program director—or, even better—a tasteful DJ behind the microphone who loves to share favorite tunes, but also introduces listeners to new music that is worthy of addition to your personal faves. But, current culture has sacrificed the serendipitous nature of the radio in favor of complete control over musical choices, or—even worse—the choices of a faceless corporate AI bot.

Bassist and composer, Esperanza Spalding understands the mystery and magic that a spin of your local radio dial can provide, and in 2012 she released an album paying homage to the spirit of radio. Produced by Esperanza and co-produced by A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, Radio Music Society showcased the breadth of Spalding’s musical aptitude and inhabited the rare musical landscape of being challenging, yet also a lot of fun to listen to.

It’s been 10 years and the Grammy award-winning album finds itself eligible for reissue by Craft Recordings and is given the full anniversary treatment featuring 2 LPs pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI. The title will also be reissued in hi-res digital audio. Esperanza and I discuss the continuing role of radio in her current life and she offers a unique and descriptive behind-the-scenes peek into her production and composing process. We also explore her complimentary role as an educator and, of course, delve into what makes vinyl special to her. So, let’s turn the radio dial and search for some serendipity.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

Luke Haines is your classic English eccentric. Following the disbanding of his Britpop band The Auteurs and between a stint with Black Box Recorder, the notoriously irascible Haines has released numerous songs about musicians, artists and miscellaneous, and a series of concept albums. One, released in 1996 under the name Baader-Meinhof, brilliantly chronicles the history of the infamous German terrorist group, while another takes a headlock on British professional wrestling (2011’s remarkable 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ’80s.) The man’s interests are Catholic, to say the least.

But the Haines concept LP with the broadest audience appeal is undoubtedly 2014’s New York in the ‘70s. On it Haines expresses his love for the NYC punk, literary and art scenes, and over the course of the album he name drops everyone from Suicide’s Alan Vega, the New York Dolls, the Ramones, Lou Reed, William Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Richard Hell, and I may have missed some. Conspicuous by their absence are Patti Smith (no big loss), Andy Warhol, Jayne County, Debbie Harry, Television, and the Talking Heads.

The LP opens with the slow “Alan Vega Says” (a tribute to Lou Reed’s “Candy Says” and “Lisa Says,” most likely). Haines is a one-man band on New York in the ‘70s, and on this one he uses keyboards and guitar to chronicle Vega’s days in the Chelsea Hotel. Vegas name drops Sharon Tate, Marilyn, and Elvis, and the song’s key line is “Alan Vegas says it’s going to be a great hit/If Alan says so it probably is.” And the following track, the bottom heavy and fuzzed-out “Drone” is a straight-up tribute to Vegas’ band Suicide and its unique sound.

The title track—which features a repetitive guitar riff, one spazzed-out synthesizer, and glam vocals—is a slow and simple tribute to a period we’ll never see the likes of again. When Haines isn’t repeating the title over and over again he tosses off lines like “American days become American nights/We’re going to have fun with the scary transvestites, oh!” and “Everybody’s gay or bisexual/A man called Jim getting experimental.” On the fast-paced “Jim Carroll” Haines goes downtown with the poet, rocker, and junkie who penned The Basketball Diaries and the super-bummer “People Who Died,” and over the course of the song Haines has Carroll say things like “Coke is just meth dressed up in drag” and “They put a man up in space/And I can’t even score in St. Mark’s Place.”

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Remembering Eddie Van Halen, born on this day in 1955. —Ed.

What to say about the passing of Eddie Van Halen? Sad? Tragic? Heartbreaking? If the words are trite ones, it’s because death is the mother of a vast brood of cliches. What I’ll carry with me forever is his impish grin in the video for “Jump.” Can a smile sum up a man’s life? It’s the smile of a show-off making it look easy when you know damn well it isn’t, but there’s nothing smug about it. He’s simply bequeathing us a gift, the giving of which makes him happy. As for the fireworks he produced with his guitar, they speak for themselves.

I fell in love with Van Halen as a result of that video, which many–including my lovely other half–view as a sell-out. But the song’s sheer exuberance won me over, and led me to do something I would never have done otherwise–go back and listen to, and fall in love with, the band’s earlier albums.

One of said albums is 1980’s Women and Children First, which I put in third place in the Van Halen discography behind their self-titled 1978 debut and 1984’s 1984. On Women and Children First Pasadena’s greatest ever metal band pulverize the competition–Eddie shows off his hair-raising chops while David Lee Roth does his patented Borscht Belt shtick, and drummer Alex Van Halen and bass player Michael Anthony make like a steamroller with swing. In short, it’s business as usual.

The LP’s two opening tracks are its best. “And the Cradle Will Rock” is one of the heaviest songs in the Van Halen catalogue–less blitzkrieg than juggernaut, it boasts (as do the other songs) a guitar solo I’m sure has led many a lesser guitarist to take up the tuba, and a message (“Well, they say it’s kinda frightnin’/How this younger generation swings”) that’s resounded the whole way back to the origins of rock ’n’ roll and beyond.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | A letter from Eli “Paperboy” Reed: “Fred Davis was a legend, but only in my living room. My Dad told me about him. He could play like T-Bone Walker and sang in a high, keen voice like J.B. Lenoir. In the summer of 1969, while the Cuyahoga river fire burned, he worked alongside my Dad at Harco, the Cleveland factory where my grandfather was an executive. They became friends, bonding over the Bobby Bland records blaring from the AM radio on the factory floor.

Fred taught my Dad the rudiments of blues guitar, but his style. Fred could play up and down the neck and, even when he played and sang just by himself, he sounded like a full band. Or, at least, so the legend went. These were only foggy memories from thirty years previous, passed down from a father to a son.

But then we found the tape, a quarter inch reel in a plain white cardboard box. Recordings of Fred that my Dad had made in my grandparents living room more than 50 years ago. The idea was that maybe if there were some recordings of Fred that he could use them to get booked on the nascent college blues-revival circuit, but it wasn’t to be.

My Dad went on to college in Boston and Fred stayed in Cleveland, fronting his own band ‘Dave & The Blues Express’ until he met a tragic end: Shot and killed during a stickup at liquor store. If it weren’t for the tape, Fred ‘Dave’ Davis might be forgotten, but with its release, the legend can finally go behind the confines of my living room and, with any luck, to the whole world.”
—Eli “Paperboy” Reed, Fall 2022

Formerly a trio, Rhode Island’s experimental-industrial-electronic-metallic noise-niks Sightless Pit have scaled it down to the twosome of Lee Buford (The Body) and Dylan Walker (Full of Hell). But if reduced in membership, the duo’s approach has considerably expanded through the inclusion of numerous guests on their new full length Lockstep Bloodwar, which is out on limited edition clear with white and blue swirl vinyl, compact disc, and digital January 27 through Thrill Jockey. The collaborators include claire rousay, YoshimiO of Boredoms, Gangsta Boo (RIP) of Three 6 Mafia, Midwife, Lane Shi Otayonii of Elizabeth Colour Wheel, and Frukwan of Gravediggaz/Stetsasonic.

Sightless Pit’s Grave of a Dog came out in February of 2020, the handiwork of Lee Buford and Dylan Walker in consort with Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota). Frequently pummeling and abrasive, at other times textural, and with clearly defined passages of beauty in the equation, the record established Sightless Pit as far more than just unrelentingly harsh and thematically bleak.

The beauty moves on their debut were most often tied to the voice of Hayter, and her exit might lead those familiar with Grave of a Dog to assume there’d be a heightening of the uncompromising nature of Sightless Pit’s sound. Like, for one example, the vocalizations, which are reminiscent of an incensed pack of demons freshly unleashed from the deepest crannies of hell.

There’s still plenty of that on Lockstep Bloodwar, indeed right away in opening track “Resin on a Knife,” but the interaction with the impressive cadre of guest contributors takes the record into some fruitfully unexpected regions. “Resin on a Knife” integrates the vocals of Midwife (aka Madeline Johnston) to a surprisingly pop-tinged result that productively contrasts with the cut’s streams of static, rhythmic thud and reverberating electro-bass.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Critically acclaimed rock group, EELS is today announcing the limited-edition vinyl reissues of their earlier records, Hombre Lobo, End Times, and Tomorrow Morning which will be released via E Works/[PIAS] on March 17. Alongside the news, EELS is also sharing “Anything For Boo” (Unplugged – Gentle Souls 2021 KCRW Session).

EELS will hit the road this Spring for the long-awaited Lockdown Hurricane tour of Europe and North America, starting March 26 in Nottingham, UK. Available at the live shows only, EELS will be releasing two new very limited vinyl editions of two live sessions—Live at Largo (2019) and Gentle Souls: 2021 KCRW Session. These will be unique to the tour and not available anywhere else. The reissues and new live records follow EELS’ critically acclaimed 2022 record, Extreme Witchcraft which found praise at MOJO, NME, The New York Times, Stereogum, SPIN and more.

EELS have had one of the most consistently acclaimed careers in music. The ever-changing project of principal singer/songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett), EELS have released 14 studio albums since their 1996 debut, Beautiful Freak. In 2008 E published his highly acclaimed book Things the Grandchildren Should Know and starred in the award-winning Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives documentary about the search to understand his quantum physicist father, Hugh Everett III.