VIA PRESS RELEASE | The musical legacy of the late, great Gregg Allman continues with the release of The Gregg Allman Band – One Night In DC, May 15, 1984, a full-length concert recording arriving digitally and on CD June 20, 2025, via the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s posthumous label, Sawrite Records.

Recorded live at The Bayou in Washington, DC before a capacity crowd of 900 lucky fans, the latest release from Allman’s personal archives sees the Gregg Allman Band flying at full force after three years of non-stop touring, rocking the house with a stacked setlist highlighted by new songs, iconic covers, and fiery renditions of classic songs from the Allman Brothers Band repertoire. Highlights include the Allman Brothers Band classic, “Dreams,” premiering today at all digital streaming services.

Though his passing in 2017 has left an immense space in rock ‘n’ roll that can never truly be filled, Gregg Allman Band – One Night In DC, May 15, 1984 stands as a stunning audio snapshot in time that magnificently captures Gregg Allman during his quest to prove that no matter what the challenges, the road would go on forever. Having spent more than three years playing anytime, anyplace, for anyone who wanted to listen, the Gregg Allman Band had truly hit its stride.

The core line-up of Gregg on vocals and Hammond organ, Danny Toler on lead guitar, his brother Frankie on drums, bassist Gregg Voorhees, Bruce Waibel on rhythm guitar, and percussionist Chaz Trippy had been augmented by the addition of keyboardist Tim Heding, which brought another lead instrument to the GAB. A further advancement was that Gregg was writing new songs with the brothers Toler, which further expanded the band’s repertoire.

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Many people have dreamed about being in a movie. While it amounts to no more than a dream, for many, finding the perfect movie soundtrack to play whenever you want is quite easy. The two releases covered here will not only provide a fantasy soundtrack, but will whisk you away to England in the ‘60s or Italy in the ’70s and early ‘80s.

Alfie was one of the most important films of the 1960s. Released in 1966, it was a galvanizing cinematic success that not only solidified London as the center of world cinema for a brief time in the early and mid-‘60s but also provided the breakthrough role for Michael Caine, which launched him into international stardom. He’s never looked back.

For a film that would be considered the height of ’60s Swinging London, this soundtrack is an American jazz tour de force. While Italian clothes, scooters, and cappuccino highly influenced the mod movies and culture of the time, Jamaican music and American jazz and R&B fueled the sound of the early stages of Swinging London.

Original copies of this highly sought-after soundtrack album fetch big bucks on the collector’s market, due to its immaculate sound and innovative jazz music. Though primarily the musical brainchild of saxophonist Sonny Rollins, Oliver Nelson’s arrangements set the cool cinematic mood. The title song, done here in instrumental fashion and written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was recorded by many artists at the time, most notably Cilla Black and Dionne Warwick. Black’s version is not included here, but was played during the end credits. The US soundtrack release included a version sung by Cher.

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Andi Harriman is a NY-based DJ, producer, music journalist, and the boss of the party/label, SYNTHICIDE, which promotes live and DJ events all over NYC. She is the author of Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace, the worldwide compendium of post-punk and goth in the 1980s. She is also an EBM artist, and you can find her work as Andi on Bandcamp and wherever you stream.

We recently spoke about her upbringing in a Pentecostal family in Appalachia, how she first discovered the ’80s Goth subculture, our shared love of Depeche Mode, and her unending energy to create environments that support lovers of darker and synth-driven sounds from multiple genres without barriers. We both agree that there should be more women everywhere.

I really love everything Andi makes and think she has an amazing story. I suggest heading over to Synthicide on Instagram, where you can keep track of the events. You can find Andi’s page @andi80s, which has links to her music and piles of great stuff, including vinyl, over on Bandcamp on the Synthicide page.

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, a New York-based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

One of Washington, DC’s finest ever bands, Unrest also blazed a trail out of the 1980s underground scene, smack dab into the middle of the indie era without ever making a bad record. In fact, their final album, Perfect Teeth is arguably their best. Originally co-released by 4AD and Teen-Beat Records, that last statement turns 30 years old this year and has been reissued for the occasion by Teen-Beat with a bonus LP of material on vinyl (that appears to be sold out), a single LP (plus an accompanying download with all the extras that’s still available), 2CD, and digital. Impeccable as an unintentional missive of finality, Perfect Teeth has lost none of its allure. The extras add value.

Formed in 1983 by guitarist-vocalist Mark Robinson (who also runs the Teen-Beat label) and drummer-occasional vocalist Phil Krauth, Unrest started out with the intention to never play the same song twice. By the time they recorded Malcolm X Park with third member Dave Park in 1988, the mission had shifted to encompassing an insanely wide stylistic range that against all odds maintained a continuity of personality.

Released by the Caroline label, Malcolm X Park is also a logical conclusion to Unrest’s early days, which began with a pair of homemade cassette albums and the vinyl set Tink of S.E. (among numerous other names), all issued by Teen-Beat in the lead up. However, Malcolm X Park and the next record, Kustom Karnal Blackxploitation, released in 1990, can also be considered as Unrest’s Caroline era.

The culminating stretch with Bridget Cross effectively begins in 1992 with the release of Imperial F.F.R.R. by the No. 6 label. It’s an exquisite record that refines the Unrest sound toward its decidedly Anglo-centric late phase, but with the band’s experimental side intact as Cross settles into the bass position and adds occasional vocal standouts.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino proudly announces the return of Metiendo mano!, the influential 1977 debut from Willie Colón and Rubén Blades that started it all.

In the late ’70s, bestselling bandleader, producer, and trumpet player Willie Colón and Panamanian singer-songwriter Rubén Blades forged a musical partnership, blending Blades’ socio-political lyricism with Colón’s innovative approach to salsa music, resulting in what would become known as “conscious salsa.” The first of four LPs by Colón and Blades, Metiendo mano! changed the Latin music landscape with thought-provoking tracks like “Pablo Pueblo,” “Plantación adentro,” and “Según el color.”

The album, which has long been out of print in the US, returns to its original format on July 11th, featuring all-analog mastering and 180-gram vinyl. A limited-edition (only 300) “KO Red” color vinyl variant is available exclusively at Fania’s online store, bundled with a Fania Retro logo T-shirt. Both vinyl options are available for pre-order.

The story begins a decade earlier with Willie Colón (b. 1950). A Latin GRAMMY® Lifetime Achievement Award winner and multiple GRAMMY® nominee, Colón was instrumental in shaping the sound of salsa through his prolific work on and off the stage. The Bronx native launched his storied career at just 15 years old when he signed to New York’s own Fania Records.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Virtually no other album anywhere in history is known to its audience by its label number. Not Kind of Blue, nor Pet Sounds, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, none. Except this one. Rounder 44. Probably the most seminal bluegrass album of all time. Notice we didn’t say modern bluegrass, though it originally came out in 1975. That’s because, unlike, say, Aereo Plain by John Hartford (who contributed notes to the original package, reproduced here), The New South didn’t reinvent bluegrass. It perfected it.

Bandleader and banjoist supreme J.D. Crowe got his start as a teenager in Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, before returning to Kentucky and forming The Kentucky Mountain Boys. That band morphed over the years to become The New South, boasting probably the most formidable line-up any American band of any genre has enjoyed. Bassist Bob Sloane (of The Kentucky Colonels) was the first to join, followed by one legend after another: fiddle and mandolin player Ricky Skaggs, dobroist Jerry Douglas, and guitarist/vocalist Tony Rice.

Together, they were pure magic: technically brilliant but soulful, inventive but disciplined, each a virtuoso but still part of the unit. And, oh, those harmonies! The New South is the cornerstone of any bluegrass collection. Of course, a group this talented wasn’t destined to last long. Within a year, each member went their own way, pioneering progressive bluegrass with each successive project. But the one album they recorded together, Rounder 44, is THE ONE.

Real Gone’s reissue of The New South features two sets of added liner notes, one by guitarist Skip Heller and one by mandolinist Jarrod Walker, along with the bonus tracks “Why Don’t You Tell Me So” and “Cryin’ Holy” with Emmylou Harris. We’re pressing 1,000 copies of this classic in root beer vinyl—don’t you dare miss it!

Remembering Joe Cocker, born on this day in 1944. —Ed.

If you’re going to write a piece about the late, great Joe Cocker, or so it seems to me, that piece should be every bit as spastic and twitching all over the place as the feller himself. When he was singing that is. I don’t know as Joe walked the streets gesticulating and twitching and wringing his hands and all. If he did, God bless him.

Anyway, I tried to write a spastic and twitching review of 1969’s Joe Cocker! but gave up after sentence one, because the man did it better than I could ever do. He was possessed by genius, and told those who would exorcise said genius to piss off. A voice as gravelly and soulful and great as his came with a cost, and if that cost was that he twist himself into pretzel-like contortions ever time he sang, so be it.

The early Cocker was a genius of such magnitude that his idea of a great gig was coming on stage, vomiting on the front row, and passing out. A real showman, our Joe. But if his gravel-grinding voice was a gift from Heaven, it need be said that it was not the only reason Joe Cocker! is an indispensable piece of vinyl as you should turn red with shame for not owning.

No, Joe Cocker! is a classic due in part to the pure dead brilliant performances of the people behind the voice, namely his backing outfit the Grease Band, to say nothing of Leon Russell, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Clarence White, and a veritable heavenly choir of backing vocalists including Rita Coolidge, Merry Clayton, Bonnie Bramlett, and Shirley Matthews, amongst others. I take my hat off in particular to Chris Stainton, the fella as played piano in the Grease Band. His every performance is hair-raising, and he makes the LP worth owning all by his own self.

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On May 23, the latest full-length record from the Thalia Zedek Band arrives; like the previous five it’s available through the auspices of the Thrill Jockey label of Chicago, Illinois, USA. And like those prior volumes, The Boat Outside Your Window documents its maker’s enduring growth as a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and bandleader, as bassist Winston Braman and drummer Gavin McCarthy return to a lineup that’s solidified by pedal steel guitarist Karen Sarkisian. The 10-song set, released on limited coke bottle clear vinyl, compact disc, and digital, reinforces Zedek as one of the underground rock scene’s most reliable and yet consistently undersung figures.

Thalia Zedek’s musical journey began at the dawn of the 1980s in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts. The band was White Women, long represented by a sole song, “Midge,” released on a compilation tape in 1981 by the Propeller label. The same tape offered “Catholic Boy” by Dangerous Birds, a somewhat higher profile outfit featuring Zedek; they released the single “Alpha Romeo” b/w “Smile In Your Face” in 1982. After that, it was Uzi, a highly regarded but short-lived outfit that broke ground on the fringes of post-punk and art rock, releasing one EP, “Sleep Asylum,” on Homestead Records in 1986.

Zedek made a bigger splash on the national scene when she joined New York City’s Live Skull for the albums Dusted (1987, Homestead) and Positraction (1989, Caroline). Upon Live Skull’s disbandment, Zedek joined Come, a critically lauded heavy indie two-guitar four-piece who made a big splash with their 1992 debut 11:11 for Matador Records.

Come had a nice run of it on record before winding down in 2001; from there, Zedek branched out on her own, first with two solo studio efforts under her own name, Been There and Gone (2001, Matador) and Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch of Madness (2004, Thrill Jockey), and then with The Boat Outside Your Window, six records fronting the Thalia Zedek Band and four as one-third of the ensemble E, alongside guitarist James Sanford and until their most recent LP, drummer Gavin McCarthy doing double duty; he’s replaced on 2024’s Living Waters by Ernie Kim.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Celebrating its 20th anniversary this June, Jamiroquai’s Dynamite will be released as a double-LP set on Dynamite Smoke vinyl. The original album will be featured alongside a bonus CD of the original promo album sampler, which features different pre-release track versions. The album will be released on 13 June, and pre-orders can be placed now.

Dynamite was the hotly anticipated sixth album from the band. It followed the release of their 2001 album A Funk Odyssey that had garnered critical and commercial success globally. Also in the intervening period between the two albums, the band were exposed to rafts of new fans when their 1999 track “Canned Heat” became the focal point of cult-turned-smash-hit movie Napoleon Dynamite (2004) when the movie’s namesake lead performed his now infamous dance.

Originally released in the UK on 20 June 2005, its lead signal and first track on the record “Feels Just Like It Should” became the band’s fourth number-one on the US Dance Chart that also broke into the UK Top 10 Singles Chart and was accompanied with a Grammy Award nominated video that features Jay Kay going from nerd to himself and also adopt the role of the Candyman—all of who adopt Jay’s unique style and moves.

Dynamite, like all of their previous albums, continued their great album chart success, this time entering at number three. The second single, “Seven Days in Sunny June,” entered the top 15 and, in 2006, saw the band’s relationship with smash hit movies continue, appearing in The Devil Wears Prada. “(Don’t) Give Hate A Chance” was released as the third single, once again featuring a hugely captivating video, this time with an animation of the band’s infamous “Buffaloman” logo throwing some signature Jay dance moves.

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