TVD Los Angeles

TVD’s The Idelic Hour with Jon Sidel

Greetings from Laurel Canyon!

I met a girl who sang the blues / And I asked her for some happy news / But she just smiled and turned away / I went down to the sacred store / Where I’d heard the music years before / But the man there said the music wouldn’t play

And in the streets, the children screamed / The lovers cried and the poets dreamed / But not a word was spoken / The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most / The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost / They caught the last train for the coast / The day the music died

I guess one could say, “Any day is a good day to release a new song.”

Honestly, I’m a bit stumped on what to report this week. I did give a nod and a wink at this week’s stack of new vinyl. This Idelic Hour set shows that even in dark times, music thrives.

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TVD Washington, DC

TVD Live: The Go! Team and La Sécuritié at the Black Cat, 11/3

In 2000, Ian Parton was a documentary film director in Brighton, England, who started putting together musical tracks for his films the way he handled visuals, a collage style that created surprising results. Eventually his interest in the musical creations overtook the movies and he released the tracks, cobbled together from old hip hop tracks, cheerleader chants, instrumental fanfare from myriad old records and a big drum sound.

The resulting 2004 Thunder, Lightning, Strike, credited to The Go! Team, became an unlikely hit when DJs like John Peel began playing it. But when requests came to tour, Parton had to quickly assemble an actual band that could play it live. Twenty years and six albums later, The Go! Team is back on tour with the 20th anniversary celebration of that debut. And while the number of band members has fluctuated over the years, it was down to six members (and steady reliance on backing tapes) to replicate it when they played the final US stop at the Black Cat.

Nkechi Ka Egenamba, who calls herself Ninja, has been the group’s frontwoman almost since the beginning (but after the recording of Thunder, Lightning, Strike) and served as ringmaster and lead chanter—there isn’t a lot of singing involved. In the delightfully diverse aggregation, half women and half men, Jaleesa Gemerts played the big main drum kit, an important sound augmented by a second drumset occupied by anyone not playing anything else at the moment.

The newest female member was Kate Walker, who seemed delighted to be there (“I’m a fan myself!”) and played a suspicious trumpet that seemed to double its sound on some tracks, and could be played with any apparent fingering on others. She also sang the tremulous vocal on the ditty “Hold Yr Terror Close,” handled on the record by an uncredited Robin Pridy.

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The TVD Storefront

TVD Radar: Carpenters, Christmas Once More gold vinyl in stores 11/11

VIA PRESS RELEASE | A&M/UMe celebrates the upcoming holidays in a merry big way with the release of the Carpenters’ Christmas Once More, an all-new Christmas collection featuring 16 timeless Carpenters holiday classics personally curated by Richard Carpenter.

This newly remixed and remastered 16-track set includes perennial Carpenters holiday favorites such as “Sleigh Ride,” “(There’s No Place Like) Home For The Holidays,” Richard’s own “Merry Christmas, Darling” featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and many more. All 16 tracks, which have been culled from the Carpenters’ most cherished holiday albums, are available now in multiple formats, including CD, black vinyl, limited-edition gold vinyl, digital download, streaming, and ATMOS. Listen to or order Carpenters’ Christmas Once More HERE.

Building upon the grand traditions of Christmas songs and holiday-themed albums recorded by legendary artists like Enrico Caruso (“O Holy Night”), Bessie Smith (“At the Christmas Ball”), Bing Crosby (“White Christmas”), Perry Como (“Home for the Holidays”), and Frank Sinatra (Christmas Songs By Sinatra), Karen and Richard Carpenter set out to make their own first seasonal LP in 1978 titled Christmas Portrait. Richard had a unique idea for creating a near-continuous work that would mix hymns, pop tunes, vocals, and instrumentals into a more flowing, inventive medley style.

In effect, the Carpenters came up with a modernized sound tapestry in which old and new traditions followed one another in surprising and pleasing ways. Their concept of making Christmas albums artfully reflected the eclectic ways American audiences experienced the season and its joyful music in the years when the Carpenters’ generation was growing up.

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The TVD Storefront

Graded on a Curve:
Rickie Lee Jones,
The Devil You Know

Celebrating Rickie Lee Jones on her 70th birthday.Ed.

I’ve always had the same issue with Rickie Lee Jones as I do with Tom Waits; to wit, I can’t escape the sense that they’re beatniks escaped from a time capsule. There’s something atavistic about their sound; hearing it, it’s impossible to escape the eerie sensation that you’re sitting in a smoky and low-ceilinged Village club, the Kettle of Fish say, surrounded by beret-wearing hipsters in goatees, of the type who click their fingers instead of applaud.

That said, I’ve always preferred Jones, if only because she doesn’t have a patch of hair sprouting from her lower lip. No, the truth is I can’t really rationalize my life-long dislike of Waits; sure, he’s written lots of great songs, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him. I don’t have to like Jones either, but I do, from her groundbreaking debut to her latest release, 2012’s The Devil You Know, on which she sings like… well, like she just swallowed a shitload of ludes, which causes her to sing very slooowwwllly, which I like a lot. No more of the beatnik affectations. Her phrasing and sudden shifts in tone are idiosyncratic, to say the least, but she doesn’t sound as rebop as she does wasted, like she brought a quart of bourbon to the studio and drank it before she sang any of the songs on this album of noteworthy standards.

Jones’ career took off with the release of her 1979 self-titled debut, which featured dozens of top-notch LA sessions players—to say nothing of Dr. John on piano and Randy Newman on synthesizers—and included the great “Chuck E.’s in Love.” Buoyed by a highly touted performance on Saturday Night Live, she soon found herself on the cover of the Rolling Stone, and her beret quickly became more famous than Joni Mitchell’s beret, which no doubt pissed off Mitchell’s beret to no end.

And she would likely have become a superstar had she not drifted inexorably jazzwards, a move that she found creatively fulfilling but didn’t win her many pop fans. Henceforth she toiled in the jazz-pop wilderness, moving to Europe where she battled with writer’s block. But she continued to record, moving from more mainstream projects to more avant-garde efforts, none of them wildly successful but most of them critically praised.

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The TVD Storefront

TVD Radar: The Podcast with Evan Toth, Episode 164: Mike Treen, Director The Session Man: Nicky Hopkins

I don’t know when you first found out about the role of a session musician, but for me, it was associated with The Monkees. I remember not quite understanding how a band could make music, yet still not play all of the instruments on the record. Well, my youthful naïveté was obliterated when I learned that there exists a highly skilled, dedicated, professional group of elite musicians who slip in the studio to lay down tracks that uplift whatever the star performer may have created.

On keyboards, there’s one session musician who stands above many others: he’s played extensively with The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and even The Beatles. Not only did he share that rarefied air with those heavyweight champs of classic rock, but his keyboard parts were sometimes integral to the artistic and commercial success of the song. You’ve heard the wild electric piano solo on The Beatles’ “Revolution,” you know that haltingly beautiful piano part in The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow,” and you’re familiar with the majestic grandeur of the piano part that supports Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful.”

So when you learn about a musician such as Nicky Hopkins, who’s reputation may be a bit unsung, what are you to do? Well, if you’re a filmmaker like Mike Treen, you make a documentary about him. And you gather as many first hand witnesses to Nicky’s expertise as possible, including Peter Frampton, Dave Davies, and even Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.

Mike Treen joins me to talk about his film titled The Session Man. We explore how he pieced together different elements from Hopkins’s life and presented it in a cogent and easy to follow narrative that showcases the ups and downs of this special musician’s life.

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.

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The TVD Storefront

Graded on a Curve:
Riley Puckett,
“Nobody’s Business”

Riley Puckett became the poster child of weird old American country music when Nick Tosches plastered his face on the cover of his groundbreaking 1985 book, Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock’n’Roll. Puckett’s an odd-looking bird, to say the least, which must be the reason Tosches used his photo, because Puckett himself warrants only two passing references in the book.

Puckett was blind, but looks cross-eyed. He has a dimpled chin, jowls, no lips to speak of, and what with his high forehead his facial features seem to have retreated to the center of his face. The effect is hard to describe. Perhaps Tosches thought he best personified that “twisted.” And there’s no denying that his photograph could have come straight out of Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip.

But twisted isn’t the word that comes to me. He looks inscrutable, sphinxlike. It’s true that his eyes, one seemingly entranced by his nose and the other buried in the shadow cast by his brow, give him an otherworldly look. It doesn’t help that the book cover paints him in lurid colors, his face a sickly lime green, his hair, shirt collar and tie a bright pink. Tosches did Puckett a disservice, to an extent; in a photo I’ve seen of a younger Puckett he looks dapper, his hair pomaded—he’s almost movie star handsome. This Puckett, an older Puckett obviously, just looks lost in some kind of Depression-era fever dream.

Riley Puckett was born in Georgia in 1894, and early on was dubbed the “Bald Mountain Caruso.” This stemmed from the fact that he had a good voice, and didn’t sound as hillbilly as many of his country contemporaries. He was also an influential guitarist. He recorded a lot of music during his relatively short life, but he’s primarily remembered for being the first country singer to stand up on his hind legs in a recording studio and yodel, first in April 1924 to the song “Rock All Our Babies to Sleep,” then to “Sleep Baby Sleep” in 1927.

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A morning mix of news for the vinyl inclined

In rotation: 11/8/24

Minneapolis, MN | So Minnesota: HiFi Hair and Records: Many build a close connection with the person who cuts their hair. One man combines a cut and a chord at his Minneapolis shop. Jonny Clifford owns HiFi Hair and Records near Loring Park. “It’s become a bit of a gathering place,” he said. From Elvis’ pompadour to the Beatles mop top, hair and rock have always gone together. “I wanted to look like Paul Weller or David Bowie, so that’s how I got into hair,” Clifford said. A dozen years ago, Clifford opened the hair and record store. Every square inch of the walls is covered in music history. “Everyone relates to something in here because it’s something they grew up with,” Clifford said. Clifford followed his dream and is now living the dream of owning HiFi Hair and Records.

Omagh, IE | Sound and Vision—Bringing Small-Town Stories to the Big Screen: Faye Blaylock looks at how Irish musician Mark McCausland’s record store went from inspiring a newspaper column to being immortalised in feature film, The Spin. Mark McCausland is one half of ‘alt-folk geniuses’ * The Lost Brothers. Releasing music under the moniker McKowski, he is dubbed the ‘Sonic Wanderer of Omagh’ and has always crafted his own unique narrative. However this time his art form of choice is cinematic. Back in 2016, Mark opened a record store, Boneyard Records in his hometown of Omagh. It was there, between tours, that he spent his time buried among the vinyl treasures, writing music and observing the details of small-town life. Drawn to Storytelling: He says, “It can sometimes be a mind-numbing existence in a small town. I probably opened the record shop to make it more bearable. I felt like I had to create a whole new world in my imagination to help pass the time—an Omagh record shop didn’t tend to get many customers!

Melbourne, AU | Melbourne’s Bar Open Is Now A Venue, Bar, And Record Store: “There will be an emphasis on local band album releases, particularly those bands that play at Bar Open.” Beloved Naarm/Melbourne venue Bar Open has expanded its musical sights beyond its regular offerings, announcing that it’s also turning into a record store as of this weekend. The venue, which has been a staple of the Fitzroy music scene since its launch in 1998, announced the news on social media on Wednesday, revealing that alongside its facilities as a bar and live venue, the grand opening of the aptly-titled Bar Open Records will take place on Saturday, November 9th. “Bar Open Records will stock a range of new and second-hand records, particularly jazz, funk, soul and roots-related genres, including rock from doom, psych, prog and Krautrock to retro and alternative,” they wrote. “There will be an emphasis on local band album releases, particularly those bands that play at Bar Open.”

Croydon, UK | Croydon’s lost record store that was Europe’s biggest and a favourite with London celebs: The shop had 3 storeys and included a gig venue and arcade games. Croydon locals may remember a time when the town boasted an impressive 13 music shops. These days, with most people getting their music online or from retail giants like HMV, Croydon’s record shops have all but disappeared. But taking a look – or listen – down memory lane, and you might remember BEANOS, a legendary Croydon record store. David Lashmar, the man behind the icon that was BEANOS, shares that even 17 years after closing down and selling his collection, he’s still contacted daily by people eager to share their memories. “Our first shop in Croydon was called Bell Hill Cassettes,” David remembers. “Cassettes were really massive in the early 1970s. It was a real revolution and seen as an indestructible medium believe it or not, while records jumped and crackled. I thought the cassette would be here forever—I’m not very good at predicting the future, obviously.”

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TVD San Francisco

TVD Live Shots: Danny Elfman at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, 11/3

With Halloween and Daylight Savings Time behind us and fall in full swing, amphitheater season is typically over. Not quite though, as Danny Elfman brought his dead man’s party for the second of two very special career-spanning shows to the Shoreline Amphitheater.

While Elfman has been celebrating his movie and television soundtracks live for the last few years, the idea to expand the setlist to include Oingo Boingo and solo material really only emerged as part of an oddly placed mainstage performance back in April at Sick New World Festival in Las Vegas where he shared the stage amongst headliners Slipknot and other heavy acts. Improbably, the reception was phenomenal.

Following up Sick New World with two headlining shows was no small feat; the Shoreline stage crammed with at least 50 people including a choir, an orchestra, and the “Elf-Band” which included Robin Finck (Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails) on guitar, Stu Brooks on bass, Nili Brosh on guitar, and Ilan Rubin (Nine Inch Nails) on drums.

The nearly two hour set ran the gamut of Elfman’s diverse career, including soundtrack work from The Simpsons, Batman, Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks, Edward Scissorhands, and of course The Nightmare Before Christmas during which Danny channeled Jack Skellington the “Pumpkin King.” During the instrumentals, Elfman stood in the shadows and the crowd largely stayed seated.

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The TVD Storefront

TVD Live: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band at the Bell Center, 10/31

MONTREAL, CA | When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have played on past Halloweens, he’d sometimes start by emerging from a coffin. For the first big concert since he turned 75 weeks before, that spooky symbolism might have hit a little too close to home.

So he kicked off his Halloween show at the Bell Center in Montreal with something more goofy—a cover of “Ghostbusters.” The ever-professional, super-augmented E Street Band could acquit the Ray Parker Jr. oldie well, of course, and to their credit only did a couple of verses, before moving to the more bracing rocker of economic unrest, “Seeds.”

Known to wear the occasional Halloween getup over the years, Springsteen stuck to his recent stage uniform of a kind of hip maître d’ in white shirt, tie, black vest and rolled-up sleeves. The Montreal show was, like dozens of stops on his fraught 23-24 tour, a makeup date (that takes the tour into 2025). Originally scheduled for last November, it instead kicked off a seven-city fall Canadian tour.

Despite the ghostbusting, spirits of the past would repeatedly arise in the long set, from “Ghosts” and the title track from his 2020 Letter to You, a work inspired by the death of the last other member of his original Jersey band The Castiles, George Theiss, who died in 2018. Inheriting his friend’s guitar, books and records inspired songs on that album (intended as a message to him), as it did the E Street Band’s first tour since 2017, much delayed by the pandemic and other illnesses.

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The TVD Storefront

TVD Radar: Cat Stevens, Saturnight orange splatter vinyl edition in stores 11/29

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ little known 1974 concert album, Saturnight: Live from Tokyo, is scheduled for release in the U.S. for the first time ever, 50 years after it was released only in Japan, due to contractual restrictions.

Remastered from the original production master for the first time since its original release, the record will go on sale exclusively as part of Record Store Day’s Black Friday annual event on November 29th. It will be available as an “RSD First” release on 180-gram Orange Splatter color vinyl. The LP has been cut at the world-famous Abbey Road Studios and will be packaged for the first time in a gatefold sleeve that includes lyrics and new liner notes from the band’s 1974 tour manager, Carl Miller, and bassist Bruce Lynch.

Saturnight was recorded on June 22nd, 1974, at Sun Plaza Hall in Nakano, Tokyo, Japan on the Japanese leg of Cat’s 1974 “Bamboozle World Tour.” The tour comprised 50 shows across North America, Europe, Australia and Japan to support the release of Buddha and the Chocolate Box. Cat had long felt an affinity with the aesthetic elegance and spiritual depth of Japanese culture, especially the principles of meditation and reflection upon which their traditions of poetry, design and craftsmanship are founded.

Saturnight features Cat at his peak, performing an incredible concert of songs from his then-newest release, Buddha and the Chocolate Box (“Oh Very Young,” “King of Trees,” “A Bad Penny”) alongside some of his greatest hits which dominated the charts in the early ‘70s. These include the classics “Lady D’Arbanville” (Mona Bone Jakon – 1970); “Wild World,” “Where Do The Children Play?” “Hard Headed Woman,” “Father & Son” (Tea for the Tillerman – 1970); “Peace Train,” “Bitterblue” (Teaser and the Firecat – 1971); and “Sitting” (Catch Bull at Four – 1972).

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The TVD Storefront

Graded on a Curve:
Joni Mitchell,
Court and Spark

Celebrating Joni Mitchell on her 81st birthday.Ed.

My great ambivalence about Joni Mitchell, she of the beret and the aloofly confessional lyrics, is best expressed by the critic Robert Christgau, who addressing her 2000 LP Both Sides Now wrote, “My favorite Joni story is that they tried to do a TV special on her and none of her old friends would pitch in. Even if it’s a dumb rumor or a damned lie, it’s a hell of a metaphor for someone who loves herself so much nobody else need bother, and yet another reason to scoff at her concept song cycle about the rise and fall of an affair. But after decades of pretentious pronouncements on art, jazz, and her own magnificence, this very if briefly great singer-songwriter proves herself a major interpretive singer.”

It’s no mystery Mitchell thinks very highly of herself, but it can be argued she has good reason. There has never been another folk-rock-jazz artist like her; she possesses a voice as clear as a bell and a mode of phrasing that is all her own, with which she sends her semi-confessional lyrics out into the world. That’s the good part, along with her remarkable songwriting skills. The bad part is that if her music sometimes reminds me of that of Steely Dan, it unfortunately lacks their sense of irony and humor.

But that’s just carping. Mitchell may be a prima donna with delusions of grandeur, to say nothing of jazz-lite and boho pretensions, but her music is beloved by many, and admired at a great distance by numerous other folks like yours truly. I mean, I love “Coyote” and “Raised on Robbery” and even “Free Man in Paris,” despite its beatnik affectations and the vocal contributions of those two horrible, horrible people, David Crosby and Graham Nash. (Okay, so only the former is horrible. Sorry, Graham.) Why, I even have a sneaking admiration for her failed 1979 homage to the great jazz bassist Charles Mingus, which she kinda screwed up by recruiting members of that middling jazz-fusion band Weather Report as sidemen. But her early work terrifies me and her later work leaves me stone cold.

Ms. Mitchell was the official chronicler of life in Laurel Canyon as seen from a woman’s perspective in the early to mid-seventies, and her gimlet eye for the condemning detail is unsurpassed. And Lord knows Laurel Canyon deserved everything she dished out; not for nothing did Neil Young, a fellow Canadian, write “Revolution Blues,” which imagined a kind of dune buggy apocalypse Manson-style that would kill Laurel Canyon’s pampered and self-indulgent stars in their cars.

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TVD UK

Needle Drop: James Blunt, Back to Bedlam 20th Anniversary Edition

Let’s be honest—I never expected to be writing this review. James Blunt’s Back to Bedlam 20th-anniversary release just landed on my turntable in all its red recycled vinyl glory, and I’m sitting here wondering why we all decided to be such jerks about this album. 13 million copies sold? After giving it a proper listen, I get it.

Here’s the thing about Blunt—everyone got so caught up in the “You’re Beautiful” hysteria that they missed what’s actually happening here. The guy can write some serious hooks. Even he admits that his biggest hit isn’t exactly his proudest lyrical moment, but holy shit can this guy write a catchy tune.

What really got me were tracks like “High” and “Wisemen”—proper songwriting that somehow got overshadowed by all the noise. And “No Bravery”? That’s not just another pop song, that’s someone who’s actually seen some stuff and knows how to tell the story. After serving in the military and seeing some of the shit that he’s seen, Blunt earned the right to write about whatever the hell he wants

This remastered version brings new life to these tracks. The red recycled vinyl release feels like a fitting tribute to one of the Noughties’ best-selling albums. In typical Blunt fashion, he jokes about “milking it for all it’s worth,” but honestly? This release deserves the attention.

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The TVD Storefront

Graded on a Curve:
Joni Mitchell,
Love Has Many Faces:
A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to be Danced

Celebrating Joni Mitchell on her 81st birthday.Ed.

Joni Mitchell’s discography gathers 19 original albums spanning from the masterful to varying degrees of flawed, a range highlighting her lack of artistic complacency. She’s had her share of compilations, and Rhino’s Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to be Danced is the third box set devoted to her work. Containing four CDs curated by Mitchell from a long stretch of productivity, it eschews chronology for a quite personal and sometimes frustrating thematic vision.

The first inapt tag I’ve read applied to Love Has Many Faces is “career-spanning,” its usage positing Mitchell’s musical activity beginning with 1971’s Blue. Indeed, nothing from ‘68’s Joni Mitchell/Song to a Seagull, ‘69’s Clouds or ‘70’s Ladies of the Canyon is included here, and it leads me to a minor quibble in the casual use of “greatest-hits” to describe this collection; a few of her larger singles did make the cut, but absent is “Big Yellow Taxi” from Ladies or “Help Me” from ‘74’s Court and Spark.

Given the specifics of this box, the omissions make sense. Artist-assembled and love song-themed (the subject nowhere near as constrictive as a Joni newbie might suppose), these 53 tracks essentially underscore what Mitchell’s made clear since the arrival of Blue; in particular, she’s anything but just another strumming folkie, and as Love Has Many Faces’ accompanying book rounds up 54 poems and six new paintings, at this late date it’s hard to imagine anybody lumping her into that bag.

“I am a painter who writes songs,” Mitchell is quoted in the press materials, and after spending time with the entirety of this set, at less than a minute shy of four hours long no small undertaking, I consider the key portion of her statement as “writes songs.” Over the years she’s done a good job transcending mere writing to enter the realm of robust musicality, though her self-assessment does differ, and at points substantially, with this reviewer’s evaluation of her oeuvre.

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A morning mix of news for the vinyl inclined

In rotation: 11/7/24

Isle of Wight, UK | Ventnor Exchange celebrating 10th anniversary with special event: Ventnor Exchange is celebrating its 10th birthday this November. The community hub, which was established by a group of Ventnor locals to provide a permanent home for the Ventnor Fringe, has grown significantly over the years. The space is now a bustling centre with a record store, performance area, co-working space, and a café and craft beer bar that’s open seven days a week. Co-director Mhairi Macaulay said: “Today Ventnor Exchange is a thriving hub of workshops, clubs, socials, a record store, a performance space, and co-working space. “The organisation also reaches out across the whole Island with a mission to create cultural experiences available for all.” Since 2014 Ventnor Exchange has gradually refurbished the Post Office building in Church Street, and has hosted hundreds of events across the Island, welcomed creative clubs and groups and commissioned new projects

San Antonio, TX | You’re one of the family at Del Bravo: San Antonio, a city known for its rich history and landmarks, is also home to an iconic location on the West side of town. Opened in 1966, Del Bravo Record Shop is a family-owned store with a beautiful exterior and festive decor alongside endless racks of CDs, vinyl records and cassette tapes. The history of this business starts with Salome Gutierrez, the father of Iva Gutierrez who runs the front of the shop nearly full-time, and his passion for creating and selling music. He founded the independent record shop and composed his own songs at the same time, working with Grammy winners and recording artists. His work has been passed down to the next generation and is still thriving for all to visit. While Tejano music might be what Del Bravo originated with, they sell a variety of genres—including the latest pop and rap. With such a wide range of music filling the store, it is impossible to not find an appealing song or artist.

Harrogate, UK | Much-loved Harrogate indie record shop’s big role in Britain’s great vinyl revival: A Harrogate independent record shop whose reputation is so high that a punk legend popped in is playing its role in the country’s vinyl revival. As the UK embraces the return of 7inch singles and 12inch albums—sales rose by 11.7% to 5.9 million units last year—Evil Eye Vinyl is keeping the flag flying with its diversity of stock and commitment to high quality. After sharing a space with Space Vintage retro shop for years on The Ginnel in Harrogate, Evil Eye Vinyl successfully moved to larger premises in the beautiful Westminster Arcade. Although more than four-fifths of recorded music is now consumed via streaming, vinyl has made a huge comeback, not only for nostalgia reasons but among young music fans, as have cassette tapes. Evil Eye Vinyl specialises in both.

NJ | DJ Alex Kaynes Record Store Raid II: Roamin’ around New Jersey: So this Record Store Raid did not happen all in one day as both my previous treks through North Carolina and California did. My New Jersey romp happened over a few weeks as it is closer to home, which affords me more time. For those who missed the first Record Store Raid: I am a professional DJ and record collector for nearly 50 years, so it’s safe to say I have a fair amount of experience in this field. I am looking for heavy metal, so the reviews are with that in mind. Jack’s Music Shoppe: Jack’s has a long, well-known local history of being open since 1970. It’s smack in the middle of Red Bank, a town filled with boutique eateries and “shoppes.” The store is quite long and about four long rows wide, the front of the house displays new vinyl releases. The used wax is towards the back, and a boatload of CDs are in the middle…

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TVD San Francisco

TVD Live Shots:
The Psychedelic Furs, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Frankie Rose at the Masonic, 11/2

The Psychedelic Furs and The Jesus and Mary Chain are on the road for a proper co-headlining tour, hitting San Francisco’s Masonic Auditorium on a Saturday night with opener Frankie Rose.

The Masonic was absolutely packed by the time The Jesus and Mary Chain took the stage for their 1 hour and 10 minute set, setting a dramatic mood as frontman Jim Reid tried his best to hide behind the mic stand as he belted classic after classic. A man of few words, Reid apologized in advance for any f***ups but otherwise let the music do the talking, inviting Frankie Rose to join the band on stage for “Sometimes Always” and fan favorite “Just Like Honey.”

The house lights came on after TJAMC’s set revealing a celebratory atmosphere although clearly some folks had over-imbibed in the lead-up to The Psychedelic Furs, at one point some friends carrying a totally limp but still conscious pal into the lobby. Yes, it was going to be one of those nights where the folks that don’t get out much take advantage of leaving the kids alone with the babysitter to let loose.

For those fans, the journey down memory lane continued with The Psychedelic Furs closing set that spanned their 40+ years of music. Original members Richard Butler (vocals) and Tim Butler (bass) ruled the stage as the crowd sang along, fueled by what seemed like a constant flow of alcohol.

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  • SUPPORTING YOUR LOCAL INDIE SHOPS SINCE 2007


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