VIA PRESS RELEASE | Friends Of Jesse Malin–I Would Do It For You Vol. 1, a 26-song celebration of the music of Jesse Malin, arrives September 11, 2026 via Wicked Cool Records, bringing together an extraordinary cross-section of Malin’s friends, collaborators and musical community.

Produced by Lyle Hysen, the collection reaches across generations and scenes, with contributions from Gogol Bordello, Dead Milkmen, Bebe Buell, Sami Yaffa, Valley Lodge, Trapper Schoepp, James Maddock, Cat Popper & Sasha Dobson, Danny Sage, Prima Donna and many more, each taking on a song from Malin’s extensive catalog. The album also marks the return of influential New York alternative rock band Das Damen, whose version of “Don’t Let Them Take You Down (Beautiful Day!)” is the band’s first newly released recording in 35 years.

One of the album’s focus tracks is Prima Donna’s “Everybody Wants To Rock And Roll,” a fast, loud take on a song that feels right at home in the Los Angeles band’s world.

For Prima Donna frontman Kevin Preston, the connection to Malin goes back years. Preston has cited seeing Green Day with Malin’s D Generation opening as a formative rock show, and the relationship eventually came full circle: Preston, who has toured as a guitarist with Green Day, recently joined Malin onstage in Los Angeles to perform “Everybody Wants To Rock And Roll.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In 1997 Bruce Dickinson released his fourth solo album, Accident Of Birth, a swaggeringly confident collection of powerful songs that saw the acclaimed singer return to his hard rock and metal roots, following the more experimental sound of the previous Skunkworks project.

Co-produced by LA musician Roy Z and featuring Adrian Smith on guitar—while both he and Bruce were on hiatus from Iron Maiden—the album has long been admired as one of Bruce’s most essential releases, and features a host of fan favourites including “Man Of Sorrows,” “Darkside Of Aquarius,” “Road To Hell,” and the title track itself, “Accident of Birth,” all of which have been performed live on Bruce’s recent solo tours.

The album title and album cover, designed by Derek Riggs, is a defiant statement on Bruce Dickinson’s resilience and determination, referencing the fact that, due to a medical procedure his mother had, he was not meant to be born but survived against the odds and by the time of the album’s release had more than made his substantial mark on the world.

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Celebrating Arvo Pärt on his 91st birthday. —Ed.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is considered to be one of the greats in the broad spectrum of 20th-century classical music, and he’s further distinguished as a trailblazer of “holy minimalism.” Befitting a composer of his stature, the discography of Pärt’s recorded works is vast, but from inside that number there resides a smaller group of releases holding particular import. Silentium joins the list of essential Pärt recordings. 

Arvo Pärt came to prominence in his home country in the 1960s with a handful of recordings spanning the decade, but these are formative works that precede a long period of woodshedding after which Pärt reemerged with his tintinnabuli style of composing, a method where he utilizes two distinct voices (i.e. instruments), a tintinnabular voice restricted to the notes of the tonic triad and a melodic voice that can roam around freely.

Für Alina, first performed in 1976, introduced Pärt’s tintinnabuli style. It was eventually documented on one of the numerous recordings made for the ECM label, a label whose releases comprise a significant chunk of his essential discography. The first recording of Pärt’s compositions released by ECM was Tabula Rasa in 1984, the title piece dating from 1977, scored for two solo violins, prepared piano, and string chamber orchestra (consisting of two violins, viola, cello, and contrabass).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | TidalWave Comics proudly honors the extraordinary life and enduring legacy of music icon Dolly Parton with the release of Tribute: Dolly Parton, the newest installment in the publisher’s acclaimed Tribute biography series, out this week.

Written by Michael Frizell, illustrated by Ramon Salas and Pablo Martinena, with a striking cover by Martinena, Tribute: Dolly Parton is a heartfelt and visually powerful 28-page celebration of one of the most beloved and influential entertainers of all time.

Dolly Parton was more than a country music legend. She was a songwriter, actor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and one-of-a-kind cultural icon. Tribute: Dolly Parton celebrates her remarkable journey from East Tennessee to global superstardom, including her music, Hollywood career, Dollywood, and extraordinary philanthropy. Featuring additional pages honoring her passing, this special edition remembers Dolly’s warmth, humor, generosity, and unmistakable spirit. Her butterfly wings may have grown tired, but her legacy will keep flying.

“Dolly Parton is one of those rare figures whose songs, humor, generosity, and personality have connected with generations of people,” said writer Michael Frizell.

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Paul Simon called the German band Dissidenten the “true godfathers of ethno-beat.” Robert Christgau wrote disparagingly of them, “So German pop-rock isn’t your stein of beer? And Middle Eastern music still seems a little alien? Now imagine a fusion.”

I wrote of Dissidenten [this very minute] “What we have here is shallow world beat hokum that could use a good world beating.”

Dissidenten have traveled the globe releasing continent-spanning ethno-beat records in exotic locations with non-Western musicians, which is admirable. But the results have been uniform wherever they go—they invariably release dance music albums with local music flavoring, which might pass muster if the dance music didn’t always sound the same. Or the exotic trappings weren’t such a vapid collection of low-rent cliches.

This is easy-listening stuff for people whose idea of great fusion is Japan’s Hiroshima. Or, to stay closer to home, Weather Report. About whose 1980 album Night Passage, Christgau wrote, “At last it is revealed they want to be Henry Mancini.” With Dissidenten, that would be Henry Mancini on a dromedary.

Dissidenten got together as a band in India and have recorded albums in India, the Middle East, and North Africa, and while I won’t accuse them of cultural appropriation, I am prepared to say that they haven’t made the music of any of those places proud. Oh, and their 2000 album The Memories of the Waters is a “documentary opera” about the Danube River, so I’m guessing they haven’t made the lovely Danube proud either. In fact, I’m guessing it’s holding its wet blue head in shame.

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Alexandria, VA | Alexandria’s Newest Record Shop To Open This Weekend With Music And Freebies: Mobius Records’ Del Ray location will open with a party on Saturday. Mobius Records will open its new Del Ray location on Saturday with a party promising a DJ, giveaways and more. The new shop at 2016 Mount Vernon Avenue will be a sister to Mobius Records in Fairfax, which opened in 2014. It’s a collaboration with Neighborhood Restaurant Group, the organization behind dozens of local restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops and more. The group announced that it wanted to open a record store in Del Ray in June, the Alexandria Brief and others reported. Dempsey Hamilton of Mobius Records tells Patch the Del Ray location will be more than just a record shop.

Chelmsford, UK | Chelmsford Intense Records store on the vinyl revival: A record shop which began in a university bedroom has grown into a staple of Chelmsford’s music scene. Intense Records, founded by John Smith in 1999, started as a mail-order business when he was 21 years old. The first shop opened in 2003 under a railway arch on Viaduct Road, specialising in dance music. Two decades later, a second shop launched in the Meadows Shopping Centre, offering a wider range of new and second-hand music on vinyl. …James credits the vinyl revival for the shop’s continued success, especially among younger customers.

Chicago, IL | Chicago store Bridgeport Records unveils new outpost, Onion City Records: The West Town location will officially open this Saturday. Chicago is getting a new record store courtesy of the team behind Bridgeport Records. Onion City Records will hold its official grand opening this Saturday, September 12th, following a soft launch of the store in mid-July. Located on Chicago Avenue in West Town, the store is owned and operated by Bridgeport Records co-owners Vick Lavender and Jerry Morrison. “We’re gonna function as a neighbourhood record store,” Morrison told the Chicago Reader. “There’s a lot of record stores there—we’re not gonna do what these other guys do. They don’t do what we do.”

Los Angeles, CA | Los Angeles’ Sound Platters Looks To Ignite A Change In Record Collecting Through Educated Sincerity: With vinyl’s resurgence in recent years, it hasn’t escaped the pitfalls of popularity. Much like shoes or trading cards, when a product like vinyl becomes popular, a slew of scumbags get cartoon dollar-sign eyes and pollute the once pure hobby with malicious, capitalistic intent. Thankfully, though, the art of collecting vinyl is so ingrained in people’s hearts that for every greedy person looking to resell collectibles, even more pure-hearted participants keep the spirit of vinyl collecting alive. …With just two years under its belt, Sound Platters is a shining example of a record shop committed to enriching its customers and community, and Scott seems to be just getting started.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | World Circuit Records will release Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela’s celebrated album Rejoice on 30th October. Originally released in 2020, the universally acclaimed record is being reissued on special edition orange, pink and white splatter vinyl. Rejoice is the fifth in a series of re-releases celebrating the label’s 40th Anniversary and is available now for pre-order.

Rejoice is a very special collaboration between Tony Allen, the legendary drummer and co-founder of Afrobeat, and Hugh Masekela, the master trumpet player of South African jazz. Having first met in the ’70s through their respective close associations with Fela Kuti, the two world-renowned musicians talked for decades about making an album together. When, in 2010, their touring schedules coincided in the UK, the moment presented itself, and producer Nick Gold brought the giants together in the studio.

Shortly after the very sad passing of Hugh Masekela in 2018, and with renewed resolution, Tony Allen and Nick Gold, with the blessing and participation of Masekela’s estate, unearthed the original tapes and finished recording the album in summer 2019 at the same London studio where the original sessions had taken place.

Rejoice can be seen as the long-overdue confluence of two mighty African musical rivers—a union of two free-flowing souls for whom borders, whether physical or stylistic, are things to pass through or ignore completely. According to Allen, the album deals in “a kind of South African-Nigerian swing-jazz stew,” with its roots firmly in Afrobeat.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Orbital are set to reopen a defining chapter in electronic music history with the first-ever official release of their now-legendary Glastonbury 1994 performance. Available on September 25th via London Records, this definitive document of a landmark show captures the exact moment electronic music proved it could command the main stage alongside rock’s biggest acts. The release is available for preorder here.

Originally broadcast by the BBC to a generation discovering electronic music in real time, Orbital’s Glastonbury ’94 set became a watershed moment for both the band and UK dance culture. Just six years after the Second Summer of Love and at a time when rave culture was still viewed by many as a fringe movement, Orbital brought electronic music out of the clubs and onto one of the world’s most prestigious festival stages.

Their performance demonstrated that two musicians armed with synthesizers, sequencers, and samplers could hold tens of thousands of people spellbound with the same emotional weight and intensity as any traditional live band.

Orbital’s Phil Hartnoll says, “All I remember is the energy from the crowd, this love… oozing out, like it was vibrating from them. It was just an amazing feeling.” And Paul Hartnoll says, “At the time, you were either an indie kid or you were a raver, but they came and saw our set and the penny dropped. It made that connection between indie music and dance music.”

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Celebrating Don Powell, born on this day in 1950. —Ed.

These lovable Wolverhampton cheaters at Scrabble certainly never won a spelling bee. One of ‘em (guitarist Dave Hill) walked around in a mullet so hideous it could even get you evicted from an Alabama trailer park, and come to think of it, the whole bunch of ‘em looked pretty silly in their Glam clobber. Still, we’re talking about the great Slade here, so—cum on feel the noize! Because when it comes to irresistibly catchy (and irreducibly simple) rabble rousers (they perfected the whole stomp and clap thing long before Queen came along with “We Will Rock You”), Slade can’t be beat.

Slade may have abandoned their braces and boots, Oi roots to climb aboard the Big Glam Bandwagon, but they never forgot their rowdy West Midlands yob origins—“Cum On Feel the Noize,” “Gudbuy T’ Jane,” and “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” are all rafters-shaking boot boy anthems. Not for nothing did Hill wear the words “Super Yob” on the breastplate of his pointy-shouldered space doofus stage costume.

The “Brummie oiks” (thanks Barney Hoskyns!) in Slade were the friendliest bunch of Wulfrunian lager louts you’d ever want to meet, preferring cheery sing-alongs in the great English pub tradition to sticking a broken bottle in your mug. They also had a quiet side and a sentimental streak a mile wide, not that you’d know it if you lived in the States, which only got to meet Slade’s crazee Mr. Hyde persona.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sun Records today releases It’s Been So Long, a collection of rare and previously unreleased recordings from The Gentrys that brings a largely unheard chapter of the Memphis rock band’s history to light.

Produced by Knox Phillips, son of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, the album captures a new incarnation of The Gentrys as the group explored a different musical direction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, pairing their Memphis roots with softer harmonies and the influence of the era’s West Coast sound. Available now alongside the album is a new lyric video for “Cinnamon Girl,” The Gentrys’ take on the Neil Young classic. The song is among several familiar works interpreted on the collection, alongside Cat Stevens’ “Wild World” and “Father And Son,” offering a window into the sounds and songwriters influencing the band during this period.

Best known for the 1965 hit “Keep On Dancing,” The Gentrys emerged from Memphis during the height of the city’s rock and soul explosion. By 1969, however, the band’s original lineup had come to an end. Jimmy Hart, who would later become one of professional wrestling’s most recognizable personalities, was looking for a way forward when drummer Mike Gardner introduced him to Knox Phillips.

Hart and Gardner soon found themselves at Sun Recording Studio, where Hart performed original material for Sam and Knox Phillips. Hart recalls nervously playing “Why Should I Cry” on the autoharp for Sam Phillips, who asked him to play it again. The meeting ultimately led to a new chapter for The Gentrys at Sun Records as the label entered a new era under Shelby Singleton’s ownership.

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Celebrating Bill Stevenson, born on this day in 1963. —Ed.

Though it seems they perennially garner fewer accolades than their Cali cohorts, Black Flag and the Minutemen, coffee-fueled Los Angeles band the Descendents’ full-length debut, Milo Goes to College, stands as one of the ’80s’ indispensable punk documents. Its grooves are teeming with furious catchiness, and what it lacks in good manners it more than makes up for in sheer gusto.

I’ve fond memories of and considerable goodwill for the Descendents, namely the incarnations of the group that recorded up to and including the Enjoy! LP, but must say that from my viewpoint, they can be easily underrated. Or, more appropriately, they often slip through the cracks, largely due to the non-flash nature of their music and image. First and foremost, about focused energy, they wrote tunes that joined musical and lyrical concerns triumphantly seeking to shirk the concept of the punk as a metal-studded casualty with a tube of Testors stuck up his/her nostril.

Occasionally described as “nerd-core,” their songs tackled topics like fishing, hanging out in nature, the joys of junk food, loyalty to friends, bodily gases, the desire not to be a fuck-up, coffee, friction between cliques, and, quite frequently, late-adolescent struggles with the opposite sex. Many of these concerns have been addressed by other bands. Still, frankly, a few haven’t, and certainly not with the appealingly direct (again, focused) musicality and no-frills sincerity that basically stands as their enduring legacy.

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KING OF PRUSSIA, PA | There was something a little full circle about seeing Collie Buddz at Concerts Under the Stars in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Sixteen years ago, I took my two sons, Kiran and Janak (both in middle school)—now 29 and 27—to see Collie in State College. I brought my camera along that night and photographed a concert for the first time. There was no assignment and no real plan; I was simply doing it for fun. But somewhere during that show, I remember thinking, This is really cool. Maybe I should do this.

Sixteen years later, I was standing in front of a Collie Buddz stage with a camera again, this time covering his Spark Up Summer Tour for The Vinyl District. Funny how things sometimes come back around.

Concerts Under the Stars proved to be a perfect setting for the night. Tucked into the King of Prussia community, the outdoor venue has an easygoing, neighborhood feel that fits a reggae show perfectly.

Atlantic City’s SensaMotion got things started with an impressive set of their positive, roots-driven reggae. Together for nearly 16 years, the band has continued building momentum following Life In True Color and their sophomore album, Feel It All Around. Songs including “Truth and Discovery,” “Beautiful Day,” “Feel It All Around,” and “Show Love” connected with a crowd that was clearly into the band from the start. It was exactly the kind of opening set you want on a summer reggae bill.

Then it was time for Collie Buddz.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino honors the enduring legacy of genre-defining artists Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe with a reissue of their landmark 1975 album, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. A collaboration with master cuatro player Yomo Toro and legendary singer-songwriter Rubén Blades, the influential salsa LP features such standout tracks as “Güaracha,” “Qué bien te ves,” and “El Cazanguero,” and marks Lavoe’s final album with Colón before embarking on his highly successful solo career.

Arriving October 23 and available for pre-order, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly features all-analog (AAA) mastering by Clint Holley and Dave Polster at Well Made Music and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl for an exceptional listening experience. The LP is housed in a replica of its classic gatefold jacket, featuring an imaginative design by artist Ron Levine that pays homage to the iconic Spaghetti Western film of the same name, depicting Toro as “The Good,” Colón as “The Bad,” and Lavoe as “The Ugly.”

On the flip side are the album’s original liner notes by ethnomusicologist and music journalist John Storm Roberts. A limited-edition “Cobre Campesino” (Rancher Copper) color pressing (only 300 copies) will also be available as a standalone or bundled with a Fania Retro Logo T-shirt at Fania.com. The remastered title will also be reissued on streaming platforms in Hi-Res for the first time, and standard digital audio.

By 1975, Willie Colón (1950–2026) and Héctor Lavoe (1946–1993) were two of the biggest names in Latin music. The influential duo began their partnership at New York’s Fania Records in the mid-’60s, when Colón was just 16, and Lavoe was 21.

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