Most music festivals send you home at midnight. This one kept going until the sun came up over the Pacific.

For three nights, the inaugural Cali-Country Cruise turned the Carnival Panorama into a floating honky tonk, with four headliners, stages tucked into nearly every corner of the ship, and a sold-out crowd in boots and hats who had not come to sleep. It was part country festival, part dance hall, part all-night party at sea, and from the first chords in the Atrium, it was clear this was not going to be a quiet few days on the water.

On Saturday, August 29, the ship set sail from Long Beach for a three-night trip to Ensenada. This cruise has something for everyone, from main stage headliners to late-night DJ sets in the clubs around the ship to line dancing.

The cruise kicked off with fans gathering in the Atrium for a party with rum punch and country music playing while everything was getting set up for the trip. The artists playing there were Matthew Auston, Kylie Tround, and Ashley Felton. After that, the party really got going, with Country Night getting the vibes high on the main pool stage.

Then came the first of the cruise’s four headliners, Jo Dee Messina, whose energy set the tone for everything that followed. Next came Gretchen Wilson with the first of her two sets for the trip. She kept everything going, and the whole cruise was like that—there was never a moment when there wasn’t something to do.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Ween’s Boognish Provides arrives October 16 from Rhino, bringing together seven previously unreleased concerts recorded during the band’s Chocolate and Cheese tour.

Boognish Provides will be released as a 14CD boxed set and on 2LP, with 19 performances drawn from all seven shows. Pre-order here. New apparel and accessories inspired by the collection will also be available. Fans can also immerse themselves in “The Altar of the Boognish,” an interactive, ’80s-style text terminal experience.

The tour’s sound engineer, Kirk Miller, says the 24-minute “Vallejo” played at The 40 Watt Club in February 1995 was extra special. “From the start, the band and crowd were hyped, and the show ended with Mickey diving over the drum kit into Claude, and the two of them rolling down the couple of stairs into the dressing room, locking the door behind them,” he recalls. The epic performance is available digitally today.

Released September 27, 1994, Chocolate and Cheese marked a turning point for Ween, moving Gene (Aaron Freeman) and Dean (Mickey Melchiondo) from four-track home recordings into a professional studio. The tour brought another change as the duo hit the road with a backing band for the first time, joined by bassist Andrew Weiss and drummer Claude Coleman.

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Celebrating Mark Farner on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Jesus Funkin’ Christ, Grand Funk. Where does one even begin? Homer Simpson’s immortal description of the band’s members is as good a place as any: “You kids don’t know Grand Funk? The wild shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drumwork of Don Brewer? Oh, man!”

Grand Funk was one of the biggest arena acts of the 1970s, but nowadays you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone besides Homer Simpson who will admit to liking them. I’ve never heard a single rocker cite Grand Funk as an influence, and unlike their Michigan brethren, the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, Grand Funk scored a big zero when it came to hipness factor. Their talk of revolution was transparently empty jive, they didn’t have a proto-punk bone in their bodies, and in general, all they did was fill arenas—something the far cooler MC5 and the anarchic Stooges never came close to doing—and make the people in those arenas (and their bongs) happy.

Of course, filling arenas doesn’t prove much, except that it’s impossible to overestimate the ignorance of the American public. However, still it’s intriguing—what did all those potheads on reds at all those Grand Funk shows hear that we can’t hear in 2014? Did people back then have an extra Grand Funk ear? That closed up around the time of 1976’s Born to Die, which marked the band’s downward slide following seven consecutive LPs in the Top Ten?

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Celebrating Brett Anderson, born on this day in 1967. —Ed.

When Suede released their eponymous 1993 debut, Glam fans took notice. No, they didn’t. They leaped to their feet and dug through their closets for their six-inch platform Ziggy Stardust boots and moth-balled space age Brian Eno ultra-high collars before sprinting, or more accurately tripping and wobbling—have you ever tried to run in six-inch platform boots?—to loot the make-up counters of every store in London. Finally, they managed to lose (in six minutes flat!) the eighty pounds necessary to squeeze themselves into their old designed-for-skeletons glam attire. Depending on your point of view, it was a glorious moment or a bleeding horror show.

Actually, of course, none of this happened, because while Suede had that classic Glam sound, they didn’t necessarily look the part. They were, for the most part, Glam in mufti, and dressed, for the most part, in fashionable black, with the notable exception of vocalist Brett Anderson, who had that vintage Brian Ferry look—sans the 1940s tailored suits and jaded sophistication—down flat.

But none of this has anything to do with Suede, which ranks amongst the finest LPs of the Britpop era. By turns lush, romantic, low-key, high-strung, guitar-heavy, and flat-out metallic, the album’s songs are showcases for Anderson’s vocals, which tend towards the histrionic and fabulous. His voice is the Glam glue that draws it all together—Bernard Butler’s guitar shapes the music, for sure, but it’s primarily Anderson’s arch delivery that sets the band squarely in the Great Glam Tradition.

“So Young” is as good as it gets. The song’s fresh melody captures the sound of youth; Anderson goes big-time romantic; Butler’s piano adds flavor; and his guitar gives the song just enough muscle to keep it from dissolving into a lovely fey wisp. “Animal Nitrate” is a tougher beast, boasting a killer chorus and Anderson singing, “Oh, it turns you on, on/Now he has gone/Oh, what turns you on, on?/Now your animal’s gone.” The ballad “She’s Not Dead” showcases Anderson’s ability to hit those dramatic high notes, while the band produces a Starman solar sound that fits Anderson’s voice like a tailored space suit.

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There is a version of every record you own that you have never heard. Not a remaster, not a better pressing—the one the people who made it were hearing while they made it. Ultimate Ears Pro has spent three decades building the hardware that grants that access, starting in 1995 with a pair of custom monitors for Alex Van Halen and ending up in the ears of a startling percentage of the artists on your shelf.

I have spent my listening life on the other side of that glass: speakers, a room, a needle, the compromises of moving air across fifteen feet. So, I sat in an audiologist’s chair and had impressions taken of my ear canals, then sat with UE Pro and blind-tested all eight monitors in its lineup until my own ears picked a winner, and about ten days later, took delivery of a pair of UE Premiers that fit nobody else on earth. Then I plugged them into a turntable. What came back wasn’t a smaller version of my system. It was a much bigger one. And because UE Pro would rather you hear this for yourself than take my word for it, they’re giving a pair away to one of you.

It starts with your ears, and that is where I had badly underestimated things. The mold is not packaging. It is the first component in the chain, and everything the monitor does downstream is built on top of it. A custom shell seals the canal completely, and that seal is what gives twenty-one drivers something to push against—without it, there is no real low end and no isolation worth the name. A universal tip approximates your ear. An impression doesn’t have to approximate anything.

I went to Ann Mundell-Noel at Amazing Hearing in Laguna Hills, and the appointment felt closer to a medical exam than a fitting, which is essentially what it is. She inspected both canals first, reading the depth and shape she’d be casting, clearing anything that would compromise the mold, and narrating every step a beat before she took it.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Twenty years after The Open Door debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard200, Craft Recordings celebrates Evanescence’s landmark 2006 album with a newly remastered and expanded anniversary Deluxe Edition, arriving November 6 on 2-LP, CD, and digital formats. Alongside the original album, the collection brings together three fan-favorite rarities from The Open Door era—“If You Don’t Mind,” “Together Again,” and “The Last Song I’m Wasting On You”—plus a never-before-released demo of “Good Enough,” offering an intimate glimpse into the early development of one of the album’s most beloved songs.

Alongside the black vinyl release, the 2-LP set, housed in a deluxe gatefold jacket, will be available in a range of limited-edition color pressings through the Evanescence Store (Midnight Nebula), Craft Recordings (Metallic Blue), Barnes & Noble (Sea Glass), Books-A-Million (Ghost Blend), Revolver (Mercury Blend), Indie Record Stores (Opaque Ivory), and select International retailers (Translucent Cobalt). All formats are available to pre-order/pre-save now.

Frontwoman Amy Lee says, “The Open Door was such an important time for me, pushing boundaries and feeding my desire to experiment and grow. I wanted to connect on a deeper level, and fought for a future for the music I loved. It was beyond worth it. The fact that it resonates with so many people 20 years later means so much to me.”

When Evanescence emerged in the early 2000s, their debut album Fallen became a global phenomenon, earning two GRAMMY® Awards and establishing the band as one of the defining rock acts of the decade. Released on September 25, 2006, The Open Door arrived with enormous expectations—and found Evanescence pushing decisively beyond the sound of their debut.

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Remembering Jerry Lee Lewis in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

For Jerry Lee Lewis, 1973 was the worst of years and the best of years too; despite a brief turn in prison, the death of a son, a divorce (his fourth), and rampant drug and alcohol abuse, the Killer still turned out two seminal LPs with The Session… Recorded in London with Great Artists and Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis.

The latter LP is nothing short of a miracle; Jerry Lee somehow managed to knock off ten galvanizing performances even though he was, by all accounts, out of control, even by his own berserk standards. When he wasn’t abusing legendary producer Huey “The Crazy Cajun” Meaux, the heavily medicated Lewis was threatening to kill a photographer and generally being a dyspeptic old cuss. “Do you wanna try one?” asks Meaux, doing the proceedings. “If you got enough fuckin’ sense to cut it,” replies the orneriest cage-rattler to ever hail from the friendly state of Louisiana.

Let’s make one thing clear from the start: neither LP comes close to recapturing the anarchic feel and demented energy of Lewis’ early recordings, or the deranged ferocity (subtlety? toss it out the goddamn window!) of his hair-raising live performance with the Nashville Teens at Hamburg, Germany’s Star Club in 1964. His vocals are lazier, and his piano playing less frenzied hammering at the gates of Hell, the place he’s always figured will be his final destination. It may have been the pills, but the old piano burner almost sounds relaxed at times.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Released in 1986, Orgasmatron featured the line-up of Lemmy, Phil Campbell, Würzel, and Pete Gill. It marked a new chapter for the band, pushing further into heavier territory while retaining the speed, aggression, and raw energy that had defined Motörhead from the beginning.

The album’s production was the subject of much discussion among the band and their fans, but beneath it was a formidable collection of songs. “Orgasmatron,” “Deaf Forever,” and “Built For Speed” became key parts of the Motörhead live repertoire, while the album’s combination of hard rock, heavy metal and punk influences gave it a character all of its own. Four decades on, Orgasmatron has taken its place as one of the most distinctive and respected records in the Motörhead catalogue.

Now, 40 years after its original release, Orgasmatron is revisited in a new anniversary edition that explores both the album itself and the story behind its creation. The original studio recordings have been remastered for the anniversary and cut at half speed from the original tapes, while longtime Motörhead collaborator Cameron Webb has created a brand-new remix and remaster from the original stems.

The Motörhead team explain: “Orgasmatron is a special album. Part of that is down to the stylized production of Bill Laswell, who approached the work from a unique perspective. Bill’s work stands in its own right as something special in the Motörhead library, and Orgasmatron stands as one hell of an album. However, there was some controversy in the sense that both Lemmy and Phil Campbell felt that some of the power, bite and energy had been lost in Laswell’s final delivery.

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These mooseburger-loving Peggers weren’t flashy, but they’ll always be the band of choice for diesel rig mechanics and ice fishermen. They also happen to be one of Canada’s largest exports, and it shocks me that Donald Trump has yet to slap a tariff on them.

That said, he has renamed them on maps to America-Turner Overdrive.

BTO were one of the least flamboyant bands ever to come rolling down any highway, and I defy non-fans to pick ex-Guess Who guitarist/occasional vocalist Randy Bachman and bassist/vocalist Fred Turner out of a police line-up. And their rejection of foppery in all of its forms carried over to their music, chiefly because they had the collective imagination of your average logging crew.

And good thing. You won’t find a single trident or mythological beast in their musical canon—although I think they do have a song about slow-roasting a Hobbit on a spit—and they’d have slow-roasted the producer who dared suggest they employ a flute, harpsichord, or horn section in their songs. They were down-to-earth Everymen who stuck to what they did best—write anthems for ice road truckers.

But their populist, four-on-the-floor, stripped-to-the-basics music also resonated with folks, like yours truly, who can hardly weather a Los Angeles winter. It didn’t hurt that they boasted two distinctive vocalists in Bachman and Turner, two fine guitarists in Bachman and his brother Tim, and a rhythm section (which featured “third Bachman” Robbie on drums) to put the over in the drive.

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