We’ve closed the office for the Thanksgiving holiday. While we’re away, why not fire up our free Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores during Black Friday or Small Business Saturday, either online, curbside, or with some sound social distancing?
Perhaps there’s an interview, review, or feature you might have missed? Catch up and we’ll see you back here on Monday, 11/30.
Greetings from Laurel Canyon and happy Friday!
Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac / Diamond in the back, sunroof top / Diggin’ the scene / With a gangsta lean / Gangsta whitewalls / TV antennas in the back / You may not have a car at all / But remember brothers and sisters / You can still stand tall / Just be thankful for what you got…
Heading into Thanksgiving week everything is as “fine” as can be in this canyon.
Throughout the decade or so that I’ve been creating the Idelic Hour, the show has been following the new album release cycle for artists and their labels. Now with a singles based streaming paradigm and the pandemic, the landscape of new music is and will be shifting.
Fuck man, gone are the days when I would make the rounds to the 4 or 5 local record shops in my neighborhood to ask when the new Led Zeppelin record would be in. I’m actually very grateful that as a kid in New York City I fully experienced record shopping at its height.
Thanksgiving is a little different this year, there’s no denying it. However, even though these are complicated times, it doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of things to still be very grateful and thankful for. That’s what we celebrate on this week’s episode of Radar and we do it with some help from some of our favorite musicians who share with us an overarching theme of thanks.
You’ll hear Gregory Porter, Sly and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, Leonard Cohen and much more; old favorites and new. I don’t know about you, but the holiday season for me is always synonymous with those four Liverpool lads, The Beatles, so they of course stop by as well. We also have a “Thank You” contest between ZZ Top and Sam & Dave, make sure to tune in and see how that one turns out.
All in all, it’s an opportunity to bask in a glow of gratefulness with some of our favorite musicians and performers; we can use their comfort and support now more than ever. So, a Thanksgiving toast to all of our loyal Radar listeners and readers: may you enjoy this special season with your closest of loved ones and may you also recognize that—even during these very weird times—we all still have much to be thankful for.
Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Sharp Notes each Saturday evening at 6pm and TVD Radar on Sundays at 5AM on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Discover the extraordinary story of legendary bluesman Joe Bonamassa in the inspirational documentary Guitar Man, arriving on Video-On-Demand and for Digital purchase December 8, 2020 from Paramount Home Entertainment.
From average Joe by day to guitar hero at night, Guitar Man tells the incredible rise of blues-rocker Joe Bonamassa, whose hard work and determination have made him one of today’s top-selling blues artists. With more #1 Blues albums than anyone else in history, Bonamassa pulls back the curtain on his incredible career, allowing us to see his remarkable musical achievements and pioneering style. Featuring behind the scenes interviews and live concert footage showcasing some of the biggest names in music, kick back and enjoy the exhilarating soundtrack of his phenomenal life.
Guitar Man showcases Bonamassa’s astounding talent from his childhood as a “wunderkind” discovered and mentored by Blues legend B.B. King. At the age of only 43, Bonamassa has an illustrious career spanning over three decades. Through highs and lows, Joe persevered, taking his musical journey into his own hands to overcome challenges and reach his goals. In 2009, Bonamassa fulfilled a lifelong dream of playing at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall and was joined on stage by Eric Clapton, marking a pivotal moment that elevated his music to the next level.
Filled with an abundance of music, live concert footage, and interviews with music industry legends, Guitar Man chronicles a musician growing in his craft, traveling the globe, collaborating with top artists from across the world of music, and ascending to the heights of inevitable success.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | To date Matador’s Revisionist History series has set its focus on the hallowed year of 1995 – surfacing critical releases by Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, and Chavez. Today, however, we whirl the dial on the in-house wayback machine and travel toward the future: the year 2000 and Mary Timony’s debut solo album, Mountains, which will be reissued on January 15.
Remastered by Bob Weston, Mountains comes back to us as a gold foil-embossed gatefold 2xLP and will include the previously unreleased original takes of “Return to Pirates,” “Poison Moon,” and “Killed by the Telephone,” which were delivered along with the original master tapes 20 years ago, but were omitted from the final album. The record is completed by a newly recorded orchestral version of “Valley of One Thousand Perfumes” produced by composer Joe Wong (Russian Doll, Midnight Gospel) and mixed by Dave Fridmann.
At the turn of the century, Timony (Ex Hex, Wild Flag, Hammered Hulls) was already a celebrated presence in American underground music – a fixture of D.C. and Boston rock ’n’ roll via her work in Autoclave and Helium respectively. By 1998, though, Helium was drawing to a close and Timony was feeling uncertain about the future. “I had never been good at the rock’ n’ roll business, and making a living from being in a band just didn’t seem like it was in the realm of possibility for me,” she writes. “I just knew I wanted to make another record because that was the part of being in a band that I liked the most.”
At the time of its original release, Timony called Mountains, “A Trip to the New Underworld.” “A bunch of hard stuff was happening in my life: family illnesses, people dying, people leaving, relationships ending. I fell into a deep depression,” she explains. “I tried new ways of making music: I tried writing songs without any filter at all, and I purposely didn’t think about what the music would sound like to anyone else. I was only interested in describing what was in my head.”
“My first date with vinyl followed the arc of a classic ’90s romcom. A series of almosts and missed connections before finally we each turned the corner, caught the other’s eye, and fell in love.”
“Like most folks who have a dad with a garage, I unearthed his high school and college collection of records while exhuming my family’s Christmas decorations. I was a braces-laden eleven year old, and though I theoretically knew what the records were as objects, the band names within bands ‘The Temptations’ and ‘Marvin Gaye’ were entirely alien to me. My family didn’t own a record player, so they stayed in the box, forgotten.
It was many years before vinyl and I crossed paths again. I was in my early twenties and just played a gig with Drew Martin, a local in the Seattle music scene who lived most of the year in Hawaii, but would manage to sell out venues like The Sunset simply by sending out one group text message. He’s a mythic underground figure, to say the least. I don’t drive, so he was carting me to and from the venue.
We were loading my gear into his car and he had some left over merch in his trunk. A home-printed T-shirt, and a deluxe vinyl of his record The Valley, an invaluable object only available in physical form since he hadn’t bothered with streaming sites or digitizing his music at all yet. He offered them, and I happily accepted both proffered gifts. I’d conveniently forgotten that I didn’t own a record player.
I keep having the same nightmare. In it, Keith Emerson is hitting me over the head with dead classical composers. First he hits me over the head with Johannes Sebastian Bach, then he hits me over the head with Modest Mussorgsky, then he hits me over the head with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, then he hits me over the head with Béla Bartók, then Jerry Lee Lewis bursts into the room and hits Keith Emerson over the head with a piano. Thank God for Jerry Lee Lewis.
Keith Emerson didn’t start bashing me over the head with dead composers when he joined the Evil Triumvirate Emerson, Lake & Palmer. No, it started back in 1968, when the classical blowhard formed the Nice with singer/bass player Lee Jackson and drummer Brian Davison. The trio quickly set about mixing classical music with rock, creating a tidal wave of bands set upon putting a conductor’s baton in the hand of a popular music form guilty only of minding its own business.
Emerson showed early promise as a live performer, taking a whip to his piano, riding it across the stage like the Lone Ranger, and stabbing it to death with knives. Unfortunately he grew up, quit the shenanigans and went full SymphProg, sealing the fates of those of us who believe that once you’ve buried a classical composer you should have the common decency not to dig him back up again.
On 1970’s live Five Bridges The Nice, aided and abetted by a horn section and the Sinfonia of London, play a classical hash that incorporates the music of Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius, with a dash of jazz schmaltz tossed in for flavoring. The entire album’s a horror show, but The Nice reach a world historic nadir with “Country Pie”/“Brandenburg Concerto,” which they presumably created by cramming Bob Dylan and J.S. Bach into a prototype of Seth Brundle’s telepod.
Tower Records launches online store: The legendary Tower Records is back and better than ever! Founded back in 1960 in Sacramento, California, the record store had to unfortunately file for bankruptcy in 2006 and has been closed ever since then. It previously had 89 chain stores across America, and their store in Japan became iconic – but had become separate from the business back in 2002 – and still runs as popular as ever today. The original Tower Records, though, is now back in an online store form. Not going anywhere now, this is brilliant news for the independent record store market, and their online form means that it will never leave us again. It’s been 14 whole years, but now the revival of Tower Records is in full swing. Stating that they’re open 23/7, they boast over 500,000 titles on CD and vinyl including 468 pages in the electronic section filled with some of the greatest dance albums of all time. Also on their store is a merch section where you can purchase logo shirts, record slipmats, hats, sweaters and much more.
Louisville, KY | Would ear X-tacy Survive in Today’s Vinyl Revolution? For music lovers in Louisville, it’s almost a citywide shared memory: You carve out some time, head to ear X-tacy in The Highlands and get lost for the next two hours checking out new music on the many listening stations scattered around the store. The hope was you’d hear that next band or artist that you were about to fall in love with and listen to incessantly, as the thrill of “discovering” that new favorite band is something that cannot be explained, only experienced. The iconic store opened Aug. 1, 1985, at 4264 Poplar Level Road, moved to a space next door to Great Escape where it did business for three years, then to the 1534 Bardstown Road location that became its long-time home. It ultimately landed in a smaller spot down the street, at Douglass Loop, before closing for good in late 2011. The classic Bardstown Road space then became a Panera restaurant, adding insult to injury. Ear X-tacy’s legacy would spark the 2012 documentary “Brick and Mortar and Love,” and many remain wistful for those days of browsing through albums and CDs and soaking in the quirky atmosphere of the destination music shop.
Rehoboth, DE | Rehoboth’s Extended Play triples size with new location: Record store moves from Rehoboth Avenue to Village By The Sea complex. After more than two years in one of the smallest retail locations in Rehoboth Beach, record store Extended Play has tripled its size with a recent move to the Village By The Sea shopping center. Owner Steve Fallon opened Extended Play in July 2018 in the space next to Dos Locos Stonegrill. At the time he estimated it to be roughly 400 square feet. The new location, Suite 8B, across from Arena’s Deli, is about three times the size, he said. Fallon said the extra space was the reason for the move. In addition to more room for records, the space allows for the display of the business’ audio equipment, he said. “Too many tiny hands could touch things in the old place,” said Fallon. Estimating 2,000 vinyl records sitting on the floor now, Jackson Beckner, Extended Play store manager, said the new location will allow him to sort out and display the remaining 4,000 records the shop has in storage. “More space means more inventory,” said Beckner, happy to have the task in front of him.
San Diego, CA | Folk Arts and Jupiter join forces: “When you own your own store it’s the real education.” Brendan Boyle began his vinyl education while working at a record shop in Sacramento. Following that, he went solo and spent about ten years selling vinyl online. The combined experiences gave him a 20-year education when it came to buying and selling records, but he claims that it wasn’t until he purchased Lou Curtiss’s Folk Arts Rare Records that he entered the uppermost realms of vinyl expertise. “When you own your own store it’s the real education,” he explained. “What you’re learning is on a whole other level than anything else. So, the biggest education I’ve had is the last six years.” Boyle’s El Cajon Boulevard Folk Arts location had been chugging along fine since it opened in 2014, but about four years into that run he decided to open Jupiter, a second record shop. It wasn’t so much a stab at increased profits as his inner soothsayer predicting bad days on the horizon. “I built Jupiter in 2018 partially as a fallback plan,” he explained. “It was a fallback plan for a potential Great American Shitshow. I was worried about Donald Trump not being the greatest president and some kind of shitshow happening — and I ended up being right.”
Poppy reveals her favorite store is Newbury Comics, announces holiday EP: It’s uncertain to really know just how many things Bostonians have in common with Poppy. But as of today (November 18), we can add our favorite chain of record stores to the list. News dropped this morning that the increasingly enigmatic metal-pop-fusion star will release an album of Christmas tunes called A Very Poppy Christmas on December 1. New England-based pop culture and record shop Newbury Comics also shared via Twitter that they’ll have 1000 white vinyl copies of the album available to pre-order, exclusive to their shops. Then came the big reveal: Poppy responded to the tweet, writing “My favorite store since I was a bb.” The news, while glorious, isn’t altogether shocking; Poppy was born in Massachusetts and lived here until her early teens until she moved to Tennessee, and then later, to Los Angeles. Multiple articles, fan pages, and her Wikipedia page state that she was born near or in Boston, making her birthplace one of the few facts about her life that isn’t constantly disputed on online message boards.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Destiny Street was the follow-up album to one of the greatest punk albums of all time, 1977’s Blank Generation. The album was originally recorded in 1981 and released in 1982, but not to Richard Hell’s satisfaction. As he says in his new liner notes to Destiny Street Remixed, “The final mix was a morass of trebly multi-guitar blare.”
Now, for the 40th anniversary of its creation, the album is at last presented improved the way Richard Hell has long hoped and intended: “The sound of a little combo playing real gone rock and roll.” The resultant Destiny Street Complete, due out via 2-CD set and Digital, is set for January 22, 2021 release on Omnivore Recordings. Omnivore will also release a vinyl version of the new Destiny Street Remixed set for the same date.
Richard Hell co-founded his first band, the Neon Boys, with Tom Verlaine in 1973. That band became Television. When Hell left Television in 1975, he formed, with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, both formerly of the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers. After another year, Richard departed the Heartbreakers and created Richard Hell & the Voidoids, which, along with other CBGB bands of the era, such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, formed the template for punk, the effects of which are still being felt.
Apart from Hell on vocals and bass, the original Voidoids comprised Robert Quine (guitar), Ivan Julian (guitar), and Marc Bell (drums). The Destiny Street-era band retained Quine, but otherwise the backing lineup became Naux (Juan Maciel) on guitar and Fred Maher on drums.
Kelly Finnigan has always added classic soul to his sound and does so in his original new Christmas release next month, A Joyful Sound on Colemine Records. But he brings a whole new menace to the holiday with his second single from the set, which amplifies the familiar warning, “You better watch out, you better not cry” into the sizzling “Santa’s Watching You,” which we’re happy to premiere today at The Vinyl District.
“This song came to me like all good ideas, by accident,” Finnigan tells us. “I was deep in making this record and thinking a lot about Christmas music pretty consistently. I was sitting around, hanging out listening to some different records. A great gospel tune by The Sacred Four came on called ‘Somebody’s Watching You.’ In that instant, I realized that somebody else watches people too.” So the jolly North Pole denizen turns into somewhat of an NSA super spy in the hands of the soulful Bay Area singer, producer and songwriter.
If the funky feel of “Santa’s Watching You” has the easy camaraderie of an office Christmas party, it’s because he’s enlisted musicians from the esteemed Ohio label, headquartered upstairs from the Plaid Room Records in downtown Loveland, a shop definitely worth a stop to vinyl lovers in the Cincinnati area.
Backing Finnigan alongside label head Terry Cole is Plaid Room Records employee Henry Allen. It also features Jimmy James, guitarist for the Delvon Lamar Organ Trio, and no less than the Harlem Gospel Travelers on backing vocals. That meant some widespread geographic contributions to the album, Finnigan says, with “drums and bass in Ohio, guitar in Seattle, organ, percussion and vocals at my place with some additional background vocals by the Harlem Gospel Travelers in New York.”
PHOTO: KENNY MATHIESON | The world music festival, which began in 2012, is planning an unprecedented global event featuring world music icons Terry Riley, Zakir Hussain, Toumani Diabate (pictured at top), Betsayda Machado and numerous others. Artists in thirteen cities from Mysore to Madagascar will contribute to a celebration of “Community, Unity, and Harmony.” Raga is the classical music of the Indian subcontinent.
In a sense, the festival, which began as a radio event and eventually began producing live shows around the New York area, is returning to its roots on the air. Performances will be live streamed on the site of one of the sponsors, Pioneer Works and on radio station, WKCR-FM 89.9 FM from 7 PM Friday evening until 7 PM Saturday evening (eastern time).
Some of the cutting edge cross-cultural performances include Terry Riley performing raga-based improvisations from Japan preceded by Brooklyn Raga Massive premiering a 24-person performance in homage to Riley. Amir ElSaffar will be collaborating with the Brooklyn Raga Massive as well as with Raga Maqam, a 14 piece ensemble that explores the intersections between maqam, the tonal language of Arab, Turkish, and Persian traditional music, and raga. Andy Statman, the legend of klezmer and bluegrass will be exploring both Jewish doinas and ragas from the 200-year-old synagogue B’nai Jeshurun.
Part three of the TVD Record Store Club’s look at the new and reissued releases presently in stores for November 2020. Part one is here and part two is here.
NEW RELEASE PICKS: Lisa/Liza, Shelter of a Song (Orindal) Lisa/Liza is singer-songwriter Liza (pronounced Lisa) Victoria, who resides in Portland, the one in Maine. This is her third LP for Orindal (she’s also issued a pair of cassette EPs for the label), and after welcoming additional instrumentalists on her prior effort Momentary Glance, she returns to solo mode here with eight tracks recorded live in a kitchen with nary an overdub. Victoria’s sound lands securely in the late night folk zone, with singing that’s pretty but sturdy, delivery that’s emotional but in control, and fingerpicking that is often gentle but with an invigorating tension and flashes of sharpness. Additionally, Victoria has the ability to tackle topics (the suicide of a friend on Momentary Glance, her own chronic illness on this album) that’s stimulating in its seriousness rather than burdensome. Still, it’s difficult to deny this record is a heavy experience, but that’s ultimately to Victoria’s credit. Shelter of a Song is unlikely to get many back-to-back spins, but when it is played it will surely leave an impression. A-
Enrique Rodríguez and the Negra Chiway Band, Fase Liminal (Soul Jazz Records) One of the dangers with spiritually focused music is an overflowing bliss that deflates into insubstantiality. Fase Liminal, which can be succinctly tagged as contemporary spiritual jazz from Chile, doesn’t have this problem, largely because the range of influence is fairly wide, so that an appealing balance is struck between free jazz fire and modal fusion textures, with electric keyboard prevalent. And so, not only does Rodriguez and band avoid getting too airy, but they also avoid faltering into hackneyed vamping or technique-flaunting noodles. Hooray! And while there’s an abundance of percussion across the record, rhythm doesn’t dominate the proceedings, as the horn playing is rich and occasionally raucous. This is true in particular during the closing alt take of “Dónde ?,” which attains levels of collective intensity recalling Sanders’ Karma but with piano that brought to mind LaMont Johnson’s playing on Jackie McLean’s “Hipnosis.” Everything clicks, even the flute and vocals. A-
REISSUE/ARCHIVAL PICKS: V/A, CUBA: Music and Revolution: Culture Clash in Havana: Experiments in Latin Music 1975-85 Vol.1 (Soul Jazz) This set, issued in 3LP and 2CD editions, arrives in conjunction with the hardcover book CUBA: Music and Revolution: Original Album Cover Art of Cuban Music: Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1959-90. Both the book and this collection are the handiwork of Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, their third such collaboration (the prior two delved into revolutionary jazz and bossa nova), and as these selections play it’s abundantly clear, even without access to the book (which isn’t available in the US until December 11), that the compilers are at the very top of their game. Now, you might’ve noticed that the book tackles a much longer timeframe than the compilation. That’s okay. The compressed focus of Experiments in Latin Music allows for a deep immersion into a transitional period rather than surface-skimming a longer span of years. Furthermore, it’s stated that most everything here was previously unheard outside Cuba, making this a feast for the curious (out 11/27). A
MIYUMI Project, Best of the MIYUMI Project (FPE) Now 20 years strong, the MIYUMI Project is a Chicago-based Asian-American / African-American collaboration founded and led by bassist Tatsu Aoki. Drawn from the group’s sizeable discography, these nine selections span four sides of vinyl (CD is also available) and from all research appears to by MIYUMI Project’s debut on wax. The sound is a synthesis of the Japanese taiko drumming tradition and avant-jazz improvisational firepower, with a sturdy connection to the Windy City’s AACM, including members Ed Wilkerson and Mwata Bowden on reeds and Dushun Mosley on drums. Aoki, who was part of Japan’s experimental scene before moving to the USA in 1977 (Chicago in ’79), brings a steadying maturity (and robust bass) to this fusion, though that’s not to infer that things don’t get wild. They do. Things are also consistently rhythmic, rising to a powerhouse level in the nearly 16-minute “Episode One.” Along with spirited expansive blowing, there is beaucoup string scrape, which only increases the fortitude of the MIYUMI Project’s bedrock. Compilations rarely get any better than this one, which culminates with an unreleased live track. A
Chicago, IL | ‘Dusty Groove’ film sifts through the emotions of giving up your vinyl: Chicago music store owners buy stranger’s collections and hear their stories in the engrossing documentary. Rick Wojcik and J.P. Schauer are the co-founders of the Dusty Groove record store in Wicker Park, and they’ve been at this a long time. If you caught up with John Cusack’s Rob Gordon and Jack Black’s Barry Judd from the fictional Championship Vinyl record store in Wicker Park from “High Fidelity” (2000) some 20 years down the road, well, that’s Wojcik and Schauer in a nutshell. …In Danielle Beverly’s engrossing and warmhearted documentary “Dusty Groove: The Sound of Transition,” the customers aren’t treated as human props for the proprietors, as is often the case on shows such as “Pawn Stars” and “American Pickers.” Beverly is clearly as interested in the record lovers as the record store owners, and the result is a verité slice of American life shining a light on a disparate group of individuals who have one thing in common: They love their vinyl.
Kansas City, MO | Best of KC 2020: Every single record store from Topeka to KC is doing amazing, sweetie: Starting out west, and heading east: Time Machine Music, Mother Earth Records & Tapes, the Vinyl Score, Love Garden Sounds, Orange Cat Records, FM Music, Josey Records, Revolution Records, Mills Record Company, Records with Merrit, Brothers Music, Vinyl Heaven the Vinyl Underground at 7th Heaven, and Gotwhatulike Records. These stores have been at the forefront of making sure that customers are distanced, masked and, in many cases, gloved during their shopping experiences, thanks to the sheer amount of touchy-feely involved in flipping through the bins. Be it scheduled visits, where customers can browse the shops all by their lonesome like a high-rolling celebrity, curbside pickup, outdoor browsing experiences, or just a copious amount of available hand sanitizer, these record shops have allowed a certain amount of normalcy in our live, while not unnecessarily putting anyone at risk. Given that musical experiences these days are few and far between, it’s a rare opportunity to engage with like-minded music fans.
BBC: Asia’s forgotten musical gems rediscovered on vinyl: As the vinyl market experiences booming demand, crate diggers are spending time and money to re-release forgotten musical gems around Asia and beyond. Fariz Rustam Munaf, a prolific multi-instrumentalist better known as Fariz RM, was a household name in his native Indonesia during the 1980s. Back then, both teenagers and adults grooved to his signature brand of jazz fusion, which incorporates elements of spacey disco and Brazilian samba. Today, contemporary record labels are re-releasing his music for a new generation of listeners, with DJs routinely mixing his hit songs with electronic genres, such as Balearic house, at underground parties from Jakarta to Ibiza. “Being reissued is a great compliment,” says the 61 year-old. “It’s a new period of my career. I feel like I’ve been reborn.”
The 11 Best Vinyl & Record Player Accessories for Every Turntable Setup: From sound tweaks to a record club, gift ideas for every record nerd. Like any kind of collector, record enthusiasts tend to be obsessive about the object of their desire. That’s good news for gift-givers hunting for the best vinyl accessories for their friends and family. While buying records for anyone you don’t know intimately can be a dicey proposition—unless, of course, you have a link to their Discogs wantlist—the list of add-ons, novelties, and vinyl-adjacent doodads is long, with a bounty of possibilities at every price point, from humble anti-static brushes to absurdly pricey record-cleaning systems. So we’ve perused our own crowded shelves to come up with a selection of gifts guaranteed to delight any record aficionado. For still more ideas—or maybe just because you deserve a treat, too—check out our guide to buying the best record player and stereo system for any budget.
Tame Impala announce 10th anniversary InnerSpeaker box set: We kinda had a hunch this was coming… Earlier this year, Kevin Parker commemorated the 10th anniversary of Tame Impala’s debut album InnerSpeaker and hinted that “something very special coming v soon.” That special something is a new vinyl reissue of the album. The 4LP box set features “2020 mixes” of the tracks ‘Alter Ego’ and ‘Runway Houses City Clouds’, instrumentals for ‘Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind’ and ‘It Is Not Meant To Be’, a collection of demos, and a 40-page book. Diehards will get excited at the inclusion of a previously unreleased ‘Wave House Live Jam’ – as in the studio property in WA where InnerSpeaker was made, and that Parker purchased recently. InnerSpeaker won the 2010 J Award for Australian Album of the Year – we praised it as a “spiralling, trippy adventure” at the time. And just a few months back, the album came #3 in Double J’s list of the 50 Best Australian Debut Albums. hailed as a “timeless album that still hits like a mind-melting sonic adventure from another era.”
VIA PRESS RELEASE | In his directorial debut filmmaker Tyler Q Rosen offers a revealing and inspiring documentary about how a man and his guitar can be the beginning of change for an entire nation, one person at a time.
Doin’ My Drugs is a profound and personal look at the extraordinary life of musician Thomas Muchimba Buttenschøn as he uses music in an effort to wipe out AIDS in his native Zambia and beyond. Born in Zambia in 1985 to a Zambian mother and Danish father, Buttenschøn was diagnosed HIV positive as an infant. After emigrating to Denmark with his family for treatment, Thomas lost both of his parents to AIDs at the age of nine and became deathly ill himself at 13. Upon regaining his health after beginning antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, he threw himself into music, and at 20, became a Danish pop star.
After marrying and fathering two sons, Thomas reconnected with family in Zambia, and was shocked to discover that the country remains trapped in a senseless HIV/AIDS epidemic. While he is able to live a full and healthy life with the virus, a staggering 13% of Zambians who are infected with HIV remain untreated because of the social stigma attached to the virus, and the resulting reluctance to get tested, despite the availability of free treatment from their government. Determined to make a difference, Thomas has dedicated his life to using his music and his own story to raise awareness about HIV and treatment in Zambia. Teaming with an extraordinary group of Zambian musicians, Thomas embarks on a crusade to wipe HIV and AIDS in Zambia, and throughout Africa.
The film is executive produced by longtime HIV/AIDS activist Jake Glaser of The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. EGPAF seeks to end global pediatric HIV/AIDS through prevention and treatment programs, research, and advocacy. Released by Freestyle Digital Media, the film distribution division of Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | UMe’s Urban Legends, the label imprint and cross-platform initiative devoted to the curation and celebration of over three decades of urban catalog music and culture, and Soul In The Horn, an innovative digital movement that seeks to bridge cultural gaps by bringing together a diverse cross-section of creative talents, have teamed up to create an extraordinary one-of-a-kind 3-D experience for ardent Mary J. Blige fans that celebrates the November 29 anniversary of My Life, one of the most critically acclaimed and important R&B albums of all time.
Over the past few days, 500 randomly selected superfans from her newsletter and website, ages 21+, received an invitation to dive into a dynamic online environment full of rare content via mobile or desktop that mirrors virtual reality. Custom-built so fans can interact with one another as well as with digital concierges designed to guide them on-demand throughout the journey, UMe’s Urban Legends and Soul In The Horn provide VIP access to My Life music, performances, visuals and more.
Mary J. Blige, the legendary singer-songwriter, actress, philanthropist and honorary Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, will re-release her acclaimed 1994 sophomore album, My Life, on November 20 via Geffen/UMe. The album will be released in three physical forms: a 2CD, a standard weight black double vinyl, and a triple vinyl edition in translucent blue with a lenticular cover, including bonus tracks featuring LL Cool J, and Smif ‘N Wessun. The 3LP edition will also be available digitally which will also feature commentary by Mary J. Blige on the original album tracks. From her No. 57 hit “You Bring Me Joy” to her No. 22 version of Rose Royce’s 1976 soul classic “I’m Going Down,” My Life was one of Blige’s most creatively vital works to date.
