VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Big Mama Thornton was rock & roll before rock & roll. She had the energy. She had this rawness. There was electricity when she would perform. I actually think she inspired a whole lot of singers but nobody could really hit like she does.” —Brittany Howard

Celebrating Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and Blues Hall of Famer Big Mama Thornton’s centennial and coinciding with the new documentary about her life, I Can’t Be Anyone But Me, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is reissuing Thornton’s essential first two Arhoolie Records albums In Europe (originally released in 1966) and Big Mama Thornton with Muddy Waters’ Blues Band (1967) on vinyl LP. The LP reissues arrive December 4, one week before her centennial on December 11.

Both albums were remastered by Don Godwin, with In Europe restored to its original mono and Big Mama Thornton with Muddy Waters’ Blues Band in stereo. Both show the rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm & blues architect in full command at the front of all-star blues bands.

In Europe, recorded in London in 1965, finds Thornton backed by a band that featured nine-time Grammy Award-winning guitarist and Sinners film actor Buddy Guy alongside Blues Hall of Famer Eddie Boyd on piano and Fred Below—the legendary Chicago blues drummer and veteran of Chuck Berry sessions—on drums.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rhino High Fidelity (Rhino Hi-Fi) expands its acclaimed audiophile series today with Love’s Forever Changes on vinyl and reel-to-reel.

Forever Changes (Rhino High Fidelity) was cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. It comes in a glossy gatefold sleeve with newly written liner notes. The album is limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and available exclusively at Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores internationally.

Forever Changes (Rhino High Fidelity R2R) was duplicated in real time from a 1:1 copy of the original flat analog master tape. The result is a master-quality listening experience that captures the recording’s full dynamics. The 15 i.p.s. half-track 1/4” tape is produced to the IEC equalization standard on premium RTM LPR90 tape stock and stored on a 10.5” metal reel. The Reel-to-Reel edition is limited to 350 copies worldwide and available exclusively at Rhino.com.

Forever Changes marked a creative breakthrough for Love in 1967, radically expanding the Los Angeles quintet’s musical vocabulary, from the sophisticated arrangements of “Alone Again Or” to the adventurous instrumentation of “The Red Telephone.” Produced by Bruce Botnick and Arthur Lee, the album captured Love at their most ambitious, with David Angel’s inventive string and horn arrangements adding new dimensions to “Andmoreagain” and “You Set The Scene.”

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Celebrating Keith Hopwood on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

Amongst the insults lobbed at Herman’s Hermits over the decades: fabricated, shallow, calculatedly commercial, utterly safe, disposable. At home, they scored hits, and in the US, they became one of the most popular imports of the mid-‘60s. However, for many, they are simply a Brit Invasion phenomenon that connects the Frankie Avalon/Fabian ‘50s scene to the eventual rise of bubblegum. Any folks curious as to what the fuss was all about might want to look into Their Greatest Hits.

Herman’s Hermits can be considered the UK equivalent of, and a predecessor to, The Monkees. However, they had to fight longer for redemption, which is still in progress, as many persist in viewing them as eternal inhabitants of Squaresville, damned to never ascend from the circumstances thrust upon them by their era.

The ever-growing legion of Pop scientists will chalk this up to plain Rockism, but it’s a little more complex than that. Before being captured in the vise-like clutches of Mickey Most, Herman’s Hermits were a highly amiable, small-time, Manchester-based gigging band, initially shouldering the rather unimaginative moniker of the Heartbeats; it was after Peter Noone’s arrival that a name change, reportedly inspired by managers Harvey Lisberg and Charlie Silverman, occurred.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | A superb, but long out-of-print document by tenor saxophone giant Clifford Jordan will greet a new generation of jazz fans with Time Traveler Recordings’ October 23 reissue of Night of the Mark VII, Jordan’s celebrated 1975 album recorded live in Paris.

The LP package is the latest installment in TTR’s Muse Master Edition Series, unearthing the long-lost masterworks from the catalog of the historic Muse Records. The series is a collaboration with Virgin Music Group spearheaded by TTR founder, producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman.

Remastered AAA directly from the original analog tapes by Matthew Lutthans at the Mastering Lab in Salina, Kansas, Night of the Mark VII is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Furnace.

It will be issued in a hand-numbered, high-gloss tip-on sleeve jackets by Stoughton Press, featuring a new liner essay by journalist and NEA Jazz Master Willard Jenkins (along with the original 1975 notes by writer/musician Hank Diamond Smith), a rare period photograph of Williams by Raymond Ross, and statements by Barney Fields and Feldman.

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Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler sounded like an atavistic throwback from the very start—a throwback to another, and in his mind, better time. “Sultans of Swing” was a celebration of the past, whether it was about the present or not. With Dire Straits’1978 debut, Knopfler introduced himself as a musical conservative dedicated to the proposition that punk never happened. He was a counter-revolutionary with a guitar.

“An active member of the Fraternal Order of Old Farts since birth,” Robert Christgau once said of Knopfler. “Money for Nothing” is a prime example. It’s the rare Dire Straits song that sounds of our time, but Knopfler definitely comes across as an Old Fart. He mocks the working class for thinking musicians have it easy, and comes across like a rock elitist harboring a grudge.

He seems to disdain a proletariat unwilling to spend the ten hours a day necessary to master the guitar. I doubt it has ever occurred to him that the know-nothings in “Money for Nothing” weren’t lazy (ever try to move a refrigerator, Mark?), but the victims of an industrialized society that condemned them to grunt work.

But there’s no denying Dire Straits have recorded their fair share of commendable songs, even if few of them are as electrifying as Knopfler’s guitar. There’s something staid about the work of Dire Straits—they impress, but they rarely thrill. Tasteful, always—but tasteful, perhaps, to a fault. The only tasteless thing about Dire Straits is Knopfler’s frequent slurs against gays, which is definitely an Old Fart thing to do.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | While the present-day incarnation of Cactus continues to defy the passing of time (the band’s new video, “300 Pounds of Joy,” is among the heaviest things you’ll encounter this year), the band’s former self is crushing the opposition as well.
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Formed by Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert after the former Vanilla Fudge-rs initial intention of teaming up with Jeff Beck was derailed by the guitarist’s car accident, Cactus swiftly established themselves among the loudest, and most influential hard rock bands of the early 1970s.

Three killer albums set the stage for a legacy that swept even Van Halen into their court—Carmine still possesses a cassette tape Eddie Van Halen gave him, of the then-unknown band blasting Cactus covers to a clubful of fans.

And the last few years have seen Cleopatra Records delve into the band’s archive for a clutch of live albums that capture the original band in even more fiery form—The Birth of Cactus, Ultra Sonic Boogie ’71 and, stressing on December 18, Auxiliary Studios ’71, a truly monstrous performance from fall 1971, and an historic one as well.

This was the night when the band announced that guitarist Jim McCarty was on his way out of the band, and they were searching for a new axeman—a shock split that hit the fan-base like an earthquake. Cactus were already known across the US as “the American Led Zeppelin.” And now the American Jimmy Page was on his way out.

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Remembering Ellie Greenwich, born on this date in 1940. —Ed.

The late Ellie Greenwich’s well-deserved fame derives primarily from her activities as a songwriter, specifically as one half of the behemoth Brill Building duo Greenwich-Barry, a pair that penned some of the most brilliant and enduring tunes in the rich history of the ‘60s Girl-Group sound. But she was also a gifted vocalist, and while her talents behind the microphone will never eclipse her abilities as a composer, a little enthusiasm for her performances can only serve to deepen an already impressive legacy. Exhibit number one should be her fabulous single from 1967, “I Want You to Be My Baby” b/w “Goodnight, Goodnight (What’s So Good About It?).”

Once upon a time, the highly rewarding phenomenon of the ‘60s girl groups was firmly in the grip of the formidable tentacles of nostalgia. Such was the intense power of the “golden oldies” experience. While the same can be said of the numerous other rock-based genres that also remained in cultural memory through widespread popularity, those forms were separated far more easily from their sticky status as representatives of a supposedly simpler and somehow preferable past.

As such, younger folks often come to grips with the greatness of Stax before they integrate the more sophisticated pop direction of Motown into their listening diets. And to this day, whole hypothetical countries can be populated with Beatles fans that care nothing about the concept of the ‘60s as a great time to be alive, mainly because they weren’t around to form any memories of that nature.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Circulation: How Culture Moves in the Age of Algorithm, the new book from author and Co-Founder/President of Thirty Tigers, David Macias, is out January 14 via Whitefox Publishing.

Circulation looks at the utility of the algorithms deciding how songs and stories reach an audience and their impact, not only on music discovery, but on how culture develops as a whole. Focusing on the mechanics of the algorithms used today by streaming services, e-commerce platforms, and more, the book explores the ramifications for the emerging and marginal cultures that lack the data trails and institutional backing that these platforms are built to reward.

Circulation both diagnoses the problem and goes on to propose solutions, suggesting counterweights built into the system itself rather than tearing down recommendation systems or resurrecting old-school gatekeeping. Macias treats what the algorithm already knows as a starting point rather than a verdict and searches for ways to break the entertainment industry’s addiction to algorithmic affirmation. Circulation aims to open a door for the cultures that currently find themselves walled off from the processes for cultural discovery.

In addition to its January release, Circulation is being serialized via Macias’ Substack; read the first entry—a web-exclusive introduction from Macias—HERE, with Chapter 1 set to post this Friday (10/23).

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There are live albums that make you wish you’d been there. And then there are live albums that make you fall to your knees and cry, “Thank you, Jesus, for sparing me!”

My gratitude for not having been in the audience for Eric Clapton’s gruesome 1992 live album for the MTV Unplugged TV series is akin to what I’d feel after missing a flight that nose-plowed into an alligator-infested swamp. Had the righteous of the earth seen fit to ban the album, all would be well. Unfortunately, it’s out there right now, eating souls.

Filmed before an adoring audience willing to forgive Clapton for his racist, anti-immigrant track record, Unplugged is, I confess, a fascinating album—you’ll rarely hear an artist so gleefully make a mockery of his own reputation and legacy. Not that he hadn’t already done some of the heavy lifting—he was well on his way when he gifted us the maudlin “Tears in Heaven,” a version of which appears on Unplugged. If it isn’t a sure-fire legacy killer, I don’t know what is.

Unplugged is one laid-back album. Clapton had gone the laid-back Tulsa Sound route before, but the laid-back of Unplugged is aggressively, oppressively laid-back—in an ideal world his transformation of “Layla” into an industrial-strength soporific would constitute a crime against humanity. And Clapton’s lazy acoustic guitar is the ruination of several songs, the defanged “Nobody Knows When You’re Down and Out” being the worst offender. Unplugged has zero bite—you get the sense Old Slowbore was afraid his dentures would fall out.

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