VIA PRESS RELEASE | Formed in Westchester, California by high school friends Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, along with Don Murray, Al Nichol, Chuck Portz, and Jim Tucker, The Turtles racked up nine Top 40 hits, including the unforgettable “Happy Together,” during their original run from 1965-1970.

While the band may be best known for that and a few other chart-toppers, each of their six studio albums offers unique gems and unsung treasures, featuring unforgettable harmonies and sardonic wit. At long last, those albums are being reissued as they were meant to be heard — on vinyl — on June 26, 2020 by Manifesto Records. Originally released on the Los Angeles-based White Whale label, the long out of print albums were reissued on CD in 2016, but now, for the first time in more than a decade, they’re back on vinyl, digitally remastered from the original tapes.

And purists won’t have to struggle with the old mono vs. stereo conundrum. The band’s first three albums — It Ain’t Me Babe, You Baby, and Happy Together — will be issued in high-quality gatefold jackets as two-record sets with both the mono and stereo versions, so you’ll get the best of both worlds. The later three albums — Battle of the Bands, Turtle Soup, and Wooden Head — will also be released in gatefolds as two-record sets with the original album, plus a second disc featuring rare bonus material, including previously unreleased recordings.

It Ain’t Me Babe, The Turtles’ 1965 full-length debut, includes the Top 10 hit cover of the classic Bob Dylan tune that served as the album’s title track, and renditions of Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” as well as a take on P.F. Sloan’s “Eve of Destruction.” The album also features several Kaylan originals that show his evolution as a songwriting force.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Third Man Records is excited to announce their reissue of Albert Ayler’s groundbreaking 1969 album New Grass, to be released on 180-gram vinyl on June 26. This will mark the first pressing of the album in nearly 40 years. Limited edition Coke bottle clear vinyl with opaque green wisps will be available at Third Man storefronts and select indie shops throughout the US (full list of stores TBA).

New Grass has been misunderstood from the day of its release. The album finds Ayler experimenting with soul music and digging back into his R&B roots (he started his career playing saxophone with Chicago bluesman Little Walter), fusing it with the avant-garde free jazz (the one element of the record which garnered consistent praise) and adding the vocals of Rose Marie McCoy, The Soul Singers and Ayler himself. As if predicting the divisiveness of the record to follow, Ayler speaks directly to the listener and explains that New Grass is nothing like his albums before — that it is of “a different dimension of his life” — in the album opener “Message from Albert.”

New Grass deserves reconsideration, if not for the heavy grooves and surprising arrangements, then for its bravery in challenging norms of the time; by the ‘60s, jazz was well-accepted as a uniquely American art form, while soul as a genre was very much still seen as primitive. Ayler melds them together and creates something novel, adventurous, and completely his own.

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Throughout history there have been communities where creative people gather, attracting like-minded artists who create something that becomes a legacy. Usually it involves low rent. In Los Angeles, the woody hills above Sunset with its cul de sacs and affordable rentals helped nurture what was also the natural sounding outgrowth of folk into rock in the late ’60s with occasional twangs of country.

More than 50 years after its heyday, Laurel Canyon has been heralded of late in documentary films. First came Jakob Dylan’s Echo in the Canyon, which was built around interviews with surviving originators alongside rehearsals for a contemporary salute to the bands. After a short run in theaters last year, it’s now showing on Netflix. Now comes the more expansive Laurel Canyon, a two-part, two-night, four-hour film that premiered on epix Sunday (May 31) and concludes this Sunday (June 7) and is available on demand.

With the goofy catchphrase of “Everything They Touched Turned to Music” it aims to capture a magic time when guitars rang through the hallows and The Byrds, The Turtles, Frank Zappa, and The Doors were all neighbors, more often trading joints than cups of sugar, and always apparently open to drop over and jam.

Alison Ellwood, whose previous similar extended music documentary was History of the Eagles, begins with what looks like it will be a ton of previously unseen or otherwise rare home movies of activities in Laurel Canyon, when handheld movie cameras were just another avenue of creativity for those capturing the freewheeling spirit of the era.

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“Growing up in Brooklyn, music was always playing in our household. My earliest childhood memory was hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time—I distinctly remembering my mom telling me she had something I needed to listen to.”

“I remember her walking over to our old stereo and loading the CD. I remember the sound of the disc spinning. And from that first second of the first bars of “All Along the Watchtower,” my little child-mind was blown into smithereens in a way that I’ve still since not come back from. I saw in technicolor for the first time. Nothing would be the same.

We also listened to a lot of Dylan, The Everly Brothers, Captain Beefheart, Bob Marley, Van Morrison, The Doors, Little Feat, The Rolling Stones, Queen, and The Band and Jackson Browne. Then I got into my teens and discovered bands like Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Slayer, and The New York Dolls as well as Nick Cave, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits and Warren Zevon. I feel that my melodic sensibilities were probably more informed by the first phase, while my lyrics and guitar playing were more influenced by the latter. Or maybe it’s the other way round. What does it matter anyway—music saved my life. Or maybe it’s the other way round there too.

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Drag City Records’ May 29 release of the No Trend Too Many Humans/Teen Love box set comes during a resurgence of interest in the Ashton, Maryland hardcore band turned three-ring circus. While the band went on to record three additional LPs and an EP with Lydia Lunch, the Drag City compilation chronicles the band’s early years, when their Flipper meets PiL grind and black humor made them the enfants terribles of Washington, DC’s hardcore scene.

I exchanged e-mails with the duo who co-produced the set: former No Trend guitarist Buck Parr (who played with the band in 1985-86) and writer Jordan Mamone, and together they cast light on how the project came about. But first, here’s Parr’s rundown of the box set’s contents:

“The box set includes exact vinyl facsimiles of the Too Many Humans LP and the “Teen Love” 7″ and 12″ right down to the original inserts, and how things are folded. It comes with 40-page booklet with a great interview I did (tooting my own horn, but whatever), plus the French Too Many Humans bootleg book, one of the ‘lost’ dance books, and all manner of other nonsense. (The box set also includes flyers from a variety of shows, as well as bonus CDs consisting of demos and live recordings from San Francisco’s Mabuhay Gardens and LA’s Cathay de Grande.) Comedian Neil Hamburger (aka Gregg Turkington) actually recorded one of these shows. How weird is that?”

“For decades,” Parr added, “people had been writing to Jeff (band leader Jeff Mentges) in an effort to re-release the material on this set (the Too Many Humans LP and the “Teen Love” EP). Jeff, for reasons known only to himself, would refer these inquiries to me. I’d check them out–some of them seemed rather worthy–and report back to Jeff, who would invariably kill the idea. He really had little interest in seeing this material out again. He’s never been altogether concerned with the band’s legacy and saw releasing old material as pointless.”

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We’ve closed up the shop for the Memorial Day holiday. While we’re away, why not fire up our free Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores, 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, 6/1.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The impact of Elliott Smith’s music holds no bounds. He has been championed, covered, and sampled by artists from Billie Eilish to Pearl Jam to Frank Ocean and his distinct, solemn sound reverberates in the work of the National, Phoebe Bridgers, and Bon Iver. To commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elliott Smith’s self-titled second solo album, Kill Rock Stars is set to release the Elliott Smith: Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition on August 28, 2020.

The package includes a revelatory new remastering of the original Elliott Smith record and a bonus disc of the earliest known recording of Smith performing as a solo act, from September 17, 1994 at Portland’s café and “art salon” Umbra Penumbra. The albums come encased within a 52-page coffee table book with handwritten lyrics, reminiscences from Smith’s friends and colleagues about his life at the time he was writing and recording this album, and two dozen previously unseen photographs from the era by JJ Gonson, who shot the image on the album’s cover (the original photo that became the cover is also seen here for the first time).

Leading up to the reissue’s release Kill Rock Stars will be working with a handful of artists to release covers of Smith’s songs from this album. Artists confirmed for the project thus far include Bonny Light Horseman – the new project of Anais Mitchell (Hadestown), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), and Josh Kaufman (Muzz, Bob Weir, Josh Ritter), Marisa Anderson, MAITA, Prateek Kuhad, and Califone, with more to be announced as we get confirmation.

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“I will never forget the wave of sensations I felt when I heard Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on vinyl for the first time.”

“The year is 2002 and I am studying jazz drumming at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida, my hometown. I started playing the drums at the age of 7 years old and ended up winning the audition that year to become a student. I was beyond excited! Everyone at the time was listening to iPods and the radio. I personally had never heard vinyl in my entire life till one day a fellow student invited me to come jam with him.

It was on that faithful day that my life was forever changed. We were studying the art of swinging and I was obsessed with a certain album—Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue. It was on repeat on my iPod! Well my friend and I started discussing my love for the album.

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It’s the coup of the century! I’m talking about my exclusive interview with the shade of the late Greg Lake, singer, bassist and guitarist of the greatest pomp rock band in history, Emerson, Lake & Palmer! Greg had a prior commitment (“I’m off to jam with Rachmaninoff”) but he set aside a few moments from his busy schedule to answer a few questions. So without further ado, let’s get to it.

For starters, I would just like to say how much I love “Nights in White Satin.”

GL: That was by the Moody Blues.

My bad. “Lucky Man” then. And that song, I can’t remember the name of it, that starts “Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.” Are you talking about the song, which seems to go on forever?

I see “Karn Evil 9″ a a stripped-to-the-basics rock ’n’ roller. We wrote it in the spirit of Carl Perkins.

I hear that simplicity in all of your work. It has an almost garage-like feel that brings to mind the Standells’“Dirty Water.” With Hammond organ, St. Mark’s Church organ, piano, celesta, and Moog modular synthesizer thrown in.

We liked to think we were playing Chuck Berry with a tip of the old orchestra to Tchaikovsky.

Some would say your music is pretentious.

Is it our fault we were the first band to realize the potential of artificially inseminating rock with the jism of classical music? Why restrain yourself to playing three chords when you could be playing 4017?

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The 320 page, 9” x 12” hardcover book with more than 300 stunning color and black and white images by filmmaker / photographer Ted Bafaloukos explores the inspirations behind—and making of —the hugely influential reggae film Rockers, from 1975 to 1978, with extensive text by the late photographer.

Set amongst the reggae scene of late-1970s Jamaica, the film Rockers achieved instant cult status among music and cinema fans upon its release in 1978, with worldwide distribution by 1980. Rockers director Ted Bafaloukos received many accolades for his work on the film, but the fact that he was also a fine writer and documentary photographer has been overlooked. Bafaloukos penned this vivid autobiography in 2015, less than a year before his passing.

Beyond Bafaloukos’ fascinating story of the making of Rockers, the book tells the tale of a Greek immigrant from a family of sailors and his move to New York, eventually rubbing shoulders with the likes of The Velvet Underground, Robert Frank, Jessica Lange, and Philippe “Man on Wire” Petit. Bafaloukos fell in love with reggae when it was still just an underground facet of Jamaican culture in the City. His experiences in New York eventually led him to shoot Rockers, praised for the portrait it paints of Kingston’s late-‘70s music scene along with its unique style and aesthetic.

The director’s intense experiences in Jamaica and New York between 1975 and 1978 provide the substance of the incredible stories that complement the incredible photos, including: gunshots at his first ever reggae concert in Brooklyn; the director’s bizarre arrest for suspicion of being a CIA operative; paranoia at the Bob Marley compound and “street photography” taken of the legend in NYC years before; musicians-turned actors’ “rude boy” antics; and naturally, sympathetic, highly descriptive recollections of the music that first drew Bafaloukos into Jamaica’s music and culture.

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