Look, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.
Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.
It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged.
All jokes aside, New Jersey is a pretty great place. While it has a lot to offer as a state, it also has a rich musical history of which many people remain unaware. Everyone knows Sinatra and The Boss, but there’s much more.
No one has as many fingerprints on as many classic jazz recordings as Rudy Van Gelder who died last week at the age of 91. Not a producer or arranger, but a fantastically talented engineer who recorded some of the greatest jazz albums of all time in his studios in both Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs.
Mr. Van Gelder also served as a mastering engineer for albums not recorded in his studio and made mobile recordings of some of the greatest live jazz performances ever captured on tape (Mr. Van Gelder also heralded the use of tape in recording before much of the sound community embraced it). He was a hero of jazz music, but also a titan of the New Jersey music scene. With his talents, Mr. Van Gelder could have set up shop anywhere, but he chose to stay in New Jersey for his entire career.
This week, we revisit a broadcast commemorating his 90th birthday. Next week, you’ll hear a brand new show memorializing his recordings and further discussing his life.
“Western Massachusetts in the late ’70s and ’80s was not exactly the center of the musical universe. I grew up in the mountains of the Berkshires, and getting your hands on a new release took some serious planning.”
“Step 1 – Figure out the release date of the album in question. Now today, this may seem ridiculous considering the ubiquitous nature of information and your almost INABILITY to avoid it. But “way back then,” you had to earn it. Somehow, usually via the radio, you’d hear mention of a new record from your favorite band. The mission would grow from there.
Step 2 – Build your alliances and acquisition network. That’s right. If you wanted that copy of the new album on the day it came in, you’d need to have a couple of alliances at local music stores. You definitely needed to know them by name! There was often a “list” that they would keep of people looking for the first copies that came in, so you’d want to plant the seed early. Having a small army of like-minded passionate music pals helped immensely because they may know someone you don’t.
Step 3 – Ditch school early and get to the record shop on release day. Man, I feel so old saying that, seeing as though there is ZERO reason for this anymore! All things being digital, and pre-order, etc. You don’t need to go ANYWHERE! But back then, like I said, you had to earn that record. It took some serious and methodical planning.
I am going on record, right here and now, as stating the indefensible; namely that Bob Dylan, the great Bob Dylan, would have done us all a favor had he disappeared into darkest Africa—as the brilliant young Symbolist French poet Arthur Rimbaud did after abandoning poetry at the ripe old age of 21—after recording The Basement Tapes with the group that would go on to be called the Band. Because nothing he ever did after them even comes close to measuring up.
Oh, I know Blood on the Tracks has a billion fans, as does John Wesley Harding. Hell, I’ll bet even the execrable Self-Portrait and its bastard son Dylan have their doting admirers. But I’m not one of them, and I will spend the rest of my days wondering what happened to the trickster Zimmerman whose surreal wordplay, wild sense of humor, and flashes of brilliant spiritual insight illuminated The Basement Tapes, making them, I think, the best folk-rock music ever recorded.
I know, I know, I constitute a minority of one. But aside from 1974’s great Before the Flood, the live LP Dylan recorded with his old buddies the Band, the only post-Basement Tapes LP I ever listen to is that same year’s Planet Waves, the studio LP Dylan recorded with Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm and Company before the tour that led to Before the Flood. That this LP constitutes the only real studio collaboration between Dylan and the Band is downright inexplicable; the feel between Bob and his Basement Tapes compadres is hand and glove, and if the LP is a kind of bummer (“Dirge” and “Wedding Song” make sure of that), it’s a lovely bummer, and makes up for its down in the mouth lyrics with ensemble playing that is inexplicably both impromptu sounding and tight as a pair of too small shoes.
Press Play is our Monday recap of the new and FREE tracks received last week to inform the next trip to your local indie record store.
Somatoast – Nodus Tollens
Caleb Keith & the Calaveras – Marie
Angie Keilhauer – Made To Live By The Water
The Chairman Dances – César Chávez
The YUM YUM’s & Mat McHugh – A Pocket Full of Shells
The Shondes – Carrion Crow
TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Bloods – Bring My Walls Down
IAN SWEET – All Skaters Go To Heaven
Fialta – Be Someone
Jessie Reyez – Figures (beats 1 Zane Lowe Premiere RADIO RIP)
Mood Robot – Ghost
The Burgeoning – Beautiful Rampage
The Moondoggies – Oh Now Honey
Time – World War Me
The Best Remaining Record Stores in America: Gentlemen, we are in the midst of a vinyl revolution. You’ve heard that phrase over and over again, but it really is true. People all over the world—young and old—are discovering and rediscovering the warmth and tonality of high fidelity vinyl sound and experiential listening one record sleeve and liner note at a time. But where does one procure such archaic wares? (Ugh. —Ed.)
A Hit-Predicting Algorithm Is Keeping This Record Store Afloat, Bull Moose a Maine-based chain, licenses its data analytics software to other small retailers: A visitor to any one of Bull Moose’s 12 stores in Maine and New Hampshire would be hard-pressed to see the future of brick-and-mortar retailing there. The uniform display racks and fluorescent lighting are utilitarian, offering up a warehouse-size selection of new and used CDs and LPs, movies (including straight-to-VHS horror flicks), video games, and books that evokes the golden era of the 1990s. What sets Bull Moose apart from other independent media store chains is the software behind it.
Toronto’s Microforum Signs with Viryl Technologies to Build State-of-the-art Record Pressing Plant: Microforum signs an agreement for the purchase and installation of Viryl’s “WarmTone” vinyl pressing lines at its Toronto, Ontario manufacturing facility. Viryl Technologies’ presses are the most advanced vinyl record presses in the world. “These presses are modern, fully-automatic and in a class of their own. We studied the options and the WarmTone press was the clear winner”, says Microforum President Frank Stipo.
The world’s best record shops #034: Discos Paradiso, Barcelona: Co-owner Gerad Condemines used to work at local store La Ruta Natural whilst fellow native Catalan Arnau Farrés would sell flea market finds on Discogs. Their joint obsession with rarities sent them hunting for vinyl all over Europe. Eventually they decided to channel their efforts into a brick-and-mortar, opening Discos Paradiso in the Raval neighbourhood. Since its inception in the Raval neighbourhood in April 2010, the store has become a focus point for Barcelona’s dance and experimental scene.
Now that anyone can be a DJ, is the art form dead?: In the 1990s, DJs who rose to the top had generally paid their dues. Alan Banks, onesuch, says he started on school radio and graduated to local bars before promoting his own nights in big London clubs such as Heaven. Mr Banks would spend hours preparing for a set, learning the break-points of records, counting bars and arranging the tunes in his box by their musical keys. The tables, though, were about to turn.
Greetings from Laurel Canyon!
“That first summer of my recovery was one of the most beautiful I can remember, perhaps because I was healthy and clean, and I began to rent some trout-fishing days for myself, mostly on stretches of water in the neighborhood that had been specifically stocked for local fisherman… Fishing is an absorbing pastime and has a Zen quality to it. It’s an ideal pursuit for anyone who wants to think a lot and get things in perspective.
It was also a perfect way of getting physically fit again, involving as it does a great deal of walking. I would go out at the crack of dawn and often stay out till nighttime… For once I was actually becoming good at something that had nothing to do with guitar playing or music. For the first time in a long time, I was doing something very normal and fairly mundane, and it was really important to me…”
Ask anyone who knows me. During the summer months I am fairly obsessed with fishing. I agree with Eric Clapton, it’s an “ideal pursuit” with a “zen quality.” Yes it does have its barbaric qualities, but going out to sea, killing a few fish, and eating them…it makes me feel like an ancient warrior. Humble, strong, at peace. True the chick might be hotter at Sushi Roko on Sunset, but filling your belly with a big tuna you slayed…
The Go-Go’s
Thirty eight years after crawling out of the burgeoning Los Angeles punk rock scene to become one of the biggest bands of the new wave era, The Go-Go’s could be finally calling it a day. At least that’s what the name of the current tour suggests. Postponed from 2010 when Wiedlin was forced to take time off to recover from a knee injury, the Go-Go’s official “Going Going Gone; The Farewell Tour” has sadly come to pass.
Openers Kaya Stewart and Best Coast collectively did a great job of warming up the crowd as they filled the seats, wine and beer in-hand. But it was clear that the gathered crowd, whose age rage spanned a several decades but generally tilted towards the 50s, was there for the headliners. So when the band finally took the stage to Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re An American Band,” the house lit up.
The Go-Go’s
While Kathy Valentine officially parted ways with the band in 2013 amidst acrimony, the rest of the Go-Go’s (including Abby Travis on bass) could not have looked happier to be on stage together, all smiles as they danced along to the intro music before kicking straight into “Vacation,” as a barefoot Belinda Carlisle spun around the carpeted stage.
Trumpeter Maurice Brown will be bringing his funky and soulful band, Mobetta and SOUL’D U Out, to the Frenchmen Street club on Saturday night. This is his first time playing a non-Jazz Fest show in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.
Mobetta and SOUL’D U Out will feature an all-star cast of collaborators. Expect to see saxophonist Derek Douget, bassist Max Moran, drummer Simon Lott, keyboardist Jason Butler, guitarist Josh Connolly, and percussionist Weedie Braimah.
Brown, a Chicago native, burst on the scene like a trumpet-propelled rocket in the first years of the 21st century. He sat in with everyone in town, played some inspired headlining gigs that invigorated the local jazz scene with youthful energy, and released his acclaimed debut album Hip To Bop while a resident of the Crescent City.
Look, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.
Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.
It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires, mixtapes, and fan letters.
When Leo Nocentelli, the legendary guitarist from the Meters, moved back to town after decades in Los Angeles, he told interviewers not to expect too many local performances. This Saturday night, the funk master is providing something completely different. He will be offering his services as both a teacher and a musician to an intimate group at the famed 100-year-old theater in the French Quarter.
Given Nocentelli’s freewheeling nature as a musician, it’s likely to be a one of a kind event, which is formally billed as, “Dickie Brennan & Co. Presents an Intimate Musical Education Evening with Leo Nocentelli.” Brennan is the famed restaurateur whose business is invested in the theater as well as the adjoining restaurant, Tableau.
Joining Nocentelli on stage will be drummer Jamal Batiste and bassist Nick Daniels. Vocalists Rockin’ Dopsie Jr., Darcy Malone, Margie Perez, and Don Bartholomew are on board as well. Eric Paulsen of WWL-TV Channel 4 News will be the host for the evening.
“To be honest, the first time I set a needle to a record was only about 7 years ago. I was born in 1984 and so by the time I was really interested in music, cassettes and CDs were the most commonly available. My family didn’t own a record player—I think maybe my grandparents had an old Victrola in the basement but it was basically furniture.”
“In fact, my first real memory of being excited about music of any kind wasn’t until Christmas 1995. I asked for and got my first boombox CD/Cassette combo, paired with the soundtracks from my two favorite movies at the time—Batman Forever and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. So needless to say, I was a late bloomer. Here are a few memories that come to mind with regard to my discovery of vinyl:
1. In 2009, I was in Seattle to open a show for Ben Folds in Bellingham, WA. It was just a one-off opportunity but I was still excited out of my mind for the opportunity. I had never been to WA and barely had any money back then and so I remember having to call in favors to get picked up at the airport at midnight, sleep on someone’s couch, and then bum a ride to Bellingham from another singer-songwriter my manager was friends with.
Except it turns out he was busy that night and so his girlfriend—who none of us knew—offered to drive us the 2 hours there and back instead. With a little time to kill that day, our new friends showed us around Seattle—specifically a little artsy neighborhood called Fremont. We wandered into a record shop and for some reason, despite not owning a record player myself or having ever bought vinyl before, I walked out with U2’s War album and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. Those were the first 2 records I ever bought.
Let us, dear reader, turn to the strange case of Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg. In 1970, tired of playing “second banana” and biding his time as a “jukebox” for other people’s songs while getting screwed over in the royalties department in the process, the deep soul and R&B singer decided to reinvent himself. “So,” in his own words, “I came up with the name Dogg because a dog can do anything, and anything a dog does never comes as a real surprise; if he sleeps on the sofa, shits on the rug, pisses on the drapes, chews up your slippers, humps your mother-in-law’s leg, jumps on your new clothes and licks your face, he’s never gotten out of character. You understand what he did, you curse while making allowances for him but your love for him never diminishes.”
Dogg’s reinvention, which was apparently aided by an LSD trip, allowed him to turn his attention to, in his own words again, “Sex, niggers, love, rednecks, war, peace, dead flies, home wreckers, Sly Stone, my daughters, politics, revolution and blood transfusions (just to name a few),” without ever getting out of character. Recorded at Muscle Shoals and Macon, Georgia with a bevy of incredibly talented session guys, the songs on Dogg’s 1970 debut LP Total Destruction to Your Mind are every bit as strange as the album’s cover, which shows Swamp Dogg in his underwear sitting on a pile of garbage. One of a kind he is. If you have any doubts, check out his Christmas album, which boasts the wonderful title, “An Awful Christmas and a Lousy New Year.”
No, there’s no doubt about it, Swamp Dogg is one of a kind. The very soulful “I Was Born Blue” posits a world in which Dogg is blue and the rest of the world has orange skin and green hair; “Sal-A-Faster” is, I think, a hilarious testimonial to the wonders of LSD. But who knows? As for the horn-fueled “Dust Your Color Red,” I have no idea whatsoever what Swamp Dogg is talking about, or to be more accurate, testifying about.
Sounds like an (un)broken record: Talking about a record collection makes someone sound old. Hopefully, always makes a person sound educated on how to care for music and art. If someone wanted to record an album in 1975, that person needed to either be rich or be talented enough and play ball enough with record companies to get one of them to bankroll a recording session and tour. This provided a higher benchmark of talent to reach.
The definitive guide to São Paulo’s best record shops: São Paulo is the third largest city in the world and Brazil’s sprawling cultural hub…Luckily, a large majority of the record stores are very close together in the downtown (Centro) area. The stores are mostly located in galerias (shopping malls) and often you can encounter 10+ stores on a single floor. Some of the best record stores are in the downtown galerias but travel outside of the city centre and you’ll be equally rewarded, as long as you know where to look.
Asia Minute: Vinyl’s Record Appeal in Japan: Tokyo is getting another record store…and a pretty big one. Jiji News reports the store in the Shinjuku neighborhood will have about 70,000 records for sale…along with record players, and some 20,000 CD’s. It will be run by a subsidiary of the convenience store Lawson’s, which launched its first record store in the nearby area of Shibuya a couple of years ago. Most of the records in the new store will be used, with prices ranging from about three dollars to as much as a thousand dollars for rare items.
How To Connect A Turntable To Your Wireless Speaker: … as we enter a golden age of streaming music, the popularity of a dinosaur music format is going gangbusters. It’s hard to imagine a less practical format for playing music than a vinyl album –it’s huge, one scratch and it’s ruined, the vinyl warps in heat and a vinyl record can cost $25 or more– but vinyl is hot. Vinyl album sales have grown every year for the past decade. That means more and more people are investing in a turntable, hitting the local used record store and then trying to figure out how the heck to listen to these records over their Bluetooth speaker—because many of them have never had the need to buy a traditional stereo system.
San Francisco rock outfit, Train brought their crisp, progressive tones to Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday night along with an energetic performance from opening act Andy Grammer.
Train’s commercial success dates back to the ’90s with the hit single “Meet Virginia” from their 1998 debut album. The band’s second release scored two Grammy Award wins for the single “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)” in 2002, and Train’s third studio album, My Private Nation was certified platinum with the release of the hit “Calling All Angels” in 2003. Judging by the droves of fans that lined the grounds at Merriweather on Saturday, it’s clear that this band still touches the hearts of many who flock to see them.
While the band’s lineup has changed over the years, their core remains intact with band mates Jimmy Stafford and lead singer Patrick Monahan conducting this train. The current lineup includes Jerry Becker, Luis Maldonaldo, Hector Maldonado, Drew Shoals, and Nikita Houston and Sakai Smith on backing vocals. Live, Train’s sound is clean and refreshing and they are completely in their element on stage.
When Andy Grammer walked into the spotlight to get the night started he brought an overdose of charisma and charm that was matched by the sheer talent of his backing band. Grammer, a multi-instrumentalist, played the piano, trumpet, guitar, showcased his dancing abilities, and set the evening off with proverbial panache.
