Monthly Archives: February 2017

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sidemen: Long Road to Glory provides an intimate look into the incredible lives of three of the last Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf sidemen, piano player Pinetop Perkins, drummer Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith, and guitarist Hubert Sumlin.

Premiering last year at SXSW, the film is complete. However, due to the cost of securing the music licensing for a full release, Sidemen may never reach a wider audience. In the final days of the Kickstarter campaign, filmmaker Scott Rosenbaum says “Their amazing story needs to be told. This is for them.” The average music fan might not recognize their names, but these legendary bluesmen, who performed and recorded into their 80s and 90s, played a significant role in shaping modern popular music. The film features some of the last interviews conducted with all three men as well as their final live performances together.

These memorable live performances, vividly capture these blues legends with the blues and rock stars they have inspired including, Robby Krieger of The Doors, Elvin Bishop (recent rock ‘n’ Roll Hall inductee with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band), and Tim Reynolds of The Dave Matthews Band. Personal insights from artists such as, Bonnie Raitt, Gregg Allman, Derek Trucks, Shemekia Copeland, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Joe Perry, Joe Bonamassa, and Johnny Winter offer heartfelt accounts of how these three legendary sidemen helped shape their careers as well as rock ‘n’ roll.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Colin Hay–Waiting For My Real Life is Colin’s inspiring story and journey from dizzying heights to staggering lows to finding salvation through song. The film follows the unexpectedly swift rise to superstardom of Men At Work, to the band’s equally surprising demise, to Colin’s long, slow climb back to relevance and resonance.

Ultimately, commitment to his craft and the development of a truly one-of-a-kind stage show set Colin on the path that leads to a deeply satisfying solo career – one that is still ascending. Colin Hay–Waiting For My Real Life weaves its story around intimate footage from Colin’s successful 2013 world tour and features interviews with close family and friends as well as celebrity admirers Hugh Jackman, Mick Fleetwood, Zach Braff, Sia Furler and many others. Now, with sold out shows, critically acclaimed solo albums, and a word-of-mouth reputation for offering one of the finest evenings a music fan could ask for, Colin finds himself at the top of his powers and simply waiting for his real life to begin.

Colin Hay–Waiting For My Life is written and directed by Nate Gowtham and Aaron Faulls. After building a successful audio career in television and film post-production (Lemmy, The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, Rolling Stone, NBC, CBS, ABC), Gowtham sought to combine his deep love of music and documentary film into transformative storytelling. Aaron Faulls’ award-winning documentary feature, Still On Her Keel, followed the adventures of three treasure-hunting shipwreck divers. His latest documentary, Taking A Bullet, detailed the making of Little Birds, a film featuring Kate Bosworth and Leslie Mann.

“There’s something different about holding a vinyl record in your hands compared to a CD or your iPod. Our new ways of listening to music weren’t built to last the way they were, which in turn gives them a life of their own. Think about it. From the time a record is printed to the point it reaches a store, to when it’s bought, listened to, tucked away, and then found again, a record lives its own life.

“For example, the first time I got my hands on a record I was 14. I was late in the game. Neither of my parents had kept their record players, and I grew up in Italy after my mom had remarried an Italian man, so she had left all her records behind. My closest encounter with vinyl had been this incredibly old gutted out record player that my Nonna kept family photos in. It wasn’t until we were visiting my mother’s parents’ home in Los Angeles one summer that I discovered it. And I really mean discovered because it was never introduced to me like great music was.

I was digging through my mother’s childhood room when I opened the closet and found a crate full of old records. From the Beatles’ Abbey Road to Blondie’s Eat to the Beat—at the time I had no idea how valuable these records were. I was so excited because this was music I loved and the act of finding a way to play these was exciting! I felt like I had stumbled upon a piece of family history. What a story these records had.

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Emerging in 1985, Londoners The Godfathers promptly injected a dose of muscle into the decade’s sonic milieu. Essentially a hard-rocking update of R&B-infused pre-punk action with occasional ventures into pop territory, they released a string of albums, chalked up a handful of radio hits, and persevered until 2000. Reactivated since 2008, their new record is A Big Bad Beautiful Noise; while uneven, it benefits from focused energy and intermittently sturdy writing. It’s out now on CD and digital through Metropolis Records, with the 180gm vinyl arriving on March 24.

The Godfathers were formed by Peter Coyne and his bassist brother Chris after the breakup of The Sid Presley Experience, a mid-’80s act with a short but eventful lifespan; they managed to kick out a pair of singles, visit a few radio stations including a session for John Peel, perform the A-side of their first single “Hup Two Three Four” on TV program The Tube, and even toured with Billy Bragg.

The Coyne brothers wasted no time in building upon the momentum of their defunct unit, getting at it so quickly that many have chalked up The Godfathers’ arrival as simply that of a name change. That’s not true, as Presleyite (and future conspirator) Del Bartle ended up in the Unholy Trinity for a subsequent spell, but the idea is supported by cover versions of the Plastic Ono Band’s “Cold Turkey” titling Sid Presley’s second EP and adorning The Godfathers’ ’87 full-length Hit by Hit.

Comprised of their first three singles and a smattering of new tracks, Hit by Hit isn’t a mindblower but it does document promise, and it was the final release on their Corporate Image label before Epic came a calling. In something of a reversal of norms, ’88’s Birth, School. Work, Death and the following year’s More Songs About Love and Hate, saw the involvement of a major company improving upon the band’s independent beginnings.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The son of a sharecropper, blues legend John Lee Hooker was one of the very first artists to break out of that genre and become a world-wide force. He based his sound on a driving boogie beat and lyrics that sometimes seemed to come from another world. To begin the centennial celebration of Hooker’s birth year, Vee-Jay Records, a division of Concord Bicycle Music, will release Whiskey & Wimmen: John Lee Hooker’s Finest on March 31. The multi-label compilation features songs from Hooker’s Vee-Jay, Specialty, Riverside and Stax Records releases, and includes many of the bluesman’s most iconic songs.

Born near Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1917, the man who would become known as the “King of the Boogie” was destined for blues royalty. Hooker’s 1948 single, “Boogie Chillun,” sold a million copies and set Hooker on his unstoppable path. Countless recordings followed, and a winding road through different labels and audiences. He was a huge influence on the burgeoning British Invasion in the early ‘60s, and welcomed with open arms by the rock audience around the world. Hooker is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Blues Hall of Fame, Memphis Music Hall of Fame, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and won four Grammys. He performed with or had his music covered by music’s elite, including Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana and many more.

Whiskey & Wimmen: John Lee Hooker’s Finest is the perfect collection to honor the man. It includes many of Hooker’s most exciting and time-honored recordings, showing how an artist who started with literally nothing but his inspiration and talent was able to make such a lasting impact on music. His work for the Vee-Jay, Specialty and Riverside labels were many of the recordings his unshakeable legend is built on, and provide a sonic tour of what Hooker’s blues accomplished. Music journalist Bill Dahl contributes insightful new liner notes.

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When the conversation turns to the forgotten band that was King Bee, which it, admittedly, never does, it becomes quite clear that one mono inferno begets another. In other words, a person cannot speak of King Bee without alluding to Dead Moon. Long-revered (at least in these northwestern parts) as the irrefutable sovereigns of the underground punk arena, Portland’s rock ’n’ roll triumvirate, apart from creating some of the most hard-driving and soul-throttling music this side of Detroit, possesses a founding legend like no other.

Formed in ’88 and composed of husband-wife duo, Fred and Toody Cole and late drummer Andrew Loomis, the band was, and is, the truest manifestation of its leading lo-fi mastermind’s essence and vision. The lore surrounding Fred Cole’s road to the status of rock ’n’ roll baron, though heard by far too few, is profoundly warranted, not only because it’s as serpentine as journeys come, but given the newfound rarity of bonafide tales of onerous toil and perseverance among rising bands, the story now rings even more compelling.

Above all, the fact remains that just about every group Cole assembled over the years put out more than its fair share of unthinkably masterful rock ’n’ roll, no matter how brief a tenure.

Cole first emerged at the age of fifteen as the leading man of Deep Soul Cole under the moniker, the “White Stevie Wonder,” a descriptor that would be utterly and demonstratively abandoned amidst his turn towards rock music. As the 1960s progressed, Cole made a living laying it down for lost garage outfits of the era such as the Weeds and the Lollipop Shoppe, whose single “You Must Be a Witch” ranks among the finer high-pressure psych-garage tracks to come out of the tradition’s heyday.

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Sit back, kids, and I’ll tell you about the baddest punk of them all. No, I’m not talking about Johnny Rotten or Richard Hell or Sid Vicious even. No, I’m talking about Captain Fantastic, The Big E—that’s right, Elton John his tough mofo self. Sure, he’s better known for such anthemic softballs as “Your Song,” “Somebody Saved My Life Tonight,” and that awful piece of treacle “Candle in the Wind.” But John is the same rock’n’roll badass who gave us “The Bitch Is Back,” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” “Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock’n’Roll),” “Midnight Creeper,” and “Street Kids,” the last of which is off Sir Surly’s punkest LP of them all, 1975’s Rock of the Westies.

In a deliberate effort to be misunderstood, because every good punk wants to be misunderstood, John larded his earlier LPs with love songs, broken heart songs and the like. He threw in lots of oddball tunes as well; the great “Solar Prestige a Gammon” is made up of nonsense words, “Social Disease” is a hillbilly ode to living life as a form of human syphilis, and “Teacher I Need You” is “Hot for Teacher” years in advance. As for the great “Bennie and the Jets,” who else could have conceived of such a thing? And who but Elton John would have thought to write a song called “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself” and fit it up with a bona fide tap dance solo? That right there is a real punk move for sure.

But on Rock of the Westies Elton John is feeling scurvy and ready to put the boot in. “No more Mr. Tender Genitals,” I can hear him thinking. “I’m the bitch who gets high every evening sniffing pots of glue.” And so he went and he co-wrote a bunch of evil-ass tunes and he went and he set Davey Johnstone’s guitar on stun and then he went to business, kicking out the motherfucking jams.

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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.

Elouise – Saturn Bar
Diamanda Galas – Round Midnight
Tabah – Curtain Call
Curse Of Lono – Pick Up The Pieces
Kill The Precedent – Irrational Anthem
Dot x JNTHN STEIN – No Filter

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Jane Weaver – Slow Motion

Ed Sheeran – Shape Of You (MAKJ Remix)
The White Panda X VÉRITÉ – Somebody Else (The 1975 Cover)
Mura Masa – Lotus Eater (Swindail Remix)
JAXX DA FISHWORKS & R3LL – Swing
Nathaniel Knows & Dirt Monkey – Abba (feat. Shamon Cassette)
A Boy & A Girl x ENGLISH LIT – Beast Widdit (feat. Armanni Reign)