Monthly Archives: February 2017

“I grew up a few blocks from Tower Records on east 4th street in NYC when CDs were the thing. I always felt like a kid in a candy store sifting through the albums.”

“What I didn’t know then was how much lush, uncompressed, instrumentation I was being deprived of by only listening to digital music. Vinyl just makes it all come to life. Now when I listen to the mainstream digital media, I feel like I need to pop my ears!

My first vinyl record was a special edition from my favorite band Pearl Jam. Although my own music is very different, I am a huge ’90s grunge fan. When I played the record, I was blown away by the depth, texture, and contrast between the low and high end of the track.

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PHOTO: PRISCILLA MARS | Following some delay, emerging singer, guitarist, and visual artist Dakota Blue has released “Lavalike,” an intriguing five-track EP.

Each of the tracks on “Lavalike” were written, played, and produced by Blue, an LA native. The music videos for singles “Blueprints” and “Distant Disco” were released in late 2016, offering a preview of the experimental EP. “Blueprints” is a soothing track with a gauzy, blue hazed video, while “Distant Disco” is a psych-pop instrumental with an acid-tinged video to accompany it. Blue’s vocals are reminiscent of the mellow, early ’90s alt sound that launched Beck’s career, while much of the instrumentals harken back to ’70s prog rock. The combination creates a surprisingly fresh sounding, understated EP.

“The State of Things” kicks off the EP with dark, heavy, and sultry tones which are heard throughout each of the tracks. This tone is lifted slightly halfway through by the jangly, yet still pessimistic “Tropical Dust,” only to be dropped to its lowest by the end of the EP with “Shadows In Paradise.”

“Lavalike” is a dreary day soundtrack in the best possible way; a work that is both thought-provoking and entrancing.

With a band as great as hair metal heroes Poison, where does one even begin? With the cover of their 1986 debut Look What the Cat Dragged In, on which the boys look cuter than any of the groupies they sleazed into the sack with? Or with 1988’s follow-up Open Up and Say… Ahh!, about which muz-crit Robert Christgau wrote, “A residue of metal principle spoiled the top 40 on their debut, but here they sell out like they know this stuff is only good when it’s really shitty.”

I believe that’s what’s called a backhanded compliment. But I get where he’s coming from even if I disagree. Call Poison pop metal if you want, and no one is ever likely to call their music cerebral. But the songs on Open Up and Say… Ahh! are anything but shitty. Simplistic, sure. But Poison rocks harder than the likes of Def Leppard ever would.

These Aqua Net émigrés from Mechanicsburg, PA took both Hollywood and MTV by storm, and were so in touch with their feminine side they began their career playing pink guitars. Their sophomore LP has been called “a master-class in Eighties metal power balladry,” but that’s patently absurd. Sure, Open Up and Say… Ahh! will most likely be best remembered for the immortal ballad “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” but the song is an anomaly; from opening track “Love on the Rocks” to closer “Bad to Be Good,” Poison eschews the maudlin in favor of rocking balls.

Like many effete and impudent snobs, I spent hair metal’s golden age sneering at Poison and everything they represented. Found them ridiculous. Never gave them a fair listen. I should have heeded the words of Oscar Wilde, to wit, “Ridicule is the tribute paid to genius by mediocrities.” In my own defense, I was far from alone. Rolling Stone only gave them one star, which is one more star than I’d probably have given them at the time.

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“Time to get a turntable! When I moved to New York City about a year ago, I was pretty obsessed with getting a new turntable. Moving makes one buy things. However, a few months later you usually realize you don’t need half of what you bought. These kinds of changes are a reminder to what is essentially important to us in life—like a little epiphany, like ice cream.”

“Two things I did bring along with me and my guitars were my Moka maker and a small magnet that survived four different refrigerators. The quote on the magnet: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” For me, this meant something like, “A musician without a music collection is like a car without gasoline.” Where can you possibly go with writing your new song if you don’t appreciate all the groundwork that is already out there? History is a call, always to be new.

I love my music collection—six, dusty enormous boxes—and although I always hoped that one day I would have an apartment only for those albums, I consciously and rightfully left them behind. Obviously, the times they are a changing, and digital world is way beyond just here.

Any collection is potentially a great story, passing from one to another, threading generations and spaces. All those pieces of a particular something we hold onto is perhaps also another way for us to feel less lonely and illusionary immortal too, like those stamps, coins, music, art, and so on. Yet, without looking back, armed with my magnet and Moka coffee maker, I gladly left my music collection in those six huge boxes and headed out to a new beginning in New York City, CD-less and free, ready to start “collecting” something new.

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Run Out Groove is a new vinyl only label that caters to music fanatics, pressing limited edition titles made by music fans for music fans. Each month you’ll have the opportunity to vote on select titles to decide which record gets pressed next with no obligation to buy. The title that wins the vote will be made available for a 30 day pre-order. Run Out Groove will then manufacture a limited and numbered high quality record based on orders and involve the consumer in the journey from initial concept to delivery of the final product, educating fans about artist history along the way.

The first title available to pre-order is a new collection from Detroit proto-punk legends, the MC5. It is their first retrospective on the format and will come on 180g multi-color vinyl adorned in a tip-on paper wrapped Stoughton sleeve including a 12″ x 12″ insert with photos and liner notes. It is available to order until 2/28. On March 1, the numbered quantity will be announced then pressed and delivered to your door—AND be made available at your favorite record store on May 9th. Run Out Groove’s next three titles are open for voting now until 2/28 and include the following:

Echo & The Bunnymen, It’s All Live Now: Eight tracks from a 1985 performance in Sweden, and a lengthy live version of “Do It Clean” from a Royal Albert Hall gig in 1983; these tracks first appeared on the 2001 box set Crystal Days 1979-1999 but would make their vinyl debut in this new collection with liner notes from guitarist Will Sergeant.

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“‘Save Me’ is a song of a spiritual battle about being on the run from the devil. The song certainly gives a nod to the story and music of Robert Johnson.” —Shane Henry

With upwards of six independent releases dating back to 2000, Shane Henry has steadily worked toward the blues-pop fusion achieved on his latest single and upcoming eleven-song album, Light in the Dark, due in stores on April 28th. Having performed alongside numerous legends such as B.B King (over 30 supporting gigs) and Buddy Guy as well as soul royalty, Etta James and the Neville Brothers in particular, Henry’s blues acumen speaks for itself.

In small town Oklahoma, the Beatles and Hendrix found him first, but these early influences soon gave way to the Claptons and the Reddings of the world, setting Henry on an unwavering course towards a promised land of blues and soul.

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It was blasted dastardly, the way Paul Simon gave poor Art Garfunkel the old heave-ho. Absolutely duplicitous. So duplicitous in fact that I coined a shiny new word for the sad fate that befell the kinky-haired half of the famous duo—he got Garfunkeled. The word is slowing entering the popular lexicon, and I plan to patent it and thereby grow filthy rich.

Because it’s the ideal word for all manner of occasions. Say your boyfriend should, without due warning, terminate your relationship. And say said abrupt news should fall upon your heart like a ton of Mick Jagger solo albums. You are left with two alternatives. You can shed bitter tears of the sort that wilt flowers. Or better by far, you can run to your friends and cry, “The sleazy bastard just Garfunkeled me!”

In any event, having been Garfunkeled following 1970’s Bridge over Troubled Water, Art of the magic golden Jewfro found himself at loose ends. I like to imagine, although it doesn’t fit the historical time line, that he spent many a dour hour sunk in the funk at the home of Jim Messina, the poor fellow who got Garfunkeled by Kenny Loggins. In reality Garfunkel did some acting, released 1973’s Angel Clare (for which he took much abuse for his treacly version of Randy Newman’s “Old Man”), and then followed Angel Clare with 1975’s Breakaway.

Breakaway is Garfunkel’s most successful LP and a soft rock classic. Garfunkel’s choirboy vocals can rankle, but on Breakaway he gathered up a bunch of songs that made effective use of those inimitable tenor pipes of his. He also dragooned every crack studio musician in the known world, to say nothing of such folks as David Crosby, Bill Payne, Graham Nash, Toni Tennille, and (erk!) Andrew Gold. Why even Garfunkeler-in-Chief Paul Simon reunited with the Garfunkeled one on “My Little Town.”

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