Monthly Archives: February 2018

VIA PRESS RELEASE | From his hitmaking ’70s heyday until his untimely passing in 2003, Barry White set an unmatched standard for sexy, seductive, soulful R&B. As a vocalist, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, White created music that was unmatched in its sonic and romantic intensity, highlighted by lush, widescreen arrangements and the artist’s deep, dark baritone voice. Over the course of his remarkable career, two-time Grammy Award–winner Barry White scored 106 gold albums worldwide, with 41 of those attaining platinum status, along with 20 gold and 10 platinum singles, with worldwide record sales of over 100 million records. He remains one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.

On April 13, Mercury Records/UMe will release the first of a series of catalog releases of Barry White’s classic work, in a yearlong celebration of the 45th anniversary of White’s first release on 20th Century Records. New collections feature such White solo hits as “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe” and “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything,” along with hits by female trio Love Unlimited (“Walkin’ In The Rain With The One I Love,” “I Belong To You”) and the 40-piece Love Unlimited Orchestra (“Love’s Theme,” “Satin Soul”), both of which benefitted from White’s distinctive songwriting and production skills.

The White reissue series launches with a pair of remastered White hits collections: Love’s Theme: The Best Of The 20th Century Records Singles, a single-CD compilation incorporating 21 classic White hits, which will also be available as a double vinyl LP including the bonus track “Satin Soul” by Love Unlimited Orchestra; and the three-CD, 46-track The Complete 20th Century Records Singles (1973-1979), which will be presented in a specially-designed box with the three discs packaged in individual wallets. Both albums will feature expansive liner notes and track details.

Pre-order is available now for both the physical and digital collections with digital downloads receiving the first in a series of instant grat downloads that will be rolled out up to the album’s release. Love’s Theme: The Best Of The 20th Century Records Singles includes the title track “Love’s Theme” and “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More Baby” while The Complete 20th Century Records Singles (1973-1979) is also accompanied by that song as well as “Just A Little More, Baby (Instrumental).”

PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | Allow us to dispel a notion, if you in fact harbor it, that Andrew W.K. is only about THE PARTY. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, Mr. Wilkes-Krier is party practitioner par excellence, yet he’s also quite an astute music aficionado (and fan) with tastes across a wide swath of genres which we were made aware of during our recent record rummage in DC. (Not to mention he had some cool ideas for the video you’re about to view.)

Here’s some stuff you probably DO know—Andrew’s sharp as a tack, hysterical, and has a brand new record, You’re Not Alone, whose vinyl edition lands in your local record shop on March 2nd—which you can pre-order right here.

So, let’s get this party started, shall we? We’re record shopping with Andrew W.K. at Washington, DC’s Som Records!

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“My vinyl collection is dearer to me now more than ever.”

In the mp3/streaming age there’s something incredibly special about holding an album in your hands. And you end up handling your favourites a lot. They get worn from use, evidence of your love or perhaps that of the previous owner.

My Martha Reeves and the Vandellas 4-side anthology is one of my favourite LPs, and it’s got the bruises to prove it. I bought it used at a record store in Toronto and it was in mint condition then. The once bright purple edges of the cover are now well-worn, exposing the brown fibre beneath, and one is even chewed a bit by an old roommate’s cat (my cat would never!) But when you love a record, it’s always out and so always at risk of injury by man and beast alike!

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I don’t know what I imagined I’d hear when I turned on Imagine Dragons’ 2017 magnum opus Evolve, but what I heard was worst than my most horrendous imaginings. I mean, I’d just been listening to Keith Emerson back with The Nice doing simply unspeakable things to Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages,” and this was worse. Far worse. I’d heard stories… terrifying rumors… about Imagine Dragons, but like Pol Pot’s Cambodia you just don’t know what unspeakable means until you’ve been there. My editor, the estimable Jon Meyers, calls them “Imagine Jagoffs.” It is appropriate. Evolve is the rare LP that is so bad as to evoke not mirth, but contempt.

Just the other day I heard “Whatever It Takes” at the gym and immediately thought, “Wow, these guys are such empty vessels they’re actually proud to release a song that is not only thoughtless but the opposite of thought, whatever that opposite is.” Don’t get me wrong; I have no aesthetic bias per se against pure pop product. That said, I must insist it signify something other than its own obvious desire to move units, and “Whatever It Takes” as well as every other song on Evolve is a carefully engineered exercise in moving units.

Evolve is one of those albums designed to do only one thing, namely go platinum by any means necessary. It has, of course, gone platinum. These guys may have only one big idea–they certainly didn’t put any into their songs–but they have stayed true to that one big idea, which goes something like if we’re going to be a successful corporation we’re going to have to have all of the personality of a corporation, and make the homogenized likes of Mumford and Sons sound like bona fide fucking soul groups. They have succeeded to the extent that Evolve has about as much soul as your average snuff film and far less personality–at least a snuff film evokes human emotions such as pity and terror.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | When Don Gibson signed to Hickory Records in 1970, he was already a weathered music industry veteran, successful songwriter, and compelling performer.

Sixteen of his singles on RCA Victor with producer Chet Atkins reached the country Top 10 between 1958 and 1969, but by the end of the 1960s, his album sales were dwindling. Gibson joined Hickory Records, part of Nashville’s Acuff-Rose publishing empire, at the invitation of executive Wesley Rose, who had first signed him to a publishing deal at Acuff-Rose in 1955. Already serving as Don’s manager and publisher, Rose would now be Don’s producer and label head too.

For the first time ever, Don Gibson’s most popular singles of the 1970s will be chronicled with The Best of the Hickory Records Years (1970-1978), to be released by Omnivore Recordings on April 13, 2018. The date coincides with the 90th anniversary of Gibson’s birth (April 3, 1928) and the 60th anniversary of his Grand Ole Opry induction (April 12, 1958).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Hailing from Indianapolis, Caesar Frazier (spelled ‘Ceasar’ from time to time) was a funky soul-jazz organist who recorded several albums for the Eastbound/Westbound label family during the ’70s. In addition to recording on his own, Frazier also played keyboards in Marvin Gaye’s backing band. Collaborations with contemporaries were numerous and to this day Frazier’s legacy is still alive through samples and remixes from outfits such as Gang Starr and Arrested Development.

In 1972 Frazier cut his first album Hail Ceasar!, which featured musicians commonly associated with the Prestige label’s jazz-funk outings — Melvin Sparks (guitar), Houston Person (tenor), and Idris Muhammad (drums). Those names alone should give you a clear idea what’s going down on this album: slick wa wa guitar lines, the crisp ultra bumpin’ conga rhythms, Idris’s slick funk beats, screaming sax solos, and last but not least Caesar’s trademark Hammond organ sound.

Next to his own material you can also find a few cover tunes on here (by Quincy Jones, Isaac Hayes, David Gates of Bread, and Sly Stone). Production on the album was handled by Bob Porter (responsible for many superb jazz productions for Prestige and Atlantic) and to top it all off, recording duties were handled by Rudy Van Gelder (known for recording Miles Davis in the early 1950s and the countless work he did for Blue Note, Prestige, Verve…and many others).

This record is a delight for anyone who likes that 1970s organ groove sound and is right up there with some of the best of the Soul Jazz coming out of the early seventies. Hail Ceasar! Is a monster album that could keep you grooving for weeks if you so desired. Originally released in 1972 on Eastbound Records, super rare and fetching large sums on the collectors market, now finally back available as a limited deluxe vinyl edition featuring the original artwork by Tom Curry.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Rev. Gary Davis, born in 1896 in the Piedmont region of Laurens, S.C., was a blues and gospel singer who played guitar, banjo, and harmonica and influenced a generation of blues revivalists in the ’60s and beyond—ranging from Dave Van Ronk to Keb’ Mo’.

Following decades of playing the Carolinas and mentoring fellow musician Blind Boy Fuller, Davis was introduced to the American Recording Company, where he recorded the bulk of his pre-World War II work. In 1937, he became an ordained minister and released mainly gospel music. The late ’60s proved a career renaissance for the Reverend; he played to a new, largely white audience at the Newport Folk Festival. He died in 1972. In late October of 1966, Davis was captured on a single microphone in the small Milwaukee coffeehouse called Avant Garde. Only open from 1962-1968, the Avant Garde featured everything from experimental film and poetry to some of the best blues and folk performers of the era. Rev. Davis rolled out his classics “Samson and Delilah,” “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well,” “You Got To Move,” “Twelve Gates to the City” and others in an intimate setting.

Omnivore Recordings will release this previously unavailable material as Reverend Gary Davis: The Avant Garde Recordings: Recorded Live — October 1966, a 2-CD set and Digital, on March 23, 2018. Musicologist Bill Dahl wrote the biographical liner notes along with memories of the venue by John Stropes of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Included as a bonus download is an interview with Rev. Davis after one of the shows. Produced by native Milwaukeean and Grammy Award-winning producer, Cheryl Pawelski with restoration and mastering by Grammy Award-winning engineer, Michael Graves, these spellbinding, never-before-heard recordings are a revealing addition to his recorded legacy.

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The kids in my 6th grade class didn’t give a shit about The Beatles; we were Monkees fans through and through. The Beatles, well… The Beatles were for fucking old people, and who gives a shit about old people? We had our own squabbles (Mickey’s No. 1!) and rumor mill (Davy’s dead!) and preferred Dr. Pepper to Sgt. Pepper anyway. My older brother never tired of playing the thing; it was fucking boring! And what did he know anyway? He was, like, 16 and practically dead!

And all these years later I’ll still take the Pre-Fab Four over the Fab Four any day. My heart doesn’t go pitter patter when I hear “Penny Lane,” but it skips a beat every time I hear “Daydream Believer” or “Valleri.” What do I care if The Monkees were the product of big Hollywood and that boring homunculus Don Kirshner? The truth is I kinda like Don Kirshner; his impossibly monotone and utterly banal introductions of bands on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert bordered on Andy Kaufman-school performance art, and provided me with some of my biggest laffs during the seventies.

Sure, the Monkees were created in a test tube in a laboratory by the suspiciously named Raybert Productions, and sure they were hardly allowed to play their own instruments on their own albums (hell, for a long time they couldn’t play ‘em!), but when push comes to shove it’s all about the songs, man, which now that I think of it were outsourced to the likes of Boyce and Hart and Neil Diamond and Goffin and King, but who cares? The kids in my 6th grade class knew something our boring elders/Beatles’ fans didn’t know; namely, that The Monkees were communicating with us DIRECTLY through the televisions in our living rooms, and the televisions in our living rooms were omnipotent!

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