Monthly Archives: June 2018

If you stress it, they’ll press it. —Ed.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | After the death of John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane embarked upon a solo career that was marked with the same uncompromising vision, spiritual probing, and formal innovation as that of her husband. Her first seven solo albums were recorded for the Impulse! label, home to John during the latter part of his career; those records, though offering more of the modal jazz with devotional overtones that Coltrane fans had come to cherish, also saw her branch out in unexpected ways, introducing new instruments (harp, Wurlitzer organ), new styles (raga, modern classical), and new approaches to recording, even incorporating classical string sections into a “free” musical environment.

By the mid-‘70s, however, time was ripe for a change. ABC, the parent label of Impulse!, was suffering from management upheaval, while the now-local Warner Bros. label—Coltrane had moved to Woodland Hills, CA to raise her family—was aggressively pursuing a number of Impulse! artists, with Alice at the top of the list. Spiritual Eternal—The Complete Warner Bros. Studio Recordings brings together, for the first time ever, the three studio albums that Alice Coltrane cut for the Warner Bros. label, albums that proved to be her final commercial recordings of the 20th century.

Though it is difficult to characterize such an eclectic and far-reaching collection of music, several things hold true throughout these three records, recorded from 1975 to 1977 with Ed Michel as producer. The first is that Alice’s instrument of choice was increasingly the Wurlitzer organ, specifically a 1971 Wurlitzer 805 Centura that included an Orbit III analog synthesizer with pitch-bending ability as one of its three manuals—a feature she used liberally and which further distinguished her sound. Coltrane credited divine guidance for her choice of the instrument; it certainly pushed her work even farther from jazz, its droning sound echoing that of the harmonium used in Eastern music.

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“The story of my first record is a complex one. There was, in fact, a first, that I bought personally, but then there was the collection I was already exposed to through my older brother. And it’s that collection that gets props for being so strong that it could keep my first record in its proper context.”

“The first record I ever bought was Kiss Destroyer. I loved Kiss. I was like 10 or 11. It was a great thing to have on LP (which is all there was then) because of the art–it was like having a freaking painting. That first purchase lead to a buying spree of all things Kiss–records for sure, but that right down to the Tiger Beat or Hit Parader that had one, meager, tiny black and white picture of Gene Simmons puking blood.

I would like to say that I, like many young ’70s suburbanites, was merely overcome by that perfect blend of theater and rock–taken in by the hype. But somehow, I actually loved the music as well. Listening to it now it’s sort of hard to image how you ever liked it. I mean the words are really dumb–guys singing about their love guns and such–there was a lot of bombast. But the tunes could rock and had some great pop hooks. Anyway, I loved it all at 11.

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So what do we have here? Let’s see: world’s most unnecessary prog supergroup names itself after world’s largest continent, releases self-titled debut LP that subsumes worst prog instincts in attempt to score big hit singles, and ends up with No. 1 album in the U.S. in 1982. Oh, and world’s largest continent inexplicably fails to sue for slander.

Reality is so depressing. No wonder people love Roger Dean, whose fantasy-themed artwork decorates Asia’s cover. Better to meditate upon a sea-skating serpent playing fetch with a glowing orb than acknowledge that the American people sent this tepid, Prog Lite monstrosity to the top of the charts.

I had no problem with this quartet of castaways from the likes of Yes (guitarist Steve Howe and keyboardist Geoff Downes), King Crimson (lead vocalist/bassist John Wetton) and Emerson, Lake & Palmer (drummer Carl Palmer) selling out–I never much liked the precious fares said bands were hawking to begin with. It’s the popularity of Asia’s Pop Prog that I find so inexplicable. And Asia wasn’t alone; Phil Collins was successfully retooling grandiose Art Prog Vehicle Genesis into a hit-making hotrod at the same time.

But who can blame them? Dumbing down to meet the pop crowd halfway–by doing away with the album-side-long cuts, the classical influences, the complex time signatures, and the endless displays of technical virtuosity–turned out to be good commercial horse sense. Gone was Rick Wakeman in his golden cape, and in were these rags and bones merchants, who held on to the tattered trappings of progressive rock but reined in its worst impulses. No more themes from Mussorgsky or long-winded tales from topographic oceans–it’s back to the popular song!

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “The best punk book since Please Kill Me.” ​—Legs McNeil, author of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

Writer and award-winning German-language translator Tim Mohr has announced the release of his first book, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, out September 11, 2018 via Algonquin Books. Telling the little-known story of a group of East German kids who rebelled and helped set the world on fire, Mohr takes readers on a fascinating trip through the 1980s.

Rejecting the dismal, pre-ordained futures the dictatorship tried to impose on them, these teenagers embraced punk—the aesthetic, the music, the liberating feeling of collective anarchy—and defied the state and its security apparatus. Banding together, they faced down surveillance, police violence, blacklisting from schools and jobs, and even imprisonment as they fought to create and control their own individual futures.

Beginning in earnest in the late 1970s, a handful of young people who had lived in the shadow of the Berlin Wall their entire lives caught snatches of punk music on forbidden British military radio broadcasts and began to question authority, daring to dress differently and make music that was dangerously critical of the government. Living inside the borders of East Germany but outside the system, they were hassled in the streets relentlessly pursued by the Stasi—the notorious East German secret police—but would not be deterred in their pursuit of punk.

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“I did all of my records with A and B sides in mind. Even though they were going to compact disc or digital at the time of release, I always followed the vinyl template to ensure maximum Musical adventure. After a long, strange, and cold digital journey, I feel like these albums have finally made their way back home to where they belong: on warm vinyl.”

“My first album I started in my parents’ basement and finished at the legendary Charles Austin’s studio, called Ultramagnetic, in Halifax. It was where my heroes Buck 65 and Joel Plaskett did albums. It was on the very teeny top floor of the Khyber building art space that just recently was spared from wreckage. We included my original version of “City of Lakes” as a bonus track, which I believe was held back due to my very questionable drumming.

El Torpedo and myself recorded the second record pretty much live off the floor in Halifax with Don Smith, a producer who worked on some of the great early Tragically Hip albums. Don also engineered a few Tom Petty albums and also The Traveling Wilburys albums. You could say we were pretty excited to get started on that one…

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Since I was two years old,” Elvis Presley once said, “all I knew was gospel music. It became such a part of my life, it was as natural as dancing. A way to escape my problems, and my way of release.” It was gospel music that most ferociously stoked his musical passions, even as his unique synthesis of country, popular, and rhythm and blues styles made him an idol to millions around the world.

The new album Where No One Stands Alone, available August 10, celebrates the power and passion of Elvis Presley’s gospel music. Produced by Joel Weinshanker, Andy Childs and Lisa Marie Presley, the album features 14 of Elvis’ most treasured performances of inspirational music with rare alternate Elvis vocal takes and newly-recorded instrumentation and backing vocals, including members of The Blossoms, The Sweet Inspirations, The Imperials, and The Stamps Quartet. The title track, originally recorded in 1966, is presented as a duet between Elvis and his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.

Shop.Graceland.com will have exclusive, limited edition versions of the album on blue 12” vinyl and cassette configurations. Fans purchasing the CD, exclusive blue vinyl, and cassette together from Shop.Graceland.com will receive a limited edition lithograph signed by Lisa Marie Presley.

Yeah, I was that dick. You know, the dick whose unvarying response to Boy George’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” was “Yes!” But not because he wore makeup and a dress. I was fine with that. It was because, well, poor George sounded like such a defenseless wuss.

But I turned that “Yes!” into a “You go, girl!” a long time ago, and my typical response to hearing Culture Club on the radio nowadays is giddy excitement. Such frothy musical entertainment! What a beat! And those pasty-faced, Smoky Robinson Lite vocals! You would have to be a MONSTER to want to hurt crooning milksop B.G., even if he did seem dead set on hurting both himself and others during a decades-long Lost Weekend that saw him assaulting innocent Norwegians, abusing every drug under the sun, and doing a skirt-hem-dirtying stint of community service at the New York City Department of Sanitation.

But let’s not allow Boy George’s very public personal problems cloud Culture Club’s myriad contributions to Western Civilization, which are convincingly set out on 1987 best-of compilation This Time–The First Four Years. It has all the hits! And all the hits Culture Club wish had been hits! Including “The War Song,” in which everybody’s favorite cross-dressing misanthrope writes off the human race with the words “People are stupid”! How did that one not climb to the Top of the Pops?

Culture Club specialized in lightweight pop confections composed of equal parts New Wave and blue-eyed soul; they avoided the frigid constraints of synth-pop and by so doing succeeded in emanating real warmth, even if was of the D. Bowie “plastic soul” variety. Just listen to the crooning on “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.” Boy George sucks you in before the band even kicks in and he never lets up. And the rest of the band has the good sense to let his vocals stand front and center throughout. Doesn’t hurt, either, that the melody is one in a million.

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