Monthly Archives: April 2019

PROVIDENCE, RI | In the midst of a milestone tour celebrating 50 iconic years, country supergroup Alabama brought their “50th Anniversary Tour” to Providence, Rhode Island treating generations of fans to a night of pure Mountain Music.

Over the past 50 years, the band has fostered a long line of accomplishments. They have amassed a staggering 43 #1 hits at country radio and have sold over 73 million albums, earning 21 gold, platinum and multi-platinum certifications. They have released 50 albums and won 178 awards including three Grammy Awards and numerous CMA Awards. The band was also named ACM Entertainer of The Year an unprecedented 5 times in a row. They have sold over 28 million concert tickets and are proud members of The Country Music Hall of Fame.

Winning more than 200 industry awards, Alabama is the most celebrated group in country music history. In addition, they are world-class philanthropists who have raised millions of dollars for various charities.

That Alabama is the best-selling country band of all time means they may have some of the most dedicated fans of all time. Kevin Gilliam traveled from Lancaster, Mass., with his wife and friends to see the once in a lifetime show. Gilliam beamed, holding a bow given to him moments earlier by show opener Charlie Daniels, who he has seen five times, but the wait to see Alabama has been long.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings is pleased to announce the vinyl reissue of R.E.M.’s platinum-selling collection, In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003. Available for the first time on vinyl in over 15 years, the album includes 18 songs from the Athens, GA alt-rockers, spanning 1988’s Green to 2001’s Reveal, plus two previously unreleased tracks. The double-LP set—which makes its debut on audiophile-quality, 180-gram vinyl on June 14th—is housed in a deluxe gatefold jacket. In addition to the wide reissue of In Time, a special version—pressed on translucent blue vinyl—will be available exclusively at Barnes & Noble.

Originally released in late 2003, In Time serves as an opportunity to reflect on the astonishing creative and cultural influence that R.E.M. offered during the height of their 30-year run together. One of the most revered groups to emerge from the American underground, singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry—who amicably retired from the band in 1997—helped originate college rock during the post-punk scene of the ’80s, and went on to become one of most popular and critically acclaimed bands in the world; their idiosyncratic blend of brash tunefulness, poetic lyrics, chiming guitars, and evocative vocals served as a soundtrack to the cultural tide of the late ’80s and ’90s.

The songs included on In Time offer more than just a collection of charting hits. Rather, listeners will hear the evolution of a band on the rise, reaching and surfing the peak of its fame. In his original song-by-song liner notes, Peter Buck writes, “If you think about it, our career can be divided into…two parts: pre-‘Losing My Religion’ and post-‘Losing My Religion’.” Buck explains that before the band’s breakthrough, chart-topping 1991 hit, “R.E.M. was a large cult band touring ten months a year. Respected and successful, we were still considered kind of minor league. Afterward, we had hit singles, platinum albums, we were on the covers of all kinds of unlikely magazines, and, at least for a couple of years, were one of the biggest bands in the world. All of which is irrelevant.”

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“There is something deliciously ceremonial and ritualistic about listening to music on vinyl.”

“The process of picking a record, looking at the album art, maybe displaying it somewhere as you listen, the flip to side B. No matter how big or small a collection is, it feels like a fun creative restriction to pick a record from the collection at hand, since these days with streaming services we can put on a digital version of pretty much anything in the world we want to hear.

I was fortunate to grow up in a home with a pretty sweet vinyl collection. My parents had lots of rock, soul, jazz, and folk records from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Some classics that I’ve had on heavy rotation for as long as I can remember that have greatly influenced my taste and the music I make include George Harrison, All Things Must Pass, Joni Mitchell, Blue, Prince, Prince, Steely Dan Aja, and Kate Bush The Kick Inside.

Below is a little more info about why I chose each of these albums. I would say overall, that the biggest aspect of all of these albums that influenced my own music is melody. All 5 of these artists write really beautiful, unique, and emotionally rich melodies in my opinion. A lot of really great music does not have strong melody lines, nor does it intend to.

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When diving into the work of John Coltrane, many begin with a canonical record, likely from his tenure with the Atlantic or Impulse labels. There’s certainly no mistake in that, but anybody building a shelf of the saxophonist’s vital stuff will end up procuring a significant percentage of the material he cut for Bob Weinstock’s New Jersey-based Prestige company. Right now, via Craft Recordings’ attractively designed and thoughtfully assembled 5CD or 8LP Coltrane ’58: The Prestige Recordings, a substantial hunk of it is easy to obtain. Chronologically sequencing the man’s leader or co-leader sessions from January to December of the titular year, it coheres into a powerful statement of budding greatness.

Make no mistake; nothing about Coltrane ’58: The Prestige Recordings suggests that it is a purchase one would make on a whim. A hefty clothbound release with an ample LP-sized booklet of photos, production notes, and excellent words from Ashley Khan, plus the meat of the matter, eight LPs tucked into manila sleeves (the 5CD set is the same with scaled-down dimensions), it’s a package clearly made for both longtime lovers of John Coltrane and Modern Jazz in general and for folks whose recently developed interest in these subjects is unquestionably keen.

As its full title makes plain, Coltrane ’58 documents the saxophonist’s time with the Prestige label, though only partially so; none of the extensive sideman work is here, and neither are his earlier leader sessions (his first album under his own name, Coltrane, was released through Prestige late in ’57). And so, not a completist thing, which would be unwieldly, as the man’s complete recordings for Prestige required 16 CDs, but instead, something better; a digestible and enlightening portrait of a year’s work in the driver’s seat under the supervision of Weinstock and recorded by Rudy Van Gelder.

Prestige didn’t keep alternate takes, so there’s nothing unreleased here. That means those longtime fans who already own all of the original LPs (or picked up either the complete Prestige 16CD box from ’91 or the leader-date truncation Fearless Leader from ’06) will need to calculate whether dropping cash for Coltrane ’58 is in their interest.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, ABBA’s Voulez-Vous will receive a multi-format reissue on June 14, 2019.

The album that saw the band say goodbye to the decade they dominated with style, Voulez-Vous was their fifth consecutive No.1 in Sweden, a chart-topper around Europe and a U.S. Top 20 album. Powered by classic singles, including the title track, and “Chiquitita,” Voulez-Vous was at the heart of one of the group’s most successful years to date. Marking one of the longest gaps between new albums, Voulez-Vous was recorded across an entire year, with Benny and Björn refining their precision song writing, and Agnetha and Anni-Frid providing some of their finest vocals across a diverse set of songs that ranged from contemporary disco classics to ballads that explored Sweden’s rich musical past.

To celebrate the album’s original April 23, 1979 release, Polar Music (via UMe) will be releasing a number of anniversary reissues: A 2LP half-speed master on 180g vinyl, mastered at Abbey Road and cut at 45rpm, a colored-vinyl 7” singles box set collecting the singles “Voulez-Vous,” “Summer Night City,” “I Have A Dream,” “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight),” “Does Your Mother Know,” “Chiquitita” and the extended dance mix of “Voulez-Vous.” Each single is released as a limited-edition standalone picture disc. All products will be released June 14, 2019.

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American singer-songwriter and environmental advocate Paul Doffing deals in the kind of hushed, purposeful folk songs that made Iron and Wine a household name. His aching acoustic ballads often pose large, cosmic questions which he endeavors to resolve unpretentiously, creating compelling prose which reveals the inner working of his heart.

TVD is pleased to bring you the lead-off single and video from Doffing’s forthcoming LP, Running in the Dark, which is possibly the most introspective of his now 4-album-strong catalog. Paul’s touring schedule, consisting of epic bicycle expeditions, his guitar in tow, has taken him across 22 U.S. states and 7 countries.

But instead of creating a flashy, cosmopolitan collection of songs, Paul has used his outward experiences to sink deeper into his dharma, using his broad wold perspective to paint intimate pictures with sincerity and substance.

Running in the Dark arrives in stores on May 14th.

“Both as a band and as individuals, we have come to appreciate vinyl and albums as a whole and we all have a pretty substantial vinyl collection. Perhaps in part because we want to push back against the 3 minute, single orientated, soundbite, immediate culture we find ourselves in.”

“I think most of all, because listening to vinyl and settling into an album is more intentional and an investment of both time and effort. We feel that the artist deserves that. If they put in 1,000 hours into it, the least we can do is take 44 minutes and hear them out. We’ve found that this investment of time and effort pays off and allows you to get into the headspace of the artist in a more meaningful way. The themes, the song sequence, the production, it all plays off of one another and great records, front to back, really stand out these days.

Singles are fine, but it is like reading the headline of an article, thinking you understand, and scrolling on by. Vinyl is like reading the article and actually learning something. It is an attractive medium for these reasons alone. Not to mention it is nice to physically own your music and have a tangible keepsake with artwork and liner notes.

It is oddly refreshing to truly take time with anything these days. We always try to be efficient with our time, even with leisure and pleasure. For us, music deserves time, and vinyl offers this and encourages us to just stop, and take it in.

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Swans’ 1983 debut LP Filth reminds me of the summers I spent working at an iron foundry. That foundry was a prodigy of chaos, noise and filth. This baby has it beat.

Me, I kinda dig Filth’s no-wave, proto-industrial clamor, and I’m not alone. After noting that “Not only isn’t it for everybody, it isn’t for hardly nobody,” Village Voice rock crit Robert Christgau wrote, “I think it’s a hoot.” And then there’s my pal Rick Piel, who said, “I love Swans. They’re like Pere Ubu without a good singer. Or good musicians. Or harmonies, rhythm and melody.”

Filth remains one of the most vicious assaults on human ears ever released, and producing such a preternatural din wasn’t easy–it took two bassists, two drummers (who occasionally abandoned their kits to strike tables with metal straps) and a guitarist who approached his instrument like a man applying a steel file to a cheese grater to do it.

And over it all Michael Gira, whose muscular vocals make him sound like a man who’s singing while bench-pressing heavy weights, invokes scenes of submission, humiliation, and depravity. He keeps things monotonously simple, repeating the same ugly phrases over and over; on “Blackout” he bellows, “Get drunk! Get drunk!” and “Don’t breath in! Don’t Breath in!” And that’s pretty much the formula throughout. Gira the minimalist makes man-of-few-words Iggy Pop sound downright verbose.

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We’ve closed up the shop for our annual Spring Break. While we’re away, why not fire up our free Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores?

Perhaps there’s an interview, review, or feature you might have missed? Catch up and we’ll see you back here on Monday, 4/29.