Monthly Archives: July 2019

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “This warmly diverting film is not just for Fab Four fanatics, but for anyone who recalls the start of the Sixties.” —The Times (UK)

The Beatles defined music and popular culture like no other band — but how exactly did they make the journey from Merseyside teenagers to international pop stars in the ’60s? Featuring unique and revealing interviews from those involved in the early years of The Beatles, in THE BEATLES: MADE ON MERSEYSIDE, home audiences will discover the story of Fab Four’s ascent from Liverpool and Hamburg to the pinnacle of success.

Recounting how American rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues dragged post-war Liverpool into one of the most vibrant music cities ever with the Mersey Sound, this acclaimed doc delves into the young history of the Fab Four, their early band iterations and why it took so long for them to break through the noise. From school bands, to colleges, Hamburg to The Cavern Club, The Beatles moved from skiffle to rock ‘n’ roll before creating their own unique sound that took the world by storm.

With newly filmed contributions from the “fifth Beatle” Pete Best, Quarrymen Colin Hanton and Len Garry, Brian Epstein’s business associate Joe Flannery, The Beatles first ever secretary Freda Kelly, original Mersey Beat magazine owner Bill Harry, and flatmates of John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe, this acclaimed doc charts the original music and the energy and excitement that led to the explosion of Beatlemania and one of the most influential and beloved bands in history.

It’s probably a fair statement to say Terrane is something of an anomaly in the current climate, where an artist’s persona and public image is valued above their creativity.

Terrane’s work has, against contemporary logic, been rapidly gaining traction for its beautiful fusing of dreamlike cinematics and raw emotion, whilst the artist has remained hush about who he is and where he came from.

His newest single, “Circles,” is an expansive piece of world pop which strikes a balance, walking the tightrope between organic and electronic composition. His subdued melodies drift in and out of earshot over richly emotive soundscapes before static drenched wires crackle and beaming harmonies are pulled into sharp focus.

The man remains a mystery but his music becomes more and more personable, conveying the urgency of raw emotions caught in the moment and the distorted memory of stories and connections made, lost and only half remembered in a haze of dial-up era discord.

The chances are good that anyone reading this site knows about a certain three-day music festival held in August of 1969. Well, this review delves into the other major musical gathering from that month of that year; it occurred from Aug. 1-3 at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium, and it was dedicated to the blues. For half a century, the occasion has been a part of the genre’s lore rather than an interactive milestone, but Third Man’s release of Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969 Vols. 1 & 2 changes this situation across two double LPs offering a multiplicity of approaches from names big and small and just in time for the 50th anniversary of the whole affair.

Organized by a handful of blues-nut attendees of the University of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Blues Festival is notable as the first musical event held on US soil devoted solely to blues music. Scoping out the names that comprise these eight sides of vinyl, it’s remarkable how they excelled without much of a specific template, though of course there were folk and jazz fests a la Newport that served as a sort of rough guide.

While the lineup is loaded with titans, it’s diversity that’s the vital organizational tactic, interspersing acoustic country blues, with obvious nods to the Delta, into a landscape of electrified urbanity. The guitar is unsurprisingly favored, but there is room made for pianists, harp blowers, horn sections, and even some accordion.

The co-rulers of amplified Chicago, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, are here, both in strong form, with B.B. King joining them on the fest’s marquee of post-WWII blues mega-names, but it all kicks off with the indefatigable and highly adaptable pianist Roosevelt Sykes, whose skill on the keys is matched (indeed surpassed) by his ability to work a crowd as he dives with relish into the risqué smack-talk of “Dirty Mother For You.” As Sykes mentions, he cut it in ’34 for Decca, and it establishes a lineup spanning considerably wider than the cravings of a typical rocker turned budding blues aficionado.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | A Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to LP mastering legend Bernie Grundman at the third annual Making Vinyl conference on October 14, 2019 that celebrates the global rebirth of the record manufacturing industry.

The ceremony will be held at the W Hotel in Hollywood, a few blocks away from Grundman’s flagship facility which opened in 1984, following a 15-year tenure with A&M Studios. In 1997, Grundman opened his Tokyo mastering studios and in 1998 relocated to expanded facilities in Hollywood. “The name Bernie Grundman is synonymous with mastering,” says Making Vinyl president Bryan Ekus. “Bernie’s world-renowned facilities responsible for a consistently large percentage of chart recordings, and makes him the perfect recipient of our award.”

Grundman’s mastering credits include: Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Van Halen, Prince, The Carpenters, Steely Dan, Herb Alpert, Barbra Streisand, Jack Johnson, Mary J. Blige, Maroon 5, and Outkast, among thousands of other top recording artists.

Grundman’s Hollywood facilities comprise a complex of six studios, including dedicated 5.1 Surround and Lacquer Cutting rooms, which provide mastering services for vinyl, digital streaming, and CDs. Coexistence of physical media in the digital age is a theme of this year’s Making Vinyl conference, which soon will be announcing other confirmed speakers.

Grundman, an expert with the LP cutting lathe, describes mastering as “basically post-production for the recording industry—the final creative step before delivery to the manufacturer for mass production.”

“Vinyl is something that had been pushed aside by cassettes and CDs by the time any of us in the band were born, and all of these were pushed aside by iPods and iPhones by the time we were in school and actively consuming music (unaided by our parents). With the resurgence of vinyl I have been able to connect with it as an adult in a number of ways and observe how others connect with it.”

“There are the obvious things, such as listening to an album in its entirety (how music should be digested IMO), and the importance of artwork. Nowadays, some people buy vinyl to be used strictly for wall art and they don’t even listen to the album… hipsters! But there are 2 things I have really come to appreciate about vinyl that both revolve around the inflexibility of the this persistent technology:

1. Audio quality. Yes in theory audio quality today on phones and computers has the capacity to be just as good or better than vinyl, but not in practice for most people. Making digital copies of songs that are easy to stream requires a lot of compression to make the files small enough to share. If you are listening to your music through computer speakers or ear buds or worst of all…your phone speaker, you miss out on so much in terms of the fine details in the recordings.

Most songs you listen to have so much depth and the people who worked on that recording made hundreds of decisions that are so important to their vision, but so easily lost on poor quality playback. The inconvenience of vinyl forces you to listen through the proper stereo components.

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Heavy rockers The Giraffes formed in mid-’90s New York City and released a slew of records through the aughts of Century 21. They’ve put out a few this decade as well, though there was also a hiatus from 2011-’14. Flower of the Cosmos is their latest; featuring co-founders Damien Paris and Andrew Totolos on guitar and drums respectively, longtime vocalist Aaron Lazar and bassist Hannah Moorhead, the sound is powerful and punky with touches of technical flair and inextricable ties to the harder side of the 1990s-2000s Alt-rock shebang, though as the ten songs unwind, they avoid succumbing to the less appealing aspects of that era/ sound. It’s out on vinyl and digital August 2 via Silver Sleeve Records.

The Giraffes are described as a cult band, and I won’t argue, though it seems to me that their sound, if not the stuff of massive popularity, was and remains a commercially viable proposition. And they’ve certainly sold some records across the last couple decades, along with touring and sharing stages with such noteworthy acts as Eagles of Death Metal, Gogol Bordello, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, The Strokes, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and…Blowfly.

But alas, while I’ve been cognizant of The Giraffes’ existence over the years, I’ll confess to having spent very little time with their stuff. In fact, Flower of the Cosmos is serving as my proper introduction to the band, whose sound has been likened to Queens of the Stone Age, Mars Volta, Big Business, Fu Manchu, and Black Sabbath. Additional contrasts have been made, but these are the ones that stuck out to me after a casual listen.

Upon digging in more intently, they put their best collective foot forward with album opener “Can’t Do This in Your Head,” pairing heaviness commencing with a thunderous bass line to cooking velocity. It’s a combination supporting the reported mayhem of their live shows. It’s undeniably Lazar’s vocals that put me in a ’90s frame of mind, but his heavy rock soul-wailing connects as non-noxious by hanging in proper balance with the instrumental ripping throughout the record.

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“The first vinyl I ever bought was a Freddie Hubbard record called Super Blue from Half Priced Books in Berkeley California. I’ll tell ya right now, Half Priced Books in Berkeley is exactly everything that you imagine when you hear Half Priced Books in Berkeley. Smack dab in the middle of the city, this shop has got the look, the nostalgic smell, and everything else you’re thinking up.”

“I remember stopping in the bookstore on the walk from a jazz big band rehearsal at the California Jazz Conservatory to the subway station. There is something royal about classic jazz on vinyl, and I couldn’t resist the tattered, well used look. My brother had bought me a turntable for my birthday that year, and I was delving heavily into jazz at the time. I picked out the classic John Coltrane record Giant Steps for a buddy, and got the Hubbard one for myself. There truly is nothing like listening to the pure, round tone and melodic genius of a trumpet player like Freddie on warm staticy vinyl.

Funny enough, I didn’t even know my parents had a record collection until I was in high school. With no turntable around the house, the vinyl remained inside a dusty old cupboard for years; it was only when I got this turntable for my birthday that we busted out the old collection and rocked out as a family. I vividly remember my mom’s excitement as she picked up an ABBA album and tossed it on the turntable. Next came the flood of James Taylor albums, my parents’ consistent go to for as long as I can remember.

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A few observations about Leo Sayer’s big breakthrough LP, 1976’s Endless Flight:

1. The cover will scare the shit out of you. Leo looks like some kind of heretofore unknown beastie leaping from the top of a kapok tree onto a party of unsuspecting Amazonian explorers, with the intention of sodomizing the lot. “What is that ungodly shriek?” asks Explorer A. “My God,” cries Explorer B, “it’s wearing suspenders!” “Shoot it in the afro!” howls Explorer C, tossing haversack and pith helmet to the winds before disappearing into the jaguar-infested underbrush.

I can see the headline in the London Times: Expedition Set Upon By Horrifying Creature followed by the subhead Sole Survivor: “It Was Singing “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” as It Tore Sir Pleatherbottom’s Guts Out!”

For a prank, I once taped a life-sized enlargement of the cover to the ceiling above my college dorm-room mate’s bed. When he awoke he let loose with a terrified scream and fled the room wearing nothing but his underpants, never to be seen again. Last I heard he was living in Harrisburg, PA, in his old bedroom in his parent’s house. Seems he’s flinchy and refuses to leave the house much, and when he does, he spends a lot of time looking uneasily into the sky.

2. Endless Flight is remarkably easy on the ears. I was prepared to despise it, but get this: even the title track, an Andrew “Worst Singer-Songwriter to Ever Come Out of LA” Gold cover, passes muster in an Elton John kinda way. And believe me when I say Andrew’s version is purest ear torture. Which makes Leo, what exactly? I’ll tell you. A pretty good interpreter of the popular song.

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