Monthly Archives: August 2019

VIA PRESS RELEASE | This fall, Craft Recordings will reissue three titles from Social Distortion’s independent catalog on vinyl. Set for a September 27th release, the LPs include the band’s 1983 debut, Mommy’s Little Monster, their 2004 studio album, Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll, and 1995’s Mainliner (Wreckage From the Past), which compiles early singles and rare B-sides. Celebrating their 40th anniversary this year, the enduring So-Cal punk icons just kicked off their extensive, two-month North American tour.

Social Distortion formed in Orange County, CA, with front man Mike Ness and guitarist Dennis Danell at the helm. With their distinctive blend of punk and primitive rock ‘n’ roll, the four-piece (whose bassists and drummers would fluctuate over those years) found equal influences in bands like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and the Clash as well as the early country music of Hank Williams and the classic blues of artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Lightnin’ Hopkins. Their 1983 debut, Mommy’s Little Monster was released on the band’s own label, 13th Floor Records. Full of raw vocals, powerful guitar-driven hooks, and plenty of attitude, the seminal album gained Social Distortion a national following and went on to inspire the likes of the Offspring, Rancid and many other well-known artists. Standout tracks include “The Creeps (I Just Wanna Give You)” and “Another State of Mind.”

The next two decades would bring the band continued lineup changes, a rehab stint for Ness—who has maintained his sobriety since 1985—a major label deal, some of their highest-charting singles (“I Was Wrong” and “Bad Luck”), and two Gold records (for 1990’s Social Distortion and 1992’s Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell). In the late ‘90s, the band returned to their indie roots and signed to Time Bomb Recordings.

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The Decline and Fall of Roderick David Stewart is one of rock’s great tragedies. Five years, tops, is how long it took for “Rod the Mod”—the lovable rogue with the rooster-cut and the great cackle whose unique talents as a singer and songwriter gave us the magnificent Every Picture Tells a Story—to transform himself into “Rod the Bod,” the sleazy, self-proclaimed sex symbol and trend-following hack who bequeathed us “Hot Legs” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

Since then Stewart has released a slew of desultory LPs (does anybody remember 1983’s Body Wishes or 1988’s appropriately titled Out of Order? If so, you have some explaining to do) and reinvented himself as an interpreter of popular song via his five “volumes” of The Great American Songbook. (Me, I prefer unpopular song. As Oscar Wilde once noted, “Everything popular is wrong.”) And I’m forced to ask: Am I the only one who wonders what happened? Because Stewart’s precipitous plummet from genius to sex goat is nothing less than a riddle wrapped in an enigma, or to be more accurate a mystery wrapped in the awful suit he’s wearing on the cover of Body Wishes, which makes him look like Don Johnson in flames.

Stewart’s singing career began in the early sixties, and he played in some half-dozen bands including The Steampacket (with Long John Baldry and Brian Auger) and The Jeff Beck Group before joining The Faces at about the same time he released his first solo LP, 1969’s The Rod Stewart Album. Rod was an ambitious lad, splitting his time between the Faces and his solo work and somehow managing to put out both a Faces album and a solo album nearly every year. Unlike the Faces’ rough-edged but smart good-times rock’n’roll, Stewart’s solo albums tended to cover the waterfront from rock, country, R&B, to folk.

Stewart’s first two LPs—for which he basically dragooned the Faces as a backup band—didn’t chart particularly well, although they included such excellent songs as “Handbags and Gladrags,” “Cut Across Shorty,” and “Gasoline Alley.” So come LP no. 3, Stewart tried a different approach, limiting the input of the Faces (excepting guitarist Ron Wood) to basically one tune—a cover of The Temptations’ “(I Know) I’m Losing You”—in favor of a sound that accentuated the mandolin of Lindsay Raymond Jackson (of Lindisfarne infamy), the violin of Dick Powell, and the 6,000 different guitars of Ron Wood.

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PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | Bernard Fowler has been singing with the Stones since the ’80s and his CV reads like a Who’s Who of music legends. But this veteran rocker is anything but intimidating—in person he’s warm, charming, and full of great stories. Cratedigging with Bernard feels like cratedigging with an old friend, even if you just met him five minutes ago.

When we met up at Som, his most recent record, Inside Out, was up on the wall. It’s a collection of Rolling Stones songs, but instead of merely covering familiar tracks like “Sympathy for the Devil” or “Dancing with Mr. D,” Inside Out uses elements of free jazz, funk, and spoken word to completely reinvent songs you thought you knew. Nobody’s better qualified to do this than Bernard, with his impressive musical pedigree and years of personal experience with the Stones.

The day before the No Filter tour’s rescheduled stop at FedEx Field, I asked him what his favorite thing was about playing with Mick and Keef and Ronnie and Charlie. He’s got the best seats in the house, he said, with a laugh. What song would he add to the setlist, given the opportunity? “Dandelion.”

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Frisco-based alt hip hop artist Morsifire is well versed in the art of committing his mental anguish to tape.

He’s experienced an unbelievable amount of trauma in his young adult life, and his honest songs bravely explore the depths of his pain. Yes, his debut LP, Metanoia, is clearly a therapeutic exorcism of his inner demons, but it also shows the boundless promise of an MC who is not afraid to tackle more substantial themes.

“Contact” is about the untimely loss of his younger sister, (one of the several family members he’s lost along the way), and Morsifire succeeds in honoring her by constructing a cathartic memorial of heartfelt verses that delve into the past and project into the future—all weaved together with a beautiful hook from San Fran songbird Emily Afton. It’s an evocative interplay of tones that recalls Eminem’s career high collaboration with Dido, “Stan.”

The forthcoming LP, Metanoia, arrives in stores on October 11, 2019.

If folk music scares me–and it does–English folk music really scares me; I’m still trying to recover from the traumatic consequences of inadvertently viewing a YouTube video of Pentangle performing the pro-virginity dirge “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme.”

That said, I’ve always made an exception for Fairport Convention in general, and their LP 1969’s Unhalfbricking in particular. Unhalfbricking was the work of a band moving away from American influences towards the Ye Olde English-style minstrelsy, and the music they performed during said transition is some of their best.

Fairport Convention’s take on folk rock is decidedly English–as English as eel pie. And how couldn’t it be–listening to Sandy Denny, who remains arguably the best English folk singer in the history of recorded music, is like walking the Cornish cliffs of Tintagel on a lovely May morn. But–and the caveat is critical–you never get the awful sense you’ve wandered into the bucolic pagan setting of the 1973 film The Wicker Man, where you’ll be shoved into a wicker totem and burned alive, a sacrifice to a bountiful harvest, as the happy villagers sing “Sumer Is Icumen In.” (A tune I’m sure Pentangle performed all the time.)

While “lovely” best describes the songs on Unhalfbricking, you get plenty of variety: a trio of exceptional Dylan covers; one instant classic; a pair of slower numbers that creep up on you, and one Cajun-flavored rock’n’roller that sticks out, if you’ll bear the obscure allusion, like Beau Brummell at a stevedores’ convention. Oh, and there’s one simply incredible song that somehow manages to bridge the gap between the English traditional folk form and the Velvet Underground.

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A native of Kent, England, Alexander Tucker’s musical roots span back to hardcore in the 1990s, but he’s come to prominence through the interweaving of drone, electroacoustic elements, psychedelia, post-industrial ambiance and honest-to-goodness songs. Tucker’s latest solo effort (he’s also part of Grumbling Fur) is Guild of the Asbestos Weaver, his eighth full-length and the fourth to be released by Thrill Jockey. Offering five expansive tracks and a “classic” album runtime, the contents blend focused experimentation and trad tunesmithing to a result that’s as inviting as it is edgy. It’s out on vinyl, compact disc, and digital August 23.

The title of Alexander Tucker’s new record derives from the underground opposition in Ray Bradbury’s dystopian science-fiction classic Fahrenheit 451, a borrowing that’s representative of the artist’s stated desire to combine his longstanding interest in sci-fi and “cosmic horror” (from comic art, filmic and literary forms) with minimalism, drone and dream music.

To elaborate on that last style, it’s not dream-pop Tucker is tapping into but rather, explicitly stated, the “Dreamweapon” modus operandi of Angus MacLise, a legendary 1960s NYC-based percussionist-composer who was part of La Monte Young’s groundbreaking drone endeavor the Theater of Eternal Music. MacLise died in 1979, and it took roughly two decades for recordings (both under his own name and as a part of Young’s group) to become commercially available.

Still, MacLise’s biggest claim to “fame” (notably a goal he never strived for) is as an inaugural member of the Velvet Underground; that no recordings featuring his contribution survive from this era only adds to his mythic stature. As mentioned above, the impact of MacLise’s aesthetic on Guild of the Asbestos Weaver is right there in Thrill Jockey’s promo text, and it’s worth expanding upon due to Tucker’s similarity, both vocally and compositionally, to MacLise’s associate John Cale.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Vinyl edition to be available on translucent blue with printed inner sleeve with liner notes from original album contributors and the surviving band members.

Big Star formed in 1971, and in its brief four years together, created three albums that consistently make “Best of All-Time” lists. Eighteen years after officially disbanding, original members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens joined forces with the Posies’ Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow for a live performance, which led to a tour (documented on Omnivore Recordings’ Live in Memphis), and years of concerts. While the live shows were a joy and surprise, a bigger surprise happened in 2005, after more than a decade playing together: a new studio album. As Ryko A&R’s Jeff Rougvie said, “It was the easiest approval for a project I ever got.”

In Space featured new 12 tracks (10 originals and a cover of The Olympics’ “Mine Exclusively” and French baroque composer Georg Muffat’s “Aria, Largo”) recorded where Big Star began, at the classic Ardent Studios. The new lineup was creating a new chapter for the band while honoring its past.

With original albums going for outrageous prices, In Space returns as an LP on translucent blue vinyl, and expanded CD with six bonus tracks including “Hot Thing” (previously available on the out-of-print Big Star Story) and five previously unissued demos and alternate mixes. Packaging contains liner notes from Rougvie, original album co-producer/engineer Jeff Powell (who also cut the new vinyl), assistant Ardent engineer Adam Hill, and surviving band members Jon Auer, Ken Stringfellow, and Jody Stephens.

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