Monthly Archives: November 2019

VIA PRESS RELEASE | In October 1958, 13-year-old wunderkind Brenda Lee entered the recording studio to record a new song by Johnny Marks, the songwriter behind “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” called “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” that her and her producer, Owen Bradley, felt had a lot of potential. Lee, who had already earned the nickname, “Little Dynamite,” belted out the lyrics, “Rockin’ around the Christmas tree/At the Christmas party hop/Mistletoe hung where you can see/Every couple tries to stop” while the band rocked on around her and created one of the biggest, most indelible, holiday songs of all time. “It was just one of those magical moments in the studio when everything came together,” Lee remembered. “The sax solo, the little guitar lick that’s in there. Everything just sort of fell into place.”

Surprisingly, when originally released the following month as her second Christmas single, backed with the Cajun-flavored holiday tune, “Papa Noel,” the song failed to make a dent in the charts. It was déjà vu all over again the following year too, but in 1960 when Lee’s teenage anthem of unrequited love, “I’m Sorry,” became a #1 smash hit, Decca Records reissued “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” and the song turned into a #14 hit. Over the last six decades the timeless song has become a perennial holiday favorite around the globe with continual airplay and streaming and has sold more than 36 million copies with the 5th most digital downloads sold of any Christmas single.

It has been featured in several movies including an iconic scene in the hit movie, Home Alone. Since 2014 “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” has returned annually to the Billboard Hot 100 chart and last year as it turned 60, it reached an all-time chart peak of #9 during the holiday season.

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The 1950s and ‘60s were a golden age of television. There was zero drug use, no filthy language, and nobody got to second base. Heady times indeed, if you were a puritan. But the theme songs! They were great! And wouldn’t you like to hear them again, all together in one place? Well you can, thanks to TVT’s invaluable 1985 compilation Television’s Greatest Hits: 65 TV Themes! From the 50’s and 60’s. And I’m here today with everybody’s favorite talking horse, Mr. Ed, who’s on a nationwide tour to promote the album.

Are you ready to answer some questions, Mr. Ed?

Mr. Ed: Ready as I’ll ever be. And you can call me Ed.

Thanks, Ed. Before we get started, what have you been up to since your show went off the air in February 1966?

Mr. Ed: I went through some hard times. I’m talking a serious oats addiction, three failed marriages, a couple of bankruptcies. At the peak of my career I owned a million dollar stable in the Hollywood Hills. I was dating Donna Douglas. Eva Gabor was an intimate friend. By the end I was living in a one-room flea trap on Skid Row, freebasing hay and settling for non-speaking roles on Bonanza. Chub and I used to sneak into Virginia City to score celery.

But you’re back on your feet?

Mr. Ed: Sober as Dick Webb.

What do you think of the compilation?

Mr. Ed: It’s great. I love every song on it with the exception of Grieg’s “Peer Gynt: Morning Suite.” For the life of me I don’t know why it’s on the comp. But to be honest, a lot of these TV theme songs are colored by what I know about the stars of the shows. Wilson Mizner called Hollywood a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottom boat, and he wasn’t kidding. It’s easy to lose your moral bearings in Tinseltown. You get jaded fast.

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Waterloo, Ontario-based Death Party Playground create wily power pop anthems, soaked in the tradition of Springsteen and Tom Waits.

Their latest single, “Still Memories,” boasts some thick, nostalgic vibes, sparkling with hope and reflection. “It’s a bit of a rock lullaby about resolving the pain of the past into something positive,” lead singer Kyle Taylor says. “A holistic reminder to appreciate the entire experience, both good and bad.”

Taylor’s poignant songwriting is accompanied by bright, folky guitars, all the way until the final lift, towards the end of the song, where the listener is invited to sing along, dance, and just have fun despite it all.

“These songs squeeze a little joy out of a darker time,” Taylor reflects. “It’s trying to have fun in spite of it. It’s purposefully not letting something break you.”

“Still Memories” is lifted from the band’s debut album Little Joy, due in stores January 17th.

Hot on the heels of his 51st birthday, Jake La Botz has packed a lot of living into that half century, acting in films and on stage, learning the blues from Chicago legends Honeyboy Edwards and Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis, teaching meditation to prisoners and kicking drug addiction. Navigating through the ’80s punk scene, landing in Nashville and returning to Chicago to cut his ninth full-length, the results reflect his range of experience. Rootsy with a theatricality that avoids faltering into minstrelsy and with strong singer-songwriter bona fides, in an earlier era, he would’ve been a cult artist struggling on a major label, but in 2019 he’s releasing They’re Coming for Me on Jimmy Sutton’s Hi-Style Records. It’s a good fit.

Jake La Botz has a whole lot of records out that I’ve somehow managed to not hear since he debuted in 1999 with Original Soundtrack to My Nightmare. The extensive background is palpable on his latest, as They’re Coming for Me is not the album of a fresh-faced newbie, though it still has the spark that I often associate with more youthful performers.

The artist successfully walks a dangerous line as the album progresses, in that he successfully tangles with the roots impulse without straining for a weathered effect and simultaneously doesn’t impact the ear like some anachronistic relic. Contemporary touches are frequent as the disc progresses, with the opening title track settling into a country-tinged rockish singer-songwriter zone.

There’s enough blues in the cut’s equation to drive home that La Botz isn’t a replicator; instead, he’s productively absorbed the stuff. With that said, the next track “Johnnybag the Superglue” radiates some Calexico similarities, like if they were enlisted to back up Tom Waits, which brings us to how La Botz effectively conjures a likeness to that troubadour of bent Americana but without sounding like a copyist.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Light in the Attic Records commemorates the 40th anniversary of Donnie & Joe Emerson’s Dreamin’ Wild, the private press album that hit the mainstream, garnering considerable acclaim and notoriety since its original release in 1979, and subsequent reissue in 2011 by Light In The Attic.

The brothers have recently become cult favorites thanks in large part to the hypnotic allure of “Baby,” a song that has been covered by Ariel Pink & Dâm-Funk (released as part of LITA’s Cover Series) and featured in a number of films and TV shows, including a prominent placement in the most recent season of the critically acclaimed HBO series, Big Little Lies. The unlikely story of the rock’n’roll farmer boys from rural Washington State is set for a big screen adaptation, helmed by Oscar-winning producer Jim Burke (Green Book) and producer/writer/director Bill Pohlad (Love & Mercy, 12 Years a Slave, The Tree of Life).

As part of LITA’s 40th Anniversary celebration, Donnie & Joe’s rare 1977 debut single “Thoughts In My Mind” and its b-side “Take It” will be released digitally for the first time, and Dreamin’ Wild will be made available on “Baby Blue” vinyl and on 8-track⁠—yes, on 8-track—which will be limited to 100 units world-wide. A newly commissioned series of animated shorts by Jeffrey C. Lowe will portray the unique story of Donnie & Joe. Exclusive merchandise will include a “Dreamin’ Wild” eye pillow (included with Donnie & Joe vinyl orders from the LITA online store while supplies last), fleece sweatshirts and, looking towards Valentine’s Day, a pack of Donnie & Joe-themed heart candy and a heart-shaped vinyl single of “Baby” b/w the previously unreleased song “Tonight.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | PopMotion Pictures’ critically-acclaimed third wave ska documentary Pick It Up! Ska in the ’90s, directed by Taylor Morden, has been a fan favorite on the festival circuit and now the film is coming to DVD & Blu-Ray on November 18! The film will also be available for purchase digitally soon via Vimeo and Amazon.

The feature-length documentary explores the third-wave ska explosion of the 1990s, and tells the story of ’90s ska from a wide variety of points of view, including dozens of the key figures who lived it, such as members of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, No Doubt, and Sublime. A “love letter” to third-wave ska, the film delves deep into how the genre of ska evolved from its original Jamaican form, through British “two-tone” in the ’80s, into an entirely new global sensation in the ’90s, when it became wildly popular for an all too brief moment in music history, from the early years of bands like No Doubt, Fishbone, The Toasters, Let’s Go Bowling and Skankin’ Pickle, to the massive radio success of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, and Save Ferris.

Pick It Up is narrated by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong and features commentary from the likes of No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake, Goldfinger, the Pietasters, Fishbone, Save Ferris, Let’s Go Bowling, Dance Hall Crashers, the Specials, Mustard Plug, the Toasters, Skankin’ Pickle, Hepcat, the Slackers, Kemuri, Blink 182, the Aquabats, the Hippos, The Skatalites, Sublime and many more!

Earlier this year, the label Lovely Music, Ltd. reissued composer and avant-gardist Robert Ashley’s Private Parts on vinyl and compact disc. Getting a new pressing of that ’78 classic was a terrific turn of events, and on November 22 the same imprint is bringing out a fresh wax edition of Ashley’s ’79 album Automatic Writing. It provides a sharp contrast with the October arrival of a contemporary performance (from February of this year at NYC’s The Kitchen) on double CD of the composer’s 1991 opera in two acts Improvement (Don Leaves Linda). If wildly different, both sets illuminate complementary sides of the same wonderful mind, and they help to shape one of the best release programs of 2019.

Even from within an oeuvre known for its qualities of eclecticism (partly detailed in my long review of Private Parts in this space earlier this year), Robert Ashley’s Automatic Writing is something of an outlier. While it postdates Ashley’s transition to text-based compositions, the record’s focus on involuntary speech, and specifically, Ashley’s self-described mild form of Tourette’s Syndrome, lends it stature that’s certainly distinctive but not especially divergent from the releases surrounding it in the man’s discography, in large part due to the focus on the human voice.

It required two attempts to record his involuntary speech, but Ashley succeeded, though the finished record offers more than this component. There are four intertwined parts, in fact: there is Ashley’s speech, a reading in French by Mimi Johnson of a translation of Ashley’s speech by Monsa Norberg, electronics and Polymoog as played by Ashley, and trad organ played by I’m unsure who (Paul DeMarinis designed and built the switching circuit that was crucial to the whole process). Actually, there is a fifth element, but we’ll get to that shortly.

Automatic Writing has been described as an ambient album, and as it’s a really quiet experience (best absorbed on headphones for maximum reward), that designation makes sense. It’s also, to my ear, the Ashley record that best fits the bill of minimal (although I haven’t heard everything he’s done). However, maybe the better categorization, if somewhat vague, is simply Experimental.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings is thrilled to announce The Memphis Masters—a limited video series celebrating various albums from the iconic Stax Records label, showcasing its enduring musical legacy, as well as its influence on Memphis, TN.

Created in partnership with Memphis Record Pressing and Memphis Tourism, and directed by Andrew Trent Fleming of TheFilmJerk Media, the multi-part series was shot in several locations around the city—also known as the home of blues, soul and rock ’n’ roll—including such historic landmarks as Sam Phillips Recording Service, Royal Studios, and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. With interviews spanning multiple generations of artists, The Memphis Masters offers insight from the likes of Robert Trujillo (Metallica), Grace Potter, Matt Berninger (The National), Walshy Fire (Major Lazer), Steve Selvidge (The Hold Steady) and producer Boo Mitchell—all of whom were inspired by the label’s music and the albums being reissued. The Memphis Masters also includes interviews with Stax legends like Steve Cropper, Big Star’s Jody Stephens, James Alexander (the Bar-Kays), and Booker T. Jones, plus longtime label publicist Deanie Parker and songwriter Bettye Crutcher, who share their memories from the label’s heyday.

With rollout beginning today (11/14), each episode—available on YouTube—will revolve around an album or collection from a singular artist or group on Stax’s roster, starting with Melting Pot from Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Other titles covered include Gotta Groove from The Bar-Kays, Home from husband-and-wife songwriting duo Delaney & Bonnie, Who’s Making Love from Johnnie Taylor and Victim of the Joke?…An Opera from acclaimed producer and songwriter David Porter. The series will take a broader view of The Staple Singers, who will be honored with a deluxe, seven-LP box set, Come Go With Me: The Stax Collection, available in early 2020. All of the standalone titles have been cut from their original analog tapes by Jeff Powell at Memphis’ Take Out Vinyl and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Memphis Record Pressing. The majority of the single albums will be available November 1st, while LPs from Porter and Taylor will be reissued on December 6th.

2019 marked the 50th anniversary of Stax beating the odds and thriving as an independent entity, following its split with Atlantic Records in a period called the Stax “Soul Explosion.” Throughout the past months, Craft has paid tribute to the label and its artists with special reissues, box sets, playlists and more. Fittingly, The Memphis Masters will wind down the year-long celebration, as it pays homage to the timeless music and persevering spirit of Stax.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Band’s influential, pioneering self-titled album is being celebrated with a suite of newly remixed and expanded 50th Anniversary Edition packages.

Available now via Capitol/UMe, the album is available as a Super Deluxe 2CD/Blu-ray/2LP/7-inch vinyl boxed set with a hardbound book; 2CD, digital, 180-gram 2LP black vinyl, and limited edition 180-gram 2LP “tiger’s eye” color vinyl packages. All the Anniversary Edition releases were overseen by The Band’s Robbie Robertson and feature a new stereo mix by Bob Clearmountain from the original multi-track masters, similar to the acclaimed 50th anniversary collections of last year’s Music From Big Pink releases. The 50th Anniversary Edition’s CD, digital, and box set configurations also include 13 outtakes, featuring six previously unreleased outtakes and alternate recordings from The Band sessions, as well as The Band’s legendary Woodstock performance, which has never been officially released. Order/stream The Band (50th Anniversary Edition) here.

Clearmountain and Robertson’s approach to remixing the beloved album was done with the utmost care and respect for the music and what The Band represents. “The idea was to take you deeper inside the music, but this album is homemade,” Robertson says in the liner notes. “You can’t touch up a painting. It has nothing to do with what you get when you go into a recording studio.” When he expressed his concerns to Clearmountain, the renowned engineer and producer reassured him: “We’re just trying to overcome the original technological limitations in order to bring you closer into the room,” he explained. “I’m going to do everything in my power not to get in the way of this music at all.” The result is a new mix that allows listeners to hear these classic songs in stunning, and often times startling, clarity, packing more of a sonic and emotional punch than ever before. The included early and alternate versions offer fans the ability to hear the evolution of these tracks or as Robertson says, “That’s us trying to teach ourselves how to play these songs.”

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“In late 1964 my dad was building his Beatles collection literally as the albums came out, so his latest purchase was Beatles For Sale which I believe came out in December of that year. At that time my mother was pregnant with me and suffering from morning sickness. So as my dad played the record over and over again, it was the soundtrack for my poor mother’s, well, vomiting. My mother tells me that as soon as I was able, around four years old, I put Beatles For Sale on the turntable and played it incessantly, dancing around in bliss while she, in a flashback, relived her nausea.”

“She thinks the song I particularly loved was “I’m a Loser” but she’s not sure. She helpfully offered to do some research by listening to the record to see which song makes her most nauseated. Not a typical response to that record I’m sure. I told her not to bother.

And so, I am, like many people, an avid Beatles fan. My dad collected all the records. I grew up with them. A friend once said “It’s like the Beatles are in my DNA.” That’s exactly how I feel.

However I’m trying to think back to my first date. I think I must have been around 15 or 16, (1980 or ’81) and the fellow I had a crush on was a punk rocker. My friends and I loved punk. We were totally into it, particularly Siousxie and the Banshees. (I would back comb my hair, spray about a can of hairspray into it, and copy her makeup to try to look like her. I thought I looked cool. Looking back I think I looked scary.)

So on my first date I’m sure I did not talk about The Beatles, or anything much at all actually. I think I just kind of tried to smoke without becoming ill, and snogged. If we had talked about records it may have been something by the Sex Pistols. This boy looked like Sid Vicious on purpose. But as I say, we didn’t talk much. He wasn’t a big talker. I think our affair lasted for one day at least.

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