Monthly Archives: July 2020

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Talking Heads spawned a number of worthy side projects and spinoffs: David Byrne & Brian Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Jerry Harrison’s The Red and the Black, but none were as funky, danceable, and flat-out fun as Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth’s Tom Tom Club.

​Conceived as something of a larkish break from the grandly realized intellectual and artistic pretensions of the Heads’ Remain in Light record, the duo’s self-titled 1981 debut was recorded in Barbados with Weymouth’s sisters and Adrian Belew and Steven Stanley from the Remain in Light band, and not only spawned a couple of hit singles in “Genius of Love” and “Wordy Rappinghood” but also became, in its own way, enormously influential. This was the sound of downtown New York talking, listening, and rapping to the burgeoning hip hop movement, a hybrid heard in a whole host of acts in the ’80s and ’90s, from Madonna to Mariah Carey to the Beastie Boys and beyond.

Weymouth and Frantz went on to record several more albums under the Tom Tom Club moniker, but this remains the classic; Real Gone Music is proud to offer Tom Tom Club in a tropical yellow and red vinyl edition that pays tribute to its Barbados roots (and goes beautifully with the album’s colorful cover). Fun, natural fun!

Becoming a beatnik isn’t as easy as it looks. You have to wear a beret, master the patois, put out for a goatee–and learn how to play the bongos. That’s where Mr. Bongo comes in.

Mr. Bongo’s real name is Jack Costanzo, and his 1961 Liberty Record release Learn, Play Bongos with “Mr. Bongo” will have you playing “Peanut Vendor” in no time. And you won’t be learning from some bongo nobody—the Master of the Membranophone’s résumé reads like The Collected Works of Jack Kerouac.

Costanzo toured with Stan Kenton, spent four years as the “phantom fourth” in the Nat King Cole Trio, and released a slew of solo albums with titles like Bongo Fever and Mr. Bongo Plays Hi-Fi Cha Cha. He made guest appearances on the Art Linkletter, Ed Sullivan, Edward R. Murrow, and Dinah Shore shows, and was no stranger to the motion pictures; that’s Jack playing the bongo-beating Middle Eastern slave Julna in the 1965 Elvis Presley musical comedy Harum Scarum.

But Mr. Bongo was a consummate educator as well. And I’m not talking Bongos 101 at Beatnik High. Costanzo mentored some of the biggest names in Tinseltown, including Marlon Brando, James Dean, Betty Grable, Gary Cooper, Rita Moreno, and Tony Curtis. It’s rumored he coached the famed Nazi bongo beater Josef Goebbels as well, but you won’t the Nazi Propaganda Minister’s name on Costanzo’s CV.

With the help of Mr. Bongo–and the invaluable assistance of narrator Ira “One of Los Angeles’ leading personality disk jockeys!” Cook, you’ll be savaging the skins in no time.”Hear that?” asks Cook at album’s start. “It’s one of the most exciting sounds in the world. Everyone’s doing it. Ouch! Well, everybody’s trying to do it.”

Read More »

“Since I was a kid, I have been drawn to music. The way I could feel it move through my whole body. The way it could re-shape my brain waves. The way it connected me to the people in the room who I was listening with. Music, I later learned, was one of the few things in life that delivers a ‘complete’ experience.”

“I’ve been on board with Spotify from very early on. Streaming is easy and the collection might as well be infinite. I was a regular user right away. I am grateful for it, as a listener and as a working musician. But for all of the convenience that streaming offers, a complete musical experience it is not. Unlike vinyl, it’s a bit like listening in one dimension.

My experience of music, from a really young age, was largely visual. As a kid, I’d lay on the floor and stare at album art for the duration of an entire album. I’d read every lyric and every word of every liner note. I became familiar with the names of the producers and engineers. I’d inspect and analyze every photograph as if there were some mystery in there to be solved or unlocked, about the music, about the artist, about everything. The music was all magic to me. A big mystery. The.Big.Mystery. It was clear to me that in the music there were answers. Whether I could find them or not, was clear to me that I’d gladly spend the rest of my life looking for them and listening.

My parents had a strange and eclectic collection of vinyl. I remember sitting way too close to giant speakers in the living room, when I was probably 5 years old, completely engulfed by Barry Manilow’s silk voice, looking at his giant face on the cover, bigger than mine, and thinking he looked a lot like my dad and that he was probably someone I could trust.

Read More »

The Special Pillow hail from Hoboken, NJ, a fact that, if you are of a certain age and/ or pop-rock disposition, might lead to thoughts of a certain thing. While undeniably exhibiting traits that can be described as post-Feelies and Yo La Tengo-descended, the band is so much more, with an incontestable tendency towards psychedelia. Made up of all-star long-haulers, their six-song “World’s Finest” EP is intended to celebrate 25 years of existence. It’s out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital (with an extra track on the CD and download) through Zofko Records.

With the exception of one 7-inch from 1995 that came out on Really Fast Racecar Records, the other releases by The Special Pillow, seven in all by my count, have been issued by Zofko, which is their own label, commencing operations with Ancient History in 1994. Regarding the connection to Hoboken precedent, it’s pretty substantial, as James McNew of Yo La Tengo (also of his own project Dump at the time) plays guitar on The Special Pillow’s debut.

McNew is also on the 7-inch, but nothing else; for a long time, the core of the band was bassist Dan Cuddy and drummer Peter Walsh, both of the terrific and terribly underrated Hypnolovewheel, violinist Katie Gentile of the equally terrific and nearly as underrated indie supergroup Run On, and joining a little later, guitarist Peter Stuart (formerly of the Tryfles and Headless Horsemen). Cuddy and Gentile have been in the band for the duration; Walsh was with them for Ancient History, 2003’s Inside the Special Pillow, and ’07’s Sleeping Beauty, which is when Stuart joined.

Walsh left after 2014’s Infinite Regression; Stuart remained for ’16’s At the Earth’s Core, ’18’s Sleeping Weird, and he plays on “World’s Finest” too, which additionally features Eric Marc Cohen (Fly Ashtray, Autobody, Dymaxion, etc.) on drums (he also wields sticks on At the Earth’s Core and Sleeping Weird), the excellent u-ground folkster Debby Schwartz on vocals (her voice also figures in At the Earth’s Core), plus Steven Levi, Cheryl Kingan (both of The Scene Is Now) and Robbie Lee on horns.

Read More »

During this period of historic uncertainty, the fight for the survival of our independent record stores is directly mirrored by the dark stages of our local independent theatres, clubs, and performance spaces which have been shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been cited as well that 90% of these concert venues may never, ever return.

Enter the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) whose #SaveOurStages campaign has provided a spotlight on this perilous predicament with a unique mission to “preserve and nurture the ecosystem of independent live music venues and promoters throughout the United States.” Without help from Congress the predictions are indeed quite dire and TVD encourages you support the S. 3814/H.R. 7481, the RESTART Act, by telling your legislators to save independent music venues via the form that can be filled out and forwarded right here.

This week as we did last week, we’re turning our own spotlight onto previous live concert coverage as a reminder of the need to preserve the vitality of live music venues across the country—and indeed across the globe—and while we’re at it to celebrate the work of the fine photographers and writers at TVD who are all itching to get back into the pit. 

On Saturday, August 10, Reignwolf, with support from JJ Wilde, brought their headlining tour to an intimate crowd at Washington DC’s U Street Music Hall in support of the band’s new album Hear Me Out. Stirring up fans with their charisma and blistering fuzzy blues rock, they tore through the roughly hour-long set of new songs and old favorites, leaving fans and themselves worn out and sweaty.

Reignwolf (songwriter/singer/guitarist Jordan Cook, bassist S.J. Kardash, and drummer Joseph Braley) released Hear Me Out, the band’s first LP, in March. Prior to this, Reignwolf had only released a handful of singles over seven years, developing an enthusiastic following while maintaining an air of mystery among fans.

This mysterious air was underscored in the darkened, underground room at U Street Music Hall. The band played shrouded in smoke and back-lit by bright white lights, allowing those in attendance to see Cook and Karsdash in silhouette, and Braley not at all. No matter, as songs like the ferocious “Wanna Don’t Wanna” and Gary Clark Jr-ish “Black and Red” were loud and energetic as the blazing fires of Hell. During those moments when Cook emerged from the smoke and could be seen, he revealed a look that calls to mind 1970s Bruce Springsteen or even a black leather-clad Cat Stevens, while the band’s sound could be compared to Jack White, the aforementioned Gary Clark Jr, or the barely contained insanity of Black Pistol Fire.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Today Verve Records releases Love Letter, the first all-ballads album from magisterial tenor saxophonist-composer Jimmy Heath. In addition to his original material, this elegant collection offers the jazz ambassador’s beautiful take on ballad classics, and includes songs written by Billie Holiday, Mal Waldron, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham, and Gordon Parks. The album also features 21st century vocal superstars Gregory Porter and Cécile McLorin Salvant, and trumpet icon Wynton Marsalis.

​For Love Letter, Jimmy presided over a brilliant cast of colleagues and friends. Joining Maestro Heath is a multi-generational all-star unit, including NEA Jazz Master pianist Kenny Barron, esteemed guitarist Russell Malone, soulful vibraphone veteran Monte Croft, New York first-call bassist David Wong, and all-world drummer Lewis Nash. Love Letter features all new arrangements by Heath on Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” Dorham’s “La Mesha” (featuring Marsalis), Gordon Parks’ “Don’t Misunderstand,” and “Left Alone” the Billie Holiday Mal Waldron collaboration, as well as three originals chosen from his vast body of work. Heath’s soulful, trenchant, urbane solo flights evoke his poetic spirit with old master concision and the authoritative chops of a musician half his age.

A listener unfamiliar with the backstory of Love Letter would not imagine that the orchestrator and primary instrumental voice on this recording is a jockey-framed, spirited, 93-year-old man, who with the full breadth of his intellectual powers, delivers his final, magnificent salvo.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The centennial celebration of Peggy Lee’s birth—May 26, 1920—continues to be commemorated with new music releases and the airing of an updated documentary. Honoring one of the 20th century’s most important musical influences in the world of jazz and popular music, and in conjunction with UMe/Capitol, the Peggy Lee Estate today announces the digital-only release of The Capitol Transcriptions 1946-1949, and the airing of an updated edition of Fever: The Music of Peggy Lee in partnership with American Public Television.

​During the 1940s, Capitol’s Transcription Library Service produced records exclusively for radio airplay and not commercial sale. From 1946-1949, Peggy Lee, backed mostly by a small jazz group, recorded masters for the Capitol Transcription Library Service. The Capitol Transcriptions 1946-1949, a 72-track collection, features 55 songs making their worldwide digital debut and includes two Peggy Lee compositions, “Don’t Be So Mean To Baby” and “I Don’t Know Enough About You.”

Fever: The Music of Peggy Lee, which originally aired in 2004, has been newly updated for the centennial commemoration. The 60-minute PBS program, which will air in select markets in mid-July and premieres in most areas the week of August 29, explores her life and songs as told in her own words, though vintage interviews and performances. Check local listings for air dates and times.

Featuring her biggest hits and most famous signature songs, spanning the 1940s through the 1980s, Fever: The Music of Peggy Lee offers a wealth of extremely rare footage and images, including photographs and home movies. The program also includes commentary by family, friends, and colleagues, including k.d. lang, Quincy Jones, Andy Williams, Nancy Sinatra, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Margaret Whiting, and interviews with Michael Feinstein and Lee’s daughter, Nicki Lee Foster, and her granddaughter, Holly Foster Wells.

Read More »

Irma Thomas has been long known as “The Soul Queen of New Orleans.” It only takes a listen to understand why. Debuting on record in 1959, she’s recorded a bunch since, and if she never hit the commercial peaks attained by a few of her soulful counterparts, there was no shortage of standout work. This includes later releases like After the Rain, which came out in 2006 and delivered Thomas her first Grammy Award. Initially issued by Rounder Records, the album features a talented band and wide-ranging material, and if often described as a response to Hurricane Katrina, the contents retain an appealing freshness. The record hits vinyl for the first time July 31 through Craft Recordings.

Like many singers from the classic soul era, Irma Thomas was served best by singles. This shouldn’t imply that she didn’t get some albums in the racks; it’s just that until her career resurgence in the 1980s, most of them were compilations. On wax, the best of the bunch is probably the Kent label’s Time Is on My Side. Issued in 1983, it draws from her sessions for Minit and Imperial, though Sings is of the same vintage and was reissued on vinyl by Mississippi in 2015.

Time Is on My Side was expanded on CD in 1996, that version vying with Razor & Tie’s Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans as the strongest collection of Irma Thomas’ ’60s material (the latter is available digitally as the generically named Irma Thomas Collection: 1961-1966, except it’s missing one track). Unsurprisingly, there are a few other comps using Soul Queen of New Orleans as the title, including a pretty good 2CD on Charly; the second disc of that one is a likeable performance from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in April 1976 (released that year by Island as Live).

Like a lot of musicians who’d experienced moderate commercial success in the 1960s, Thomas suffered a rough stretch in the decade following. After Hurricane Camille in 1969 (the second most devastating hurricane to strike the US on record) she moved to California, first to Oakland and later Los Angeles, and then took a job at retailer Montgomery Ward.

Read More »

During this period of historic uncertainty, the fight for the survival of our independent record stores is directly mirrored by the dark stages of our local independent theatres, clubs, and performance spaces which have been shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been cited as well that 90% of these concert venues may never, ever return.

Enter the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) whose #SaveOurStages campaign has provided a spotlight on this perilous predicament with a unique mission to “preserve and nurture the ecosystem of independent live music venues and promoters throughout the United States.” Without help from Congress the predictions are indeed quite dire and TVD encourages you support the S. 3814/H.R. 7481, the RESTART Act, by telling your legislators to save independent music venues via the form that can be filled out and forwarded right here.

This week as we did last week, we’re turning our own spotlight onto previous live concert coverage as a reminder of the need to preserve the vitality of live music venues across the country—and indeed across the globe—and while we’re at it to celebrate the work of the fine photographers and writers at TVD who are all itching to get back into the pit. 

Big Wreck is a very special kind of band. One that has a truly unique sound, an unrivaled live show, and a frontman who does a remarkable job transporting the listener through storytelling and thought-provoking lyrics.

Formed by Ian Thornley in Boston back in 1994, Big Wreck released a stellar piece of work in the form of their debut album In Loving Memory Of. This record spawned a couple of minor radio hits for the band. The folks who got it know that Big Wreck never really got their fair share in the clouded and confused major label clusterfuck of mediocre rock at the time. But more importantly, it was just enough to lay a foundation for the band to build upon for the next decade.

I haven’t seen Big Wreck since 1994 back in my hometown of St. Louis as the band rarely tours the lower States because they remain quite popular in Canada and the New York/ New England area with a rabid fan base. During a business trip to New York City last week I saw that the band was playing a show at the Gramercy. I extended my trip by one day to see this one, and holy hell was it worth it.

Read More »

Remembering Emitt Rhodes with a look back from our archives.
—Ed.

Nearly half a century has passed since fans have had a chance to hear new music from Emitt Rhodes, but Rainbow Ends has made it worth the wait.

Backed by a crack group of in-demand musicians, Emitt returns to lay down new compositions and sings with a surprisingly spry and smooth voice. Chris Price turns in a solid production job—he stays out of the performer’s way and helps to provide thick drums and meaty guitar parts. Price explains his take on the project in a press release saying, “I view this as a continuation album, meaning it isn’t meant to be recreating the sound from his first record, but instead what he might have sounded like after his third album, Farewell To Paradise, if he kept making music in the mid-to-late ’70s.” In that vein, both Price and Rhodes succeed in doing so both sonically and compositionally.

As with Rhodes’ other albums, there isn’t a bad song in the bunch. This reviewer surveyed the clear vinyl release from Omnivore—the pressing was flat and quiet. There are hints of Zevon, Steely Dan, moments of coziness and measured professionalism, but mostly what we’ve got here is unique, prime, Emitt Rhodes—he’s pulled some true gems out of his bag of tricks which, as usual, feature lyrics of desperation and yearning paired with infectiously dreamy chord progressions that refuse to allow the listener the luxury of knowing which way is up—he remains a deft composer. These compositions invite the listener to play them and then play them again.

Read More »

Smack in the middle of an era full of complications—and amidst a year of fear and confusion—singer-songwriter Sasha Dobson has released her four-song EP “Simple Things” that reminds all of us to divert our attention toward what truly matters.

A child of hardworking musical parents from Northern California, Dobson first garnered traction as a jazz vocalist who crafted a sonic and spiritual space for herself amidst New York City’s West Village jazz scene. Sasha befriended recording artist Norah Jones, who recognized a similar musical inclination toward the subtle, nuanced elements of artistic approach that she herself possessed, and together they co-founded the girl group trio Puss N Boots along with Cat Popper.

But Sasha’s rock inclinations were left unattended. A vow to write and write and write was held to, as Dobson devoted herself to the craft that she was simultaneously used to from her upbringing, and coerced into pursuing via her many artistic collaborations as a young artist in California and New York.

“Simple Things,” the captivating four-song EP recently released under her own name, is Dobson’s testament to the potentials of the rock idiom. And it’s a beautiful experiment heralded by the guidance of veteran producer and Blue Note Records label head Don Was who believed in Sasha from day one. A stellar San Rafael session at Bob Weir’s TRI Recording Studios with Jay Lane on drums, Was himself on bass, and Sasha leading on guitar and vocals, resulted in a lovely and authentic product by which to showcase her talents.

You’re from California originally—what brought you to the New York area? Have you lived here for a long time?

I’m a little over twenty years in New York. I spent ten years in Manhattan and ten years in Brooklyn. And I just saw myself cycling into this routine of gigging every night. I was working and I was busy, but I wasn’t building anything beyond that. And I knew that if I distanced myself from the city, that I would only say yes to gigs that made financial sense or that I really, really wanted to do. Because as musicians we’re starving for work, and so you get into this momentum.

I come from a long line of musicians who were eternally overworked. So I moved to Far Rockaway, New York for the beach and the lifestyle, but I actually ended up working more because at the same time, my career opened up more. But I did start really making sure that when I said yes to a gig or project with someone that it made sense. Certain artists like myself who are musicians’ musicians, we burn ourselves out. And I come from a long line of really hard-working musicians, blue collar musicians if you will, like people who work with other musicians and spread themselves so thin. And so for me, I just thought, I think that my life path, aside from singing jazz, is writing music.

Even though it’s not what I set out to do, and even though I fell into it kind of guilty by association—I worked with all these songwriters, I dated and lived with a great songwriter for many years who’s a dear friend of mine. My life has been deeply influenced into this category that it fell into and I needed the space to sort of dive into that. And ever since then, “Simple Things” and the last Puss N Boots record, and my next project—this jazz record I’m about to put out—they’re all a product of making the room to write all the time.

I’m getting a lot of work done. The only real drag, for me, aside from losing all the big tours that we had planned this year, is that my social life—as dorky as it sounds—was also my work. And so whatever isolation that I kind of created by living out here and kind of love—I don’t get to balance it out by going and doing a gig every night or a session. But it’ll pass.

So you had a tour planned around the release of this record originally before quarantine started?

This year was the busiest year of my adult life. I’ve never had so much going on at once. I can’t even believe I have the financial structure to survive this pandemic period, because if it were last year and I didn’t have savings from making a record with Puss N Boots—my band with Norah Jones… we also put out a record this year, which kind of afforded me this project. I really had planned my whole year out. And the universe was like, “fuck you!”

But I’m not the only one; we’re all kind of going through that. I think a lot of us were hoping to have a great year. So you just keep going. On the other hand, my new jazz project was just sort of a trail off of this. You know, you get into a zone with whatever productivity you’re into, and I was just in this really super hustling zone at the beginning of the year, and my jazz band is a big deal for me. That’s kind of like another topic, but it’s something that I think, because I was so fired up about “Simple Things” and that coming together, I just knew that as soon as the tour was over with Puss N Boots, I was going to want to have something else in the mix after “Simple Things.” The point is that if I didn’t have these two projects to work on right now during this pandemic, I’d be just so lost. I have them to focus on and push out into the world, and it could be worse.

Read More »

“The feeling of accomplishment I experienced after dropping the needle down onto my finished record for the first time was wildly incomparable to what I felt listening to it digitally. From the very moment I peeled the plastic off, I felt like I was at the beginning of some kind of ritualistic experience of “closure” in my life. The end of the greatest chapter was being marked by the closing track, sliding the record back into its sleeve and finding a place for it on the shelf amongst the rest of my collection.”

“After pouring so much labour, love and life into the music, I think it’s the ongoing interaction needed to listen to a record—the artwork size, the heft, the substance—that makes it feel like a more cathartic finish line. I’m not going to lie, though: How a round piece of plastic can be transformed into music is still one of life’s most enchanting mysteries to me. Of course I know how it works, but the fact that it works at all feels like magic and definitely contributes to my emotional response.

The sentimentalism I feel about vinyl is also hugely influenced by my fathers’ own relationship with and reverence for records. He’s an audiophile and his large collection of hi-fi magazines and stereo equipment was and continues to be the butt of many jokes in our family. I’ve known for my whole life that music moves me in a way most things don’t—but I was about 11 when I started really listening to music on my own and developing my taste independent of what my older sisters and parents were listening to.

Read More »