Monthly Archives: September 2020

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Nina Simone’s classic 1965 albums I Put a Spell on You and Pastel Blues will be released as definitive audiophile grade versions as the third installment of Verve/UMe’s recently launched audiophile vinyl reissues series Acoustic Sounds.

​Utilizing the skills of the top mastering engineers and the unsurpassed production craft of Quality Record Pressings, the LPs, which will be available November 6, were mastered in stereo from the original analog tapes, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and packaged by Stoughton Printing Co. in high-quality tip-on gatefold jackets. Like all Acoustic Sounds titles, the releases are being supervised by Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, the world’s largest source for audiophile recordings. The Simone titles follow the Acoustic Sounds editions of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and Ballads set for release October 9.

I Put a Spell on You and Pastel Blues are two of the seven incredible albums that Simone recorded for Philips Records during an extremely prolific four-year period from 1963-1967. Lauded during their initial releases, both albums have only grown in stature and popularity over the years as Simone’s timeless recordings, many covering such important territory as race and equality, remain as vital and relevant as ever 55 years later.

A distinctive contralto vocalist and Julliard-schooled pianist who expressively melded jazz, blues, pop and classical in her repertoire, Simone was unlike most other top-line vocalists of her time as the ardent political activist often used her voice to protest racial inequality and became a siren of the civil rights movement. In 2018 Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who proclaimed: “Her triumphant voice sang what it meant to be young, gifted and black in a sometimes unjust and troubled world.”

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“I grew up in the ’80s, so I was very much a cassette kid for a lot of years, but my earliest memories of hearing music were of digging LPs out of my Dad’s closet and playing them on our record player. It was how I first discovered music. My first record store, I guess.”

“The first time I put on “Louie, Louie” by the Kingsmen, I was absolutely hooked. I used to hold my breath for the few seconds of hiss and pop before the intro lick. Another pivotal moment was hearing The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” for the first time. I had never heard anything like that electric guitar, or anybody sing with that kind of swagger. I remember being slightly terrified and fascinated by “Play With Fire.”

There was also Simon and Garfunkel, The Righteous Brothers, The Beach Boys and The Oak Ridge Boys. And while I didn’t listen to the Herb Alpert Whipped Cream And Other Delights album much, I certainly spent a good deal of time looking at that cover. Add to all of this, the sheer mystery of the physics of a record player, and it’s safe to say my little mind was blown.

I remember going on family trips to the mall and getting to go to the Record Bar. I played guitar by then and I’d load up on as many Chuck Berry, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin tapes as I could afford. Sometimes I’d hear a song on the radio and not know who it was, and I’d go to the clerk and sing a little of it for them and they could always find it for you. That level of mystery and engagement in music discovery seems to plant it a little deeper in your soil.

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Once the beans have been counted, the votes cast, and the losing tickets torn and scattered to the winds, which is the worst band ever? The Red Hot Chilies, obviously. But who’s in second place? It’s a difficult question. International commissions composed of scientists, physicians, casino owners, philosophers, music critics, statisticians, psychiatrists, bookies, seeing eye dogs, and necromancers have failed to come up with an answer.

But I’ve succeeded where the others failed. The second worst band in the world is Starship, which in case you’re keeping score started life as Jefferson Airplane, changed its name to Jefferson Starship, briefly changed its name yet again to Jefferson Starship, and finally settled on just plain Starship. Should the trend continue they’ll drop the Starship altogether and we won’t even know they’re there.

I came to my conclusion through the use of a carefully considered set of variables including annoyance factor, uselessness, stench, former greatness and “We Built This City.” In the end the stench factor prevailed; Starship may have entitled its 1985 debut Knee Deep in the Hoopla, but a better title would have been Knee Deep in Pig Shit.

Knee Deep in the Hoopla marked Starships’s stab at commercial success, and God help us all they pulled it off. The quintet of Jeff Airplane ringers expanded its core audience of aging hippie holdovers to include to a younger crowd weaned on the MOR likes of of Journey, Foreigner, Warrant, and Asia, and made a bundle in the process. It was a smart move on Starship’s part–there’s nothing in the rock rule book that says a band that’s artistically bankrupt need be financially bankrupt as well.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Warner Music [Sony Music outside Europe] today announced the upcoming release of Pink Floyd’s Delicate Sound Of Thunder on Blu-ray, DVD, 2-CD, 3-disc vinyl, and deluxe 4-disc edition with bonus tracks, on November 20, 2020.

​Across the various different formats, the release of Delicate Sound Of Thunder encapsulates a band at their best. Alongside the classic live album and full concert film (restored and re-edited from the original 35mm film and enhanced with 5.1 surround sound), included in The Later Years box set, all editions feature 24-page photo booklets, with the 4-disc box edition including a 40-page photo booklet, tour poster, and postcards. The 3-LP 180-gram vinyl set includes 9 songs not included on the 1988 release of the album, while the 2-CD release includes 8 tracks more than its original release.

In 1987, Pink Floyd made a triumphant resurgence. The legendary British band, formed in 1967, had suffered the loss of two co-founders: keyboardist / vocalist Richard Wright, who left after sessions for The Wall in 1979, and bass player and lyricist Roger Waters, who had left to go solo in 1985, soon after the 1983 album The Final Cut.

The gauntlet was thus laid down for guitarist/singer David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason, who proceeded to create the multi-platinum A Momentary Lapse Of Reason album, a global chart smash, which also saw the return of Richard Wright to the fold.

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Celebrating Bruce Springsteen during his birthday week. —Ed.

Born to Run changed my life. Oversized, operatic, and full of grandiose musical gestures, it sounded like a Phil Spector album and I loved it for its outrageous flourishes, its sheer joy in its own majesty, and its wild and outrageous poetry about life on the Jersey shore. It turned my teenage hormones to 10, and made me want to break free of all the constraints of my small town life. It conjured up a world of desperate and romantic characters—set against a backdrop of turnpikes, oil refineries, and billboards—making last ditch attempts to get out, escape, and set themselves free, no matter the cost.

It seemed impossible that Bruce Springsteen could ever top the grandiosity of Born to Run, and he didn’t. Instead he began a process of relentlessly stripping his sound down and paring his lyrics to the essentials. No more operas out on the turnpikes; his concerns shifted from the fervent fantasies of adolescence to the constraining realities of adulthood, a process that reached its apotheosis with 1982’s Nebraska, which featured just Springsteen and a handful of instruments, all of which he played himself. The back story is well known; the Boss originally recorded the songs as demos for an album with his E Street Band, but after recording a version of them with the band—which has never been released, although there has long been talk of its emergence—he decided the demos were better, and ultimately decided to release them rather than the E Street versions.

Nebraska is bleak—much of Springsteen’s canon is dark, and I’ve had many an argument over the years with people who failed to pick up on that darkness, especially on Born in the U.S.A.—so dark indeed that there isn’t what I’d call an upbeat song on the thing, although “Open All Night” comes close. What is remarkable is the beauty he conjures from that darkness. Haunting and haunted, he sings song after song of bad luck, murder, crime and punishment, economic hard times, and looking for reasons to believe—in life, in goodness, in the meaning of it all.

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“There’s a Harry Potter closet under the stairs in the house I grew up in. When I was little the whole thing was crammed full of stuff to the point you could barely move in there. Jackets, baseball gloves, and stereo equipment filled most of it.”

“However buried far in the back there were two boxes of old vinyl records. It took me quite a bit of digging, but I remember how excited I was as a 6 year old kid to see Abbey Road and Revolver amongst so many other cool album covers peeking out at me from behind the barricade of junk. I had found my dads old record collection.

Shuffling violently through the boxes, I picked out all of the Beatles and Beach Boys albums I could find and set them aside on the floor. At this point in time I was in elementary school, probably in first grade, and I’d ask my parents to put on “California Girls” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” every day on the way to school. So those records were extra special to me when I found them in the old vinyl box.

At this point in my life my family didn’t have a record player, so much to my dismay I couldn’t actually listen to the records I found. I remember asking my parents over and over if we could get a player but all the good ones were always too pricey and my dad didn’t want to play such old records on a bad table that would mess them up. Funny enough, to this day I’ve never actually listened to those particular records.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | This November sees the release of 50th Anniversary edition of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, available as a 4LP vinyl box set via UMe/Polydor. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1970 double album, the original has been given the ‘Half-Speed Mastered’ treatment by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios and is completed with a certificate of authentication. The 50th anniversary 4LP box set, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, is available exclusively through uDiscover and Sound of Vinyl and can be ordered here.

​Layla is often regarded as Eric Clapton’s greatest musical achievement. The album is notably known for its title track, an evergreen rock classic, which had top ten single chart success in the U.K. and features the dual wailing guitars of Clapton and Duane Allman. Alongside this are a further 2LPs of bonus material some of which has not previously been released on vinyl. All the bonus material across all of LP3 and LP4 is mastered normally (so is not half-speed mastered). The LP set also includes a 12×12 book of sleeve notes taken from the 40th-Anniversary Edition.

In 1970, following the break-up of Blind Faith and his departure from Delaney & Bonnie, Derek & The Dominos initially formed in the spring of that year. The group comprised Eric Clapton on guitar and vocals alongside three other former members of Delaney & Bonnie & Friends: Bobby Whitlock on keyboards, Carl Radle on bass, and Jim Gordon on drums.

Derek & The Dominos played their first concert at London’s Lyceum Ballroom on June 14, 1970 as part of a U.K. summer tour. During late August to early October they recorded Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, with the Allman Brothers’ guitarist Duane Allman sitting in, before returning to a tour of the U.K. and the U.S. until the end of the year. Shortly thereafter the group disbanded but their short time together offered up one of the rock canon’s most enduring albums of all time.

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“I didn’t know it was vinyl when it was ‘vinyl.’ It was just how the dance party would get started with my sister in the basement on a little portable 45 record player. Or, in the living room on my parents’ old system. It was easier to use than the 8-track. “

“The first records that I remember playing over and over again was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. My sister had some Madonna 45 singles…and my parents loved Simon and Garfunkel. I have to say that I got into Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass because of the cover. A naked woman covered in whipped cream seemed like a good invitation.

Later in college is when it really came back. I started hanging out with DJs and producers. I fell in love with the Golden Era of Hip Hop’s production techniques, and I started digging. And honestly, that’s when I started falling in love with jazz. Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock obviously… Bitches Brew changed my life. Honestly, after Bitches Brew, my mind exploded.

Also, side note, while I was in high school listening to The Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” I finally made the connection that they were talking about LSD. I guess everybody has to figure it out at some point.

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London-based dream-popper Philip Brooks produces nostalgic and emotionally charged tunes that land like bedroom bop Fleetwood Mac. “I’m So In Love With All Of My Friends” is a particularly bittersweet entry into their catalogue, examining regrets over having lost friends by admitting feelings for them. The German-born singer-songwriter has recently come out as non-binary.

Philip says about the track: “I wanted to write a love song for my platonic friends, because deep platonic love is so underrated in my opinion. In the past I was always seeking affection and I famously fell for my friends all the time—like, that was basically my brand. Every time I took the courage to be candid to find out if my crushes felt the same, people kept disappearing from my life until I found myself all alone.”

“Feeling both emotionally and physically distanced from my loved ones over the last few months led me to reflect on that, and writing this song helped me manifest that deeply loving people platonically is okay and enough and actually it’s really awesome. The track means a lot to me, especially because so many of my super talented friends are on it.”