Monthly Archives: November 2020

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Live Events Lift Up Festival, also known as LEVL UP Fest, will stream live from the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Wednesday, December 16 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. This “festival of music and stories of life on and off the road” will feature performances from more than 25 artists and entertainers who have stepped up to honor all those who help them “go live.” Throughout the event, we’ll hear stories from artists and crew about what it means to be part of a “road family” and get a glimpse behind the scenes of what it takes to produce live entertainment and events.

​In early March 2020, the live events industry was shut down by mandate in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Suddenly, an entire workforce whose livelihoods revolve around creating events where people gather, came to a grinding halt. The collapse of the ecosystem in the live events industry, from supply chain to front lines, quickly became catastrophic. Live events support more than 12 million jobs; and according to statistics from several sources, including the Department of Labor, 77% of the workers in live events have lost 100% of their income. Event pros are grappling with the loss of their income, the uncertainty of when work might return, whether the Government might do enough to stabilize the industry and trying to figure out how they are going to survive.

“We’ve seen depression and anxiety take hold across our community, loss of life due to suicide, families in fear of losing homes and generational small businesses closing their doors,” says Shannon Cook, Co-Founder of LEVL UP Fest. “With large-scale gatherings not expected to return until mid to late 2021, workers across this industry face a very uncertain future.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Black Keys release Brothers (Deluxe Remastered Anniversary Edition), an expanded version of their watershed 2010 multi-platinum, Grammy-winning sixth studio album December 18, 2020 in the US and Canada and on January 1, 2021 in all other territories, via Nonesuch Records, on which the record is newly available throughout the world.

​To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Brothers will be re-released with three added bonus songs: “Keep My Name Outta Your Mouth,” “Black Mud Part II,” and “Chop and Change.” It will be available in three formats: a 7” box set, a 2-LP set, and a CD (full info about each below). This will be the first in an annual series of archival releases from the band. Brothers (Deluxe Remastered 10th Anniversary Edition) is available for pre-order here. The band today also share their promotional video for the release, directed by Bryan Schlam.

Members of The Black Keys fan club, The Lonely Boys and Girls Club, were treated to an early listen of one of the new tracks from the deluxe reissue, as well as an early look at some of the bonus material included in the upcoming release.

Brothers, originally released on May 18, 2010, was largely recorded at the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. It was a career breakthrough for The Black Keys, receiving critical praise and earning three Grammy Awards, for Best Alternative Album, Best Rock Performance, and Best Recording Packaging for Michael Carney’s design. Upon release, Rolling Stone hailed the album “a masterpiece,” and Uncut named them “one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands on the planet.”

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“Every fall, in Montreal and the nearby Laurentian mountains, people come from all over the world to see the leaves change colours. We call them Leaf-peepers… I think… At any rate, it really is a spectacle worth seeing, the leaves, that is, not the peepers—one of Mother’s Nature finest from her deep bag of tricks.”

“To a kid growing up in the area, however, the same leaves represent a very different beast. The changing colours are seen for what they truly represent, the death-throes of summer before the long, dark winter sleep. And where do dead leaves end up? The lawn, the flower beds, the driveway…like water, they will find a way into and through and under everything. On precious weekend afternoons, it is the sacred and unpleasant duty of every Canadian kid to rake these leaves—“bag ‘em and tag ‘em.”

My dad used to offer us financial compensation but my brother and I saw through the scheme…10 cents a bag, seemed easy enough—could be looking at a dollar for an hour’s work. Not so fast! A bag is never full until dad has given the OK. Which meant passing the compression test… which meant him taking what looked like a full bag of leaves and standing in the bag until the leaves had been squashed to a near-atomic level! Then came the inevitable judgment, “That’s not full…”

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Joe Wong is a great musician, but he dabbles in a little bit of everything. Not only is his new release Nite Creatures a great addition to the modern psychedelic canon, but he also hosts a popular podcast called, The Trap Set which focuses on musicians, particularly drummers. When he’s not doing those two things, he’s composing music for film and television notably for Netflix’s Russian Doll andMaster of None.

Here, Joe and I discuss his new album, Nite Creatures which was recently released on Decca records and it’s a big, sprawling psychedelic delight featuring a 24 piece orchestra consisting of members of the London Symphony Orchestra and the L.A. Philharmonic and of course a harpist, you’ve got to have a harp. Joe and I also dig into his composition and production process. We talk about his influences yet manage to identify how his unique voice stands out in a crowded musical world.

Are you the kind of person who thinks of great ideas throughout your day, different things you might be able to do? Directions to take and creations to work on? Joe Wong is like that, but he has the determination to take these ideas and turn them into something tangible. That’s not an easy thing do to, c’mon let’s find out more together.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Sharp Notes each Saturday evening at 6pm and TVD Radar on Sundays at 5AM on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

This is what fans of The Move call a masterpiece? You might it expect it to be, seeing as how it’s the product of the bizarre mind of professional eccentric Roy Wood, future co-founder of Electric Light Orchestra and founder of the glam rock band Wizzard. And that’s the major flaw of 1970’s Shazam–despite the presence of Wood, the album isn’t eccentric enough.

The Move take a scattershot approach on Shazam, delving into art rock, classical rock, raga rock, and proto-metal, while also taking stabs at The Beatles and sixties folk rock. But their most important influence is the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and that’s where things fall apart. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band kept whimsical tongue firmly planted firmly in dada cheek, but on Shazam The Move want to have it both ways. They wander into Stanshall/Innes territory on a couple of cuts, but for the most part they play it straight. Shazam is a case of a split personality, and it’s too late for it to seek therapy.

“Cherry Blossom Clinic” makes the comedy grade, what with its light-hearted treatment of “they’re coming to take me away ha ha” lunacy, but the song is ruined for me by the extended foray into the music of Bach and Paul Dukas. Sure, it’s all in fun, but I don’t enjoy being classically gassed–if I wanted to listen to the likes of Bach I’d have to become a different person, because the person I am is bored stiff by the stuff.

Far less funny is the opening of the tender and very serious “Beautiful Daughter,” in which the band takes the same “talk to the man in the street” approach the Bonzo Dog Band employ in their masterpiece of absurdity “Shirts.” Trouble is, with the exception of the old women who responds to the question of whether she likes pop music by saying, “Well, it’s nice in its way, you know some of it, not uh, not when they go naked,” the Q and A just ain’t that funny. One laugh line doesn’t not a comedy classic make.

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This week we begin by spinning some old Philly soul 45s that I recently found. Their condition was near the point where I might not normally let them follow me home, but I’m glad I made an exception: they cleaned up well and sound great.

We play some favorites from folks who were kind enough to allow us to interview them for the Radar program, A Girl Called Eddy’s latest gets a spin (on white vinyl, of course). If you haven’t heard her newest sophisticated gem released on Elefant Records, do yourself a favor and track it down. The vinyl pressing sounds great, too.

Little Richard also gets some serious airtime as we begin to cull through the ambitious reissue campaign from Omnivore Records which will culminate in the release of Richard’s unreleased country album, Southern Child; expect that on November 27 as a Record Store Day Black Friday title.

There is plenty of new music on the radar this week: we take a spin through Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and More release, check out the new albums from Dawes and Darlingside, and hear a few more tracks from the latest Van Duren reissues. You might even learn some best practices of how to make your parakeet an accomplished conversationalist.

You never know what to expect on Radar—join us for this week’s journey.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Sharp Notes each Saturday evening at 6pm and TVD Radar on Sundays at 5AM on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Resonance Records will proudly release Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott’s, the label’s third collection featuring hitherto unheard recordings by the great pianist’s short-lived 1968 trio with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette, as a two-LP Record Store Day exclusive on Black Friday, November 27. The album will subsequently see release as a two-CD set and a digital download on December 4.

​Resonance—a division of the Rising Jazz Stars Foundation, a non-profit corporation created to discover the next jazz stars—has previously issued two widely acclaimed, never-before-heard albums by Evans’ ’68 unit. That combo recorded the pianist’s second Grammy Award-winning Verve album, Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival; recorded on June 15, 1968, it was the only contemporaneous album released from the lineup during its brief existence.

Unearthed by Resonance co-president Zev Feldman (a/k/a “the Jazz Detective”), Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest (2016) was a two-LP/two-CD studio date, cut five days after the Evans-Gomez-DeJohnette trio’s Montreux appearance, which had sat unheard in the German vaults for 50 years. A second historic discovery, Another Time (2018), was recorded two days later by the Netherlands Radio Union in Hilversum. These collections garnered praise in DownBeat and JazzTimes in the U.S., Jazzwise in the U.K., and the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll; Some Other Time topped Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart.

Drawn from Jack DeJohnette’s personal archives, Live at Ronnie Scott’s comprises 20 scintillating tracks captured during the Evans trio’s month-long ’68 residency at the eponymous saxophonist-impresario’s Soho club. (It is Resonance’s second live Evans album to emanate from that venue: 2019’s Evans in England derived from a 1969 stand at Scott’s, featuring Gomez and drummer Marty Morell.)

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Trafalgar Releasing and Warner Bros. today announced the upcoming release of Elvis: That’s The Way It Is: Special Edition, coming to cinemas across North America from December 3 to 6. This follows the success of the release earlier in the year across the UK and additional selected territories. The film took the number one spot on the UK cinema box office on night of release, making it the biggest popular music concert release of 2020 at that time. Tickets for the North American release will be on sale beginning today at ElvisThatsTheWayItIs.com.

​To celebrate 85 years of Elvis Presley and 50 years since the film’s original 1970 release, the King returns to cinemas—remastered—with Elvis: That’s The Way It Is: Special Edition, an unmissable event for fans.

On July 31, 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Elvis Presley staged a triumphant return to the concert stage from which he had been absent for almost a decade. His series of concerts broke all box office records and completely re-energized the career of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. This feature-length documentary and concert film features performances including “Love Me Tender,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Suspicious Minds.” Crossing the footlights, revealing the legendary singer as a man preparing for an emotional career comeback, the fans who travelled from all over the world for this history-making event…. and the electrifying live performance of the man who gave us rock ‘n’ roll.

Kymberli Frueh, SVP, Programming and Content Acquisitions of Trafalgar Releasing has said on the release: “Following the success in the UK and other territories earlier in the year, we’re so excited to be partnering with Warner Bros. and Authentic Brands Group to be bringing this seminal film to cinemas in North America. The film marks the start of a new global event cinema distribution relationship between Trafalgar Releasing and Warner Bros. and we look forward to collaborating closely with their team.”

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Listening to Journey inspires me–to stop listening to Journey. I’ve always hated them, mainly because they’re the incarnation of late seventies/early eighties AOR shlock, and I offer prospective Journey buyers two simple words of advice: Stay Home.

Journey’s 1978 LP Infinity has sold some 3,000,000 copies and counting, but had we been lucky it wouldn’t exist. Its predecessor, 1977’s Next, sold so poorly Columbia Records was on the verge of dropping the band, and odds are Journey would have gone the way of Head East had they not hired Steve “Castrato” Perry and gone big time mainstream on Infinity, which won the hearts and minds of the sorts of people who consider Footloose the pinnacle of modern American filmmaking.

Journey’s songs are safe, sturdy, reliable, and gooey with emotion–Volvos with feelings. Volvos may be boring but they sell, and there’s case to be made for boring; there are plenty of people out there who are perfectly content to drive the speed limit, and as far as they’re concerned Infinity makes the perfect accompaniment to their 30-minute stay-in-the-right-lane commute from home in the suburbs to job in accounting firm and back.

Very few music listeners would call Journey a hard rock band, but Infinity tells a different story–trapped within the MOR schmalz there’s a Led Zeppelin screaming to be let out. For every “Patiently” and “Opened the Door” there’s an “Anytime” or “Can Do,” both of which pack a surprising wallop. Five of Infinity’s songs have muscle; you have to look beyond their icky make-it-stop exteriors.

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Do People Still Buy CDs? The Answer Is Yes — Tens of Millions Are Still Sold Every Year: The short answer to the question that so many music fans have asked – ‘do people still buy CDs?’ – is absolutely ‘yes.’ But despite tens of millions of CD sales worldwide, evidence indicates that far fewer consumers are purchasing CDs amid the pandemic. It’s part of a trend that could continue even after COVID is in the rearview. Nearly 11 millions CDs were sold during the first half of this year — in the United States alone. Head over to the second largest music market in Japan, and CDs remain the dominant format with more than 70 percent of all recorded music sales. But with COVID closing record stores, CD sales in both markets could be facing serious declines ahead. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), U.S. recorded music revenues increased 5.6 percent during 2020’s first half, to $5.7 billion at retail value, compared to the same period in 2019. The fact that this growth arrived amid the pandemic is significant, with CD-buying die-hards still making purchases despite record store closures and widespread lockdowns.

Austin, TX | Austin Record Stores Move the Needle on In-Person Shopping: You may now commence thumbing through the stacks again (provided you follow the new safety rules). Before last Saturday, I hadn’t set foot in a record store in seven months. The last time I’d gone that long, my favorite musical artist was the children’s singer Raffi. Still, my weekend trip to Waterloo Records felt normal – even considering I got scanned with a forehead thermometer upon entry, the checkout clerk was behind Plexiglas, and the shop’s used new arrivals section had been relocated to spread out customers. In those crates, I mined an LP from the Sixties vocal group the Exciters, then journeyed over to the international section and scored a copy of Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti, a collection of field recordings of possession rituals captured in the Forties and Fifties. I didn’t know I needed that record until I flipped upon it in a rack…Owner John Kunz believes the slow, scaled reopening of Austin’s record retailers speaks to them “trying to be part of solution, not part of the problem in terms of the spread.” Still, he says operations have evolved as we understand more about the coronavirus.

The best high-end turntables: So you’ve had your mid-range turntable for a while: it’s the best, you love it! However, there’s a daunting question lingering in the back of your mind, is there more? Well for the enthusiast or self-proclaimed audiophile, the upgrade to the next bracket is completely worth it. With any price increase you can expect an even more precise attention to detail – whether it’s design, sound quality, or components going into the construction of a turntable. In higher-end turntables, all of these things play pivotal roles in delivering you the utmost, and accurate sound quality you can imagine. There are a few caveats however: with an emphasis on vibration reduction, you’ll typically find features found in budget and mid-range turntables – such as speed change buttons, removable headshells, built-in preamplifiers – removed. Things such as your phono preamplifier, stereo amplifier, and RCA cables all need to be of a high quality if you want to get the most out of your turntable. Ease of use or easy set-up isn’t to be expected either.

Sleevenote is a high-res music player designed for album art: Tom Vek, recording artist, wants to sell you a music player. One that he’s designed himself. Sleevenote is designed to respect your favorite albums, from cover to tracklist, as a work of art in their own right. It’s pretty much all-screen, a 6.2-inch square picture frame that lets you interact with music the way we used to. Select a record, read through its (digital) booklet and select tracks by touching their name on the back cover. It’s designed to recapture the vibe you had when getting a CD, or vinyl record, ready to play for the first time. “I was doing the artwork for [2011’s Leisure Seizure] and it dawned on me that not everyone buying it was going to see it,” Vek told Engadget. Knowing that the work he was putting in to creating the album-as-a-package was likely to go to waste upset him greatly. “I’d been resistant to the iPod,” said Vek, “because it wasn’t a good replacement for the visual side of CDs.” For many cover design is an art form in and of itself, with many covers iconic in their own right.

Williamstown, MA | The Pick-Up Pop-Up Bookshop: A visual suspension of the new coronavirus reality: “It’s almost a single freeze frame of a movie. It’s a space, cast with characters. The idea is to take you away, and sort of transport you off Spring Street,” said Artist Stacy Cochran as she described her new Pick-Up Pop-Up Bookshop in town. As the Mass MoCA gift shop recently closed, Cochran fashioned an operative art installation to create a moment of atmospheric light in the symbolically vacant space. The space is not a complete store, but a pop-up installation, intended to emulate a bookshop, where people can pick up an order placed from the website of the Northshire Bookstore of Manchester, Vt. each week. “It was sad to see Images with an empty storefront. So I thought I’m just going to rent the space and do something here that feels productive,” the artist said. The goal was to contribute to the life of the street and bring people together in an unexpected way, especially in this isolating time. “The first thing I thought of was a bookstore. I am worried about independent bookstores, as we all are, and if anyone is going to spend money on gifts or for themselves, and be persuaded not to go to Amazon to do it, that seems like a win,” the artist said.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | A Special Music Programming Experience on Thanksgiving Day

​Celebrating 40 years as an independent broadcaster, Radio Woodstock (100.1 WDST licensed to Woodstock, New York) celebrates the Thanksgiving holiday connecting listeners with the record albums that have had an enduring impact on their lives. “Record Day” asks engaged listeners to submit their favorite albums they are “most thankful for.” Radio Woodstock will play these entire albums on Thursday, November 26, 2020 from 7am-10pm, creating the ultimate listener-curated Thanksgiving day album soundtrack.

The “Record Day” line-up includes The Last Waltz by The Band, 11-17-70 by Elton John, Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacree (scheduled for 9AM), and Alice’s Restaurant Massacree Revisited (scheduled for 12pm). Listeners can submit their favorite albums by emailing live@radiowoodstock.com and can tune in 100.1 FM in the Hudson Valley, or listen to the live stream worldwide via the iHeartRadio app or online at radiowoodstock.com. “Record Day” is supported by Gary DiMauro Real Estate and Darkside Records in Poughkeepsie.

Radio Woodstock’s Director of Programming Greg Gattine says, “This year let’s be especially grateful for the music and how it connects us to ourselves, to each other and to the universe. On Thanksgiving let’s go back to a time when we listened to the whole album, in order from side A to side B, and have the shared experience that we’re all listening to Rock n’ Roll history.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Documentary features Nick Cave, James Turrell, Laurie Anderson, and David Byrne. Original music and soundtrack features John Stirratt of Wilco, with songs by Talking Heads, Sharon Jones, Big Thief, Wilco, Moses Sumney among others

​The captivating new documentary Museum Town from former MASS MoCA director of development Jennifer Trainer, tells the story of a unique museum, the small town it calls home, and the great risk, hope, and power of art to transform a desolate post-industrial city. In 2017, MASS MoCA became the largest museum for contemporary art in the world—but just three decades before, its vast brick buildings were the abandoned relics of a massive shuttered factory. How did such a wildly improbable transformation come to be?

MASS MoCA is a testament to tenacity and imagination, Museum Town traces the remarkable story of how a small rural Massachusetts town went from economic collapse to art mecca. Threaded with interviews of a diverse cast—a tattooed curator, a fabricator, former factory worker, and shopkeepers—the film also looks at the artistic process itself, tracking the work and ideas of celebrated artist Nick Cave as he creates his groundbreaking installation at MASS MoCA, UNTIL.

Museum Town captures the meeting of small-town USA and the global art world as it tells a tale that is, like any great artwork, soulful, thought-provoking and unforgettable. Museum Town will be released by Kino Lorber through Kino Marquee virtual cinemas December 4th, 2020.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The plural of vinyl is vinyl. Period. But sometimes a good cause is a good cause, right?

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Vinyls for Good has just launched, a collaboration between NYHed Studios and a Spanish beer company to support local bars and restaurants affected by the global pandemic crisis. By purchasing a vinyl record featuring two songs from up-and-coming Spanish band Go Cactus (“Would You Hold My Hand” & “Hippie Jump”) on sale in over 150 establishments in New York, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, DC, supporters can help reduce the impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry. All proceeds go directly to the businesses.

​Resident producer and co-owner of the legendary analog and digital NYHed Studio, Rocio Verta-Ray has a multi-generational connection to the beer company. She produced these exclusive tracks from Go Cactus, a fresh rock band in the vein of Ty Segall and Strange Boys. They have played at major music festivals like SXSW and were featured by YouTube Music as one of 2019´s essential music groups of the moment. The recordings made at NYHed were also pressed in Brooklyn Phono.

“Artists and musicians need an outlet and the bars, halls and clubs where they play are the essential proving grounds where their creative drive can flower. And bars are where we all congregate, to share a laugh, great music and perhaps a cool beer,” Verta-Ray says. “For me, Vinyls For Good is the perfect project to respond to this crisis since it supports both the musicians as well as the live venues and bars that until recently were the lifeblood of in-person performances.”