Monthly Archives: March 2021

VIA PRESS RELEASE | YouTube, Island Records, Interscope, UMe, and UMC today announce U2: The Virtual Road, a series of four concerts broadcast for the first time exclusively on the band’s YouTube channel, for 48 hours only. U2: The Virtual Road also marks the first time that three of these concerts—Slane, Red Rocks, and Mexico—have been made available digitally.

​The first concert will broadcast on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2021. U2 Go Home: Live From Slane Castle celebrates the band’s return to the legendary Irish concert site on September 1, 2001, for their first performance on the banks of the River Boyne in over twenty years. And in an exclusive YouTube performance, Dermot Kennedy will open the show with a solo performance recorded last week outside Los Angeles.

On March 25, fans can tune in to see U2: Live At Red Rocks recorded on June 5, 1983, at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, the United States, on the band’s War Tour. A career-defining show, the rain-soaked performance at the iconic venue helped establish U2’s reputation as one of the greatest live acts in the world. And another Grammy-nominated Dublin band, Fontaines D.C., will open the show with a performance recorded in their hometown last year.

The PopMart Tour stormed into Mexico City in December 1997 for a memorable show at the Foro Sol Stadium and on April 1 will see Carla Morrison open for the band, only on YouTube, for a very special one-off performance ahead of Popmart: Live From Mexico City.

In December 2015, U2 returned to Paris less than a month after the November 13 terrorist attacks on the city for two rescheduled shows. iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE: Live in Paris marked the final performance on the tour, an unforgettable evening which included an emotional performance of Patti Smith’s ‘People Have The Power.’ On April 10, YouTube will broadcast the show for the very first time, with the French band Feu! Chatterton on support.

Read More »

American Culture is a labyrinthine subject, with multiple tomes devoted to its countless nooks. But American Culture is also a band, and as musical acts go, the Denver-based outfit is quite multifaceted, their sound blending lo-fi, classique guitar pop, psychedelia, indie rock, and on their new album For My Animals, even a few stabs at dub. If this sounds like a decidedly late-20th century scenario, that’s not wrong, but American Culture manage to avoid falling under the sway of one particular influence while simultaneously sidestepping pastiche. Recorded pre-pandemic and released on LP, CD, and cassette by Happy Happy Birthday to Me as a gesture of necessity in an uncertain world, it’s out March 19.

Meat Puppets, Crass, The Grateful Dead, The Feelies: the four are cited in For My Animals’ PR as being amongst American Culture’s favorites. Those names don’t tidily equate into tangible influences, so the info isn’t as insightful as a newbie might expect regarding the nature of their sound, but in firmly establishing American Culture as a band made up of music fans, this tidbit of background does illuminate the territory covered across their third album.

However, the list of faves, wide-ranging to say the least, is shaped-up by bands that, from American Culture’s viewpoint, “do what they feel” rather than electing to travel unwaveringly along a single genre course. This only reinforces the breadth heard on For My Animals, which chronologically follows-up their 2015 debut Pure American Gum, though The Olympia Sessions 2013 came out on cassette later that same year.

Those first recordings, captured at K Records’ Dub Narcotic Studio and with J Mascis lending guitar to the closing track “Hamburger Stand,” constitute an effort that’s wholly worthy of its slightly delayed release. Pure American Gum does connect as a stronger showing, and without deviating much from a sturdy template informed by the melodic guitar motions of the 1960s, punk of the ’70s and ’80s, and the indie scene of the ’80s and ’90s.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Glamour & The Squalor is the story of Marco Collins, one of America’s last great rock radio DJs and a musical tastemaker that changed our culture.

​Before the internet made sourcing new music and rising bands a simple matter of keystrokes, there was the radio DJ. No one epitomized this role like Collins. He was the gatekeeper credited for helping break the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Weezer, Garbage and countless others. Marco’s story is inspiring and universal. He turned his passion into a significant lifetime of work. And battling serious demons along the way—he’s still standing.

Mike McCready wrote and performed a generous batch of tracks for the score showcasing both his guitar chops and flair for creating striking moods with his use of a variety of instruments including Mellotron, autoharp and strings. Local hero Kim Virant, founder of Lazy Susan, provides vocals on “You’re the Song.” Also appearing on the album are Star Anna and Troy Nelson and MacKenzie Mercer of The Young Evils.

“It was a real treat to be able to write and record the musical score for The Glamour and Squalor—a film about my friend Marco Collins,” McCready tells TVD. “Marco was one of the old school radio programmers who could influence people and help deserving bands in creative ways.”

“Marco pushed and created space for new bands and artists and took chances for the betterment of radio and music. The Glamour and Squalor film shows his greatness, and his struggles—but also his caring, above all. I’m proud to have done the music score to help tell his story. Thanks Marco.”

The film’s music supervisor Kevin Moyer is equally enthusiastic. “I know Mike McCready is a huge vinyl fan, so it only made sense to expand this soundtrack offering onto vinyl also, so that we can all add it to our collections and turntables.”

Lakeshore Records will release a vinyl edition of the original score album for the film The Glamour & The Squalor on April 16. Preorder the vinyl edition here.

Read More »

When Todd La Torre took over the reigns as vocalist for Queensrÿche back in 2012, many felt that he’d have a hard time filling Geoff Tate’s shoes. Admittedly, I was one of those early doubters and could not imagine anyone else hitting those incredibly high notes across some of progressive metal’s most cherished masterpieces.

That all changed when I witnessed one of Queensrÿche’s earliest shows with La Torre at the helm. From his opening salvo to the final curtain call, Todd’s vocal prowess was on full display throughout among classics such as like “Roads to Madness,” “The Whisper,” and “Take Hold of the Flame.” It was as if I was transported back to the early ’80s all over again with La Torre crushing every song he wrapped his vocals around.

Fast forward to 2021, and La Torre has not only filled Tate’s shoes, but expanded on the Queensrÿche legacy tenfold. Sure, he can slay the classics. However, Todd’s also been instrumental in bringing back the band’s classic sound seemingly lost sometime after Promised Land. With three releases under La Torre’s belt as Queensrÿche’s lead singer, the band is back (and in a really big way). And while many in the music industry took an unscripted break due to Covid-19, Todd La Torre used the downtime to release his first solo album, Rejoice In The Suffering.

How did you get your start in music?

Here’s the nutshell version. I started playing guitar at 10, got my first set of drums at 13, and have played in multiple bands throughout my life. I joined Crimson Glory in 2010 and was with them for three years. In 2012, I ended up joining Queensrÿche and have been their vocalist ever since. Bottom line, I’ve always played music and primarily have been a drummer my whole life.

Who were your greatest inspirations as a young musician?

I grew up listening to a ton of rhythm and blues because of my mom. She was into legends such as Al Jarreau, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, and of course Michael Jackson. She was also into a lot of progressive jazz like David Sanborn, Keiko Matsui, Spyro Gyra—stuff like that. My dad, on the other hand, was into Earl Klugh, Elton John, Steely Dan, Billy Joel, that kind of stuff. All very inspiring artists to say the least.

As I got older growing up in the age of radio, I really got into the great singer / songwriters of the ’70s such as Fleetwood Mac, Jim Croce, and Jackson Browne. I then transitioned into ’80s rock and to this day I’m still a huge fan of bands like Tesla, Dokken, and Ratt. In my formidable teen years, I began listening to heavier stuff like Iron Maiden, Queensrÿche, Testament, Overkill, Halloween, and Slayer which helped mold me into the musician I am today.

So how did you know that you wanted to pursue a career in music?

I honestly never really believed that I was going to have a career in music. In high school I always wanted to be a drummer and constantly dreamed of making it big as an musician. In my late twenties, I figured that ship sailed and became an upholsterer by trade. I had my own business and ran it successfully for 22 years while having a really great reputation in the Tampa Bay area. During that time I still liked to play music and was gigging in local bands. I was having fun as a drummer doing cover songs at beach bars and it gave me something to do outside of work. It wasn’t until I joined Crimson Glory back in 2010 where I actually began singing in a band—which is not something I ever really aspired to do—and the rest is history.

Read More »

Witch house (bet that’s new on ya) pioneers Salem have an interesting backstory. Back in 2010 the bummed-by-life band (then a trio, now a duo) released their debut studio album King Night, and captivated chillwave fans everywhere. They then vanished like Amelia Earhart, leading to much speculation about where they’d gone and if they’d ever come back. But here they are,10 years later, excellent new release, Fires in Heaven, in hand.

Salem’s brand of electronica sludge is as gloomy as a week-long stay with your dying grandmother, and sunk in the mix are a pair of of white guys (Jack Donoghue and John Holland to be exact) who sound like black guys, which has led some to scream cultural appropriation as if white guys haven’t been swiping their vocal cues from black guys since well before Elvis Presley made history doing it.

Upon first listen I wrote off Fires in Heaven as a murky, druggy bore, theme music for your next heroin overdose. Chillwave my ass–there’s a world of difference between chill and suicidal ideation. But a few listens changed my mind; Fires in Heaven may be a colossal downer, its songs echoes of the abyss, but it’s a fascinating and often beautiful bummer. The melodies creep up on you, stately and majestic, the speaker-destroying bass is deep as the Mariana trench, and the electronica toppings add layer upon layer of entrancing textures. By listen three I was hooked.

Several of the songs on Fires in Heaven can only be described as sublime. Show stopper and opening track “Capulets” borrows liberally from Sergei Prokofiev’s “Montagues And Capulets,” and this musical backdrop gives Salem ample opportunity to philosophize about their favorite subjects, hardcore drugs and terminal slackerdom (“Ask me what I’m doing with my life, ain’t shit to tell ya’ll”). The title track is slow, its buried chanting witchy. Is this heaven? I don’t think so.

Read More »

Judee Sill was a California-based songwriter who came of age during the peak of the Laurel Canyon scene in the early 1970s and she mingled with the likes of Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell. In fact, Sill was even the first artist to be signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Records label. But, Judee—and her music—generally tapped into something a little darker; more dangerous than her colleagues did. Sill relied on Christianity, mysticism, and occult imagery that could sometimes be comforting and uplifting, yet simultaneously looming and foreboding.

Judee released two very well-regarded albums, her self-titled debut Judee Sill was released in 1971 and her follow-up, Heart Food, came out in 1973. However, she never hit the big time. After years struggling with addiction, Sill died in 1979. The limited body of music that she left behind is, however, exquisite.

New York multi-instrumentalist and producer, Lorenzo Wolff, also loves Judee Sill and has crafted an EP reimagining some of Judee’s classic tunes. It’s titled “Down Where the Valleys are Low: Another Otherworld for Judee Sill,” released on StorySound Records. Wolff’s vision was to avoid simply recreating Sill’s excellence, but rather to funnel her music through an edgy and contemporary lens. Some Sill fans might initially be taken aback by the treatment Wolff has given these tracks, but that’s the point: he’s fostering a conversation about Sill and her music whether you like it, or not.

While Lorenzo performs on all of the tracks, he’s chosen to showcase different vocalists in an effort to get the right voice behind the right songs. Some of the artists in his stable are Bartees Strange, Michael Cerveris, Mary-Elaine Jenkins, Grace McLean, Emily Holden, and more.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Streetlife was a short-lived soul-funk band from the Tampa Bay area and released just one album in 1980. The group was composed out of several dynamic musicians (ranging from street players to college professors) but at that time nobody knew (yet) that their Nite Songs LP would become such a much sought-after private pressed holy grail within the record collecting community!

​Streetlife was founded in 1979 by Sonny Pekerol and Phil Tolotta who were both members of the top selling 1960s Washington, DC Grammy Award winning hit-band The Winstons. Their track “Amen, Brother” is the most widely sampled instrumental in the history of the electronic music & hip hop genres…it would become known as the Amen Break.

When The Wintstons story came to an end, Sonny Pekerol (founding member and originally playing the bass—then successfully evolving into the manager and promoter) and pianist/ vocalist extraordinaire Phil Tolotta would continue their musical friendship/ collaboration under the name Streetlife.

Their high-energy sound got the attention of local crowds in no time, so the decision to record and cut a vinyl album came as a natural thing. Nite Songs (produced by Sonny and Phil, who also wrote the bulk of the songs) saw the light in 1980 and quickly gained attention and airplay (receiving radio and television coverage nationwide). Described as the hottest band from the state of Florida, Streetlife had the magnetism to captivate you, be it in concerts, nightclubs, or on vinyl.

Read More »

“my first experience with vinyl was when i was about 7 years old. a group of little league friends and i had just discovered the beatles and it had struck an obsession that had us all sprouting bowl cuts and dressing up as the fab 4 for halloween and singing from door to door.”

“the only problem was that a couple of the moms weren’t too keen on letting us listen to the later drug influenced records quite yet, and one track in particular, “maxwell’s silver hammer,” which had a violent undertone, rendered the entire abbey road strictly forbidden. naturally, it only made us want it more. since we had been only listening to what had been allotted to us on CD, the only access we had to the forbidden tracks was to raid one of the parent’s vinyl collection and listen in secret. i remember the first time we figured out how to fire it up, hook up the old stripped RCA cables and drop that needle. the smooth sweet spectrum of sound from the forbidden albums filled that old carpeted basement with glory and wonder.

smash cut to age 13. i had picked up the electric guitar pretty good and had an old crate solid state amplifier and a hand me down marshall combo from my cousin. of course in the age of MTV spring break, the romance was turning to vinyl DJs and it fascinated me. i convinced my dad to buy me a set of entry level turntables and a little mixer at guitar center. i hooked the left channel into the crate and the right channel into the marshall and it was on. then he let me raid his old record collection. the only problem was that it was mostly ’60s folk and not enough of that thumping bass i had seen on tv.

Read More »

Named not after Marvin Heemeyer’s modified bulldozer of destruction but rather a 1944 short story by Theodore Sturgeon, Madison, Wisconsin’s Killdozer had more in common with the latter. During their 10-year existence (1984–1994) the mighty Killdozer ground exceedingly slow across the noise rock landscape flattening everything in their path, winning the adoration of people who go in for entertaining tales of human depravity set to the high-volume din of construction machinery. Marvin Heemeyer would have been proud.

Killdozer were fronted by little-guy-with-the voice-of-a-foghorn Michael Gerald, whose lyrics could only be filed under the category of Wisconsin Gothic. In “Hamburger Martyr” a guy murders a fry cook after declaring “I could make a better hamburger with my asshole; “The Puppy” is about a sausage factory worker who sets fire to the balls of a guy who called his girlfriend a whore. And the rank “New Pants and Shirt” opens with the lines “Enter the forty-nine gates of uncleanliness!/Said she, pushing up her skirt/I held my breath against her fetidness/As I gazed upon the swinish flirt.” It doesn’t help any that he’s talking about his mom.

Comic tales like these, combined with the band’s knack for killdozering other people’s songs–1989’s For Ladies Only is a covers LP, and the band recorded versions of everything from Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said” to Robert Palmer’s “Your Mother Should Have Told You”—have given people the impression that Killdozer were cynical wise guys who took nothing seriously. But on 1994’s Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Gerald employs his mordant wit and withing sarcasm to deliver a scathing indictment of the human cost of America’s rapacious capitalism. Killdozer’s real war wasn’t against art—it was against a heartless ethos that places the profit margin above the lives of ordinary Americans.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | In 2020, 4AD turned 40. Never one to be on time for a party, the label is commemorating that landmark this year with the release of Bills & Aches & Blues. The compilation features 18 of its current artists covering a song of their choosing from 4AD’s past: a creative experiment rooted in the spirit of collaboration and a snapshot of 4AD, 41 years after its inception.

​Bills & Aches & Blues will be released on April 2 digitally, with standard vinyl and CD editions following on July 23 and a deluxe vinyl boxset later this year. To pre-order head here.

The first 12 months’ profits from Bills & Aches & Blues will be donated to The Harmony Project, a Los Angeles-based after-school programme for children from communities and schools that lack equitable access to studying the arts or music. Available today are the first five songs from Bills & Aches & Blues (‘Side 1’), with Tkay Maidza, U.S. Girls, Aldous Harding, The Breeders and new signing Maria Somerville reworking Pixies, The Birthday Party, Deerhunter, His Name Is Alive, and Air Miami respectively.

Bills & Aches & Blues’ 18 recordings contain fascinating connections between artist and track. The earliest song chosen (by U.S. Girls) is The Birthday Party’s “Junkyard”, from 1981; the most recent are the two Grimes covers (“Genesis” and “Oblivion,” respectively by Spencer. and Dry Cleaning) from 2012. Suitably, for the one band that bridges 4AD past and present, The Breeders are all over Bills And Aches And Blues. They’re covered three times—”Cannonball” by Tune-Yards, “Mountain Battles” by Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, and “Off You” by Big Thief, whilst The Breeders cover “The Dirt Eaters” by their ‘90s contemporaries His Name Is Alive.

Read More »