Monthly Archives: March 2022

Fans of Paul McCartney continue to be treated to a myriad of archival releases of solo and Wings music. CDs, expanded CDs, box sets, standard vinyl reissues and expanded vinyl reissues have recently been joined by the Paul McCartney Half-Speed Mastering Series.

These are single album vinyl releases, with no bonus materials, that faithfully replicate the original album’s art and packaging and are mastered using the bespoke audiophile mastering technique at Abbey Road studios. This series has so far yielded his debut solo album McCartney from 1970 and, from Paul and Linda McCartney, Ram from 1971. The newest in the series is Wild Life (Capitol), also released in 1971.

What distinguishes this release from the previous two is that it is a Wings album. This was the first album from the group, and is credited on this reissue to Paul McCartney and Wings. That group consisted of Paul, Linda, Denny Laine, formerly of the Moody Blues, and Denny Seiwell on drums.

This is also the first album in the series that did not use the original analog tapes for the remastering process but instead used a high-resolution transfer of those tapes. It’s not clear why the original tapes were not used, but the sound here is fine, and in fact the nature of some of the instrumentation may have even benefited from a more digital approach, if that’s possible.

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PHOTO: MARYANNE BILHAM | Rock and roll didn’t waste any time growing up, even in the earliest years of its inception. Like a delicious batch of chili, it heartily welcomed extra ingredients and spices. In fact, it was those accoutrements which allowed the revolutionary musical style to splinter and create so many successful sub-genres.

Carlos Santana did more than anyone else in those early days to initiate and imbue strong Afro-Latin influences into a traditional rock and roll framework. But he continued—and continues—to grow, finding new musical landscapes to explore with the legendarily talented friends that he’s made along the way. Santana’s reputation, of course, precedes him: leader of the Santana rock outfit, Carlos has sold over 100 million records and played in front of 100 million people. Of course, he’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has 10 Grammy and 3 Latin Grammy wins to his name.

Santana has recently released a new album titled Blessings and Miracles where he revisits the formula that brought him so much success with 1999’s Supernatural album. Blessings and Miracles finds a new duet with his partner, Rob Thomas, but also boasts heavyweight mutual collaborations with Steve Winwood, Chris Stapleton, and many others. In addition to his new album, Santana is also currently headlining a multi-year residency at House of Blues at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

So, I’m very pleased and honored to welcome Carlos Santana to the program. It was a thrill to discuss his career, but what you’ll find most interesting is the mystical way he looks at his life and experiences: through a lens of gratitude, joyfulness, and curiosity. So, grab my hand and let’s climb up this hill together to meet the wise man sitting at the top. Like any guru worth his salt, Santana looks at the complicated edges of existence and filters them to make everyday consciousness seem simple. See if you can see what he’s seeing.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

How great is Faster Pussycat’s 1987 eponymous debut? In 2005 Rock Hard magazine ranked it at 498 in its book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. That’s only 497 spots away from being the greatest rock and metal album of all time! Numbers 499 and 500 must have been green with envy.

Me, I’d have ranked it much, much higher, because I consider it a top-notch slice of glam metal. Hair metal fans tend to dismiss the LA band as recycled Aerosmith, but they were rawer, and closer in spirit to the New York Dolls (without the camp factor, unfortunately) than any of their contemporaries. Faster Pussycat practically oozes sleaze, and I have to carefully disinfect my turntable after every play.

Faster Pussycat appeared in Penelope Spheeris’ 1988 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, and I suspect the reason was lead singer Taime Downe, whose barb-wired vocals will leave you with bloody ears. He prowls the songs on Faster Pussycat like a hissing alley cat in heat, and he knows exactly when to explode; check out the “Living in LA is so much… FUN!” that opens “Babylon.” Or the way he spits out that “lobotomy” on “Bottle in Front of Me.” And he has one of the best screeches in rock and roll.

The band instrumentalists are ace too, and as I mentioned before they’re rough around the edges; if it’s polish you’re looking for, buy a Warrant album. You can literally smell the cheap perfume of the discount hookers haunting the sleazier parts of the Sunset Strip on them; they were glam metal’s ne’er-do-well younger brothers, flotsam washed ashore on the sordid beaches of West Hollywood.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | To tie in with the sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders airing now on BBC One, UMe is releasing a blood-red vinyl edition of the official soundtrack to the series that has captivated audiences across the globe. The previous seasons are also currently available on BBC’s iPlayer and on Netflix in more than 100 countries outside of the UK.

It’s not just the low tones of Nick Cave’s vocals in the opening theme tune that have become synonymous with the BBC’s hit drama centred around Birmingham gangster Tommy Shelby, his family and their somewhat dubious business practices. Alongside the atmospheric opener, all the songs featured in the show have been painstakingly chosen to reflect the feel of the program (the violence, the grit, AND the glamour), and the internal life of its characters.

The soundtrack features the haunting rendition of the show’s iconic theme song, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand,” plus a version recorded specifically for the show by PJ Harvey that’s only available on this soundtrack.

Also exclusively on the album are Jehnny Beth’s “I’m The Man” and Anna Calvi’s series 5 score, “You’re Not God,” along with Richard Hawley’s (Bob Dylan) “Ballad of A Thin Man.” The album is completed by songs from Nick Cave himself, Arctic Monkeys, The White Stripes, Royal Blood, The Last Shadow Puppets, Queens of the Stone Age, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Laura Marling, and Foals among others.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Welcome to the world’s first (and only) post-punk-industrial-trance- psychedelic-surf album! The fact that it took us so many adjectives to describe Tragic Figures lets you know just how unique of an album it is.

Sure, there are echoes of other artists, like krautrock legends Can, post-punkers Public Image Limited (Savage Republic opened for PiL on their 1982 West Coast dates), avant-garde guitar players like Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham, scrap metal industrialists Einstürzende Neubauten, and Bay Area sludgecore nihilists Flipper—but really, this unlikely product of (mostly) UCLA undergrads sounds like no other record before or since.

And only adding to Tragic Figures’ mystique are its graphics, which displayed band co-founder Bruce Licher’s trademark letterpress printing and featured a UPI photo of rebels getting executed in Kurdistan, the ghostly images sharing space with a red lettering that gave the album’s title in script that roughly translated “tragic figures” into Arabic (which, in turn, had the unexpected effect of drawing more Iranian and Middle Eastern people to their shows)! Tragic Figures wasn’t just a bold musical statement; it was an objet d’art in its own right.

For its 40th anniversary edition, we at Real Gone Music worked with Bruce Licher to preserve and expand on the magical, talismanic quality of the initial release. The original album has been remastered from the original tapes by Mike Milchner at Sonic Vision, while both the CD and LP editions boast an extra disc of largely unreleased rehearsal recordings taped in the bowels of UCLA parking garages, where the band used to practice to take advantage of the extended reverb afforded by all the concrete surfaces (imagine being an unwitting undergrad happening upon this unearthly din coming out of nowhere)!

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Celebrating Neneh Cherry, born on this day in 1964. —Ed.

Some say Neneh Cherry is back. Nonsense, she and her vastly impressive talents never left. Some say The Thing play a load of formless racket. Hooey, they’re as methodical as an unusually suave trio of Chess Club presidents. Some say The Cherry Thing is a strange curiosity. Baloney, it’s a first-class record that details one of the strongest and most sensible collaborations of recent years.

As concerns The Cherry Thing, there are the obvious correlations and symmetries. Neneh Cherry was the step-daughter of the late great trumpeter/cornetist Don Cherry, he of the now legendary Ornette Coleman groups that basically defined an early dominant strand of free jazz.

And Scandinavian jazzmen Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love, and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten play free and hard in an extremely modern context but are also sensibly informed by the innovations of the past; therefore it’s not a bit surprising their name derives from a tune found on Where is Brooklyn?, Cherry’s 1966 Blue Note LP.

But Neneh is far more than just a flesh and blood conduit between a musically innovative ancestor and his young descendents. Some only know her through “Buffalo Stance,” her rather excellent 1988 single or the album that included it, the highly enjoyable Raw Like Sushi. Others are familiar with her follow-up albums’ Homebrew and Man, the latter featuring “7 Seconds” with Youssou N’Dour, an enormous hit nearly everywhere in the world except the United States, presumably because a big portion of Americans find the sound of voices singing in a foreign language either distasteful or unappealing.

It’s also no secret that Cherry began her career in association with post-punk cornerstones The Slits and through the formation of her own band Rip Rig + Panic. Too few have heard that group, for they were at times very good, but even fewer realize the band’s name derives from a masterful 1965 LP from Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sparks are celebrating their post-millennial renaissance with the 21st Century Sparks collection of deluxe reissues, to be released by BMG on CD and vinyl later this spring. Balls (2000), Lil’ Beethoven (2002), and Hello Young Lovers (2006) arrive on Friday, April 29; Exotic Creatures Of The Deep (2008) and The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman (2009) follow on Friday, May 27. Pre-orders are available now HERE.

All five releases—a number of which have been out of print for years and much sought after by Sparks collectors—have been specially remastered for the 21st Century Sparks collection, with an array of bonus material—much of it previously unreleased—featured on all (excluding 2009’s ambitious radio musical, The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman). Sparks’ two most recent releases—Hippopotamus (2017) and A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (2020)—complete the collection and are both available now.

Sparks are about to begin an epic world tour, including the biggest North American run of their remarkable career. North American dates—which began last month with a pair of triumphant hometown shows at Los Angeles, CA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall—continue through early April, followed by eagerly awaited shows in the UK and Europe. Additional dates will be announced. For complete details and ticket availability, please visit allsparks.com.

There’s never been a better time to be a Sparks fan. Levels of interest in the work of Ron and Russell Mael are at a height unseen since their 1970s breakthrough. 2021’s acclaimed career-spanning documentary film, The Sparks Brothers, directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver), brought an awareness of Sparks to parts they previously hadn’t reached. Their 2021 film musical Annette, directed by Leos Carax and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, has been showered with awards, especially in France where Carax won “Best Director” at Cannes, and where the film won three Lumières Awards and five César Awards, including “Best Original Music” for Ron and Russell. The ultimate cult band are suddenly center stage, in the full beam of the spotlight.

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Long based in New Orleans, Irma Thomas debuted on record in 1959 and made a few minor dents in the pop charts in the mid-’60s, but her greatest success, including a Grammy win, came much later through a string of releases for Rounder Records, beginning in the 1980s. What was going on in the ’70s? A quick burst of recording with noted Atlantic Records’ soul impresario Jerry Wexler that produced one single at the time and later, the release of Full Time Woman: The Lost Cotillion Album. Initially released on CD in 2014 by Real Gone Music, the same label is set to deliver a light blue vinyl edition on March 11.

Irma Thomas has long been anointed as the “The Soul Queen of New Orleans,” a status earned not through big hits (only one of her five charting R&B singles broke the pop Top 20) but due to sheer perseverance, though there was certainly lean times; at one point, after a move from New Orleans to the Bay Area of California post-Hurricane Camille, she took a job at the department store Montgomery Ward.

But for a deeper dive into Thomas’ background, the numerous retrospectives of her early work, and her later career renaissance for Rounder, please consult my review of her 2006 release After the Rain for this very website. Said missive references the 2014 issue of this very release, but Real Gone’s fresh vinyl edition allows for a deeper inspection of its contents.

The first thing to understand is that Full Time Woman, if subtitled as such, is not the retrieval of a proper album but rather the collection of six sessions that took place in 1971–’72. Had the one single Cotillion released, the album’s title track b/w “She’s Taken My Part,” made a significant sales splash, a legit (if likely shorter) LP might’ve actually been released.

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PEORIA, IL | March came in like a metal god when legends Judas Priest made a triumphant return to the stage, rebooting their 50 Heavy Metal Years tour in Peoria, IL six months after guitarist Richie Faulkner’s terrifying health emergency. With Priest for this march across the US is Queensrÿche, taking Sabaton’s place as support. Both bands were welcomed with a full house of horns held high.

Metal vets Queensrÿche kicked off the night with a setlist that genuinely seemed to delight the band’s many fans in attendance. There was no “Silent Lucidity,” no “Jet City Woman,” and the crowd was there for it. “Screaming in Digital,” from the band’s 1986 album Rage for Order, got the most enthusiastic response from the fans around me after singer Todd La Torre annihilated it, and I’ve been listening to “Eyes of a Stranger” (from 1988’s Operation: Mindcrime) on an endless loop since I arrived home in Washington, DC.

Queensrÿche complement Judas Priest nicely and were a good choice for the 50 Heavy Metal Years tour. They have been around long enough to have been contemporaries of Judas Priest in the 1980s and have their own solid fan base all the way into 2022 (even those fans grumpy about line up changes over time). However, Queensrÿche’s sound and history as a Seattle progressive metal band makes them different enough so the music isn’t competing with that of Judas Priest.

At 9:00PM sharp, the house lights dimmed and the Metal God himself, Rob Halford, was escorted to center stage. As in fall 2021, the stage is set up to resemble a steel mill, an homage to the band’s industrial Birmingham roots. After 50 years of some of the greatest heavy metal ever created, Judas Priest still bring it. Rob Halford still has the pipes to tear through a hefty 18 song set spanning from the band’s infancy (“Rocka Rolla”) to“Lightning Strike,” from the band’s latest album Firepower, the highest charting album of Judas Priest’s career in the US. The Priest is back, indeed.

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Celebrating Robin Trower, born on this day in 1945. —Ed.

Memory is a strange thing. I owned Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs on 8-track in the mid-seventies, but I distinctly recall it being a horrid shade of lime green. But everywhere I look now, it’s a sandy brown. I wish I still had it, because then I’d know. But it was undoubtedly eaten by the 8-track player in my older brother’s Dodge Duster, along with innumerable other 8-tracks.

I know this piece is for The Vinyl District, but you have to love the 8-track for its general fecklessness. It was the biggest loser in the history of musical media. That click that signified the track was changing generally occurred in the middle of your favorite song, totally ruining it, just as the 8-track itself was soon thereafter ruined by the 8-track player. The life of an 8-track was nasty, brutish, and short, but I have to admit I kind of miss them, because they were like the dodo of sound technology—feckless and doomed.

So I had what I remembered as my lime green Robin Trower 8-track, and I played the hell out of the thing. This was when Trower was being labeled—rather absurdly—“the white Hendrix” and led a power trio that played a downed-up blues rock—blues rock on Quaaludes, as it were. His songs tended as often as not to be slow, mist-enshrouded, and atmospheric, while his guitar playing was totally unique thanks to his trusty Stratocaster and frequently employed whammy bar. I’ve never heard him described as a progenitor of stoner rock, but the label fits him as well as it fits Black Sabbath.

Trower made his bones playing axe for Procol Harum during their glory years, before jumping ship to join a short-lived band called Jude. When Jude failed to record Trower split, and took bassist and lead singer James Dewar with him. He then recruited Reg Isidore to play drums, and presto, the Robin Trower band was born. 1974’s Bridge of Sighs was their second release, and their most successful by leaps and bounds.

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