Monthly Archives: May 2022

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “The art of John Mellencamp stretches the American brand of expressionism…Free in spirit, his work punches out at us. His is not a work that dabbles along the edges; it is every bit as strong-willed as the best of the American expressionists no matter the period with which we might make a comparison.”
—Dr. Louis A. Zona

Before John Mellencamp embarked on a musical career, he seriously contemplated pursuing a career as a painter. While both outlets offered him creative expression, music knocked a bit louder and so started the path that made him the acclaimed singer-songwriter we have known for over four decades. Mellencamp never gave up his artistic aspirations however, continuing to paint as he wrote songs, recorded in the studio, and toured. His large-scale oil portraits and mixed-media assemblages document America’s heart and soul, revealing unsettling but beautiful truths with an anti-establishment frown and a rich sense of narrative.

John Mellencamp: American Paintings and Assemblages is the definitive survey—curated by the artist himself—of Mellencamp’s oeuvre as an expressionist painter, grabbing our attention through the canvas. For example, Mellencamp’s 2005 ode to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. titled Martin Luther King shines a spotlight on how society has fallen short on King’s renowned dream by incorporating the text “Martin Luther King Had a Dream and This Ain’t It” into the painting. Full of self-portraits made over the years as well as portraits of other well-known subjects—including Marlon Brando, Johnny Cash, and Meg Ryan—as well as a variety of everyday people, Mellencamp’s art is storytelling at its finest.

John Mellencamp is an award-winning singer-songwriter whose music career spans over 45 years. As a painter, collector, and longtime activist he has exhibited his work in galleries and museums across the United States. He is a member of the Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame, a recipient of the John Steinbeck Award, ASCAP Foundation’s Champion Award, The Woody Guthrie Award, the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and most recently, the Founders Award, the top honor assigned by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. His latest studio LP Strictly A One-Eyed Jack, out now on Republic Records, reached #1 on the album charts upon its January, 2022 release.

Dr. Louis A. Zona is the executive director and chief curator of the Butler Institute of American Art, in Youngstown, Ohio. David L. Shirey is a former foreign correspondent, critic, and editor with Newsweek magazine, a critic and cultural writer for The New York Times, and former chair of the MFA Fine Arts program at New York City’s School of Visual Arts. Award-winning editor and publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. has created and managed some of America’s most iconic publishing brands, including SPIN and Gear.

©John Mellencamp: American Paintings and Assemblages, Rizzoli New York, 2022. All artwork ©John Mellencamp

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Paul Weller’s Platinum-selling 22 Dreams album is to be reissued on vinyl. The double-LP set will be available on July 22 and is available to pre-order now.

22 Dreams is Weller’s ninth solo studio album. At the time of release (2008) the album received huge critical acclaim—The Guardian calling it “… a triumph of the most unexpected kind,” Uncut… “​​easily Weller’s finest solo album to date,” Q magazine saying “…constantly rewarding musical odyssey,” Rolling Stone “…a genre-leaping set of 21 tracks,” Allmusic “…it’s rich in sound and feeling, possessing a shimmering dreamy quality,” and the Observer Music Monthly “…a set of distinctive, strangely addictive songs”—to name but a few.

Featuring a host of guest appearances throughout including Noel Gallagher, Gem Archer, and Graham Coxon, it went straight in at number one in the U.K. album chart. A double-LP with gatefold sleeve, this first-time-on-vinyl version includes a 12″ x 36″ black and white poster with printed lyrics, tracklist, and credits on the back side and includes an 8-page booklet titled “The Missing Dream AKA Dream # 22” by Simon Armitage. It can be pre-ordered from here.

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Baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams had a long, fruitful career, recording extensively as a leader and appearing on roughly 600 records as a sideman. Along the way, he played gigs all over the world, with the vast majority now lost to time. Live at Room at the Top is an exception. Featuring Adams with the Tommy Banks Trio; that’s Banks on piano, Bobby Cairns on electric bass, and Tom Doran on drums, the contents were captured on the top floor of the University of Alberta student union building in Canada on September 25, 1972. Documenting hard-bop at a high level in an era when it was supposedly in decline, it’s out now on 2LP (for Record Store Day) and 2CD from the Reel to Real label.

Folks with a casual interest in jazz might not register the name Pepper Adams. The most famed baritone player in jazz probably remains Gerry Mulligan. There’s an good chance that fans of Duke Ellington will be familiar with Harry Carney, while lovers of avant-jazz might know Hamiet Bluiett. If the names Cecil Payne, Serge Chaloff, and Charles Fowlkes ring bells of recognition, it’s safe to say that the individual hearing them is more than a casual jazz fan.

However, anybody familiar with Charles Mingus’ Blues & Roots has heard Adams, as he delivers an amazing spotlight-solo on that album’s “Moanin’.” That record, which makes the list of Mingus’ masterpieces, also serves as a fine introduction to Adams, as does 10 to 4 at the 5 Spot by Adams’ quintet, recorded in 1958, a sorta dry run for the co-led quintet with trumpeter Donald Byrd, who’s in the group on 5 Spot with pianist Bobby Timmons, bassist Doug Watkins, and drummer Elvin Jones.

But Adams was such a reliable player that pretty much any record he’s part of shines a positive light on his artistry (this is conjecture, of course; there are 600 of them). And this is indeed the case with Live at Room at the Top, even as it stands more than slightly apart from the norm for live albums, having been recorded as part of a radio broadcast and then essentially lost until tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds tracked down the tapes for release on his Reel to Real archival label (home to albums by Cannonball Adderley, Etta Jones, Roy Brooks, etc.), a side label Weeds’ Cellar Live imprint.

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The 2022 live concert season looks like it will shape up to be a vast improvement over 2020 and 2021, although as of this writing, the vagaries of the virus continue to complicate people’s lives and create uncertainties. Regardless of how the season plays out, it’s a good time to take a look at some of the better live concert releases that have arrived on store shelves. The live album doesn’t get the love it used to, but many excellent releases come out every year and shouldn’t be overlooked. All of the releases covered here, except for one, are available on vinyl and that one is also out on DVD. For this article, we will cover releases from artists primarily associated with the West Coast ’70s and singer-songwriter album genres.

First off, let’s start with Still Deliverin’ / Deliverin’ Again: 50th Anniversary Return to the Troubadour, Live In Concert, from Richie Furay from DSDK, available as either a two-CD set or a DVD. The Still Deliverin’ title refers to the live album Deliverin’ released by Poco in 1971, a group Fury founded. Furay was, of course prior to Poco, a founding member of Buffalo Springfield.

This live concert consists of two sets, recorded at the Troubadour in West Hollywood from November 16, 2018. The first set is a retrospective primarily of Furay’s non-Poco material, featuring two Buffalo Springfield and solo songs. The second set is a recreation of the famed live Deliverin’ album recorded at Madison Square Garden in 1971.

Furay really makes this material work well. Most of the songs here came from Poco, where Furay was joined by Jim Messina, Rusty Young, Timothy B. Schmit, and George Grantham. Through his sheer talents as a band leader and especially peerless vocalist, he comes up with one of the best live albums in memory. The set where Furay recreates the Deliverin album is flawless and a reminder of what a great band Poco was. Former Poco member and current member of the Eagles Timothy B. Schmit joins in on “Good Feeling to Know.” Poco was never really given its due and the merciless East Coast rock press gave them short shrift.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | With a howling and unholy mix of punk rock and the blues, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club exploded on the L.A. club scene in the early ’80s. By 1984, the band had gone through a few lineup changes and expanded their musical palette to deliver The Las Vegas Story, their most diverse effort to date.

Now the album is back as a super deluxe two-CD/DVD and double-vinyl set, containing a digitally remastered version of the original 11-track album produced by Jeff Eyrich. Both the vinyl and CD versions feature a bonus disc with 10 live tracks recorded at Scorgie’s in Rochester, New York on August 8, 1984. The CD package includes a DVD of rare footage of the band both on and off stage. This isn’t your typical high-gloss concert footage, but rather appropriately rough and raw footage that’ll make you feel as if you’re watching the iconic band in a club. The LP will include an exclusive download link for the video footage featured on the DVD.

For The Las Vegas Story, Pierce’s original Gun Club co-conspirator guitarist Kid Congo Powers returned to the fold after quitting The Cramps to find that Pierce had now become an accomplished guitarist in his own right. Original drummer Terry Graham also was back behind the kit, with his former Bags bandmate Patricia Morrison recruited to fill the bass slot vacated by Rob Ritter (who coincidentally had played guitar in the Bags alongside Morrison and Graham). This is the only Gun Club album to feature this classic lineup.

The CD version includes a 24-page booklet with liner notes by Terry Graham, Kid Congo Powers, and Patricia Morrison as well as producer Jeff Eyrich, and guest musicians Dave Alvin and Phast Phreddie Patterson. It also includes rare photos and ephemera. The LP version, housed in a gatefold package, also includes those liner notes, photos and ephemera.

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To say that Zoh Amba is making a sizable splash on the current scene is something of an understatement, as O Life, O Light, which features bassist extraordinaire William Parker and the brilliant drummer Francisco Mela, is one of three recordings coming out in 2022 with her name on the cover. Across three cuts (plus one short vinyl-only bonus) she more than holds her own on O Life, O Light, shining brightly throughout. The CD/ digital are available now and the vinyl arrives later this year.

Although currently based in New York City, tenor saxophonist and flautist Zoh Amba is originally from Kingsport, TN. Having moved up north to study with tenor titan and composer David Murray, along the way she attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for two years and more recently the New England Conservatory in Boston.

I’m eager to hear Amba’s debut recording O Sun, which was released by the Tzadik label on March 18 of this year. Along with Amba on tenor, the band on that CD is comprised of bassist Thomas Morgan, drummer Joey Baron, pianist Micah Thomas, and on one track, alto saxophonist and Tzadik head honcho John Zorn.

Did I say eager? Yeah. That’s an attractive lineup to be sure, but the primary reason I’m so amped up to hear O Sun is that Amba plays so exquisitely across O Life, O Light’s appealingly tidy runtime, and in a configuration that effectively emphasizes her music’s similarities to the fiery beauty of the great Albert Ayler. Specifically, both the trio lineup and the instrumentation here is the same as on Ayler’s cornerstone free jazz masterpiece, Spiritual Unity, though there is enough variation in the combined execution to avoid any insinuation of the imitative.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | To mark its 20th anniversary, The Libertines’ era-defining debut “What A Waster” is being repressed on seven-inch single (backed by original b-side “I Get Along”), while the new “What A Waster Live From The ICA” EP will be made available on streaming services.

This digital only edition features live versions of “What A Waster” and “I Get Along” recorded during the band’s legendary show at the iconic venue just up the road from Buckingham Palace on the original day of release, 3rd June 2002. Preorder here.

Part calling card from the stars, part postcard from the gutter, “What A Waster” dropped you straight in the middle of the energy and chaos that surged through the lives of Pete’n’Carl’n’Gary’n’John. It wasn’t a song to help you get your bearing with a new band, it was a clarion call that made you realise The Libertines would become your whole world.

Produced by Bernard Butler, “What A Waster” came out of the blocks at full pelt, but there was a preciseness and a thought behind its ramshackle charms. Twenty years on from its release, The Libertines’ opening salvo retains a freshness that is as much down to its wisdom beyond its years as it is the youthful exuberance it inspired. Available for the first time, the live recordings of “What A Waster” and “I Get Along” from the ICA show capture the first fruits of a band destined to make a long and enduring impression.

The single and digital EP will be released on 3 June 2022. Stay tuned for Up The Bracket anniversary releases.

Celebrating Bob Dylan on his 81st birthday. —Ed.

Lots of supposedly sane folks shouted “Masterpiece!” when Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind came out in 1997; Elvis Costello, to pick a seemingly sober-minded celebrity name out of a hat, said, “I think it might be the best record he’s made.”

Hoo ha, said I. Sure, Time Out of Mind was a marked–no, make that very marked–improvement on the rather desultory couple of albums he’d released before it. So if you wanted to call it a resounding comeback, that was fine by me. But masterpiece? Forget about it.

Well, time has softened me some. I still wouldn’t call Time Out of Mind a masterpiece–so far as I’m concerned Dylan stopped producing them in the mid-seventies, at latest. But it includes at least one song that stands with the very best of his work and a couple of others that are pretty damn good, and that’s not bad for an artist who was born before America entered WWII.

And the album as a whole is noteworthy for its unremittingly dark tone. Dylan sounds lost, desperate even; love makes him sick and has him all mixed up, things are disintegrating, and while it’s not dark yet, it’s getting there. This baby is one long twilight stroll through the graveyard of Dylan’s mind, and he’s not whistling; he taking a reckoning, and wondering whether the journey was worth the cost.

Time Out of Mind is an autumnal, and even elegiac, work; you can practically hear the shadows gathering. The dark and sublimely lovely “Not Dark Yet” is the album’s linchpin and one of the greatest songs Dylan will ever write. On it Dylan finally looks back, if only because there doesn’t seem much ahead; “Behind every beautiful thing,” he sings, “There’s been some kind of pain.” This is the sound of a man sinking beneath his burden of years, and you’re forced to wonder; does he fear the darkness, or look forward to it?

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