Monthly Archives: June 2022

Celebrating Mick Fleetwood on his 75th birthday. —Ed.

Between their start as a standard English blues band and their apotheosis as perhaps the seventies best pop group, Fleetwood Mac wandered from style to style and sideman to sideman, and in so doing put out some very intriguing albums. 1970’s Kiln House is a fine example.

Guitarist Peter Green was out. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer was in, as was (kind of) Christine McVie, who provided backing vocals and wouldn’t be considered a full member until 1971’s Future Games. Bob Welch, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks were all in the future.

Like the other LPs Fleetwood Mac would release during their middle period, Kiln House is a dizzyingly eclectic affair. You get a couple of rockabilly rave-ups, a country music parody, a very, very English folk rock instrumental, an engaging hard rocker in the vein of The Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman” (only gnarlier!), a couple of very likable folk rock ditties, and an inspired cover of “Buddy’s Song,” which is credited to Buddy Holly’s mom Ella but is basically “Peggy Sue Got Married” with new words.

Kiln House constitutes a loving backwards look at rock ’n’ roll’s past, and as such anticipated the “rock ’n’ roll revival” that would inspire albums by the likes of John Lennon, The Band, David Bowie and a whole slew of backwards-looking English glam bands.

Fleetwood Mac doesn’t quite follow through on the concept; songs like “Earl Gray” (the aforementioned instrumental), “One Together” (which could be a Neil Young tune), and “Station Man” (chug-a-lugging blues number with nice vocal harmonies and raucous guitar) are hardly R&R revival fare. And that goes double for the C&W send-up “Blood on the Floor,” on which Jeremy Spencer does an uncanny imitation of a woebegone hillbilly crying tears in his beer.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Pink Floyd are to release two physical versions of their first newly recorded music in over 25 years, “Hey Hey Rise Up.”

The single, which was initially released digitally in April in support of the people of Ukraine and was #1 in 27 countries, will be available on 7” and CD single. Both formats will also feature a newly reworked version of “A Great Day For Freedom” taken from the band’s 1994 album, The Division Bell. The single will be available on 15 July (excluding Japan—released on 3 August—and USA, Canada, Australia and Mexico—released on 21 October).

The lead track sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards and features vocals by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox. When the track was first recorded at the end of March, Andriy, who left his band’s US tour to return home and fight for his country, was in a hospital bed in Kyiv recovering from a shrapnel injury. Proceeds for the physical release and the ongoing digital proceeds will go to Ukraine humanitarian relief.

For this limited edition release, David Gilmour revisited The Division Bell track “A Great Day For Freedom,” he has reworked the song using the original tapes which feature Nick Mason on drums and Richard Wright on keyboards, along with backing vocals from Sam Brown, Claudia Fontaine, and Durga McBroom. The track was composed by Gilmour with lyrics by himself and Polly Samson.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The biggest British psych find of the century!

Think that’s hyperbole? Well, of the 24 tracks on this collection, the only two to be previously issued on vinyl, “Beeside” b/w “Vacuum Cleaner,” comprise probably the rarest and most highly prized single (Deram DM 164) in ‘60s British rock, an original copy having sold for as much as $1600! (And with good reason…the guitar solo on “Vacuum Cleaner” set a new standard for mod-psych feedback freakout.) Indeed, that single was the only recording officially released by Tintern Abbey, and only a small handful of skeletal demos have leaked out since; yet, their legend persists some 55 years later.

Now, after two decades of planning, research, tape transfer, and sound restoration, the full story of Tintern Abbey can at last be told. The 2-LP set Beeside—The Anthology unearths 24 tracks of music recorded by Tintern Abbey between the summer of 1967 (when they spent a month in a Cornwall cottage, rehearsing and taping their performances prior to their London launch) and the end of 1968. Alongside that genre-defining Deram single and those previously-leaked demos are some astonishing treasures.

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With a career spanning back to the late 1960s and a creative breakthrough early in the decade following, vocalist and songwriter Horace Andy is one of reggae’s most respected figures, with his artistry persevering into the current moment largely in connection with UK trip hoppers Massive Attack. Well, Andy has a fresh album in the racks, and don’tcha know Midnight Rocker was realized with producer Adrian Sherwood? Released on the Prisoner’s label On-U Sound, the experience is fully up to snuff, it’s ten songs available now on vinyl, CD, and digital.

Having recently scored a major success in collaboration with the preeminent reggae survivor Lee “Scratch” Perry (two albums, Rainford and its dub companion Heavy Rain, both issued in 2019), Adrian Sherwood follows a similar path with Midnight Rocker, which has its own album of dub versions to come, hopefully released later this year.

Obviously, the vital component here isn’t Sherwood but Andy, who’s in fine voice throughout. To clarify, Sherwood’s presence is certainly felt across the album, adding value along the way, but his input serves the songs, or better said, Andy’s voice, rather than overtaking them, which is worthy of note given that dub techniques are already a significant part of the album’s scheme.

Midnight Rockers has a few fresh recordings of songs well-known from Andy’s repertoire, namely opener “This Must Be Hell” (from 1978’s Natty Dread a Weh She Want), side one’s finale “Materialist” (from a 1977 single), “Rock to Sleep” (from a 1976 single), and closer “Mr. Bassie” (from a 1972 single). While the impulse to re-cut established songs is largely considered a suspect maneuver inside the realms of rock and pop, there’s really no such danger in the reggae field, which (similar to the jazz scene) is simply versions galore.

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Celebrating Todd Rundgren, born on this day in 1948. —Ed.

The words “studio genius” get flung about willy-nilly, but Todd Rundgren, the guy who gave us “Hello, It’s Me,” is the real thing. Oh, I know, his prog explorations with Utopia are largely unlistenable, but I would ask you to look at Exhibit A, the 1972 double LP Something/Anything?, as proof of his, er, geniusitude. It was one of the greatest gifts (along with Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes and Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story) my older brother bequeathed to me when he took off to see the country in the mid-seventies, and I loved (and played) it to death.

Studio savant that he is, Rundgren recorded three of the LP’s four sides all by himself, and brought in a gaggle of studio musicians, including Rick Derringer, Randy and Mike Brecker, Hunt and Tony Sales, and Ben Keith to record side four. All four sides have titles, which we needn’t worry about, and side four purports to be a “pop operetta,” to which I can only say okay, Todd, it’s your LP. The critic Robert Christgau said of Something/Anything?, “I don’t trust double albums” before changing tracks and saying, “But this has the feel of a pop masterpiece, and feel counts.” He’s right about double albums: some of the tunes on Something/Anything? do nothing for me and have the distinctive smell of filler. That said, there are more than enough timeless tunes on Something/Anything? to justify that other overused word, “masterpiece.”

Stirring ballads (“It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference”), dizzyingly marvelous power pop numbers ala The Raspberries (“Couldn’t I Just Tell You”), flat-out screamers (“Some Folks Is Ever Whiter Than Me”), great horn-driven hard rockers (“Slut”), Steely Dan soundalikes (“Piss Aaron”), utterly sublime pop confections (“Hello, It’s Me,” “I Saw the Light”) and oddball novelty tunes that nevertheless rock (“Wolfman Jack”)—that “anything” in the album’s title is Todd’s way of telling us he can do it all, and does.

Why, I didn’t even mention his soulful turns on the piano (“I Went to the Mirror,” “Torch Song”), maniacal metal contraptions (“Little Red Lights,” the big-hooked “Black Maria”), big, bad gospel- AND Steely Dan-tinged tunes (“Dust in the Wind”), ironic Harry Nilsson numbers (the happy-go-lucky sad song, “You Left Me Sore”), and brief lo-fi studio jams (“Overture—My Roots: Money (That’s What I Want)/Messin’ with the Kid”).

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This is part four of our summer live concert album series. —Ed.

The Rolling Stones are arguably the greatest live musical act in rock ‘n’ roll history. While the group only released three live albums during its 1960s and 1970s heyday and one of them wasn’t even a truly live album, as the years have gone by, the group has more than made up for that oversight.

Along with releasing twelve official live albums since 1966, the group has also released 20 “official bootlegs” since 2011, available in a variety of media formats, along with various miscellaneous live releases from ABKCO and Eagle Rock/Mercury Studios. The latest release of live material, Live at The El Mocambo, does not fall under the category of official bootlegs and may be one of the best live releases in the group’s history.

This new set is available as either a 2-CD or 4-LP vinyl set. We will be reviewing the vinyl set. The vinyl is housed in a slip-case that contains two double albums, pressed on 180-gram vinyl, with each two-album set in a gatefold package. The eighth side of this four-LP set features an etching of the group’s iconic tongue logo.

In March of 1977, The Rolling Stones played two nights at the Toronto club El Macombo. From the tiny stage, in front of about 350 people and with support from the likes of Billy Preston, Ollie Brown, and Ian Stewart, and with Ron Wood by then comfortably ensconced in the group after replacing Mick Taylor in 1975, the group was at a peak of live playing.

Four tracks here originally appeared on the 1977 double album Love You Live. The material on that release was from the first night. Unfortunately, on the second night there were sound problems and even worse, it was supposedly the better night. However, this new release features the entire second night and three performances from the first.

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With the release of Beja Power! Electric Soul & Brass from Sudan’s Red Sea Coast, the track record of Vik Sohonie’s Ostinato Records remains unimpeachable, at 14 releases quite the impressive feat. This latest set, available June 24 on 180gm black vinyl and digital, features six highly pleasurable selections by Noori & his Dorpa Band, a contemporary outfit from the region of the title, and specifically Port Sudan, which is located on the eastern side of their home country. Like so much of the music released by Ostinato, it is a revelation made all the more powerful through its relationship to the present.

The reason the music on Beja Power! is so revelatory is directly political in nature. In short, the Beja people’s home territory in Eastern Sudan is rich in gold, with the rights having been long ago sold off to foreign companies. What’s more, numerous Sudanese governments have not just ignored Beja’s calls to right this injustice, but under leader Omar al-Bashir (ousted in 2019, though little has changed), there were calculated attempts at erasing Beja language, music and culture. In turn, this release is an act of political defiance.

The Dorpa Band, formed in 2006, consists of Naji on tenor sax, Gaido on bass, Tariq on rhythm guitar, Fox on congas, and Danash on tabla, with Noori the leader playing the Tambo-Guitar, a one-of-a-kind instrument, pictured on the album’s cover, that Noori made by fusing the neck of an standard electric guitar to an electric tambour, a traditional instrument found in East Africa.

The Beja people trace their ancestry back thousands of years, with some historians claiming they are descendants of Ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush. And yet, there are hardly any recordings of the Beja that have survived. Ostinato’s release is indeed the first recording of the Beja sound that’s been made internationally available, issued in part to bring attention to Beja people’s insistent plight.

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