Monthly Archives: September 2022

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Stories of Baton twirlers, a young Bob Dylan, poets and wizards…

You’d be hard pushed to write a more romantic tale about lost folk troubadours and psychedelically enhanced neo-hippies than the story that revolves around the late great Tom Rapp and his revolutionary combo Pearls Before Swine. The roots of the yarn, oft recounted by Rapp in interviews and on-stage patter, include the colorized legend that, at a tender age, he took part in a talent contest alongside a fledgling Bob Dylan—Bobby Zimmerman to all and sundry at the time—the pair of them beaten into submission by a seven-year-old baton twirler in a red-sequined costume.

Tom Rapp was always destined to become a cult hero; an unsung contemporary of Tim Buckley and Love’s Arthur Lee, Leonard Cohen and the aforementioned Dylan; if you were lucky enough to have heard about the Pearls way back then, you were in for life—these were songs to make you wonder, lyrics for life, poetry in motion.

This new collection started life as The Wizard Of Is back in 2004, after musicologist Pat Thomas sifted through a box of tapes that the singer songwriter had unearthed. Some of the songs were made at home by the first edition of the band, some are with later incarnations of Pearls Before Swine, some are with notable musicians like David Bromberg, and some are Nashville session demos of Tom’s songwriting craft, all of this punctuated by a clutch of gorgeous covers including Joni Mitchell’s ‘For Free’, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’ and Dylan that never sounded so different.

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Lou Reed couldn’t win for losing in the early 1970s. He released an album he considered his masterpiece (1973’s Berlin) and it was a commercial flop; he then released a pair of albums he was either ambivalent about or truly hated (1974’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal and that same year’s Sally Can’t Dance) and his audience rushed to the record stores. Reed said of the latter LP, “I hate that album. Sally Can’t Dance is tedious. Could you imagine putting out Sally Can’t Dance with your name on it? Dying my hair and all that shit? That’s what they [his audience] wanted; that’s what they got.” He then proceeded to call it “a piece of shit.”

Reed was right, to an extent. The album’s a hodge-podge of musical styles that don’t cohere. The songs’ subject matter is all over the place. Its songs vary from the ridiculously over-arranged to the stripped to the bones. But Sally Can’t Dance remains one of–if not the most–fascinating LPs of Lou Reed’s career, and not because it’s a failure. It’s far from a failure. It’s simply an oddball work on which Reed seemed to be winging it, at least in part because he’d stopped caring about pleasing his audience. Fuck ‘em, he might have thought, if they can’t take a joke.

Few tracks are as uncharacteristic of Reed’s work as opener “Ride Sally Ride.” It opens with a fancy horn arrangement, tosses some female backing vocalists into the mix, then goes full gospel with horns and vocalists, giving you the impression the guy who gave us “Heroin” was in the studio bathroom shooting speed, leaving some happy-go-lucky Lou in his place. The song’s ending is pure Broadway, but Lou adds a few characteristic lines along the lines of “Ooohhh, isn’t it nice/When you find your heart is made out of ice.”

“Animal Language” also goes heavy on the horns, but it’s also exceedingly strange even by Reed standards. Let’s see if I have its storyline straight: dog’s barking annoys guy so guy shoots dog in mouth. Meanwhile, old lady’s house cat has a blood clot, while some sweaty dude puts up a board to keep cat and dog (isn’t he dead?) dog apart, which so frustrates dog and cat they shoot up guy’s sweat. I can’t decide whether it’s metaphor, parable or a symptom of methamphetamine psychosis, but in any event it’s worth it just to hear Lou say “Ooohhh-wow, bow-wow” and “Ooohhh-meow, me-meow.” As for the guy’s sweat it may or may not be a controlled substance. I’m calling my pharmacist as we speak.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Experience Hendrix L.L.C. in partnership with Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, is releasing the Jimi Hendrix Experience Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969 this November 18 on 2LP vinyl, CD and all digital platforms.

Recorded in the spring of 1969 before a raucous, sold out audience, the captivating performance of the original lineup (singer/guitarist Jimi Hendrix, drummer Mitch Mitchell, bassist Noel Redding) has never before been released in its entirety. This album comes out in time for the 80th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s birth (11/27).

Following the massive success of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1967-68 studio album trifecta (Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland), the trio had developed into the most popular international touring attraction in rock music. This wide scale public interest coincided with the construction of new arenas for sporting events, among them the Forum in Inglewood, CA. Designed by famed architect Charles Luckman (who also designed New York’s rebuilt Madison Square Garden), this multi-purpose venue opened in 1967 as the home of the Los Angeles Kings hockey team and Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, but also began to serve as a music venue.

Among the earliest concerts held there was Aretha Franklin in January 1968 and the Cream farewell tour with opening act Deep Purple in October of that year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience were booked to perform on April 26, 1969 with opening acts Chicago Transit Authority (soon-to-be renamed Chicago) and Cat Mother & The All Night Newsboys, the latter of whom shared management with the headliners. Floor seats cost $6.50 ($51.20 adjusted for inflation).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings is pleased to reissue John Lee Hooker’s widely acclaimed album, The Healer, on vinyl and CD, after more than a decade of being out of print.

The 1989 LP earned the then 73-year-old blues icon his first GRAMMY® Award (for the song “I’m in the Mood” with Bonnie Raitt) and features contributions from a star-studded collection of guest artists, which in addition to Raitt, includes Carlos Santana, George Thorogood, Los Lobos, Canned Heat, Charlie Musselwhite, and Robert Cray. Set for release on October 28th and available for pre-order beginning today, The Healer was pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Records Pressing (QRP), with lacquers cut by the award-winning engineer Bernie Grundman.

Few artists have made such an explosive comeback as Hooker did when he released The Healer in 1989. The prolific singer-songwriter—also known as the “King of the Boogie”—rose to fame in 1948 with the chart-topping R&B hit, “Boogie Chillen’.” Over the next four decades, he worked tirelessly—recording dozens of albums, touring the world, and reinventing modern music along the way. As one of history’s greatest bluesmen, Hooker’s influence spread far and wide, inspiring a generation of musicians across multiple genres, including folk, rock, and blues. A handful of these artists are represented as guests on The Healer.

Recorded at San Francisco’s Russian Hill Recording Studios, the album was produced by guitarist Roy Rogers, who served as a member of Hooker’s Coast to Coast Band and would go on to helm three more records by the artist, including the GRAMMY®-nominated Mr. Lucky (1991) and the bestselling Chill Out (1995). Together, they invited some of the industry’s greatest talents to perform a selection of new and classic material in both stripped-down and full-band settings.

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Two recent reissues from female artists who began their careers in the 1960s reflect how their talent and longevity transcend their ’60s image and early musical persona.

First up is Nancy & Lee from Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood from Light in the Attic, part of the Nancy Sinatra Archival Series. The 1968 album is a collection of the “hits” of the two and the fourth in a series from the label featuring Sinatra, with two of the releases a collaboration with Hazlewood.

Nancy Sinatra is, of course, one of the two daughters of Frank Sinatra, from his first marriage. Hazlewood was a producer, songwriter, and vocalist who was somewhat in the mold of Phil Spector, Sonny Bono, Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Webb, and Burt Bacharach. While he didn’t have the name recognition, hit success or longevity of any of those artists, he was a cult figure in ’60s pop whose musical stature continues to grow. He is most known for his work with Sinatra, and their hit “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” an iconic ’60s pop single with feminist lyrical undertones, that for all its brash, campy style, has become a timeless anthem.

Hazlewood’s production on this album mixes glossy pop, baroque folk-rock, and romantic loner cowboy country pop. It’s a somewhat unlikely mix, but it works. This production setting allowed Sinatra to shake off her ’60s sex kitten image and make serious sophisticated music with accessible hit potential. It also provided Hazlewood, with his limited vocal range, a chance to begin a career that stretched beyond his work with Sinatra.

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PHOTOS: ROBERT ASHCROFT | “Get a little courage, find a little backbone,” urges Julian Lennon in “Every Little Moment,” the second track off his reflective new album Jude, in stores September 9th—and 10th on vinyl, in remembrance of his mother Cynthia Lennon’s birthday. Current and intensely relevant in its focuses of introspection and soul-searching—individually, and on behalf of the planet partly in turmoil—Jude was composed and produced over a span of years and shines as a beacon of authentic wisdom and earned insight, yet rooted in positivity.

The choice of album title, Jude, an allusion to Paul McCartney’s Beatles song written to Julian during a difficult time following his parents’ split—and his choice of album cover photo featuring his young self—suggests a kind of full circle of the individual. As in to know, understand, and feel close to one’s childhood self is to accept one’s truest, most uncompromised self.

In the past Lennon has alluded to having a love/hate relationship with the song “Hey Jude.” Releasing this album can be viewed as a revisiting of his childhood, and perhaps coming to terms with and accepting the past. Given that Get Back was released last year, which in part celebrated The Beatles’ legacy and brought the Let it Be era of the band’s career into a more finite documentation, that film’s journey in a way aligns with Lennon’s own journey as an artist, of revisiting feelings or episodes from one’s past and editing them differently and more comprehensively to reveal a more positive overall conclusion, and perhaps partly tying up loose ends in a spirit of enlightened acceptance.

Though Jude’s songs were composed and developed over a span of years, much of Lennon’s new album seems to encapsulate the shared mindset of humanity dealing with and trying to recuperate from the Covid era. “Save Me” speaks to someone seemingly unable to handle or cope with the darker sides of being alive. “You’re the only one I know / who lets the darkness come and go inside,” speaks to God maybe, the Universe, or just a friend who tolerates and who lives alongside the darker parts of the self and the world.

Dramatic, sweeping strings, commune with computerized effects to emotively articulate the reality of modern existence. “Breathe” highlights our common victimhood as we who keep the specters of despair at bay. Its lyrics detail the world’s collective feelings, that of generalized trauma accumulated by facing the state of the globe during these past number of bizarre and alienating years. “Breathe” as well should resonate with most listeners with its background sounds of children, an echo of lost innocence for the world.

On an album full of revelations, “Love Never Dies” is a standout, with a beautiful articulation of where our energy might go and what it might become once we die. There is evidence of earned wisdom, knowledge of what is important and real, and certainly what lasts. Lennon is in possession of a lush musical heritage given his parentage, but his individuality and unique artistic viewpoint transcend this fact, while still honoring it.

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Saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Chris Williams, guitarist Jessica Ackerley, and drummer Jason Nazary comprise the avant-jazz/ improv/ experimental ensemble SSWAN, with their debut Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster available now on black vinyl (first pressing of 400 copies), digipak CD (first pressing of 500 copies), and digital through 577 Records. Fiery and abstract in its explorations, the album’s three pieces are also cohesive in their interplay. SSWAN can kick up an impressive racket, but there are also passages of considerable beauty. Freedom rarely sounds better than this.

To hopefully communicate the brilliance of SSWAN, three of the five participants landed on my list of 2021’s best new releases found on this very website. That’s Jessica Ackerley with Friendship: Lucid Shared Dreams and Time Travel, her striking duo record with multi-horn man Daniel Carter, Patrick Shiroishi with his massive solo effort Hidemi, and Luke Stewart as part of Open the Gates by Irreversible Entanglements.

The CD Numbers Maker by Desertion Trio, an outfit that includes Jason Nazary, was a candidate for inclusion on said best list as well, and San Soleil, a cassette by the duo of Chris Williams and Shiroishi, would’ve been a serious contender had I actually heard it last year instead of only recently in preparation for this review. San Soleil is loaded with closely recorded splatter skronk and hovering extended tones made even more varied by the use of multiple horns. The set also served as my introduction to Williams and worked as a proper prologue to the three pieces that comprise Invisibility.

For it is easy to speculate that the familiarity of SSWAN’s participants adds to the record’s power. In addition to Sans Soleil, Shiroishi is heard on the lathe cut LP Live by the Chris Williams Quintet, which was mixed by Nazary. Shiroishi and Ackerley also have Extremities, a cassette of often wonderful sonic mayhem and brutality from 2020 that notably documents the first-time meeting of the pair, and another tape, Across Water, that was issued just a couple months ago.

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Remembering Sonny Rollins, born on this day in 1930. —Ed.

Sonny Rollins’ name met the marquee of The Village Vanguard in the fall of 1957, and by November 3rd the saxophonist had honed his group to basic rudiments and figured out exactly what he wanted to do. With drummers Elvin Jones and Pete La Roca and bassists Wilbur Ware and Donald Bailey, he delivered one of jazz’s core documents, the undyingly superlative A Night at the Village Vanguard.

According to Leonard Feather’s liner notes for the original 6-track LP documentation of Sonny Rollins’ ’57 Vanguard stand, the saxophonist first hit the stage for a week with a quintet including trumpet and piano. Not happy with the results, he ditched the other horn and grabbed a new rhythm section for week two. Dissatisfied with the quartet lineup as well, Rollins then decided upon a sax-bass-drums trio. And that’s what we hear on the still startling A Night at the Village Vanguard. If Rollins’ rapid-fire retooling seems odd for a concert engagement, understand that he was basically using the bandstand as a live laboratory, experimenting loosely and approachably for proprietor Max Gordon’s hip urban clientele.

Though the Vanguard opened its doors in 1935, based on Feather’s notes, through the ‘40s and well into the next decade most live jazz had moved uptown, and Gordon’s club had then only recently underwent a substantial return to its now legendary intersection of serious jazz and bohemia. In attempting to steer his joint back in the direction of the cutting edge, Gordon casually inviting Rollins to spontaneously create in his spot was an extremely bright maneuver.

For at this point in his career Sonny Rollins was at an early peak. Frankly, the previous sentence is understating the case almost criminally; from ’56-’58 he cut 17 LPs as a leader, and by my count (and I’m far from alone in this arithmetic) at least ten of those recordings are classics. The performances corralled on A Night at the Village Vanguard arrived in the midst of all that activity, and the vinyl configuration’s slim but thoughtful annotation of the significant invention presented by these group’s (there are two, each with individual characteristics) remains an absolute masterpiece.

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