Monthly Archives: October 2022

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Originally released on the Concord label, this masterful 1978 meeting of jazz guitar giants has quietly become one of the most collectible albums of its era. Herb Ellis and Remo Palmier (a.k.a Palmieri) were contemporaries in the red-hot NYC jazz scene of the ‘40s, but they arrived at this recording through very different routes.

Ellis’ reputation steadily grew as he went from being a sideman in the Glen Gray and Jimmy Dorsey orchestras to being a mainstay in the Oscar Peterson Trio in the ‘50s, and later playing in a guitar trio with Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd. Palmier, on the other hand, got his career off to a blazing start, playing with Coleman Hawkins before appearing on seminal bebop sides (e.g. “Groovin’ High”) with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

But then, health issues intervened, and Palmier spent the next three decades or so working a staff job at CBS for The Arthur Godfrey Show. Finally, after the show was canceled, Palmier re-entered jazz circles but never really recorded much, which only makes Windflower that much more of a treasure.

“Sublime” is the word that springs to our mind, but you can substitute your own superlative; backed by George Duvivier on bass and Ron Traxler on drums, Ellis and Palmier bring an organic sense of swing, beautifully-voiced chords, and lyrical lead lines to such fare as “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,” “Groove Merchant,” and even “Danny Boy.” Produced by Concord label founder Carl Jefferson. First-ever reissue, emerald green vinyl!

The title of this 1973 release is certainly appropriate seeing as how many of its songs move in the direction of outer space where oxygen tends to be in short supply, and the band’s name seems borrowed from some B-flick about an intrepid spaceship commander doing battle with evil Gerkazoids somewhere in the environs of planet Krasznahorki, and what’s more the LP’s song titles continue the theme, and it would all be swell and futuristic if it weren’t for the fact that Sufficiently Breathless is, when all is said and orbiting Uranus, a second-rate NASA reject made up of scraps of musical styles salvaged from other, more aerodynamically sound bands.

Los Angeles’ Captain Beyond were one of those bands that got labeled a supergroup, and I suppose you can call them that if you squint long enough. Me, I wouldn’t call a band composed of former Deep Purple vocalist Rod Evans, a guitarist and bassist from Iron Butterfly, and a guy who used to pound the skins for Johnny Winter a supergroup. But hey, if the label helped them move so much as a single unit, god bless them.

If Sufficiently Breathless doesn’t leave you breathless period it’s because while the band plays an eclectic mix of acoustic and space rock, progressive rock and jazz fusion, originality, for the most part, isn’t their forte. They’re like that alien shape-shifter in a horror movie–you know, the one that’s Bob Dylan one moment then Bobby Flay the next, then Bob Hope the minute after that, then Bobby the Spazz down the street with the three left feet some thirty seconds later, but doesn’t have its own body it can call home. Except in Captain Beyond’s case they go from Santana to Yes to Pink Floyd. And they’re not very adept at getting away with their thievery—they’re always getting caught in a trap and can’t even chew off their left paw to escape because it’s the property of Carlos Santana.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Dame Olivia Newton-John is celebrated today with a “Deluxe Edition” remastered release of her double platinum album Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits, in honor of the album’s 45th Anniversary.

Originally released in 1977, the record has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and features her biggest international hits from her 1971 debut through her 1976 album Come On Over. Among some of the songs featured include all of Olivia’s U.S. Top 40 hits from that era including the #1 singles “I Honestly Love You” (which won two Grammy Awards in 1975 for “Record of the Year” and “Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female”), the Grammy winning “Let Me Be There” (“Best Country Vocal Performance, Female” 1974) and “Have You Never Been Mellow.” Click here to purchase or stream.

“Olivia was unique in the fact that she was so versatile and throughout her career was able to have success across multiple genres,” says Blake Davis, General Manager, Green Hill Productions. “Greatest Hits is a perfect collection showing that diversity from Olivia’s early career. It has been remastered for the first time and includes all iterations of the versions originally released around the world.”

When finalizing the deluxe edition track listing in May 2022, Newton-John said: “It’s hard to believe that it is the 45th anniversary celebration for my first collection of hit 45s. I was lucky enough to have various songs become hits around the world and that gave us the ability to create versions of the album to represent the biggest hits in each country/ region. If I remember correctly, there were five international versions released by different labels—USA and Canada; UK, Europe, Mexico and South America; Scandinavia; Japan; Australia and New Zealand.”

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Celebrating Manfred Mann on his 82nd birthday. —Ed.

So yeah, before we go any further–about the band name, which is unfortunate. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band evokes images of earth tones, earth shoes, earthworms, Middle Earth, the Mother Earth Catalog and turnips, and all of these things horrify me.

I know, I know, poor Manfred got caught up in the whole big “ecology thing” that had every hippie not killed at Altamont waving cardboard signs on wooden sticks (did they even give a thought to where that piece of wood came from? Or the cardboard?) reading “Save the Planet.” Hell, even Charles Manson jumped on the ecology bandwagon, so who am I to judge?

But let’s just write it off to hazy hippie idealism (those poor longhairs really thought they could save the world, har!) and get on to the important stuff, which is that while most sentient beings (and turnips) only remember Manfred Mann’s Earth Band for the coupla Bruce Springsteen covers they sent to the top of the charts, they also got around to putting out some pretty great albums in the early seventies starting with this eponymous 1972 debut, which may just be the best of ‘em.

Like many of his more musically savvy rock cohorts, Manfred Mann had a pop heart and an art head, which is to say that at the same time he was singing “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” he was also playing jazz piano, and would later (much to the consternation of yours truly) even go the dubious classical/rock hybrid route, thus placing himself squarely in the progressive rock camp alongside such blackguards as Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

But on Manfred Mann’s Earth Band everybody’s favorite South African auteur sticks to the pop/hard rock knitting with a slew of great tunes featuring lots of state-of-the-art synthesizer (which he never allows to dominate the proceedings) and at least one very impressive jazz piano flourish, to say nothing of some really mean guitar playing by the very underrated Mick Rogers.

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PHOTO: CHRIS BRYCE | The Hammond organ—specifically the Hammond B-3, or C-3—has a long musical history. But it’s not for everyone; it’s a heavy machine that often finds itself in need of some regular repair and constant maintenance. However, when coupled with a Leslie speaker, the sound of a Hammond organ is difficult to match; its sonorous quality and authoritative heft make it unmistakable in many of what are probably some of your favorite recordings.

Adam Scone is a Hammond organ devotee, he’s made the commitment necessary to become one of the 21st century’s notable users. He’s long been associated with the instrument and has played in jazz and boogaloo legend Lou Donaldson’s band at the Village Vanguard and the Blue Note in New York City. Scone has also shared the stage and recorded with countless others, performing on over 50 albums and was selected as a Jazz Ambassador by Lincoln Center & the Kennedy Center for the Arts; an honor which took him to perform in over 35 different countries.

When he’s not working with his other band, the Sugarman Three, he’s branched out to form The Scone Cash Players; a group with a slightly more experimental and thoughtful range than the boogaloo and funk he’s often associated with. Their latest album on Daptone, Brooklyn to Brooklin, features a blend of the usual grooves, but also includes intriguing group vocal treatments that add a truly unique character to this release.

Join Adam and I as we discuss his life’s musical journey, the many musical masters he’s met along the way, the details behind his latest album and, of course, the good people who help him load out his 400 pound Hammond organ at the end of his gigs.

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.

This one should have been great. Recorded in England’s Hammersmith Odeon and Broadway’s Uris Theater in 1974, it captures Mott the Hoople at the height of their powers. They deliver on many of their biggest crowd pleasers; unfortunately, and this is almost the band’s undoing, two of the LP’s nine tracks are B-Sides, and another is far from one of the band’s best. What’s more, the closing six-song medley does an injustice to at least three of its songs, and includes two non-Mott songs that shouldn’t be on it in the first place. Given their catalogue of great songs, Mott the Hoople managed to shoot themselves in the foot.

That said, the band sounds great; guitarist Mick Ralphs had split for Bad Company but Mott had found a deft replacement in Ariel Bender, whose six-string razor adds flash to their material. If Ralphs played hard rock, Bender leaned more towards finesse—he’s more of a showman, and he fits perfectly into Hunter’s glam scheme of things. The rest of the band is tight, and the added organists—Blue Weaver in the US and Mick Bolton in the UK–help fill out the sound.

The A-side opens with ultimate road song “All the Way to Memphis,” which puts Morgan Fisher’s honky-tonk piano up front but packs far more of a hard rock punch than the studio version. Bender’s guitar solo is ferocious while Hunter tells the ugly truth about the R&R dream: “Yeah its a mighty long way down rock ‘n’ roll/As your name gets hot so your heart grows cold/’N you gotta stay young man, you can never be old”—no one else I can think of has ever so clinically diagnosed the hollow heart of stardom. The band follows with the menacing S&M-themed “Sucker,” which boasts killer power chords, Weaver’s organ and backing vocals that might have come straight from David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs.

Piano and Phantom of the Opera-school organ dominate ballad “Rest in Peace.” The song’s presence on Live is a puzzler–what the B-side from “The Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll” from 1974’s The Hoople is doing here is beyond me, although there’s no denying the emotional power of lines like “Cause you know, we ain’t gonna be here all that long/And when I go I want to know I sung/If there’s a road ahead, I’ll jump right in/Just got to win, this is my hymn.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Telex has announced details of a vinyl box set, collating the long awaited remastered reissues of their six studio albums, Looking for Saint-Tropez (1979), Neurovision (1980), Sex (1981), Wonderful World (1984), Looney Tunes (1988), and How Do You Dance? (2006). Remastered and newly mixed from the original tapes by Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers, Telex will be out on limited edition vinyl box set, CD box set, and digitally on Mute on March 3, 2023.

The Belgian synthpop trio—Marc Moulin (1942–2008), Dan Lacksman, and Michel Moers—launched in Brussels in 1978 and, as one of only a handful of synthpop pioneers at the time, helped bring electronic pop to the mainstream. Telex skillfully used cover versions to deliberately play up the disparity between their ice-cool electronic approach and the sweaty, fleshy, frenetic passion of pop, demonstrated here on the opening track for a digital EP to launch the box set. Their take of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock” from the debut album, in which, so to speak, all of the rock is removed leaving nothing but the clock; a ticking, vocoderised, supremely deadpan robot parody of the original that the band performed on Top of the Pops in 1979. “Buster Keaton was our idol,” explains Moers, and it shows.

The follow up album, Neurovision, includes the track “Euro-vision” which was famously entered into the Eurovision Song Contest, representing Belgium. Moers says he regarded their entry as “very Situationist International, the worm in the apple.” And they resolved either to come first or last. They didn’t achieve that goal, but became part of the Eurovision saga.

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Celebrating Wanda Jackson, born on this day in 1937. —Ed.

When it comes to vocalists—male, female, whale, Sasquatch, you name it—it’s hard to top Wanda “The Queen of Rockabilly” Jackson. For a couple of years at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s Jackson recorded a bunch of truly hair-raising vocal performances that generated every bit as much feral excitement and raw sexual energy as the ones being recorded by Elvis Presley (whom she dated for a brief spell), Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, and Little Richard. The very much alive Jackson possesses vocal cords made of barbed wire, and has never met a tempo—most of them played back in the day with lethal intensity by a relatively unsung young guitar slinger named Roy Clark—so raucous she couldn’t rein it in. And she can yodel up a storm, too.

There were other women singing rockabilly during its golden age; Janis Martin, for example, who was unfortunate enough to have the moniker “the Female Elvis” hung around her neck like an albatross. But Martin had a more staid vocal style that came up short in the barbaric yawp department, and for the most part the same goes for Lorrie Collins of novelty act the Collins Kids, who had her moments of inspiration (check out her wonderfully frenzied take on “Mercy”) but who rarely roamed into the realm of the possessed. Jackson was a full-grown woman and her voice was a force of nature in 1961, and still is; just listen to the 73-year-old Jackson kick up a rockin’ ruckus out on such raunch’n’roll numbers as “Shakin’ All Over” and “Rip It Up” on 2011’s Jack White-produced The Party Ain’t Over if you have any doubts about the matter.

On 1961’s There’s a Party Goin’ On Jackson was at the peak of her rockabilly powers and poised to go country, which was the smart move for an Oklahoma City girl with country music in her veins after the rockabilly craze went belly up. With her band the Party Timers, Jackson—who declared herself the first woman to put “glamour into country music” with her fringe dresses, high heels, and long earrings—jumped, wailed, and growled, and the best tracks on There’s a Party Goin’ On are every bit as crazy, daddy-o as those produced by Elvis, Gene, Little Richard, etc.

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Smart cookies will make it a point to periodically check on what Crammed Discs has on their release schedule, as the entity, founded by Marc Hollander of the often excellent Belgian avant-rock outfit Aksak Maboul, has been one of the more consistently interesting international labels around since its inception in 1980. What’s just landed in the store racks and what’s immediately imminent? Two releases, a various artists collection Fictions, celebrating the return of the Made to Measure series, that’s available now, and Neon Colonialismo by the Angolan/Portuguese electronic artist and producer Batida, that’s out October 21. Both are offered on vinyl, compact disc, and digital.

Of the two releases, Fictions presents the deepest connections to Crammed Discs’ long history, so it makes sense to tackle it first. As Made to Measure 47th volume, Fictions is part of a composer’s series that spans back to 1984, but with ties that are even stronger, as Benjamin Lew and Steven Brown, whose track “A.D. sur la carte” closes Fictions, took part in Made to Measure Vol. 1 (alongside Aksak Maboul and Minimal Compact).

Recorded live at a Made to Measure night in Brussels, “A.D. sur la carte” documents Lew and Brown’s first meeting since the 1980s, with its analog synth and sax working up a potent blend of swirl and drift. And alongside Lew and Brown, Stubbleman, whose Fictions track “Ne pas se pencher au dehors” features the hazy trumpet of Nils Petter Molvaer, has prior Made to Measure experience, as his 2019 album Mountains and Plains is Vol. 44 in the series.

The rest of Fictions’ lineup consists of Made to Measure newcomers, with Hollander’s choices superb, ranging from Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s opening modular synth weave “Waterways” to the cyclical synth and soaring vocals in Lucrecia Dalt, Camille Mandoki, and Matias Aguayo’s “Sumamone (The Free Flyers)” to the almost environmental sound sculpting of Inne Eysermans’ “Blue.”

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