Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Any fan of solo guitar that’s not clued in to the Tompkins Square label’s long-running Imaginational Anthem series is in for an exquisite awakening. The most recent collection, Vol. XIV: Ireland is out now on vinyl (with a few test pressings still available) and compact disc. It’s an illuminating geographical dive assembled by the terrific Dublin-based guitarist Cian Nugent, who provides notes. Also, for those not yet hip to the Imaginational Anthem experience, the bundle of 12 volumes on CD (including this new one) is on sale through Bandcamp for a very affordable price.

To get right down to business, David Murphy has extensive session credits playing pedal steel, but only one album so far, Cuímhne Ghlinn: Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar, released last year on vinyl by Rollercoaster Records. Murphy’s meditative and very pretty version of the traditional “The March of the King of Laois,” which serves as Vol. XIV’s opener appears to be an exclusive track.

Brendan Jenkinson has also played on a bunch of other people’s records, including a few as a keyboardist in the band of this album’s curator, Cian Nugent. Jenkinson’s original composition “Paris Blues” is a delightful serving of fingerpicking that should please fans of the American Primitive impulse that set the Imaginational Anthem series into motion.

The nimbleness of finger continues across “The Lark in the Morning,” a wonderfully warm interpretation of a traditional piece by Junior Brother, aka Ronan Kealy. As Junior Brother, Kealy has recorded three full-length albums and a bunch of EPs, with everything on vinyl.

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On the scene in the Southern USA since the mid-’90s, Tyler Keith specializes in what one might call roots punk. He’s played in numerous bands and even released a few records under his own name along the way. His latest, I Confess, is the byproduct of tough personal circumstances. Faced with a lack of ducats, no musical compadres, and rising rent, Keith made a series of wise decisions; he grabbed his instruments, set up his 4-track, and cut a truly solo record in his kitchen. Raw and bluesy, the 12-song set is out now on vinyl and digital through Black & Wyatt Records.

Way back in the boom years of the 1990s, Tyler Keith’s band The Neckbones earned the distinction of being the first, and for a long while, the only rock band on the Fat Possum label. Garage punk was the style, and after The Neckbones finally snapped, Keith fronted the Preachers’ Kids for a handful of albums, then moved on to Tyler Keith & the Apostles and Teardrop City.

Under his own name, with backup, he recorded The Last Drag in 2020 and Hell to Pay in 2023. Now here comes I Confess, which is Keith going it wholly alone with appropriately crude overdubs in the spirit of dangerous times. Opener “Out on a Limb” rips right into high gear, dishing a jagged blues-rock grind with a legit air of desperation about it.

“Lost in the Desert” is a downright doomy journey into echo overload with convulsions of harmonica. “Buckskin Girl” sounds like a Nuggets-styled act that took a wrong turn and ended up playing their one song at gunpoint on the outskirts of some demented backwoods carnival. And then “Black Cloud Blues” takes a further offramp into acidic paroxysmal pessimism; it’s a bit like a late-night dark arts communion of John Lee Hooker and Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

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Remembering Wynton Kelly, born on this date in 1931. —Ed.

Wes Montgomery remains one of the undisputed greats of Modern Jazz guitar. To hear the man at his best is to luxuriate in the elevated energies of Smokin’ at the Half Note, an LP co-billing him with the impeccable trio of pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. That set has been freshly reissued in Verve/UMe’s Acoustic Sound Series, and for consumers of vinyl with a passion for post-bop jazz, its acquisition is absolutely essential.

As “No Blues” opens Smokin’ at the Half Note it becomes rapidly clear the album’s title is wholly accurate, though in fact it only communicates part of the release’s reality, as the three tracks on side two, the Sam Jones composition “Unit 7,” the Montgomery original “Four on Six” and the standard “What’s New?,” were cut in studio in September of 1965. The visit to Van Gelder’s Hackensack, NJ studio, reportedly at the behest of producer Creed Taylor, occurred roughly three months after the band’s engagement at the New York City club; the LP hit stores in November of that year.

The studio side, if a tad more composed in execution than the two live cuts, does not falter. But really, it’s “No Blues” that has firmly established this record’s reputation as a must-own, with the track’s gripping nature reflected in the release’s shared billing. Having formed through an association with trumpeter Miles Davis in 1958 and heard together on one track, “Freddie Freeloader,” on Davis’ Kind of Blue, plus the entirety of its follow-up Someday My Prince Will Come (where “No Blues” was first recorded under the tile “Pfrancing”), the triumvirate cut numerous albums as a working band.

The trio’s familiarity with Montgomery was long-established. They are heard together, with the addition of tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, on Full House, cut for Riverside in 1962. In short, Kelly, Cobb, and Chambers knew each other well, they knew “No Blues” well, and they knew Montgomery well. This explains the cut’s casual energy in showcasing the guitarist’s technical skill and in how he seamlessly integrates those heightened abilities into a swinging post-bop scenario par excellence.

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When it comes to raw and scorching ’90s garage punk, few bands did it better than Teengenerate. Featuring singing guitarists Fink and Fifi, bassist Sammy, and drummer Suck (later replaced by Shoe), the Tokyo-based band swiped their name from a Dictators song and specialized in the snotty and surly, a la prime Dead Boys. No Teengenerate release better encapsulates the band’s strengths than the just-released Live at the Empty Bottle, a wild and wailing 16-song set captured on November 5, 1995, mastered by Tim Warren of Crypt Records fame and pressed onto vinyl by HoZac Records of Chicago. The album is an absolute necessity for garage punk mavens.

HoZac platters up the occasional record by a contemporary band, like the freshly issued and very appealing Hangin on a String by Laundry Bats (a trio comprised of Memphis garage punk royalty), but the label has been increasingly devoted to retrospective releases under the heading HoZac Archival, alongside an ever-growing shelf of books where music is the common subject matter.

HoZac Archival’s steady, sturdy, historically focused output largely mines the proto and pre-hardcore punk eras for revelatory material. Although there is a high standard of quality, the objective doesn’t seem to be the curation of flawless masterworks but rather documenting a spectrum of subterranean punk-aligned activity, often from the days before the movement even had a name.

There are releases of a more recent vintage in HoZac Archival’s discography, and many of those are from the 1990s, which makes total sense, as the decade was a certifiable hotbed of garage punk action. Nothing illustrates the garage punk dominance of the ’90s better than Live at the Empty Bottle, which presents Teengenerate in total command of their joyous viciousness.

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Celebrating Mike D on his 60th birthday. —Ed.

With the Love American Style EP, The Beastie Boys gave the public a small taste of their new and improved direction. Some ears were ready and many were not, but this twelve-inch contained a tidy morsel of a true hip-hop classic.

In retrospect, Licensed to Ill came on like a ton of bricks. Out of the blue the group just seemed to suddenly be everywhere; on stereos and television naturally, but also in magazines, in car tape decks, as the soundtrack to parties, in the parking lot at school. This level of saturation wasn’t all that unusual, for the same sort of situation happened with Purple Rain, Thriller, Madonna’s debut and Born in the USA. Unless you were a hermit, it was ultimately all music the ears couldn’t escape, particularly in a suburban existence. What made Licensed to Ill feel like such a haymaker was its heightened sense of immaturity and its use (some said hijacking) of a musical form that many observers were still coming to terms with.

The Beastie Boys were generation gap music in its purest form. As expected, parents were indignant; Who raised these ingrates, What has happened to the youth of America, Where are the values, When I was your age we thought Pat Boone was risqué, Why I oughta lock you in your room without your stereo for playing that noise in the house, and in front of your sweet, impressionable little sister at that. How does it feel to feel old?

And while these days it seems that every child of the ‘80s got and dug what the Boys’ were laying down right off the bat, of course that’s not a bit true. Tons of kids were horrified or at least highly perturbed that three unruly youths were besmirching the rep of their peers through constant airtime on MTV. And it’s important to understand that The Beastie Boys were many ears’ first prolonged exposure to rap music, especially in the areas of the country not served by cable TV. And to be accurate, before Licensed to Ill MTV played very little rap music, just like before Thriller this supposedly progressive, groundbreaking entity aired almost no black music at all.

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Long based in San Francisco, vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Tony Molina’s stylistic reach spans from hardcore to stripped-back home-recorded acoustic pop.

His new record, On This Day, offers 21 songs in 23 minutes and is a gem leaning to the melodic side of the spectrum, blending folk-pop, chime-pop, and baroque-pop. Molina taps into the essence of these classique sub-genres and works up a succinct, highly digestible whole that positively begs for repeat spins. On This Day is out now via Slumberland Records. The vinyl edition has sold out quickly; until there is a repress, there are compact discs and the digital option.

Many students of classic ’60s guitar pop stylistics home in on the specificity of the era’s high points, and that’s just fine. With them, every song is constructed as a full-bodied radio single that never was, and in turn, every album is loaded with potential singles. That can make for some mighty fine listening if the songs are truly up to snuff and have something to communicate in terms of inspiration over imitation.

Tony Molina can certainly conjure up the sound of ’60s pop, be it baroque, folky, or jangling, at its catchiest. On This Day attests to this, and in particular the folk-pop of “FC ’23,” the suburban garage band Bacharach of “Faded Holiday” (complete with trumpet by Ladybug Transistor’s Gary Olson), the rays of sunshine glistening on the fringes of “Lie to Kick It”’s emphatic chiming, the Brit-folk gentleness of “Despise the Sun,” and the explosive near freakbeat of “Have Your Way.”

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In terms of popularity, America never produced an equivalent to David Bowie. But there was Jobriath, an unfortunate victim of record label hype and consumer indifference who produced what’s easily the USA’s purest expression of glam sensibilities.

Jobriath Boone, né Bruce Wayne Campbell is one of the more fascinating casualties in rock’s colorful history. Starting out in the ultra-obscure pop-folk-psyche group Pigeon (who recorded an LP and a single for Decca in ’69) after defecting from a Los Angeles production of Hair, his demo tape was stumbled upon by ‘70s mover-and-shaker Jerry Brandt, who managed to get him signed to Elektra Records for the reported sum of $500,000.

A barrage of publicity followed, including a billboard in Times Square and an appearance on the late night TV variety program The Midnight Special. Problem was, his ’73 debut tanked commercially, setting off a media backlash that left his follow-up Creatures of the Street to wither without promotion.

His relationship with Brandt severed, Jobriath was held in the clutches of a ten year contract that kept him from recording any further material. Instead, he worked as a cabaret singer under the name Cole Berlin and lived in the Chelsea Hotel, where he died of AIDS in 1983.

Jobriath’s status as an openly gay musician sets him apart from his glam contemporaries. Where Bowie and others flirted with the perception of bi-sexuality, Jobriath made no bones about his sexual orientation. He described himself to the press as a “true fairy,” displaying frankness and flamboyance that surely damaged his chances with many observers hiding a closed mind in the closet, and in fact this defiant boldness situates Jobriath as an exponent of the camp theatricality that’s long been an aspect of gay culture.

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There has been no shortage of single and various artist Soul anthologizes over the years, but most came encoded on compact disc and ranged in worth from outstanding to moderate to shoddy. Vinyl sets became few and far between, but recently that circumstance has begun to change. Behold A Crate Diggers’ Collection of Rare Soul, a compilation of three 180gm LPs assembled by Rhino Custom in an edition of 1,000 copies.

The purported scarcity of the originals corralled here, everything initially issued on 45s from ’64-’75 either by Atlantic and its subsidiaries Atco and Cotillion or Warner Brothers and its sub-label Loma, offers a fine angle of presentation. However, the secret to any various-artist comp, and especially one devoted to a genre so deeply tied to the emotional, is not rarity but listenablity, though the opportunity to hear these selections on vinyl is an unequivocal plus.

A Crate Diggers’ Collection of Rare Soul smartly drafts a smattering of ringers and immediately taps into a cornerstone of the style. Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle” was issued posthumously by Atco in ’68 both as a single and on The Immortal Otis Redding. Oft covered and sampled as it features the confidence, precision, and verve of Otis, Booker T & the MGs, and the Memphis Horns, there’s simply no substitute for the original.

Another stone beast is ’66’s deep and slow groover “You Put Something on Me” by Don Covay & the Goodtimers. A somewhat slept-on soul figure both at the time and hence, akin to the majority of the artists on this set Covay was recorded by Atlantic, but like “Sookie Sookie” before and “Somebody’s Got to Love You” after it, “You Put Something on Me” failed to chart, which is difficult to fathom since it pairs with “Hard to Handle” as the best track on this set’s first side.

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Liz Hogg is a Brooklyn, NY-based guitarist who divides her expertise between classical guitar and electric rock stylings. On the rock side of the spectrum, she’s bent the strings in numerous bands, including Fables, UFOs, and Beach Arabs, and with Aagoo Records’ November 12 release of Goodbye World Hello Something, she’s completed her second solo album, available on LP and digital. While Hogg is a highly skilled instrumentalist, the 10-song set is less about flash and more focused on solid, often downright catchy songwriting.

Liz Hogg’s prowess on guitar shouldn’t be understated, but just as impressive is her adaptability, which ranges from her excellence as a classical guitarist as documented on the 2019 CD Presenting Liz Hogg: Music by Mignone/ Villa-Lobos /Krenek/ Darr/ Bach/ Matiegka, to the ’80s underground rock power trio energy of Beach Arabs’ 2013 cassette Wild Movement, to the pricklier exploratory solo rock-aligned environments of her self-titled 2018 LP.

And now here’s Goodbye World Hello Something, a larger-scale solo affair that’s infused with pop hooks while continuing to emphasize Hogg’s abilities as a guitarist. Opener “Things I Said Before” is the album’s biggest slice of melodic maneuvering, combining tropical ambiance with a bold guitar groove to arrive in the vicinity of ’80s Downtown NYC.

“Wonder When” picks up the tempo and dishes a hook reminiscent of The Cars, although Hogg’s singing and the tightly wound intensity of her playing ultimately pushes the song into a distinctive direction. “On Paper” is more laid back and layered, with a few gorgeous crescendos along the way, and then “Belly” revs matters back up with a hint of power pop and a few angular touches that can bring Mary Timony to mind.

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The writers of the Beat Generation engaged passionately in the reading of their words aloud, in a room or in the open air, and so recordings are in no short supply. Die on Me is a collection of readings and discussions from the youngest Beat giant, the undercelebrated Gregory Corso. Produced by Hal Willner and Marianne Faithfull and originally released on CD in 2002, the set has been reissued, slightly reordered, and remastered with bonus tracks by Kramer on his label Shimmy Disc, where it makes its vinyl debut. It’s an essential acquisition for anyone who loves the elevated thought spillage of prime Beat poetics.

The pool of writers that shaped the Beat Generation isn’t especially large. There was an older generation of writers and publishers (William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, James Laughlin) that heard something crucial in this defiant mid-20th-century impulse and encouraged it. But Beats, they were not.

Additionally, there were numerous simultaneous and sometimes overlapping scenes (the New York Poets, the Black Mountain College writers, the West Coast/San Francisco scenes), alongside the many writers and muses that orbited around the core Beats like satellites.

The size and shape of the Beat Generation can expand or contract, given the situation. It should be established that if a controversial figure, Norman Mailer, was not a Beat writer. Nor were the notorious and often-banned Henry Miller and the young and hip Terry Southern. Charles Bukowski wasn’t Beat, either, as he often went to pains to impolitely make clear in his writings.

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The impact of the African-American gospel tradition on soul and rock ‘n’ roll is long-established. Craft Recordings’ Jesus Rocked the Jukebox: Small Group Black Gospel (1951-1965) spreads the evidence across six vinyl sides as they provide an expansive overview of the undiluted spiritual spark. Mingling well-known artists who made the jump into pop territory (Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls, The Staple Singers) with giants in the gospel field (The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Swan Silvertones, The Harmonizing Four), the results are an unmitigated joy. 

The give and take between the sacred and the secular was long and productive across the 20th century, and for the details, this set’s notes by Robert M. Marovich do an outstanding job. But really, the beauty of Jesus Rocked the Jukebox is that all one needs to do is listen; the elements of the crossover to soul and rock and of course to the pop charts, is abundant here, and frequently from artists who themselves made the thematic transition.

None were bigger than Sam Cooke. Unlike Ray Charles, who built his career on honing a blend of blues, R&B, jazz, and gospel into a cornerstone of soul, prior to a foray into pop, Cooke was well-known as a member of the already long-running Soul Stirrers. Indeed, the quartet’s greatest success essentially spanned Cooke’s tenure, with the a cappella “Jesus Gave Me Water” an early hit (from 1951, exactly) and one that was clearly influential on doo wop’s explosion later in the decade.

From the following year, “Just Another Day” begins with the vocalist’s immediately identifiable style, blending it with rich harmonizing and simple but driving rhythmic accompaniment that as Marovich explains, was often the design of record labels, in this comp’s case Specialty and Vee-Jay, in hopes of shifting more units. Naturally, this addition is important to gospel’s impact on secular music, particularly R&B and rock. Here, it intensifies the Stirrers’ considerably more emphatic “Come and Go to that Land” and the splendid “Sinner Run to Jesus” (from ’57, a year before Cooke left the group).

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Led as always by songwriter John Darnielle, The Mountain Goats remain a distinctive pleasure in a landscape plagued by homogeneity. Theirs is a steadfastly intelligent, ever-evolving body of work that’s impossible to confuse with anyone else, even as the sounds often surprise. Their latest breakthrough, Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan, out November 7 on LP, CD, cassette, and digital through Cadmean Dawn, moves into the territory of the stage musical and welcomes backing vocals by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

A full-blown stage musical might seem like a bit of a descriptive overstatement for a songwriter with numerous concept albums in his discography. This album’s predecessor, 2023’s Jenny from Thebes, has been categorized as a rock opera, and in fact, Darnielle has called it a “fake-musical.”

But as it plays, Through This Fire exudes legit stage musical qualities, and straightaway with “Overture,” an ornately scaled orchestrally arranged opener, courtesy of longtime Mountain Goat multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas, that would certainly be appropriate for a theater production.

Naturally, and fairly, Through This Fire will be assessed as a considerable departure in terms of instrumental thrust, but that’s not really anything unusual for John Darnielle, a guy who began his musical journey as part of the lo-fi “movement” by strumming a guitar and singing into the microphone of a boombox.

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In late-’70s Minneapolis, guitarist Bob Mould, drummer Grant Hart, and bassist Greg Norton came together to form one of the great trios in rock music’s long history. Burning bright for most of the ensuing decade, Hüsker Dü exploded out of the hardcore scene with ferocious speed, only to incrementally increase the melody without turning down the amps. On November 7, Numero Group releases the 4LP live set 1985: The Miracle Year, which posits the smack-dab middle of the ’80s as the band’s peak in terms of productivity, execution, and songwriting acumen. Soaking up the 43 songs, it’s impossible to argue.

Consisting of a complete live set from the venue First Avenue in Minneapolis on January 30, 1985, spread across two LPs and then an additional batch of live songs from various locales during the same period sequenced onto two more LPs, 1985: The Miracle Year might appear to be an undertaking best suited for an intensely devoted listenership.

However, time spent with the collection establishes a gripping momentum that thrives on an extraordinary level of precision, the band dynamic taken to an extreme, and a ratcheting up of intensity that teeters on the brink of sheer mayhem. This is especially the case as the First Avenue set (dubbed the “Minnesota Miracle”) blazes forth, the trio in the throes of a particular, peculiar positive energy that can only really exist when a group endeavor explodes far beyond any reasonable expectations.

As part of the SST Records elite that changed rock music forever, alongside Minutemen, Meat Puppets, and Black Flag, Hüsker Dü succeeded through a defiant tenacity and a relentless desire to keep pushing the possibilities. These bands were never supposed to progress beyond a local phenomenon. It all gets a thorough examination in 1985: The Miracle Year’s booklet essay by Bob Mehr.

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Remembering Bert Jansch, born on this date in 1943. —Ed.

There might be no better time than the present to be a record collecting fan of Bert Jansch. Vinyl reissues from all stages of the Brit-folk guitar linchpin’s career have been flowing into the racks for a while now, and we’re currently experiencing a crescendo of material from the late singer-songwriter.

The 1960s was flush with fingerpickers, and Bert Jansch was amongst the very best. Adding to his appeal, the Scottish troubadour was also a capable vocalist, solid songwriter, and a deft collaborator, first teaming with fellow guitarist John Renbourn; in short order the duo co-founded the progressive folk combo Pentangle.

Jansch’s eponymous debut and its follow-up It Don’t Bother Me, both issued in 1965, have endured as classics, and for those wishing to become conversant with the man’s work, they are the place to begin; last year Superior Viaduct issued the LPs singly, and both will be part of Earth Recordings’ upcoming box set of Jansch’s output for the Transatlantic label.

This period remains the most lauded stretch in the guitarist’s oeuvre, in part due to its consistency and sharpness of focus. 1966 brought third album Jack Orion, which both extends from and contrasts with its predecessor, the opening strains of banjo in “The Waggoner’s Lad” picking up where It Don’t Bother Me’s finale “900 Miles” left off. The instrumental switch intertwines productively with Renbourn’s guitar, as his role, having commenced on the prior disc’s “Lucky Thirteen,” is deepened across four Jack Orion cuts to positive effect.

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On October 13 the Mushroom Hour Half Hour and New Soil labels co-release kwaNTU, a gorgeous album of South African guitar from the duo of Madala Kunene (the elder) and Sibusile Xaba (the protégé). Known as the King of the Zulu Guitar, Kunene is little known outside his home country, while the younger jazz-influenced Xaba is poised to break out even more on the world stage. This 10-track collection is a splendid balm for troubled times, available on vinyl, compact disc, and digital.

That Madala Kunene isn’t better known by international listeners can be chalked up to the difficulties of exposure that befell South African musicians in the waning moments of Apartheid and then immediately after. His self-titled 1990 debut album, originally released by Third Ear Music, is certainly a pleasant experience, if unsurprisingly a wee bit dated in the production department.

Sibusile Xaba’s 2017 debut, the double set Open Letter to Adoniah/Unlearning, was the first release on Mushroom Hour Half Hour, an adventurous Johannesburg-based label that began as a vinyl-only radio show on a pirate radio station. If jazz influenced (Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall are cited as having impacted his style), Xaba is no trad cat; his debut finds him just as moved by South African sounds and also singing, often exuberantly in a sort of dialogue/counterpoint with his guitar playing.

After a meeting and time spent together, Kunene and Xaba became friends, with a budding mentorship to follow, and now comes this collaboration, which is often stunning in its beauty, and immediately so in opener “Umkhulu Omkhulu,” with its exchange of folky and jazz guitar as Xaba sings atop.

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