Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Remembering Carl Perkins, born on this date in 1932. —Ed.

Carl Perkins was one of the major shakers in the peak period of Sun Records, and these days he gets his due mostly as an architect of classic rockabilly. In that regard, one of his many hits compilations will provide an accurate if not comprehensive analysis. To get a taste of the full-blown ‘50s Perkins experience however, one will need to dig a little deeper, and seeking out the 1988 LP Honky Tonk Gal is an excellent choice.

Many outstanding recordings were made in the USA in the decade immediately following the Second World War, but at the top of the heap are a few truly indispensable documents. Amongst them can be found Charlie Parker’s master takes for Dial and Savoy, the high lonesome sound of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys as captured by Columbia and Decca, Muddy Waters’ electrification of the Delta in Chess Studios, and perhaps inappropriately since it compiled 6 LPs worth of material from prewar 78s, the Anthology of American Folk Music as issued by Folkways.

But if an outlier, I’ll stump passionately for that Harry Smith-compiled doozy. On top of being one of the few multi-disc sets that can be listened to in its entirety without a hint of exhaustion, it just as importantly established a disparate songbook that’s continued to influence music right up to this very minute. And the icing on the cake is how the inspired assemblage of a bohemian painter (and record collector!) integrated American folksong two years before the Supreme Court handed down their unanimous blow to the ugliness of segregation with the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

And that relates pretty well to Samuel Cornelius Phillips and his Memphis Recording Service, later known more famously as Sun Records, a small business concern that was really on a creative mission in loose disguise. It was also the cradle of some extremely essential postwar music. For instance, Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88,” considered by some to be the first rock ‘n’ roll song. Or that behemoth of the blues The Howlin’ Wolf, who delivered his first sides there. And by the mid-‘50s it was where a bunch of poor white cats, to borrow a phrase from the mouth of Presley, got real real gone for a change.

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Record Store Day 2026 is just around the corner, and the Soul Jazz Records compilation Power Pop! American Power Pop for the Now Generation 1977-1981 is among the standouts in this year’s crop. Leaning toward an assemblage of highly sought-after and in many instances very pricey gems that hover on the fringes of the coinciding punk shebang, the selections are raw and loaded with crafty, inspired riffs.

In the five-year stretch covered by this compilation, punk, power pop, and new wave were stylistic impulses that essentially intermingled as they presented an alternative to increasingly stale and often overwrought rock sensibilities. This is not to suggest that harmoniousness was constant or even the norm, but neither was divisiveness an overriding reality amid the competitiveness of regional musical scenes.

The bands collected here are catchy, often rough-edged, and guitar-focused. A few posthumous reputations loom large, but none of the bands included became a national phenomenon. Given a different set of circumstances, a few of these songs could’ve become chart hits, but the majority of the selections are just too punk-informed to have chalked up widespread popularity. Keyboards and synths are largely absent.

Some of these bands, if not these particular songs, have landed on punk compilations, including in the Killed by Death bootleg series and the associated Bloodstains volumes. So it is with West Lafayette, Indiana’s Dow Jones and The Industrials, whose “Let’s Go Steady” is a banquet of gnarled-riff tension and bursts of rocking release.

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Marta Sanchez is a Spanish pianist and composer (not to be confused with the Spanish vocalist Marta Sánchez) who has been based in New York City since 2011. Along with touring and cutting albums in the quartet of David Murray and recording Unseparate as part of the Webber/Morris Big Band (issued last September), Sanchez has a handful of knockout releases as a leader and on April 17, she delivers For the Space You Left, her first solo album of prepared piano on LP (black or pink swirl), CD, and digital.

Long associated with Modern Classical kingpin John Cage and assorted subsequent avant-gardists, the prepared piano is given a fresh exploration through Sanchez’s distinctive, energetic approach. This striking collection includes nine compositions that shine through momentum and the expected cadences.

Marta Sanchez debuted as a leader in 2008 with Lunas, Soles & Elefantes, a trio set. She followed that up in 2011 with La Espiral Amarilla by her quartet. This album and her debut were cut for the Spanish Errabal label. She made a bigger splash in 2015 with Partenika, the first of three quintet sessions for Fresh Sounds; two years later, Danza Imposible was released, and then in 2019 came El Rayo de Luz.

In 2022, Sanchez assembled a new quintet (save for Roman Filiu, the alto saxophonist on her three prior sets for Fresh Sound) and recorded SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) for the Whirlwind label, released as a 2LP set with three sides of music and one side an etching (copies are still available). For one track, this group expands to an octet.

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Remembering Merle Haggard, born on this date in 1937. —Ed.

Merle Haggard is a man who needs no introduction. His music, however, is best served by a thoughtful entry-point that reflects his emergence as one of country music’s truly singular figures. As the first LP he recorded with his estimable backing band the Strangers, it’s not the only Haggard record you’ll need, but it does establish the beginnings of a very fruitful period and essays with precision the attributes that make him such a valuable artist.

Along with Buck Owens, Merle Haggard was a principal architect of the Bakersfield Sound, a strain of country music rooted in the ‘50s that broke big in the following decade, providing an alternative to the Nashville Sound that was dominating the C&W charts during the era. Calling it the original Alt-Country will make many folks wince, but it’s not that far off the mark. For in eschewing the syrupy string sections, overly polite backing singers and general pop slickness of the Nashville Sound, a production-driven style that later morphed into a movement called Countrypolitan, the Bakersfield musicians were retaining the glorious essence of Honky-Tonk (a form derived from the work of Jimmie Rodgers, Western Swing-man Bob Wills, and Hank Williams) that prevailed on the C&W charts during the ‘50s.

Classic Honky-Tonk was exemplified by such major cats as Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, Hank Locklin, Lefty Frizzell, and a little later on George Jones, and it was a band music that flourished on the stages of the very clubs that named it. While the early years of the Bakersfield Sound overlap that of Honky-Tonk, by the ‘60s and its national breakout through Owens and Haggard, it was appropriately assessed as a reaction against the pop sensibilities of a city that in 1960 was designated as the USA’s second biggest record producing center.

If the Nashville Sound developed into Countrypolitan, the Bakersfield thing also continued to thrive, influencing contemporaneous work from important artists like Johnny Paycheck and setting the stage for the Outlaw movement of the ‘70s. It also touched both The Beatles and The Stones and was a crucial ingredient in the creation of both country-rock and the stuff we now indeed categorize as Alt-Country.

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Remembering Marvin Gaye, born on this day in 1939. —Ed.

Since his tragic and premature death in 1984, Marvin Gaye’s discography has steadily risen in critical esteem, and particularly What’s Going On, his eleventh album and the enduring apex of the man’s posthumous ascension, as it’s landed atop at least one noted list of the Greatest Albums of All Time. And so, Motown/uMe has understandably endeavored with due diligence in marking the half century since that LP was originally released, their work culminating in a 50th Anniversary Edition on double vinyl, which adds six original mono single versions, plus four rare mixes of the title track, to the nine masterful selections that comprise the original album.

As fruitful as the 1960s were for Marvin Gaye, he didn’t really hit his stride until the first half of the following decade, with What’s Going On the record that began his run as a fully-formed, mature artist. It took until the second half of the ’60s for Gaye to really find his footing inside the Motown hit machine, and there was indeed a bunch of excellent singles and even a few classic LPs during that stretch, but with his second record of the ’70s, he began transcending the boundaries of the Motown framework.

Records like What’s Going On can be intimidating to engage with in print, mainly because they can inspire mere rephrasing of long-established observations, or to the other extreme, straining for a fresh perspective (which frequently ends up having little to do with the actual music). It’s been said that any truly great record is inexhaustible, and by that metric, there should always be something new to say about their individual qualities, but it’s just as true that many masterpieces are relatively straightforward in their brilliance.

It’s true that What’s Going On is something of a rarity in how it stylistically advances its genre while remaining pretty firmly inside the realms of pop. There’s nothing edgy about the music (a la Funkadelic), or uncompromising (like James Brown’s work of the period). Instead, Gaye favored sophisticated string arrangements that came to define soul at its most urbane in the first half of the ’70s (Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Gamble & Huff), and as the decade progressed, served as a primary building block in the emergence of pop-disco.

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On April 17, Guerssen Records is releasing four singles to mark the label’s 30th anniversary. All but one 45 is a split, and the bands include The Attack, The Voice, In Black and White, Mandrake Paddle Steamer, Fairfield Ski, Ngozi Family, and Crossbones. The stylistic range, from freakbeat to psych-rock to Zamrock, makes picking up more than one or even the entire batch of these limited editions quite tempting. Happy anniversary to Guerssen Records!

Formed by singer Richard Shirman in 1966, The Attack cut four singles for Decca across a two-year existence. Each record documented a unique lineup of the band, with Sherman the only constant member. Perhaps remembered best for releasing the original “Hi Ho Silver Lining” (Jeff Beck’s more famous version following quickly after), The Attack’s finest moment might just be “Magic In the Air,” a slice of prime freakbeat that was rejected by the label for being too raw and raucous.

“Magic In the Air” is combined with the fuzzed-out and dark, indeed apocalyptic, freakbeat mayhem of “Train to Disaster” by Scotland’s The Voice. It’s the A-side to the band’s only single, released by Mercury in 1966. The Voice might’ve cut another record except that a portion of the lineup bailed for the Bahamas as part of The Process church. Knowledge of this cult affiliation intensifies the darkness of “Train to Disaster,” but it’s a nasty burst of proto-punk scuzz all on its own.

Speaking of Mercury Records, it was the US branch of the label that issued the sole LP by The Wizards From Kansas, a bunch of Sunflower Staters transplanted to San Francisco. But before the formation of Wizards From Kansas, member John Paul Coffin played in the band In Black and White, a psychedelic affair that cut a few songs in a Prairie Village, KS studio in 1967. Guerssen has pulled “Nowhere This Time,” a fine serving of garage-psych for the A-side of this very welcome archival edition.

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Minimalism is alive and strappingly healthy in 2026, in no small part due to the creative efforts of Erik Hall. This past January, Hall’s Solo Three was released as the culmination of the multi-instrumentalist-composer’s Minimalist trilogy. On April 3, Hall joins with the Metropolis Ensemble and Sandbox Percussion to revisit and expand upon the source of part two in Hall’s trilogy, a piece by noted, if still undersung, Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt. Canto Ostinato is an absolute stunner of a collaborative effort available on LP, CD, and digital from Western Vinyl.

For Canto Ostinato (Simeon ten Holt), which was released by Western Vinyl in February 2023, Erik Hall utilized multitracking as he played grand pianos, electric piano, and organ. That recording proved a resounding success as it hipped many who live outside the Netherlands to the importance of composer Simeon ten Holt.

Born in 1923, Simeon ten Holt died in 2012, leaving behind a substantial body of work, of which Canto Ostinato is his most famous composition. In this case, famous is a relative term, as ten Holt has long been one of Minimalism’s best-kept secrets. Hall’s initial solo recording was clearly an attempt to eradicate this unjust international obscurity.

But first, Hall recorded Music for 18 Musicians (Steve Reich), tackling a celebrated work by one of Minimalism’s most famous composers. Unsurprisingly, this reinvigoration of Reich made a big splash that swept up Canto Ostinato and, more recently, Solo Three, which included another piece by Reich, plus one each by Charlemagne Palestine, Glenn Branca, and Laurie Spiegel.

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Celebrating Herb Alpert on his 91st birthday. —Ed.

Herb Alpert is often praised as a veteran bigwig of the record industry who possessed a measure of taste alongside his business acumen. He’s even more notable for his trumpet playing and leadership of a crucial if not necessarily hip 1960s outfit; Whipped Cream & Other Delights is the most popular LP from Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass; it’s also their best.

Let’s get it out of the way right up front; nobody in the Tijuana Brass was from Mexico. They were in fact a purely studio concoction at the outset with Alpert overdubbing his trumpet for increased vibrancy. Naturally, these realities have led many to rashly assume the (largely) instrumental venture effectively putting A&M Records (stands for Alpert and Moss, as in executive Jerry Moss) on the map was an exercise in total squaresville.

The theory ain’t necessarily wrong, as the Tijuana Brass albums remain amongst the highest profile artifacts produced in the Easy Listening era. Make no mistake; beginning with 1962’s The Lonely Bull and continuing well into the ‘70s, Herb Alpert strenuously avoided grating upon even a single human nerve. The objective was to sell a ton of records, which he and A&M did by undertaking a generationally inclusive approach and by appropriating a neighboring culture in a manner that, while surely dated today, was far less contemporaneously niche-driven than Alpert’s stylistic relatives in the Exotica field.

But like Les Baxter, Martin Denny and their ilk, there seemed to be a point where the consumers of Alpert’s records arrived at the conclusion that his stuff was either old hat or all of a sudden utterly out of step with their lives. The abovementioned heap of records was unloaded, though not necessarily into the bins of used record stores; instead, the Tijuana Brass was a staple of the antique shop, the consignment store, the Goodwill, the flea market, the yard/garage sale, and the Salvation Army — particularly in retiree-heavy Florida, where estate sales from Sarasota to Boca offered Volume 2 by the stack, and where the same households whose mailboxes filled with Alpert come-ons in 1965 now find them stuffed with sports betting Florida pitches instead.

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With Otterson, Nashvillian singer-songwriter Diana Darby has released her fifth album; it’s freshly out on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Delmore Recording Society, the label that has issued the entirety of her full-length discography. If Darby’s place of residence leads to an assumption that she can be categorized as part of that city’s long stylistic tradition, that’s not really accurate. Her sound is better assessed as folk, smart, and often fragile without dissipating into insubstantiality. Darby’s roots are strong and deep without ever registering as a mere throwback.

Diana Darby released her debut album, Naked Time, in 2000. Her next two followed in rather quick succession, Fantasia Ball in ’03 and The Magdalene Laundries in ’05. Roughly seven years elapsed before I V (Intravenous) came out. It was also her vinyl debut. Otterson ended an even longer stretch, although she started working on the record in the midst of the COVID pandemic.

Darby has related that a few of Otterson’s songs were written years before and stored on an old hard drive. After rediscovering them, she recorded them anew, and their inclusion on her latest strengthens the cohesiveness of her sound across a quarter-century. Generally recording solo, Darby struggled through difficulties this time out due to problems with a Digital Audio Workstation (she’d previously recorded to 4-track cassette). The good news is that none of those issues are apparent in Otterson’s finished sequence, which is as accomplished as any of her prior albums.

Along with electric and acoustic guitar, Darby plays a little piano on Otterson. She welcomes the contribution of JZ Barrell on guitars, bass, and percussion, as the album, with one exception, was recorded in Chicago and Brooklyn. The songs are vivid and textured, with opener “April” establishing an ethereal gentleness that’s persistent but not dominant.

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Genesis, the sole album from the teen femme duo Wendy & Bonnie was released in 1969 to no fanfare, but over the decades it has quietly grown into a solid cult item. 2008 found Sundazed issuing a 2CD/3LP set with a massive helping of extra tracks, but that still in-print edition is a reward for the record’s most ardent converts.

Calling Genesis a period piece will automatically impact some readers as a putdown, in part due to many folks’ yardstick of measurement for the art of the past relating directly to whether or not it’s relevant to right now. On the other end of the spectrum, at least a few of Wendy & Bonnie’s most passionate fans surely prize the duo’s only LP precisely because it is indeed so evocative of the time and circumstances of its making.

Though I’m generalizing, those who love Genesis purely for its Flower Power era ambience are likely to value Roger Corman’s ’67 film The Trip over the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler’s first directorial effort, ‘69’s Medium Cool. The former is a spirited teen-exploitation flick that uses clichés and stereotypes as inspired playthings, but the latter is a one of kind motion picture with a seriousness of intent specifically concerning the upheavals of the tumultuous year of 1968.

And people who expressly use the term period piece as an insult could easily be prone to burdening The Trip and Medium Cool with that problematic bag, though with the possibility that Corman’s movie might be “appreciated” as camp and Wexler’s effort referenced as symbolic of the folly inherent in attempting a formally challenging, legitimately political cinema. And if the denigrators were asked to pair Genesis with one of these films on the basis of shared traits, I’m pretty sure the majority would choose The Trip.

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Far too frequently, when pop acts and rock bands attempt comebacks, the results register as disappointing. By extension, sometimes even good examples benefit from diminished expectations. This is not the case with The Searchers’ unexpected return to studio activity, the fruits of which are collected on Another Night: The Sire Recordings 1979-1981. Utterly avoiding nostalgia without straining for the new, they simply tapped into the period’s melodic-rock upsurge, and the albums’ meager commercial fortunes remain something of a stumper. 

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating; Rhino’s DIY compilation series, which emerged in one nine-volume splat back in 1993, delivered a consistently killer ride, and the four pop entries (two each for the US and UK) additionally served as an education for ears that’d missed out on much of the melodic action situated between ’75 and ’83. For one example, Starry Eyes – UK Pop II (1978-79) included the Yachts, Joe Jackson, Bram Tchaikovsky, Mo-Dettes, and naturally, The Records (as their classic titled the set) along with an intriguing track by The Searchers.

While familiar with and quite fond of the band’s ’60s material for the Pye label (released by Kapp in the US), I initially thought this was some other Searchers, as there isn’t another ’60s-era outfit on any of the DIY discs. Discarding the shrink wrap clarified matters, and listening to “Hearts in Her Eyes,” which opened the band’s ’79 LP The Searchers (just Searchers in the UK) drove home the wisdom of their inclusion, as they mingled with a younger generation without a snag (the song was written by The Records’ Will Birch and John Wicks) and sounded not at all like a dusted-off, reanimated relic.

Fact is, The Searchers never quit. Instead, after numerous attempts to put platters into the racks faltered post-’60s heyday, they just set their sights on the cabaret circuit, which, if far from glamourous, was preferable to desperately jumping onto a series of stylistic bandwagons in hopes of regaining lost success. That they didn’t soil their public image by going psych or hard rock or glam surely helped stoke Seymour Stein’s interest in getting them back into the studio.

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Simon Hanes has played varied roles in an assortment of projects over the last 15 years, including the experimental surf band Tsons Of Tsunami, the Italian soundtrack-pop ensemble Tredici Bacci, and even Guerilla Toss in their wild early no wave period, but it’s his skill as a composer, arranger, and conductor that shapes his brilliant new effort Gargantua, which comes out March 27 on compact disc and digital through Pyroclastic Records.

Hanes brings together trios of soprano vocalists, French hornists, trombonists, electric bassists, and drummers to realize a vision that pulls from an array of influences, amongst them 16th-century writer François Rabelais, contemporary heavy metal, 20th-century Classical composer Edgard Varèse, and the Volcanoes of Hawai’i. The complete work is boldly maximal and thrillingly precise with outbursts of the ecstatic that can teeter on the precipice of the delirious.

In addition to the outfits listed above, Simon Hanes is part of the noise/improv quartet GNR8RZ with Anthony Coleman, Grant Calvin Weston, and Aliya Ultan, the experimental electronic noise-rock quartet Shimmer with Anina Ivry-Block, Nina Ryser, and Paco Cathcart, and is a collaborator in various configurations with JG Thirlwell, including Xordox.

Hanes has also worked extensively with John Zorn, including as part of the thrash metal/improv trio Trigger. There’s additionally a trio with Anthony Coleman and Brian Chase to consider, plus his orchestration and conduction for Hal Willner’s album Angelheaded Hipster: A Tribute To Marc Bolan.

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Remembering Paul Atkinson, born on this day in 1946. —Ed.

With three enduring hit singles, the last of which derives from a classic album that’s as redolent of its era as any, The Zombies aren’t accurately classified as underrated, but it’s also right to say that the potential of much of their catalog went unfulfilled while they were extant. Since their breakup, subsequent generations have dug into that body of work, which has aged rather well, and right now nearly all of it can be found in Varèse Sarabande’s The Complete Studio Recordings, a 5LP collection released in celebration of the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For anyone cultivating a shelf of ’60s pop-rock vinyl, this collection is a smart acquisition.

The Zombies began cohering as a band around 1961-’62 in St Albans, Hertfordshire UK. By the time they debuted on record in ’64 the lineup had solidified, featuring lead vocalist-guitarist Colin Blunstone, keyboardist Rod Argent, guitarist Paul Atkinson, bassist Chris White, and drummer Hugh Grundy. That’s how it would remain until their breakup in December of ’67. Rightly considered part of the mid-’60s British Invasion, The Zombies’ stature in the context of this explosion basically rests on the success of two singles, both far more popular in the US than in the band’s home country.

Those hits, “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No,” each made the Billboard Top 10 (the former all the way to No. 2) and respectively open sides one and two of the US version of their first album, a move suggesting confidence on the part of their label Parrot that, as the needle worked its way inward, listeners wouldn’t become dismayed or bored by a drop-off in quality.

That assurance was well-founded. While “She’s Not There” is an utter pop gem, thriving on perfectly-judged instrumental construction (in its original, superior mono version with Grundy’s added drum input) and emotional breadth that’s found it long-eclipsing mere oldies nostalgia, and “Tell Her No” a more relaxed yet crisp follow-up, their talents were established beyond those two songs, even if nothing else on The Zombies quite rises to the same heights of quality.

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There are few things finer on this perpetually spinning planet than a compilation dedicated to musical rediscoveries originally grooved into shellac, particularly when the bountiful selections are reissued on 2LP. That’s exactly what Sublime Frequencies has done with Indian Talking Machine Part Two: Instrumental Gems From The 78rpm Era; it’s a collection 26 tracks deep with all the contents recorded in India.

Produced by Robert Millis of Climax Golden Twins, with selections drawn from his personal collection, this follow-up extends the magnificence of the first volume, released in 2016 and also produced by Millis. It’s available March 20.

The first volume of Indian Talking Machine is a truly deluxe release, collecting 46 tracks on two compact discs and combining them with a book loaded with over 300 photographs, track notes, and an essay from producer Robert Millis. The kicker is that the first set was issued as a solitary edition of 1,000. That means when someone elects to sell their copy, it goes for some considerable scratch. But the music is available digitally, which is nice for listeners on a budget.

This second installment comes a decade later, this time on double vinyl with fewer selections but still quite generous with a 12-page booklet insert. The musicians utilize a variety of instruments, including shehnai, tabla, pakhawaj, violin, kashta-tarang, sarangi, clarinet, jalatarang, been, sundri, Saraswati vina, dilruba, sarod, kazoo, piano, vichitra vina, flute, nadaswaram, and whistle. The recording dates span over half a century, from 1904 to 1959.

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In 2008, Jon Irabagon won the Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition. Since then, his productivity as a player, composer, and improviser has been immense. His latest recording, just released on CD and digital through his own label Irabbagast Records, is Focus Out. It offers seven pieces featuring his quartet with Matt Mitchell on piano and Fender Rhodes, Chris Lightcap on electric bass, and Dan Weiss on drums, plus guests: KOKAYI on vocals, Donny McCaslin and Mark Shim on tenor sax, Miles Okazaki on guitar, and Dave Ballou on trumpet. Irabagon plays alto on this energetic and adventurous set.

Jon Irabagon was solidly on the scene prior to winning the Monk Sax Competition, most notably in Mostly Other People Do the Killing, a mind-bendingly proficient ensemble that could grapple with the grand span of jazz history through a seamless combination of virtuosity and unconventionality, with occasional stabs of humor.

As he played on 11 of Mostly Other People Do the Killing’s releases up to 2017, Irabagon also joined ensembles led by drummers Barry Altschul and William Hooker, trumpeter Dave Douglas, and guitarist Mary Halvorson. Additionally, numerous recordings in co-leadership mode have been released along with an increasing number of his own albums.

Having landed the opportunity through the Monk Competition victory to cut a record as leader for the jazz label Concord, the resulting set, The Observer, spotlighted him in straight-ahead mode with top-flight backing including trumpeter Nicholas Payton, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Rufus Reid, drummer Victor Lewis, and on one track, a duet with pianist Bertha Hope.

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