Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Remembering Joe Strummer, born on this date in 1952. —Ed.

Vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter John Graham Mellor, better known by his recording and performance handle Joe Strummer, was a co-founder of one of the most important, and in the view of some, the very finest band in UK punk rock’s original wave. That would be The Clash, but the man’s activities preceded and extended far beyond that group. The Ignition label spotlighted the results with Joe Strummer 001, totaling 35 tracks, including a dozen unreleased.

It can feel (and will surely be read as) contrarian to say it, but I’ve never been greatly enthusiastic over The Clash. Sure, the first two albums, ’77’s The Clash and the following year’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope, are essential, and the third, ’79’s London Calling arguably so, but when they took a nosedive in quality after that they did so with gusto, following up a double album with triple album Sandinista!, a display of excess that no matter how well-intentioned sent them into a tailspin from which they never recovered, though folks who discovered them through the rather tepid pop move Combat Rock might disagree.

The bigger problem, at least for me, was how the band came to represent what I’ll call the Springsteenization of punk rock. That is, The Clash were often championed, well into the 1980s after their breakup, as the exception to the rule that punk rock sucked. By extension, certain folks frequently openly professed Clash-fandom as a way to prove they weren’t complete moldy figs.

Now, most of my punk-loving friends adored The Clash, and I could surely listen to them (the good stuff, anyway) without trouble; merely appreciating the group wasn’t a problem. It’s just that loving their output while deriding The Damned and Buzzcocks and The Lurkers, and yes indeed the Sex Pistols (to limit myself to a short list of UK outfits) was and remains downright suspect.

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Remembering Isaac Hayes, born on this day in 1942. —Ed.

Released in 1969, Hot Buttered Soul brought Isaac Hayes widespread attention as he helped lead the charge into a new decade of soul music innovations. An impeccable album in a genre that hitherto had been largely dominated by singles, Hayes’ achievement is a perfect addition to Craft Recordings’ Small Batch series. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl at RTI with Neotech’s VR900 compound using lacquers cut from the master tapes by Bernie Grundman, the edition of 3,000 arrived in stores in 2024.

Given how Hot Buttered Soul has consistently pulled in new listeners across a span of generations since its smash hit release, it can be easy to misplace the record’s reality as a groundbreaker. Featuring two songs on each side, the LP did something almost unheard of, hitting the marketplace without any accompanying singles; radio edits of “Walk on By” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” were subsequently issued (and charted) after the record’s unexpected success.

That Stax (through subsidiary Enterprise) allowed Hayes such creative freedom is not only unusual but also pretty risky, as the set’s bold conception couldn’t have been inexpensive. The scoop is that Hot Buttered Soul became a reality through Stax honcho Al Bell’s directive to the label’s active roster to cut a slew of albums for release in a very tight timeframe, a decision made because Stax had lost its entire back catalog to Atlantic Records.

Presenting Isaac Hayes, the artist’s debut from 1968, proved a disappointment, and to nobody more than Hayes himself, who responded to Bell’s album initiative with a demand for complete creative control. That the resulting LP received the necessary promotional push to take root with consumers and then catch fire is a testament to Hayes’ talent but also to Bell’s stature as a record man.

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Formed in the early 1970s by rock impresario Kim Fowley in a manner similar to his more famous aggregation The Runaways, The Hollywood Stars existed in the space betwixt three big rocks, specifically glam, hard, and punk. Although positioned for success, the band’s existence was rocky, and they released a sole album in 1977 before breaking up and becoming the stuff of legend. Archival albums and a reformation followed, with Hey! L.A! emerging as the band’s second LP of new material. It’s a solid effort out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Rum Bar Records.

The short description of The Hollywood Stars is that Kim Fowley assembled them as a West Coast answer to the New York Dolls. Some might be turned off by the blatant attempt to manufacture a group, but Fowley was an old-school figure who unabashedly functioned as part of the music business. That he was seeking to create a version of a band that was struggling on the fringes of glam and proto-punk reflects Fowley’s habit of chalking up his successes from the often disreputable margins.

The Hollywood Stars are also associated with two Fowley songs, “Escape” and “King of the Night Time World,” that are better known through contemporaneous recordings by Alice Cooper and Kiss, respectively. Neither song is part of the self-titled 1977 album by the Hollywood Stars, a set cut for Arista after a failed dalliance with Columbia Records and a prior breakup.

Shine Like a Radio: The Great Lost Album of 1974, released in 2013 by the Last Summer label, resurrects sessions for Columbia that included versions of “Escape” and “King of the Night Time World.” Although far from a brain-melter stylistically, the record is a fine listening experience, as it provides a glimpse into an upstart new thing transpiring on the California rock landscape of the era.

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Veteran producer-musician Bleu has a new record set for release. Tapping into the power pop mainline, the cuts that comprise Sargeant Pepper Grinder, the Los Angeles-based artist’s seventh album, are bold in conception and bright in execution. It’s radio-ready pop-rock with infusions of glam and flashes of tuneful psychedelia. It’s out on August 20 through Miracle Records with the vinyl mastered by Licorice Pizza Records.

Sargeant Pepper Grinder is coming out at the right time, as it is very much a volume-up, windows-down, acceleration-to-the-floor kind of record. As the tracks pile up, the scale broadens considerably, but the shebang starts in a mode closer to singer-songwriter pop with a baroque psych tinge.

That’s the title track, which will get a reprise in the record’s tail end, but next is the catchy stomping rocker “Start a Band,” loaded with guitar zest and anthemic dynamic shifts wild enough to turn even the most finicky power pop fan’s frown upside down. Next is “This Song Won’t Sell,” which swings from calm and contemplative to pummeling and explosive in a manner that’s maximal but engagingly non-trite.

“Where the Colors Bleed,” which features guest vocals by Los Angeles musician Carly Paige, finds Bleu hanging in the same neighborhood that housed Jeff Lynne in the second half of the 1970s. “Scooch” is just as catchy but considerably more glammed-out, with adrenaline-gush momentum, a ripping guitar solo, and a rave-up ending plus high vocal notes galore.

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Celebrating Colin Moulding on his 71st birthday. —Ed.

In their early days, XTC released a copious amount of singles, with this output appropriately corralled onto a handful of compilations, situating the band as one of the more interesting acts produced in the late-‘70s UK. Amongst these songs were the three cuts that comprise their debut, ‘77’s “3D EP.” Many consider it a strong but minor first effort in a trajectory toward future greatness, but examining them apart from the group’s initial prolific tide provided this writer with the key that unlocked XTC’s substantial value.

By the time I became acquainted with them in the mid-‘80s, XTC was essentially a critics’ fave, largely functioning as an album band. This was the era of Skylarking, and while “Dear God,” the b-side of that LP’s first single “Grass,” kicked up quite a bit of dust via MTV and even replaced “Mermaid Smiled” on the US version of the disc, in the US it only managed to land on a now defunct barometer of radio play named the Billboard Album Rock Chart, where it found modest success.

And on their home turf, it barely even entered the Singles Chart, peaking at the severe back end at #99. This really is no surprise, since “Dear God” is a truly eloquent dispatch of religious disbelief, a song that likely would’ve caused their countryman Bertrand Russell to stand up and cheer had he only lived to hear it.

“Dear God” was so cogent (while simultaneously manifesting a well-harnessed anger) that more than a few believers in my personal circle considered it a legitimate expression of doubt and questioning rather than quickly dismissing it as merely sacrilegious. The tune’s that good. But even though ‘86’s Skylarking and its follow-up Oranges & Lemons were both strong sellers and the group was very popular on college radio, the rise of their singles during this period seemed mainly tied to video play.

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Celebrating Terry Adams on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

The music of NRBQ is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s great paradoxical pleasures. How can a band this accessible and joyous be banished to the musical fringe? It’s a true stumper. But if widespread success was denied them, the group endured and excelled through relentless bar gigs, college radio play, and via the persistent word of mouth of the converted. Their early days found them hopping labels only to be dumped after disappointing sales, but instead of quitting, they smartly decided to put out their own records. 1977’s All Hopped Up was the first, and for new listeners it makes a fine introduction.

Their name originally stood for the New Rhythm and Blues Quintet. Formed by guitarist Steve Ferguson, pianist Terry Adams, drummer Tom Staley, bassist Joey Spampinato (aka Jody St. Nicholas), and vocalist Frank Gadler, they combined a stylistic eclecticism—the titular R&B, rockabilly, early Brit-invasion pop, jazz, and even more into a highly potent and easily digestible brew. But if one possesses an unusual level of diversity, constant factors were also at play. Foremost was a lighthearted sincerity about their shared influences, but NRBQ are also among the least egocentric bands, both musically and in terms of personality, to have spanned decades of neglect.

They came together in Florida but moved to New York City, where they quickly gathered steam, even playing Fillmore East, and eventually found themselves signed to Columbia Records. This resulted in a truly swell self-titled debut in ’69 that didn’t sell squat. And that’s not really a surprise; if the Q’s long-term lack of a wide following is hard to fathom, in the year of Woodstock, they weren’t exactly the height of trendiness. What to make of a group that covered Eddie Cochran, Sun Ra, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and Bobby Channel’s oldies station rotation warhorse “Hey Baby” all on the same album? The high number of covers alone was a little divergent from the era’s norm of boldfaced originality.

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Although he never rose to star status, alto saxophonist, composer, and improvisor Marion Brown is a crucial figure in the history of free jazz, playing on a few records by those bigger names, leading a bunch of energetic bands, and blazing trails into the transitional 1970s and beyond. The new limited edition CD and digital release Live in Europe 1968 & 1972 deepens the riches of an already considerable discography as it derives from two key periods in Brown’s musical development. The set is out now through the discerning and persevering Lithuanian label NoBusiness Records.

Lots of folks with knowledge of the jazz avant-garde are hip to Marion Brown through his earliest recordings. Those would be Archie Shepp’s Fire Music and John Coltrane’s Ascension, with both vastly important albums dating from 1965 and released by the Impulse label. As a groundbreaking large band experiment, Ascension is likely the better-known of the two recordings today, but Fire Music is more indicative of the path Brown would follow on his own albums.

His debut as a leader was The Marion Brown Quartet, released by ESP-Disk in 1966 with Alan Shorter (Wayne’s bro) on trumpet for three tracks, Bennie Maupin on tenor sax on the track where Shorter lays out, Reggie Johnson on bass except for one track where Sun Ra associate Ronnie Boykins steps in, and Rashied Ali on drums. It’s a solid session that established Brown’s ability to strike a sweet equilibrium between compositional potency and high-energy improv.

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The Los Angeles-based guitar duo Duffy x Uhlmann release their second album, Hot Creek, on August 14, a solid set of 13 vivid instrumentals that branch out into unexpected sonic terrain beyond the vistas established on Doubles, the 2023 debut by this collaboration. While still recognizably made with guitars, the pair’s latest offers stretches that are less easily taggable as belonging to a string-oriented thing. Instead, we enter into the realms of pure experimental sound that’s appealingly post-category. Hot Creek is available on vinyl (creek water clear, classic black), cassette (smoky gray), and digital through Orindal Records.

Along with extensive session and live work, Meg Duffy is known as the sole permanent member of the band project Hand Habits. Born in Amsterdam, New York, Duffy swapped coasts for the big burg of Los Angeles. An equally sensitive and dexterous player, their studio and touring credits include The War on Drugs, Sylvan Esso, William Tyler, Weyes Blood, Flock of Dimes, Amber Arcades, Perfume Genius, and SASAMI.

In addition to Hand Habits, Duffy is half of yes/and, a collaboration with producer Joel Ford that cut an eponymous album in 2021. As a duo set, it compares interestingly with the trajectory they have taken in partnership with Gregory Uhlmann. As stated, Doubles is a clear exercise in guitars intermingling melodically, with casual precision, and in patterns of flowing intricacy. Hot Creek is frequently less sonically specific, without losing focus, and is a development that is at once intriguing and satisfying.

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Listeners smitten with the sound of the drone who haven’t made the acquaintance of Eleh are in for an utter low-end treat. On the scene for two decades, the project of John Brien has stood apart from the tide of like-minded artists in this rewarding field, in part through intensity and the robustness of the tones he sustains. Eleh’s debut, Floating Frequencies / Intuitive Synthesis I, was released in 2006 through Important Records, the label Brien has run since its beginnings in 2001. Important remains the source of this album’s very welcome reissue, which is out now on vinyl and digital.

It wasn’t until 2020 that John Brien made it publicly known that he was the person behind Eleh. By this point, the project had released a significant number of albums. Even if exactly who was responsible for Eleh (one person? More?) wasn’t a burning question or a built-in aspect of the project’s allure (ala Jandek before he came out of the shadows), learning who was responsible was still appreciated. Drone music is human music, after all.

Eleh’s reclusiveness did bring an air of mystery that widened the distance between his work and others in the drone field. This isn’t to equate calculated anonymity with insularity. A sizable number of records in the Eleh discography are splits, with those sharing a side of vinyl with Brien including such major figures as Pauline Oliveros, Sun Circle, Nana April Jun, Ellen Fullman, Duane Pitre, Tara Jane O’Neil, Christina Kubisch, Richard Chartier, and Caterina Barbieri.

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Celebrating Kenny Burrell on his 95th birthday. —Ed.

In March of 1958 producer and Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock organized a session with two up-and-comers in a very fertile scene. Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane was the result, pairing one of the most consistent guitarists in Modern Jazz with the now long renowned tenor saxophonist. It took over five years for those recordings to hit the retail racks via the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz, but the contents have been reissued numerous times since, reinforcing the high level of play. 

Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane is certainly a notable album. While Coltrane had played with guitarists before, this set is the only studio album to feature him leading (in this instance, co-leading) a band with that instrument (Wes Montgomery did join Coltrane’s sextet featuring Eric Dolphy for some West Coat live dates in 1961, even playing the Monterey Jazz Festival, but any tapes of those performances have yet to surface).

That this album sat in the vaults for half a decade will understandably lead some to assume it’s a lesser recording, but Weinstock had amassed quite a bit of Coltrane studio material while he had him under contract, sessions methodically issued as the saxophonist’s star continued to rise, often with Coltrane posthumously designated as leader.

To expand a bit, Coltrane and Burrell do play together in a sextet for three tracks on The Cats, a 1957 recording released in ’59. Issued as a leaderless date (sometimes credited to the Prestige All Stars), it sure sounds like it was conceived as a Tommy Flanagan session; the other two tracks feature the pianist in trio with bassist Doug Watkins and drummer Louis Hayes (trumpeter Idrees Sulieman completes the sextet).

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Fans of early blues and jazz have reason to celebrate, as the Black Swan label and the George H. Buck Jazz Foundation have collected and freshly released the works of the legendary vocalist Ma Rainey as Mother of the Blues: the Complete Paramount Recordings 1923-1928, combining five compact discs with a 106-page hardcover book.

Offering a wealth of well-ordered biographical and musical info by David Sager and savvy appreciations from Dom Flemons and Gaye Todd Adegbalola, plus all of Rainey’s 118 sides, including unreleased alternates in the cleanest fidelity ever, Mother of the Blues is certain to be one of the best box sets of 2026.

For far too long, Ma Rainey’s enduring rank as “Mother of the Blues” was more understood than truly felt. This comes down to the joint compromising factors of the original recordings’ poor fidelity and the lack of care (or interest) on the part of the reissue labels in both improving the clarity of the recordings. To be fair, as detailed by Mother of the Blues’ restoration and remastering wizard Doug Benson in the set’s book, removing the haze of damage from 78rpm discs is far from easy.

Also, as time passes, it’s vital to find the right experts and enthusiasts to effectively expand upon Rainey’s sheer skill, her adaptability, and her refusal to dilute her brilliance in pursuit of greater popularity. The recordings are a century old. With enhanced audio clarity comes increased understanding.

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Remembering Jimmy Cliff in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

The phenomenon of the Comeback Album used to be cringe-inducing, largely because the results would far too often get it wrong. However, as a testament to human development, the last few decades have seen a gradual increase in actually getting it right. Happily, Jimmy Cliff’s Rebirth falls onto the successful side of the comeback street, mainly because it picks a smart strategy and then sticks with it. Modestly scaled, it would be hyperbole to call it a true return to form, but it does prove that Mr. Cliff still has the goods.

Yes, the road to a wickedly hot musical eternity is paved with good intentions. No musician deliberately sets out to make a record that’s truly, non-ironically bad, after all. And nobody that loves The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World, a record often cited by journalists scribing for list-happy magazines or websites as one of the Worst of All Time (a musical cousin to Ed Wood’s film Plan 9 From Outer Space essentially), I mean sincerely values it as a musical document and not as the aural equivalent to a velvet painting, would describe it as a “bad” record. And the Wiggins’ Sisters sure as hell weren’t trying to make music that would fall under the (admittedly ambiguous) definition of “bad”.

Again, back in the day, comeback records were often just filthy with benevolent intentions. Somebody with contacts in the industry couldn’t shake the nagging insistence that it would be a great idea if a certain artist or band got back into the studio with the aim of recapturing the special magic that for numerous reasons had been lost; maybe the act was a huge commercial entity that somehow lost their way, perhaps a cult musician or group getting a belated push after being afflicted with indifference, or possibly just a name that was around for so long that total disfavor befell them on the road to inevitable rediscovery.

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Celebrating Gerald Casale on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

A number of years ago, the first of two exceptional Devo compilations hit the racks, and along with its counterpart from the following year, it provided a wealth of insight into the early work of an often misunderstood band. Unfortunately, neither installment received a US vinyl pressing at the time, but courtesy of the outstanding reissue label Superior Viaduct, that lack has been corrected with panache. Any listeners curious about the sound of Devo in their wily ’74-’77 stage should begin with Hardcore Devo: Volume One.

When looked at through a commercial lens and in mainly New Wave-ist terms, it can be easy to overlook just how stridently critical Devo was of the culture that spawned them. And like many first-wave American punk outfits, by the time they began impacting a wider consumer consciousness in the second half of the ‘70s, the group’s members were actually full-blown adults choosing to express their dissatisfaction with contemporary society through a prickly, rough-edged music that stirred up a lot of negative reactions amongst a sturdy and steadily growing base of support.

Some might quibble with the description of Devo as punk, but in the form’s early stages, before its moves became defined as largely rudimentary and classicist, the band fit into this emerging milieu as easily as New York’s Suicide or their fellow Ohioans Pere Ubu did. That Devo now seems like stylistic outliers to many observers is almost entirely wrapped up in retrospective “rockist” assessments of punk that, when applied to the music’s invention, are actually a little (or a lot) narrow.

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Originally released in 2022 on cassette, Classic Fevers and Chills is a striking duo session from vocalist Ayami Suzuki and guitarist Rob Noyes. An important facet of the recording is that it was the result of a first-time collaboration, essentially improvised rather than composed. Intense and beautiful as the vocals soar and the strings resonate, the meeting produces a distinct form of duo exchange. It’s available now on vinyl and digital through Feeding Tube Records.

Based in Tokyo, Ayami Suzuki traveled abroad to Ireland and the UK for study before returning home and commencing a series of recordings, some solo, others duo and trio. Suzuki’s musical approach can be assessed as ambient while avoiding the fallback stylistic norms associated with this frankly overused descriptor.

Part of the reason Suzuki’s sound is so consistently interesting relates to her range, both alone and as she bounces ideas off those chosen collaborators. There is a folk influence, explicitly related by Suzuki, that can be heard as far back as her first physical release, the 2020 cassette single “Unknown Beach,” released by the sandfountain label.

This folk root isn’t always discernible, and when it does come through, there’s not a trace of cliché. More prevalent is an experimental air that’s neither tangibly academic nor even avant-garde in nature. Instead, Suzuki’s work connects as more akin to the deep underground of the early 2000s, a scene that was equally aligned with noisy racket on one side and folky strum glisten on the other, as it opened up free and freaky vistas in between, often on cassette.

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Celebrating Andy Mackay on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

Bursting onto the scene 50 years ago, Roxy Music’s blend of glam rock and art rock proved highly influential while being impossible to imitate, as the music of singer Bryan Ferry, synthesist Brian Eno, saxophonist Andy Mackay, guitarist Phil Manzanera, and drummer Paul Thompson was simply drenched in personality. Virgin/UMe’s vinyl reissue program of the band’s eight studio albums began with the debut Roxy Music and its 1973 follow-up For Your Pleasure, both half-speed mastered at Abbey Road Studios by the engineer Miles Showell. Bluntly, these four sides of wax are indispensable to any collection of 20th-century rock music.

Looking back on it, it feels wholly appropriate to describe Roxy Music as coming out of nowhere in 1972. Their debut LP arrived sans any pre-release singles, with “Virginia Plain” b/w “The Numberer,” the band’s first 45, cut just short of a month after Roxy Music’s release, a short enough span that its hit A-side was added to nearly all later pressings of the album (on the subject, please note that Virgin/UMe’s release retains the sequence of the UK first edition).

The nature of the band’s arrival is nicely encapsulated by Roxy Music’s opening track “Re-make/Re-model.” After a passage of what might be intended as dinner party ambiance (shades of Ferry the pure sophisticate to come), Roxy explodes forth, maximally but methodically, and by song’s end it’s clear that in this particular outfit at this point, nobody was taking a back seat (well, except maybe bassist Graham Simpson, who exited after the LP’s release, with Rik Kenton stepping in for “Virginia Plain,” only to be quickly replaced on For Your Pleasure by John Porter).

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