Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Remembering Peter Tosh, born on this day in 1944. —Ed.

Live at My Father’s Place 1978 offers crisp audio of a Peter Tosh performance originally broadcast live on the radio via New York’s WLIR FM. While it’s unlikely to alter many opinions, positive or negative, of Tosh’s work at this stage of his career, it does accurately represent the man’s musical direction during a commercially productive and musically transitional period. 

Flash back to 1978, and Peter Tosh was in the midst of his most fertile commercial run. That year saw the release of Bush Doctor, his first album for Rolling Stones Records, a set that found him duetting with Mick Jagger on a Temptations tune. If Tosh wasn’t reggae’s biggest star at the time, he was sitting pretty secure in the number two spot.

While album-focused listeners might disagree, Peter Tosh’s early recordings endure as his strongest work, cohering into an unimpeachable stretch of singles both solo and as part of the Wailers; alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston, the Wailers eventually cut a string of crucial LPs in the early ’70s, before Tosh and Livingston’s departure and the Wailers effectively shifting to Marley’s backing band.

However, the appraisals of Tosh’s post-Equal Rights LPs are decidedly varied. This is partly due to an increased attempt to score crossover success, which, as detailed above, was fully realized. Although he’d been frequenting studios since the mid-’60s, Tosh didn’t release his full-length solo debut until 1976, after signing with Columbia. The record, Legalize It, remains his best-known, and for reasons that should be obvious: for decades, its title track was an anthem for folks who were tired of being hassled for their stash.

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Claire Cronin is a Berkeley, CA-based singer-songwriter whose music can be characterized as folk, though her latest album, The Bruise, offers lyrical heft combined with instrumental edge and intensity that transcend mere categorization. Cronin is also a scholar and writer of poetry and non-fiction; published in 2020, Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God, brought her considerable acclaim.

Strengthening the thematic connections that distinguish Cronin’s work, The Bruise is a pleasure to absorb through repeated listens. It’s out now on vinyl through Orindal Records and on cassette through A Moth Object. An accompanying lyrics and art zine featuring illustrations by Cronin is also available through Bandcamp.

As a musician, Claire Cronin’s work spans back to 2009, though the earliest release that’s readily available is the “Proof of Names” digital EP from 2011. That set and two more digital EPs, “Football” from 2012 and “Blacklegs” from 2014, are the basis for the “Best of” cassette Over and Through, which came out via Ba Da Bing in 2015, arriving ahead of Came Down a Storm, her proper full-length debut from the following year.

A cohesive and assured collection of songs, Came Down a Storm was produced by John Dieterich of Deerhoof, who contributed instrumentally and collaborated on the arrangements for the album. Next came Big Dread Moon, Cronin’s first for Orindal, which appears to have been self-produced, though Shahzad Ismaily, along with playing numerous instruments, recorded and mixed the set. It’s easily as fulfilling a listen as its predecessor. Just as solid is Bloodless, released in 2021, with Dieterich returning to mix, master, and play on that record.

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Remembering Art Tatum, born on this date in 1909. —Ed.

Fans of jazz piano and Art Tatum in particular have reason to rejoice, as Jewels in the Treasure Box: The 1953 Chicago Blue Note Jazz Club Recordings offers 39 previously unreleased performances from Tatum’s trio with guitarist Everett Barksdale and bassist Slam Stewart. Recorded by the Blue Note Jazz Club’s proprietor Frank Holzfeind, this set is a major discovery that deepens a persistently undervalued side of the pianist’s artistry.

Born in 1909, Art Tatum’s style evolved from stride piano as exemplified by Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, and Luckey Roberts. Importantly, he was also impacted by the innovations of his contemporary Earl “Fatha” Hines. When assessing the key influences on Modern Jazz piano, Hines and Tatum hover at the top of the list.

The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz includes two selections by Tatum, both featuring him solo. As a student of stride, Tatum was a technical powerhouse with great stamina who thrived without accompaniment. Lennie Tristano was once quoted as saying that Tatum and Hines were the only two pianists who could deliver jazz’s essential swing while playing alone, and solo is the mode for which Tatum remains most celebrated.

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My Daughter the Broad is the second album from indie rock’s behemoths of bad taste, the Frogs. Out of print for decades, the record has been expanded into a double set, including eight bonus tracks. Alternately funny and profoundly disturbing, this might be this demented duo’s best album. The reissue is out now on vinyl from the Foreign Leisure label.

It all started in relative normalcy. In the manner of myriad others before and since, the brothers Dennis and Jimmy Flemion formed a band. The year was 1980, and that band was the Frogs. It took most of the decade for the Milwaukee-based duo to gain traction in the era’s underground scene, and when labels and listeners began taking notice, it was not necessarily in the manner they’d planned.

A self-released eponymous album emerged in 1988 without much fanfare. It’s a perfectly fine, occasionally quite likable, and never uninteresting set of (alternately) art-tinged glam-pop or glammed-out art-pop. Still, it was cut in a studio and only hints at the home-recorded mayhem that emerged on their follow-up, It’s Only Right and Natural, which was issued by Homestead Records the next year.

That album collected what the Frogs have described as “made-up songs,” meaning they were whipped together and quickly taped at home without the intention of being released for wider public consumption. While making the rounds among those close to the Frogs, a cassette reportedly first landed in Steve Albini’s hands and then with Gerard Cosloy at Homestead.

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Remembering Melvin Franklin, born on this day in 1942. —Ed.

On March 21, 2025, Elemental Music concluded the impressive string of reissues that constitutes the label’s Motown Sound Collection with a 180-gram edition of The Temptations’ Psychedelic Shack, the groundbreaking Norman Whitfield-produced LP from 1970. It’s an appropriate finale for a series that has divided its focus between the classic Motown approach to pop R&B and the company’s later forays into funkier and more expansive sonic terrain.

Psychedelic Shack isn’t Motown’s first dive into the style, whose impetus for Barry Gordy’s enterprise has often been attributed to Sly and the Family Stone. However, that’s somewhat reductive, as in terms of pop sophistication, the 5th Dimension almost certainly served up some inspiration to Gordy. Just as importantly to Norman Whitfield, as from a contemporary vantage point, psychedelic soul is the innovation upon which the producer’s reputation largely rests.

Attempts to cash in on trends can frequently age like a deli tray left out in the desert sunshine, with the sounds often reeking of the retrograde at the moment of first release. Aging poorly is really not the case with most of Motown’s psych soul output, though that shouldn’t suggest that the company’s intentions weren’t mercantile in nature.

But of course, Motown’s aims were far from purely financial, and the label’s excursion into psychedelic soul set as many trends as it followed them. Often it was both at once. For one example, Psychedelic Shack features two longer numbers, “Take a Stroll Through Your Mind” and “Friendship Train,” that set a standard for Motown album tracks to follow (even as some were released as singles in shorter edits). At the same time, likely being influenced by The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today.”

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Featuring two former members of the California desert rock specialists Thin White Rope, Odom-Kunkel have released their second recording, the 4-song 10-inch EP “Sniffing Spirits,” the set available now via Too Long to Chew Music. Stoo Odom brings the upright bass and vocals, and Roger Kunkel handles the guitar. Rootsy with an experimental, improvised edge, the quality rises with repeated spins.

Thin White Rope was a key band from the desert rock side of the Paisley Underground spectrum, forming in the early 1980s in Davis, CA, and releasing their debut album, Exploring the Axis, in 1985 on Frontier Records. Guitarist Roger Kunkel was in the band from essentially the beginning and remained a participant until they called it quits in 1992.

To the band’s credit, it’s not exactly easy to choose Thin White Rope’s best record. The debut is solid, its follow-up Moonhead (1987) is a little better, and third LP In a Spanish Cave (1988) maintains the quality, but Sack Full of Silver (1990), with its leftfield cover of Can’s “Yoo Doo Right,” likely takes the prize. The final album, The Ruby Sea (1991), is far from a disappointment, however.

Bassist Stoo Odom joined late, playing on The Ruby Sea and the EP “Squatter’s Rights” (also 1991). Odom also plays on The One That Got Away (1993), a double live set documenting Thin White Rope’s final show. That gig took place in Ghent, Belgium, on June 28, 1992. It doesn’t appear that Thin White Rope has ever reunited.

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Remembering Glenn Branca, born on this day in 1948. —Ed.

“Lesson No. 1” is Glenn Branca’s first release as a composer, originally issued in 1980 as a mini-LP on the 99 Records label. Not only does it stand as an avant-garde debut of remarkable assurance, but it’s also a strikingly prescient document, sounding, in retrospect, like a harbinger of indie rock to come.

It was in the late ’80s that many young underground rock listeners first encountered the name Glenn Branca, largely due to the composer/guitarist’s association with Sonic Youth. For folks under the sway of Evol, Sister, and Daydream Nation, those LPs served as a gateway into a subterranean, art-drenched New York City that was extremely alluring, especially to suburbanites who perceived their immediate surroundings as being conspicuously lacking in worthwhile cultural activity.

Those residing in other large US cities often decried NYC’s significance as the country’s art Mecca, but for thousands of young people stuck in towns devoid of an extant scene, reading about and hearing the recorded evidence of the city’s defiant underbelly proved a fascinating antidote to the nagging strains of ‘80’s conformity.

Inquiring minds could browse text on Glenn Branca pretty easily in this era, since his symphonies for multi-guitar orchestras and percussion made for good copy, as did that connection to Sonic Youth and his impact upon Tin Machine, the unjustly maligned crew of the Sales brothers, Reeves Gabrels, and David Bowie (the group once cited their influences as Gene Krupa, Charles Mingus, Jimi Hendrix, Branca, and Mountain.)

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Like many historical compilations, A Walk on the Wild Side: Classic Tracks From L.A.’s Legendary Central Ave. Scene (1944-1955) delivers a succinct soundtrack to a delineated time and place, with the specifics outlined right there in the album’s title. It’s a wild, grooving, wailing, bluesy, jazzy, proto-rock & rolling ride, and one can only hope it’s the first of multiple volumes spotlighting the sounds associated with this fertile historical locale. It’s out now on LP from Shanachie Records.

It’s taken decades to change the perception of the 1950s as an utterly square decade saved from sustained conformist tedium by a gang of majestic African American groundbreakers and the Caucasian wildcats inspired by what they found by defying the color line: Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley, Carl Perkins, and yes indeed, Elvis Presley.

Doo wop’s harmonic wizardry and a bunch of one-shot rockabilly maniacs serve to underscore the belief that there occurred at mid-decade a musical Big Bang of sorts. The reality is that all music is built upon precedent. A Walk on the Wild Side is an exquisite dive into the Great Black Music captured on shellac and vinyl by numerous enterprising labels and sold in shops in the South Central district of Los Angeles.

Side one kicks off with the honking and bar-walking proto-R&R of Big Jay McNeely’s “The Deacon’s Hop,” an instrumental cut for Savoy that topped the R&B chart in 1949. McNeely was noted and captured in photographs as a performance showman, but the sound of the man and his band (with trombonist Britt Woodman subbing for baritone saxophonist brother Bob McNeely) has lost none of its potency on record.

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Remembering Albert Collins, born on this day in 1932. —Ed.

Albert Collins hailed from Texas, and he had the blues. His greatest fame as a guitarist came in the 1980s, but his tenure as a performer and recording artist spanned all the way back to the late ’50s. Truckin’ with Albert Collins serves up a very nice collection of his mid-‘60s work, and it’s chapter one in the story of a major electric blues figure.

It was a long run of albums for Alligator that finally brought Albert Collins sustained and much-deserved recognition. Still, before his association with that long-serving Chicago-based indie, he’d already achieved the status of a Texas master. Along with T-Bone Walker, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Freddie King, and Lightnin’ Hopkins, Collins is an essential component in the Lone Star State’s post-World War II blues progression, and his pre-Alligator material reveals an artistry that thrived on versatility and yet was also quite focused.

However, noting the man’s rise in stature via Bruce Iglauer’s label shouldn’t suggest that Collins was doing his thing under a shroud of total obscurity during the ‘60s, or conversely that the ascension via Alligator was instantaneous (far from it; it was only in the late-‘80s that he was able to pay someone else to drive his tour bus.) The guitarist certainly had his moments during the ‘60s blues boom, and the record that established him as a force was his single for the TCF/Hall label, “Frosty.”

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Remembering Linda McCartney, born on this date in 1941. —Ed.

Paul McCartney was the member of the Fab Four whom so many used to relish knocking around. Whether it was in spirited bar chats or animated discussions at parties, when the tide turned to The Beatles, somebody could always be counted on for a hearty jibe at Macca’s expense. And in my above use of “so many,” I’m generally referring to males, and by “somebody,” I’m specifically speaking of those who indisputably consider John Lennon to be the Best Beatle.

While for those truly devoted fans of the band, there could never be a Worst, for many, Paul was the Square Beatle, a designation not borne out by the facts, for he was as interested in the avant-garde as any other member. Hell, in ’68 he co-produced “I’m the Urban Spaceman” by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for Pete’s sake, an act that places him rather high up on the cool meter. However, others derided him as the Corporate Beatle. And yeah, it’s true that Paul never lost track of the business aspect of the whole affair. Still, his behavior in this regard hasn’t really played out as particularly odious in comparison to other rock star types of not even half his stature or talent.

But both Paul’s image and the assessment of his post-Beatle solo career have rebounded in recent years. Much of this might have to do with the Four’s constantly regenerating fanbase, which is consistently growing older and perhaps letting go of the rebelliousness that once inspired easy identification with Lennon or Harrison. It might also be related to the race for the Coolest Living Beatle being down to him and Ringo “No More Mail, Thanks” Starr.

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Remembering John Coltrane, born on this date in 1926. —Ed.

John Coltrane’s Atlantic period presents an arresting convergence of circumstances. It was a time of raised profile and considerable transition, the artist’s confidence audibly growing as he united jazz tradition and experimentation; most of all, it was an era of major breakthroughs that established the saxophonist as a leader in his field. The Atlantic Years in Mono doesn’t include all of his work for the label, but it ably documents a thrilling era that brought Coltrane to a mainstream audience. 

By the time John Coltrane hooked up with the Ertegun brothers he’d already chalked up a significant list of achievements, serving as a powerful voice in post-bop’s development via the bands of Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, guesting for a track on Sonny Rollins’ Tenor Madness, teaming with Hank Mobley, Al Cohn, and Zoot Simms for Tenor Conclave, and leading bands for Prestige and for one LP Blue Note.

Top billing came with Coltrane in 1957, and next was Blue Train for Blue Note, which many consider to be his first great album. John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio followed in ’58 (aka Traneing In for its ’61 reissue), and Soultrane retained the services of the Garland band. As Coltrane’s fame grew, Prestige would later release nearly a dozen albums under his name from unissued sessions and elevated sideman dates, in turn possibly lending a false impression of the saxophonist as unusually prolific during ’57-’58.

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Celebrating Nick Cave on his 69th birthday. —Ed.

Need a fitting soundtrack for tuning up that rattletrap fuel-guzzling dragster in the garage? Or are you looking for a fab backdrop whist brushing up on the books of the Old Testament, though not for their supposed lessons but rather for their rampant bloodletting and begetting? Maybe you’re desirous of the appropriate musical accompaniment for the dilapidated trailer-park whiskey-still explosion finale in your yet to be filmed epic screenplay? Well, a suitable listening for all three circumstances is Junkyard by The Birthday Party.

These days, Nick Cave is a well-respected man of letters, an unabashed litterateur whose eternally thin visage gets brief cameo spots in the big Hollywood films that happen to sport his scripts. Indeed, he can be located in Lawless, currently (hopefully) playing in a theatre near you as directed by his friend and collaborator John Hillcoat. But it should also be noted that once upon a time, Cave was a completely punk-centric scribe, his scrawling taken seriously by only a small handful beyond the ‘80s subterranean music playground. In fact, his double duty as a musician and writer placed him in the direct company of such names as Henry Rollins, Lydia Lunch, and Chris Desjardins, aka Chris D.

Way back then, Cave’s “thing” as a pen wielder was totally wrapped up in how he presented a booze-soaked and drug-bent updating of the Southern Gothic tradition as previously staked out by such Advanced American Lit-Class stalwarts as William Faulkner and especially Flannery O’Connor at her most darkly acidic. Yes, even though the dude hailed not from the Southern US but from the very down under climes of the Australian continent. And why not? Hell, at the time Cave started putting pen to pulp, there was hardly anybody in the states besides the late Harry Crews who was even bothering to up the ante on this fine patch of fictive territory anyway.

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Remembering Jesse Ed Davis, born on this day in 1944. —Ed.

Prior to his death in 1988, the noted Native American guitarist Jesse Ed Davis played on records by numerous big names, including Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Taj Mahal, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and Harry Nilsson. If you’ve heard the guitar solo in Jackson Browne’s “Doctor, My Eyes,” well, that’s him. But not so well known are Davis’ own records, which are weird, as his 1971 debut for Atco, ¡Jesse Davis!, features guests Russell, Gram Parsons, and Eric Clapton, amongst others. It’s a solid affair that’ll be a welcome addition to any shelf of sharp and rootsy early ’70s sounds.

Listening with fresh ears in 2022, ¡Jesse Davis! fits into the early 1970s Atco Records scheme pretty damn snuggly, a tight fit that derives in large part from the judiciously applied guests; in addition to those named above, Davis’ debut pulled in contributions from singer Merry Clayton (The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”), bassist Billy Rich (Paul Butterfield, Taj Mahal), drummer Alan White (Plastic Ono Band, Yes), and keyboardists Ben Sidran (Steve Miller Band, dozens of sessions, his own stuff), and John Simon (The Band, Big Brother & The Holding Company).

Rather than merely attempting to increase sales by flaunting the names Clapton and Russell, Atco’s intent seemed to be aligned with making the best record possible (along with some clear mutual backscratching). Other examples from the label include a handful from Delaney & Bonnie (albums that offer some insane credits lists) and Dr. John’s The Sun, Moon & Herbs, which is notable, as a couple of moments on ¡Jesse Davis! are reminiscent of the Night Tripper, the set’s opener “Reno Street Incident” in particular.

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Remembering Hank Williams, born on this day in 1923. —Ed.

Hank Williams is an icon of early country music, but he recorded before the LP era really took hold, so posthumously assembled compilations dominate his legacy. These sets come in various sizes and levels of quality. The latest, Pictures from Life’s Other Side: The Man and his Music in Rare Photos and Recordings, offers 144 transcriptions from Williams’ Mother’s Best radio program on six CDs, all tucked into a magnificent hardcover book loaded with photos, many of them in color, that serve to broaden the life of the artist beyond the still too common reduction of strife and an early death. But if it’s vinyl you require, the 3LP distillation Only Mother’s Best is also available from BMG.

When it comes to concise surveys of Hank Williams’ exceptional musical abilities (by which I mean single or double sets), the gold standard remains Polydor’s 40 Greatest Hits. Released in 1978, it was distinguished at the time for its lack of production meddling. Those four vinyl sides weren’t rechanneled into stereo, and there was no additional posthumous meddling such as overdubs or duet fakery.

40 Greatest Hits was just pure Hank, and for those who favored his work, disappointment in the listening experience was impossible. That’s not the same as being fully satisfied, however, which is where box sets come into the picture. Mercury’s 1998 10CD The Complete Hank Williams is an award winner, but amongst the numerous two- and three-disc collections, there’s an even bigger assemblage, Time Life’s The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings…Plus!, which emerged in 2010 as a 15CD behemoth.

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Celebrating Kenney Jones on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Small Faces stand as one of the very finest groups of the 1960s. However, many know them mainly for Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, their most ambitious and final album before Steve Marriott’s departure effectively ended their diminutive phase. The scoop is that all of the Small Faces’ ‘60s records are worthy of ownership, even the mercantile odds-and-ends collection From the Beginning. That disc and its self-titled predecessor are currently available as 180 g LPs. Are they cut to lacquer from the original quarter-inch production masters with front-laminated sleeves? Why yes indeed.

One gauge of the true greats is that the music improves, or at least maintains a high standard of quality, as the discs take their place in the racks. So it is with the Small Faces. With that said, the Decca period offers distinct and enduring appeal; more so than The Who, the Small Faces circa ’65-’66 are the true ambassadors of Mod. Utterly Brit in orientation, it wasn’t until the fourth LP that the group entered the US market.

The Small Faces consisted of Steve Marriott on vocals, guitar, and harmonica; Ronnie Lane on bass; Kenney Jones on drums and percussion; and, initially, Jimmy Winston on keyboards. Upon signing to Decca through the efforts of manager Don Arden, they released two singles in ’65. The first “What’cha Gonna Do about It” charted, hitting #14, while the second “I’ve Got Mine” didn’t. Shortly thereafter, Winston was replaced by Ian McLagan, the new keyboardist, assisting 3rd 45 “Sha-La-La-La-Lee” in reaching the #3 spot. A full-length followed a few months later.

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