Author Archives: Matthew Belter

PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | The first time I heard Howard Jones, I was a kid sitting too close to a stereo speaker, trying to figure out how a single guy with a stack of synthesizers could sound so big. The second time mattered more. April 28, 1992. The Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles was one of my first dates with my future wife. He walked out with nothing but a piano and Carol Steele on percussion, and over the course of one evening, he quietly dismantled every lazy assumption the world had ever made about “synth-pop.”

The songs didn’t need the machines. They never had. Listening to that show—which would later become Live Acoustic America—I understood, maybe for the first time, that what I’d loved about Howard’s records all along was his songwriting. The keyboards were just the delivery vehicle.

That memory is why this conversation felt particularly good to have. Howard is heading back out across North America this summer with the Things Can Only Get Better tour—twenty-one dates kicking off July 19 in Napa and rolling east through August—and for the first time, he’s curated the bill himself.

Wang Chung, The English Beat, and Modern English are riding shotgun. Richard Blade is hosting. Four British acts who came up together in the early ’80s, finally on the same buses, in the same backstage hallways, on the same stages—full sets, no second-tier slots, no “opening act” treatment. It is, by Howard’s own description, his mini-festival. And it is exactly the sort of bill that anyone who wore out the grooves of Human’s Lib in 1984 would have drawn up on a napkin and quietly tucked away as a fantasy.

What struck me most, talking to him from his studio across the Atlantic, was how little distance there is between the man on the records and the man on the phone. He is unhurried, generous with his answers, and openly Buddhist about the work—he chants every day, he says, that he’ll go out there and really see every person in the room.

He talks about kindness the way other artists talk about chord changes. He’s also, I’m delighted to report, a full convert to vinyl, engaged with the Voices Around the World project for schools, and—if I have anything to say about it—now officially on the hook to finally press Live Acoustic America on wax. He said he’ll talk to Cherry Red. I’m holding him to it.

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Some voices carry a country on their back. Ziggy Marley has been doing it for forty years, and the weight has only made the man more graceful, more centered, more himself. Nine Grammys and a lifetime spent stewarding a global musical inheritance, and he still sounds like he has something to prove—not to us, but to the work. Brightside, his ninth solo studio album and his first new material in eight years, arrives as a quiet act of defiance against the noise of the moment.

A pre-release review copy landed on my doorstep ahead of Record Store Day, and what I pulled from the mailer was a stripped-down version of what fans would soon find in shops—a clean, uncluttered cover, a plain white inner sleeve, no insert, no handwritten note from Ziggy, no colored wax. Just a black-labeled disc spinning in those classic Tuff Gong colors, the way the originals always looked. Sliding it out of the sleeve, that unmistakable new-vinyl smell hit me first, that warm petroleum-and-paper perfume every collector knows. I dropped the needle and let it ride. A faint crackle, a whisper of static, then the music breathed in.

Eight tracks total, co-produced by Ziggy and his brother Stephen at the newly built Rebel Lion Studio in Los Angeles, all of it tracked at 432Hz—that warmer, slightly detuned frequency reggae heads and meditators alike swear by—and you feel it. The low end sits lower in your chest. Trombone Shorty’s horns breathe instead of blare. Sheila E.’s percussion, Nikka Costa’s vocals, Jake Shimabukuro’s ukulele—this is a deep bench playing soft, and the restraint is the whole point. There are tiny imperfections in the pressing on my copy, a little surface noise here, a barely-there pop there, and somehow it makes the record feel more alive, not less. Reggae was always meant to be heard this way.

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It’s that time of year again.

Record Store Day is Saturday, April 18, and if you know, you know—the lines, the crates, the early morning coffee runs, the thrill of walking out with something you’ve been hunting for. There’s nothing else quite like it in the music world.

But every year, RSD also attracts a new wave of listeners just getting started. First-timers. People who’ve been meaning to set up a turntable for years and finally pulled the trigger. And the question they’re all asking is the same one it’s always been: Where do I even start?

For a lot of those listeners, the answer starts with Audio-Technica. Founded in 1962 by Hideo Matsushita out of a small Tokyo apartment, the company has spent over six decades doing one thing exceptionally well—making great audio accessible to everyone. Turntables, cartridges, headphones, microphones. Bedroom setups and broadcast booths. If you’ve been in this hobby for any length of time, you already know the name.

Ahead of Record Store Day, I got my hands on two of their latest: the AT-LP70XBT Bluetooth turntable and the AT-SP3X powered speakers. I also sat down with Kurt Van Scoy, Audio-Technica’s VP of Products, Business Alliances & Marketing, to talk about where the company came from, what these products are built to do, and what he makes of the vinyl moment we’re all living through right now.

No frills on the packaging—just clean, functional, and everything well protected inside. Directions were right there, easy to follow. Audio-Technica isn’t trying to sell you an unboxing experience. They’re trying to sell you a turntable. I respect that.

First thing I noticed out of the box: lighter than I expected. But don’t let that fool you—this thing is well built. Solid, confident, no wobble or flex anywhere. The hinged dust cover snapped on first try. No fussing, no loose hinges, no missing hardware. If you’ve ever wrestled with a budget table’s dust cover, you know exactly why that matters.

Setup, for a small home office situation, was genuinely painless. The AT-LP70XBT pairs over Bluetooth—no additional wires required—and the connection established quickly and without drama. In an era where “easy setup” is a marketing promise that often proves aspirational rather than accurate, this one delivered. The turntable was spinning within minutes of coming out of the box.

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PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | I’ll be honest with you—my roots are in rock and roll. That’s where I live, that’s where I was raised musically, and that’s the lens I’ve always brought to this work. But one thing this job has taught me, over and over again, is that great artistry doesn’t care about genre. It doesn’t care about your background, your assumptions, or the box you built for yourself before you knew better. It just grabs you. Tech N9ne grabbed me.

I reached out cold to his team, not because I had an angle or a hook, but because I kept bumping into his name in places I didn’t expect—in conversations about independent business, in discussions about vinyl culture, in rooms full of people who don’t agree on much but agree on him. Thirty-plus years in, over twenty studio albums, a label he built from nothing into the most successful independent hip-hop operation on the planet, and a fan base—the Technicians—who don’t just follow the man, they memorize him. Word for word. Breath for breath. That kind of devotion doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when the art is real.

What I found on the other end of that phone call was a man who has never once confused success with permission to stop working, never confused longevity with legacy, and never let anyone else decide what his music was allowed to be. He talks about freedom the way some people talk about survival—because for him, they’re the same thing.

This is a conversation about a Kansas City kid who turned a Slick Rick record into a chopping style the world had never heard. About parachute pants and patent leather shoes and a dance crew that went to audition for MC Hammer while he stayed back and wrote rhymes. About what it costs to build something real from nothing, and what it feels like when it works. And about vinyl—the heartbeat, as he calls it—and why a man who has earned every digital platform still looks across the room at a record and feels something no stream has ever replicated.

I think you’ll feel it too.

You’ve talked about rapping as a child just to remember how to spell your own name—but when did that innocent trick become something burning inside you, something you had to chase? What was the exact moment music stopped being something you did and started being something you were?

What it did for me on the inside—how it moved me—started early on. I was a dancer, man. Music made me want to dance. I thought I was a B-boy; break dance, pop lock, MC Hammer. I had the high-top fade with the Kwame streak, the Hammer pants, the parachute pants with the patent leather shoes with the silver on the toe. I did the whole thing.

When my homeboys in the dance crew, Imperial Prep, went to try out for the Hammer dance, I stayed back—I was the younger one in the crew. I stayed back and worked on my rhymes, and it just took over from dancing. The more I got into rhyme, the cooler I got, and I danced less. Even though I still move a bit on stage—I can’t help it—writing rhymes made me cool in a different way. When I was a dancer I’d be at all the clubs sweating through my silk shirts, but once I became an emcee I was holding up the bar. Rapping pretty much made me stop dancing as much as I did.

Before Strange Music, before the Technician army existed, you were grinding through groups like Black Mafia and Nnutthowze. Most artists erase those chapters. You’ve owned them. What did those early collectives teach you about yourself as an artist that you still carry today?

Without those people who lifted me up in the beginning, there would be no Tech N9ne. All of that was college for me—from Black Mafia with Black Walt and Icy Rock, Frozen Image, to Don Juan and Diamond Shields with Midwest Side Records. Those were the building blocks. You cannot erase your history unless you’re embarrassed of it, and I never was.

My last album, 5816 Forest, I went all the way back—Black Wall Street, 55th and Michigan, 5816 Forest, my block. All the stories are in there. I didn’t leave anything out because those experiences are the foundation of what I am today.

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Some interviews you prepare for. You build the questions, you do the research, you know exactly where you want the conversation to go. And then the person on the other end of the line says something that stops you cold—something that has nothing to do with the prepared question in front of you and everything to do with why you got into this work in the first place. That’s what a thirty-minute phone call with Sammy Hagar on a Wednesday morning will do to you.

I had just come off reviewing his Best of All Worlds Tour residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas—a show that ran 145 minutes, covered 17 songs, and left me genuinely undone in the best way a rock and roll show can. I had left my camera at home that night and experienced it purely as a fan. By the time “Eagles Fly” came around, I wasn’t holding it together. By the time the house lights came up, I knew I needed to talk to this man.

Here at The Vinyl District, we write about music because we believe it matters—not as background noise, not as content, but as the thing that reaches into places language alone cannot touch. Sammy Hagar has spent sixty years proving that point, and this tour, with this band—Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani, Kenny Aronoff, and Greg Phillinganes—may be the finest chapter of the whole remarkable story.

What follows is a conversation about beginnings and legacies, about what it means to stand on a stage at seventy-eight and still feel something new, about vinyl and the records that shaped a life, and about a homeless man in Las Vegas who recognized the Red Rocker at midnight and quoted things he said onstage thirty-two years ago. It’s about a song called “Eagles Fly” that his mother asked him to sing at her funeral, and that mine would have loved just the same. It’s a conversation I will carry for a long time. I think you will too.

Take me all the way back to the very first time you stepped onto a stage. Not a rehearsal, not a garage—an actual stage in front of actual people. What did that feel like, and did any part of you in that moment know this was going to be your life?

I remember a few different early moments, but the one that really sticks was playing a party for five dollars at a little union hall for a car club called the Swampers in Fontana, California. My brother’s friend—an older guy, really hip, really into cool music—taught me how to play a couple of songs on rhythm guitar. We had one amplifier, two guitars, and a microphone, all running through the same amp. I was probably fifteen.

We played “Gloria” and some surf songs, and I just loved it. I got dressed up, I felt like a performer—and the second I stepped on that stage, it became official. There was an adrenaline rush like I had never felt in my life. I thought I wanted to do it long before I even knew how to play guitar, but I didn’t feel it until that moment. From then on, I knew this is what I’m going to do, by hook or by crook.

Every musician has a shortlist of artists who fundamentally rewired how they heard music—the records and performers that made them think, “I want to do that.” Who were yours, and is there one that stands above all the others?

Honestly, it was more about the people around me than any particular rock star. I was in my teens, and I had three or four friends who genuinely believed in me. We’d get together, listen to music, and I’d tell them I was going to be famous someday. I dressed the part—psychedelic clothes, the right hairdo, the language—and they’d introduce me to people at parties saying, “This guy is going to be a big star.”

They really believed it and they had me convinced too. Having that circle of people around you who see what you’re going to become before you’ve become it—that’s the thing that drove me. I could already play a few songs from that guy who taught me when I was fourteen, and I could sing them. I just hadn’t started a band yet. But those friends, that belief—that’s what lit the fire.

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There is a particular kind of violence that Exodus has always dealt in—not the theatrical, fog-machine menace of lesser bands, but something that feels genuinely unsanctioned, like a fight that started in the parking lot and ended up inside.

Since Bonded by Blood tore through the Bay Area in 1985, they’ve been the thrash scene’s permanently aggrieved outliers—Kirk Hammett’s former band, Gary Holt’s moonlighting gig, the almost-Big-Four stalwarts who somehow kept showing up with blood on their knuckles and a grudge to settle. Their story is one of constant turbulence: lineup churns, vocal swaps, and a decade-long loan of their own guitarist to Slayer.

Goliath, their thirteenth studio album, isn’t just a record—it’s a reckoning. Arriving five years after Persona Non Grata and marking the return of Rob Dukes behind the mic for the first time since 2010, it feels less like a comeback than a reclamation.

The production, handled by Mark Lewis in his first time at the board for Exodus—ending a thirty-year run with Andy Sneap—is muscular and clear without being sterile. Jack Gibson’s bass sits right up in the mix where it belongs, warm and rolling under the relentless twin-guitar assault of Holt and Lee Altus. Tom Hunting’s drums hit with the kind of tactile clarity that makes you involuntarily tense your shoulders. And Dukes? He sounds like he spent the last fifteen years storing up everything he needed to say and is now saying all of it at once.

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LAS VEGAS, NV | There are rock shows, and then there are moments—those rare, full-body experiences where the music stops being something you listen to and starts being something that happens to you. Saturday night at Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas, Sammy Hagar delivered exactly that.

Flanked by a supergroup that reads like a fever dream written by every rock kid who ever taped a poster to their bedroom ceiling, the Red Rocker tore through 145 minutes and 17 songs of hard rock history with the relentless, joyful fury of a man who has absolutely nothing left to prove—and everything left to give. If you have ever loved Van Halen, Chickenfoot, or the singular, sun-soaked swagger of Hagar’s solo catalog, you owe it to yourself to be in that room. Remaining dates are filling fast, and I am telling you from the front lines: this is one you will be talking about for years.

I have been chasing Sammy Hagar across his many incarnations for a long time now—the solo Red Rocker years, the Van Halen run, Chickenfoot, Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas, and of course Sammy Hagar and the Circle. Each version offered its own pleasures, its own personality. But what he has assembled for the Best of All Worlds Tour is genuinely something else. Anchoring the lineup alongside Hagar are four musicians who, between them, have touched virtually every corner of his legacy: bassist Michael Anthony, guitarist Joe Satriani, drummer Kenny Aronoff, and keyboardist Greg Phillinganes.

This was the third night of a six-night residency at Dolby Live, and the band arrived with the looseness and electricity of musicians who genuinely want to be exactly where they are. I made a deliberate choice on this particular evening to leave the camera behind—no lens between me and the music, no hunting for the perfect frame. Just the show. It was the right call.

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There is a particular kind of courage in a man who once set dancefloors ablaze, deciding at 60 years old, to sit down at a piano and simply stop moving. Moby has never been easy to categorize—rave architect, punk misfit, vegan provocateur, accidental pop deity—and that stubbornness to defy expectation is precisely why he remains essential. Twenty-three albums in, with Play still echoing across every coffee shop and car commercial that came after it, he has earned every right to follow the silence.

Future Quiet, released February 20 via BMG, is not a surrender. It’s a deliberate act of subtraction—and in 2026, with the world screaming at full volume, that restraint is its own kind is truly radical.

Strip out the beats, the samples, the euphoric drops. What you get here is Moby alone at the keys, augmented by strings, the occasional ambient synth wash, and a handful of guest vocalists deployed like brushstrokes rather than centerpieces. The production is hushed and deliberate throughout—pianist first, composer second, electronic artist a distant third. This isn’t ambient wallpaper. It breathes differently.

“When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die,” reworked from his 1995 Everything Is Wrong and freshly unearthed by Stranger Things—opens with Jacob Lusk (of Gabriels) delivering the kind of vocal that physically relocates you. Lush orchestral strings pool beneath him like rising floodwater, and I had goosebumps before the first minute passed.

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PHOTOS: GRACE STUFKOSKY | In a world where retail often feels impersonal and automated, Jen Keenan has built something radically different in the high desert of Northern Arizona: a sanctuary that treats both coffee and vinyl as sacred, tactile rituals. As the driving force behind Queen B Vinyl Café, Keenan isn’t just selling lattes and records; she is curating an immersive sensory experience that challenges the “grab-and-go” culture of modern consumption.

From hosting “Goth Proms” for local homeschoolers to launching a subscription club that pairs dark roasts with obscure albums, her approach redefines what it means to be a community hub. In this exclusive conversation with TVD, Keenan reveals how she transformed a former church into a cultural haven, why sustainability is non-negotiable, and how a deep emotional connection to music saved her during her darkest times. This interview offers a masterclass in building a business with soul, starting with the spark that ignited it all.

What inspired you to create Queen B Vinyl Café, blending music, coffee, and community?

The Queen B Vinyl Café was originally Puscifer, our store in Jerome, AZ. Because we have the record store and a wine bar in there—since we also make wine—I feel like the coffee just came along organically. It’s very similar to wine, with the different varietals and flavors depending on where it’s grown. We were interested in doing coffee from that perspective.

We didn’t own the building in Jerome, so we knew at some point we would have to move. When the building came up in Cottonwood, we decided to look. It’s an old church, and when I walked in, I thought, “This is it. This is home.” We decided to move it and give Puscifer a little more separation from the band, so it became Queen B. Now we have the perfect place for the coffee.

How does your personal passion for music and coffee influence the vision and atmosphere of the café?

There’s not a lot to do in this area—I’ve been here for about 20 years. The wine industry has brought in more, but there’s still not much for young people. I wanted to create a place that had some culture and bring bands here.

My music taste is eclectic. I decided that since I can’t see these bands anywhere else nearby—some of the ones I like are two hours away in Phoenix—I’m just going to start bringing them here. I’ve been very lucky that a lot of bands have been open to coming a little out of the way.

With our record store, we keep it curated. I want independent music, smaller bands, and interesting stuff—not things that are pumped into every retail shop. The coffee is the same. We were definitely into dark roasts, but as we got into coffee more, we evolved into lighter, medium roasts. We try to highlight that and show people it doesn’t always have to be burnt and dark to be enjoyable.

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PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | For over four decades, KMFDM has served as the unflinching, sawtooth-edged conscience of industrial rock. Led by the inimitable Sascha “Käpt’n K” Konietzko, the band has consistently delivered a barrage of politically charged, sonically abrasive anthems that have defined and redefined the genre.

Their legacy is one of relentless innovation and fierce independence, a “dope-show” of industrial metal, pounding electronics, and sardonic commentary that has influenced countless artists. Now, with their 24th studio album, ENEMY, the band proves they are as vital and ferocious as ever.

Set for release on February 6, 2026, ENEMY arrives as a defiant statement in a world grappling with rising instability and social tension. This album is a testament to the enduring power of the current lineup. Konietzko’s visionary production and snarling vocals remain the anchor, while Lucia Cifarelli delivers her signature blend of ethereal melodies and commanding aggression.

Longtime drummer Andy Selway provides a relentlessly powerful rhythmic foundation, and the album marks the studio debut of guitarist Todor Nieddu, whose sharp, incisive riffs add a fresh layer of intensity to the band’s sound. In addition, Annabella Konietzko contributes her first songwriting credit with KMFDM, and her contribution and vocals are straight fire.

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There are voices in rock history that don’t just age; they gather texture, like a well-worn leather jacket that only gets cooler with time. Graham Bonnet possesses one of those voices.

When you think of the sheer power required to front bands like Rainbow, MSG, and Alcatrazz, you realize it takes a special kind of fortitude to keep that engine running decades later. With the release of Lost In Hollywood Again, recorded live at the legendary Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip, the Graham Bonnet Band doesn’t just revisit history—they grab it by the collar and shake the dust off. And this isn’t a nostalgia trip; it’s a testament to the enduring vitality of hard rock when it’s delivered with Bonnet’s level of conviction.

From the moment the band launched into their set, I could feel the raw energy of the Whisky beginning to hum. The album opens with “Eyes of the World,” a 1979 Rainbow classic that immediately sets the stakes high. It’s a bold choice, demanding vocal dexterity right out of the gate, and Bonnet delivers. But the true centerpiece of the evening—and perhaps the emotional anchor of the entire record—is “Since You’ve Been Gone.”

Bonnet himself notes that this track “put Rainbow on the map,” and hearing it live in 2025 feels like a victory lap. The audience connection is electric; you can almost hear the crowd sweating along with the band as they belt out that iconic chorus. It captures the essence of a great live performance: the shared passion between artist and fan.

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