Author Archives: Steve Matteo

The flood of Frank Zappa archival releases may soon edge out the number of such releases from Neil Young and the Grateful Dead. Like those from Young and the Dead, these archival releases are warmly received by fans and consistently top-notch in quality and/or historical significance. Two recent releases from the Zappa estate reflect two very distinct and different eras in his career.

The first is very much about the fledgling birth of the Mothers of Invention. These are recordings from 1966 that were part of a multi-media “happening,” recorded and filmed as a documentary, Sex In Today’s World, filmed at TTG Studios in Los Angeles, that reflected the woolly fringes of the southern California musical counterculture explosion that was also happening in San Francisco, New York, and London. While there are tinges of the trippy jams of San Francisco bands and some of the darker hedonism of London, especially New York, Zappa’s more professional yet more humorous approach sets this scene apart from the others.

This freak out, which was the title of the debut album from the Mothers of Invention, released in 1966, seems somewhat unhinged looking at it through the artifice of the calculated corporate state of pop music today, although for the most part it just sounds like a garage band captured at some drunken frat party, with careening freak-beat rock, leavened with brief moments of woozy doo-wop and hints at the Mothers’ songs to come.

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As Neil Young passes 80, time doesn’t stand still. For Young, time is a shifting, changing, moving force that encompasses the past, the present, and the future, and not always in that order. While his contemporary Bob Dylan has said “don’t look back,” Young often does, using memory as a jumping-off point for yet another new song and another new album.

Young also subscribes to Dylan’s assertion not to look back but to move ahead. He does it by creating new sounds, working with new people, and confounding those who would like him to remain the blue-jeaned ’60s icon of Sugar Mountain, forever mining for gold and living the hippie dream.

While he does release a cascade of archival music, it’s the new albums and new groups he plays live with on the road that keep him as relevant as ever. Time is very much on his mind with his new live album, appropriately titled As Time Explodes. The name of the album follows other similarly titled releases: Time Fades Away and Comes A Time, as well as albums where some reference to time exists: Tonight’s The Night, Long May You Run, Old Ways, Early Daze, Decade, Journey Through the Past, and Before and After, to name a few.

In 2010 and 2011, when Young reformed the Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay for benefit shows and a short tour, at the Bonnaroo Festival, in Manchester, Tennessee, on June 11, 2011, he walked on stage and introduced the performance by saying, “We’re Buffalo Springfield; we’re from the past.”

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Seu Jorge’s celebrated musical career transcends the borders of his home country, Brazil. Yet, oddly enough, more people might know him better from his film career.

Jorge has appeared in more than 20 films since 2002, including the critically acclaimed City of God. He is even better known for his role in the 2004 Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He also appeared as a cowboy in another Anderson film, the more recently released Asteroid City from 2023.

Along with his considerable musical contribution in 2005 to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, covering in acoustic Brazilian fashion and singing in Portuguese, songs written by David Bowie, as the character Pelé dos Santos, he has released six other studio albums since 2003, and after an eleven-year wait, has recently released what has to be considered his best and maybe even most accessible album to date.

Jorge is quite a talent, and his fans have been hoping for a new album for some time, but it’s hard to believe anyone thought he would make an album this extraordinary. Jorge has always been able to add a certain contemporary edge to his primarily Brazilian roots sound, and that is part of the secret to his success and crossover appeal.

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The Rolling Stones are true rock ‘n’ roll survivors. Even in the midst of losing one of their key founding members, drummer extraordinaire, Charlie Watts, in 2021, and with its three principal members (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood) headed toward or going past the ripe old age of 80, the group is in one of its most creative and successful recording phases since the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Beginning in 2016, the group has released three excellent albums, with its newest and maybe its best album in nearly 50 years. Rather than trying to awkwardly adapt to the current flavor of the week in pop music, the group does what they do best on their new album, but with a newfound vigor and just enough studio sheen to make the album more than just a nostalgic trip down classic rock music main street.

Like Paul McCartney, the group has enlisted the help of producer and, in many ways, co-collaborator Andrew Watt. Watt is a guitar rocker at heart, and he clearly knows what makes the Stones tick. He’s not trying to control them or make them sound too modern. He’s letting them be and allowing their unique bluesy sway, even with Charlie Watts gone, to shine through. What this album also highlights, which is sometimes overlooked, is that the Stones know how to write great songs.

Their image, reputation as the world’s greatest rock band, and epic narrative history often overshadow what is, in fact, a truly robust catalog of songs, primarily written by Jagger and Richards, that they can still pull off with aplomb. Of the fourteen tracks, Jagger and Richards are assisted in writing by Watt on two tracks and by Matt Clifford on one. Clifford also wrote one song with Richards. On their previous album, Watt also produced and co-wrote three songs.

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Billy Preston had been making music as far back as 1956, backing Mahalia Jackson at the age of ten, and had recorded four albums since 1963 before he first entered The Beatles’ orbit.

After playing on the group’s Let It Be album in January 1969, and being the only musician credited on a record by The Beatles, he signed with the group’s fledgling Apple Records. He recorded two albums for the label before Apple fell apart, then moved on to A&M. His two solo Apple albums have been reissued by Dark Horse Records, run by George Harrison’s wife, Olivia, and their son, Dhani.

That’s the Way God Planned It, released in 1969, is a fine album and, for the most part, follows the same soulful, gospel-funk groove as his previous works. George Harrison produced the album and included such guest musicians as Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Keith Richards, along with singers Doris Troy and Madeline Bell. Troy, who was also signed to Apple Records, co-wrote three songs here with Preston.

Preston offers a few glimpses into his future direction with his take on Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me” on the lush, orchestral “Morning Star,” aided by string arrangements of John Barham, who worked with The Beatles solo and collectively, and on the title cut, his signature performance song two years later at the Concert for Bangladesh.

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It has been a banner year so far for fans of The Beatles. With news of the Rubber Soul deluxe edition box set coming in early October, let’s take a look at some of the excellent Beatles-related albums already released. So far, the biggest releases this year have been the two most recent solo albums from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

First up is Boys of Dungeon Lane from McCartney. Fans and critics have been unanimous in their high rating of McCartney’s last two solo albums, Egypt Station in 2018 and McCartney III in 2020. As good as those albums were, this new album is one of his most solid efforts and may be his best album since Flaming Pie in 1997.

What’s so refreshing about this album is how constructed it is and how it reflects the myriad talents and unique sound that have made McCartney one of the most beloved and successful musical artists in pop history. While McCartney III featured many contemporary guest musicians, this new album is focused more on McCartney doing what he does best.

There are brief moments of familiarity, like on the opening track with its echo of “Monkberry Moon Delight” and its searing guitar rock and rousing vocal, the melancholy of “Junk” on “First Star of the Night,” the psychedelic dreaminess of Magical Mystery Tour on “The Fool On The Hill”-like “Mountain Top,” and the almost Lennon-inspired “Never Know,” the best produced track on the album.

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The Tedeschi Trucks Band released their debut album, Revelator, in 2011. After combining two bands and with Derek Trucks playing full-time with the group once he was no longer part of the Allman Brothers Band in 2014, the group did well with their debut album and released their biggest-selling album, Made Up Mind, in 2013.

Both of those albums were released on Sony Masterworks. Let Me Get By, their 2016 debut on Fantasy, continued the group’s winning formula of jammy blues rock. The group just kept building a bigger following with each album and tour. Three years later, on the same day they released Signs, keyboardist Kofi Burbridge died, casting a pall over the release and plans to promote the album.

The band regrouped and, in 2022, released four records that were eventually collected as I Am the Moon. The collective release was their lowest-selling effort, but not for lack of quality. They also released the live album Everybody’s Talkin’ on Sony Masterworks in 2012 and Live from the Fox Oakland in 2017 on Fantasy.

Now, four years later, it looks like Future Soul is the kind of album that reflects all their roots magic while remaining accessible. While it’s the perfect mix and may be their best album, sales have been slow. But the group’s album sales build over time, and their massive tour, which starts at the end of July, will probably increase sales dramatically. This could be the group’s moment, and there’s no question the album will show up on best-of-the-year releases.

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Marvin Gaye went from strength to strength throughout most of his career. His early Tamla/Motown singles became big hits, and he had some of those hits as a duo, primarily with Tammi Terrell.

His album What’s Goin’ On, released in 1971, was a breakthrough that demonstrated he was a serious artist writing about the issues of the day and expanding his musical palette by incorporating sophisticated musical arrangements, lush orchestrations, and new musical sounds into a conceptual masterpiece that has withstood the test of time. Lyrically, the album is as relevant as ever. Only two years after that album was made, one of the most purely amatory albums ever recorded was released, and he hit the charts yet again with Let’s Get It On.

Even with all this success, behind the scenes, Gaye was, to riff on the title song from the soundtrack album he released in 1972, a troubled man. Drugs, personal demons, record company hassles, and an unraveling marriage would eventually lead him to drop out of the music business and leave Motown. The album that would in many ways be his last real Motown effort of note (even though there would be two more released) is I Want You. While not met with as much critical praise as Let’s Get It On, it did hit number one on the R&B album charts, and the title song was a number one hit there also.

Over the years, the album has gone through a re-appraisal, and in fact, in retrospect, it has become a highly influential work. It’s fitting that the album is now receiving an audiophile release to mark its 50th anniversary. The album, the first recorded at Gaye’s own Marvin’s Room studio, has superb sound, and this is easily one of the best-sounding Vinylphyle releases.

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Celebrating Cat Stevens on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

The singer-songwriter movement that began in the late ‘60s and blossomed in the ‘70s became one of the most dominant musical movements of that very rich era. Its influence seems to continue to grow, and the genre’s key music holds up remarkably well.

While many think of American or Canadian artists as the dominant artists of the genre—Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Gordon Lightfoot, Carly Simon, and others—some British artists were also key to the sound, particularly Cat Stevens. His 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman became one of the most important and commercially successful albums of the era. A Super Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition of the album was released in 2020, along with Mona Bone Jakon, his previous album, which was also released in 1970.

Mona Bone Jakon signaled a sea-change in Stevens’s music. He had previously written and recorded very pop-oriented music for the Deram label, which was often lumped in with the then-waning British Invasion sound. Mona Bone Jakon also began his relationship with Chris Blackwell and Island Records. Equally influential and as timeless as Tea for the Tillerman, his next album, Teaser and the Firecat, released in 1971, is now also available in a Super Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition.

This set is as fulsome as the Tea set, including, for starters, four CDs. CD one is a 50th anniversary remaster of the original 10-track album. CD two includes 17 demos, alternate versions, rehearsals, bonus tracks, and new recordings of “The Wind” and “Bitterblue.” CD three, entitled Live On Air, UK 1970/71, includes 20 live radio and television performances, mostly from the BBC. CD four is a 12-song live performance from Montreux, Switzerland, on May 2, 1971.

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With our previous article on Miles Davis, we kicked off commemorating the jazz trumpeter’s 100th birthday year with a review of an excellent audiophile stereo reissue of Kind of Blue. While the album is the biggest-selling album in jazz history and a seminal modal jazz masterpiece, Davis is more known in jazz circles for his various periods of unprecedented innovation.

Davis shares the watershed breakthroughs with the musicians he plays with, and in many cases, some or all of them contribute equally to his many new phases. While it is the iconic studio albums that are the canvas on which Davis and his sidemen make musical history, sometimes there are historic live dates and/or tours that serve as the incubator for some of his cornerstone musical breakthroughs. One of the most celebrated groups of musicians he ever played with is what is referred to as his second great quintet.

The first great quintet lasted roughly from 1955 to 1958 and included Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums, and, completing the group, John Coltrane, who replaced Sonny Rollins, who had to leave the band because he was dealing with drug problems. The group eventually became a sextet with the addition of Cannonball Adderley.

It would be roughly six years before the second great quintet began in 1964. The lineup would last roughly until 1969. The group originally included Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums), with Wayne Shorter (saxophone) being the last to join. The group relied on a more acoustic sound, often took an almost avant-garde approach, which was never quite free jazz, and, without anyone really noticing early on, began laying the foundation for fusion-jazz.

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Kind of Blue from Miles Davis may be the most examined and re-examined album in jazz music history. The biggest-selling and most popular album in jazz history has been reissued countless times over the years in a myriad of formats. Oddly enough, both the stereo and mono issues of the album have major problems.

The original 1959 mono master tapes no longer exist, making original pressings through the 1960s the only true way to listen to the album in mono on vinyl. The stereo issue has been plagued by problems from the start, as one of the tape machines used at Columbia’s 30th Street studio ran too slowly, causing speed issues and pitch anomalies on the three tracks on side one.

The Analog Productions UHQR Edition, released in 2021, digitally corrected the problem with the later mono pressings. The original list price of that now out-of-print reissue was $150. Thankfully, for the stereo version fix, a more affordable option now exists at around $65. This new, all-analog reissue is sourced from an out-of-print, speed-corrected edition released by Classic Records in 1995, mastered by Bernie Grundman, and includes the late music critic Robert Palmer’s liner notes from that reissue.

This new two-LP set features the full album on disc one with the new speed-corrected side one version. The second album includes side one without the speed correction. The first three sides are 33 1/3. Side four, at 45 RPM, includes a previously unreleased take of “Flamenco Sketches.”

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It’s difficult to explain to today’s pop music fans just how big Frampton Comes Alive! was when it was released in 1976. The double-live album was a blockbuster sales hit and a phenomenon.

Music in the 1970s was driven just as much by blockbuster albums as by a plethora of must-see live acts. Nowadays, the concert business is in shambles because of high ticket prices and the prevalence of popular artists who primarily built their followings on producer-driven music with slick, controlled, mostly electronic studio craft. Some may put on entertaining shows, but many lack the organic musicianship of the classic rock-era groups and artists. Live albums, especially blockbuster live albums, are a thing of the past.

Peter Frampton was in many ways a surprise breakout artist. He was in the short-lived group The Herd, which was formed in 1965 when he was 16, formed Humble Pie with Steve Marriott in 1969, and then departed in 1972 to go solo. He recorded four solo albums before the tour that yielded Frampton Comes Alive! and was slowly building a following and becoming more popular, but was strictly an FM artist. Even for that era, a double-live album that yielded so many hits was an oddity.

It’s hard to remember the last time anyone had a hit with a live track or album. The album yielded the hits “Show Me the Way” and “Baby I Love Your Way” and unleashed the 14-minute-plus FM staple “Do You Feel Like We Do.” That track highlighted Frampton’s dexterity with the vocoder, a vocal tube/mic setup that gave vocals a spacey, robotic, fuzzy sound. Joe Walsh also had success with the effect during that time period.

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There was a time in the early to mid-’70s when Glam was the hottest trend in music. Also referred to as Glitter rock, it had been brewing for a while and often encompassed groups or artists from other musical genres.

The dominant artists, who were all British, were David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and T. Rex. By the time Glam was at the red-hot center of pop, T. Rex was, for the most part, the primary musical vehicle for Marc Bolan. Bolan had been on the scene for years before he hit big, starting with the short-lived John’s Children in the late 1960s.

Initially called Tyrannosaurus Rex, the group was, in their early days, primarily a duo comprised of Bolan and Steve Peregrin for their first three albums, with Mickey Finn replacing Peregrin for the fourth. The group played a distinctively trippy and heady brand of folk-inspired psychedelia on their first four albums. Two were released in 1968, one in 1969, and one in 1970.

The group became T. Rex in 1970 (thanks to some studio log-sheet shorthand by producer Tony Visconti) with their self-titled debut, which showed a funkier, flashier, more rock-oriented style, although Bolan and Finn were still the two main members. It wasn’t until 1971 with Electric Warrior that the group exploded and became truly a group with the addition of Steve Currie on bass and Bill Legend on drums, and with guests including Ian McDonald on sax, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman on backing vocals, and Rick Wakeman supplying the keyboards on “Get in On.”

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Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys is one of the most influential albums in pop music history. Released in 1966, it became a major influence on The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Of course, Pet Sounds would never have happened if it weren’t for The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, released in 1965.

What must be considered The Beach Boys’ best album has been reissued countless times over the years in a variety of formats. While Brian Wilson favored the mono mix of the album, it has also been issued and reissued in various stereo mixes. In 1997, 2006, and 2016, fulsome box sets of the album on CD, with bonus material, were released to commemorate the album’s 30th, 40th, and 50th anniversaries, respectively. Several new reissues to mark the 60th anniversary have been released, with a heavy focus on vinyl. The two we will focus on here are the Vinylphyle double-album, black vinyl reissue, and the Pet Sounds Sessions Highlights double-album, black vinyl.

In less than a year, there have been fourteen Vinylphyle reissues. This particular release includes both a mono and a stereo version of the album. Brian Wilson favored the mono mix, but he also remixed the stereo version in 1972 because he wasn’t happy with the original stereo mix.

That version has been referred to as the Artisan Sound Recorders EQ’d tape and alternately as the Reprise tape, as it was for the 1972 reissue of Pet Sounds packaged with a new album entitled Carl and the Passions So Tough that was released through the group’s own Brother Records, distributed by Reprise/Warner. The stereo version here is from an assembled master reel from 1996 and is not the Artisan EQ’d tape/Reprise tape, and does include a digital step. The mono album is from the original 1966 mono mix analog tape.

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Supertramp is one of the many groups or artists who started in the late 1960s or early 1970s as artsy, offbeat, or even underground unknowns and, by sometime before the end of the 1970s, became multi-million-selling blockbuster album artists.

The British band released their self-titled debut album in 1970 and quickly followed up the next year with Indelibly Stamped, establishing them as a quirky and uncompromising group that created richly drawn albums of deeply thematic pieces, with indescribable music. Not quite prog, something more than jazzy or folk rock, the group’s music was something entirely new and original.

After a three-year hiatus, they released Crime of the Century, an album that was a massive leap forward, with such FM faves as “Bloody Well Right” and “Dreamer,” and a recording that immediately became an audiophile landmark as the first UHQR Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab release.

Their next album, Crisis? What Crisis? released the following year only further solidified their growing stature in the FM album rock world and set the stage for their massive commercial breakout. Even In The Quietest Moments…, released two years later and now available as one of three new Supertramp reissues, began the group’s ascension to massive breakout success, mostly due to the album’s opening track, the epic sing-song “Give a Little Bit,” which dominated FM radio at the time.

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