Author Archives: Steve Matteo

Lovers of bespoke, limited edition, audiophile reissues are living in a golden age as new audiophile reissue series continue to be launched. One that debuted recently is the Vinylphyle series. In this roundup, three of the initial releases in the series will be covered. They are The Velvet Underground & Nico from The Velvet Underground, originally released in March of 1967 on Verve Records; Northern Lights-Southern Cross from The Band, originally released in November of 1975 on Capitol Records, and Exodus from Bob Marley & The Wailers, originally released in 1977 on Island Records.

The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground may not be considered an audiophile recording. Still, it’s easily one of the most influential albums of all time, with its influence felt more overtly years after the album’s release. While Lou Reed is often the member of the group most talked about, and who would have a long and highly regarded career, all of the members here (which also includes John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, and Nico) contributed in key ways.

Cale was Reed’s primary collaborator at various points in their career and an innovative musician. Tucker was more influential as one of the few female drummers in music at that time. Morrison’s contributions were more subtle. Nico, although she adds a sophisticated European glamour to the group, offers a stark contrast to some of the darker, dissonant music here, with her lovely lead vocals on “Femme Fatale,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror.”

These three tracks work perfectly with the album’s opening number, “Sunday Morning,” proving that, amidst the dissonant decadent squalor of such songs as “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Heroin,” and “Venus in Furs,” there are some beautiful and softer tracks at the heart of this album.

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The music world lost Robert Flack in February of 2025. Flack began her singular career in 1969 and released her 15th and final album in 2012. Her Atlantic Records albums make up the bulk of her recorded output and easily represent her best music. It’s no surprise that an iconic artist whose music was initially rooted in jazz and R&B, and later in pop and soul, would record for Atlantic Records. She is one of the key artists who made the label the undisputed supreme record company of the music business during its heyday of the 1960s and 1970s.

A new box set includes the first eight albums she recorded, all on Atlantic. Two more Atlantic albums are not included in this box. Flack’s beautiful, silky, smoky, and sultry style evolved slowly over these eight albums. This is the sound of a singer fully in command of her art and life, who sings with an understated yet powerful, mature grace unmatched.

Many may not know that her debut album, First Take, released in 1969, was the result of her being discovered by jazz pianist and vocalist Les McCann. Joel Dorn, veteran producer of many legendary jazz recordings, produced the album. It begins with her singular interpretation of the jazz classic “Compared to What.”

Flack was also adept at interpreting folk-based material at this time, with a Leonard Cohen cover and the album’s big hit, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” written by English folk artist Ewan MacColl. The song, in its earlier folk incarnation, was popularized by Peggy Seeger. Flack’s version was featured in the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty for Me. It was her commercial breakthrough.

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It’s a wondrous time to be a fan of the music of Yes. The group’s classic period albums (The Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge) have recently received mammoth reissue box sets, and there have also been some excellent live albums, including much-coveted Record Store Day releases.

The album that followed Close to the Edge, 1973’s Tales from Topographic Oceans, has now also been released in a fulsome reissue box. Unlike the three aforementioned albums from the group’s most beloved period, Tales from Topographic Oceans has its fans and its detractors. Some of those detractors even include members of Yes, most notably keyboard player Rick Wakeman.

Up until Close to the Edge, prog was a commercially successful musical genre, and many critics applauded its imaginative, ethereal, and conceptual approach, as well as the musicians, who were true instrumental craftsmen of the highest order. Tales from Topographic Oceans was an album that was, for some, an album that unfortunately reflected too much of what the genre’s critics considered the worst aspects of the sound; its indulgent, long musical passages and sometimes nearly incomprehensible lyrical flights of fancy that would make C.S. Lewis blush had them questioning whether two full LPs was overkill.

For some, the album was a symptom of how music was losing its way as the mid-’70s approached and may have even been signaling the first stirrings of listeners looking for something more immediate and simpler that harkened back to the roots of rock, which would eventually lead to punk and new wave and, much later, indie and grunge.

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We spotlight two Record Store Day 2026 releases from Craft Recordings that landed in the racks last Saturday.

That’s Him! from Abbey Lincoln is another in a long line of bespoke jazz reissues from Craft Recordings. It’s an RSD 2026 Exclusive with a run of 4,200 copies. Cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing on 180-gram vinyl, the reissue comes in an archival sleeve, is a limited mono edition, and replicates the period Riverside label.

Originally released on Riverside as part of the Contemporary Series in 1958, but recorded in 1957, Lincoln is backed by what is billed as the Riverside Jazz Stars, and that’s not hyperbole. The quartet is Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Sonny Rollins on tenor sax, Wynton Kelly on piano, and Paul Chambers on bass. Max Roach, not part of the Riverside stable, plays drums.

Lincoln is a powerful singer, but approaches the songs here with understatement and nuance. “Strong Man,” “My Man,” “I Must Have That Man,” and “When a Woman Loves a Man” form the lyrical thematic core of the album, along with the album’s closing track “Don’t Explain,” written by Billie Holiday. The way Lincoln handles the Oscar Brown Jr. composition “Strong Man,” which opens the album, sets the mood for an extraordinary set.

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The name Robin Trower may not resonate with today’s young pop streamers, but throughout roughly the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, he went from one successful musical life to another.

From before the group’s debut album in 1967 and through their fifth album in 1971, Trower was the guitarist with Procol Harum. Along with the group’s 1973 album Grand Hotel (which Trower was not part of), the five albums he was on with Procol Harum constituted their peak as one of the most inventive pop/prog groups from England in that period.

If that wasn’t enough, after leaving the group, Trower embarked on a highly successful solo career, in a trio format, beginning with Twice Removed from Yesterday in 1973. His next album, Bridge of Sighs, was an FM staple, has achieved classic rock immortality, and was the first of four best-selling albums, with his next three albums also charting. Chrysalis released all of these albums.

Trower left behind the near-classical, pop/art-prog of Procol Harum and formed a blues-rock power trio, clearly rooted in both the heavier and dreamier sides of Jimi Hendrix’s music. In many respects, even though he was British, his music became a natural bridge between the music of Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Beginning with the reissue of Twice Removed from Yesterday, issued in a 2-LP or 2-CD edition, Bridge of Sighs and For Earth Below have also been released in remastered, bespoke 2-LP vinyl editions and in an expansive CD/Blu-ray set and a 4-CD box set, respectively, that should not be missed. The latest 50th-anniversary reissue is Robert Trower Live!, originally released in 1976 after For Earth Below.

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Two recent Mobile Fidelity reissues with New York roots, originally released on Elektra, but from two different decades and two very different musical genres, both had a seismic impact on music when they were first released.

East-West, from The Butterfield Blues Band, was the group’s second album, released in 1966, and expanded on the vital promise of its self-titled debut, released in 1965. A veritable supergroup, the band featured the twin-guitar attack of Elvin Bishop and, especially, the iconic Mike Bloomfield. Both would go on to make music beyond their time with Butterfield, but to hear them play together on the first two Butterfield Blues Band albums proved that lightning could indeed strike twice.

Bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Billy Davenport both played with Howlin’ Wolf, and Davenport also played with Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Otis Rush. Keyboardist Mark Naftalan would go on to play with Mother Earth and Quicksilver Messenger Service and has a long list of credits.

Members of the group would be part of Bob Dylan’s infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival appearance, when the former folkie went electric, backed by, among others, Bloomfield, Arnold, and the drummer of the first Butterfield Blues Band album, Sam Lay. East-West was released on the esteemed Elektra label, and although a blues album, it was a pivotal release in the label’s gradual and organic evolution from a folk/ roots/ world music label to a pop and rock powerhouse.

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Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, a documentary about Paul McCartney’s departure from The Beatles, his beginnings as a solo artist, and his founding of Wings, and ending in the early ’80s with his McCartney II album, is currently playing on Amazon. Directed by Gordon Neville, it’s an entertaining and surprisingly candid portrayal of McCartney’s early solo career, ’70s success, family life, and much more.

A companion soundtrack album has been released. The album is yet another recently released project that looks at the period. The Wings Anthology audio releases and Paul McCartney and Wings: The Story of A Band on the Run book are also part of chronicling this era. In many ways, the soundtrack album, best enjoyed on the 180-gram vinyl edition, is a pared-down version of the Wings Anthology. This album, though, includes some rarities.

There’s a demo of “Silly Love Songs,” a rough mix of “Arrow Through Me,” a track from the James Paul McCartney television special from 1973, and the Rockshow version of “Live and Let Die” from 1980. Although not in chronological order, the album actually has a nice flow. As a single album, it might be a good introduction for younger fans just discovering McCartney’s early solo music and Wings. Collectors will appreciate the rarities and the enclosed two-sided color poster. The sound quality is also quite good, particularly McCartney’s bass, considering how many different sources were accessed for this project.

While this soundtrack and even the Wings Anthology are welcome releases, an audio companion that matched the robustness of the book and film might have been more fitting. Gathering together several discs of rarities would have been thrilling. Also, many live concert discs could have been released, chronicling the different bands McCartney assembled during the Wings period. And of course, fans are still waiting for the obvious reissues of London Town and Back to the Egg from this period, as part of the McCartney Archive.

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Celebrating Nick Lowe on his 77th birthday. —Ed.

Brit Nick Lowe was one of the most beloved, talented, and versatile figures of the punk/new wave explosion of the late-’70s. Oddly, he really wasn’t punk or new wave, but an artist who emerged during that scene in the wake of the pub rock, post-’60s scene in England as a member of Brinsley Schwarz (with Schwarz, Ian Gomm, Billy Rankin, and Bob Andrews).

Lowe was a roots rocker at heart who occasionally dipped his toe into psychedelia, but was most at home with pure pop, even naming the American version of his solo debut album Pure Pop For Now People, released in 1978. Lowe was also and still is an accomplished record producer, most notably for Elvis Costello and The Pretenders. He was part of the group Rockpile (with Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner, and Terry Williams) while simultaneously producing and releasing solo albums. Later, he would be in another supergroup, Little Village (with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, and Jim Keltner). He is also a prolific songwriter.

Lowe’s last solo album was The Old Magic, released in 2011. He released a holiday album, Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family, in 2013. That resume barely scratches the surface and doesn’t even mention the other singles, EPs, live albums, and contributions he’s made to other people’s work and appearances on a plethora of tribute albums. Indoor Safari is his second with Los Straightjackets, the mysterious, Tennessee-based instrumental band, after their debut together, Walkabout, in 2020. It’s filled with the kind of rootsy simplicity and charm we’ve come to expect from Lowe.

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Neil Young remains one of the most prolific artists in music today. While he continues to put out previously unreleased live and studio recordings from his vast archives and reissues of albums from his full catalog, he also records new studio albums, releases live concert recordings from recent tours, and puts out soundtrack releases. Two recent must-have Young releases, from the many that came out in roughly the last 15 months, are Oceanside Countryside and Coastal.

Oceanside Countryside is an album Young shelved, consisting of songs he originally recorded by himself in 1977 in Florida, as well as several tracks he recorded with additional musicians in Nashville. Except for one song, all the music here would eventually be released in fuller versions. On the tracks with band backing, the core players are Ben Keith on dobro, Rufus Thibodeaux on fiddle, Joe Osborn on bass, and Karl T. Himmel on drums. There are also contributions from Tim Drummond, Greg Thomas, Dennis Belfield, and Tom Scribner, with Levon Helm of the Band on “The Old Homestead.”

This was the Comes a Time period, and most of the music has a wistful, acoustic country feel, with the quintessential ’70s classic Neil Young sound. “Goin’ Back,” “Human Highway,” and “Field of Opportunity” would come out on Comes a Time. “Dance Dance Dance” appeared on Harvest. “It Might Have Been” appeared on A Treasure. “Sail Away” would turn up on Rust Never Sleeps. “Lost In Space” appeared on Hawks and Doves, and “The Old Homestead” would appear on Hawks and Doves.

“Captain Kennedy” has been released in different versions on American Stars and Bars, Hitchhiker, and Chrome Dreams. “Pocahontas” would appear on Rust Never Sleeps, Hitchhiker, and Chrome Dreams. “Human Highway” would also appear on Hitchhiker and was intended for an aborted Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album.

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It would take several volumes of a biography to detail Don Was’s extensive and celebrated career in music.

Highlights include his band Was Not Was, the countless sessions he’s played on, and the high-profile albums he’s produced. If that wasn’t enough, he has been the president of Blue Note Records since 2012. In an industry where lawyers, agents, accountants, and executives who couldn’t even carry a tune in their shower head labels, Was brings a wealth of musical knowledge and experience to a historic label, and his tenure there has been nothing short of successful on every level.

Not content to just run one of the most esteemed record labels in the world, Was has continued to perform, produce, and stay involved in day-to-day music-making. Somehow, amidst all that activity, he has a new album out: the debut album of his new group, Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble Groove in the Face of Adversity, on the Michigan-based Mack Avenue Records, is a heady stew of soul, funk, and jazz with touches of reggae, pop, rock, and R&B. This is no solo album and is truly a group project. Was anchors the affair with his stand-up bass playing, but this large, nine-piece ensemble is an all-star lineup.

The opening track, with subtle dub reggae grooves, features lead vocalist Steffanie Christi’an. “Nubian Lady,” a sprawling soul-funk epic written by jazz keyboardist Kenny Barron that features Dave McMurray, has the kind of spiritual flute feel of vintage Yusef Lateef mixed with the groove of the Brian Jackson, Gil Scott-Heron, and the Midnight Band recordings. “I Ain’t Got Nothing But Mine,” surprisingly a cover of a Hank Williams song, is a powerful jazz workout that, like “Nubian Lady,” was recorded live.

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The Sun Records label, based in Memphis, Tennessee, put rock ‘n’ roll on the map in the 1950s and launched a musical, artistic, and cultural explosion that resonated around the world and can still be felt today. While rock ‘n’ roll and its many permeations are virtually absent from popular music these days, their place in American culture remains.

The key artists of the Sun rock ‘n’ roll explosion—Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and others—arrived at their sound by a gradual and organic mixing of American roots music, primarily country and blues, but also R&B, jazz, and folk. Other Sun artists, while considered part of Sun’s seminal and groundbreaking rock ‘n’ roll stable, made a sound rooted in country. For Sam Phillips, who launched the company, labels meant very little.

Which brings us to two original and important Sun releases. One from Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar, which might be deemed strictly country, and one from Carl Perkins, Dance Album of Carl Perkins, which was a rock ‘n’ roll hybrid (rockabilly) that added a pinch of country to rock ‘n’ roll. The descriptions, categorizations, and assigning of labels are debatable and ultimately pointless.

Reissues of important recordings can serve many purposes, but often the big questions are: how do they sound and how faithful are they to the originals? Although these two Sun recordings from Cash and Perkins are revolutionary, the original pressings of the albums just don’t sound very good. Poor tape transfers, inferior vinyl record quality, and primitive means of producing records and getting them out to market in the mid- to late-’50s resulted in great music of historical significance.

However, given how quickly every step of the record-making process evolved through the late ’50s and particularly ’60s and ’70s, even mint copies of original and later vinyl pressings just didn’t sound very good. Of course, various CD reissues and deluxe packages of Sun recordings have been released over the years, preserving the music for generations and expanding on the knowledge, significance, and understanding of this important music. However, it would appear that these new Intervention Records releases are not only the best reissues of these albums, but maybe the best recordings of them to ever be released.

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Axis: Bold as Love, the second album from The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Jimi Hendrix, Noel Redding, and Mitch Mitchell), originally released in December 1967, is the middle child of the trilogy of albums that introduced guitarist Jimi Hendrix to the world and often receives much less attention than the other two albums.

As detailed in an overview of the Bold As Love box set from 2025, the album was recorded quickly at Olympic Studios in London, following the startling group debut of Are You Experienced?, and was released just seven months after that album in the UK. Hendrix often lamented that the album was rushed, but a listen to it reveals a musician burning with inspiration as a songwriter, guitarist, and studio innovator. The album features some of Hendrix’s most beloved songs, including “Little Wing” and “Spanish Castles.”

Hendrix grew to love working in the studio, and this album takes some of the raw fury and guitar dazzle of Are You Experienced? and adds songs of great depth, often with more emphasis on mood and spirit than sheer guitar prowess. Hendrix was becoming more involved in shaping the sound of his music in the studio and did so on the album’s mix, alongside engineer Eddie Kramer and manager Chas Chandler. Unfortunately, side one of the album had to be remixed in one night at the last moment by Hendrix, Kramer, and Chandler, as Hendrix lost the master tape in a taxi. Over the years, those involved in the making of the album have said this added to the rushed nature of the album.

This new UHQR release of the album from Acoustic Sounds marks a slight departure in design for the UHQR package. The new outer box is a flip-open, clam-shell package with gold foil lettering, with the change being a flip-open design replacing the rounded dowel spine, slip-case box. Released previously in a UHQR package as a single-33 1/3 vinyl album, this set is a double 45- RPM Clarity vinyl set, with the two vinyl records in audiophile archival sleeves in a plastic sleeve.

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Remembering Nicky Hopkins, born on this day in 1944. —Ed.

Ever since the late ’50s/early ’60s pop music explosion, session or studio musicians were integral to recording. Whether they be backing singers, soloists, part of such illustrious posses as the famed Wrecking Crew, or the musicians who were the heart and soul of the Motown sound, these formerly somewhat anonymous players have been given their due over the years in books and in such movies as Standing in the Shadows of Motown from 2002, The Wrecking Crew from 2008, and 20 Feet from Stardom from 2013.

For anyone who has followed the birth and evolution in particular of British rock, from the singles-based British Invasion or album-based ’70s, one name stands out for those who read liner notes: British pianist Nicky Hopkins. In 2011 the book And on Piano …Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock’s Greatest Session Man by Julian Dawson was published. The book came many years after Hopkins passed away in 1994 at the age of 50. That book did a lot to recognize what an important musical artist he was and solidified his place in rock music history.

A new film entitled The Session Man: Nicky Hopkins is sure to bring his legacy alive for even more fans of great British and in some cases even American music. The film was directed by Mike Treen who has primarily worked in television. The timing is just right as it was just announced that Hopkins will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the “Musical Excellence Award.”

This is a perfectly crafted musical doc and includes a star-studded cast of interviewees with whom Hopkins worked. There are interviews with Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Peter Frampton, Nils Lofgren, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Jim Keltner, Terry Reid, Chuck Leavell, Graham Parker, P.P. Arnold, Harry Shearer from Spinal Tap, and record producers Glynn Johns, Shel Talmy, and Chris Kimsey, among many others. There’s also an audio interview with Pete Townshend and a previously filmed interview with Mick Jagger.

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It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years since The Alan Parsons Project debuted in 1976 with their album Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The group was somewhat of an anomaly when they started. They were the brainchild of British songwriter Eric Woolfson and British superstar producer Alan Parsons. Parsons began as an engineer at Abbey Road Studios on recordings by The Beatles and Paul McCartney, among others, and quickly made the leap to uber-producer, working on defining ’70s albums such as Year of the Cat by Al Stewart, and struck gold with the iconic Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd.

Parsons initially enlisted Woolfson to start a production company and serve as his manager, and then the duo was suggested to form a studio group. Few record producers have made the transition from producer to performer or group leader. Still, in the case of The Alan Parsons Project, it worked: 11 successful albums over 15 years saw the group explore ’70s rock, prog, and a unique combination of electronic soft rock/MOR and pop, resulting in hits.

The albums, however, were surprisingly complex, sometimes dense, lyrically thematic and conceptual, reflecting peerless state-of-the-art studio innovation and with a shifting musical cast. They were far ahead of their time in exploring the vast possibilities of electronic music and in tackling the philosophical themes of thinkers/writers such as Issac Asimov.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an album that, while primarily based on the stories of Gothic horror writer Edgar Allen Poe, draws on a variety of musical styles. It starts a bit heavy in spots and has moments of ’70s bombast, but it is quite varied. Arthur Brown, from the group The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, takes a star turn on “Tell Tale Hearts.” Terry Sylvester, who replaced Graham Nash in the Hollies, guests on vocals on “The Cask of Amontillado” and “To One in Paradise.” The musical foundation of the album is unique, as it features all members of the bands Pilot and Ambrosia, along with Francis Monkman of Curved Air.

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Jethro Tull holds a unique place in rock history. Led by flute-playing, musical minstrel, and Dickensian vagabond Ian Anderson, the quintessential British group has been lumped into various trends, most notably prog, but it is so much more. Their melding of folk, jazz, rock, classical, and pop began with their bluesy debut, This Was, in 1968, and successfully evolved through nearly the end of the 1970s before their sound became heavier and more straightforward.

Arguably, their first 10 studio albums are exceptional, and much of their music still stands up today. Along with Anderson, the key members of Tull who contributed to this rich period are Glenn Cornick, Clive Bunker, Martin Barre, Jeffrey Hammond, John Evan, Barriemore Barlow, John Glascock, and Dee Palmer, in an ever-shifting lineup that found guitarist Barre as Anderson’s most important and consistent collaborator.

The 1972 double-album release Living in the Past came at perhaps the group’s peak and is an odd, yet excellent album in the Tull discography. Their sixth overall album was also their first on Chrysalis in the States. It has recently been reissued in both vinyl and a deluxe CD/Blu-ray box set, billed as Still Living in the Past, further enhancing the album’s stature.

What made the initial double-album release so successful was that rather than being the standard compilation album or just a simple collection of bits and bobs (or odds and sods), it offered a rich variety of music, much of it B-sides, different single mixes, live material, EP tracks, and previously unreleased music from various album configurations or territories. It was a beautiful presentation in an era when the rock album package was truly a thing of beauty.

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