Author Archives: Steve Matteo

In 1970 and 1971, Cat Stevens released two albums (Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat) that established him as one of the most important and successful singer-songwriters in music. The genre ruled in that period, with albums from fellow UK artist Elton John and Americans Carole King, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Carly Simon.

Catch Bull at Four in 1972 didn’t yield any hits, but it continued a winning formula for Stevens. Foreigner in 1973 was a stylistic departure, and although it was not well received or popular at the time, in retrospect it was an adventurous and experimental album that included a full side of the Foreigner suite, illustrating how Stevens was broadening his sound and growing as an artist.

Buddha and the Chocolate Box from 1974 was a return to more familiar musical territory and included the hit “Oh Very Young.” The album would be one of the last quintessential albums from Stevens and came four short years before he left the music business. It would be almost 20 years before Stevens recorded again. The album has recently been reissued and sounds as fresh and new as when it was originally released. The hit “Oh Very Young” is as poignant as ever, and for those who heard it when it was first released, hearing it now is a whole new experience.

What made the album and those other successful albums of the period so good was the way Stevens mixed folk, rock, and pop with rich musical textures and exotic sounds, highlighted by his guitar work, keyboards, and distinctive vocal style. While his music was often moody and introspective, with baroque classical touches, Stevens was a deft songwriter who could craft catchy choruses and memorable melodies.

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The Smithsonian Folkways label has been the premier depository of the history of American roots music. Folkways Records was founded in New York by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948, and was a major player in the great folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. The Smithsonian Institution purchased the label in 1987.

Releasing music over the years in a wide variety of formats, the organization isn’t just a museum or archive but a living, breathing producer of recordings that are readily available and accessible for purchase. Classic Blues From Smithsonian Folkways, a recent release, is the perfect example of the rich trove of music in the label’s archive.

First released on CD in 2003, it is a two-album vinyl set offering the original recordings of some of the most important acoustic blues music ever made. Over 26 tracks, iconic blues artists that defined the acoustic roots blues movement are represented. While this is not a strictly acoustic release, it covers almost a 50-year period from 1942 through 1992 and draws on various locales.

The music here provides a deep, rich foundation to help anyone gain a foothold in one of the most influential American musical movements. Some of these recordings also blend folk music with blues and could arguably be labeled folk. Some of the essential recordings included here are “Mercury Blues” by K. C. Douglas, “Candy Man” by Reverend Gary Davis, “Boll Weevil” by Pink Anderson, “Come Go Home With Me” by Lightnin’ Hopkins, “Rising Sun” by Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, “Pony Blues” by David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and “Vastapol” by Elizabeth Cotten.

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Remembering John Lennon, born on this day in 1940. —Ed.

The Plastic Ono Band album, released in 1970 by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, is monumental in the annals of rock history. It was the fourth album John and Yoko released, but it is often credited as Lennon’s solo debut.

There were so many facets to what made the album so iconic, right from its initial release. First and foremost, it signaled Lennon’s complete break with The Beatles and the 1960s, spiritually and philosophically. It was a sharp severing of all the bonds that tied him to that earth-shattering decade as well as to his place in the band that defined the era. It was also his divorce from Paul McCartney, his songwriting partner and co-equal in The Beatles.

Emotionally and psychologically, the music was the result of Lennon’s time in primal scream therapy with American psychologist and psychotherapist Dr. Arthur Janov, who developed the therapy in the early 1950s. It is this therapy that informs Lennon’s use of raw, sparse backing as a foundation for his direct, unflinching, and often wrenching lyrics.

Lennon, unlike most rock stars (except maybe Pete Townshend), sought to shatter the mythology and invincibility of his group, especially after the breakup of The Beatles. George Harrison didn’t exactly seek to do that, but he felt the burden of being an ex-Beatle the heaviest.

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Second Song is Neil Young’s second studio album with the Chrome Hearts and is a follow-up to last year’s Talkin’ to the Trees. Like that album, this one was co-produced by Young, his brother-in-law, the iconic record producer Lou Adler, and Niko Bolas. It was recorded at the fabled Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, California. Young’s band includes Spooner Oldham, Micah Nelson, Willie Nelson’s son, Corey McCormick on bass, and Anthony LoGerfo on drums.

The album is a sparse, stripped-down, organic, raw affair that finds Young in a reflective, gentle, at times almost child-like frame of mind. It really isn’t in the vein of his previous, more acoustic-based albums, but is actually something quite new. Young references the song “Long May You Run,” the title track from his one and only Stills-Young Band album from 1976, on “Casting Me Away From You,” when he sings, “We found things to do in stormy weather.” Also, the song “Long May You Run” includes a reference to a chrome heart, which appears to have inspired the name of his new band.

“Soon I Might Be Going,” a deeply personal song of acceptance, also directly addresses the sad state of the US presidency, but not in any angry way. Instead, it expresses a resigned reporting-the-news feeling, with the lines “President was on TV, says everything is golden/He’s tearing down the old White House, those days were never olden.” Of the seven songs, “Casting Me Away,” from 1965, in demo form, was previously released on Neil Young Archives Vol. I in 2009. “I’ll Love You,” from 1965, was a song Young recorded with his band the Squires.

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Verve Records was primarily a jazz label that eventually dabbled in folk, rock, and some other genres. In many respects, the label’s heyday was in the 1960s. Blue Note is often applauded as being perhaps the premier jazz label of all time, and under the recent leadership of Don Was, it has been leading the way in bespoke jazz reissues. In terms of quantity, Verve may not have reissued as many classic jazz albums as Blue Note recently. Still, with several reissue imprints, it is releasing both popular titles and rare gems that at times rival the quality of the Blue Note Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl series. 

While there have been some fine Brazilian and Bossa Nova jazz releases from Verve, the label continues to boast one of the strongest back catalogs in these genres, exemplified by recent reissues of Astrud Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Marcos Valle. Vocalist Astrid Gilberto was a key figure of the runaway success of the Getz/Gilberto album released in 1964, and that same year, she was also part of the live album Getz Au Go Go. Getz/Gilberto launched her as a major international star and the de facto voice of the new Bossa Nova Brazilian music sound that captured the world.

She released her debut album, The Astrid Gilberto Album, in 1965, produced by Creed Taylor, and quickly followed up the same year with The Shadow of Your Smile, which we will cover here. This Verve release has been given the full audiophile treatment with an Analogue Productions release from the Acoustic Sounds Series. This is a bespoke reissue mastered from the original analog tapes by Matthew Lutthans, pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings (QRP) and packaged in high-quality tip-on gatefold jackets.

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Marvin Gaye’s career was cut short at the age of 44, as he was launching a comeback, when he was murdered by his father in 1984. In his short life, he made some of the best R&B and soul music ever, and his music transcended those genres.

Initially known for his slew of popular R&B crossover hits in the 1960s, including his duets with Tammi Terrell and, to a lesser degree, with Kim Weston and even Mary Wells, Gaye later recorded albums that reflected his maturation as an artist and not just a hitmaker.

The first was the iconic What’s Going On, released in 1971, an album that still resonates today with its themes of social injustice and ecological apocalypse. Gaye made one other album that, while not as monumental as What’s Going On, defined 1970s soul music: Let’s Get It On, in 1973.

The album was sensual, sometimes raw, like on “You Sure Love to Ball,” yet tender and untamed in its approach to music for lovers. The title song was a massive hit and set the tone for the album’s largely uncluttered sound. The end of side one features somewhat of a reprise entitled “Keep Gettin’ It On.”

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The late 1980s were not very kind to many music lovers. With the iconic music of the 1960s and 1970s long in the rearview mirror and the fast-food, video-age pop of the ’80s waning, those who would not embrace grunge and rap in the 1990s were at a loss for excitement about new sounds, or even the future of pop.

One album that came out in this period that harked back to the magic of the ’60s and ’70s, but was as cutting-edge and youthfully joyful as anything in music at the time, was Fisherman’s Blues, released in 1988 by The Waterboys. Though the album was not a mainstream pop hit, its highest album sales ranking was more than respectable, and it appeared on many year-end best-of lists.

Despite being an album from the UK in the tradition of Van Morrison, U2, and contemporaries such as Hothouse Flowers and The Pogues, it foreshadowed the Americana roots sound just emerging in many instances. The album was the group’s fourth and a dazzling mix of current and traditional roots styles that stood out amid the clunky drum machines and synthesizers of the time, much like Music From Big Pink by The Band stood out in the waning days of psychedelia in 1968.

It was also the group’s first album after the two they released that included Karl Wallinger, who went on to form World Party. Interestingly, the album included a song called “World Party,” co-written by Wallinger. The Waterboys have continued, with only the group’s leader, Mike Scott, as a constant. He has also recorded two solo albums.

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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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