Category Archives: The TVD Storefront

VIA PRESS RELEASE | To celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary, Yoko Ono will release a special reissue of Wedding Album, out Friday 22nd March with Chimera Music and Secretly Canadian. Its release comes 50 years after Yoko and John were married – to mark the golden wedding anniversary of two of the 20th century’s most emblematic cultural figures.

Originally released in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Wedding Album was the couple’s third experimental, album-length record, following Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (1968) and Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions (1969). Wedding Album has been often cited as the most remarkable of the duo’s testaments to an intense romantic and artistic partnership that would last 14 years, until Lennon’s tragic passing in 1980.

As Lennon later recalled, the two artists first met in late 1966, when Ono was preparing an exhibition of her conceptual art in London. On 20th March 1969, John and Yoko were married in a civil service in Gibraltar. To celebrate the event, in lieu of a conventional honeymoon, the newlyweds spent a week in bed at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam, inviting members of the press into their room for interviews and photo sessions to call attention to their campaign for world peace.

With Wedding Album, Lennon and Ono created an enduring snapshot of a vibrant pop-cultural moment, with the hostilities of the Vietnam War as its backdrop. The album features “John & Yoko,” a call-and-response duet, which features John and Yoko calling out each other’s names seductively and playfully over the sound of their heartbeat as well as clips from interviews with reports and John’s acapella version of the Beatles’ song “Good Night.” Altogether, Wedding Album captures the humour, earnestness, and spontaneity that marked the early years of the “Ballad of John and Yoko” era.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Murder In The Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story will premiere next month on Saturday, April 20 at AMC Kabuki 8 in San Francisco, CA at 1pm. Directed by Adam Dubin (Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right to Party” & “No Sleep ‘til Brooklyn”), the film contains over fifty interviews with various metal stalwarts, (including Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Exodus, Testament, and Death Angel), telling its tall tales through a mix of first-person interviews, animation, and narration by comedian Brian Posehn.

“These are just good stories, and they are very human stories,” says Dubin. Narratively, MITFR follows the story of a group of young kids in Northern California with a shared passion for heavy rock bands like UFO, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead. “All these bands were mainly from England, and they never really toured the West Coast,” says Dubin. “So these young people started creating their own music, starting their own fanzines, booking clubs, and trading tapes. These were people who were adamant about music and the bands, but also each other.”

The documentary is loosely based on a 2012 photojournal of the same name by Harald Oimoen and Brian Lew. “What I loved about the book is that it wasn’t just about Metallica,” says Dubin. “It was documenting a vibrant scene, where all the bands were equal and there was real camaraderie. The photos captured the sweat of the clubs, the ringing in your ears, and the power of young people. Harald and Brian captured the humanity of it, and they understood that I was somebody who could bring that out in a film.”

Another strength of the film is shedding light on bands who never hit the heights of Metallica but certainly cast a wide influence — thrash forefathers Exodus in particular. “There’s a big four of metal that should really be a big five and include Exodus,” says Dubin. “I particularly think the movie will inspire viewers to re-evaluate the contributions of Kirk Hammett, who founded Exodus in the Bay Area three years before Metallica came to town. Kirk was the central mover who put the band together, guided the music, and found frontman wild man Paul Baloff.”

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On which Mr. Lou Reed, poète maudit of Long Island and member of the most influential avant-garde rock’n’roll band to ever sell about a thousand records, picks himself up a couple of guitar whiz Detroit boys best known for playing with Alice Cooper, pushes ‘em on stage at Howard Stein’s Academy of Music in New Yawk City, and proceeds to turn some of his most beloved Loutoons into heavy metal stompers.

1974’s Rock n Roll Animal Reed must have mortified the VU faithful, but it sure won him the big youth audience. When I fell in love with it I didn’t know the Velvet Underground from Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, and I’ll never forget the day my older brother and I happened upon a copy of 1969: The Velvet Underground Live in the cheap-o bin at the Woolworth’s in Hanover and popped it into the 8-track on the way home. Did we like it? Hell no! We were so plumb disgusted with it we stopped the car, tossed it out the window, and BACKED THE CAR OVER IT!

In so far as populist moves go Rock n Roll Animal reminds me a lot of Dylan and the Band’s Before the Flood, released the same year. Both live LPs performed the same civic function–shot a buncha sacred songs full of steroids in blatant disregard of the tender feelings of the folks who adored the originals so as to bring ‘em to the hoi polloi (like me!). Fuck subtlety and crank up the volume was the recipe, and Robert Christgau’s words about Before the Flood (“I agree a few of [these songs] will never walk again, but I treasure the sacrilege”) apply as well to Rock n Roll Animal.

Me, I always appreciate a big hard rock move, and Lou pulls this one off without even showing any armpit sweat. The album’s built on the boffo twin guitar attack of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, who alternately play it pretty (the legendary “Intro” to “Sweet Jane”) or go the heavyweight route (“Sweet Jane” itself). For the most part the band keeps things hammer-to-thumb simple, the exception being the epic version of “Heroin,” on which they aim for majesty (albeit a very twisted sort of majesty) and hit the nail on the noggin.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | German label Groenland Records reissues The Bells of 12, the 2006 debut solo album from Sol Seppy, the project of British singer-songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, Sophie Michalitsianos. She was a member of the band Sparklehorse and toured with Radiohead. The Bells of 12 is out April 13 on vinyl for Record Store Day followed by a CD and digital release on April 19.

All of the songs on The Bells of 12 were written and arranged over two years by Michalitsianos, a classically trained pianist and cellist. Born in England, and growing up between there and Australia, she was raised with music in her blood, beginning to write songs as early as 5 years old.

At sixteen, Sophie wrote music for television documentaries and lent her vocal abilities for free studio time at the EMI studios in Australia. For the next few years, labels would approach her with offers, provided she shifted her image to fit their ideals and sing the pop songs their producers wrote. She politely declined and continued on her own path of exploration. Here Sophie reached a peculiar juncture and went to university with the intention of becoming a diplomat. She soon shifted courses and was accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she studied contemporary composition and orchestration. In due course, she began making a name for herself as Australia’s improvising rock cellist, touring with numerous acts, though the position soon wore itself out and Sophie decided it was time to move on.

At twenty-three she moved to the US and not long after received word that Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse had heard her music and wanted her to join them for their tour with Radiohead. Sophie obliged and contributed on Sparklehorse’s albums, Good Morning Spider and It’s A Wonderful Life.

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British singer-songwriter Tom Wardle creates plaintive and powerful country-rock, full of grit and golden-hued ’70s vibes.

The title-track from his gorgeous little 5 song EP, “Jacqueline,” is Wardle at his best, throwing his husky voice around like Rod Stewart in his heyday, milking his melodies over a jangly bed of drums and glowing organ. His soulful cry is suited for this kind of ballad, which reaches anthemic heights without losing the feeling of being grounded in reality. It’s no wonder that Tom has become fixture at high-end events around the globe with spins on the BBC and celebrity endorsements becoming a regular thing.

The “Jacqueline” EP arrived in stores this past February and features a set of impressive Americana-leaning gems and even a dip into reggae. All these tracks are worth a listen and provide a more upbeat approach than “Jacqueline,” and come across as raw, potent, and unprocessed. Wardle is one of the more promising crooners in recent years and it is clear that he knows how to play on his strengths, especially when given the space to serve the song in an intimate, slow burning way as he does on “Jacqueline.”

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “For me the music here brings a joyful tear. How wonderful to get a sense of the entire arc of Ronnie’s work, rough and smooth, lost and found.” —Pete Townshend

Ronnie Lane, bass player for the Small Faces and the Faces—songwriter behind iconic songs such as “Ooh La La,” “Itchycoo Park,” “The Poacher,” “Annie and Debris.” In many ways Ronnie Lane remains an enigma in the story of rock ‘n’ roll. An artist who was determined to chart his own destiny and break free from the demands of the music “business.” His sense of disillusion with the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle led him to leave his hugely successful band for a ramshackle country farm (Fishpool) and a life on the road (of sorts…) He assembled a new band—Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance—and would create The Passing Show—a now legendary circus tent tour of the country with assorted clowns, acrobats and comedians. To further his ambition to do as he pleased musically, he built his own recording studio—The Lane Mobile Studio—itself an icon in the history of rock recordings.

Ronnie created a sound that was unique in British music, a style that leaned heavily on an array of influences particularly folk, country music, and later r ’n’ b with welcome contributions from the band of musicians he surrounded himself with. Ronnie was not alone in his rural idyll—many friends would join him in his new artistic endeavours—Gallagher and Lyle, Kevin Westlake, Billy Livesey as well as Ronnie Wood, Pete Townshend, and Eric Clapton (the latter wrote “Wonderful Tonight” round the fire at Ronnie’s Fishpool Farm). Eventually the symptoms of MS would surface and in the ’80s Ronnie would move to Austin, Texas where he still wrote and performed up until his death in 1997.

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I just listened to The Clash’s Combat Rock, and my ears have gone MIA! I don’t know whether they crawled into a foxhole to get away from the damn thing only to have the abominable “Rock the Casbah” drop dead smack on ‘em, or flat-out took to their heels screaming “Fuck it! I didn’t sign up for this shit!”

But one thing I do know–when the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau ass-kissingly cited this sonic shitpile as proof positive that The Clash were evolving, he failed to say what they were evolving into–Allen Fucking Ginsberg is my guess.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that my ears are born cowards who have been known to flee at the first sign of a firefight, but then again they’ve stood up to some really savage combat over the years; they bravely endured more than their fair share of ELP albums, after all, and walked away from the Battle of Captain and Tennille with Distinguished Service Crosses.

But Combat Rock? Sheeeit, man, who could blame ‘em for dropping their earbuds and deserting like Private Eddie Slovak? The poor bastards were expecting a punk album! They weren’t expecting to get spattered with horseshit! They walked into the worst ambush since the Battle of Little Big Horn and I don’t blame ‘em for beating a hasty retreat. I ran too, and I’m their fucking commanding officer!

Allow me to just say here that I respect The Clash for occupying the moral high ground during the abysmal Reagan/Thatcher years, and commend them for addressing the plethora of ills that kept all right-minded people on the brink of ethical apoplexy during that benighted time. But when it comes to probing analyses of the pressing issues of the day I’ll take the Minutemen any day, because they never failed to make me jump up and down while they were deploring the sad state of El Salvador.

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Lucky 757 are the genuine article when in comes to modern-day rockabilly, tipping their hat to the past pioneers of the genre while pushing the retro sound forward with a combo of chops, passion, and innovation.

The band has maintained a relentless show schedule and consistent artistic output, becoming a prominent fixture and sought after live act around their home state of Virginia. But they journeyed away from their stomping grounds to record their latest record, making a pilgrimage to Sun Studios in Memphis in order to insure their tracks were bursting with that vintage rockabilly flavor.

Their insanely cool album cover shows the quintet in a moment of reprieve from what I can only imagine to be an all night session in the legendary cramped room that once housed the burgeoning talents of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison.

What’s equally as cool, is that the core of the Lucky 757 is made up of a father/son duo who clearly vibe on the same kind of rhythms. The dad writes the cagey lyrics and the son belts them out in such a nonchalant fashion, it’s hard to believe he knew the tape was rolling, let alone the camera which captured the whole session. The joyful, rowdy, and downright delightful video is a perfect companion piece for the band’s new 3-song EP “Memphis Sun” which arrives in stores on May 4th.

Mary Lattimore is known for collaboration; if the scene were jazz, she’d be rated as a first-call harpist. Mac McCaughan is noted as the singer-guitarist in Superchunk, a band that has thrived in four decades; it sorta goes without saying that collaboration is in his skill set. Still, the prospect of a duo record from these artists came with a tinge of uncertainty, as the team-up didn’t seem a natural fit. New Rain Duets, out on clear or black vinyl and digital March 22 through Three Lobed Recordings, exceeds expectations. One reason why: McCaughan isn’t slinging guitar but helming an array of synths. Meanwhile, Lattimore is plucking like a champ. The results are appealingly celestial, but also more.

I haven’t listened to everything Mary Lattimore’s recorded, but to varying degrees, I’ve liked everything I’ve heard. Her own stuff, either solo or in collaboration (she’s released records with Jeff Zeigler and Meg Baird and played with many others) displays an admirable range and comfort with experimentation while avoiding falling back onto the baseline cascades of lushness that are associated with her chosen instrument. If I see the name Mary Lattimore in the credits of someone else’s album (as I did with Sharron van Etten’s Are We There or Marissa Nadler’s For My Crimes) I note it as a sign of promise.

Of course, no artist is infallible, and I was unsure over what exactly New Rain Duets held in store. This is not to suggest that I don’t hold Mac McCaughan’s work in high regard. To the contrary, Superchunk was amongst my most-played bands of the ’90s, in part because they consistently delivered hooky songs with punk energy and edge while never coming off like a bunch of hackneyed doofuses.

I really dig his other bands Portastatic and Bricks, as well. Same goes for his 2015 solo LP Non-Believers. But a common thread in McCaughan’s work is pop, though it’s far from one-note. Over the years, he’s expanded from early Superchunk’s post-hardcore Buzzcocks-zone into lo-fi melodicism and power-pop-shaded singer-songwriter territory, and later augmented his sturdy strum with vivid baroque flourishes. On Non-Believers, he even productively integrated New Wavy synths into the scheme.

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Today we remember Andre Williams who passed away on March 17, with a look back from our archives. —Ed.

Zephire Andre Williams has packed a lot of living into his nearly 80 years on this planet, and along the way his name has been attached to a whole lot of records. In the second half of the 1950s he cut a slew of smolderingly low-fi platters for Detroit’s Fortune label, with “Bacon Fat” b/w “Just Because of a Kiss” growing into a national hit. The a-side is amongst the most potent R&B of its era, and it rightfully stands as a classic.

Specifically due to its scarcity, Andre Williams’ early work was once the stuff of legend. Not just his run of singles for Fortune, but his subsequent motions for ventures of differing size and longevity such as  Wingate, Sport, Avin, Checker, and Duke. He was also noted for his role behind the scenes at Motown during the first half of the ‘60s and as a co-writer (with Otha Hayes and Verlie Rice) of “Shake a Tail Feather,” the original of which was recorded in Chicago by The Five Du-Tones for the One-derful imprint.

The waxing of that ludicrously swank monster occurred in 1963 during one of Williams’ absences from Motown. It’s now well-established that he and Berry Gordy’s relationship was a highly volatile one, and by ’65 the two men had parted ways for good. His biggest post-Motown success came at Checker, one of the numerous subsidiaries belonging to Phil and Leonard Chess. Hooking up with Ike Turner in the early-‘70s sent Williams’ life into a downward spiral, mainly due to the steady availability of copious amounts of cocaine.

And Williams’ frequent label-hopping combined with his overall lack of national hits to basically insure difficulty and neglect in the anthologizing of his discography, even after he’d made his comeback. In ’84 Fortune Records, still in business against seemingly insurmountable odds, issued the compilation Jail Bait, but by the point of his ‘90s resurgence copies of that slab were long gone.

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Today we remember Surf Guitar legend Dick Dale who passed away on March 16 with a look back from our archives at the genre he pioneered. —Ed.

The Western Hemisphere has just entered prime beach season, which of course means swimming, soaking up rays in the sand, sipping upon cold beverages to help counteract the swelter, and for beings of adventuresome and athletic nature, the riding of major waves. But if one is faced with landlocked circumstances a perfectly acceptable alternative is cranking up Anthology Recordings’ reissue of the OST to Stephen Spaulding’s surf film Bali High. Gills-drenched in appropriate vibes, it also spotlights the ingenuity of musician-composer Michael Sena. 

Whilst enduring my teenage years a steady rise in clumsiness unfortunately became tangible, and thusly skateboarding, skiing, and surfing essentially got lumped together as activities best avoided in the safeguarding of physical health. However, I did enjoy skate and surf rock (I know not of a corresponding mountain genre of the slopes), though gradually clear was that a lot of surf music didn’t actually impact the listening diets of those having shaped up the subculture.

A whole bunch of real estate spreads out between the coasts of the United States, and a significant portion of surf rock served that market in a manner kinda similar to Exotica; residing closer to the root of true surf was Dick Dale, The Ventures, The Chantays, The Surfaris, and more so scads of obscure regional acts, a high number of them hailing from Southern California, but surf music’s reality was undeniably somewhat messy. For instance, many quickly adapted to hot rod themes in hopes of expanding audiences instantaneously snatched away by the tsunami of the British Invasion.

So the story goes, anyway. In 1966 The Endless Summer appeared, giving voice to a legitimate way of life amid the death throes of faddishness. Scored by The Sandals (or Sandells, who curiously went on to contribute the soundtrack to Dick Barrymore’s ’67 skiing doc The Last of the Ski Bums), Bruce Brown’s documentary is the obvious starting point of any tour through surf culture’s audio-visual component.

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Although he’s noted as a painter and conceptual artist, Terry Allen also writes songs, sings them and has recorded albums that have earned him an enduring cult following. This music has sometimes found him lumped into the subgenre of outlaw country, a designation that short-shrifts the man to an almost ridiculous extent. At no time will this be more apparent than while listening to Pedal Steal + Four Corners. Collecting Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band’s long-form narrative audio works onto one LP and three CDs with an info-loaded 28-page color booklet, the set defeats tidy stylistic categorization and presents the artist as truly one of a kind. It’s in stores March 22 via Paradise of Bachelors.

Art continues to accumulate at such a rate that the impulse to time-manage and only engage with an artist’s best or most noteworthy work is stronger than ever, even as evaluations over which examples are the greatest evolve over time. Make no mistake; Terry Allen, an artist of multiple specialties born in Wichita, KS and currently residing in Santa Fe, NM who’s been long-associated with the non-conformist country music scene of Lubbock, TX, is amongst our greatest artists. Pedal Steal + Four Corners takes the idea of abbreviating his body of work to one or a few examples and blows it completely to smithereens.

For decades, folks looking to become knowledgeable about Allen’s music were almost always urged to check out Lubbock (On Everything), his sophomore double-album masterpiece from 1979. Circa the late 1990s and into the new century, if someone was eager to go a little deeper, the recommendation was often Human Remains from ’96, in part because it was easily available (or easier to find, anyway) and also because it retained a similar vibe to Lubbock; call it singer-songwriter. The two albums even shared personnel in Joe Ely and Lloyd Maines (the latter’s steel guitar is all over Pedal Steal + Four Corners).

Back in 2016, Paradise of Bachelors’ vinyl reissue of Allen’s ’75 debut Juarez threw a major wrench into the works. It had hit CD for the second time in 2004 through his longtime label Sugar Hill, though I don’t recall much fanfare during that period. And by much, I mean hardly any at all, probably in large part because it was a rough time for physical releases of any kind.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | April 19, 2019, sees the vinyl, half speed master release of Blind Faith’s self-titled and only album. This platinum selling album topped the charts in the U.K., U.S., Canada, Denmark, Norway and Netherlands.

Cut at half speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road, one of a very few internationally renowned exponents of the technique, the album will be presented on heavyweight vinyl with high spec packaging, to create a thoroughly bespoke vinyl experience that, most importantly, will provide a sound quality superior to anything else currently available. Blind Faith were an English blues rock band, composed of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech. The band, which was one of the first supergroups, released their only album, Blind Faith, in August 1969.

Half Speed Mastering is an artisan technique offered by Abbey Road Studios, which results in the very highest quality sound reproduction. UMC have created a range of bespoke vinyl pressings of iconic albums utilising this process and have carefully selected Blind Faith to be a part of the series.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Dorothy Ashby was probably the greatest—and certainly the most swinging—jazz harpist of all time, re-purposing an instrument best known for ethereal glissandos into a fully versatile voice in combo settings, capable of providing both instrumental embroidery and rhythmic drive.

But she was always fighting an uphill battle in terms of garnering critical and commercial success; both her gender and the exoticism of her instrument often prevented her from being taken seriously among the hidebound environs of late ‘50s and ‘60s jazz. But it is that very uniqueness of her sound and station in the jazz world that has made her one of the most collectible musicians of her era, as her music has been sampled and celebrated by modern-day hip hop and world music artists (e.g. Jurassic Five, Bonobo) alike.

In a Minor Groove is one of two albums she made in 1958 with flautist/saxophonist Frank Wess, and it is a marvel; backed by fellow Detroit native Herman Wright on bass and the great Roy Haynes on drums, she and Wess weave mesmerizing melodic threads through standards like “Alone Together” and “Yesterdays.” But perhaps the most amazing track is “Bohemia After Dark,” which displays Ashby’s uncanny ability to turn her harp into a rhythm guitar.

“I’m so thrilled about the resurgence of vinyl—it’s back, and it’s back with a passion!”

“Of course, it never really went away – it was more hiding in the corner in disguise, having been bullied by the bright young CDs, who themselves got beaten down by MP3s, which is kind of hard as you can’t even see an MP3. So, how do you fight something you can’t see? Well, I think vinyl decided to take off its hat and dark glasses and come out in its bright colours, printed picture discs, gatefold sleeves and show them what they’ve been missing!

I’m lucky that I’ve always been around vinyl. I was handed down some fantastic records by my family. We had Bowie’s Hunky Dory, Blondie’s Parallel Lines and of course dozens of collections from Sinatra and Elvis. The vinyl was so seductive—it wasn’t just the music, it was the whole package—the artwork, design, sleevenotes, sometimes the lyrics printed, and if you’re really lucky a note from the artist or band, and if they mentioned someone, trying to work out who that person was.

It was the whole story that captivated me. When I was young, I didn’t even realize that the music could be disconnected from the physical vinyl—my mum told me that when I heard ‘Starman’ on the radio once, I got upset because I thought that a stranger must be in our house playing it!

Speaking of the artwork, one thing I really loved was picture discs. We had a 7” disc of “Road To Nowhere” by Talking Heads which I loved because I think it had a photo of the band with some kind of children’s drawings or cartoons that I tried to copy. Also Devo’s Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! which was this bright blue vinyl. I remember thinking how amazing that was—that it wasn’t black—simple pleasures!

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