Category Archives: The TVD Storefront

VIA PRESS RELEASE | For over fifty years, Yes has stood at the forefront of rock, defined by their unmatched craftsmanship, creativity, and innovation, creating symphonic masterpieces that continue to inspire.

On January 23, 2026 Mercury Studios is proud to release Yes Symphonic Live an outstanding 14-song live collection filmed in high definition. Vocalist Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, lead guitarist Steve Howe, and drummer Alan White recreated the dramatic intensity of their 2001 album Magnification, the first Yes album without keyboards and the last Yes album with Anderson. Touring to support their symphonic album Magnification, they hit the road in 2001 with a new approach to their live set.

They called in the help of the European Festival Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Keitel, to add lush new textures to their live set, essentially bringing the spirit of their new album to life on the stage. Not only did they play tracks from Magnification, but re-imagined interpretations of their timeless hits. Classics such as “Owner Of A Lonely Heart,” “Long Distance Runaround,” and “I’ve Seen All Good People” have never sounded so grand.

Previously released as a 2DVD set and Blu-ray, Symphonic Live highlights the expansive nature of Yes’ music backed with a full symphony orchestra. The special edition reissue of Symphonic Live is packaged in a CD-sized clamshell box including the Blu-ray and 2CDs, each housed in their own slipcase, along with a booklet, fold out poster and 5 art cards.

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The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” is more than just the greatest rock and roll song ever recorded by wingless bipeds with workable thumbs—it’s the Zapruder film of rock and roll.

Recorded in Portland, Oregon some seven-plus months before the Kennedy assassination, “Louis Louis” attracted the same intense scrutiny as the 26.6 seconds of standard 8 mm Kodachrome II safety film recorded by Abraham Zapruder on his Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera as he stood on a concrete pedestal along Elm Street in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

And from the same people. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. To say nothing of the Federal Communications Commission and the National Association of Broadcasters. And for all I know, the Central Intelligence Agency. And for the same reason: the powers that be smelled conspiracy, a criminal plot, some foul rot that could bring down the edifice of our entire American Way of Life, and they were looking for hard evidence to prove it.

But unlike the Zapruder film, the Feebees weren’t interested in what was right there, apparent to the senses. No, FBI technicians wearing headphones in windowless rooms in field offices across our Great Land spent some thirty-one months trying to parse the seemingly indecipherable words coming out of Kingsmen vocalist Jack Ely’s mouth, because in the minds of the kids who loved the song and the purple-with-apoplexy prudes (some of whom were upright decent teens themselves) who saw it as a vile portent of the end of Western Civilization, those words were so patently obscene they would bring a blush to the face of the most foul-mouthed tar ever to traverse the Seven Seas.

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We’ve closed TVD’s HQ for the Thanksgiving holiday. While we’re away, why not fire up our Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores?

Perhaps there’s an interview, review, or feature you might have missed? Catch up and we’ll see you back here Monday, 12/1.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | On Friday, February 13th, 2026, Sub Pop will release Velocity Girl’s ¡Simpatico! (Remastered and Expanded), a new reissue of the long out-of-print 1994 sophomore album by the beloved indie-rock band, a few months ahead of its 32nd Anniversary.

On ¡Simpatico! (Remastered and Expanded), the album gets an overdue sonic refresh with mastering by Golden, updated artwork by Ed Fotheringham, and a treasure trove of bonus tracks from the ¡Simpatico! era. Today, you can hear the band’s cover of New Order’s “Your Silent Face (2025 Remaster)” from the bonus material associated with the release.

Velocity Girl’s ¡Simpatico! (Remastered and Expanded) will be available on CD/2xLP/DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders in North America at the Sub Pop Mega Mart, in the UK and Europe at Mega Mart 2, and at your local record store will receive the limited Loser edition on opaque jade blue and opaque violet vinyl (North America), or petrol and magenta vinyl (UK/EU). (All vinyl colors whilst stock lasts!)

Velocity Girl formed in 1989 or so at the University of Maryland outside Washington, DC with guitarist Archie Moore (Black Tambourine), guitarist Brian Nelson (Black Tambourine), drummer Jim Spellman (Starry Eyes, Foxhall Stacks, High Back Chairs, Julie Ocean, Piper Club), bassist Kelly Riles (Starry Eyes), and singer Sarah Shannon (Starry Eyes, The Not Its). The band combined English-inspired noisy shoegaze fuzz with scrappy US indie rock and classic ‘60s-style pop songwriting. A killer single on Slumberland and non-stop touring grabbed the attention of the indie-rock cognoscenti, and soon after Velocity Girl signed a contract with Sub Pop on a car hood in Hoboken, New Jersey.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | SING, a music technology company and label, announced today that Christmas On The Air, a new album of more rare and historically significant music from Frank Sinatra is available now here.

Released just in time for the holiday season, this Christmas album contains tracks recorded on radio and follows on the heels of SING’s ambitious Frank Sinatra reissue of rare and previously unreleased seasonal music for fans of the greatest pop singer of all-time. Previously, SING has released both a limited edition of 2,000, 5LP vinyl box set of previously unreleased and rare live radio performances entitled Long Ago, Far Away as well as Live At The Hollywood Bowl 1943–1948 which are both available for purchase here.

SING spared no expense on extensive audio restoration campaign for these projects from original broadcast sources to give fans the best fidelity possible. Paired with a deluxe booklet featuring expert liner notes, rare photos, and vintage memorabilia.

“Frank Sinatra thoroughly enjoyed Christmas, and seized every opportunity to celebrate it in song on radio and television—especially in the 1940s and early 1950s,” said world-renowned Sinatra expert and author Charles L. Granata. “On these programs in Christmas On The Air, he often sang holiday favorites that he hadn’t officially recorded, making this all-broadcast Christmas album a rare and special treat for all music lovers.”

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As indicated in the recent review published here on Neil Young’s latest studio album, for some time, Young has issued unreleased music from his bottomless archives, reissues of previous works, often in expanded and creatively packaged editions, and albums of all-new songs and recordings. There have been many releases from Young this year, and the one just coming out is a 2LP reissue of his 1975 album Tonight’s the Night, part of his Analog Originals, Neil Young Archives Official Release Series.

Tonight’s the Night may be one of the most groundbreaking, pivotal, and influential albums of Young’s canon. While fuzzy and organic first-take band-oriented cuts had populated Young’s previous albums, Tonight’s the Night was a stark, revealing album of raw simplicity. The music occasionally has a queasy frankness, particularly about the price of drug addiction, that was almost entirely absent in song lyrics during the drug culture music of the day.

This wasn’t just some “just-say-no” sloganeering. This was a man bearing his soul over the sudden loss of one of his bandmates and one of his roadies. The stark, unvarnished way Young sang of losing his bandmate Danny Whitten, fired by Young during rehearsals for the Time Fades Away tour because his drug problems affected his playing, and roadie Bruce Berry, was both brave and unsettling.

Notably, Berry was the brother of both Jan Berry of Jan and Dean and Ken Berry of S.I.R. Rehearsals, where nine of the album’s studio tracks were recorded (two were recorded at Young’s Broken Arrow ranch studio). Young had written about Whitten’s addiction and heroin’s effect on musicians in general on “The Needle and the Damage Done” on Harvest in 1972. How Young was able to hold it together on the title cut when plainly singing about losing those men is astonishing.

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I recently spoke with Martin Glover, AKA Youth—founding member and bassist of the legendary post-punk band Killing Joke, a pioneering producer, and one of the most influential sonic architects of the last four decades.

Beyond his work with the band, he’s shaped the sound of artists across genres—from The Orb, The Verve, and Paul McCartney to Kate Bush, Crowded House, Gina Birch, and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour—blending experimental, dub, and atmospheric elements into a signature production style. His career bridges punk, mysticism, and radical creativity, making him one of the most singular figures in modern music.

We spoke about dimension-crossing experiences with Killing Joke, writing and production techniques, current work, and worldviews. Tune in.

Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer, and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

Remembering Mani. —Ed.

As a famous man (I think it was Geoffrey Chaucer) once said, time waits for no man. And in the case of Manchester’s The Stone Roses, the five long years that passed between this, their massively popular 1989 debut, and 1994’s Second Coming were fatal. Come Second Coming baggy pants and bucket hats were passe, and Britpop ruled England’s green and pleasant land.

Those five years may have been piddling compared to the 14 years that elapsed between Guns N’ Roses’ The Spaghetti Incident and Chinese Democracy, but those five years they were an eternity–during the same time span The Beatles went from Meet the Beatles to Abbey Road.

The Stone Roses’ half-decade of silence stemmed form a variety of issues, the most important of which was a protracted effort to sever ties with their record label, but it doesn’t much matter. In his poem “The Second Coming” (sound familiar?) William Butler Yeats foresaw a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born. The Stone Roses’ follow-up didn’t so much slouch towards the record stores as crawl, and by the time it arrived Engand’s notoriously fickle trend watchers had long since written them off.

None of which detracts from the fact that The Stone Roses is one killer LP. The album’s rave-friendly dance rhythms and hypnotic grooves would seem to put The Stone Roses in the same category as fellow Mancunians the Happy Mondays, but they took it the extra yard by fusing said dance rhythms with the Happy Daze psychedelic guitar sounds of the mid to late ‘60s. Like the Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses produced dance music, but they could rock the arenas as well.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Six decades later, the music still wows, baffles, and inspires.

What happened over two nights in a tiny, unassuming Chicago club under a bakery was a fascinating and unplanned documentation of a pivotal moment in the evolution of Miles Davis’s leadership and sound. Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, today announce the reissue of these legendary recordings: The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965. Arriving January 30, 2026, as a cornerstone moment in the year-long celebration of Miles Davis’ Centennial to come next year, this comprehensive collection will be available as a 10LP or 8CD box set. Pre-orders are available now.

As a preview of the larger collection, a standalone 2LP set, Live At The Plugged Nickel: December 23, 1965 – Second Set, will be released for RSD Black Friday on November 28.

The recordings capture Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet—featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams—at an inflection point. Wayne Shorter was just over a year into his tenure, and the group, fresh off of recording E.S.P., was solidifying into what would become the most transformative small group in jazz. What unfolded on the stage of the Chicago club was not just a performance, but a provocation.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | If you could actually hear an abstract expressionist painting, it would probably sound a lot like the work of Morton Feldman.

And that’s no accident: Feldman hung out in ‘50s and ‘60s New York with Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston (whose work graced the cover of Feldman’s first album), and Robert Rauschenberg. Like the paintings of his visual artist peers, Feldman’s work emphasized tonal color over structure, rhythm, or melody, the traditional building blocks of music. It also employed the musical equivalent of painterly “negative space” with its use of silence and stasis; that Feldman and John Cale were enormous influences on each other will come as no surprise.

So, it makes sense that Feldman would dedicate probably his two most celebrated compositions to two giants of the New York scene: abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, whose famous Chapel adorns this LP’s front cover, and writer and critic Frank O’Hara, whose own work drew inspiration from the same sources as Feldman’s.

Rothko Chapel and For Frank O’Hara first were released in 1976 on a seminal album from the Odyssey imprint on Columbia Records; for its 50th anniversary and first LP reissue, Real Gone Music had it pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Gotta Groove Records for the quietest listen achievable, using new transfers from the original master tapes. Profound, career-defining work that opened the door for latter-day ambient composers like Brian Eno to walk through.

Remembering Dr. John, born on this date in 1941. —Ed.

I am happy to report there is one town in this God-obsessed land that remains under the sway of the Devil. I am talking, of course, about N’Orleans, that spirit-haunted hotbed of hedonism and home to the legendary likes of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, the prostitute Lulu White, and the never-captured Axeman of New Orleans. God has sent flood upon flood to destroy America’s most depraved and flat-out weird city—where else are you going to find public ordinances banning gargling in public and tying an alligator to a fire hydrant?—but in vain. Either God’s floods ain’t what they used to be, or sin has rendered the birthplace of Jazz, where Lucifer owns a winter home, indestructible.

The Big Easy is renowned for two things: music and voodoo. And no human being has ever combined the two with such funky finesse as Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John Creaux the Night Tripper. Like most people, the only tune I knew by the good doctor was 1973’s funky “Right Place Wrong Time.” Then Kid Congo Powers—who honed his own voodoo chops with the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s Gun Club—suggested I check out the Night Tripper’s 1968 debut LP Gris Gris, and I promptly fell under its spooky Creole spell.

Its trance-inducing, doom-heavy grooves instantaneously transported me to a shadowy Louisiana swamp swarming with snakes and alligators, voodoo drums sounding in the distance, the Axeman of New Orleans hard on my heels. Then to an incense-choked, unpainted wooden shack on stilts situated deep in the bayou’s perpetual gloom, where I found myself shuffling and shaking to the sound of congas and the Night Tripper’s Muzippi-muddy growl. Suffice it to say Gris Gris is one the most haunting slices of hoodoo you’ll ever hear, and one of the most addictive.

A child model (his face appeared on Ivory Soap boxes) turned strip club musician and illegal teen sessions player for such legendary figures as Professor Longhair, Joe Tex, and Frankie Ford, Rebennack turned from the guitar to the piano following an altercation with a pistol-packing club owner that resulted in the near severing of his left index finger. Forced to relocate to LA in the mid-sixties due to the legal consequences of an ongoing heroin addiction, it was there Rebennack adopted his colorful voodoo-headdress-wearing Dr. John Creaux persona and stepped into the limelight with Gris Gris, that incantatory and utterly unique melange of Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, and Mardi Gras Indian-flavored R&B and psychedelia.

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Celebrating Mike D on his 60th birthday. —Ed.

With the Love American Style EP, The Beastie Boys gave the public a small taste of their new and improved direction. Some ears were ready and many were not, but this twelve-inch contained a tidy morsel of a true hip-hop classic.

In retrospect, Licensed to Ill came on like a ton of bricks. Out of the blue the group just seemed to suddenly be everywhere; on stereos and television naturally, but also in magazines, in car tape decks, as the soundtrack to parties, in the parking lot at school. This level of saturation wasn’t all that unusual, for the same sort of situation happened with Purple Rain, Thriller, Madonna’s debut and Born in the USA. Unless you were a hermit, it was ultimately all music the ears couldn’t escape, particularly in a suburban existence. What made Licensed to Ill feel like such a haymaker was its heightened sense of immaturity and its use (some said hijacking) of a musical form that many observers were still coming to terms with.

The Beastie Boys were generation gap music in its purest form. As expected, parents were indignant; Who raised these ingrates, What has happened to the youth of America, Where are the values, When I was your age we thought Pat Boone was risqué, Why I oughta lock you in your room without your stereo for playing that noise in the house, and in front of your sweet, impressionable little sister at that. How does it feel to feel old?

And while these days it seems that every child of the ‘80s got and dug what the Boys’ were laying down right off the bat, of course that’s not a bit true. Tons of kids were horrified or at least highly perturbed that three unruly youths were besmirching the rep of their peers through constant airtime on MTV. And it’s important to understand that The Beastie Boys were many ears’ first prolonged exposure to rap music, especially in the areas of the country not served by cable TV. And to be accurate, before Licensed to Ill MTV played very little rap music, just like before Thriller this supposedly progressive, groundbreaking entity aired almost no black music at all.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Jane Weaver’s illustrious career has produced an expansive library of music that has seen her journey through solo folkloric and pop leaning beginnings through to the psychedelic synth-pop explorations of today. Celebrating her pioneering vision, Fire Records will be deep diving into her early catalogue with a new reissue series set for release in 2026.

On its 15th anniversary, we revisit The Fallen By Watch Bird (out 23rd January 2026) with a special expanded edition double vinyl release that will include “The Watchbird Alluminate”—featuring Demdike Stare, The Focus Group, Anworth Kirk, and Samandtheplants. The album will be performed for the first time ever in its entirety by Jane and the sonic sisterhood group of Septieme Soeur including harpist Serafina Steer (Bas Jan), guitarist and singer Emma Tricca, Welsh folk artist Lisa Jen (9Bach), and guitarist Joel Nicholson (Jane Weaver Band) with accompanying storybook visuals and film.

Originally released on Weaver’s own label Bird Records, The Fallen By Watch Bird is a tapestry of psychedelic femme-folk-rock drawing influences from Eastern European children’s cinema, Germanic kunstmärchen, ’70s television music, and ’80s electronic scores. Steeped in synths and mysticism, the fully realised conceptual record weaves imagery of absent sailors, telekinesis, bird messengers, and white witchcraft alongside pagan themes of death and rebirth.

Presented across seven chapters it features performances from Septieme Soeur, Wendy Flower of Wendy & Bonnie folk pop duo who released 1969’s Genesis, Lisa Jen Welsh vocalist on Gruff Rhys’ Candylion, lost American folk-pop singer Susan Christie and Bosnian Folk music singer and violinist Behar.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | One of the most important events in modern music history remains the late ’80s cross-pollination when rock met hip hop.

From Aerosmith and Run-DMC’s groundbreaking collaboration, the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill use of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath to Public Enemy joining up with Anthrax, Rick Rubin, and Russell Simmons, De La Soul and Third Bass, to the 344 hip hop records that sampled Billy Squier’s “The Big Beat”—this era exemplified creative possibilities and cultural energy that defined a generation. Rap records sampled rock bands, elevating sampling into an art form and influencing all other genres of popular music.

The book When Rock Met Hip-Hop explores the many ways the fusion of rap and rock gave hope to a sense of interracial harmony, confronting sociocultural fault lines, and sparking collaborations that forever altered the course of popular music. In keeping with Steven Blush’s celebrated works—When Rock Met Disco and When Rock Met Reggae—this book illuminates the musical cross collision and cultural fallout that changed the sound and significance of popular music for the better and remains an influence today.

Steven Blush draws from decades of experience as an author, journalist, documentarian, and active participant in the culture at that time. A pioneer in chronicling musical boundary breakers, Blush offers incisive cross-genre analysis and first-person interviews with the visionaries who shaped music history. From documenting the underground hardcore movement to following the evolution of hybrid genres, Blush’s legacy shines in his exploration of the stories, sounds, and intersections that shaped generations.

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Halloween is over, and the last remnants of leftover Mars bars may still remain, but for Frank Zappa fans, every day is Halloween. Frank Zappa’s Halloween shows (which sometimes lasted more than just Halloween night) in New York, at the Palladium, are not just legendary among Zappa fans, but caused quite a stir in the music world at the time and paved the way for many others to do annual theme shows or take up annual residencies in various locales.

What unofficially began in 1972 and more or less went on (although not every year) until it unofficially ended in 1981, is now part of the Zappa mythical allure. While some entertainers are associated with Christmas, and others, like Guy Lombardo and then later Dick Clark, are associated with New Year’s Eve, Zappa became the musical ringleader for nights that brought out the freak in his fans.

This is the fourth in a series of archival Zappa Halloween releases that have included Halloween 77 (which also spawned the movie Baby Snakes), Halloween 73, and Halloween 81. For those who followed Zappa’s live Halloween concert bag of tricks, they know 1978 was the peak, making this release a real treat.

There are several editions of this new release, including an Expanded Super Deluxe Costume Box Set, which features 62 tracks across five CDs. The set comes with a pop-out mask of Zappa resembling the Devil (which was not a stretch), complete with a pitchfork and a UV light, and showcases some supernatural (or unnatural) artwork. There is also a Grimoire book, a book of spells, that includes photos and memorabilia.

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