Category Archives: The TVD Storefront

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Blues guitarists have been the foundation of American music for more than a hundred years, back to early acoustic musicians performing in the Deep South. The evolution of the blues has been one of the truly captivating legacies of popular music in America, from early jazz to even country and, to everlasting success, rock ’n’ roll.

The guitarists in the pantheon of blues players reads like a Who’s Who of the world’s finest musicians, and for the past 50-plus years one of those people has been Jimmie Vaughan. The guitarist fell in love with that most moving of styles when he was still a young teenager in early 1960s Dallas, Texas, and while it took him a few years to find a true home for what he heard in his head and felt in his heart, once he got to Austin in 1969 and found some fellow blues lovers, he set off on a journey that still continues, playing the blues whenever and however he hears it. The man has spent countless years treating the blues with full respect.

The Last Music Co.’s guiding light Malcolm Mills took on the mission a few years ago to create The Jimmie Vaughan Story, a five-CD box set that captures Vaughan’s blues journey, starting with some of his earliest recordings from the mid-1960s and continuing all the way to his most recent in the 2020s. The result is a stunning collection of not only music, but really Vaughan’s history, on the record and in person.

From early bands Storm through the Fabulous Thunderbirds, including previously unreleased recordings with producers Joel Dorn and Doc Pomus; Jimmie’s collaboration with brother Stevie Ray Vaughan on 1990’s award-winning Family Style album; and into the past 30 years of duets, shared albums and solo releases featuring a divergence of styles, the box showcases Jimmie’s take on the blues. Jimmie Vaughan built a world of blues from the only sound that completely captured him as a very young Texan. He is often seen as being in a party of one in this pursuit, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Olivia Newton-John remains well-known for a string of ’70s-’80s hits and for her starring roles in Grease, a box office smash, and the roller-disco musical Xanadu, a commercial and critical disappointment in its day that has subsequently acquired cult status. But before all that, young Olivia was part of Toomorrow, a group assembled by Harry Saltzman and Don Kirshner to star in a sci-fi R&R musical film of the same name. That the movie persists as essentially a footnote in the career of Newton-John is reflective of its quality. As for the soundtrack, which is coming out on vinyl July 30 through Real Gone, it also falls far short of a classic, but with numerous points of interest, which we’ll consider below.

Let’s begin with Don Kirshner, the music publisher, songwriter, producer, manager, and talent coordinator whose biggest credit is as a guiding hand in the formation of The Monkees, though he was also responsible for cartoon pop group The Archies. Swinging over to rock seriousness, Kirshner’s eponymous record label featured lite-progsters Kansas, who, in a startling conflict of interest, once performed on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.

In attempting to extend his good fortune with The Archies (a rebound after being jettisoned from involvement with The Monkees) by reaching into the realms of motion pictures, Kirshner’s partnership with Harry Saltzman was a savvy move. This is specifically due to Saltzman co-producing (along with Albert “Cubby” Broccoli) the first nine James Bond films, a string that was still in progress as Toomorrow was taking shape.

Although some will harrumph at the notion, putting together a group not just to make records but to star as that group in films (yes, plural, as a series was apparently the objective) is an idea with potential for positive returns. But conversely, things could go horribly awry. That didn’t really happen in this case, as the music of Toomorrow is underwhelming but largely listenable. As the album is a soundtrack, a handful of instrumental middle-or-the-road-isms bring a wild unevenness to the affair; those approaching the record with Newton-John as primary point of interest will likely get the fidgets.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The title and lyrics to its big hit “F**k You” aside, CeeLo Green’s 2010 album The Lady Killer was something of an old school R&B throwback.

Though the lyrics to its big hit, “F**k You,” were decidedly NOT something you would hear on a classic soul record, in many ways CeeLo Green’s 2010 album The Lady Killer was something of a love letter to old school R&B, complete with strings, horns, and a meaty bottom end. And Green’s flawless yet impassioned vocals proved him a worthy successor to such legends as Gaye, Mayfield, and Redding. But perhaps the biggest miracle about this record was that, despite having a half dozen producers, The Lady Killer remained unmistakably 100% CeeLo Green, larger than life and with its heart on its sleeve.

For its vinyl debut (that’s right, this Top Ten record never came out on LP), we’re pressing it up on hot pink wax and including an inner sleeve with lyrics. One of the 21st century’s essential soul albums, now on vinyl where it belongs.

Celebrating Mick Jagger on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

I’ve been down in the dumps of late; the suicide of a friend, the death of another friend I dearly loved, and a bad case of the blues have all pretty much brought me to my knees. I feel beat down, fucked over, and broken up, and life sure does have a way of tarnishing your eyelids, doesn’t it?

Where to turn in times like these? When you’ve got a foot in the grave and your head in the oven? Exile on Main Street, naturally. It’s as beat down an LP as ever you’ll hear; Mick, Keith and Company are torn and frayed and have shit on their shoes and the whole album sounds like it was recorded in a sub-basement of Hell.

And yet. The Rolling Stones’ 1972 bruised and battered masterpiece (and high-water mark) somehow manages to rise above the bad vibes and general miasma of death and dissolution that surrounded the band at the time. Nothing–not drug busts, the death of Brian Jones, Altamont, tax exile, or Keith Richards’ slide toward junkiedom–could stop the Stones from turning Exile on Main Street into a celebration of hope and soul survival.

And this despite the fact that the album is the aural equivalent of the La Brea tar pits. Mick Jagger has never stopped carping about Exile’s notoriously sludgy mix, but the murk doesn’t just work–it’s part and parcel of the double album’s greatness. You have to trudge through shit to get to the Promised Land, and if you scrape the shit off these songs, well, you find diamonds. “Turd on the Run” anyone?

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Shakespeare sucks. You can make neither heads nor tails of his plays because his characters are always spouting words I’m convinced the Immoral Bard made up on the spot, and they have more footnotes than words.

And I’m not the only critic who thinks Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy was a plate of rotting haggis. In 1606 a theatre critic for The London Cock-a-Hoop wrote “Last night’s debut of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth made me harken for a return to Middle English. As gagging playgoers streamed from the Globe Theatre at the end of Act II the poor lad portraying Lady MacDuff tore off his wig and cried “I’ve had enough of this fancified gibberish!” I strongly recommend that worthies in search of real entertainment avoid this Black Plague of a play and head over to Blackfriars Theatre to check out Strumpets on Ice instead.”

Fortunate for us we have we have a sort of Cliff Notes in metal to Shakespeare’s tragedy in the form of the German power metal band Rebellion’s 2002 concept album Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Tragedy in Steel. The LP—the band’s debut—is an audacious masterpiece that peppers its heavy metal thunder with dialogue from Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare would no doubt doff his copotain to Rebellion in tribute, agreeing that their version of Macbeth makes his smell like the foul ordure of a prancing bear.

As you’ve no doubt known from the start, it’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Tragedy in Steel that reeks of bear shit. You can’t fault Rebellion for their ambition, but you can fault the finished product as one of the worst LPs this side of Starship’s Knee Deep in the Hoopla. You know you’re knee deep in something when a heavy metal album comes complete with a ten-member “cast,” each and every one of whom has mastered the fine art of overemoting.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Almost 20 years after the release of his fourth solo album, Roger Glover has announced the long-awaited re-release of Snapshot. The album is out October 8 on CD, with vinyl arriving on November 19. Pre-order it here.

Upon its initial release in 2002, the Deep Purple bassist joined forces with the Guilty Party, teaming up with vocalist Randall Bramblett, daughter Gillian Glover, and guitarist Warren Haynes, among others, to deliver this blues rock album. It’s a true highlight of Glover’s solo career, peppered with swing, reggae, and jazz influences.

The re-release comes with a big plus, as it not only brings back these 14 wonderful blues songs but also comes fully remastered with five previously unreleased bonus demo tracks, which show the album in a completely new light.

New liner notes by Roger Glover himself complete the additional content and give an insight into the recording and songwriting process behind this album. The album will also be issued on vinyl for the first time ever, with new artwork, as well.

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Remembering John Rutsey, born on this day in 1952. —Ed.

Sounding less like a bird of prey than a castrati with a gerbil up his ass, Geddy Lee is trying to tell us something. Xanadu, subdivisions, the spirit of radio, how we’re all trees in the forest and if you happen to be a stunted one you’re shit out of luck—your guess is as good as mine. The late Neil Peart, may he rest in peace, wrote ‘em, and your average 13-year-old with a unicorn glitter notebook would have rubbed his nose on the playground gravel.

Behind Geddy, prog-metal bric a brac: 2012’s ping-ponging title track (Rush isn’t a band, it’s a kid with attention deficit disorder) boasts seven parts including a grand finale, and is less a suite than a Frankenstein monster of ill-fitting parts. As for the band’s concept albums, Geddy himself has been quoted as saying, “Even I can’t make sense of them.”

Either you love Rush or you loathe ‘em, and I loathed ‘em up until the day I realized they were a comedy act. Now I love ‘em. Geddy cracks me up every time he opens his beak. “Closer to the Heart” is my all-time favorite song.

But there was an old Rush before the new Rush, and the old Rush can only be heard on the band’s 1974’s eponymous debut. With the soon-to-be-booted John Rutsey on skins, and nary a tedious 19-minute musico-philosophical discourse on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead in sight, everybody’s favorite Molson belchers made like Led Zeppelin on Beaver Tails, and while your critic types derided Rush as a turd hamburger, I like it cuz I’ll take good old-fashioned hard rock over mutant mullet metal any day.

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It’s unusual to discuss an album that doesn’t fully exist yet, but that’s what’s happening here with soul and R&B singer-songwriter, Rozzi who joins me this week to discuss her new song, “I Can’t Go to the Party” which encapsulates the age-old and awkward experience of navigating a social setting with an old paramour, and I won’t say more, just tune in to hear Rozzi explain how the scenario went down.

Discovered by Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Rozzi’s voice is full of depth, yearning, and character. Of course, we talk about the song, but there’s an album brewing as well. So, consider the song an appetizer for the album that is still a work in progress.

You’ll hear Rozzi rattle off a list of some of her favorite musicians, and she’s got great taste! With heroes like that it would be hard to create a product that didn’t shoot for the stars. So, join me and meet Rozzi, and get ready to hear plenty more where this came from.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

The opening track of The Dandy Warhols’ 2020 release Tafelmuzik Means More When You’re Alone is entitled “It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Bored.” Well so do I, and the reason is this album, which in case you haven’t heard is four hours long. I’ve loved the Dandys since I first heard “(Tony This Song Is Called) Lou Weed,” but the only way I’ll listen to this 240-minute trudge again is by getting too wasted to get up and turn it off.

The Dandy Warhols have been the personification of the cool groove since their 1995 debut Dandys Rule OK. Over the intervening years they’ve been producing infectious songs for discerning hipsters, many of which can be heard on the band’s 2010 compilation The Capitol Years 1995-2007. Feel free to stop by the house and I’ll treat you to my favorites. That or I can snatch you off the street and hold you hostage. It’s your choice.

But on Tafelmuzik (that’s table music to those of us who refuse to learn German because we’re still holding a grudge over WWII) The Dandy Warhols dispense with the infectious grooves, irresistible melodies, and irrepressible good humor that have given us such great indie anthems as “Boys Better” and “Every Day Should Be a Holiday.” Message to The Dandy Warhols—a Tafel isn’t good for much there’s nothing on it.

The longest of Tafelmuzik’s eleven tracks weighs in at approximately thirty-seven minutes; six of its cuts top the twenty-minute mark. Their length lends them a hypnotic power; give them a couple of hours and you may find yourself a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. But most listeners (yours truly included) will give each of Tafelmuzik’s songs a few minutes of their valuable time before moving on. That said, these same songs will delight sofa dwellers who don’t set too high a premium on trivial things like excitement and euphoria and who have nothing better to do with their ears.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The isolated audio of Paul McCartney chewing carrots and celery has been released by Super Furry Animals to announce the 20-year anniversary reissue of their acclaimed “maximalist,” fifth studio album, Rings Around The World, newly presented on 180g gatefold, double vinyl, triple CD, and double digital album in September.

McCartney’s playful addition is released on its own for the very first time as one of 75 curiosities from the vaults—including unreleased outtakes, remixes, hidden sounds and demos appearing across the multi-format release. So vast is the BMG reissue of Rings Around The World that the digital version will be split over two separate release dates. All physical versions and the first digital instalment will be released on Fri 3 September 2021, with a second digital collection being made available three weeks later on Fri 24 September 2021.

A story that starts with a chance encounter at the NME Awards in 2000 and ends with McCartney’s enthusiastic chewing being delivered by mail and then woven into the production of the Furries’ single, “Receptacle For The Respectable,” the ex-Beatle’s contribution is just one of the wild bends in the road of the expansive, Millennium-era, classic alt-pop album’s remarkable story.

Approached by artificially emboldened Furries’ keys player, Cian Ciarán at the ceremony at the Mermaid Theatre, London, initially to convince McCartney to let the band loose to remix The Beatles’ songs (a successful pitch as the Furries later received boxes of Beatles master tapes to contribute heavily to the Liverpool Sound Collage), McCartney agreed to appear on the band’s upcoming album. Within weeks, McCartney had sent the band a tape of just what they had requested. Having previously “played” the celery on The Beach Boys’ 1967 track “Vegetables,” McCartney took the chance to revive his penchant for percussion with roots.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rough Trade Records are extremely happy to announce the PHYSICAL release of reggae pioneer and innovator Dennis Bovell’s mixes of the JARV IS… track “Swanky Modes” on August 20th. These mixes were first made available digitally back in April (before Dennis was awarded MBE status in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list). Iggy Pop was so impressed he played BOTH of the mixes during the course of a single edition of his BBC 6Music radio show.

This limited-run 7” single features hand-drawn label art by Jarvis himself and is housed in a bespoke cardboard sleeve with reinforced edging. Tuff. It gets better: the song takes its name from a clothes shop Jarvis used to live near. The original song, taken from the band’s acclaimed album Beyond The Pale, found Jarvis Cocker confirming his position as one of the greatest lyrical auteurs of all time. The track weaved together a vivid series of snapshots of an unfurling affair with customary candid detail and electrifying erotic charge.

Bovell’s remix taps into that atmosphere, while forging his own, new take on Swanky Modes. Expansive, tender, yet laced with a thrilling edge, his musical reimagining of Swanky Modes nods both at the original track’s illicitness and Bovell’s own musical roots, as it takes the song into a new, truly original space with its haunting mix of darkness and light. Along with the remix of the original track, a dub cut of Swanky Modes is featured on the flip side of the 7”, which beautifully exposes the textures Bovell has interwoven into Jarvis Cocker and co’s original creation.

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Celebrating George Clinton on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

A decade or so ago my friend D., a borderline sociopath jailhouse-type individual, suggested we go rock climbing. Without ropes. Idiot that I am, I said sure. I was some 20 feet off the ground—a frightful distance when you looked down—when I found myself unable to go forward or retreat. Suddenly my left leg began to violently shudder. D. looked over (I think I was whimpering for help) and mirthfully cried, “You’ve got Disco Leg!” That’s when I fell, breaking my ankle and cracking my skull.

That “Disco Leg!” never fails to crack me up, and for some reason always brings to mind Funkadelic, the greatest funk-rock band of ‘em all. And of all their LPs, my all-time fav-o-reet has always been 1971’s Maggot Brain. (Yeah, I know, 1978’s One Nation Under a Groove is brilliant, fantastic, blah blah blah, but I’ve made up my mind, and I’m too dumb to change it.) I would say you can thank guitar svengali Eddie Hazel for making Maggot Brain my most treasured slice of P-Funk, but it would only be partly true—some of the tunes on Maggot Brain barely feature Hazel at all, and I still love them every bit as much as my Black Power Fist Afro pick.

Maggot Brain features one of the more unfortunate covers in music history, with its front cover depicting a black woman buried up to her neck screaming in agony and back cover showing the same woman’s head, now become a skull. Why, it’s almost as creepy as the cover of Herbie Mann’s Push Push, on which Herbie shows off his ghastly lubed-up chest pelt for reasons I don’t care to speculate about. And the same goes for Maggot Brain. Then again, what do you expect from a band that entitles an LP Maggot Brain in the first place? P-Funk was a crazy-eyed crew of acid-gobbling freaks, and on LSD everything seems like a grand idea.

Some brief history: George Clinton’s Parliament was founded in the late 1950s in Plainfield, New Jersey as a doo wop group called the Parliaments. But then psychedelics hit town and the Parliaments became Parliament, and morphed from played doo wop to do wot?, by which I mean they went funky berserk. Funkadelic began its career as the backing band for Parliament, but by the early seventies Parliament and Funkadelic were separate entities with different sounds but utilizing most of the same musicians. Funkadelic was the freakier of the two outfits, a funk-rock monolith that melded psychedelia, big honking guitar riffs, Bible-belt blues, James “Soul Brother No. 1” Brown’s flaming funk, Frank Zappa’s absurdist humor, and Sun Ra’s astral plane crash jazz, to cite just some of their influences.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Varèse Sarabande has announced the re-release of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Smokey and the Bandit.

Widely available on vinyl for the first time in 25 years, the soundtrack to the classic Burt Reynolds film features massive hits from Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Jerry Reed, including “East Bound and Down” and “The Bandit.” Jerry also provides much of the instrumental score alongside celebrated musician and composer Bill Justis. The album additionally includes many memorable dialogue tracks taken right from the movie and featuring Reynolds, Reed, and Jackie Gleason. The soundtrack will release on September 10, and is available for pre-order today, July 20.

The film follows Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds) and Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Reed), two bootleggers attempting to illegally transport 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana to Atlanta. While the Snowman drives the truck carrying the beer, the Bandit drives a Pontiac Trans Am to distract law enforcement (called blocking) and keep the attention off the Snowman. During their run, they are pursued by Texas county sheriff Buford T. Justice (Gleason). Smokey and the Bandit was the second highest-grossing domestic film of 1977, with $126 million against a budget of $4.3 million.

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Out of all the musicians knocked off the road by the pandemic, it must have been a real strain on Bob Dylan. A guy who has essentially played one tour after another since 1988, totaling more than 3,000 shows, pausing only a few months during a health scare in 1997, he had seen nothing like this eradication of his touring schedule. 

He filled it initially with his remarkable “Murder Most Foul,” an unexpected, 16-minute rumination about the assassination of JFK that was also his first No. 1 single, 57 years into his recording career. Released March 20, 2020, soon after lockdowns began, it was an anchor for his 39th studio album Rough and Rowdy Ways, released in June 2020.

It took a while, though, for Dylan to catch up to fellow artists using the internet to stream concerts as a way to connect with fans and maybe make up for all that lost touring revenue. Dylan had gotten used to traveling the world and reworking his tunes while dressed in cowboy garb and maintaining his career-long mystery before devoted fans.

His streaming event Shadow Kingdom on Sunday allowed him belatedly to continue that interest. On stages he surrounds himself with old Hollywood klieg lights and smoke to create a kind of atmosphere. In his streaming concert, smoke almost takes over.

The idea is that he’s in an imaginary ’30s cafe — the nonexistent Bon Bon Cafe in Marseilles, France (given “special thanks” in the credits). But with the cowboy hats of the denizens, surrounded by columns of long neck beers and overflowing ashtrays, it’s more like a period cafe in Hollywood, where it was almost certainly created. A slightly different setting for some songs has him on a checkerboard linoleum, adding to the dreamlike Twin Peaks nightclub vibe.

Not a live event, the 50-minute, 12-song presentation is more like an extended black and white video. There are no songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways (whose cover suggested a similar fantasy juke joint), and nothing in fact from the past 30 years of the Dylan songbook.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Montreux Jazz Festival and BMG announce the next anticipated installment in The Montreux Years series with Marianne Faithfull: The Montreux Years and Muddy Waters: The Montreux Years, both to be released on Friday, September 17, 2021. Available on multi-format configurations including double LP as well as download and streaming services, the two new full-length albums feature captivating performances from Marianne Faithfull and Muddy Waters’ multiple appearances at the iconic Swiss festival for the very first time, recorded and remastered in breath-taking quality.

The Montreux Years embodies the spirit of the Montreux Jazz Festival and the legacy of its much-loved founder, Claude Nobs. Nobs refused to compromise on quality or settle for anything other than the best and this ethos lives on in the superb quality of the recordings compiled in this collection. Mastering has been performed by Tony Cousins at London’s iconic Metropolis Studios, incorporating MQA to capture the original sound of these special concerts. Similar to the first albums in the series, featuring Nina Simone and Etta James, the Marianne Faithfull and Muddy Waters releases will be accompanied by exclusive liner notes and previously unseen photography.

Instantly recognizable with her raw, varied vocal talents and tangible charisma, Marianne Faithfull has been a long-time friend of the Montreux Jazz Festival, appearing five times over a nearly 15-year period: 1995, 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2009. The first live album of Faithfull in over 10 years, Marianne Faithfull: The Montreux Years opens with an enchanting rendition of Van Morrison’s “Madame George,” recorded live at Auditorium Stravinski on July 10, 1995, where Faithfull’s powerful range and unfaltering dynamism was instantly apparent.

The singer’s fans can immerse themselves in these unique recordings, which include several songs from her celebrated album Broken English, such as an electrifying, guitar-heavy performance of the titular track “Broken English,” the soaring “Guilt,” and John Lennon’s rousing anthem “Working Class Hero.” Meanwhile, the haunting sensitivity of “Strange Weather,” recorded live at Casino Barrière on July 6, 2005, captures the bottomless depths of Faithfull’s brutal and ragged beauty.

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