Category Archives: The TVD Storefront

Remembering Marvin Gaye, born on this day in 1939. —Ed.

Since his tragic and premature death in 1984, Marvin Gaye’s discography has steadily risen in critical esteem, and particularly What’s Going On, his eleventh album and the enduring apex of the man’s posthumous ascension, as it’s landed atop at least one noted list of the Greatest Albums of All Time. And so, Motown/uMe has understandably endeavored with due diligence in marking the half century since that LP was originally released, their work culminating in a 50th Anniversary Edition on double vinyl, which adds six original mono single versions, plus four rare mixes of the title track, to the nine masterful selections that comprise the original album.

As fruitful as the 1960s were for Marvin Gaye, he didn’t really hit his stride until the first half of the following decade, with What’s Going On the record that began his run as a fully-formed, mature artist. It took until the second half of the ’60s for Gaye to really find his footing inside the Motown hit machine, and there was indeed a bunch of excellent singles and even a few classic LPs during that stretch, but with his second record of the ’70s, he began transcending the boundaries of the Motown framework.

Records like What’s Going On can be intimidating to engage with in print, mainly because they can inspire mere rephrasing of long-established observations, or to the other extreme, straining for a fresh perspective (which frequently ends up having little to do with the actual music). It’s been said that any truly great record is inexhaustible, and by that metric, there should always be something new to say about their individual qualities, but it’s just as true that many masterpieces are relatively straightforward in their brilliance.

It’s true that What’s Going On is something of a rarity in how it stylistically advances its genre while remaining pretty firmly inside the realms of pop. There’s nothing edgy about the music (a la Funkadelic), or uncompromising (like James Brown’s work of the period). Instead, Gaye favored sophisticated string arrangements that came to define soul at its most urbane in the first half of the ’70s (Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Gamble & Huff), and as the decade progressed, served as a primary building block in the emergence of pop-disco.

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Brothers Mark and Clive Ives have been making music since the early 1970s as the creative engine of the UK outfit Woo. Having released their debut in 1982, they collaborated with Independent Project Records later in the decade, and now, after a break of over 35 years, that relationship has been rekindled with Xylophonics + Robot X. Distinct but complementary, these two sets, initially assembled and issued in 2016–’17, are packaged together and given a physical release for the first time, available now on double vinyl (black or clear) and double compact disc, each exquisitely designed as is the IPR way.

As a significant portion of their early material has been reissued or given archival release in the 21st century by a variety of labels including Drag City, Emotional Rescue, and Palto Flats, Woo has been described as a cult band, a tag that fits as the Ives brothers’ work resists easy encapsulation. Additionally, Woo long persisted outside of the standard music industry mechanisms, with a high percentage of their recorded output initially self-released, a practice that has extended into our current digital reality.

Woo had been privately busy for roughly a decade before they put out Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong. Well received by the UK music press, that album was reissued by Bruce Licher’s Independent Project Records in 1988, with the label bringing out It’s Cozy Inside the next year. These initial releases inspired comparisons to kosmische, The Durutti Column, and Brian Eno, but as the ’90s progressed Woo had earned the New Age appellation, and fairly so, as much of their output was openly intended for relaxation, deep listening, healing, meditation, and therapy sessions.

After seeing widespread derision from the moment of its arrival (while being consumed in large quantities), New Age music has seen an upswing in esteem over the last few decades, and Woo’s work in this admittedly wide open territory (often just as easily assessed as ambient) belongs on the positive side of the style’s quality spectrum. But it’s clear straight off that Robot X stands outside the New Age genre while maintaining a few loose ties to the kosmische root.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | 50 years ago, the Grateful Dead were cooking with gas. It was spring 1974, the band had successfully emerged from a series of hectic, harrowing times, and would soon follow their transformative Wake Of The Flood with the second acclaimed album release on their very own Grateful Dead Records: From The Mars Hotel.

During the mere eight months that had passed between those two beloved LPs, the group also played some of their most exploratory live music and largest venues to date, famously amplified by the homemade, 75-ton Wall of Sound that they debuted on March 23rd, 1974, at their hometown Cow Palace in Daly City, CA. Eternal staples such as “Scarlet Begonias,” “Ship Of Fools,” and “U.S. Blues” would first be introduced into setlists along that season’s tour, before the Grateful Dead spent two months recording and honing them in the studio for From The Mars Hotel.

Not to mention perennial classics like “China Doll” and “Loose Lucy,” or “Pride of Cucamonga” and “Unbroken Chain”—the final two tracks Phil Lesh would sing on a Grateful Dead studio album. Now, as Grateful Dead members and tributaries continue to celebrate and bring so many of these formative songs to the masses, From The Mars Hotel has been remastered and expanded with newly unearthed material and rarities, in honor of its 50th Anniversary.

Out June 21st via Rhino, six days before the album’s original release on June 27, 1974, From The Mars Hotel (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) features remastered audio by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer David Glasser, with Plangent Processes tape restoration and speed correction. Produced for release by Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Audio Archivist, David Lemieux, the deluxe edition also includes demos of “China Doll” and “Wave That Flag”—the song that became “U.S. Blues”—as well as a previously unreleased live performance of the Grateful Dead at University of Nevada-Reno on 5/12/1974.

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Remembering Ronnie Lane, born on this day in 1946. —Ed.

Small Faces stand as one of the very finest groups of the 1960s, though many know them mainly for Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, their most ambitious and final album before Steve Marriott’s departure effectively ended their diminutive phase. The scoop is that all of the Small Faces’ ‘60s records are worthy of ownership, even the mercantile odds-and-ends collection From the Beginning. That disc and its self-titled predecessor are currently available as 180gm replica LPs. Are they cut to lacquer from the original quarter-inch production masters with front-laminated sleeves? Why yes indeed.

One gauge of the true greats is that the music manages to get better, or at least maintains a high standard of quality, as the discs take their place in the racks. So it is with the Small Faces. With this said the Decca period offers distinct and enduring appeal; more so than The Who, the Small Faces circa-’65-’66 are the true ambassadors of Mod. Utterly Brit in orientation, it wasn’t until the fourth LP that the group entered the US market.

The Small Faces consisted of Steve Marriott on vocals, guitar and harmonica, Ronnie Lane on bass, Kenney Jones on drums and percussion, and initially Jimmy Winston on keyboards. Upon signing to Decca through the efforts of manager Don Arden, they released two singles in ’65. The first “What’cha Gonna Do about It” charted, hitting #14, while the second “I’ve Got Mine” didn’t. Shortly thereafter, Winston was replaced by Ian McLagan, the new keyboardist assisting 3rd 45 “Sha-La-La-La-Lee” in reaching the #3 spot. A full-length followed a few months later.

Sporting the brass to open with “Shake” in Sam Cooke’s tempo, ’66’s Small Faces starts out strong and never really falters, which is impressive for a debut comprised roughly equally, as was the norm of the time, of originals and borrowed/cover material. Neither tentative nor betraying instrumental greenness, the Small Faces were also unburdened by conflict over what they wanted to be.

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Bob Seger was thirty and practically a geriatric (thirty is sixty in rock years!) when 1976’s Night Moves finally took him nationwide, big time. It came as a surprise. Seger seemed destined to spend his career as a journeyman—a big fish (although hardly as hip a fish as The Stooges, the MC5 and Alice Cooper) in the Detroit area, just another band everywhere else. He was a second-tier rocker who put on high-energy rock shows and had written some great songs including the 1968 classic “2 +2 = ?”and 1975’s “Beautiful Loser,” none of which—with the exception of 1968’s “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man”—broke into the American Top Forty.

He began his recording career with the Bob Seger System before going solo and then forming the crack Detroit unit Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, but fame eluded him until Night Moves (with its title track, which may well be the greatest and most poignant song ever written about growing old and looking back) went to No. four on the charts. It says everything you need to know about Seger’s genius that “Night Moves” sounds like the work of a much older man—thirty is a bit early to be singing about autumn closing in. But Seger pulled it off with ease, perhaps because all that touring left him wise beyond his years.

Night Moves broke Seger, but he made his first inroad towards national attention with the previous year’s two-fer Live Bullet with The Silver Bullet Band. Recorded at Detroit’s Cobo Hall before a vocal and partisan crowd, Live Bullet is a galvanizing non-stop hard rock party and call to arms. Live Bullet demonstrates that Seger was a no-frills roots rocker with a voice that was all road grit who put on an electrifying live show, heavy on irresistible, high-octane, old-school scorchers that should have made him a star but didn’t. And the covers (of songs by Tina Turner, Van Morrison, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry) are barnstormers as well. When the announcer at album’s open shouts, “You are here because you want the real thing!” he isn’t fooling.

Seger projects almost as well as John Fogarty—he may have been in Cobo Hall, but I’ll bet you the kids could hear him giving it his all in North Dakota’s Iron Range. And Seger and band seemed to have a constitutional aversion to going the ballad/love song route or even going the speed limit; aside from “Turn the Page” and “Jody Girl,” the adrenaline never flags. Simple, loud and fast: it’s the oldest formula there is, but there’s a reason Seger would go on to sing about loving that old time rock and roll—he loved that old time rock and roll. It’s an awful song, granted, and a real blot on his permanent record, but a true reflection of his Chuck Berry-loving self.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | With 14 Academy Award nominations, seven Grammy awards, and an Emmy to his credit, Thomas Newman has a track record second to none among modern screen composers (and even among his family, which is saying a lot considering he is son to Alfred, brother to David, and cousin to Randy Newman).

But among all his Academy Award-nominated scores—to classics like The Shawshank Redemption, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Saving Mr. Banks, and The Road to Perdition—his score to the 1999 Academy Award-winning Best Picture American Beauty (the first of his many collaborations with director Sam Mendes) remains his most distinctive. That’s because Newman made the bold choice of composing a score almost entirely with percussion instruments, brilliantly intuiting that the lack of melodic resolution in the film’s themes would echo and amplify what he termed the “moral ambiguity” of the script.

The result was a haunting and wholly original film score that is instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen the picture. Real Gone Music is very proud to present this work of genius on blood red rose vinyl to match the original album art (here used for the first time on vinyl release) and the film’s shattering conclusion.

Celebrating Jim “Dandy” Mangrum in advance of his 76th birthday tomorrow. —Ed.

Black Oak Arkansas may well be—and I say this with affection, and as a fan—the most stunningly inept band in the history of rock. The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau once rhetorically asked why Black Oak—despite relentless touring and a big name tour manager—still couldn’t “sell out the Academy of Music on a Saturday night.” His answer: “They are actively untalented, incapable of even an interesting cop.”

Me, I think Christgau’s right about Black Oak’s incompetence, but wrong about everything else. I find Black Oak Arkansas tremendously interesting, exciting even, thanks in large part to the uncanny vocal acrobatics of the perpetually shirtless James “Jim Dandy” Mangrum. I find it hard to describe Mangrum’s voice except by comparing it to the pitching of Dock Ellis on that immortal June night in 1970 when he threw a no-hitter while on acid. Ellis’ pitches may have been all over the place—he walked eight batters, and probably narrowly missed hitting and killing a few more—but nobody could touch them, because Ellis was possessed.

And so it goes for Mangrum. He can’t carry a tune in his purse, and is likely to go from a macho growl to high-pitched keening to flat out making rabid possum noises in the amount of time it took me to write this sentence. And it’s not like he’s trying. For the horrible truth is that Big Jim has no control of the sounds coming out of his mouth whatsoever. All he can do is let rip and hope nobody gets hurt. It’s scary but in a wonderful way, that is if you possess a sense of humor and are wearing a state-of-the-art batting helmet.

The band’s 1972 sophomore LP Keep the Faith includes all of the hallmarks of the Black Oak Arkansas sound—a three-guitar attack that is far too psychedelic to fit neatly into the “Southern Rock” genre, a barely competent backbeat, and the snake oil ululations of Mangrum, who pitches his vocals just about everywhere but over the plate. And despite what Christgau says, Black Oak Arkansas has some more than decent songs on offer, even if the boys in the band don’t exactly do a stellar job of performing them.

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Often on this program, I interact with artists and creators, who do their best work when they are by themselves.

It’s in solitude that a musician often finds the freedom and flexibility to create just what it is they want to develop. However, there is surely something to be said about the chemistry between two people, two artists. When two musicians sit before one another and unite for the good of performing or recording one song, the tension can be palpable. Such a situation can reach Olympic level heights when the musical duel is between two experts in their field.

Lau Noah knew that for her next musical project she wanted to engage in this kind of intimate match-up. And so on her new album A Dos she’s chosen to pursue musical conversation with some of her favorite artists, and what artists they are. Chris Thile, Jacob Collier and many more met with Lau to assist her to communicate with her audience the compositions that she’s worked so hard to create.

Interestingly, as you’ll learn by listening to our conversation, is how Noah was adamant about recording these tracks face-to-face rather than utilizing the remote technology that is so prevalent in today’s music production. So, what you hear when you listen to her new record is that moment, that spark where two people meet and combine their forces into one.

One may be the loneliest number, as they say, but it sure can be helpful when a composer must concentrate on what they’re overall artistic vision is. But, that solitude sometimes eschews the excitement and competition that can be found in a suitable partner. After all, it does take two to tango, doesn’t it?

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.

It’s safe to say that 1972’s glam-infused Transformer will always be ex-Velvet Undergounder and Andy Warhol acolyte Lou Reed’s signature album, his biggest crowd pleaser and the one he’ll best be remembered for. It was certainly the album that finally transformed him (see “album title as self-fulfilling prophecy”) from cult figure amongst the decadent NYC demimonde to rock star—songs like “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Perfect Day” finally brought him a listenership commensurate with his talents. But is it his best album? Is it even a great album? Hell, is it even a good album? Does it live up its exalted rep?

One thing is certain—Reed would never record a solo album that matched the brilliance of the albums he released with the Velvet Underground. Never even came close. He released strong albums, weak albums, middling albums, annoyingly boring high-brow albums (1992’s Magic and Loss), viscerally powerful albums (1982’s The Blue Mask), depressing-as-fuck albums (1973’s bummer Berlin) and eleven live albums that ran the gamut from great (1974’s Rock n Roll Animal) to beyond-belief bad (1978’s “comedy record” Lou Reed Live: Take No Prisoners).

He also bequeathed us perhaps the biggest fuck you to his fans this side of Dylan’s Self Portrait (1975’s immortal Metal Machine Music) and a couple of collaborations both pretentious and boring (1990’s Songs for Drella with John Cale and 2011’s much-denigrated Lulu with Metallica). Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t trade the lot of them for the Velvet Underground’s final album, 1970’s Loaded. Hell, the only Reed solo albums I ever listen to are Rock n Roll Animal, 1975’s Coney Island Baby, and The Blue Mask, and I’m rarely at a loss for reasons NOT to listen to them.

Everybody knows the background of Transformer. Reed’s debut solo album was a good-to-excellent commercial dud, and Reed (as he always had) wanted to be a star. Who doesn’t? So along comes David Bowie who’s like the It Person of the Galaxy thanks to his androgynous space alien Ziggy Stardust shtick and Lou, smitten by glam and Bowie’s openness about his bisexuality and hoping some of the Zigster’s glitter dust would rub off, asked Bowie and Spiders from Mars guitarist and mad genius arranger Mick Ronson to produce his next album.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings celebrates the 15th anniversary of Silverstein’s bestselling fourth album, A Shipwreck in the Sand, with a vinyl reissue and several color exclusives.

The 2009 concept album remains a favorite in the band’s extensive discography, with such tracks as “Vices” (feat. Liam Cormier of Cancer Bats), “The End” (feat. Lights) and “American Dream.” Set for release on June 28th and available for pre-order, A Shipwreck in the Sand can be found on classic black vinyl, as well as several limited-edition color variants, including Green Smoke (exclusively at Silverstein’s official store), Orange Smoke (CraftRecordings.com and VictoryRecords.com) and Translucent Forest Green (Brooklyn Vegan).

Formed in 2000 in Burlington, Ontario, Silverstein have long been at the forefront of the hardcore scene, thanks to their dynamic blend of melody and aggression with the unabashed earnestness of emo. In 2002, the five-piece (whose name was inspired by a shared fondness of the poet Shel Silverstein) joined Victory Records, the storied rock, metal, punk, and hardcore label, which boasts Thursday, Between the Buried and Me, and Taking Back Sunday among its legendary alumni. Victory Records is now a part of Concord’s independent label family, with its formidable repertoire managed by Craft Recordings.

Under the label, they released their celebrated full-length debut, When Broken Is Easily Fixed (2003), followed by Discovering the Waterfront (2005) and Arrivals & Departures (2007). By the time they released their fourth and final studio album under Victory, 2009’s A Shipwreck in the Sand, Silverstein were significant stars in the scene, having earned their first Juno nomination and traversed the world (including a sold-out headlining tour across Canada, runs across South America, Europe and the UK, plus two stints with the Vans Warped Tour).

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Celebrating Lady Gaga, born on this day in 1986. —Ed.

I’ll be the first to admit I sold Lady Gaga short when she detonated like a hyper-sexualized glitter bomb on the pop scene with her 2008 debut LP The Fame. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta sounded like a brazen Madonna copycat to me, and if there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s a cheap Lower East Side Madonna knock-off. Ms. Ciccone and I go back too far.

Ah, but then her Gaganess sat down for an interview with Vanity Fair, and said an astounding and wonderful thing. Namely, “I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”

I mean, wow. Those words hit me like a diamond bullet smack in the third eye. Because NOBODY who says crazy shit like that can be written off as fake goods. No, I knew right then and there that Lady Gaga was a stone American original, and deserving of the kind of same degree of unwavering respect as the Dali Lama, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Kanye “This hat makes me feel like Superman!” West.

Why, I haven’t heard such naked honesty since Little Richard said, “The only thing I like better than a big penis is a bigger penis.” And with her refreshing candidness in mind I promptly sat down to listen to Lady Gaga with new ears.

My favorite and your favorite and the whole world’s favorite is “Poker Face,” Lady Gaga’s robotic anthem to both 7-card stud and studs in general. It’s both a great piece of stutter synth and a tribute to “The Song of the Vulga Boatmen,” and in muh muh muh opinion one of the most dance-floor friendly songs to come along since John Travolta invented the dance floor.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Bolshoi released three albums during their existence, but they also recorded a fourth album that was never officially released during their tenure. Provisionally titled Country Life, it was released in 2015 as part of a limited 5-CD box set.

We are excited to now release it on vinyl for the first time. The album is double colored orange and green vinyl. Country Life consists of demos recorded for the album, and many of these only survived on reference cassettes but were digitally restored. We are especially thrilled that Trevor Tanner has recorded a brand new acoustic reimagining of the song “Dolores Jones” made specifically for this release.

The Bolshoi were different. Their songs were dark and subversive, sufficient evidence for many critics to corral them under the “Gothic” banner at the time of their debut—but they really only “flirted” with Goth. They oozed dark, pensive lyrics supported with inventive pop-goth guitar making them nearly impossible to categorize.

The suburban surrealism of the lyrics was rooted in the stories from characters on the fringes of society rather than brooding romantics, with an undercurrent of boredom, inadequacy and violence. Not the usual themes for pop success!

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Hey Panda, the new release from the enduring English outfit the High Llamas, is an immersion and distension of contemporary pop music from a man, one Sean O’Hagan, long known for reinvigorating sounds from the past. But with strong songwriting and a respectful approach at its core, the endeavor succeeds with flying colors. The earned chutzpah of a veteran musician adds value. The album is out on vinyl, compact disc, and digital March 29 through Drag City Records of Chicago.

Hey Panda’s radical departure renders direct comparisons to O’Hagan’s earlier work not particularly useful. However, it serves a purpose, especially for those long familiar with the High Llamas, to relate that (after a break of eight years) this new record is a legit progression from (if not always a discernible extension of) the chamber-avant-electronic pop that precedes it.

Key to Hey Panda’s success is O’Hagan’s sincere appreciation for the contemporary pop forms he’s engaging with and distorting; He’s not pranking or trolling or even really subverting these forms, but instead applying fresh techniques and ambiances to the songs he’s written. And not just applying those methods, but laying them on thick.

O’Hagan cites J Dilla as his biggest inspiration in making Hey Panda, and if anybody would know, it’s him. But there are also moments that trigger thoughts of the Japanese pop-auteurs Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto (and naturally, the Yellow Magic Orchestra), plus similarities in tactics to Cornelius and Jim O’Rourke.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mercury Studios announces a new feature documentary, Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn, directed by the unheralded composer’s great great great granddaughter, BAFTA-winning filmmaker Sheila Hayman. It will be available as a DVD+Blu-ray package on May 17, 2024.

Take a celebrated musical genius, a rival sibling, an unknown manuscript, and one sensational revelation and what have you got? Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn—a captivating feature documentary starring global Decca artist, Isata Kanneh-Mason. The film also follows Fanny’s many modern champions, including pianist Sarah Rothenberg, whose pioneering recording of Fanny’s “Das Jahr” features in the story.

Anyone who has been to a wedding has enjoyed the musical genius of Felix Mendelssohn. His Wedding March is the most-played classical composition of all time. But Felix was not the only genius in the family: his sister, Fanny was also a brilliant composer. Yet most people have never heard of her, and even now only a few of her 450 works are published or performed.

Fanny as composer was equal to any of her contemporaries, male or female: technically brilliant and boldly ground-breaking. Yet she was 40 before she dared to defy Felix’s disapproval, and publish her music under her own name. Tragically, the resulting joy and recognition were short-lived. Less than a year later, Fanny died, followed shortly by Felix—his already poor health exacerbated by grief.

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There are certain jazz albums that transcend the genre and become timeless classics. Eastern Sounds by Yusef Lateef is one of those albums. It is a stirring, meditative musical excursion of sound, that could be considered a precursor of world music, or even a more nuanced, textured, and varied early new age recording, without the negative baggage of that now almost nearly forgotten musical genre.

The closest album that it shares some musical and spiritual sensibilities with is Something Blue from Paul Horn, released the year before this 1961 release. Both albums are almost musical mantras of sound, but are also very accessible releases that don’t stray too far from mellow jazz.

Lateef had been exploring these kinds of sounds on previous albums as a leader, most notably on Prayer to the East from 1957, but Eastern Sounds galvanizes all of the elements that make Lateef’s take on this sacred jazz sound work so well. While the album starts off with the subtle swing of “The Plum Bossom” and readings of the love themes of the epic films Spartacus (Alex North) and The Robe (Alfred Newman), it’s the other six tracks that reflect more of the contemplative side of this groundbreaking album.

Lateef is supported by the rhythm section of Barry Harris on piano, Lex Humphries on drums, and Ernie Farrow on bass. Farrow also plays rabat (spelled various other ways through history), a lute-like instrument that blends perfectly with Lateef’s work here on tenor saxophone, oboe, and especially flute, the Chinese globular xun.

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