Remembering Dexter Gordon in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

On May 23 of 1963 a trio of bebop originals joined up with a worthy European compatriot and visited CBS Studios in Paris. The comeback of tenor giant Dexter Gordon was well underway, but the Continent was a relatively recent change of scene. Pianist Bud Powell and drummer Kenny “Klook” Clarke had been living in France for quite some time however, and bassist Pierre Michelot was born there. Together this quartet agreed upon five standards and executed them with utter brilliance. Blue Note titled it Our Man in Paris, and years later it remains a classic.

They ate voraciously as Dean, sandwich in hand, stood bowed and jumping before the big phonograph, listening to a wild bop record I had just bought called “The Hunt,” with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray blowing their tops before a screaming audience that gave the record fantastic frenzied volume. —Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Much deserved praise gets heaped on Dexter Gordon for his comeback(s), but it can be occasionally overlooked that even if he never came back at all, he’d be a hugely important figure anyway. To begin, he’s the most distinctive tenor saxophonist to emerge from the ‘40s bop scene, extending the influence of Lester Young and quickly adapting the innovations of Charlie Parker, recording with Bird and Dizzy Gillespie and as a leader for Savoy before heading back to California and cutting those tenor battle 78s for Dial, the very sides that impacted Kerouac and Neal Cassady (i.e. Dean Moriarty) so massively.

It was heroin that nearly ended Gordon’s career for good; the ‘50s were a lost decade, though he did cut two records in ’55, Daddy Plays the Horn for Bethlehem in September and Daddy Blows Hot and Cool for Dootone two months later. After kicking the habit, he commenced his return with The Resurgence of Dexter Gordon, a minor session (some would call it a false start) for the Jazzland label.

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Badfinger was one of the most commercially and critically successful acts that were part of the early days of Apple Records in the late ’60s/early ’70s. The group’s Beatle-esque pure pop was a staple of FM radio at a time that saw the release of such classic albums as No Dice (1970) and Straight Up (1971) with the lineup of Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Mike Gibbins, and Joey Molland. Ass, released in 1973, was the last album from the group on Apple Records, the record label started by The Beatles.

The group that was the earliest incarnation of Badfinger was The Iveys, which included Ron Griffiths but not Joey Molland. Badfinger began with its contribution to the soundtrack albums of the film The Magic Christian (1970), starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, with the Paul McCartney-penned “Come and Get It,” which was a big hit.

Unfortunately, bad management, record company squabbles, changing musical tastes, and for some of the members of the band, personal problems, ended the group’s creative and commercial peak shortly after they left Apple. They then made a handful of albums for Warner Bros. Now, by some miracle, a long-lost album has recently been released and adds another welcome musical chapter to the group’s abbreviated musical career, along with an anthology of demos from The Iveys.

The music on this new Badfinger release would have come out in 1974, with a lineup that included Ham, Evans, Gibbins, and Bob Jackson. While it has come out on CD in the past in demo form, the music on this album is taken directly from the final master tapes. After the album was completed, Warner Bros. rejected it. The group’s manager ran off with their advance and the label dropped them.

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Saxophonist-composer-improvisor Tim Berne has been on the scene since the late 1970s. Here it is, a quarter of the way into century 21, and he’s still at it. Berne’s latest, featuring him in a trio lineup with guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi and drummer Tom Rainey, is the LP Yikes (limited to 500 copies) and its 2CD expansion Yikes Too, both out now, co-released by Berne’s long-running label Screwgun and Out of Your Head Records. The 2CD offers the full studio set on disc one and a live set from March 2024 at Seattle’s Royal Room on disc two. Purchase of the six-song LP gets the buyer a download of everything on the 2CD.

Tim Berne emerged as a recording musician in a period when avant-garde jazz had been essentially abandoned by the major record companies. His first album, The Five Year Plan, came out in 1979 on his own label, not Screwgun, but Empire. A few more self-released LPs followed before he was picked up by Soul Note, a vastly important enterprise (alongside Black Saint) in the period prior to the major label’s rekindled interest in the avant-garde. And when the big companies came looking, it was Columbia that grabbed Berne for a pair of records, Fulton Street Maul in 1987 and Sanctified Dreams the next year.

As is the jazz norm, Berne has recorded a whole lot, and he’s also cut a bunch of sessions with guitarists. There’s Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Ryan Ferreira, Samo Šalamon, David Torn, most prominently Marc Ducret, and most recently Gregg Belisle-Chi. This trio with Belisle-Chi and Tom Rainey deepens Berne’s long association with the drummer as their prior output includes another trio, Big Satan, with guitarist Ducret.

Except for the track “Julius Hemphill” (by saxophonist Hemphill, a jazz great crucial to Berne’s development as a musician), all the compositions here are Berne’s, a reality that solidifies him as Yikes Too’s leader, though as the record’s cover makes plain, the leadership designation is nominal. Given Berne’s preference for naming working bands (a sample: Big Satan, Bloodcount, Broken Shadows, Caos Totale, Hard Cell, Miniature, Paraphrase, Science Friction, Snakeoil), his comfort with ensemble collectivity is clear and reinforces his extension of Fusion methods into contemporary avant jazz.

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TEMPE, AZ | Since 2018, the Innings Festival has been held in Tempe, Arizona, to celebrate the start of Spring Training for Major League Baseball. For the readers unfamiliar with spring training, the league is split in two, and half the teams train in Arizona and the other half in Florida. Taking advantage of the warm weather, Arizona natives and tourists alike are treated to a weekend jam-packed with activity. The Innings Festival has taken many shapes and sizes since 2018 and brings something a little different each year. We at TVD have been lucky enough to cover this festival two years in a row and have greatly enjoyed the weekend both years. This year brought us a rock and roll-inspired lineup with features covering the last two decades.

Bringing us absolute classics like The Killers and Fall Out Boy, to newer sounds like Jack Kays and Grace Bowers, there is plenty of entertainment featured at Innings Festival, even outside of the music. The festival has an entire section dedicated to just baseball. This includes bringing out legends of the game such as Jake Peavy and St. Louis Cardinals legend Vince Coleman, batting cages, a game to clock how fast you can pitch, and the ability to interact with the players. Truly melding the love of music and baseball, the festival offers quite a unique experience.

Tempe Beach Park is laid out almost in a big “U” shape. On the one side is “Home Plate,” the headlining stage. If you’re facing the stage, refreshments will be lining the left side, and VIP will be on the right. In the middle of that is a big open space to watch the show, almost as if a baseball diamond is set up. Tempe Lake lines the entire park, and there are kayaks you can rent to experience the festival from the water. The schedule of the day alternates by stage so you can either walk in between each or stay at one and secure a good seat for the next artist.

At 5:00 PM, one of my favorite bands to shoot took to Right Field. The All American Rejects play with an unmatched energy that is so fun to see. The band has been around for my entire life, and yet the two times I’ve seen them felt like they were fully in their prime. The band is timeless, and even as the music industry changes, there is something about their personality that will cement them in memory.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “A pitch-perfect and at times hypnotic score.”
—Gold Derby

Lakeshore Records is set to release Nickel Boys—Original Motion Picture Soundtrack in a special vinyl edition with an original score by composers Alex Somers and Scott Alario. The Oscar-nominated film features an ethereal and often dissonant score that augments the intense storyline and striking stylistic elements of the film based on Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys. The album pressed on “Metallic Gold” vinyl features a full color insert and will be available April 25.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead and inspired by real-life events, Nickel Boys chronicles the powerful friendship between two Black teenagers who become wards of a juvenile reformatory in Florida. In breakout performances that cut to the bone, Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close bond helps sustain their hope even as truths unfold around them at the Nickel Academy.

Nickel Boys is nominated for two Academy Awards, for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Note Somers and Alario: “Creating the music for Nickel Boys has been one of the most fulfilling creative endeavors of our lives. The way the point of view camera exists to allow the audience to not only see what the characters see, but to feel what they see, our music exists to illuminate what cannot be seen, but is felt.”

Celebrating Doug Yule on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Contrary to what’s sometimes published, the studio legacy of The Velvet Underground didn’t end with 1970’s Loaded. No, it culminated with what many consider to be an abomination, an offense in the annals of one of the greatest bands to ever transcend and redefine rock’s limitations. The record is 1973’s Squeeze, and despite music that’s inescapably lackluster there is a case to be made for bringing the album out of the shameful shadows that persist in shrouding its existence.

For many VU fans, Squeeze exists on the same plane as that uncle who’s been sent up the river for crimes that nobody in the family feels comfortable discussing. Other Velvets fanatics LLLOOOVVVE to talk about this understandably scarce LP, mostly because it helps to flesh out theories over what made the band so exceptional, speculations that often vary greatly from person to person. Because if The Velvet Underground are the ornery granddaddy of an often sorta suspect category known as “cult bands,” unlike many of the groups awarded with this stature there is no consensus on what is VU’s best LP, or for that matter what is even their finest era.

And this seems to have been a gradually evolving process. Around 1987, when I first began listening to the Velvets in earnest, the older heads with whom I spoke (almost always inside the welcoming walls of record stores), seeking guidance on this somewhat daunting entity, were essentially divided between which of the band’s first two records, The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light/White Heat, was best. This is to say that while surely considered valuable, the post-John Cale material was definitely esteemed as lesser.

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Measuring seven inches from side to side and top to bottom, the vinyl single is quite the prudent item to display on the merch table whilst out on tour. If the songs are up to snuff, the situation grows from sensible to splendid. And when two bands on the road together elect to share the sides of a tour single? Well, that’s an even happier circumstance, and is exactly what’s transpired with Damaged Goods’ pairing of Leeds, UK-based Cyanide Pills and Bern, Switzerland’s Nasty Rumours. In celebration of their “Two Wrongs” Euro tour, it features four short sharp bursts of catchy punk rock und roll, two per band per side, with only 400 copies pressed, 200 on pink wax and 200 on yellow (and no digital), out February 28.

Cyanide Pills are nothing if not prolific, and nearly all of the band’s stuff has been released by Damaged Goods, starting back in 2009 with a pair of singles that teased a self-titled debut from the following year. Four more albums, one of them live, have hit the bins since, plus a slew of singles along the way, with a prime stylistic reference point being the Buzzcocks. Given Damaged Goods’ honcho Ian Damage’s love of punk rock classique, it’s no surprise Cyanide Pills found a spot on the label’s roster.

The danger that specialists in melodic punk face is going overboard with the catchiness so that the songs stop being fun and teeter over into obnoxiousness. This is thankfully rarely a problem with Cyanide Pills’ raw and snotty early stuff, which is represented on this new single with “Falling for You,” an unused track recorded for their debut album.

“Falling for You” is loaded with energy and neither too tight (which often results in streamlining) nor too sloppy, instead hitting the sweet spot of spontaneity, so that the harmonies in the chorus accent and complement the raucous velocity rather than overwhelm it. The other Cyanide Pills track “I Don’t Wanna Dance,” was cut during the same period that produced their latest album Soundtrack to the New Cold War; it intensifies the harmonies and guitar strum for a result that’s decidedly ’60s aligned, and we’re talking early Byrds, Bobby Fuller and Beau Brummels over the standard Nuggets moves.

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PHOENIX, AZ | Almost Monday brought their “The Dive Tour” to Phoenix, Arizona, just one stop over from where they grew up in San Diego, and they sold out the Valley Bar basement with ease.

Valley Bar is one of the more unique venues in downtown Phoenix and is certainly a hidden gem—just like the band itself. When you take in Almost Monday’s set, you’ll think to yourself, “Oh, I know this one.” “Oh wow, I know this one too.” This being the case, it’s just a matter of time before they hit the larger music scene—hard. The fans this night in Phoenix got really lucky because Almost Monday will never play venues this intimate again, and the next time we see them they’ll be selling out theaters. The younger band has the stage presence to rock anywhere they go, especially frontman Dawson Daughtery. Dawson looks like he has been performing for his entire life—and while he probably has—he’s an absolute natural.

The night kicked off by a very strong frontman in his own respect, Adrian Lyles. Adrian has a similar sound to Frank Ocean, chasing that alternative R&B groove. It takes guts to cover a Frank Ocean song, but Adrian covered “Pink + White” like it was nothing. It’s clear he is an actor, because he interacts with the crowd and performs like he was born to do it. The once member of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Adrian has hit the music industry pursuing a new realm. His acting experience certainly doesn’t hurt, and Adrian is a ton of fun to watch. Another artist I predict to have a lot of success in 2025.

The headliner, Almost Monday, the next big thing. Emerging from garage jams and D.I.Y. gigs. Almost Monday—Dawson Daugherty (vocals), Cole Clisby (guitar), and Luke Fabry (bass)—burst onto the scene in 2020 with a sound that embodies the sun-soaked essence of California. As I mentioned, even if you haven’t heard their name, you have heard their music. The sold out Valley Bar crowd certainly had, and they let the band know it.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The LA-based rights management company Killphonic Rights launches its new label division, Killphonic Records, announcing its debut release, Heart Of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, out April 25, the first of a two-volume project.

This immersive album invites you to journey through a rich tapestry of sound and sentiment, blending beloved classics with fresh interpretations of Neil Young’s songs that honor his legacy, starting with the lead-off singles “Lotta Love” from Courtney Barnett and “Southern Man” from Chris Pierce, out now. The first in this two-volume series is rounded out by covers from Brandi Carlile, Eddie Vedder, Lumineers, Sharon Van Etton, Mumford and Sons, and many more. Proceeds from the album will benefit The Bridge School in Hillsborough, California. The vinyl pre-order is available HERE.

Killphonic Records operations will be led by CEO Caleb Shreve and Co-Head of A&R Syd Butler, but the entire creative team will be involved with developing and curating the roster and catalog. This includes Co-Head of A&R Michelle Fantus, Head of Creative Michael Grubbs, and A&R Erin Walts.

The launch of the label division follows the company’s expansion of its executive team and partnership with Stilwell Creative Capital, which invested $3M of working capital in a proportional stake of equity in Killphonic Rights in 2024. Following the partnership announcement, Syd Butler and Michelle Fantus were brought on as Co-Heads of A&R, Chelsea D’Amico as Head of Sync, and Killphonic’s former Head of A&R, Michael Grubbs, moved into a new role as Head of Creative.

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Remembering George Harrison in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

I have been guilty of saying mean things about George Harrison in the past, most of them having to do with the lugubrious and often wimpy tenor of the ex-Beatles solo work. But I am here today, dear members of the committee, to recant. I’ve been listening to 1970’s sprawling All Things Must Pass, and while it has its share of doleful bummers, what strikes me about it now is how hard it rocks.

The most anonymous Beatle could cook when he felt like it, and on All Things Must Pass he frequently felt like it, as did co-guitarists Eric Clapton and Dave Mason, and when all is said and done I’m forced to agree with critic Mikal Gilmore, who called All Things Must Pass “the finest solo work any ex-Beatle ever produced.”

The studio sessions were a clusterfuck, with superstars being dragooned left and right. The line-up included the players who would soon form Derek and the Dominos as well as the members of Badfinger, to say nothing of folks like Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Ginger Baker, and Gary Wright. Why, even Phil Collins played on one track.

There was also extensive overdubbing, and while the production duties were formally in the hands of the mercurial Phil Spector, Harrison has said Spector required 18 cherry brandies just to BEGIN work, leaving poor George to handle much of the production himself. In addition, Harrison’s mother was dying, and he was nurturing a burgeoning heroin addiction.

Let me make it clear from the start; I’m not much for “My Sweet Lord,” the song the LP is probably best known for, nor am I wild about its companion piece, “Help Me Lord.” LP opener “I’d Have You Anytime,” which was co-written by Harrison and Bob Dylan, does nothing for me, nor do the run of the mill “Run of the Mill,” the milquetoast “I Live for You,” and the “I need love” sentimentality of “I Dig Love.”

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