Dream Theater’s sixteenth album, Parasomnia, marks a defining moment in the band’s illustrious 40-year history. With the return of original drummer Mike Portnoy alongside James LaBrie (vocals), John Petrucci (guitar), John Myung (bass), and Jordan Rudess (keyboards), this record is both a celebration of their roots and a bold leap forward in the band’s continual evolution. This reunion brings Dream Theater a renewed energy and focus, resulting in an album that is as technically brilliant as it is emotionally profound.

Thematically, Parasomnia dives into the elusive and enigmatic realms of sleep, dreams, and the subconscious. Much like the unpredictable experiences of the night, the album traverses a wide spectrum of moods, ideas, and emotions. From soothing, ethereal passages to chaotic, dreamlike sequences, each track explores night’s mysteries with poetic depth, blending surreal imagery with introspective storytelling. To me, this is Dream Theater at its best.

Dream Theater has always been synonymous with progressive metal, and Parasomnia reinforces this reputation while also pushing new boundaries. True to their classic sound, the album is packed with intricate arrangements, time signature shifts, and powerful solos. However, there’s an experimental edge here that sets Parasomnia apart from other albums in their catalog. You’ll hear everything from hard-hitting, classic metal riffs to softer, orchestral compositions intertwined with hints of jazz and electronic influences. The result is an adventurous and cohesive sonic landscape that takes the listener on a restless, dreamlike odyssey.

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Celebrating Alice Cooper on his 77th birthday. —Ed.

Could 1974’s Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits be the best album of the seventies? It’s a perverse and ludicrous notion, I know. But when I’m in the right mood, and I happen to be in the right mood right now, there isn’t an album I’d rather hear.

And is it such a perverse notion, when you come right down to it? I would direct the reader’s attention to Chuck Eddy, the perceptive and witty rock critic who wrote the brilliant, hilarious (and very much hated by metalheads) Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe. In said book Eddy puts Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits at No. 3 on his list. That’s right, No. 3, right below Led Zeppelin IV and Appetite for Destruction.

The fact is that Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits captures the highlights–albeit with some inexplicable omissions–of a band that melded razor-edged garage rock to grade B horror movie theatrics to create some of the most enthralling songs to emerge from your car radio in the early 1970s. I know plenty of purists who find greatest hits packages suspect. When it comes to making up “best-of” lists, greatest hits LPs don’t count. Me, I’m a populist and a utilitarian and I prefer Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits to Alice’s other product, although Love It To Death comes a close second. It’s time we let greatest hits LPs out of their ghetto!

Put simply, I like Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits more than any of the five albums whose tracks appear on it because Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits does not include any of the duds that made all five of those albums so uneven. 1971’s Love It to Death was as close as Alice Cooper came to producing a masterpiece, and is my AC studio LP of choice. Billion Dollar Babies finishes a not-so-close second. As for the other three, I don’t own them. Why don’t I own them? Because I have Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits. That’s what greatest hits albums are for.

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Vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Vashti Bunyan only released three albums, but they cohere into one of the most lauded discographies in all of British folk. The esteem accrued gradually, however, as her second record Lookaftering, released in 2005, emerged over thirty years after her first. Now, twenty years later, DiCristina Records has assembled an expanded edition of the set featuring a second disc of demos, an alternate take, and a live track. It’s an enlightening and pleasurable plunge into the evolution of an era-defining record, available February 7 on 2LP/2CD

Well before her first album came out, Vashti Bunyan released a pair of singles (as simply Vashti) in 1965-’66 under the auspices of Andrew Loog Oldham. The A-side of the first, “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind,” was composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a connection established with pretty obvious Marianne Faithfull-ish intent that’s deepened by her contribution of “Winter Is Blue” to the soundtrack for Peter Whitehead’s film Tonight Let’s All Make Love in London.

This early material failed to gather commercial steam, which effectively ended Bunyan’s relationship with Oldham, and when she reappeared on the scene roughly half a decade later, she’d become something of a back-to-the-earth hippie, traveling to the Scottish isle of Skye with her partner Robert Lewis in a horse and carriage with the intention of joining a commune envisioned by fellow folkie Donovan.

That commune (or “Renaissance community,” as it has been called) fizzled out, but during the long and interrupted trip to Skye, Bunyan began writing the songs that shaped the Joe Boyd-produced Just Another Diamond Day, so ‘twas not a waste. But the record, issued by Philips in 1970, sank without a trace despite input from Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick of Fairport Convention and Robin Williamson of The Incredible String Band plus string arrangements from Robert Kirby (noted for his work with Nick Drake and others).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Fleetwood Mac released five back-to-back multi-platinum albums between 1975 and 1987, an astonishing feat that drove them to become one of the best-selling bands in the world.

On March 28, these classic albums will be reissued on crystal-clear vinyl as a 6LP boxed set as well as a 5CD set. This collection includes Fleetwood Mac (1975), Rumours (1977), Tusk (1979), Mirage (1982), and Tango In The Night (1987). A Rhino.com exclusive edition, including a crystal-clear 12-inch of “Silver Springs” and “Go Your Own Way” in both stereo and mono, will be available on the same day and is limited to 1,000 copies globally. Pre-order HERE.

A new incarnation of Fleetwood Mac debuted in the summer of 1975, including Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and Christine McVie, along with new members Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The group’s first album together, Fleetwood Mac (sometimes called “The White Album”), topped the Billboard album chart, spent more than a year in the Top 40 and sold more than five million copies in the US thanks to songs like “Landslide,” “Say You Love Me,” and “Rhiannon.”

In 1977, the band followed up with the 21x Platinum record Rumours—considered among the greatest albums of all time. It won the GRAMMY® Award for Album of the Year and has sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Its unforgettable tracks “Go Your Own Way,” “Gold Dust Woman,” and the band’s first number-one smash, the Gold-certified “Dreams.”

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Celebrating Dave Davies on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Ray Davies is without a doubt the most fascinating and enigmatic figure to emerge from England’s whole Merseybeat movement. Was he a hard rocker or music hall romanticist, an ironically distanced and gimlet-eyed chronicler of an England in terminal decline or the biggest mourner at the funeral?

One can only conclude that he’s all of the above, and add that he was, during the late sixties, the smartest fellow on the entire English rock scene with the possible exception of the Bonzo Dog Band’s Vivian Stanshall. That he chose to exercise his estimable talents during this period writing seemingly modest vignettes—miniatures if you will—of middle-class English life should not stand in the way of our adjudging the results—in this case 1968’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society—to be undeniable masterpieces.

The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society—which was released on the same day as the Beatles’ White Album—is probably Davies’ finest hour. Indeed, I for one think it’s the finest of the “concept” albums to be released by the great bands of the era, although I’ll hardly argue with you if you go with Pet Sounds. On its 15 tracks Davies attempts to do what Marcel Proust did with his seven-volume novel À la recherche du temps perdu—namely, to recapture lost time, and in specific his lost childhood spent in the little village green near his home in Fortis Green.

The album is a wistful look back at a “simpler” time, albeit one tinged with knowing irony—the Ray Davies who sings, on the title cut, “God save little shops, china cups, and virginity” is, without a doubt, having us on. And yet there’s an edge of sincerity there too—why not save vaudeville and variety, if they’re sunny childhood memories? But the truly wonderful thing about this remembrance of things past is the way Davies holds out the hope that—as he sings in “Do You Remember Walter?”—memories remain even as people change.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | After the incredible success of the film Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper was given complete freedom to direct and star in the bizarre, surrealist The Last Movie—released in 1971. Filmed in a drug fueled haze in Peru with Hopper, Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Dean Stockwell, Michelle Phillips, Russ Tamblyn, and Samuel Fuller—there has never been a soundtrack to this film until recently.

Featuring the first-ever performances of Kristofferson’s legendary “Me and Bobby McGee” plus sublime country-folk songs from John Buck Wilkin, Peruvian folk & dance music—all recorded live on set in Peru—nothing was overdubbed. Plus, provocative movie dialogue from Dennis Hopper, Sam Fuller and others—coupled with the ambient sounds of the mountains and villages of South America—reissue producer Pat Thomas and Hopper Estate archivist Jessica Hundley have assembled an original listening experience.

Out 18th April, packaging includes rare vintage photos, detailed liner notes, et al. The Last Movie recordings are being released for the first time ever on compact disc—taken directly from the original movie reels.

We’re releasing this CD soundtrack to tie in with Mike Scott & The Waterboys new album: Life, Death And Dennis Hopper to be released via Sun Records. The new Waterboys album is the epic story of the trailblazing American actor and rebel told through a song cycle of 25 original songs tracing the extraordinary arc of Hopper’s life, from his youth in Kansas to his long rise including Easy Rider, tumultuous fall, and ultimate redemption.

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Mistrial? I say we try the album again and convict it this time because it’s guilty! Why, come to think of it, why don’t we do it now and get it over with! I’ll gladly serve as prosecutor! And I’ll settle for nothing less than the death penalty!

And rest assured I’ll be issuing peremptory challenges to the likes of knee-jerk Rock ’n’ Roll Animal apologists like Robert Christgau. He’d have acquitted an album of Lou sharting to the accompaniment of a calliope, while singing It’s a Beautiful Day’s “White Bird” in Farsi. Or worse, Lou rapping, as he does on Mistrial’s “The Original Wrapper.” In the original trial (I’ve studied the transcript carefully) the song was excluded from evidence on some legal technicality or other. Not this time.

Two Months Later

Well, it’s over. The trial was held at Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on January, 15, 2025, despite the defense’s attempt to have it held in American Samoa. A victory for yours truly, a bona fide attorney (I received my law degree from one of those children’s claw machines where you can win prizes like highly flammable teddy bears and bottles of highly combustible cheap tequila) because let’s face it—everybody in the Big Apple knows Lou Reed was an insufferable jerk. You could fill a book with people calling Lou Reed an insufferable jerk. Most of them were his friends, who tended to dive into open sewer grates at his approach because he possessed a gift for fucking over his friends that bordered on the supernatural, and which he actually acknowledges on Mistrial’s (1986) “Don’t Hurt a Woman”: Meanwhile, back in the real world, defendants would do well to seek out a criminal defence lawyer Melbourne courts actually respect, rather than betting on charm, myth, or bad attitudes.

“I was angry, I said things I shouldn’t say
I must have lost control
Sometimes something clicks in my head
And I’m not myself anymore.”

A written confession if ever I’ve ever heard one.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Lee Hazlewood made his bones producing and co- writing with guitarist Duane Eddy during the ‘50s, and then cemented his immortality with the classic sides he produced for Nancy Sinatra during the ‘60s. Over the past few decades, though, attention has turned to Lee’s idiosyncratic solo work, the heart of which he recorded for the Reprise label and his own LHI Records.

Issued in 1968, Love and Other Crimes is one of his Reprise releases, and it’s one of the weirdest records in his entire catalog. Recorded in Paris with such legendary Wrecking Crew members as guitarist James Burton and drummer Hal Blaine, Hazlewood sounds every bit the bon vivant (read: half drunk) as he swings from country ballads to lightly psychedelic pop highlighted by his rockin’ cover of Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew.”

Other highlights include “Rosacoke Street,” which presents him at his most psychedelic lounge lizard-esque, (think a Hunter Thompson character from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and his moving “Wait and See,” an apology for bad behavior to an absent lover. We’ve enlisted Mike Milchner to remaster this one for vinyl. Don’t miss Lee’s stream-of-consciousness back cover notes, either. Pressed on sea blue vinyl, limited to 1,000 copies.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Liberation Hall today shares details of its expanded edition re-release of the sole album from San Francisco new wave band, Pearl Harbor & the Explosions.

Originally issued by Warner Bros. Records in January 1980, the self-titled album anticipated the phenomenal rise of MTV the following year as it featured videoclips for the tracks “Drivin’” and “You Got It (Release It)/Up and Over.” The expanded edition CD and download will feature seven bonus tracks while the “opaque sky-blue” vinyl LP will feature one. All formats are released April 25 and will be distributed by MVD Entertainment Group (USA). Pre-order is available now on Bandcamp.

Pearl Harbor & the Explosions formed in 1978 during the same San Francisco punk rock/new wave uprising that brought forth Romeo Void, Dead Kennedys, the Avengers, the Mutants, the Units, Tuxedomoon, and many others. However, Pearl Harbor & the Explosions were more tuneful and melodic than their brethren, taking cues from local pop/rock group the Tubes with whom singer Pearl E. Gates had gotten her start as a backup singer and dancer.

When Gates was recruited from the Tubes to join Jane Dornacker in her band Leila and the Snakes, she met brothers Hilary and John Hanes (who billed themselves with the surname “Stench”). After 18 months, the trio decided to split from the Snakes and go in their own direction. Pearl (vocals, percussion), Hilary (bass, vocals), and John (drums, vocals) recruited guitarist Peter Dunne (stage name “Peter Bilt”) and Pearl Harbor & the Explosions were born.

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Celebrating John Lydon on his 69th birthday. —Ed.

Okay, so in everybody’s life there comes a day so bleak that not even Joy Division can do it justice. And on that day there’s only one recourse: to crank up Public Image Ltd.’s Second Edition. John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols band’s sophomore release, also known as Metal Box because it initially saw light as a metal 16mm film canister containing three 12” 45rpm records in 1979, was re-issued in 1980 as a double LP.

But regardless of format it was designed to brutalize the listener with music that was as remorselessly and relentlessly down-in-the-mouth as it was utterly hypnotizing, thanks to Lydon’s deranged vocal stylings, Jah Wobble’s loping and rhythmic dub-inspired bass, and Keith Levene’s splintered and utterly unique guitar riffs. Me, I find it soothing when I’ve reached the end of my tether; it lets me know I’m not alone.

Lydon was wise to abandon punk rock; he’d said everything that needed saying in that genre and knew damn well it was a dead end. And it’s a credit to his musical knowledge—which was far more wide-ranging than anyone would have given him credit for—that he went the avant-garde dub route.

Sure, the Sex Pistols posed an existential threat to everything that had come before them; but Second Edition is downright SCARY at times, and sounds every bit as demented as the Sex Pistols did menacing. Plus you could dance to it, as the band’s legendary (and hilarious) performance on American Bandstand proved.

The “death disco” (the alternative title of the song “Swan Lake”) of Second Edition marked a radical move away from the (relatively speaking) more conventional punk of 1978’s First Issue, and proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Lydon was not interested in making music for the masses.

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