Before Elvis Costello became the dullest Renaissance Man of the Western World, gadflying about with the likes of Burt Bacharach, the Brodsky Quartet, some Swedish mezzo-soprano whose name escapes me at the moment, the Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest, jazz pianist Marian McPartland, T-Bone Barnett, the London Symphony Orchestra and others, including for all I know the Men’s Choir of Barracks 22 of the Toksong Political Prison Camp in North Korea, he was a punk fellow-traveler and one of the angriest young men in England this side of Johnny Lydon.

Everybody grows up, but do you have to grow up to be a sophisticated dabbler and bore? In Costello’s case it was the Paul Weller Komplex times ten, and when it came to wanton genre-hopping, Elvis made Neil Young look like a piker. Even the early Costello was a hybrid of sorts—a singer-songwriter in spirit, a punk in attitude. The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau summed this up by comparing him to Jackson Browne in his review of Costello’s 1977 debut My Aim Is True, then turning around and complimenting him on his snarl come the following year’s This Year’s Model.

Costello famously recorded My Aim Is True with, yes it’s true, a California-based country rock act (Clover, whose members would later go on to play, variously, with Huey Lewis and the News, the Doobie Brothers, and Lucinda Williams) as his backing band. A very singer-songwriter thing to do, that, but by the time he got around to recording This Year’s Model (again with Nick Lowe as producer) he recruited a band of his own that could produce music to mirror his adamantine misanthropy (and some would say misogyny).

Costello would never be a true-blue punk—too much clever wordplay and a musical vocabulary that pre-dated the Sex Pistols—but he was a punk in spirit, much like the 1966 Dylan. Indeed, “Like a Rolling Stone” is a template of sorts for Costello, with its catchy wordsmithing, laser focus on the personal and themes of (to use words Costello would himself employ and would stick to him like glue throughout his career) “revenge and guilt.” Unlike the post-protest Dylan, Costello was not apolitical—his disgust extended to goings-on in Great Britain, but rarely went in for punk sloganeering. No anarchy in the UK for the former computer operator from Bootle.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino proudly ushers in the centennial of the larger-than-life Celia Cruz, with a year-long celebration. Throughout 2025, “The Queen of Salsa” will be honored with a series of vinyl and digital reissues, playlists, video content and more. To kick off the celebration, Son con guaguancó will return to vinyl for the first time since its 1966 release and debut on hi-res digital platforms. Recorded shortly before the singer found global fame, the album showcases Cruz’s versatility as an artist, while speaking to her experience as an immigrant in the U.S.

Arriving March 7th and available for pre-order today, the album features “Bemba colorá,” plus favorites like “Oye mi consejo,” “Se me perdió la cartera,” and the title track, “Son con guaguancó.” Delivering the highest-quality listening experience, the LP was mastered from its original analog tapes by Clint Holley at Well Made Music, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and housed in a replica of its classic jacket. Music collectors can also find a “Bemba Colorá Red” 180-gram color vinyl variant (limited to 300 copies), with a bundle option that includes a Tico Records T-shirt, at Fania.com. Additionally, Son con guaguancó will make its debut across digital platforms in 192/24 hi-res audio.

An internationally beloved singer, whose ever-evolving, five-decade-long career spanned a multitude of styles and eras, Celia Cruz (1925–2003) lives on as one of Latin music’s most revered icons. Born in Havana with a passion for music, Cruz sang, studied her craft and performed at every opportunity throughout her youth. Her big break arrived in 1950 when she joined the long-running, hugely popular group La Sonora Matancera. With the band, Cruz found stardom across Latin America, thanks to high-profile tours, hit records and several cameos in films. But in 1960, amid the Cuban Revolution, everything changed.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Showbiz never looked so violent yet cheery, chaotic yet level-headed. Justin Pearson is a lovely lunatic who writes with kindness even if he’s describing being in the middle of an on-stage brawl. He may pick the wrong girl and never be able to escape the mayhem in his personal life but he still seems kind of perfect . . . in a twisted way.” —John Waters

Justin Pearson has announced the release of his fourth book, GG Alien and the Mystery Meat, available on January 31st via Three One G & Bread and Roses Press. Pre-order available here.

Pearson’s latest memoir dives into a slew of intertwining subjects surrounding art, class, and sexuality, to name a few. Here, Justin steps right up to the line of a social faux pas steeped in current social politics as he reflects on navigating working a minimum wage job at a gay club while maintaining a non-paying job as a “musician” throughout his thirties.

Addressing an ever-present overwhelming capitalistic economy as well as his potential cultural appropriation, he lays out (or maybe coughs and spreads out) his absurd and questionable time spent as an employee at San Diego’s most popular gay nightclub.

His latest follows the acclaimed memoirs From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry (2010), How to Lose Friends and Irritate People (2011), and The Race to Zero (2018). GG Alien and the Mystery Meat was edited by Adam Gnade, with art and layout by Bran Black Moon and cover image by Paul Rentler.

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Remembering Scott Walker, born ob this date in 1943. —Ed.

The first five key albums by Scott Walker have just been compiled into a CD/LP box set, and in corralling this very important and vastly enjoyable work from a true existential dreamboat, the executives at Universal Music Group have done music lovers the world over a massive service. Scott Walker: The Collection 1967-1970 includes Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3, Scott 4, and maybe most enticingly ‘Til the Band Comes In, and if not flawless, the collection does paint a truly captivating portrait of this singular artist as a young, ambitious and enduringly relevant man.

Had Scott Walker’s recording career been somehow curtailed before the release of his 1967 solo-debut Scott, he’d still be remembered as one-third of the sneakily non-sibling trio The Walker Brothers, an American group that flipped the script to become a UK teen-pop sensation right in the midst of the British Invasion. They even scored a pair of US hits in the process.

The Walker Brothers’ enshrinement in the Pop Hall of Fame sorta rests upon the enduring pleasures of the Bacharach & David-penned “Make it Easy on Yourself” and “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” both songs climbing to the apex of the British singles charts. They also landed securely in the US Top Twenty to stand as their biggest homeland success, though the reaction of American girls to the trio’s suave image (and young Scott’s, in particular) fell quite a bit short of the mouth-agape and eyes-agog manner of those Swingin’ lasses across the pond.

During their fairly brief initial run (they did reunite in ’75 to produce three further LPs, essentially setting the stage for the second phase of Scott’s career) The Walker Brothers possessed a considerable diversity, with their discography holding a fair amount of uptempo material, including covers of Motown (“Dancing in the Street”), Chris Kenner’s R&B warhorse “Land of a Thousand Dances,” and even Dylan (“Love Minus Zero”). It’s this stuff that gets them mentioned as partial conspirators in the whole UK Beat scene, and while quite likeable in doses, it also lends an air of unevenness to their output.

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Celebrating Jimmy Page on his 81st birthday. —Ed.

So if this Hobbit Trilogy of a ditty ain’t the greatest epic in the history of rock’n’roll, what is? It contains multitudes! Encompasses whole mythopoeic civilizations of stargazing shrub worshippers! And oh, it’s got three sections each of which is a wheel, which means it ain’t a stairway, it’s a tricycle! And if you hop aboard said tricycle it’ll ride you straight to heaven, which will save you from having to take the stairs!

“Stairway to Heaven” is both an architectural folly and the fullest and most baroque realization of the rock’n’roll dream–if Chuck Berry’s songs are street-ready hot rods, “Stairway”’s the fucking Sistine Chapel set down on the chassis of an Oldsmobile 442.

Written in part at the band’s Welsh hideaway Bron-Yr-Aur in 1970 following Led Zeppelin’s fifth American tour and in part at recording sessions at Headley Grange, Hampshire, “Stairway to Heaven” is–to employ yet another metaphor–a majestic and ever-widening river, one fed in turns by the tributaries of Renaissance music, English folk, heavy metal, and progressive rock.

“Stairway to Heaven” was famously never released as a single, but two U.S. promotional discs were issued in very small numbers, so collectors start your engines. Of course FM radio played the shit out of it anyway–I’m talking to the tune of an estimated 2,874,000 times by 1991, which if you were to listen to all 2,874,000 radio plays back to back would take you 44 YEARS! So start listening!

No wonder so many people hate the fucking song. If familiarity breeds contempt, for some folks “Stairway to Heaven” breeds homicidal ideation. You never hear drunks shouting “Play ‘Stairway to Heaven’!” at live shows, probably cuz they’re afraid the band will take ‘em up on it.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Real Gone Music’s 2022 reissue of Don Julian and the Larks’ 1974 LP Super Slick made fans of rare ‘70s soul and funk very happy, and this release is gonna do the same.

Bandleader Don Julian followed the lead of Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield et al. in scoring the 1973 blaxploitation film Savage!; the reasons Julian’s score didn’t hit like Superfly or Shaft are, one, the film didn’t do as well, as it was a Philippine-based B-movie funded and distributed by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, and, two, the soundtrack came out on the lightly-distributed Money Records label.

Dig the fantastic flute work from Jimmy Vinson and the ten-plus minute title theme is just plain funkin’ filthy. Blood orange pressing limited to 750 copies.

The sound of the New York City-based trio of saxophonist Ayumi Ishito, drummer Kevin Shea, and guitarist George Draguns has been awarded the tag of avant-punk. As the four tracks that shape up their debut album Roboquarians Vol. 2 unwind, that stylistic assessment hits the target right in the bullseye. Often more enveloping than an unrelenting barrage of skronk, the group can still work up a pummeling racket and lay down the scorch. The set is out now on CD in a limited edition of 100 copies.

The first question many will be asking is how this set is a debut and also a second volume. The scoop is that the album is rooted in a prior project featuring Shea and Draguns and unnamed others that stalled out creatively. Shea and Draguns were cool with their parts however, so they isolated their playing, preserved it, and then invited Ishito to make the final contribution, cohesive but also expansive and wonderfully effects-driven.

Roboquarians Vol. 2 was finalized in March, 2021 at Metropolitan Sound in Brooklyn. The three reconvened at the same location in September, 2022 for another session, and in March, 2024, that return to the studio was released as Roboquarians Vol. 1.

Shea and Draguns began playing together in the mid-1990s as part of Storm & Stress, an experimental rock outfit from Pittsburgh (Ian Williams, later of Battles, completed the trio). Making their way to Chicago, they released a pair of records on the Touch and Go label (Draguns exited the band prior to the second). In 2014 Shea and Draguns roped in Nick Millevoi to record an eponymous album as Form and Mess.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Following the success of the Tokyo Glow and Funk Tide sets, Wewantsounds once again teams up with Tokyo-based DJ Notoya for a breezy selection of Funk and Boogie recorded in Japan for King Records in the ’70s and ’80s. Most tracks here are making their debut on vinyl outside of Japan and the album, like its predecessors, has been designed by Optigram’s Manuel Sepulveda and is annotated by DJ Notoya. The audio has been newly mastered in Tokyo by King Records and remastered for vinyl by Colorsound in Paris.

For Tokyo Bliss, Japanese Funk expert DJ Notoya has picked a diverse selection of great Funk, Boogie and City Pop tracks recorded between 1974 and 1988 for King Records, one of the most venerable record labels in Japan. These tracks—which are in demand on the Japanese groove scene—are mostly new to international ears and showcase the breadth and quality of Nippon music recorded during the ’70s and ’80s.

The selection kicks off with the group Buzz, a folk duet formed in the early ’70s by Hiroshi Koide and Masakazu Togo who released a handful of albums for King during the ’70s. The track “Garasumado” (Glass Window) is from the 1974 album Requiem The City which was produced by Nobuyuki Takahashi, the older brother of future YMO superstar Yukihiro Takahashi who’s playing drums here seconded by Ray Ohara’s formidable bass line. At the time both were members of cult group Sadistic Mika Band.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Bon Jovi will unveil their Diamond-certified best-selling third full-length album, Slippery When Wet, on vinyl and Digital Deluxe on February 28.

The original record will be available in various configurations through the artist store, including an exclusive liquid-filled vinyl disc limited to 1,300 copies worldwide, and a picture disc limited to 1,500 copies. It also arrives on cassette limited to 500 copies. Additionally Slippery When Wet will be available as a Deluxe Edition with seven bonus tracks, on 2CD and digitally at all streamers. Pre-order on the group’s official online store HERE.

The Deluxe Edition includes a long sought-after acoustic version of “Wanted Dead Or Alive” as well as four live recordings from the band’s historic 1987 Slippery When Wet Tour, two of which, including an epic “Let It Rock,” have not been heard before. The Deluxe also boasts exciting, previously unreleased mixes of “Livin’ On A Prayer (Thank You Goodnight Remix),” which was heard briefly in the band’s hit documentary series, and “Raise Your Hands (Extended Obie O’Brien Mix).”

Slippery When Wet hit like a tidal wave upon its initial release on August 18, 1986. The record debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and held the top spot for eight weeks. Not to mention, it emerged as “the top-selling album of 1987,” according to Billboard. It stands out as the band’s highest-selling record, going 12x-platinum.

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George Harrison’s triple album, All Things Must Pass, came out in 1971 and was a monumental release for the former member of The Beatles. After he issued the soundtrack to the film Wonderwall in 1968 and the experimental, electronic release Electronic Sound in 1969, many considered All Things Must Pass to be Harrison’s first true solo album.

Harrison often only had one or two songs he wrote included on an album when he was in The Beatles, with the songs of Lennon and McCartney dominating the albums and singles released by the group. All Things Must Pass included songs from the backlog of unrecorded material he had, collaborations with Bob Dylan (“I’d Have You Anytime”), and one with Bill Martin and Phil Coulter (“It’s Johnny’s Birthday”), and a cover of Dylan’s “If Not For You.” As good as the album was, Harrison did not come up with a follow-up studio album until 1973. The soundtrack to The Concert for Bangla-Desh was released in December of 1971. That next album from 1973 was Living in the Material World.

Given the sheer volume of tracks and the all-star backing musicians on All Things Must Pass, it would appear nearly impossible for anyone to follow up that release. Nonetheless, Living in the Material World was a commercial and critical success and in fact many fans and critics actually thought it was a better album than All Things Must Pass.

The album is a more relaxed affair and given it came out in 1973 it was viewed less as an album by an ex-Beatle and more as a solo album from an artist that had by then fully established himself. There were also some people who simply didn’t like All Things Must Pass due to the heavy-handed production of Phil Spector and, being a triple-album box set, it was very expensive.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Pop music history is littered with albums whose provocative covers promised something steamy and sensual inside but delivered a musical cold shower instead.

This is not one of those albums. Fresh from arranging/conducting such Broadway shows as The Wiz and also forging a successful career penning jingles for such clients as McDonald’s, Pan Am Airlines, Boone’s Farm Wines, Kool Aid, and Coca Cola, composer/ keyboardist Wheeler released this 1975 cult classic, a soulful, slinky masterpiece of bedroom jazz-funk. It’s Wheeler’s only album, but it may have been singly responsible for an increase in the mid-‘70s birth rate—light some candles and break out the lotion for this one.

First reissue in any format, available in orange with black swirl vinyl limited to 750 copies.

Rozz Rezabek is best known as the singer for the first wave San Francisco punk band Negative Trend, but he also cut a blistering batch of tunes after leaving that group that only surfaced as a bootleg CD release in 1998, attributed to Rozz and erroneously to his former band. That is, until now, as those tireless Windy City punk excavators at HoZac Records have given those nine maulers a long overdue legit release. Scorching forth from that sweet zone from whence hardcore was poised to explode, 1979 Pop Session is out now.

Negative Trend was a vastly important band in the grand scheme of 1970s San Francisco punk, but they only recorded one EP plus two tracks on the seminal Cali punk comp Tooth and Nail, and by the point of those recordings Rozz Rezabek, who’d entered as singer as the band Grand Mal was morphing into Negative Trend, had made his exit. From there, Rezabek remained something of an obscure figure, most notable for his work in the early ’80s Portland, OR band Theater of Sheep.

Highly regarded for their connections to Flipper and Toiling Midgets, Negative Trend’s 1977 EP was reissued numerous times hence, so it’s perhaps not surprising the band is miscredited, either mistakenly or (more likely) deliberately, as backing Rezabek on these tracks. The reality is that the drummer is Bobby Barrage (later of No Alternative, who seem to have swiped their name from 1979 Pop Session’s third track) and the guitarist is Dave Basic (unsure if he ever did anything else. If not, more’s the pity).

Much had been made of how this session is a wound-up stylistic straddler, wildly humping the dividing line where punk classique is on one side and the heavyweight haymaker throttle maul of early hardcore is on the other. To be sure, 1979 Pop Session sits nicely alongside the work of contemporaries Black Flag, Middle Class, Circle Jerks, and Germs circa (GI), but there’s still plenty of Brit-tinged snot in Rezabek’s vocal delivery, this aspect hitting its apex in the set’s final track “I Don’t Want to be a Machine (Karen Ann Quinlan).”

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