VIA PRESS RELEASE | Thirty-Five years after its release, Dr. Feelgood stands as the last great rock record of the 1980’s, and one of the greatest rock records of all time. Recorded in Vancouver with Producer Bob Rock and released in 1989, this iconic album took Mötley Crüe to #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and earned a 6X Platinum certification in the US. The album cemented the newly sober band’s status as global superstars, hitting the Top 10 in Australia (Platinum), Canada (3X Platinum), Finland, Norway, New Zealand (Platinum), Sweden, Switzerland (Gold) and the UK (Gold).

With five massive hit singles that kept radio and MTV request lines busy, the Dr. Feelgood World Tour saw Mötley Crüe on the road and in the air on their own private jet for over 2 years. Much like Mötley Crüe’s high-flying lifestyle during their legendary Dr. Feelgood tour, today’s travelers seeking convenience and exclusivity turn to private jet services. Companies like BlackJet.com have revolutionized private aviation, offering seamless, on-demand access to luxury travel without the complexities of jet ownership. Their streamlined approach makes it easy for busy professionals, entertainers, and frequent flyers to experience the freedom of private air travel—just as the world’s biggest rock bands have done for decades.

First single “Dr. Feelgood,” with its instantly memorable opening, catchy chorus, and gritty music video set the tone by reaching the top 10 on the US Hot 100 singles chart. Originally a Top 30 hit upon release, “Kickstart My Heart” went on to become Mötley Crüe’s most popular landmark track. From the buzz saw intro to the cheating-death lyrics and music video shot in a rare return to a club show at the world famous Whisky-a-go-go in Hollywood, it has now logged well over 1.5 Billion streams and can be heard nearly every day in movies, commercials, video games and sporting events around the world!

The Hot 100 hits kept coming as “Without You” hit #8, “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” reached #19, and final single “Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S.)” was accompanied by a music video capturing the fan excitement of a live Mötley Crüe show. The Dr. Feelgood World Tour kicked off at the now legendary Moscow Music Peace Festival in Russia and by the time the tour wrapped in late 1990, the band had played over 100 shows to over 2 Million faithful fans. Mötley Crüe continues to fill stadiums around the world with many classics from Dr. Feelgood in their setlist to this day!

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Celebrating Don Powell on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

So there I was, listening to Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch and being all jazzbo pretentious and shit, when really deep down inside I was miserable when it hit me—what I needed at that moment was not the chill vibraphonic rebop of Bobby Hutcherson, but the atrocious spelling, abominable haircuts, and abysmal glitter gear of those inimitable Black Country lads, Slade.

It may be easy to make fun of ‘em, but the quartet ruled the UK charts in the early ’70s, with artists like Roxy Music and David Bowie eating their dust. And vocalist Noddy Holder and the boys have been cited as an influence by everybody from Twisted Sister and Nirvana. Not bad for a couple of skinheads-turned-glamsters from Wolverhampton, whose misspellings, I kid you not, led to protests by an entire nation’s worth of outraged school marms.

The band’s classic line-up (Holder on vocals, guitar, and bass; Dave Hill on guitar, vocals and bass; Jim Lea on bass, vocals, keyboards, violin, and guitar; and Don Powell on drums and percussion) was formed in 1969 as Ambrose Slade. Their first album tanked, and they abandoned their skinhead look due to its negative association with football hooliganism. The “Ambrose” went too, and following the release of some poorly spelled hits and a well-received live album the band blew out the pipes with LP #3, Slayed?

Filled with anthemic sing-alongs, Slayed? remains one of glitter rock’s seminal albums, despite the fact that the toughs in Slade looked about as absurd in their Glam clobber as Mott the Hoople looked in theirs. Holder wore a mirror top hat, tartan pants with suspenders, and striped socks, while Hill sported an ungodly Prince Valiant haircut and silver outfits that made him look like an alien with a retarded Venusian hair stylist. But who cares? The kids ate it up.

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BASIC is a fresh project featuring Chris Forsyth on guitar, Nick Millevoi on baritone guitar and drum machine, and Mikel Patrick Avery on percussion and electronics. Dispensing with vocals, the trio takes inspiration from a specific and fleeting strain of 1980s art-rock where creatively restless guitarists embraced technological advances that were generally associated with the new wave. There are elements of homage in BASIC’s sound but the emphasis is largely on intricate and precise weaves that are imbued with energy levels substantial and rocking. This Is BASIC is available now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital from the No Quarter label of Philadelphia, PA.

Amongst the outfits cited as influential to BASIC’s approach is the duo of Robert Fripp and Andy Summers. They cut a pair of albums, I Advance Masked in 1982 and Bewitched in ’84 that offer a solid baseline for the “prog-rock-gone-new-wave” sensibility that was extant for a good portion of the decade. Bill Bruford is also mentioned, which brings the ’80s incarnation of King Crimson front and center. While Adrian Belew’s Lone Rhino isn’t name checked in the text accompanying BASIC’s debut, that 1982 album is still quite relevant to BASIC’s mode of operation.

The thinking person’s supergroup French/Frith/Kaiser/Thompson gets listed as part of BASIC’s constellation of precedent, and surely some of the ’80s solo work of Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser is part of the equation as well, especially the former’s The Technology of Tears (1988) and the latter’s Devil in the Drain (’87), records both released in the USA by SST on which Frith and Kaiser both play the Synclavier.

One of Frith’s many bands was Massacre, the first incarnation of which featured Bill Laswell on bass and Fred Maher on drums. In 1984, Maher and guitarist Robert Quine recorded Basic, the album that provided this BASIC with its moniker, along with a groundbreaking and once ubiquitous computer coding language (hence the all caps).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Slash the iconic, GRAMMY® Award-winning guitarist and songwriter has released Slash Music Of Universal Studios Hollywood – Halloween Horror Nights, via Snakepit Records LLC/Deko Entertainment, just in time for Halloween.

This limited edition 11-song vinyl-only album comprised of Slash’s original compositions over the last six years for the Halloween Horror Nights “Universal Monsters” haunted house, is sold exclusively onsite at Universal Studios Hollywood from September 5 through November 3. 300 alternate color vinyl that are hand signed by Slash will be placed in stores at Universal Studios Hollywood until they are sold out, and only 100 are available online via Deko Entertainment HERE.

“As a longtime fan of horror movies and of ‘Halloween Horror Nights,’ I jumped at the chance to once again collaborate with Universal Studios Hollywood to produce a soundtrack for the Universal Monsters haunted house,” says Slash. “Similar to the way music affects a film, I composed this score for the legions of infamous characters in these haunted houses to elicit a sense of emotional terror.”

For the past six years, Slash has composed the original music for Halloween Horror Nights “Universal Monsters” haunted house which fans experience live at Universal Studios Hollywood every Halloween season. This year, Slash’s original score for the all-new haunted house “Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines,” is headlined by an all-female gathering of classic Universal Monsters – The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, She-Wolf of London and the undead, mummified Egyptian princess Anck-Su-Namun.

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Billy Gibbons is an open-minded guy. While I was busy hating the English synthpop likes of Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the leader of Texas legends ZZ Top was listening to them, and enough light bulbs were going off in his head to illuminate all 1,954 miles of the US-Mexico border.

Anybody who thought Gibbons of the La Grange laugh and Methusaleh beard was some front-porch blues and boogie purist was sadly mistaken—Billy dug the synthesizers, and Billy dug the drum machines, and most of all Billy dug the acceleration—the more beats per minute the better. And they all set him to thinking—if Black Oak Arkansas could bring electricity to Arkansas, why couldn’t ZZ Top bring New Wave to the Lone Star State? And become MTV Gods and make a bazillion dollars in the process?

It didn’t happen all at once, but it all came together on 1983’s Eliminator, easily one of the slickest, glossiest, supercharged, and yes weirdest albums ever to blow across the finish line between your ears, sending tumblin’ tumbleweeds a’ tumblin’ in all directions. An unholy fusion of down home blooz-boogie and the latest in studio technology, it put plenty a purist off his BBQ, but by gum it exploded out of the speakers just like that 1933 Ford Coupe in the band’s star-making videos.

And they kept what counted most; Billy still sounded like the biggest lecher this side of the Rio Grande, and his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard still had enough Texas hot sauce on it to burn ears from Houston to Honolulu. And each and every rip-snortin’ power chord reminds me of a boast from a previous album; “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide.”

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Remembering Kelly Groucutt, born on this date in 1945. —Ed.

How great are ELO? Randy Newman wrote a song (“The Story of a Rock and Roll Band”) making fun of ‘em! Talk about your honors. That’s better than a Grammy! Six Grammys! A dozen Grammys even!

And how dumb was poor Roy Wood, who split Electric Light Orchestra before they sold like a gazillion records to form Wizzard, who sold like six! No wonder hairy Roy looks like a crazy recluse who’s spent the past 40 years in the wilderness, subsisting on a diet of spotted squirrel and sterno–he has!

The words “symphonic rock” frighten the bejesus outta me. But (at least on the best of their songs) ELO pulled it off, partly on the strength of their top-secret recipe (write Beatlesque melodies, then just add strings) but also because–and this is critical–unlike the pompous schmucks in Emerson, Lake & Palmer, ELO approached their classical-rock fusion in a spirit of fun. I don’t much care for many of their songs for the simple reason that I have a low tolerance for cellos and the like, but there’s something self-consciously preposterous in their shtick that makes me love them anyway. Call it ironic distance if you like, but the distance counts for a whole lot in my book.

There are plenty of ELO best-of compilations out there, but I’ve yet to run across one that makes me completely happy. They either dispense with the filler but fail to include some of my favorite songs, or include my favorite songs but toss in a bunch of songs I really don’t want to hear. With its 38 cuts 2001’s The Ultimate Collection falls into the second category; I have no use for “Shine a Little Love,” “The Diary of Horace Wimp, “Ticket to the Moon,” or “Last Train to London,” but the comp includes such personal must-haves as “Do Ya,” “Ma-Ma-Belle,” and “10538 Overture.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Marillion and earMUSIC are delighted to announce the first of a series of deluxe album reissues, starting with the classic 1997 album This Strange Engine. The re-release of Marillion’s ninth studio album almost three decades later, creates a heightened level of intimacy between music and listener.

Often referred to as the leaders of the neo-progressive movement of the early ’80s, Marillion have expanded way beyond any such genre-restrictions. They are purveyors of soulful, powerful, and deeply moving music, with a longstanding reputation of impressive live shows which have elicited their faithful and loyal global fan base. Steve Hogarth’s incredible voice and fine lyricism sets up Steve Rothery’s inspired guitar solos and adventurous melodic journeys. The backbone of the ensemble, Ian Mosley on drums, Mark Kelly on keys, and Pete Trewavas on bass interact instinctively to complete the band’s unique chemistry.

This Strange Engine is a remarkable album, characterized by acoustic calm and intimacy whilst offering an atmospheric soundscape of delicate lyrics and haunting melodies. The album showcases Marillion’s versatility and openness to different influences. Their ability to blend quiet and intense passages results in a dynamic listening tour-de-force. All in all, a genuine and engaging album, revealing new facets with each listen.

November 22 sees the release of a deluxe 4CD+Blu-ray media book and 5LP box-set edition. Both sets include a version of the original studio album newly mixed and mastered, a previously unreleased complete recording of the band’s 1997 performance in Grand Rapids, and also accompanied by illustrated booklets containing rare photos, new artwork, memorabilia, and an essay that’s digging deep into the album’s story.

The bonus Blu-ray, which is included in the media book, contains the album in hi res, jam sessions, and early versions of the album tracks, a This Strange Engine documentary, Live In Utrecht bootleg concert video, and promo videos from the time of the album release. A must have collectible item for all progressive rock fans and an eye-opener for music lovers in general.

Remembering Jimmy Reed, born on this day in 1925. —Ed.

One of the first great electric blues LPs is titled I’m Jimmy Reed, and it’s loaded with twelve songs from one of the 1950s only true blues crossovers. Over half a century later it still holds up spectacularly well and additionally provides a solid contrast to the electrified delta sounds that poured out of the studio Chess during the same period.

Jimmy Reed’s blues is amongst the most accessible ever recorded in either the acoustic or electric permutations of the form. Master of a relaxed, natural style lacking in the rough edges that his contemporaries Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and John Lee Hooker utilized with prideful relish, Reed’s stellar run of sides for the Vee-Jay label displayed how in the bustling post-WWII urban environment the blues could represent more than the power of the plantation transmogrified after traveling up the Mississippi River (Muddy, Wolf, etc.) or the horn-laden high strains of citified sophistication (Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Tiny Bradshaw, Willie Mabon).

In contrast to Muddy, who instigated a booming ensemble sound that while impressively groundbreaking completely on its own terms would also prove an essential component in rock music’s ‘60s growth spurt, Reed was somewhat closer to the norm of a “folk-blues” player, offering up simple and often insanely catchy guitar figures and an unfussy, plainly sung (some might say sleepy) vocal approach with accents of trilling rack harmonica.

This shouldn’t infer that Reed engaged in any forced gestures of aw-shucks down-home authenticity, at least not in what’s considered his prime. Hell, one glimpse at the picture on I’m Jimmy Reed’s back cover presents a man of top-flight refinement and truly choice threads, and his image intersected with the sound of his records extremely well.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Back in the golden era of the single of the 1970s and ’80s, Motörhead would regularly assault the ears of Top 40 chart listeners on a Sunday afternoon with a string of smash hits.

The single as a format may have been less prominent from the ’90s onwards due to the dawn of the CD, but that didn’t diminish the calibre of the singles and promos that Motörhead continued to release. These mostly CD singles are now rare and highly collectable, so it only feels fitting for this era of the band’s bullet belt full of hits to be reappraised and released on the format that singles were born for, 7” vinyl.

We Take No Prisoners is a collection of Motörhead singles spanning 1995 to 2006, and available as a nine 7” single box set and expanded double CD and digital editions. From crowd pleasers like the pummeling “Sacrifice,” through their unique cover of Sex Pistols, “God Save The Queen” to the semi-acoustic roots vibes of “Whorehouse Blues,” no one could deny their song writing prowess and sheer rock power was still second to none.

With a selection of rare live and radio edits thrown in for good measure and a long-lost promo interview with Lemmy and Mikkey Dee from 2004, this is a definitive collection of this era of the band and the songs that drove the success of the albums they were lifted from.