VIA PRESS RELEASE | Chicago & Friends Live At 55 celebrating the 55th anniversary of the band’s groundbreaking double-platinum debut album Chicago Transit Authority will be available via Mercury Studios on November 22, 2024. The film is offered in various formats including DVD+2CD, Blu-ray+2CD, 4K UHD, 2CD, 3LP, digital audio, and digital video. Fans can also order exclusive Chicago & Friends merchandise, including t-shirts, hoodies, a hat & wine tumbler, at store.mercurystudios.co.

Chicago, the legendary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band with more than 100 million albums sold worldwide, are captured in this 2½ hour event recorded this past November at Ovation Hall at the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, NJ in front of a live audience of 10,000 fans over two nights. The film, produced by Award Winning Producer Barry Summers as part of the critically acclaimed Decades Rock Live concert series, features the band who play songs from the album, including some never-before-performed songs as well as “unplugged” versions of some of Chicago’s classic tunes.

Joined by special guests Robin Thicke, Chris Daughtry, Steve Vai, VoicePlay, Judith Hill, Robert Randolph, and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, each performance is visualized in vibrant video and animation. “This concert film is a unique approach to any of our previous live performances,” said Chicago founding member Lee Loughnane. “We very rarely play with guest artists, much less seven of them. It was very interesting to work with each guest and experience their interpretations of our music.”

To celebrate the 55th anniversary of their double-Platinum debut album, Chicago Transit Authority, the band plays songs from the album, their biggest hits, and “unplugged” a cappella arrangements of some of Chicago’s classic tunes captured in an emotionally moving centerpiece, with each visualized in all original full-length animations shown against an an amazing custom LED backdrop.

The dB’s first record Stands for Decibels received its first ever US vinyl pressing earlier this year, and with little delay comes a reissue of its follow-up, which is also making its vinyl debut in the States. Compact disc and digital options offer a bonus track. For the band’s second go-round, the songs remained edgy and distinctive with occasional flareups of quirk while building upon classic models. The whole of Repercussion, brighter and a bit bolder, completes one of the great rapid fire combo-punches in pop-rock’s long history. It’s available now through Propeller Sound Recordings.

It’s fitting that Propeller Sound chose not to dillydally in getting the dB’s essential early albums into stores, as both Stands for Decibels and Repercussion were released in 1981. In consort with their UK label Albion, the speedy pace of the band’s productivity strengthened the 1960s foundation from which guitarist-vocalists Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey, bassist Gene Holder and drummer Will Rigby, sprang. Bands worked fast in the ’60s, often at the insistence of labels that would drop them if they didn’t; The dB’s set out to do the same.

Recorded in NYC and London, Repercussion marked the debut of Scott Litt as producer. For a long stretch in the late ’80s and ’90s, Litt had the rep as a guy who would sand down a band’s edges as he polished up their sound (therefore, he was something of a divisive figure), but the dB’s had too much momentum and Litt was just getting started, so while larger-scaled and more refined, Repercussion didn’t squander the energies of the debut.

Some will perhaps be thrown by the horn section in the opening cut, Holsapple’s “Living A Lie,” but it’s the Rumour Brass (backers of Graham Parker) who are doing the blowing, and the cumulative effect isn’t that far from the sound of Squeeze at the time. The next track, “We Were Happy There,” also a Holsapple tune, reins it in a bit (the Rumour Brass making their exit) and delivers a solid serving of power pop with new wavy tension.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the release of George Michael’s much-loved iconic masterpiece “Careless Whisper,” George Michael Entertainment, GME, and Sony Music will have released the “Careless Whisper EP” out now worldwide.

The “Careless Whisper EP” is available everywhere today—on ruby marble vinyl on November 1st in North America—and features a previously unreleased live recording of the timeless hit performed at the illustrious Madison Square Garden in New York City during George’s electrifying concert on the 23rd of July 2008. The recording captures the historic performance marking his reunion with a New York audience after an astounding 17-year hiatus. It was part of his monumental 25Live tour, a worldwide phenomenon that sold out arenas and stadiums and captivated millions of fans across the globe.

Topping the charts in 25 countries back in 1984, today “Careless Whisper” is certified 7 x Platinum in the United States and has sold over 1.5 million copies in the UK alone. It has also been certified multi-Platinum and Diamond in a further 20 countries.

Written with Wham! band mate Andrew Ridgeley when George Michael was just 17 years old, and widely remarked as a masterpiece of contemporary songwriting, today it is hailed as a modern-day classic. “Careless Whisper” holds a truly unparalleled legacy that resulted in him becoming the youngest recipient of an Ivor Novello Award at just 21 years old, propelling him into global superstardom. Also making him the first artist ever to top the charts as both a soloist and as a member of a group/duo in the same calendar year.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | How wild did things get in 1967?

So wild that a label (Audio Fidelity) not particularly known for its hipness put out a record with an insert to send away for “psychedelic ornaments” so you, too, could throw an acid party! And the back cover offered “instructions” referencing everybody from Emmett Grogan of the Diggers to Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. But perhaps the most amazing thing about this album was that, despite its almost comical (though well-informed) attempt to cash in on the psychedelic craze, How to Blow Your Mind and Have a Freak-Out Party wound up being a charming and even entrancing psych-pop gem of a record, albeit one with its requisite share of Eastern-influenced mumbo-jumbo.

For its first-ever American vinyl reissue, we’re pressing up just 500 copies in “orange sunshine” vinyl, complete with the insert (you can try sending it in, but don’t get your hopes up). Groovy, man!

PHOTO: HOLLY WHITAKER | As Bruce Springsteen once sang, “two hearts are better than one” and that certainly is the case with The Heavy Heavy. Not only does the name of the band have a second helping of Heavy, but the group is fronted by two musicians who, you’ll soon find out, act as a team when it comes to decisions about the group’s sound and direction.

About a decade ago, Georgie Fuller and Will Turner met under musical circumstances and haven’t looked back since. While their first musical collaboration leaned toward an acoustic Laurel Canyon sound, this new iteration is different. Will works hard to find the initial spark for his tunes, rummaging through his mental database of vintage rock, pop, soul, and Motown. He brings the composition and riff-laden guitar chops and everything is great, but then there’s Georgie. Georgie packs with her a commanding voice and knows how to employ those vocal dynamics correctly for full effect. But she also knows how to nudge her partner along when it comes to his compositional creations and she is an integral part of shaping the group’s sound in the studio.

The band has found critical success and also have landed plum gig after plum gig. These elements combined allow the group to find an audience for their retro modern sound. In this episode, we discuss their genesis and working relationship and also how they are riding the roller coaster that they’ve recently been on. Luckily for us, I’m able to speak with both Will and Georgie because as Bruce Springsteen sang. Well, you remember what he said.

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.

“Fuck Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,” Banana Splits guitarist and band leader told an audience of kids at a meet & greet on the NBC TV lot in February 1969. The hippest talking dog in the country then added, “We could have called ourselves Fleagle, Drooper, Bingo & Snorky. But we’re not egomaniacal folk scrotums with cocaine noses. And frankly, we make better music.” Shouted a little girl from the audience, “Right on! Power to the cartoon people!”

Okay, so that never happened. Here’s the real skinny. For two seasons (from September 1968 to September 1970) NBC’s The Banana Splits Adventure Hour enthralled kids like me every Saturday morning. Its stars were four talking animals (not cartoon animals, guys in animal suits) who just happened to be in a rock and roll band, and whose Monkees-like slapstick antics crossed over into Three Stooges territory.

They were never as big as The Archies in the fictional bubblegum band sweepstakes, but to plenty (like me) they were far cooler precisely because they were animals, and more importantly they were WILD animals, who rode around in dune buggies (they called ‘em “banana buggies”) just like the Manson family and really rocked out on stage, with guitarists Fleagle and Drooper (a luded-out lion) doing this syncopated leg kick that was hipper than anything the MC5 was doing at the same time.

The line-up was completed by Bingo (oversized monkey with perpetual shit-eating grin) on drums and Snorky (freaky-looking elephant) on organ, although he plays bass on a period children’s lunchbox and tambourine on the cover of a Kellogg’s cereal-sponsored EP. And unlike the square-john Archies, who wouldn’t have known the difference between a postage stamp and a tab of Owsley LSD, the Splits were obviously freaks. Hippies. “Drug takers.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | On modern jazz pioneer Charlie Parker’s heavenly birthday: August 29, 2024, Verve Records announced Bird in Kansas City, an album featuring a new set of rare recordings dating from between 1941–1951, to be released globally on October 25, 2024 on vinyl, CD, and digitally. Much of this collection has never been heard before and some recordings have never even been known to exist—Bird in Kansas City chronicles Charlie Parker’s evolution from a blossoming soloist with the Jay McShann Band into a brilliant improviser who changed the genre forever.

To celebrate the announcement of Bird in Kansas City, the first track, “Cherokee,” Chuck Haddix—scholar and author of Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker, who also produced and wrote liner notes for this album—says, “‘Ray Noble’s ‘Cherokee’ was one of Bird’s favorite songs. Whenever he showed up late for a gig, he would make a grand entrance through the front door playing ‘Cherokee.’ Taken at a bright tempo, Charlie takes wing with a melodic solo that deftly navigates the song’s challenging chord changes.”

In addition to two unreleased 78s with the McShann band, Bird in Kansas City offers two sets of private recordings—at the home of Parker’s friend Phil Baxter and at Vic Damon’s studio—made with local musicians and a very relaxed-sounding Parker who has the room to stretch out and show us the shape of jazz that was to come in his wake.

Central to these recordings is Parker’s relationship to his hometown of Kansas City, a place he never lived again once he left in 1941 but remained deeply important to him; his mixed emotions owed to the city’s history of racial segregation and to his strong ties to his family and friends there. Though he never returned permanently, he frequently came home during breaks in his travels, and it is during those times that these recordings were made.

Remembering Laura Nyro, born on this day in 1947. —Ed.

In terms of elevated 2oth century pop songwriting, Laura Nyro has remained part of the discourse for decades, with her highest profile recordings likely her second and third LPs, both cut for Columbia in 1968-’69. But hey, don’t get the idea that her ’67 debut for Verve, More Than a New Discovery, is merely formative or somehow negligible. To the contrary, many know it under its reissue title of The First Songs, which featured a reshuffled track order and a mix with increased reverb. However, the Real Gone Records-Second Disc reissue, the first time the Verve edition has been repressed on wax, sets the track order right and offers Nyro’s preferred (and rare) original mono mix. 

The latter portion of the 1960s is loaded with singer-songwriters whose work is best known through the interpretations of others. Many of these cult figures are folky in comportment, but even as Nyro recorded her debut for Verve’s Folkways imprint (later renamed Verve Forecast) and made a crucial early song sale to Peter, Paul and Mary (“And When I Die,” later butchered by Blood, Sweat & Tears), she was a pop stylist of pronounced sophistication.

She was appealingly introspective as well, a quality putting her in the same neighborhood as Carole King, with sales figures excepted, as Nyro’s own albums never made a big impact commercially, although they did shift enough units that she never fell victim to record company disinterest. In this regard, she was similar to Randy Newman, and if he’s better known today that’s partly because he’s still alive and kicking (Nyro passed far too soon of ovarian cancer in 1997). Additionally, he benefits from a lucrative late-career pursuit in film scoring.

But the bigger difference between Newman and Nyro is the lack of the satirical and ironic in her work, though the songs of his that evince a palpable degree of sincerity provide a strong point of unification, as the two songwriters share a Tin Pan Alley foundation (and a piano-based approach) that is ultimately manifested in distinct sensibilities. That is, Nyro is as much of an auteur as Newman; once heard, she’s impossible to confuse with anybody else.

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Sometimes, the only way to find yourself is by getting a little bit lost. Israel Nebeker—lead singer of the band Blind Pilot—experienced this first hand. The band came strongly upon the music scene in 2008, gaining particular media attention for their “bike tour” which brought them from Bellingham, Washington all the way to San Diego, California with nothing but their instruments and bicycles in tow.

Noteworthy activities like these—and two well-received albums—placed them in front of viewers of Last Call With Carson Daly, before audience members at Lollapalooza, and even all the way to Late Night with David Letterman where Dave mistakenly referred to the group as “Blind Spot.” It was a good time to be in an indie-folk band from Portland. However, after the release of their last album in 2016: radio silence. The band went on hiatus as they reconfigured their relationships, struggled with writing, and, of course, made it through that pesky pandemic where no one did much of anything.

However, after a trip to Scandinavia, Nebeker tapped into a well of creativity and inspiration leading him to write enough material for his first solo album and a brand new Blind Pilot record which has just been recently released, In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain. As they say, when it rains, it pours. So, join Israel and me as we dig into the long spiritual and creative journey he’s been on and how Blind Pilot regained their vision.

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.

Released just three days before Lynyrd Skynyrd’s problem-plagued Convair 240 plowed into the trees of a Mississippi forest and buried itself in a swamp some sixty miles short of their destination in Baton Rouge on October 20, 1977, Street Survivors instantly become notorious due to its macabre-in-light-of-subsequent-events cover, which had the band engulfed in flames on a city street.

There were no flames at the crash site—the band’s seemingly cursed plane ran out of fuel, which is why it ended up busted into pieces in the mud outside tiny Gillsburg, Mississippi in the first place—but it didn’t matter. The flames were foreshadowing, as was Van Zant’s “morbid” (his word) “That Smell,” the eeriest song about death ever written by the band’s death-obsessed frontman and de facto dictator, who died in that Mississippi swamp along with guitarist Steve Gaines, Steve’s sister and backing vocalist Cassie, and several others.

I remember hearing the news of that plane crash, and I remember feeling real sorrow, because Lynyrd Skynyrd was a great band, one of the best rock and roll bands America ever produced, and one minute they were there and the next, finis. Go ahead, call me crazy, but if it were up to me America would declare October 20 National Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash Remembrance Day and you wouldn’t have to go to work and even if you don’t give a shit about Lynyrd Skynyrd and can’t even spell their name wouldn’t that be great?

None of this has anything to do with Street Survivors, which was quickly reissued with a cover sans flames and is one hell of a parting shot—Lynyrd Skynyrd’s strongest outing since 1974’s Second Helping. The two albums in between—1975’s aptly titled Nuthin’ Fancy and 1976’s Gimme Back My Bullets—were so-so affairs by Skynyrd standards, the result of a multitude of factors—chiefly road fatigue and insanely tight recording schedules that left the band to churn out new songs in a rush in the studio. Gimme Back My Bullets was recorded in seventeen days by a band that walked into the studio unprepared. Don’t try that at home, kids.

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