Best known for their 1980 hit “Turning Japanese,” The Vapors are a band that formed in 1979 in Guildford, UK which is also home to The Stranglers.

They were brought to a larger UK audience with a support slot on The Jam’s iconic 1979 “Setting Sons” tour, and were by then managed by The Jam’s Bruce Foxton and Paul Weller’s father John. Their debut album spawned several hits including “News At Ten” and” Waiting for the Weekend.” They put out a second album, Magnets in 1981, toured extensively and then broke up. In 2016, they played their first gig in 35 years and have been making records and playing again ever since. I spoke with lead singer and songwriter Dave Fenton about all these things.

The Vapors are releasing their fourth album Wasp in a Jar on February 28, 2025 and have an extensive tour planned. If you go to the band’s website you’ll be able to view the calendar and all other Vapors happenings

Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer. She is the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and creator of all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

The Clash, or what was left of The Clash by the time they got around to recording their sixth and final release, can’t be serious. Because if you cut the crap from 1985’s Cut the Crap you don’t have an album! You don’t even have an EP! Why, you don’t even have enough songs to fill both sides of a single, as The Clash themselves proved!

Cut the Crap is a legendary shitfest of epic proportions and one of the most ignominious fare-thee-wells from a great band ever, setting aside such stinkers as the Velvet Underground’s Squeeze and The Doors’ Full Circle, which as everybody knows don’t count because those albums were no-hopers released by bands whose creative geniuses had either split (Lou Reed) or done a Parisian bathtub croaking act (Jim Morrison).

Seeing as how no sane person would buy Cut the Crap (Joe Strummer himself disowned it), it has lots of spare time to appear on the many “Worst Albums Ever” lists out there. It often car pools with Van Halen III to such affairs. It shared a limo with Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait to the 2023 Rolling Stone magazine 50 Genuinely Horrible Albums by Brilliant Artists list, where it asked Self Portrait, “Are my methods unsound?” To which Self Portrait replied, “I don’s see any method at all, sir.”

The story is well known. By 1985 Mick Jones and Topper Headon were history, replaced by a trio of ringers in the form of guitarists Vince White and Nick Sheppard and drummer Pete Howard. Which shouldn’t have been fatal. The Clash had three guitarists! They were a punk Lynyrd Skynyrd! Unfortunately Strummer made the inexplicable and 100 percent lethal decisions to let manager Bernie Rhodes help write the songs (strike one) and (worse!) put him in the producer’s seat, while also giving him carte blanche to realize his grandiose musical ambitions (strike three and you’re out). There is no strike two in the music business.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | WAR announce their second major release of 2025: Eric Burdon & WAR – The Complete CD Collection. Out March 7th via Avenue/Rhino it is available to pre-order now here.

The collection brings together the band’s formative works from 1970–1976 on CD, following the sold-out release of its vinyl box set on Record Store Day 2022. Available in a 4-CD configuration, the package showcases each essential album from that pivotal time period: Eric Burdon Declares War, Black Man’s Burdon, and Love Is All Around.

Arriving at the outset of WAR’s 55th Anniversary, the collection not only celebrates the band’s pathbreaking journey, but showcases the origins of a legacy defined by unparalleled fusion and relentless creativity—and one which continues to thrive more than half a century later.

One of music’s defining and most enduring soul and funk groups, WAR was founded in Long Beach, California. In 1970, producer Jerry Goldstein united a seven-piece band with former Animals lead singer Eric Burdon, an alliance which would go on to produce the No.1 worldwide hit, “Spill the Wine.” 55 years later, this chapter in WAR’s hit-making history has now been reassembled and meticulously remastered by award-winning engineer Bernie Grundman, honouring this “barrier-breaking collaboration from a trail-blazing era” (Classic Rock).

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Remembering Steve Marriott, born on this date in 1947. —Ed.

I loved Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries as a kid. I especially loved the Crunchberries, those red carcinogenic balls of pure goodness that I always saved for last. But when I became a man I put away childish things—except for my GI Joe, of course; you’ve got to draw the line somewhere—and I now begin every day with a heaping earful of Ogdens Nut Gone Flake. It sounds better than Cap’n C.—bigger, bouncier, crunchier, and far more Mod—and it’s more nutritious too. I pour the LP from its round cereal box sleeve onto my turntable, drop the needle on the first savory helping, and exclaim, “Here comes the Nice!”

In my ‘umble opinion the Small Faces were the most versatile of the great Mod bands. The quartet had it all; they could kick out the jams like The Yardbirds; were as fixated on British mores and bourgy social life as the Kinks; as Mod and in-your-boat-race (when they felt the yen) as the Who; and as psychedelic (on such cuts as “Afterglow” and “The Journey”) as Pink Floyd. And they combined all of these trappings—wrapping the whole shebang in some thick English accents, and even adding a weird uncle of a narrator, Stanley Unwin, to contribute some “looney links” between tracks—on their undisputed masterpiece, 1968’s concept LP Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake.

Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake is both the Small Faces’ greatest and final statement, for they broke up shortly thereafter, Marriott departing to form the long-stemmed heavy blues/soul/boogie band Humble Pie, and the rest of the crew joining Jeff Beck ex-pats Rod “The Mod” Stewart and Ron Wood to form The Faces. (Notice, if you will, how it took two rooster-haired personages to fill Steve Marriott’s swank Chelsea boots.) But what a last hurrah! Unless you count 1969’s posthumously released The Autumn Stone, which you shouldn’t, as it’s a sub-par mish-mash of odds and sods that Andrew Loog Oldham cobbled together to siphon every last shilling he could from the Small Faces.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Wewantsounds is delighted to reissue Roy Haynes’ 1971 LP Hip Ensemble, recorded in New York for Bob Shad’s Mainstream Records and featuring Hannibal Marvin Peterson, George Adams, Teruo Nakamura, and Lawrence Killian.

Together the musicians create a superb mix of jazz funk and spiritual Jazz showcasing Haynes powerful drumming and creativity. Hip Ensemble is reissued here for the first time on vinyl since 1971, in its original gatefold artwork with first generation photos and includes the bonus track “Roy’s Tune.” It comes with newly remastered audio and a 2-page insert featuring new liner notes by Kevin Le Gendre.

Roy Haynes who passed away last November at age 99 is one of the undisputed giants of Jazz. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1925, Haynes started drumming during his teenage years before moving to New York in 1945 where his career took off. He went on to play with the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Lester Young, becoming an institution over the decades.

​In the late ’60s, after a stint with the John Coltrane’s quartet, he put together the Hip Ensemble, a small group featuring the young turks George Adams on sax, Hannibal Marvin Peterson on trumpet, Japanese bass player Teruo Nakamura, Lawrence Killian on percussion together with German pianist Carl Schroeder on Fender Rhodes.

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Bassist William Parker and drummer Wiliam Hooker are two of the elder voices in jazz music’s long and rich history, with both men still very active on the scene. Amongst their recent activities, they’ve joined together with tenor saxophonist Isaiah Collier, a younger participant to the current jazz landscape, to form The Ancients, a group specializing in long-form improvisation in the grand tradition of the great trios established by Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman. On January 31, Eremite Records releases the debut recording by The Ancients on double vinyl, the release offering one long performance improv, dynamic and diverse, on each of the album’s sides.

Intergenerational combos have a special appeal. Often it’s a torch-passing thing, though that’s only somewhat the case with The Ancients, as Chicago-Brooklyn-based saxophonist Isaiah Collier, the youngest member of the trio, is already firmly established on the scene, in large part through a series of recordings made with his group The Chosen Few.

Collier & The Chosen Few debuted in 2018 with the CDr Return of the Black Emperor on the Good Vibes Only label. The next year brought a follow-up, the self-released digital-only The Unapologetic Negro (Live at the Coda Club Cafe). In 2021 came Cosmic Transitions, the first of three 2LP sets on the Division 81 label, with the next two, The Almighty and The World Is on Fire, arriving just last year. In 2023, Collier released Parallel Universe apart from the Chosen Few on the Night Dreamer label.

Collier’s music spans from bop-ish runs to post-Coltrane modal dives to calmer spiritual modes to straight up late ’70s drive time R&B, and now, as part of The Ancients, lengthy free jazz excursions are part of the saxophonist’s creative equation. But in a sweet move, in the opener “2023-05-12 LA Set II,” Collier immediately establishes his own personality on tenor, beginning the piece with contemplative serenity before transitioning into appealing melodic energies.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “50? Is that all?…seriously…it’s a cool collection…but look at all those songs—I’m exhausted just reading the effin list!” —Geddy Lee

On March 21, UMe/Mercury and Anthem Records label groups celebrate the half-century milestone marker for Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame icons with Rush 50, a wide-ranging 50-track super deluxe anthology that encompasses the entirety of the band’s long and storied career for the first time across all the band’s label groups, bookended with the first ever reissue of their debut 1973 single and a live recording of the last song they ever performed together as a band at their final concert in 2015 at The Forum in Los Angeles. Rush 50 will be available to fans in five distinct configurations, including the (1) Super Deluxe Edition, (2) Rush Store Exclusive Super Deluxe Edition, (3) 7-LP Deluxe Edition, (4) 4-CD Deluxe Edition, and (5) Digital Edition. They can all be pre-ordered and pre-saved HERE.

In July 1974, bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist/vocalist Alex Lifeson, and the late, great drummer/lyricist Neil Peart came together to solidify Rush’s lineup that brought the world at large many multiple decades’ worth of masterful progressive-rock-leaning musicianship and scores of rock radio masterpieces, iconic lyrics and storytelling.

Rush 50 serves as a complete career-spanning Rush anthology on seven LPs and four CDs, featuring 50 tracks in total—seven of them previously unreleased—alongside numerous choice selections from every studio album, live release, and deluxe reissue the band has officially released over the years.

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John Hammond holds a unique place in music. He released his self-titled debut album in 1960 just as the roots music revival was gaining steam. Hammond was a blues revivalist and like others who would come along in those hothouse years like Charlie Musslewhite, Paul Butterfield, Bonnie Raitt, Rory Block and even Steve Stills, Hammond was a white American who paid homage and added a new spin to blues music. While most of these artists either played strictly acoustic blues, mixed in electric blues or went electric, they were different than the British blues artists of the period who began playing electric blues in homage to black American blues artists but eventually used the sound to create British rock.

The music on this archival set was recorded 13 years after Hammond’s debut album and long after he not only established himself as a supreme blues interpreter, but recorded albums like Southern Fried (1969) that went beyond acoustic blues, the soundtrack album for the film Little Big Man (1971), and the roots supergroup summit Triumvirate (1973) album with Dr. John and Mike Bloomfield.

These live performances were recorded over two nights of a five-night run in July of 1973 at the famed Boarding House in San Francisco, with Tom Waits opening and John Lee Hooker in the audience on the last night. The club opened in 1971 and then slowly faded away in the early ’80s, but along with being a hotbed for up-and-coming comedians, it was a venerable spot for hip music from underground artists to international superstars. It was there that the iconic Old & In the Way album was recorded in 1975, featuring Jerry Garcia, Peter Rowan, David Grisman, Vassar Clemens, and John Khan.

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On January 31, the tireless Parisian wellspring of reissues Wewantsounds presents a fresh edition of Music From the East, the second album from the iconic Egyptian musician and composer Ammar El Sherei. Originally released in 1976 by the Soutelphan label, it’s seeing its first ever vinyl reissue with this splendid new pressing. Offering seven songs in tribute to another legendary Egyptian musician and composer, namely Mohamed Abdel Wahab, the set strikes an infectious balance between classic Arabic melodicism and more contemporary strains of groove urgency. Nearly 50 years later, the fire still burns.

Ammar El Sherei released two records in 1976, debuting with Oriental Music, which received its first vinyl reissue by Wewantsounds back in 2020. With that set, the parameters of El Sherei’s style were immediately in place, as well established Arabic sounds, long snaky violin tendrils in particular, were an integral part of the foundation. Then-nascent keyboard models like the Steelphon S900 or the Farfisa (the latter is what’s pictured on the cover of Music From the East) were subsequently integrated into the scheme.

El Sherei also focused on songs from Abdel Wahab on Oriental Music, so there were no giant musical steps taken between his debut and Music From the East, though that’s not to suggest the LPs are interchangeable. One distinction is that Oriental Music relies a bit more on that aforementioned violin wiggle right out of the gate. Contrasting, Music From the East has a feel that’s more spacy, and immediately so in opener “El Kamh El Leila,” which unfolds a bit like El Sherei getting visited by the ghost of Joe Meek.

If an eager adopter of the latest musical tech, the mention of Meek should relate that El Sherei’s sound is a bit dated, and sometimes more than a little. That’s not to say that El Sherei’s music is chintzy or kitschy. To the contrary, there is enough rhythmic heat running through Music From the East and its predecessor that both records have been described more than once as funky.

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