The music on this double album and six-song EP package was intended as a companion to a planned television special from Paul McCartney & Wings in 1974. Although the film was eventually released as part of the Archive series of Band On the Run in 2010 and some of these tracks have appeared on various releases, this is the first time the music has been released in full on any audio format.

The recordings took place over four days at Abbey Road studios in August of 1974, when Band On The Run was riding high on the charts. The lineup for Wings at that time included McCartney, his wife Linda and Denny Laine, who would make up the core of the band for its entire run. The other core band musicians for this lineup were Jimmy McCulloch on guitar and Geoff Britton on drums. Also included are Howie Casey on saxophone and the Tuxedo Brass Band. Legendary and prolific arranger Del Newman was the orchestral arranger.

The various audio formats for this project were released in June of this year and the film received its theatrical release in August. These live-in-the-studio type releases can be a mixed bag or a hit-or-miss proposition. Sometimes they just sound like lifeless and sterile, undercooked live concerts without the benefit of well-mixed or produced studio recordings and of course a live audience. That is not the case here.

Even though there is no live studio audience, these performances crackle with rock muscle and offer slightly unique renderings of the more stripped-down songs. It’s incredible how some of the performances that benefited from the polish of the studio versions work perfectly here live. It’s so obvious that everyone is having a grand old time and the band is tight and in top form. It’s hard to imagine what it was like being there in the cavernous studio three for those four magical days. McCartney no doubt purposely recorded in studio three to get a big live sound but to also avoid studio two and all of the baggage that came with it at that time, as it was where The Beatles recorded most of their music.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | How could this album, one of the biggest crossover country smashes of the ‘90s and a complete artistic triumph, remain a vinyl wallflower at this late date?! Well, we at Real Gone Music are pleased and proud to take this classic Mary Chapin Carpenter release to the dance with a special 2-LP expanded highlighter yellow vinyl edition that includes an entire bonus side featuring a live performance from 1994, the same year Stones in the Road was released!

The accolades and accomplishments of this record are almost too numerous to list here: #1 on the Country charts, Top 10 on the Billboard 200 Pop charts, a #1 Country hit with “Shut Up and Kiss Me,” other charting singles like “Tender When I Want to Be,” “House of Cards,” and “Why Walk When You Can Fly?”, and Grammys for Best Country Album and Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

But hits and awards aside, what makes this album so special is that every song packs its own unique emotional punch, starting with the title tune that was first covered by Joan Baez; you could also point to the transcendent “John Doe No. 24” and the brilliant “End of My Pirate Days” as firsts among equals on this amazingly consistent and rewarding album (which Country Universe called the best Contemporary Country album of all time!).

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Earlier in 2024, claire rousay made a considerable splash with sentiment, an LP that expanded her experimental approach to include vivid strains of melancholic pop, a development she tagged as emo ambient. Released by Thrill Jockey, the album registered as the start of something big. Supporting this notion is a remix album that’s freshly available on vinyl right now (in a limited edition of 250 copies) with a digital release coming on November 6. A striking compendium, sentiment remixed serves both as a wide ranging yet cohesive extension of its source material and a fully realized standalone work.

claire rousay has amassed a sizeable body of work since hitting the scene in 2017, and on a variety of formats. There’s vinyl and compact disc and even a flexi disc in there, but predominate are digital releases and cassettes. The last of these formats is fitting as her early work extends from an experimental tradition that embraced spindles and spools of tape as a cost effective mode of (often self) distribution.

It really only takes a listen to the 2021 LP a softer focus to apprehend that rousay is the real deal as an experimentalist. Incorporating field recordings into pieces that extend from ambient and musique concrète traditions, rousay’s work retains a contemporary feel that has only increased as she has chosen to explore the possibilities of song form.

rousay’s tendency toward pop predates sentiment by a bit, and eclectically. There’s an Elliott Smith cover in her oeuvre amongst a handful of one-off digital singles leaning into song structure over abstraction as she’s honed her skills as a guitarist. There’s also a predilection for Auto-Tune that really comes to the fore on sentiment in an appealingly non-gimmicky manner.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In celebration of Peter Tosh’s 80th Earthstrong (Birthday), the Peter Tosh Foundation proudly announces the re-release of his iconic album Mama Africa on October 11th during the month of the inaugural Tosh Fest in Belmont-Bluefields, Jamaica on October 19th. This limited edition recycled red vinyl pays tribute to Peter’s legacy, featuring a special commemorative label to mark the occasion.

Following Mama Africa, more of Tosh’s classic albums, including Bush Doctor, Mystic Man, and No Nuclear War, will also be re-released. Pre-order now. Tosh’s daughter comments, “Revisiting Peter Tosh’s music on vinyl is a celebration of his revolutionary voice and timeless impact. As we release these records, we invite fans to connect once more with the spirit of a true pioneer.” —Niambe Tosh

Peter Tosh was a pioneering Jamaican reggae musician and founding member of The Wailers, alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer. Known for his powerful voice and rebellious spirit, Tosh was a passionate advocate for social justice, Rastafari, and the legalization of marijuana.

His solo career produced iconic songs such as “Johnny B. Goode” and “Wanted Dread & Alive” which highlighted his commitment to fighting oppression and inequality. Tosh’s fearlessness in his activism is still living through his musical legacy.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings is proud to announce the wide vinyl debut of The Best of Ronnie Milsap from six-time GRAMMY®-winning artist, Ronnie Milsap.

The 12-track collection features such favorites as “I Wouldn’t Have Missed It for the World,” “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me,” and “Smoky Mountain Rain”—and spotlights Milsap’s accomplishments as a crossover star in the ’70s and ’80s with singles that not only topped Billboard’s Country Chart but also found success on the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, among others. Arriving November 1st, The Best of Ronnie Milsap can be found on classic black vinyl as well as a limited-edition “Tan Smoke” pressing, available exclusively to Milsap’s Spotify followers through Fans First. Click here to pre-order.

Long before country music was heard regularly on pop radio, Ronnie Milsap (b. 1943) was among the first artists in his genre to find repeated crossover success on the mainstream airwaves with hit after hit throughout the ’70s and ’80s. But this wasn’t the path he initially set out on. A native of North Carolina, the singer and pianist began his career in R&B, scoring his first hit—a cover of Ashford & Simpson’s “Never Had It So Good”—in 1965. Relocating to Memphis, Milsap established himself in the city’s rich music scene, working as a session player (appearing, most famously, on Elvis Presley’s “Kentucky Rain” and “Don’t Cry Daddy”), performing regularly on the club circuit, and releasing his self-titled debut in 1971.

But a chance encounter with country icon Charley Pride would forever alter the direction of Milsap’s career. Blown away by the artist’s talents at a Los Angeles concert, Pride urged Milsap to relocate to Nashville and try his hand at country music. Pride’s instincts proved correct, as Milsap’s entrée into the genre, 1973’s “I Hate You,” was a Top Ten hit on Billboard’s Country chart. One year later, he scored his first pair of No.1s with “Pure Love” and “Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends”—the latter of which earned the artist his first GRAMMY Award.

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Remembering Linda McCartney, born on this day in 1941. —Ed.

I finally got to see the comandante. It nearly killed me. Between the trigger-happy checkpoint guards, the high-speed ride in the bouncing wooden bed of a rickety pickup along the perilously narrow roads hanging precariously over the steep mountain gorges, and the 3-day trip upriver through alligator- and piranha-infested waters, with government troops occasionally firing upon us with AK-47s from the riverbank, I didn’t think I’d survive. But I finally arrived, having braved it all to get the STORY, the real lowdown from the general himself on the bloody revolution.

But if I thought he was as interested as I was in talking about the insurgency, I was dead wrong. The moment I entered his office he said, “Do you have it?” He was referring to my cost of admission for our tête-à-tête. “I do,” I said. He smiled. It was not a thing you would want to see. Some men smile, and it is a show of teeth. “Gimme,” he said greedily. So I handed it to him and he gazed at lovingly and said, “Amigo, Venus and Mars are alright tonight.”

Some people love sex, and some people love macaroni and cheese. The general loved two things: killing and Wings’ 1975 LP Venus and Mars. He pressed a button on his desk, and an adjutant in white gloves rushed in. “Put this on the turntable,” said the general, “and if you make so much as a shadow of a scratch, you will pay for it with your head.”

So instead of talking about the insurgency as I’d hoped, we listened to Venus and Mars. The general was rapt. No one knew how old he was (my guess: 110) or his origins (some said a patrician family, others that his mother had been a whore) or what he’d done before becoming the comandante (Proust scholar, said some, gun runner said others.) But I knew this; the bald and wrinkled old man with the great pair of big black mustaches, who looked like a character straight out of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, loved Venus and Mars. And in the end I got my STORY, only it wasn’t the one I’d expected.

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The discography of pianist Mal Waldron is extensive, broad of scope and consistently rewarding in support roles (ranging from Billie Holiday to Kenny Burrell to Charles Mingus to John Coltrane) and as the caller of the shots. Recorded in 1961 and released the following year on Prestige Records’ New Jazz imprint, The Quest is amongst the best of Waldron’s albums as leader, featuring a sextet that includes Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone and clarinet, Booker Ervin on tenor sax, and Ron Carter on cello, taking seven Waldron compositions to the crossroads of advanced bop and the nascent avant-garde. A fresh 180 gram edition arrives September 27 as part of Craft Recordings’ Original Jazz Classics reissue series.

Double bassist Joe Benjamin and drummer Charlie Persip complete the band on The Quest, an album that was reissued by Prestige in 1969 with the titling reversed, obviously to capitalize on Dolphy’s higher profile. Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin with the Mal Waldron Sextet isn’t inaccurate exactly, but it does misrepresent the album’s compositional focus, as it was the first Waldron album sourced entirely from the pianist’s songbook.

To dig a little deeper, The Quest is part of a spate of albums with partially interchanging personnel that begins by chronology of session date with the Dolphy album Far Cry, cut in December 21, 1960 with trumpeter Booker Little, pianist Jaki Byard, drummer Roy Haynes, and Carter on bass. Next is Where?, Carter’s debut as leader, recorded on June 20, 1961 with Dolphy, Waldron, Persip, and bassist George Duvivier. The session for The Quest was held seven days later.

The following month, performances by Dolphy, Little, Waldron, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Ed Blackwell were taped and released as Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot across two volumes, with bonus tracks added to the CD editions. Two of those bonus cuts were issued after Dolphy’s passing on the 1965 LP Memorial Album.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “This is a book designed to start arguments.”
—Gary Graff, from the introduction

Get out your flannel, scrunchies, and high-rise jeans and indulge in this nostalgic trip through the 1990s’ most influential albums across all genres. In 501 Essential Albums of the ’90s: The Music Fan’s Definitive Guide, Gary Graff leads a cast of fellow music journalists in presenting the music of everyone’s favorite decade.

With lively descriptions of the releases and over 600 images, this hefty 448-page volume curates 501 albums spanning genres and subgenres—pop, hip-hop, R&B, grunge, metal, country, world music—and features: year-by-year organization, knowledgeable rundowns of every album featured, album art for each selection, artist imagery, record label, release date, and producer(s) for each, soundtracks and compilation releases also included.

The journalists detail the circumstances of each release, highlight notable singles, and discuss their influence on contemporary and later artists. In short, they explain why each is considered one of the best of the decade and why it’s essential. A fun and comprehensive read, 501 Essential Albums of the 90s is the only non-genre specific book that focuses solely on the music of the ’90s.

Britney or Body Count, Nirvana or Nsync, Metallica or Morissette, Garth or Green Day, Weezer or Wu Tang—whatever your tastes, you will relish this ultimate retrospective of the decade’s music. The book will jog some memories, get you to listen to something you forgot you loved, and perhaps even inspire you to check out music you haven’t heard before.

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Celebrating Bruce Springsteen on his 75th birthday. —Ed.

Most artist compilations serve a single purpose—to give the listener who doesn’t want to spring for more than one LP of a musician or band something to buy. This is not the case with 2016’s Chapter and Verse, which offers both casual and hardcore fans of the Boss two great reasons to shell out their hard-earned shekels.

First, it includes five previously unreleased tracks of Springsteen’s early work—two with the Castiles, one with Steel Mill, and two 1972 tracks one of which, “The Ballad of Jesse James,” is a flat-out triumph. Second, it offers up a couple of recent brilliant Springsteen tracks that offer a damn good reason for lapsed fans like yours truly to check out what he’s been up to since we tuned the poor fellow out. I’ll say right now that they establish him, along with the rare likes of Neil Young, as a musician whose work remains not just exciting but vital.

Springsteen himself chose the eighteen tracks that make up this cursory overview of his long career, and frankly the whole contraption would collapse for sheer lack of meat—a simple cut from most of his studio LPs simply isn’t enough—were it not for the unreleased early tracks, which date the whole back to 1966 when Springsteen was a member of a forgotten garage rock band called the Castiles. “Baby I” may not be a song for the ages but it generates pure raw-boned excitement, and that goes double for the Castiles’ live cover of Willie Dixon’s “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover,” which jumps and shouts to the sound of one great Farfisa organ.

Meanwhile, Steel Mill’s “He’s Guilty (The Judge Song)” is a guitar rave-up that reminds me of early Grand Funk Railroad at their best. “The Ballad of Jesse James,” which is credited to the Bruce Springsteen Band, features some truly ‘eavy guitar and one great piano, and on it Springsteen sounds like Springsteen and belts out the lyrics like his life depends on it. “Henry Boy,” on the other hand, features some fancy acoustic guitar work and would have sounded right at home on Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ.

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At first nobody could figure out how they did it. How did a gaggle of English metalheads with symphonic tendencies manage to sneak up to Mt. Rushmore, replace the mugs of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the other guy whose name I can never remember with their own mugs, and do it in one night?

Then it came to me. They did it with their heavy music! After doing some serious investigative journalism I discovered the truth: they drove six hundred trucks with huge speakers on the back to the base of Mt. Rushmore and played their seminal 1970 metal opus In Rock at top volume and through precision design of each note on the album SOUND-CARVED their faces over the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the guy whose name I can never remember! And it only took them three plays!

All of which is to say that the guys in Deep Purple are heavy metal geniuses, and In Rock isn’t just a genre touchstone, it’s the greatest rock-blasting and precision sculpting tool ever invented! Sure, they’re still at the top of the National Park Service’s Most Wanted List, and lots of people now think George Washington looks like Ritchie Blackmore, but they sure got themselves a great album cover.

In Rock was Deep Purple’s fourth release, and the first studio album to feature the new Mark II line-up of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, organ king Jon Lord, drummer Ian Paice, and new acquisitions lead vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, both of whom they acquired from the New York Mets for former lead singer Rod Evans (who’d lost his fastball) and a couple of lousy draft picks, none of whom ever made the bigs. It was a real steal.

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