Grand Rapids, MI | Record store owned by former Metallica bassist’s nephew opens in Michigan: Ask any classic metal fan, they’ll tell you nothing beats vinyl. While the oldheads in the thrash metal scene have always had an appreciation for tabbing through sleeves of records, the younger generation is jumping into the fire of record stores just as often. It’s no wonder record stores are making a comeback, and now Grand Rapids has a location with true heavy metal heritage to fuel the vinyl awakening in Michigan as well. Enter Boomtown Records, a record store owned and operated by Ben Newstead, the nephew of former Metallica bassist, and Battle Creek-native, Jason Newstead, opened recently on Plainfield Avenue in Grand Rapids. Boomtown houses over 2,500 LPs for sale. Ben appears to be very adamant that his famous uncle has nothing to do with the store, but having such a connection certainly isn’t a bad thing.

Raleigh, NC | This beloved record store + bar is leaving Seaboard Station for a new spot. Here’s where. Hunky Dory is leaving its Seaboard Station store for a new Raleigh location. The record store/bar hopes to open at Raleigh Iron Works this fall, hopefully before Record Store Day Black Friday in November, owner Michael Bell told The News & Observer. “The vibe is awesome,” Bell said. “There’s life on the weekend. The place is packed. Very friendly neighbors. I couldn’t dream of a better spot for what I’m trying to do.” The lease for its downtown Raleigh location is up in October, Bell said. He has previously told The N&O about issues with Seaboard Station, where construction, blocked streets and a lack of parking has made it difficult for some businesses to survive. Hunky Dory’s original store in Durham, founded in 2010, and its Cary outpost will remain.

Chicago, IL | Wax Trax building gets preliminary landmark designation: The former records store is located at 2449 N. Lincoln. The Commission on Chicago Landmarks has approved a preliminary landmark recommendation for Wax Trax! Located at 2449 N. Lincoln, life and business partners Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher opened the WAX TRAX! records store in 1978. Their shared passion for music inspired the retail venture and their personal tastes, creative generosity, and willingness to take risks shaped the store into an international source of eclectic and ground-breaking music. Meeting Criterion 1 for its value as an example of city, state, or national heritage, WAX TRAX! invigorated Chicago’s music scene. With bootlegs, imports, and hard-to-find records, cassettes, CDs, and videos, WAX TRAX! became an international retail destination. WAX TRAX! helped to shape the world’s perceptions of Chicago music.

Isle of Man, UK | Inside the beloved island music shop that’s capping the price of records: ‘This is just our way of trying to make it so it’s not unacceptable or unreasonable.’ A vinyl shop in Douglas is capping the price of its products amidst a general increase in the price of records. Sound Records, which is based in Wellington Street, Douglas, is ran by keen record-lovers Ed Oldham and Jack Doyle, and offers a range of products such as vinyl, vintage clothes, record players and guitar equipment. Jack explained that the shop, which has been based in Wellington Street for three years now, is capping its prices to ‘mitigate the impact’ on its customers. He said: ‘The price of everything in life is going up now, isn’t it? ‘The vinyl market isn’t any different to others – rising manufacturing and distribution costs has seen the price of records go up, which has impacted the sale price. ‘We’ve committed to cap the impact of the rising costs on our customers by guaranteeing the lowest possible price. This is just our way of trying to make it so it’s not unacceptable or unreasonable.’

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Pulp guitarist Mark Webber has announced I’m With Pulp, Are You?, a personal history of Pulp, out via Hat & Beard Press on September 30.

Throughout the book, Webber has gathered material from the extensive collection of ephemera and objects that he has accumulated over four decades of involvement with the band. The book combines images with Webber’s reminiscences to chronicle a history of Pulp, told from the inside and features photographs, flyers, record covers, setlists, badges, posters, press clippings, and merchandise, alongside masses of promotional material to present a unique history of one of Britain’s most beloved bands. I’m With Pulp, Are You? also features a foreword by Jarvis Cocker, and newly commissioned essays by music writers Simon Reynolds and Luke Turner.

Webber explains, “I began to excavate the boxes of Pulp ephemera that I’d hoarded over the years and was amazed to discover so many things that I hadn’t seen for decades, things I’d completely forgotten about. It’s taken a while to get it all together into a book, and in the meantime the group unexpectedly reunited to go on tour again. I’m excited to finally share the stuff I’ve saved, and to present it in this way, along with memories of my experiences of being involved in Pulp from the 1980s ’til now.”

When Mark Webber discovered Pulp as a teenage music fan in 1985, the band was on first-name terms with most of their limited audience. Over the next few years, Mark began to help out with stage sets and light shows, eventually becoming the group’s first tour manager and running the fan club. Having been called upon to play guitar and keyboards at live shows, he began to contribute to songwriting and recordings before being asked to join the band in 1995. This incredible backstory – from being a fan to joining his favorite band—provides the unique perspective of I’m With Pulp, Are You?

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings is proud to announce a Deluxe Edition release of In Session, the legendary collaboration between blues icons Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan. This long sought-after live album will be available in its entirety for the first time ever on 3-LP, 2-CD, and digital formats, including hi-res audio. Arriving October 18 and available for pre-order today, the set represents both a definitive moment in blues history and a real-time snapshot of two all-time guitar masters in reverence of each other on stage.

Recorded live for television at CHCH-TV studios in Ontario, Canada, in 1983, this historic performance—supported by a world-class band featuring Tony Llorens (piano/organ), Gus Thornton (bass), and Michael Llorens (drums)—is the only known recording of King and Vaughan playing together. The Deluxe reissue includes the debut audio release of three tracks from the show, “Born Under a Bad Sign,” “Texas Flood,” and “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town.” Fans can preview the expanded collection with “Born Under a Bad Sign (Live)” available to stream or download today.

When Vaughan and King hit the stage in Ontario on December 6, 1983, Stevie Ray Vaughan was a rising star, while Albert King was entering a new phase of his career as a mentor. The duo’s relationship began a decade earlier in Vaughan’s hometown of Austin, TX, where, according to Billboard, King was playing a show and was hesitant about a “skinny white kid” joining him onstage. Vaughan’s brother, Jimmy Vaughan, recalled the fateful event: “When Stevie was 19, we were at Antone’s and Albert King was playing. [Club owner Clifford Antone] says to Albert, ‘You’ve got to let this kid play, because he’s (amazing).’”

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Remembering Nik Turner, born on this day in 1940. —Ed.

Why go in search of space when you’ve already found it? You would have to ask the space rockers in Hawkwind, which on its 1971 sophomore LP In Search of Space takes you on an aural tour of the cosmic beyond on a psychedelic double-decker bus, pointing out the sites while reminding you, on “You Shouldn’t Do That,” to not feed the pulsating Day-Glo protoplasm. I know, I know—it looks friendly. But it will envelop your hand like the Blob, and have the rest of you for dessert.

What differentiated the early Hawkwind from their psychedelic rock brethren was their rich instrumental palette and decided Krautrock tendencies. They came at you with guitars, flute, saxophone, synthesizer, and audio generators, lots of audio generators. And they sure knew how to establish a killer drone. The almost sixteen-minute ”You Shouldn’t Do That” dispenses with choruses and bridges and all of that nonsense because they just kill the momentum—I doubt you’ll find any bridges in the furthest reaches of space, but who am I to say? I should have flunked physics (and would have had my teacher not been terrified of seeing me again) and for all I know the universe is one big chorus.

In Search of Space revs its engines with the aforementioned “You Shouldn’t Do That,” which opens with the sound of eon-glugging space whales, then rockets you into the psychosphere (a word I may have just made up!) at the speed of lava lamp. Nik Turner’s alto saxophone and what sounds to me like the whistling noise on Flipper’s “Sex Bomb” join some group vocals that sound like an endless repetition of “Chick-fil-A.”

After that Turner and electric guitarist Dave Brock really get down to business, accompanied by lots of soaring intergalactic noise (and some cool hissing), and my only problem are the lyrics, which reveal that like David Crosby and so many other freaks of the era, Hawkwind had a pathological fear of what Freud called “hippie hair castration,” as demonstrated by the lines “You try so hard to get somewhere/They put you down and cut your hair.”

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TVD’s Radar: The Podcast with Evan Toth returns for a new season on September 9. —Ed.

It’s a real luxury to sit for a while and chat with musicians who have been a part of your life for – well – all of your life. To actually speak with the people who made the sounds that have served as your life’s soundtrack, to ask those things you’ve always wondered about. Who gets to do that? For better, or worse, I’m one of the lucky son of a guns who is allowed to engage directly with many musicians whose work has impacted my life in one way or another for many years. I’m sure you all have some Police records in your collections; what would you ask those fellas if you had a moment of their time?

I asked Stewart Copeland about his newest musical endeavor, it’s called Police Deranged for Orchestra and it features a fresh take on many of the Police classics that you know and love, but they are infused with a new and exciting energy by this musically restless, 7 time Grammy award winning rock star and drumming great. He’s taking the show on the road and wants this new album to serve as a representation of what you might expect in the audience. He’s also completed a new coffee table book titled, Stewart Copeland’s Police Diaries which looks at the lean early years of the Police where Stewart was their drummer, but also their manager.

So, what would you ask Stewart Copeland if you had the chance to chat with him? Well, you’d probably ask questions that are different from mine, but that’s only because his work and music has impacted so many different people in so many different ways that we’d each have our own unique list of comments and questions to bring to him. The best part of speaking with Stewart, however, is listening to him respond! If you’ve ever caught a moment of his interviews, he is funny, candid, intellectual, and straightforward. So, pull up a drum throne; let’s savor the opportunity to speak with one of the greats!

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.

So just the other day I was at my girlfriend’s place and I told her I’d been listening to Belle and Sebastian. And she said in amazement, “You? You?? But they’re so… emo!” To which I replied, my voice reaching that high and buzzard-like Geddy Lee pitch that I can only attain when genuinely flubbergumbled, “Emo my ass! I hate those emo fuckers! Those irony-deficient shitbags! They’re too busy setting their wretchedly sensitive and self-absorbed high school diary poems to music to realize life is a hilarious cosmic joke at their expense! Belle and Sebastian are twee, damn it, and have a sense of humor! Just listen to “This Is Just a Modern Rock Song”! I mean, gak!… Grrr!”

And after that I descended into uttering outraged gibberish while my poor girlfriend cowered at the far end of the sofa, fishing around for her son’s bb gun, which she occasionally uses to put a sudden stop to my insane ranting. There is nothing like a bb to the solar plexus to shut you up, and fast.

In hindsight, I got all heated up because while the music of Belle and Sebastian is precious beyond words, and unremittingly lovely to boot, front man and pop genius Stuart Murdoch undercuts all that divine loveliness with smart and very sexually ambiguous lyrics in which boys who love boys settle for girls (they’re not as much trouble!) and girls who love girls settle for boys (they’re not as much trouble!).

Why, the unbearably sublime “Stars of Track and Field” from 1996’s If you’re feeling sinister alone is a hilarious study of the polymorphous perverse sexual mores of our oh so very sophisticated young people, what with the girl in question playing track and field for only one reason: to wear “terry underwear/And feel the city air/Run past your body.” And Murdoch finishes his “requiem” for said star of track and field by singing, “But when she’s on her back/She had the knowledge/To get her into college.”

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We’ve closed TVD’s HQ for our annual summer vacation. While we’re away, why not fire up our Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores?

Perhaps there’s an interview, review, or feature you might have missed? Catch up and we’ll see you back here on Monday, 8/26.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The celebrated New Orleans alt rock band’s 1996 record featured the hits “King of New Orleans” and “Desperately Wanting” and sported a college radio-friendly sound merging heavy guitar with power pop.

Any album that takes its title from a Keith Richards quote (“Friction, baby” was his response to an interviewer asking him what the secret was behind the durability of his partnership with Mick Jagger) has a lot going for it from the get-go—and a certain responsibility to live up to the legacy of the Glimmer Twins. Thankfully, this 1996 album from the celebrated New Orleans alternative rock band Better Than Ezra doesn’t monkey (man) around.

On the heels of their success with Deluxe, BTE actually had a real recording budget for the first time, and, with the help of producer Don Gehman (R.E.M., Hootie and the Blowfish), they successfully merged songwriter Kevin Griffin’s Southern boy pop with the heavy guitar sound of the era to form a college radio wet dream of a record spearheaded by the hits “King of New Orleans” and “Desperately Wanting.”

Tan vinyl pressing complete with hidden track, with printed inner sleeve. Fully authorized by the band…Ezralites, rejoice!

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings celebrates the 15th anniversary of Alice In Chains’ seminal 2009 album, Black Gives Way to Blue, with a special vinyl reissue.

The LP, out-of-print since its original release and a long-sought treasure for hard rock devotees, will arrive on September 27th and is available for pre-order today. In addition to the wide 2-LP release, fans can also pick up the album on three limited edition color pressings: “Black Widow” (available exclusively through the Alice In Chains store), “Black Smoke” (via the Craft Recordings store), and “Electric Smoke” (available at Revolver). Black Gives Way to Blue is Alice In Chains’ fourth studio album, first released on September 29th, 2009. The project marks a significant moment in the band’s history, being their first record to feature William DuVall sharing vocal and guitar duties with founding member Jerry Cantrell, alongside bassist Mike Inez and drummer/founding member Sean Kinney.

Upon release, Black Gives Way to Blue was an instant smash hit, debuting at No.5 on the Billboard 200 and achieving Gold certification from the RIAA by May 2010. It includes singles “Your Decision,” “Lesson Learned,” “Check My Brain,” and “A Looking in View,” plus the poignant title track “Black Gives Way to Blue,” which features a guest performance from Elton John on piano. This song, a heartfelt tribute to late frontman Layne Staley, captures the band’s process in coming to terms with their loss while finding a path forward.

Both “A Looking in View” and “Check My Brain” were GRAMMY Award nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Additionally, Black Gives Way to Blue won Revolver’s Golden Gods Award for Album of the Year in 2010.

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Like many another hungry band desperate to make a name for itself in the early seventies, England’s Silverhead jumped aboard the Glam bandwagon with both platform-booted feet, but if you’re expecting fey androgyny and campy signifiers of the Glam demimonde, forget about it—Silverhead was a hard rock outfit that owed its sound to the likes of Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and the Faces, and there isn’t enough glitter in the whole wide world to disguise the fact.

Silverhead didn’t exactly set the world on fire and only stuck around long enough to release two studio LPs, and nowadays hardly anybody remembers ‘em (sob!), but here’s the thing; they were a pretty damn good raunch ’n’ roll band, and the evidence to prove it is on their sophomore album, 1973’s 16 and Savaged.

The more I listen to 16 and Savaged the more I realize the whole glam thing is a gloss and overlay, if not an outright red herring; aside from the triumphant “Hello New York,” which is very New York Dolls in spirit, singer/actor (he went on to play a punk rocker in a 1978 episode of WKRP in Cincinati!) Michael Des Barres and the boys can only be termed a glitter rock band in the sense that they looked like a glitter band.

What they sound like to me is a band trapped between rock epochs; the tres catchy ”More Than Your Mouth Can Hold” may anticipate the rude punk attitude of the Dead Boy’s “Caught With the Meat in Your Mouth,” and (looking even further into the old crystal ball) the hair metal sleaze of Poison’s Open Up and Say… Ahh!, but it’s a streamlined boogie number at heart–ain’t nothing glam OR punk about Des Barre’s Rod Stewart meets Steve Marriott rasp.

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