VIA PRESS RELEASE | The legendary multi-platinum-selling band America is set to release a new live album, America – Live From The Hollywood Bowl 1975 (Primary Wave Music; distributed by Sun Records), on September 6, 2024. Previously available as a Record Store day exclusive, this album featuring never-before-heard recordings of their iconic 1975 performance backed by a symphony conducted by the legendary George Martin, will now be widely released on CD, a new red vinyl variant, and digitally for the first time ever.

On August 3, 1975, America took the stage at the renowned Hollywood Bowl, backed by a symphony conducted by Martin. This extraordinary performance has been preserved in never-before-heard tapes that were recently restored and remastered for this special release. America – Live From The Hollywood Bowl 1975 features live renditions of America ‘s timeless hits, including “Sister Golden Hair,” “A Horse With No Name,” “Ventura Highway,” and many more.

Dewey Bunnell remembers exactly how the evening played out: “As I recall, this show at the Hollywood Bowl was planned to highlight the summer of 1975. The release of our 5th album, Hearts, in March of that year had been a great success and included our second #1 single, ‘Sister Golden Hair,’ so we were at the top of our game. We had developed a great partnership with Sir George Martin the year before with our first project together in London, the album Holiday. And the making of Hearts at the record Plant in Sausalito, CA had been fun and creative. Meanwhile, the live performance had evolved into a strong show, and we toured a lot that year playing large sold-out venues.

So the plan was to make the Hollywood Bowl show as special as possible. George was involved from the beginning of the planning, and it was decided that he would conduct a symphony that would include him performing first, doing a show he called ‘Bond to Beatles and Bach’ which he had recorded the year before, and he would then conduct behind us during our show.

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Remembering Bon Scott in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

Rock ‘n’ roll primitivists in thrall to electricity and American thighs, these salivating koala shaggers from Oz were the dingoes who REALLY got Meryl Streep’s baby, and maybe your baby (or your mom!) too. Just about everybody I know hates ‘em, thinks their dumb, but I’m a big fan of AC/DC’s brand of Down Under thunder–it’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to being struck by lightning.

Released the year punk exploded, High Voltage (the band’s first international release) may as well have been a punk record; the snot quotient’s high enough. But the Aussie lager louts in AC/DC weren’t play-acting nihilists–all they wanted to do was get rich and get laid while sticking their tongues out (just like Angus on the album cover!) at everything (school, parents, jobs, the Twelve Commandments) that stood in their way.

Accidental electrocution risks like “Live Wire” and “High Voltage” let you know AC/DC has electricity on the brain, but that’s just cuz it takes a whole lotta juice to produce their bare-bones brand of arena-shaking amplification. Nobody’s ever accused AC/DC of subtlety, and that’s one of the things I love most about ‘em. They’re the rock’n’roll equivalent of Mike Tyson, dispensing with all that Muhammed Ali “float like a butterfly” bullshit shit in favor of big one-punch T.K.O.s.

And then there’s Bon Scott, whose premature death (gargling vomit really can be a health hazard) was a bona fide rock tragedy. High Voltage is hardly the best AC/DC LP in terms of songs (with a few exceptions they would go on to write better), or even sonic sturm und drang, but Scott–whose voice is all sandpaper and razor blades–never sounded better.

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Unlike a certain religious figure I can think of, Rod “the Mod” Stewart didn’t walk on water until his third go-round. On 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story Stewart finally got it right. He nailed down his persona (lovable rogue with lascivious cackle and sensitive side). Wrote himself a remarkable assemblage of brilliant songs (including perhaps the two best coming-of-age songs ever written and the heartfelt “Mandolin Wind”). And finally assembled THE IDEAL cast of players who found the perfect balance between rough and tumble rock ’n’ roll, folk, and soul. If Every Picture Tells a Story isn’t the perfect album, I’m D.B. Cooper.

Which isn’t to say he sank beneath the waters without a trace his first two times out. Anything but. Both 1969’s The Rod Stewart Album (which was released under the better title An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down in the UK) and 1970’s Gasoline Alley are superb albums—gritty, soulful powerhouses packed with strong Stewart originals and imaginative covers, and boasting simpatico supporting musicians many of whom would join him on Every Picture Tells a Story.

His first two don’t get the attention afforded solo album number three, but they’re required listening. Unlike Elton John and David Bowie, Stewart (who’d honed his vocal chops with Long John Baldry’s Steampacket, the little known and short-lived Shotgun Express and the Jeff Beck Group) never took a false or indecisive step. He had his blueprint down from the very beginning—it was simply a matter of perfecting his songwriting.

And talk about double-tasking. Stewart may have the reputation as a debonair roué and two-fisted drinker (who else would put out a greatest hits album shaped like a whiskey glass?), but at least part of it must have been smoke and mirrors—he couldn’t have spent all of his time bedding the ladies and hitting the bottle, because if so where’d he find the time to put together his early solo albums (one per year, more or less) while also singing and writing songs (and immortal ones, at that) for Faces, who toured heavily and released four albums in three years in their own right? The guy worked like a bricklayer. And the lads in Faces were doing double-duty too—some or all of them appeared on his solo albums, that is until he began his sad downward slide towards mainstream mediocrity and decided he could be more mediocre without them.

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We’ve closed TVD’s HQ for the July Fourth holiday. 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, 7/8.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Celebrating the film’s 10th anniversary, Mercury Studios is re-releasing the acclaimed feature documentary Heaven Adores You in select theaters beginning August 6th.

Heaven Adores You explores the life and music of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. The film includes excerpts from previously unreleased and unfinished songs along with his best-known tracks such as the Academy Award nominated “Miss Misery,” “Happiness,” “Son Of Sam,” and “Waltz #2.”

Nickolas Rossi, director of the 2014 film, states about the beloved singer and songwriter, “Ten years ago, our film’s worldwide run at festivals and eventual wide release touched audiences and fans on five continents, serving as an homage to Elliott Smith’s unmatched musical legacy. As time has passed, his influence on music and his significance as a cultural icon have only deepened, warranting a renewed spotlight on his life and work.”

Heaven Adores You is an intimate, meditative inquiry that showcases Smith’s rise to prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s, a promising career that was cut short by his untimely death at the age of 34 in 2003. By threading his music through the dense yet often isolating landscapes of the three major cities he lived in: Portland, New York, and Los Angeles, Heaven Adores You takes an affectionate and absorbing look at the work of a truly genuine talent and presents an earnest review of the singer’s prolific songwriting and the impact it continues to have on fans, friends, and fellow musicians.

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This is the third box set reissue of studio albums from Joni Mitchell, released as part of a far-reaching Joni Mitchell Archives reissue program of Mitchell’s music that also includes several live, rare, and previously unreleased music projects.

The first box in this series, The Reprise Albums (1968–1971), covered Mitchell’s first four albums (Song to a Seagull, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, and Blue). The second box, The Asylum Albums (1972–1975), covered her first four albums on Asylum (For the Roses, Court and Spark, Miles of Aisles, and The Hissing of Summer Lawns). This box covers her last four albums on Asylum (Hejira, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Mingus, and Shadows and Light).

While Mitchell’s studio album Court and Spark, her second Asylum album, which was released in 1974, was her commercial zenith in the ’70s, her next album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns released in 1975, boasted a broader musical palette. Although she had been expanding her sound as far back as For the Roses and introduced healthy doses of jazz into her pop/folk-rock sound on Court and Spark, Hissing was a real departure and the beginning of narrow-minded, mostly male rock critics and record executives questioning her less-commercial direction and experimentation.

This new box picks up where Hissing left off. As with the two previous boxes in this series, we will review the vinyl box set version of this project. Hejira, the first album here, released in 1976 and the follow-up to Hissing, is an even more varied musical effort, with many songs essentially long prose poem travelogues. The music is evocative of a woman living her life out on the road, but also recalling her Canadian upbringing.

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PHOTO: AXEL DUPEUX | Towards the end of his memoir Under a Rock, which hit shelves on June 11th via St. Martin’s Press, Blondie co-founder Chris Stein reflects: “I remember that back then, Debbie and I never felt we’d quite succeeded, that we’d only attained some cult status; it’s only now in the rearview mirror that people consider Blondie as part of some grand showbiz hierarchy.”

Over the course of the memoir that covers Stein’s youth and formative years as an artist up until present day, Stein confronts his own life and artistic legacy with a down-to-earth grace and enlightened candor rarely found in a rock autobiography. And by reliving Stein’s and his group’s past along with him, one is left with the knowing feeling that they most definitely did succeed insofar as leaving a permanent cultural and artistic imprint on the world of music.

Other musicians contending with the weight of Blondie’s art-forward legacy in a continually digitized world, and the glittering charisma of a beautiful and compelling band frontwoman Debbie Harry (who contributes a warmly enjoyable foreword to the book) may have selected a cynical jaded tone for their first-person narrative. Faced with the alternately perplexing and bizarre post- COVID reality of the 2020s decade we are currently living through, Stein instead uses Under a Rock to treat both the collective cultural past and his own personal past with the respect, inquiry, and celebration they deserve, without negating or damning the present.

But Stein’s understanding of New York art-grunge founded in the era of the mid-late ’70s and ’80s CBGB and Max’s Kansas City rock club glory, and the colorful living that went with it, is well articulated in his book, reminding readers of the music scene’s vitality and immediate youth-based power that still resonates in Blondie’s recordings and those of the band’s contemporaries like Television, the Ramones, and Patti Smith.

Together with Debbie Harry, Stein founded Blondie in 1974, serving as its guitarist and ideological force. The group’s ’76 self-titled debut album introduced an art-first, pop-music-honoring sonic world that continued for a number of lauded records, which included a slue of chart-topping singles whose sonic adventurousness continues to influence musicians today. Blondie designed an aural character that married downtown New York art-hip with occasionally radio-friendly melody, molding a brand new sound character that left a dramatic mark upon the world of music.

In conversation with Chris Stein, infused with his inherent New York-cool, we learn more about the roots of Blondie and the origins of his new memoir Under a Rock, his and Blondie’s creative ideologies and artistic influences, and his ongoing captivation with the Burning Man Festival.

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With the fresh release of Live from the Ash Grove…Plus! by Liberation Hall Records, the already voluminous discography of versatile Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins just grew larger by one LP and CD. Available now, the set combines acoustic and electric performances that capture the man in solid, crowd pleasing form. If not an essential acquisition, the record’s pleasurable vibes are far from scrapings from the barrel’s bottom. Its purchase will increase the sturdiness of any Hopkins shelf.

Founded by Ed Pearl in 1958 in Los Angeles, the Ash Grove was a folk club, so it makes sense that Hopkins played there solo and acoustic. Additionally, beginning with his late 1950s “rediscovery” by Samuel Charters and Folkways Records, much of Hopkins’ output landed solidly in the folk blues zone, to the point that he’d become something of a staple on the folk circuit across the ’60s and beyond.

This reality comes through with clarity in Ash Grove’s sourcing two different performances from the venue, the first from September ’65 and the second from November ’70. This covers only a portion of Hopkins’ residencies at the club, but these inclusions still suggest a tougher, more energetic and intense Hopkins at the beginning of the five-year stretch who transitioned to a deceptively “laid back” yet appealingly garrulous comportment at the dawn of the decade.

The latter show is represented by eight songs (likely the entirety of a short set) plus spoken intros and it covers the whole of side one. As he chats up the audience, Hopkins’ comfort is palpable and his abilities are essentially undiminished. Overall, the short set really drives home the folky atmosphere; if this wasn’t the Ash Grove, it could’ve been any number of coffeehouses or folk clubs still operating in 1970.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Iconic Artists Group is thrilled to announce the 35th anniversary reissue of Linda Ronstadt’s timeless masterpiece, Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind, arriving on June 28th. This long-awaited reissue marks the first time the album returns to vinyl in years and will be presented on a stunning 140-gram translucent blue vinyl pressing.

Featuring not just one, but two, Grammy Award-winning songs, “Don’t Know Much” and “All My Life,” Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind showcases Ronstadt’s incomparable vocal prowess alongside the legendary Aaron Neville. Beyond its awards, the album also made waves commercially, selling over three million copies and achieving the remarkable feat of securing Linda her 10th Top 10 Billboard album. The album’s enduring popularity was further underscored by its streaming numbers, with both “Don’t Know Much” and “All My Life” amassing over 200 million streams combined, solidifying their place as timeless classics in Ronstadt’s illustrious discography.

Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind was recorded in 1989 at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, Calif., with Peter Asher producing and mastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab. This reissue was remastered by James Sáez at The Audio Labs, lacquers Cut By Stephen Marsh at The Lathe Room, and pressed at Record Technology Inc.

Linda Ronstadt is the top-selling female rock artist of the 1970s and one of the most artistically diverse recording artists of the last fifty years. One of the world’s best-selling artists of all time, she has sung on over 120 albums, with at least 31 gold and platinum records, and sold more than 100 million records worldwide with such hits as “You’re No Good,” “Blue Bayou,” the duet “Somewhere Out There” with James Ingram, and “Don’t Know Much” with Aaron Neville.

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New York City’s Lame Drivers began kicking up dust in the mid-2000s, but it’s been far too long, nearly a decade in fact, since they released a full length record. With the release of Become an Island, the band puts the kibosh on that discographical gap, working up a fine batch of tunes blending power pop with old school indie and shades of punk and new wave in the mix. It’s out now, with Portland, OR’s Jigsaw Records handling the compact discs and San Diego, CA’s Bleeding Gold Records pressing it up on vinyl in a limited edition of 100 copies. That’s ten tracks on the wax and four on the accompanying download.

Consisting of Jason Sigal on guitar and vocals, Joe Posner on bass, and Jeff Wood on drums, Lame Drivers conjure a sound that’s been called “slacker-core indie rock.” It’s a tag that effectively reinforces a seeming collective desire to make music that pleases them rather than streamline their songs in an attempt to momentarily grasp that big brass ring of widespread success.

With its opening title track tapping into the eternal fount of Big Star, flaunting similarities to Teenage Fanclub, the assorted bands of Paul Chastain and Ric Menck including Velvet Crush and even the terribly undersung Burke, VA outfit Poole, Become an Island displays no signs of rust after a long sabbatical; especially nifty is the revved-up pace in the song’s back half.

Lame Drivers’ range is quickly apparent in “My Problem,” as the cut’s melodic rock core sports a punky edge, late ’70s style. This is fitting for a band that has covered (and played with) Midwestern punk royalty The Gizmos. Lame Drivers has also covered Wire, Mission of Burma, and notably, “Drugs in My Pocket” by The Monks (the ’70s spoof punk UK band of ex-Strawbs, not the ’60s proto-punkers), the latter part of a 2023 WFMU marathon premium compilation CD Next Stop, Nowhere: 100 Percent Authentic Fake Punk, just to establish the band’s good taste and knowledge base.

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