Having spun off from the veteran Los Angelino punk outfit The Bronx, the rich and vibrant Mexican roots experience Mariachi El Bronx returns after a decade-long recording hiatus with IV, a 12-song set that rekindles the unbridled spirit essence of their previous work. It’s available February 13 on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through ATO Records.

The name Mariachi El Bronx solidifies the connection between the Cali punk rock of The Bronx, who sprang onto the scene by releasing the first of six eponymous albums in 2003, with the musical style outlined in the offshoot’s moniker. This connection doesn’t signify a genre hybridization but rather highlights that punk and mariachi share a like-minded sensibility.

Of course, punks have been branching out for decades, sometimes via hybrids (or through what can be described as form destruction) and in other examples by embodying the true, unvarnished nature of a style, even if it risks (and often deliberately strives for) the alternatingly fascinating and perplexing impression of anachronism.

Mariachi El Bronx is vocalist Matt Caughthran, guitarist and accordionist Joby J. Ford, drummer Jared Shavelson, trumpeters Keith Douglas and Brad Magers, violinist Ray Suen, jarana player Ken Horne, and guitarrón player Vincent Hidalgo. What they achieve on IV extends from their prior efforts, retaining the heft and spark of the mariachi style without registering as a throwback.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sixty years after Miles Davis and his Second Great Quintet detonated expectations across seven sets in a basement club in Chicago, The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 is out now as a definitive physical edition—available now via Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment.

Widely hailed as one of the most illuminating live documents in jazz history, the complete Plugged Nickel performances capture Davis alongside Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams at a moment when the band’s language was mutating in real time—elastic, volatile, and eerily telepathic.

Originally issued in 1995 as a limited-edition Mosaic Records LP box set and out of print for nearly three decades, The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 is now available as a 10LP box set and 8CD box set, cut from digital and presented in deluxe packaging.

The 10LP edition recreates the Mosaic musical presentation while expanding the story for a new era: a newly designed slipcase houses ten individual LP jackets and a 40-page booklet featuring new liner notes by Syd Schwartz and classic contextual writing by Bob Blumenthal, alongside archival photography and production credits that underscore the set’s stature as a cornerstone in Davis’ recorded legacy.

The performances themselves are a study in controlled risk. In December 1965, the quintet arrived at the Plugged Nickel with a well-worn repertoire—standards, ballads, blues—and proceeded to turn it inside out. Across “My Funny Valentine,” “Stella By Starlight,” “Walkin’,” “So What,” “All Blues,” and more, the group bends tempo, fractures form, and reassigns roles mid-phrase, making even familiar material feel newly dangerous.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Before “Dreams” signaled the emergence of one of the most arresting and angelic voices enwrapped in a swath of layered dreampop… Before “Linger” entranced audiences even further into their otherworldly and dreamy melodies… Before “Zombie” cemented them as one of the premier alt-rock bands globally… Before their albums were certified multiplatinum and their videos ticking up hundreds of millions of views (“Zombie” has racked up 1.7B alone), Irish alt-rock band The Cranberries released “Uncertain” in October 1991.

Island / Ume is excited to announce the reissue of this special snapshot of the band on the verge of worldwide breakthrough via this limited edition, numbered, and lightly remastered reissue of “Uncertain.” Pressed on cranberry-colored vinyl, the 45-RPM 12” captures the youthful excitement of that special moment in time immediately before the spotlight on the band got infinitely brighter (their debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? would be released two years later in 1993).

Originally released in very limited quantities (estimates project just 5,000 copies were made), the extremely rare four-song EP is a premonition of sorts, hinting at the hidden powerhouse vocals of the late Dolores O’Riordan that was perfectly complemented by drummer Fergal Lawler, bassist Mike Hogan, and guitarist Noel Hogan.

“Whoa! Listening to these songs is like taking a trip through a Time Machine,” says Fergal. “We were so young when we recorded this EP. You can really hear it in Dolores’s voice. She was just 19 years old then.”

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Celebrating Ross Valory on his 77th birthday. —Ed.

Some random thoughts on Journey’s 1981 blockbuster LP Escape:

1. Remember that final, 2007 episode of The Sopranos with the open ending that everybody hated, the one where Tony and family are sitting in the diner and you don’t know whether Tony gets whacked or not? Well, what pissed me off was not knowing whether Tony lived or died. What bugged me was that the booth jukebox was playing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and Tony’s kid, a teen from the year 2007 who had never shown any symptoms of being a congenital idiot, never said “What is this shit?” Any normal rebellious teen male from the year 2007 would have said “What is this shit?” but Tony’s kid didn’t SAY shit. Ruined the entire episode for me.

2. I don’t think Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is shit. I USED to think it was shit, thought it was shit for decades, but then something horrible happened, I had a brain aneurysm or something, and now I love it. I love it! This has happened to me with other bands and other songs and maybe it’s a function of growing old and senile but believe me, it’s disturbing. I’ve always considered myself a person of taste, although I’ve also always liked Black Oak Arkansas and Foghat while despising the likes of Patti Smith and The Clash, so that’s debatable. But Journey? Journey is no grey area. When a person tells me they like Journey I give that person the stink eye and write that person out of the Book of Life. Journey is the enemy.

3. On a completely random note, Escape’s cover falls into the great Boston/Electric Light Orchestra tradition of album covers with spaceships on them escaping Earth because who doesn’t want to escape Earth, especially if you’re a teen and your parents are hard-ons and school may as well be Leavenworth and what’s the point of growing up anyway? To get a job? To go bald and get married and STOP smoking pot? Life HAS to be better in another galaxy!

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | 17 North Parade proudly announce Randy’s 50th Anniversary: Reggae Anthology – Chapter Two, a landmark release chronicling the later years of Randy’s Record Mart and the productions of Clive Chin from 1971 to 1976, a formative period in the development of modern reggae and dancehall and the foundation of what would become VP Records.

From Augustus Pablo’s groundbreaking instrumental “Java” to Carl Malcolm’s UK pop crossover hit “Fattie Bum Bum,” Randy’s 50th Anniversary: Reggae Anthology – Chapter Two documents a period of rapid stylistic expansion in Jamaican music. The collection features a run of classics from an all-star lineup of 1970s reggae greats, including Black Uhuru, Horace Andy, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, The Heptones, and Big Youth.

Originally released only on CD in 2008 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Randy’s Records, this collection of rare recordings is now being made available on vinyl for the first time, complete with extensive sleeve notes by acclaimed reggae historian and Lee “Scratch” Perry biographer David Katz, along with inner sleeves featuring rare photographs.

Randy’s Records holds a very special place in the history of Jamaican popular music. As profiled on Chapter One of this celebratory compilation, founder Vincent “Randy” Chin was one of the first Jamaican entrepreneurs to release music during the ska era, finding particular success with the Trinidadian-born Lord Creator. During the second half of the 1960s, Vincent focused on building a recording studio upstairs from his popular retail record mart at 17 North Parade.

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Celebrating Al McKay on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Of all the things I’ve loved during my tenure on this planet, it’s hard to beat Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White. And not because he’s a musical genius and head honcho of one of the Seventies’ best soul/funk outfits. No, I love him because he’s the guy who sings, “Yowl!” on several occasions on the great “That’s the Way of the World.” They never fail to thrill me, those yowls, not since I was a young sprog and loved the hell out of MFSB’s “T.S.O.P.”

EWF’s songs dominated Top 40 radio when I was young, because unlike Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament/Funkadelic they were unapologetically middle of the road. But that doesn’t mean that their songs weren’t great, just that they were more like the black equivalent of Elton John than, say, Randy Newman. As the critic Robert Christgau noted about one of their prime LPs, “Most of these songs are fun to listen to. But they’re still MOR–the only risk they take is running headlong into somebody coming down the middle of the road in the opposite direction. Like The Carpenters.”

But so what? Earth, Wind & Fire have produced their fair share of timeless songs, and if they’re slick, the slickness works. Under the direction of White, EWF’s drummer, songwriter, and vocalist, the band’s sound was—and still is—an eclectic brew of funk, jazz, gospel, rock, smooth soul, blues, folk, African music, and disco, and what made them particularly remarkable were their group vocals, and especially the vocals of Maurice White and Philip Bailey.

Unrelentingly positive, their songs were a balm for the soul, and I for one think “That’s the Way of the World” is a slice of mystical brilliance and a song for the ages. All of those vocalists throwing in; it’s a sound so soulful I sprout an Afro every time I listen to it. And their horn section, the four-member Phenix Horns, also merits special attention; one listen to the opening of “Shining Star” and you know you’re in the presence of genius.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The life and career of pioneering heavy metal frontman Paul Di’Anno, the powerhouse voice heard on Iron Maiden’s early albums, will be celebrated in the forthcoming documentary, Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer, to be released by Cleopatra Entertainment this summer.

In a strikingly raw and intimate film, director Wes Orshoski captures the late singer as he rides an emotional rollercoaster toward the end of his life. Featuring appearances by James Hetfield (Metallica), Gene Simmons (Kiss) Maiden’s Steve Harris, and members of Exodus, Slayer, Megadeth, Overkill, and Sepultura, the film chronicles how two Iron Maiden fans encounter Di’Anno at the lowest point of his life and then set out to restore his health and relaunch his career.

Wheelchair-bound since the mid-2010s, Di’Anno’s health nosedived during the Covid-19 pandemic, when those two fans launched a crowdfunding campaign which ultimately led to him relocating to Croatia, where—through the help of those fans and doctors—he made a dramatic turnaround while running out of money, reuniting with his former Maiden bandmates, and falling in love. Eventually he makes a heroic and drama-filled return to the stage. All of this is captured in Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer, which Orshoski began shooting in 2017.

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Celebrating Mark Eitzel on his 67th birthday. —Ed.

Mark Eitzel, American music’s poet laureate of the alcoholic undertow, has never gotten his props. During his time with his band American Music Club he put out a number of great albums, each one more besotted than the last, and managed to write what I consider the best song (by far!) of the nineties, “Johnny Mathis’ Feet.”

So what if he brutalized me in comments following a review I wrote of a show at the Black Cat in Washington, DC. What really hurt was his saying, “If I’m as down as you say I am – then what gives you the right to kick me?” I wasn’t kicking you, Mark, I love you man—I was just unhappy that you were moving in the direction of stripped down torch songs.

Ah, but that’s bourbon under the bridge. I will always consider Eitzel a genius, what with his way of both bumming you out and making you laugh with his songs about himself and his burned-out friends. He can turn a phrase and has a surgeon’s eye for just where to put the scalpel in, and these gifts are, I think, on best display on 1991’s Everclear.

It led Rolling Stone magazine to declare Eitzel the Songwriter of the Year in 1991, but didn’t up his band’s exposure any; as Eitzel sadly noted later, “The next show there were about 20 people in the audience. And they were army guys and they thought American Music Club were some righteous American freedom-fighting, cool ass Springsteen-influenced Guns N’ Roses kind of guys. And we did not rock.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rhino High Fidelity (Rhino Hi-Fi), the limited-edition audiophile vinyl reissue series, returns with two albums that helped reframe rock at the dawn of the 1970s: The Stooges’ Fun House and the Velvet Underground’s Loaded.

Each album was cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. Both releases feature glossy gatefold packaging with “tip-on” jackets and newly written liner notes. They are limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and available today exclusively at Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores internationally.

Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Don Gallucci, Fun House arrived in 1970 as The Stooges—Iggy Pop, Ron Asheton, Dave Alexander, and Scott Asheton—doubled down on everything that made their debut a year earlier so confrontational. It was a deliberate escalation—testing how far the music could be pushed without coming apart.

In the new liners, Pop writes, “Something about this record that I like is the way it begins with a couple of very short, fully structured numbers, and then slips farther and farther out of control…yet it never loses a structure of its own.” He adds, “This is not a meat-and-potatoes record. It’s not ‘ten really good songs that the consumer can depend on.’”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Five-time GRAMMY® Award-winning neo-soul trailblazer Erykah Badu commemorates the 25th anniversary of her influential sophomore album, Mama’s Gun, with the release of new limited-edition vinyl options out now. The 2LP UMe Ecomm variant is pressed on gold black ice vinyl and features a newly redesigned gatefold jacket, alternate cover, and special lithograph. Order HERE.

Finally, the Vinylphyle edition of Mama’s Gun features this album’s first ever hi-res remaster since its original CD release, sourced from the original production tapes. The 2LP, which features new liner notes personally penned by Badu, was cut by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound Nashville and pressed at RTI on 180g black vinyl.

The Vinylphyle edition dropped recently, and is available HERE.

The indisputable influence of Mama’s Gun looms over every corner of the culture. It first arrived in stores on November 21, 2000. It peaked at #11 on the Billboard 200, scoring her strongest first-week sales ever and moving north of 191K copies. Within the span of only four weeks, it reached the threshold for a Platinum certification from the RIAA. Not to mention, this landmark body of work garnered three GRAMMY® Award nominations, including “Best Female R&B Vocal Performance” and “Best R&B Song” for “Bag Lady” and “Best R&B Song” for “Didn’t Cha Know?”

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