TEMPE, AZ | Innings Festival took to Tempe Beach Park for the 7th year in a row. Founded in 2018, the festival combines the first weekend of MLB Spring Training with music, creating one of the more unique festival experiences. While the festival has had some legendary headliners in the past, this year makes a strong case for the best lineup in Innings Festival history.

Spanning genres across the board, the bill offered something for everyone and covered a wide range of decades as well. From artists who released their first album in 1984 to 2022, the program was one of the most diverse I have seen. The festival features five main attractions, two music stages, a baseball themed stage, speed pitch, and batting cages. The baseball stage, Left Field, was hosted by Off the Mound, a podcast presented by former baseball star Ryan Dempster. Ryan was joined by a mix of current and veteran players who fans could interact with. There were two music stages—Home Plate and Right Field—spread out with numerous vendors and stands for whatever the patrons needed. Innings Festival is an event folks traveled far and wide for, enticed by good weather and even better company.

2:00 PM: I kicked off Friday’s coverage with The Beaches at Right Field. The Beaches are a Canadian rock band formed in 2013. The group set the bar high for the rest of the day early in their set. The all female band perfectly balances attitude with their pop alternative-indie tunes. The band clearly enjoys what they’re doing, and early festival goers were treated to The Beaches and a sunny 77 degree Arizona day. I am quite confident everyone who experienced that set went home and searched The Beaches if they hadn’t heard of them yet. If they did, they would see that the ladies have been going viral on Tik Tok for a bit now, and I would imagine they will have a lot more viral moments in their future.

2:50 PM: Bully took to Home Plate while the sun was high on the crowd. Bully is the solo project of songwriter and guitarist Alicia Bognanno. Alicia plays with a band mixing hip-hop and rap with grunge influenced tones. Bully is very upbeat, creating momentum for the festival as the day went on. Alicia has been releasing music since 2013, and most recently released an album Lucky for You in 2023. Bully’s sound is a throwback to the ’90s, mixed with a more modern, alternative sound. With the pairing, the group has a wide range of fans.

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Celebrating Roger Daltrey in advance of his 80th birthday tomorrow. —Ed.

Many have called The Who’s 1970 Live at Leeds the best live album of all time. Me, I’ve always scoffed. It made no difference that I’d never actually sat down and listened to it. A good rock critic doesn’t have to actually listen to an LP before passing judgment on it. He simply knows, based on gut instinct and certain arcane and occult clues, whether an album is a dud or not. In the case of Live at Leeds, there are three clues to the album being rated far greater than deserved.

The first is the LP’s inclusion of “Summertime Blues,” a song that has always given me hives and put me off my dinner of Hormel’s Chili on hot dogs, which is the impoverished rock critic’s version of pan-fried foie gras with spiced citrus purée. The second is that Live at Leeds suffers—if only in one notable case—from that early seventies affliction, song bloat. You know what I’m talking about: live albums where the bands stretch their songs to extraordinary lengths, in some cases obscene two-sided lengths, forcing the stoned listener to stand up, stagger to the stereo in a Tuinal haze, and turn the damned record over to hear the second side. Finally, there was the issue of song selection: six tunes, three of them covers, with none of the covers being particular favorites of mine. And I’ve never been a big fan of one of the originals, “Magic Bus,” either.

Which has always left me to wonder, “What’s in it for me?” And I’m not alone; in particular, Live at Leeds failed to impress those twin pillars of rock criticism, the generally unintelligible Greil Marcus, who called the music dated and uneventful and the ever-crotchety Robert Christgau, who singled out “Magic Bus” for special abuse, calling it “uncool-at-any-length.”

Besides, I’ve always been more than satisfied with the three Who LPs I consider indispensible, namely Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, Who’s Next, and Quadrophenia. As for the rest of the Who’s catalogue—including Tommy—I had no use for it. But having finally listened to the Live at Leeds, I’m flabbergasted; it may not be, as critic Nik Cohn called it, “the definitive hard-rock holocaust,” but it does rock balls, probably because The Who was the best live band in the world at the time.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Independent Project Records and David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) announced today the release of the triple album Tracks From the Attic on digital, CD, colored vinyl LP, and Super Deluxe Box Set Art Edition formats on May 3. 

Hand-picked by David himself, the three-LP Tracks From the Attic was originally part of Record Store Day’s RSD Black Friday 2023 and features solo demos recorded on audio-cassette between 1984 and 2004. With Tracks From the Attic, the Bauhaus and Love and Rockets co-founder invites listeners on a most fascinating journey. We’re looking through boxes of tapes, getting reacquainted with an artist we’ve known for a long time—yet, the intimate songs he recorded in solitude over three decades reveal new sides to him.

Even while busy with his two legendary groups, David J was bursting with songs; this is a thrilling selection of recordings he made sometimes on the road and mostly at home, with only the help of his Muse, a recorder and a lit candle. The fact that most of these tunes did not end up becoming beloved classics (something that, once you hit play, your ears will hardly come to terms with) is but a sign of David J’s ever prolific creative state. Tracks From the Attic offers a unique experience that gives equal importance to the aural, the visual and the tactile.

The Super Deluxe Box Set Art Edition of 70 copies is numbered, autographed, and extremely limited, comes in translucent natural vinyl and features a new color scheme cover, plus a limited edition David J artwork. What makes each of the Super Deluxe Art Box Set Edition so unique is the inclusion of actual cassettes from David’s personal home archive, the very ones that were used to compile this career-spanning archival release. This version of Tracks From the Attic is only available from the IPR store. More details here.

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Although he’s noted for extensive and diverse credits as a sideman and as a contributor to countless scores for television and film, drummer Shelly Manne remains best known as a leader, and particularly for a string of albums beginning in the early 1950s piloting Shelly Manne & His Men. This includes four LPs released together in 1960 that document a live stand at San Francisco’s Black Hawk club from September of the previous year. At the Black Hawk, Vol. 1 is reissued March 15 on 180 gram vinyl as part of Craft Recordings year-long series reissuing select titles from the catalog of Contemporary Records.

Make no mistake; in terms of numbers, Shelly Manne’s discography is a massive achievement, and that’s excluding sideman credits and soundtrack contributions. When a body of work grows to that size, obviously there’s a much smaller percentage gathering the essentials plus some additional higher quality work. For Shelly Manne, the four At the Black Hawk, Vol. 1 sets belong to that category. This first volume is a sensible place to begin investigating Manne’s work, but it also serves to expand West Coast jazz of the 1950s beyond the stereotype.

First, the band; there’s Joe Gordon on trumpet, Richie Kamuca on tenor sax, Victor Feldman on piano, and Monty Budwig on bass. This isn’t the highest-profile lineup of the Men, as prior iterations featured altoists Art Pepper, Bud Shank, and Charlie Mariano, along with Jimmy Giuffre on baritone sax, but the playing is consistently strong and the atmosphere across At the Black Hawk, Vol. 1 never falters.

And the ambience is a big part of this record’s appeal. High quality recorded documentation of robust jazz captured in a nightclub that catered to exactly that sort of thing just wasn’t that common in the retail bins during this era, so when Contemporary dished out all four volumes in 1960, interested parties could gather some insight into how a working band operated across numerous sets and nights during a club engagement.

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Band On The Run, the 1973 album from Wings (but billed here as a Paul McCartney album), would not only be considered his best post-Beatles solo album, but vies with George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums as the best solo album from any Beatle.

The album was also a defining work of the first half of the 1970s and easily one of the best albums of that decade. It has been reissued many times over the years, including as a McCartney archival release in 2010. This new double-album, vinyl reissue, to mark the 50th anniversary of the album’s release offers a unique package but more importantly may be one of the best sounding Abbey Road Studios vinyl remasters to date.

The album came after two McCartney solo albums and two albums from Wings, the group that centered around McCartney, his wife Linda, and Denny Laine. The tortured history of the album included challenging living and recording experiences in Lagos in Africa and seismic personnel changes in Wings that effectively became the end of the original Wings lineup.

Oddly, the tone of the album is a buoyant, energetic tour-de-force of great playing amid some of McCartney’s best solo songs and a loose thematic structure that ties the album together into a cohesive work, yet which eschews any heavy, grand conceptual statement. Songs like the title track and “Jet” were ubiquitous staples of AM and FM radio at the time.

This new package features two 180-gram vinyl albums in custom sleeves, two posters, and a certificate of authenticity housed in a sturdy bespoke slipcase box with a modified cover from the original that is white instead of black and uses raised lettering and photos to great effect. The original poster of various polaroids of the sessions from the photography of Linda McCartney is included.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Below are the full liner notes written by Wyndham Wallace in Berlin with grateful thanks to J.Peter Schwalm for his recollections and time:

By the late 1990s, Brian Eno was to all intents and purposes a studio-bound musician. Performance it seemed, was not for him. He famously left Roxy Music in 1973 after he found himself “thinking about the laundry on stage” and since then he made only sporadic forays into the live arena, even then merely as a member of short-lived ensembles.

Indeed, once the 1970s had ended he appeared more enthused about concepts like “Quiet Clubs” or “Quiet Rooms,” site-specific installations—ongoing to this day—in which his light sculptures, ambient sound and especially selected furnishings provide a refuge from everyday stress and noise. These couldn’t be more different to the flamboyant outings with which he originally made his name and which had threatened to upstage Bryan Ferry.

Instead he spent this time creating similarly inclined art in addition to working on solo releases, which continued to explore often ambient realms and increasingly self-generating music. There’d also been collaborative endeavours of one sort or another, including albums like 1983’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks with his brother Roger and Daniel Lanois, and 1990’s Wrong Way Up, recorded with John Cale.

That’s not to mention high profile production duties for the likes of U2 and James and he even found time to compose Microsoft’s Windows 95 startup theme. It’s no wonder then that in early 2023 he was still telling journalists that “I would rather drive nails into my scrotum than go on tour.” It’s not like there weren’t other things to do.

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Art Blakey remains high on the list of the greatest drummer-bandleaders, a claim that’s given solid support by the star-studded Jazz Messengers album Caravan. Originally released by the Riverside label in 1962 and featuring trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist Cedar Walton, and bassist Reggie Workman, the album’s hard bop thrust is streamlined but sturdy with Blakey leading the charge. It’s out on 180 gram vinyl March 1 as part of Craft Recordings’ Original Jazz Classics reissue series.

By 1963, when Caravan was released, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers were no longer on the cutting edge of contemporary jazz. Key to the development of hard bop, the band that Blakey led throughout its existence (until his death in 1990) didn’t waver stylistically. Instead, the Messengers existed as a platform where promising young talent matured into greatness.

The lineup for this album is particularly stacked, and was productive, cutting three LPs for Riverside (Caravan, Ugetsu, and Kyoto) and one for Blue Note (Free for All), plus one for Colpix (Golden Boy) with an expanded lineup that added James Spaulding on alto, Charles Davis on baritone, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Julius Watkins on French horn, and Bill Barber on tuba.

Blakey’s hard bop allegiance extended to his non-Jazz Messengers albums as leader and across his extensive work as a sideman, which extended back to the dawn of the ’50s in connection with the initial bebop wave, supporting saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt, trumpeters Fats Navarro and Dizzy Gillespie, and pianist Thelonious Monk.

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In the annals of power pop, Paul Collins is up there with Dwight Twilley and Shoes, who both happen to appear on his new album. Collins’ work goes back to being a teenage member of the mid-1970s San Francisco band The Nerves, whose “Hanging on the Telephone” was recorded by Blondie. His own band The Beat caused its own commotion, at least before it got caught up in confusion over an English ska band with the same name.

Seeing no future (or income) from his music, Collins dropped out of music for a decade before returning with albums like 2004’s Flying High and the 2008 Ribbon of Gold. The new album, Stand Back and Take a Good Look, features work with power pop luminaries such as 20/20, Richard X. Heyman, and the aforementioned Shoes.

Its single “I’m the Only One for You,” recently designated Coolest Song in the World on Little Steven’s SiriusXM Underground Garage, features the late Dwight Twilley. We talked to Collins over the phone from New York, where the retrospective cover art of his new release was shot.

You must have captured one of the last performances of Dwight Twilley who had just just died in October.

He died shortly after [recording]—and it was a shock, and of course a bittersweet thing. I go way back with Dwight as far as being a fan of his. When I went to San Francisco in ’74–’75 and heard “I’m on Fire” I was like, “OK, that’s it, that’s what I want to do.” I heard “I’m on Fire” and I heard “Cadillac Walk” by Mink DeVille and I thought, there are people out there doing this music. And it’s damn cool. So I knew I was on the right track.

You’ve been at the forefront of the power pop movement—or do you even call it power pop?

Dwight called it power poop. In the beginning [the phrase] power pop was the curse of death. It kept this music off the radio, it kept this music from being accepted by a wider audience, it kept this music being relegated to the minor leagues by journalists and radio. I don’t know why, but it did. And I lived with that.

Then it flipped over in the beginning of the ‘90s, all the young kids came along with Bandcamp and they started citing power pop as their influence because they didn’t grow up with the curse. It hadn’t cost them their album deal, it hadn’t kept them off the radio, it hadn’t been something where record companies say we don’t sign this kind of music, or radio stations saying we don’t play this kind of music. They were like, “Power pop, we love it!” And then it became bigger than it ever was the first time around.

How do you think it is faring today?

I just watched the Grammys and there was not one mention of power pop. What does that tell you?

Well, you know what kind of music you wanted to do when you heard “I’m on Fire.” What kinds of songs were you listening to when you were growing up?

I was really lucky in the sense that I was born in ’56 and when I was 10 it was ’66 so I grew up listening to the golden era by anyone’s standard, which is everything from the late ’50s to ’69. I guess. When I was a kid in Long Island listening to WABC radio with Cousin Brucie and Harry Harrison, I was listening to the cream of the crop of international rock ’n’ roll.

I say international because it included the British Invasion, it included the West Coast sound, it included the Detroit sound, and that includes Mitch Ryder and Motown. And Nashville, and Johnny Cash, and Glen Campbell, and Burt Bacharach, and on and on and on. And the Buckinghams, and the New York sound and The Rascals, and The Beatles and The Monkees, and The Foundations, Jay and the Americans. So, that was my high school and college. And my PhD was The Nerves.

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Released in 1969, Hot Buttered Soul brought Isaac Hayes widespread attention as he helped lead the charge into a new decade of soul music innovations. An impeccable album in a genre that hitherto had been largely dominated by singles, Hayes’ achievement is a perfect addition to Craft Recordings’ Small Batch series. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl at RTI with Neotech’s VR900 compound using lacquers cut from the master tapes by Bernie Grundman, the edition of 3,000 is available March 1.

Given how Hot Buttered Soul has consistently pulled in new listeners across a span of generations since its smash hit release, it can be easy to misplace the record’s reality as a groundbreaker. Featuring two songs on each side, the LP did something almost unheard of, hitting the marketplace without any accompanying singles; radio edits of “Walk on By” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” were subsequently issued (and charted) after the record’s unexpected success.

That Stax (through subsidiary Enterprise) allowed Hayes such creative freedom is not only unusual but also pretty risky, as the set’s bold conception couldn’t have been inexpensive. The scoop is that Hot Buttered Soul became a reality through Stax honcho Al Bell’s directive to the label’s active roster to cut a slew of albums for release in a very tight timeframe, a decision made because Stax had lost its entire back catalog to Atlantic Records.

Presenting Isaac Hayes, the artist’s debut from 1968, proved a disappointment, and to nobody more than Hayes himself, who responded to Bell’s album initiative with a demand for complete creative control. That the resulting LP received the necessary promotional push to take root with consumers and then catch fire is testament to Hayes’ talent but also to Bell’s stature as a record man.

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