1964 was a year dominated by The Beatles and the British Invasion. The emphasis was very much on pop. Concurrent and sometimes overlapping with Beatlemania and the British Invasion was the British R&B scene, which itself was part of the burgeoning British blues scene. The British Invasion began in Liverpool with The Beatles, followed by other Liverpool groups and groups from London and other parts of the UK such as Manchester, Birmingham, and even some from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The sound become so ubiquitous that it even included musicians from Australia and Americans who became part of the British Invasion like the Walker Brothers, P.J. Proby and others.

This three-CD set miraculously chronicles in exhaustive detail the British R&B boom of 1964. While the scene/genre began in 1964 and would continue, mutate and shapeshift for years to come, 1964 might be considered its brief peak, not so much in quality or commercial success, but by the sheer number of artists.

The scene was centered around many clubs in London, near London or throughout England including the 100 Club, the Ealing Club, Oasis, the King Mojo Club, the Twisted Wheel, the Marquee, the Flamingo, the Railway Hotel, and the Crawdaddy Club. Some of the key players who were not musicians included manager Giorgio Gomelsky, Mike Vernon of Decca and later Blue Horizon Records, and Rick Gunnel of the Gunnel Agency.

It’s important to note that several artists included here were also part of other genres, trends, and scenes such as Manfred Mann, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Merseybeats, The Searchers, The Hollies and The Zombies, who were all more associated with the British Invasion. Artists included here more aligned with the British blues scene would include John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, the Graham Bond Organization, Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men, and the Hoochie Coochie Men featuring Rod Stewart.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In celebration of its 40th anniversary, Capitol Records and Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), in conjunction with Frank Sinatra Enterprises, announce the October 25 release of Frank Sinatra’s L.A. Is My Lady with Quincy Jones and Orchestra.

The vinyl is a reproduction of the 1984 LP release and features the original 11 songs. The CD and digital versions will appear as Deluxe Editions featuring six bonus tracks, three previously unreleased, plus the original liner notes by Stan Cornyn with new notes by Charles Pignone that include revealing quotes from the main participants. Long-time Sinatra engineer Larry Walsh created new mixes for this release.

For the album, Frank Sinatra reunited with Quincy Jones, with whom he’d last worked 20 years earlier on the classic album It Might as Well Be Swing with Count Basie. The album was a high-energy event that showcased Sinatra’s timeless voice paired with the vibrant and sophisticated production of Quincy Jones, who masterfully brought together an extraordinary ensemble of musicians, including jazz guitar George Benson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and pianist Bob James. Legendary songwriter Sammy Cahn wrote new lyrics for Sinatra for“ Teach Me Tonight” and “Until the Real Thing Comes Along.”

Upon release L.A. Is My Lady hit the Billboard Top 200 and Top 10 on the Jazz chart, with the title song capturing the essence of Sinatra’s enduring connection with Los Angeles. A music video for the track featured cameos by many celebrities, including Nancy Sinatra, Dean Martin, David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, Donna Summer, Jane Fonda, and Tommy Lasorda, and aired on MTV and VH1.

In various configurations, from solo to duo to orchestra, pianist Satoko Fujii has amassed a prodigious and voluminous output, hitting the 100-album mark in 2022, and that’s only counting her work as a leader. Amongst all that achieving is the output of the Satoko Fujii Quartet alongside trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, bassist Takeharu Hayakawa, and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. Jazz-rock is the group’s specialty, avant-garde friendly in its explorations as it avoids leaning too heavily into familiar aspects of fusion. After a long dormant stretch, they have reconvened for studio record number six, Dog Days of Summer, available on CD and digital September 13 through Libra Records.

When a band resumes activity after a lengthy break, it is often discovered that the spark of interactive creativity, i.e. the “magic,” is gone. The reasons vary, but a recurring issue is a desire, frequently unconscious, to recapture something comparable to what came before rather than breaking free of expectations in the true spirit of what made the endeavor worthwhile in the first place.

To be sure, the reunion blues are a rock-centric malady, but as the Satoko Fujii Quartet is a jazz-rock affair, and one that has returned to recording after a considerable layoff, the scenario applies. Of course, the opposing sides of the hyphen in the band’s formal hybrid are fairly pinpointed as avant-jazz and art rock, but the dangers of diminishing returns are still relevant.

Fujii is on the record as disinclined to recreate the Quartet’s earlier sounds. But understanding that saying and doing aren’t the same thing, Fujii’s aim is true, as Dog Days of Summer expands upon the band’s prior brilliance, establishing fresh possibilities from a familiar framework. Like many successful recommencements, Fujii and crew got back into the groove through live performance, playing first at the Shinuku Pit Inn in Tokyo and following with a four-city tour of Japan. Then, to the studio, as this album was recorded on April 8 of this year.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Thirty-Five years after its release, Dr. Feelgood stands as the last great rock record of the 1980’s, and one of the greatest rock records of all time. Recorded in Vancouver with Producer Bob Rock and released in 1989, this iconic album took Mötley Crüe to #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and earned a 6X Platinum certification in the US. The album cemented the newly sober band’s status as global superstars, hitting the Top 10 in Australia (Platinum), Canada (3X Platinum), Finland, Norway, New Zealand (Platinum), Sweden, Switzerland (Gold) and the UK (Gold).

With five massive hit singles that kept radio and MTV request lines busy, the Dr. Feelgood World Tour saw Mötley Crüe on the road and in the air on their own private jet for over 2 years. First single “Dr. Feelgood,” with its instantly memorable opening, catchy chorus, and gritty music video set the tone by reaching the top 10 on the US Hot 100 singles chart.

Originally a Top 30 hit upon release, “Kickstart My Heart” went on to become Mötley Crüe’s most popular landmark track. From the buzz saw intro to the cheating-death lyrics and music video shot in a rare return to a club show at the world famous Whisky-a-go-go in Hollywood, it has now logged well over 1.5 Billion streams and can be heard nearly every day in movies, commercials, video games and sporting events around the world!

The Hot 100 hits kept coming as “Without You” hit #8, “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” reached #19, and final single “Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S.)” was accompanied by a music video capturing the fan excitement of a live Mötley Crüe show. The Dr. Feelgood World Tour kicked off at the now legendary Moscow Music Peace Festival in Russia and by the time the tour wrapped in late 1990, the band had played over 100 shows to over 2 Million faithful fans. Mötley Crüe continues to fill stadiums around the world with many classics from Dr. Feelgood in their setlist to this day!

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Celebrating Don Powell on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

So there I was, listening to Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch and being all jazzbo pretentious and shit, when really deep down inside I was miserable when it hit me—what I needed at that moment was not the chill vibraphonic rebop of Bobby Hutcherson, but the atrocious spelling, abominable haircuts, and abysmal glitter gear of those inimitable Black Country lads, Slade.

It may be easy to make fun of ‘em, but the quartet ruled the UK charts in the early ’70s, with artists like Roxy Music and David Bowie eating their dust. And vocalist Noddy Holder and the boys have been cited as an influence by everybody from Twisted Sister and Nirvana. Not bad for a couple of skinheads-turned-glamsters from Wolverhampton, whose misspellings, I kid you not, led to protests by an entire nation’s worth of outraged school marms.

The band’s classic line-up (Holder on vocals, guitar, and bass; Dave Hill on guitar, vocals and bass; Jim Lea on bass, vocals, keyboards, violin, and guitar; and Don Powell on drums and percussion) was formed in 1969 as Ambrose Slade. Their first album tanked, and they abandoned their skinhead look due to its negative association with football hooliganism. The “Ambrose” went too, and following the release of some poorly spelled hits and a well-received live album the band blew out the pipes with LP #3, Slayed?

Filled with anthemic sing-alongs, Slayed? remains one of glitter rock’s seminal albums, despite the fact that the toughs in Slade looked about as absurd in their Glam clobber as Mott the Hoople looked in theirs. Holder wore a mirror top hat, tartan pants with suspenders, and striped socks, while Hill sported an ungodly Prince Valiant haircut and silver outfits that made him look like an alien with a retarded Venusian hair stylist. But who cares? The kids ate it up.

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BASIC is a fresh project featuring Chris Forsyth on guitar, Nick Millevoi on baritone guitar and drum machine, and Mikel Patrick Avery on percussion and electronics. Dispensing with vocals, the trio takes inspiration from a specific and fleeting strain of 1980s art-rock where creatively restless guitarists embraced technological advances that were generally associated with the new wave. There are elements of homage in BASIC’s sound but the emphasis is largely on intricate and precise weaves that are imbued with energy levels substantial and rocking. This Is BASIC is available now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital from the No Quarter label of Philadelphia, PA.

Amongst the outfits cited as influential to BASIC’s approach is the duo of Robert Fripp and Andy Summers. They cut a pair of albums, I Advance Masked in 1982 and Bewitched in ’84 that offer a solid baseline for the “prog-rock-gone-new-wave” sensibility that was extant for a good portion of the decade. Bill Bruford is also mentioned, which brings the ’80s incarnation of King Crimson front and center. While Adrian Belew’s Lone Rhino isn’t name checked in the text accompanying BASIC’s debut, that 1982 album is still quite relevant to BASIC’s mode of operation.

The thinking person’s supergroup French/Frith/Kaiser/Thompson gets listed as part of BASIC’s constellation of precedent, and surely some of the ’80s solo work of Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser is part of the equation as well, especially the former’s The Technology of Tears (1988) and the latter’s Devil in the Drain (’87), records both released in the USA by SST on which Frith and Kaiser both play the Synclavier.

One of Frith’s many bands was Massacre, the first incarnation of which featured Bill Laswell on bass and Fred Maher on drums. In 1984, Maher and guitarist Robert Quine recorded Basic, the album that provided this BASIC with its moniker, along with a groundbreaking and once ubiquitous computer coding language (hence the all caps).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Slash the iconic, GRAMMY® Award-winning guitarist and songwriter has released Slash Music Of Universal Studios Hollywood – Halloween Horror Nights, via Snakepit Records LLC/Deko Entertainment, just in time for Halloween.

This limited edition 11-song vinyl-only album comprised of Slash’s original compositions over the last six years for the Halloween Horror Nights “Universal Monsters” haunted house, is sold exclusively onsite at Universal Studios Hollywood from September 5 through November 3. 300 alternate color vinyl that are hand signed by Slash will be placed in stores at Universal Studios Hollywood until they are sold out, and only 100 are available online via Deko Entertainment HERE.

“As a longtime fan of horror movies and of ‘Halloween Horror Nights,’ I jumped at the chance to once again collaborate with Universal Studios Hollywood to produce a soundtrack for the Universal Monsters haunted house,” says Slash. “Similar to the way music affects a film, I composed this score for the legions of infamous characters in these haunted houses to elicit a sense of emotional terror.”

For the past six years, Slash has composed the original music for Halloween Horror Nights “Universal Monsters” haunted house which fans experience live at Universal Studios Hollywood every Halloween season. This year, Slash’s original score for the all-new haunted house “Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines,” is headlined by an all-female gathering of classic Universal Monsters – The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, She-Wolf of London and the undead, mummified Egyptian princess Anck-Su-Namun.

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Remembering Otis Redding, born on this day in 1941. —Ed.

As one of the undisputed titans in the annals of Soul Music, Otis Redding seemingly needs no introduction. Any serious discussion of the genre he so thrillingly mastered will reflect upon the rewards to be found in his work, and that it’s never fallen out of favor is tribute to his talents. But in truth, scads of younger listeners do require some enlightenment regarding the massive achievements of the man. Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding will serve as an exemplary primer for the uninitiated, and the thoughtful focus on the artist’s aching love balladry might just lead many longtime fans to hear Mr. Pitiful with fresh ears.

With Sam and James and Wilson and Al and Marvin all making such singular contributions to the style, there will never be an undisputed King of Soul. But upon reflection, Otis Redding can perhaps be accurately described as the form’s Total Package, for the fabric of his music contains so many substantial fibers; a Southern “country” grit combining with the newfound sophistication of R&B, the powerhouse qualities of a consummate front-man coexisting with a distinctive desire to interact with his backing band, and the ability to knock ‘em stone cold dead on stage thriving alongside an uncommon level of success in the studio setting.

Furthermore, Redding’s considerable talents as a songwriter coincided with his equally impressive skills at interpreting other’s material, a substantial crossover into the pop market sacrificed none of his creative verve, and Stax’s significant spirit of racial harmony served as a beautiful example of brotherhood in an era that very much needed it. So Otis clearly lacked nothing in his ascension to the very top ranks of Soul expression.

Add to the above Redding’s knack for both raising the roof through raucous uptempo material and delving into the deep emotional weeds via exquisitely rendered slow burners. This dual proficiency is surely a given with the great soulsters, and it seems fairly obvious that a huge component in Redding’s lasting rep is how he could turn it way up and then bring it all back down without a hitch, frequently hitting upon spectacular mid-tempo grooves along the way.

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Billy Gibbons is an open-minded guy. While I was busy hating the English synthpop likes of Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the leader of Texas legends ZZ Top was listening to them, and enough light bulbs were going off in his head to illuminate all 1,954 miles of the US-Mexico border.

Anybody who thought Gibbons of the La Grange laugh and Methusaleh beard was some front-porch blues and boogie purist was sadly mistaken—Billy dug the synthesizers, and Billy dug the drum machines, and most of all Billy dug the acceleration—the more beats per minute the better. And they all set him to thinking—if Black Oak Arkansas could bring electricity to Arkansas, why couldn’t ZZ Top bring New Wave to the Lone Star State? And become MTV Gods and make a bazillion dollars in the process?

It didn’t happen all at once, but it all came together on 1983’s Eliminator, easily one of the slickest, glossiest, supercharged, and yes weirdest albums ever to blow across the finish line between your ears, sending tumblin’ tumbleweeds a’ tumblin’ in all directions. An unholy fusion of down home blooz-boogie and the latest in studio technology, it put plenty a purist off his BBQ, but by gum it exploded out of the speakers just like that 1933 Ford Coupe in the band’s star-making videos.

And they kept what counted most; Billy still sounded like the biggest lecher this side of the Rio Grande, and his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard still had enough Texas hot sauce on it to burn ears from Houston to Honolulu. And each and every rip-snortin’ power chord reminds me of a boast from a previous album; “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide.”

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