Marvin Gaye went from strength to strength throughout most of his career. His early Tamla/Motown singles became big hits, and he had some of those hits as a duo, primarily with Tammi Terrell.

His album What’s Goin’ On, released in 1971, was a breakthrough that demonstrated he was a serious artist writing about the issues of the day and expanding his musical palette by incorporating sophisticated musical arrangements, lush orchestrations, and new musical sounds into a conceptual masterpiece that has withstood the test of time. Lyrically, the album is as relevant as ever. Only two years after that album was made, one of the most purely amatory albums ever recorded was released, and he hit the charts yet again with Let’s Get It On.

Even with all this success, behind the scenes, Gaye was, to riff on the title song from the soundtrack album he released in 1972, a troubled man. Drugs, personal demons, record company hassles, and an unraveling marriage would eventually lead him to drop out of the music business and leave Motown. The album that would in many ways be his last real Motown effort of note (even though there would be two more released) is I Want You. While not met with as much critical praise as Let’s Get It On, it did hit number one on the R&B album charts, and the title song was a number one hit there also.

Over the years, the album has gone through a re-appraisal, and in fact, in retrospect, it has become a highly influential work. It’s fitting that the album is now receiving an audiophile release to mark its 50th anniversary. The album, the first recorded at Gaye’s own Marvin’s Room studio, has superb sound, and this is easily one of the best-sounding Vinylphyle releases.

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Folkways, formed by Moses Asch in 1948, had a distinctive approach to the blues. While the discs of many labels dedicated to this style could once be found in the jukeboxes of beer joints nationwide, Folkways took a more historical, scholarly approach to the blues, with considerable range. The new double album Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings makes a great case for the continued relevancy of the catalog. It’s available now.

Side A gets this undertaking off to a solid start with “Old Jabo,” which finds Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee sounding a little like a more down-home Bo Diddley. Following is “Mule-Ridin’ Blues,” a talking blues groove from Big Bill Broonzy cut in the company of Studs Terkel. Next is the instrumental workout “Joggie Boogie” from pianist Memphis Slim and bassist Willie Dixon, both in peak form, and not far from the thrust of their recording for the Chess label.

“Black Woman,” sung unaccompanied by Vera Hall and recorded in 1951, hits Asch’s folk objective in the bullseye. “Mercury Blues” comes next, an ode to an automobile, with K.C. Douglas smooth of voice and giving his guitar a workout. After that is the boisterous barrelhouse of “Ran the Blues Out of My Window” by the dynamic pianist and singer Roosevelt Sykes, and the side ends with “Leaving Blues” by Lead Belly, a giant of 20th-century folk music whose blues singing and guitar slinging are perhaps a bit underrated.

Side B opens with “One Dime Blues” by Etta Baker, a sweet and mild guitar instrumental (redolent of Elizabeth Cotten) and a bit of a time jump as it was recorded live in 1992 at the Barns of Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA. “County Farm Blues” by Delta titan Son House dates from a 1942 Alan Lomax field session. “Clog Dance (Stomping Blues)” by piano banger Champion Jack Dupree is the sound of a party captured in a recording studio.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Released in 1981, Face Value transformed Phil Collins from Genesis drummer and frontman to solo artist and global icon.

Now regarded as a timeless classic, the album’s impact is even clearer with 45 years of hindsight. At the time, it was a bold, groundbreaking record that challenged the musical conventions of the time, balancing raw vulnerability with a unique, stark sound. This essence is perfectly captured in his debut single, “In The Air Tonight”—which has become a cultural touchstone of its own. Against the backdrop of the era’s disco and high-tempo pop ballads, Face Value was a brave debut release and stood as an undeniably unique body of work blending elements of soul, art-pop, and R&B into a cohesive, personal masterpiece.

Upon release, it was an instant success both commercially and critically. Topping album charts in the UK, Canada, and throughout Europe, and breaking into the US Top 10. Critically it was met with top-rated reviews and over time has been praised as a classic and innovative album with Uncut saying it is “…a masterpiece of confessional pop that has only grown in stature,” Pitchfork praising it for its “Unflinching emotional honesty and production innovation,” and I magazine calling it “…his masterpiece and one of the finest moments of the ’80s musical landscape.”

The album has been officially certified 5x Platinum in the US and UK through actual physical sales alone. In the streaming era alone, Face Value has amassed over 2.4 billion streams to date with Phil’s general monthly listeners continuing to rapidly grow jumping 17% between July 2025–July 2026 to over 42 million. In April 2026, “In The Air Tonight” officially reached 1 Billion streams on Spotify, joining their Billions Club.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Interscope-Capitol Records’ Definitive Sound Series (DSS) announces Hole’s Live Through This as the next release in its acclaimed premium audiophile vinyl series. Available September 24, and now available for pre-order, the limited-edition All-Analog 180g One Step LP marks the first vinyl edition ever mastered from the album’s original analog master tapes, which were recently rediscovered by Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson.

Long believed lost, the original analog masters surfaced after Erlandson revisited a pair of oversized tape reels he had stored for decades. “I remembered two oversized reels from Bob Ludwig’s Gateway Mastering Studios that I had seen in my storage locker,” offers Erlandson. “I thought they were digital tapes created as backups. When I found them, I realized they were the actual analog mixes Bob had compiled to master the album. Bingo!”

Mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, the Definitive Sound Series edition of Live Through This was sourced from these rediscovered original analog master tapes and pressed on Neotech VR900 D2 180g high-definition vinyl at Record Technology, Inc. Utilizing the audiophile preferred One Step process, which eliminates multiple plating stages, the release presents the album with extraordinary clarity and dynamic range while preserving the intensity of the original recordings.

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And it’s a giveaway!

Here at The Vinyl District, we’re big on protection—not of the firearm variety, but smart common-sense measures to protect our vinyl investment(s), which is why we’re delighted to introduce you to ClearKeep Premium Collectible Storage Sleeves—quite literally the finest sleeves we’ve ever wrapped around a record.

What struck us first was the thickness of the sleeves—3.5 mil, which may sound like in-the-weeds stuff, but truly makes a difference in protective strength and stability. Second, as the name implies, they’re crystal-clear—no hazy plastic here. Our records literally shine in these gems. Lastly, and they really don’t make mention of this but we will—they ship flat, not folded—so there are no awkward folds or bends when you get down to the last few in the pack. It’s a nuance we really appreciate.

So, we said to the ClearKeep folks, “Let’s put these on readers’ radar!” And as such, we’re happy to sponsor this giveaway to introduce you to something Clearly needed by any serious collector or those just getting the vinyl bug. First up, though, some official background:

ClearKeep has announced the launch of its premium vinyl record outer sleeves, designed to address common frustrations that collectors and record stores face with traditional record protection products.

Many vinyl record sleeves on the market are thin, cloudy, prone to splitting, or diminish the presentation of the albums they are meant to protect. ClearKeep was created to offer a premium alternative focused on clarity, durability, and collector presentation.

Designed for both vinyl collectors and retail environments, ClearKeep outer sleeves are engineered to be crystal clear, thicker, and stronger than standard record sleeves while helping preserve album covers and improve shelf presentation.

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Celebrating Cat Stevens on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

The singer-songwriter movement that began in the late ‘60s and blossomed in the ‘70s became one of the most dominant musical movements of that very rich era. Its influence seems to continue to grow, and the genre’s key music holds up remarkably well.

While many think of American or Canadian artists as the dominant artists of the genre—Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Gordon Lightfoot, Carly Simon, and others—some British artists were also key to the sound, particularly Cat Stevens. His 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman became one of the most important and commercially successful albums of the era. A Super Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition of the album was released in 2020, along with Mona Bone Jakon, his previous album, which was also released in 1970.

Mona Bone Jakon signaled a sea-change in Stevens’s music. He had previously written and recorded very pop-oriented music for the Deram label, which was often lumped in with the then-waning British Invasion sound. Mona Bone Jakon also began his relationship with Chris Blackwell and Island Records. Equally influential and as timeless as Tea for the Tillerman, his next album, Teaser and the Firecat, released in 1971, is now also available in a Super Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition.

This set is as fulsome as the Tea set, including, for starters, four CDs. CD one is a 50th anniversary remaster of the original 10-track album. CD two includes 17 demos, alternate versions, rehearsals, bonus tracks, and new recordings of “The Wind” and “Bitterblue.” CD three, entitled Live On Air, UK 1970/71, includes 20 live radio and television performances, mostly from the BBC. CD four is a 12-song live performance from Montreux, Switzerland, on May 2, 1971.

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Bob Bert has sat in the drummer’s seat for a number of highly regarded bands, a few of them vastly important to underground rock’s march forward from the 1980s into the current century. He’s still quite active on the scene, with the newly released Beach Bongo Burnout his first album to hit stores under his own name. A truly solo affair, it finds Bert spurning the guitar, smacking away with his rhythm sticks and plattering up a rapid-fire burst of raw inspiration. It’s out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Bar/None Records.

The band that always gets named first in capsule biographies of Bob Bert is Sonic Youth, the outfit that commences the chronology of his discography. If not his first outlet of artistic expression, the Sonic Youth LPs Confusion Is Sex (1983) and Bad Moon Rising (1985) landed Bert in the history books, and his subsequent clanging and banging in Pussy Galore ensured his relevance.

Replacing John Hammill, Bert is the drummer on the biggest chunk of Pussy Galore’s output right up to the end. After that, as the 1990s dawned, Bert played in Action Swingers, Bewitched, and Chrome Cranks while collaborating with Kid Congo Powers and Lydia Lunch. More recently, Bert rejoined Pussy Galore’s Jon Spencer in the Hitmakers.

So yeah, Bob Bert’s been around the block a few times in the touring van. One might anticipate that his first solo album would be one of those years-in-the-making situations where he rounded up a dozen or so big names from his cohort, and when the schedules coincided, they got down to the business of making a big splash.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | On November 15, 1986, the Beastie Boys released Licensed to Ill—a debut that became the first rap album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200, a landmark moment in both hip‑hop and mainstream pop culture. 2026 marks the album’s 40th anniversary—a natural moment for revisiting how three kids from New York created one of the defining records of the 1980s.

In Beastie Boys: Licensed to Ill–40 Years (Quarto/Motorbooks, Oct. 13), music journalist Ben Merlis traces the album’s creation through new interviews with producers, collaborators, and cultural critics. The book offers a track‑by‑track history that explores the Beasties’ early New York years, their punk roots, the downtown scene, and the Def Jam era that shaped the group’s sound and identity. The book also features a foreword by Prince Paul, whose own groundbreaking work in hip‑hop places him among the most influential voices of the era.

As Merlis writes in the introduction, the Beastie Boys were “always the coolest guys in the room, always making unexpected choices others wouldn’t dare attempt.” He goes on to describe how what many listeners remember as a wild, funny, high‑energy album is the culmination of a far more complicated story—one that includes artistic breakthroughs and uncomfortable moments, deep friendships and irreparable betrayals, and a creative process that ran the full emotional spectrum.

His reporting reframes Licensed to Ill as both a joyous burst of youthful invention and a record whose legacy the band spent decades reshaping. Reading the story behind it, he notes, changes the way the album is heard.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Netflix’s Stranger Things, Lakeshore Records is releasing an epic 17 LP set of the complete score to all five seasons of the iconic series with music by Emmy winning and Grammy nominated composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. The albums are pressed on “Vecna’s Gate Vinyl” (red and orange colored vinyl), with gatefold jackets and full color inner sleeves. Stranger Things: All Seasons Vinyl Box Set is available for preorder via The Orchard and at other outlets. The set will be in-stores on October 30.

A love letter to the ‘80s classic genre films that captivated a generation, Stranger Things is a thrilling drama set in the seemingly normal Midwestern town of Hawkins, Indiana. After a boy vanishes into thin air, his close-knit group of friends and family search for answers and are pulled into a high-stakes and deadly series of events. Beneath the surface of their ordinary town lurks an extraordinary supernatural mystery, along with top-secret government experiments and a dangerous gateway that connects our world to a powerful yet sinister realm. Friendships will be tested and lives will be altered as what they discover will change Hawkins and possibly the world—forever.

Created by The Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things debuted in 2016 and quickly became one of Netflix’s most popular series, with Seasons 1-4 amassing over 1.2 billion views. The fifth and final season premiered in 2025 with the biggest English-language premiere week, joining Season 4 on Netflix’s Most Popular List. The final season also propelled Seasons 1–4 back into the Global Top 10 for a record eight weeks and delivered Netflix’s most-watched New Year’s Day.

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Celebrating Paul Cook on his 70th birthday. —Ed.

Well here it is–the first and best punk album ever vomited upon an unsuspecting public. And I don’t want to hear any naysaying or quibbling. With 1977’s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols Johnny Rotten and Company fired a shot heard round the world, and the aftershocks of this LP will be felt as long as kids continue to form punk bands, which is forever.

Never Mind the Bollocks sounds every bit as snotty and uncompromising as the day it was released, but hindsight affords us the opportunity to look at where it fits into the history of rock ’n’ roll. The first thing I would note is how much it has in common with smart English hard rock. Given a large quantity of speed and set loose in the studio, Mott the Hoople might have sounded like this. Which brings us to another point. Like Mott’s Ian Hunter, Johnny Rotten is one smart bloke. He may not have attended Oxford, but our lad Johnny had a knack for saying what was on his mind. And he summed up what was on his mind when he said, “Sometimes the most positive thing you can be in a boring society is absolutely negative.”

The songs on Never Mind the Bollocks are slower than I remember, and their sound is fuller; they don’t have that razor-thin edge one associates with, say, the Ramones or the Clash. And they don’t have the pop overtones of those bands either. Listen to the Ramones now and they sound like a bubblegum band; the Sex Pistols don’t blow bubbles and their songs might as well be Brighton rock. The Sex Pistols roar thank to Steve Jones’ blunderbuss guitar, and Johnny Rotten is purest ferocity. The Sex Pistols produce a ferocious din, and I can’t think of a punk band that has ever come close to equaling them in sheer savagery.

I prefer the cartoon nihilism of the Sex Pistols to the pretend revolutionary tendencies of the Clash; if nothing else, cartoon nihilism is far funnier. By “cartoon nihilism” I mean to imply that the anarchy advocated by this band probably goes no further than ripping the occasional car radio antenna off. I do not mean to suggest Johnny Rotten’s disgust, hatred, and bile are not real. It only takes a few seconds of LP opener “Anarchy in the U.K.” to demonstrate the man isn’t just taking the piss.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | David Bowie, The Shel Talmy Recordings is the most complete collection of tracks recorded by a nascent David Bowie, then Davie Jones, with legendary ‘60s producer Shel Talmy, best known for his groundbreaking hits with The Who and The Kinks. The album features ten previously unheard tracks on CD and digital, and six songs on LP, with contributions from legendary Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, then a guitar slinger for hire, and Nicky Hopkins, celebrated piano player for The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Who, and Jeff Beck.

As the musician and music historian Alec Palao puts it in his comprehensive sleeve notes that accompany the album, “David Bowie the artist is a book of chapters, the turn of each page delivering something completely different and unexpected from the last. And in perusal, a cardinal error would be to pit any of these episodes against the others, when in fact each fascinating phase in his career should be considered complementary. This collection, a primary chapter if not the very earliest installment in David’s musical journey, deserves legitimate consideration.

It is invariably tempting to search for clues in an artist’s tentative beginnings, and Bowie’s juvenilia has been dissected more than most, but this has rarely been done within the proper context. The sounds here should not be judged by the standards of his later career, but by the standards of what was happening in Britain at that precise point in time. In which case, they speak as loudly of the excitement of London and its music scene in that pivotal year of 1965 as they do for the launch of its brightest future star.”

Bowie and Talmy first encountered each other while frequenting London’s Denmark Street, which is now a guitar aficionado’s paradise but was then the centre of the British music industry, where budding songwriters sold their songs to the big publishers of the day. Talmy had already achieved huge success with The Who, The Kinks, and others, but was now branching out on his own to develop new talent.

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Sixties sacred cows Buffalo Springfield are a much-revered institution, much like Dinosaur Hall at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. And some people love dinosaurs, so I’ll have to tread carefully in this review, like a soldier making his nerve-wracking way across an IED-strewn mountain pass.

Buffalo Springfield fans are a surly and fanatical lot. You write about the band at your own risk. To pan them is to risk being impaled by a pitchfork. So politeness is called for. A delicate touch. Diplomacy. The de-escalation skills of a police negotiator.

So here it is, my measured and diplomatic opinion: Buffalo Springfield suck. They were folk-rock bores, and perhaps the most overrated band of the pre-Woodstock era. They left us a small handful of memorable songs, the most popular one being the dated “For What It’s Worth.” There are oldies, and then there are geriatrics. “For What It’s Worth” has one of those electric chair lifts to get it up and down the stairs.

Looking back at what I just wrote, I suppose I’m not very good at diplomacy. This could explain why I never achieved my lifelong dream of becoming Ambassador to Liechtenstein. And I think I’m in trouble. News spreads fast in the Buffalo Springfield fraternity, and fans are already up in arms, ululating as they stream out of every city, town, and country ending in “stan.” And word has it they’re letting their collective Freak Flag fly as they head in my direction, looking to give me a thorough peace and love mauling.

But please allow me, in the time I have left, to explain why I find Buffalo Springfield as appealing as a night of sexual congress with England Dan & John Ford Coley.

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