A look back at what was in stores, and perhaps some of your scores.

Maybe the best Record Store Day Black Friday 2025 release was The Complete Elektra Albums from Love. The box set comprises five vinyl records, including the first four albums from the pioneering 1960s LA group, and a bonus disc of rarities. Love was one of the most important bands of the West Coast ’60s music scene, which had a devoted cult following that is nearly unequaled for that time and place.

The group was led by Arthur Lee, who, like Jimi Hendrix, was a black man whose sound was rooted almost entirely in rock. Signed by Jac Holzman of Elektra Records, the band was one of the first rock signings of the mostly folk and roots Elektra label, but it became overshadowed by the other rock signing of that period, The Doors.

Love’s self-titled debut, its first album in 1966, came out the year before the self-titled debut of The Doors. While it showed real rock muscle and had a garage sound with tinges of psychedelia to come, and included such superb covers as “Little Red Book” and “Hey Joe,” it was the group’s next album, Da Capo, also released in 1966, that was a revelation. Fully embracing subtle psychedelic touches, its baroque instrumentation and production, along with Lee’s emotive singing, made it an instant cult classic that has lost none of its luster nearly 60 years later.

However, this was truly a band, and key member Bryan MacLean’s contributions are significant, particularly on “Orange Skies.” Additionally, the production team, comprising engineers Bruce Botnick (who also co-produces) and Dave Hassinger, along with the production supervision of label boss Holzman, makes this a textbook on ’60s record-making. The group’s next album, Forever Changes (1967), was an even better release. While a long-extended jam took up all of side two of Da Capo, Forever Changes was an 11-track masterpiece.

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I recently spoke with Daniel Ash, musician, songwriter, and singer—and a founding member of Bauhaus, Tones on Tail, and Love and Rockets.

Daniel and I talk about his electromagnetic tendencies, the formation of Bauhaus, his love of solitude and city, chrome, gear, how he first discovered the EBow, music he loves, and the Ashes and Diamonds album.

The new band consists of Daniel in his usual roles bringing his signature post-punk, glam and experimental style. He is joined by Bruce Smith on drums, programming, and backing vocals. Bruce is a veteran of Public Image Ltd. and The Pop Group. Paul Spencer Denman is on bass. Paul is best known as the bassist for Sade and Sweetback.

Ashes and Diamonds have released the single and video for “On A Rocka” whose video was directed by Jake Scott, and their latest single “Setting Yourself Up for Love.” The full album is out on Halloween through Cleopatra Records via streaming and limited edition vinyl. It’s all gorgeous!

Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer, and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

On the scene in the Southern USA since the mid-’90s, Tyler Keith specializes in what one might call roots punk. He’s played in numerous bands and even released a few records under his own name along the way. His latest, I Confess, is the byproduct of tough personal circumstances. Faced with a lack of ducats, no musical compadres, and rising rent, Keith made a series of wise decisions; he grabbed his instruments, set up his 4-track, and cut a truly solo record in his kitchen. Raw and bluesy, the 12-song set is out now on vinyl and digital through Black & Wyatt Records.

Way back in the boom years of the 1990s, Tyler Keith’s band The Neckbones earned the distinction of being the first, and for a long while, the only rock band on the Fat Possum label. Garage punk was the style, and after The Neckbones finally snapped, Keith fronted the Preachers’ Kids for a handful of albums, then moved on to Tyler Keith & the Apostles and Teardrop City.

Under his own name, with backup, he recorded The Last Drag in 2020 and Hell to Pay in 2023. Now here comes I Confess, which is Keith going it wholly alone with appropriately crude overdubs in the spirit of dangerous times. Opener “Out on a Limb” rips right into high gear, dishing a jagged blues-rock grind with a legit air of desperation about it.

“Lost in the Desert” is a downright doomy journey into echo overload with convulsions of harmonica. “Buckskin Girl” sounds like a Nuggets-styled act that took a wrong turn and ended up playing their one song at gunpoint on the outskirts of some demented backwoods carnival. And then “Black Cloud Blues” takes a further offramp into acidic paroxysmal pessimism; it’s a bit like a late-night dark arts communion of John Lee Hooker and Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | This year marks 45 years since the release of The Durutti Column’s landmark album The Return Of The Durutti Column. To celebrate, London Records release a very special reissue of the seminal Manchester band’s 1980 debut, out now and available to order here.

One of the first groups to be signed to the legendary Manchester label Factory Records in 1978, The Durutti Column took their name from Spanish Civil War anarchist Buenaventura Durruti and a 1960s Situationist comic strip. Having appeared on Factory’s inaugural release A Factory Sample (a double 7” compilation also featuring Joy Division, John Dowie, and Cabaret Voltaire), the band’s relationship with the label would endure for two decades and ten studio albums.

The Return Of The Durutti Column remains one of Factory’s most enduring and important works: fragile, otherworldly, and quietly radical. Produced by Martin Hannett, it showcased Vini Reilly’s distinctive, delicate guitar work against Hannett’s ambient textures, post-punk reverb, and glacial electronics. The 45th Anniversary Edition will be available in several formats:

The Deluxe Sandpaper LP, replicating the rare first pressing and limited to 500 numbered copies worldwide. Each sleeve has been spray-painted by hand with the original catalogue number, FACT 14. This edition includes a unique printed inner sleeve featuring an essay by Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, housed inside a protective outer cover. Available exclusively at store.the-durutti-column.com.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the reissue of Music by Lee Mason, the cult classic from the Chappell Recorded Music Library, originally released in the UK in 1971.

Credited to Lee Mason & His Orchestra, the album is in fact the work of renowned British composer and arranger Pete Moore—best known for producing the iconic “Asteroid” theme in 1968 for the Pearl & Dean cinema advertising company. One of the funkiest library albums of its era, blending cinematic tension, funky grooves, and jazzy undertones, Music by Lee Mason features the track “Shady Blues,” famously sampled by Madlib. Newly remastered and featuring liner notes by Kevin Le Gendre, this reissue brings a lost classic back to vinyl for the first time since 1971.

Recorded at the dawn of the prolific ’70s UK library music boom, Music By Lee Mason was part of the successful Chappell Recorded Music series—produced for television, film, and advertising professionals. Working under the “Lee Mason” alias, Pete Moore used the format to explore a wide palette of sounds: funky rhythm sections, fat horns, bumping bass lines, and catchy melodies that reveal both sophistication and swing.

​Across its eleven tracks, the album moves seamlessly between funky grooves, jazzy arrangements, and cinematic moods. “Shady Blues” in particular has become a cult favourite among crate-diggers, its slow-burning groove later sampled by Madlib for the Lootpack track “Answers” featuring Quasimoto, giving the piece new life in the spheres of hip-hop and digging culture.

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Remembering Wynton Kelly, born on this date in 1931. —Ed.

Wes Montgomery remains one of the undisputed greats of Modern Jazz guitar. To hear the man at his best is to luxuriate in the elevated energies of Smokin’ at the Half Note, an LP co-billing him with the impeccable trio of pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. That set has been freshly reissued in Verve/UMe’s Acoustic Sound Series, and for consumers of vinyl with a passion for post-bop jazz, its acquisition is absolutely essential.

As “No Blues” opens Smokin’ at the Half Note it becomes rapidly clear the album’s title is wholly accurate, though in fact it only communicates part of the release’s reality, as the three tracks on side two, the Sam Jones composition “Unit 7,” the Montgomery original “Four on Six” and the standard “What’s New?,” were cut in studio in September of 1965. The visit to Van Gelder’s Hackensack, NJ studio, reportedly at the behest of producer Creed Taylor, occurred roughly three months after the band’s engagement at the New York City club; the LP hit stores in November of that year.

The studio side, if a tad more composed in execution than the two live cuts, does not falter. But really, it’s “No Blues” that has firmly established this record’s reputation as a must-own, with the track’s gripping nature reflected in the release’s shared billing. Having formed through an association with trumpeter Miles Davis in 1958 and heard together on one track, “Freddie Freeloader,” on Davis’ Kind of Blue, plus the entirety of its follow-up Someday My Prince Will Come (where “No Blues” was first recorded under the tile “Pfrancing”), the triumvirate cut numerous albums as a working band.

The trio’s familiarity with Montgomery was long-established. They are heard together, with the addition of tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, on Full House, cut for Riverside in 1962. In short, Kelly, Cobb, and Chambers knew each other well, they knew “No Blues” well, and they knew Montgomery well. This explains the cut’s casual energy in showcasing the guitarist’s technical skill and in how he seamlessly integrates those heightened abilities into a swinging post-bop scenario par excellence.

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When it comes to raw and scorching ’90s garage punk, few bands did it better than Teengenerate. Featuring singing guitarists Fink and Fifi, bassist Sammy, and drummer Suck (later replaced by Shoe), the Tokyo-based band swiped their name from a Dictators song and specialized in the snotty and surly, a la prime Dead Boys. No Teengenerate release better encapsulates the band’s strengths than the just-released Live at the Empty Bottle, a wild and wailing 16-song set captured on November 5, 1995, mastered by Tim Warren of Crypt Records fame and pressed onto vinyl by HoZac Records of Chicago. The album is an absolute necessity for garage punk mavens.

HoZac platters up the occasional record by a contemporary band, like the freshly issued and very appealing Hangin on a String by Laundry Bats (a trio comprised of Memphis garage punk royalty), but the label has been increasingly devoted to retrospective releases under the heading HoZac Archival, alongside an ever-growing shelf of books where music is the common subject matter.

HoZac Archival’s steady, sturdy, historically focused output largely mines the proto and pre-hardcore punk eras for revelatory material. Although there is a high standard of quality, the objective doesn’t seem to be the curation of flawless masterworks but rather documenting a spectrum of subterranean punk-aligned activity, often from the days before the movement even had a name.

There are releases of a more recent vintage in HoZac Archival’s discography, and many of those are from the 1990s, which makes total sense, as the decade was a certifiable hotbed of garage punk action. Nothing illustrates the garage punk dominance of the ’90s better than Live at the Empty Bottle, which presents Teengenerate in total command of their joyous viciousness.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | UMe/Geffen celebrate Guns N’ Roses’ incredible musical legacy with Guns N’ Roses – Live Era ’87-’93, the ultimate vinyl set that chronicles the first official live album from Guns N’ Roses.

Live Era ’87-’93 was recorded live across the universe between 1987 and 1993, and it has been newly remastered for this collection from the original stereo analog master tapes for the first time since 1999. Included on Live Era ’87-’93 are definitive, of-era live renditions of classic Guns N’ Roses tracks such as “November Rain,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine, “Welcome To The Jungle,” “Don’t Cry,” and “Paradise City.”

Out now, Guns N’ Roses – Live Era ’87-’93 features a total of 23 live tracks. It is available in multiple configurations, including a Premium 4-LP Color Vinyl, Standard 4-LP 180-Gram Black Vinyl, and Digital Remaster.

The new remaster of Guns N’ Roses – Live Era ’87-’93 is available to stream and as digital downloads newly expanded with the 1999 vinyl and Japan bonus track “Coma,” with all vinyl configurations available to order, HERE.

Live Era ’87-’93: 4LP Premium Edition: The limited edition 4LP Premium Edition sports two gatefold jackets that come inside an embossed slipcase with foil details, and includes a poster. Each of the 4 LPs are pressed on unique color vinyl, and is available HERE.

Live Era ’87-’93: 4LP: The standard 4LP edition is pressed on 180-gram black vinyl, has been expanded into two gatefold jackets that are housed in a slipcase, and comes with a poster.

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Celebrating Eric Bloom on his 81st birthday. —Ed.

Blue Öyster Cult’s 1978 live album Some Enchanted Evening is a devil’s bargain. Unlike the band’s live 1974 two-fer On Your Feet or on Your Knees it includes the absolutely essential “Godzilla” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” but unlike the latter album it’s short on classics—it has to be, seeing as how it only has seven songs and two of them are covers. The result is an album that despite its great songs is lacking in ambition, and the miracle is it remains the band’s biggest seller.

The entire Blue Öyster Cult Konzept was an elaborate shuck, right down to the cryptic band name, hilarious umlaut and utterly cool logo. The band’s “Career of Evil” persona was a goof, conceived by the high-spirited inmates of a group house at Long Island’s Stony Brook University. One of them was rock critic Sandy Pearlman, who was quickly named the band’s manager and contributed lyrics, and from the very start they exploited the kinds of dark imagery and subject matter (Nazi fighter jets, Altamont motorcycle gangs, dominance and submission) designed to induce a sense of menace. And this from a group of friendly Jewish guys from the nation’s first suburb whose collective notion of evil probably consisted of sneaking free food from the university’s dining hall.

But the masses bought it—hell, I bought it—and this despite such dead giveaways as songs like “She’s As Beautiful as Foot,” the lyrics of which were penned by noted rock scribe and band associate Richard Meltzer, who would go on to contribute the lyrics for “Burnin’ for You.” Blue Öyster Cult created a mock mythology for itself, which made the band one of rock’s most mysterious bands and greatest put-ons, although they probably wouldn’t have made it out of Long Island had it not been for the fact that guitarists/vocalists Eric Bloom and Donald Roeser (aka Buck Dharma), keyboardist Allen Lanier, bass player/vocalist Joe Bouchard, and drummer Albert Bouchard knew their way around their instruments and had a knack for writing powerful but melodic songs with gnomic subject matter. Take “7 Screaming Diz-Busters.” I’ll be damned if I know what a diz-buster is, and if you do I’d appreciate your letting me know.

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