We’re ecstatic to unveil a no-holds-barred interview with the radiant Lucia Cifarelli, the voice that powers the legendary industrial rock leviathan, KMFDM. Since her fortuitous induction in 2002, Lucia has enveloped KMFDM with a whirlwind of creative energy, igniting their sound with her distinctive fiery spirit. Lucia Cifarelli’s potent vocals and lyrical prowess have not only left an indelible imprint on the band but also sculpted its genre-defying sound—a fusion of raw industrial rock, electronica’s pulse, and heavy metal’s intensity.

As we converse with Lucia, she generously unravels the rich tapestry of her journey with KMFDM, from her early days with the band to their most recent musical exploits. We dive headfirst into her background, the narratives behind their most celebrated anthems, and the unmasking of Lucia’s creative dynamism and inspiration that fuels their current sonic adventures. 

How did you get your start in music?

Well, I grew up listening to the radio. I had brother and sisters and there was music playing in everyone’s room. And as a result of that repeated and unrelenting exposure, I just fell in love with music in general. I still remember singing along in the bathroom with my hairbrush. I studied violin for a while and played in band in elementary school and I decided, I guess, when I was about 12 or 13 that I was going to be a rock star. I saw MTV and all these bigger than life iconic folks standing out there, and I said, “That’s the life for me.” And that point, I started taking voice lessons and then writing and collaborating with other songwriters in New York City while I was still in high school.

Can you recall the first time you performed on stage?

Yes, and it was terrifying. I’ll never forget it because I had been writing songs with lots of different songwriters in New York and I reached a point where I had to get out on stage. So my first real performance was with a band that I joined called Mercy Sky, and I was petrified. I was shaking so hard. I felt like I had a golf ball in my throat, and I’m pretty surprised that nobody laughed because I was God-awful. And I remained that way for a long time before I got the confidence that I’d like to believe I have now. But honestly, every show is a crapshoot. I’m good at what I do and I’m confident in what I do, but any number of things can go wrong during the course of a show which might throw your equilibrium off and thus throw you off your game. So that was the worst. But, yeah, losing my voice in front of thousands of people sucked pretty bad too.

Growing up, who were your musical inspirations?

I can tell you that I don’t feel as if I sound like any of the artists that influenced me, but I gravitated towards artists like Sinead O’Connor and PJ Harvey. I loved Sisters of Mercy. The first concert I ever saw that changed the whole trajectory of my style was when I was taken to see Diamanda Galás in New York—my sister was very ill at the time—dying of ARC, AIDS-related complex. Somebody invited me to see Diamanda Galás perform Plague Mass. She had written that piece for her brother who had died of AIDS. So it made quite an impact on me.

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The Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a purveyor of American myths. Dark myths—of long dead trains, ghosts on the highway, bad voodoo, murder and fire spirits and hellhounds on your trail. His was a vision of a haunted America where every day is judgment day, an America stained by blood and tormented by sins for which there is no forgiveness, and he translated that vision into a totally unique and new musical form—a raw punk blues infused with the imagery of our continent’s violent past. This alone set him apart from an LA punk scene set in a chaotic, dystopian present, one with no past and no future. Pierce’s vision was, ironically, closer to that of the Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead than to the Germs’ (GI). A taste for the past makes for strange bedfellows.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s fixation on the American deathtrip was odd indeed when one considers he was the one-time President of the Blondie Fan Club. He would bring a Bible on stage and preach fire and brimstone like a clay-eating, itinerant Pentecostal minister. In his mind he dreamed fugitive visions of evil going-ons in a rural South that was as foreign to him as it was to that other prophet of a bad moon rising, John Fogerty. It makes no sense to romanticize the guy. He was just a kid with a vivid imagination who liked Blondie. He wasn’t one of his characters, although he shared their taste for self-destruction. He wasn’t a myth. He didn’t die in the back seat of a 1952 Cadillac like Hank Williams. He was living with his mom. There’s something commonplace and domestic and touching about that.

The Gun Club’s debut album, 1981’s Fire of Love, is a revelation. Its primitive rhythms, raw sound and dark poetry spell out a vision of a savage, timeless America, one you won’t find on any roadmap. “Sex Beat” and “She’s Like Heroin to Me” are the standouts, carnal and dangerous. “Sex Beat” is a primal blast of feral punk blues that hits you straight where you live. A simple guitar riff and jungle drums propel Pierce’s shot-to-the-solar plexus vocals—when he sings “so you can move, move!” then follows it up with that “Sex beat… go!” it’s as exciting as hearing some long gone wild man in a Southern juke joint of the imagination. “She’s Like Heroin to Me” is all propulsion and slide guitar; it’s surprisingly melodic and is about a woman as seductive and addictive as a strong narcotic—she may be the only woman in the world that comes with a needle and a spoon. And Pierce, as always, is a live wire—the man’s frantic vocals shoot off sparks.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | With six Grammy nominations, 53 Pop chart hits, and 43 albums (15 Gold, three Platinum) to his name, and a 10-year stint headlining his own Emmy winning television variety show as well as serving as the original, longtime host of the Grammy Awards, crooner extraordinaire Andy Williams continues to cast a long shadow in the music industry and indeed in the whole world of entertainment over a decade after his passing.

The heart of his repertoire will forever be the 36 classic hits and beloved albums (e.g. Love, Andy) that he cut for the Columbia label, and those recordings have been endlessly reissued and anthologized. But there is one aspect of Andy’s career that remains a curious and very well-kept secret: he cut a lot of tracks for Columbia during his final years with the company that never saw the light of day.

Now, as a sequel to the acclaimed Emperor of Easy – Lost Columbia Masters 1962-1972, Real Gone Music is proud to present When You Fall in Love—Lost Columbia Masters 1977–1982, an 18-track collection consisting of over a dozen unreleased recordings plus several rare single-only sides from the Columbia vaults.

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How many different sides of you are there? Who are you when you’re alone, and how is that person different from who you are in front of others? We all have different sides to us and the world rarely sees the whole version of ourselves. But music and art can help to peel back the layers and provide a glimpse of the threads that make us who we are.

Stacey Kent has a long musical career under her belt, she is a longtime and critically acclaimed jazz vocalist and a Grammy nominee with a brand new album out now titled, Summer Me, Winter Me which is a compilation of the songs that she enjoys performing on stage, but that haven’t yet made it to an album. It’s that “little bit of everything” that lets us in on the secret of what Stacey enjoys performing for her audiences around the world, but also gives us a sneak peek into who she is through the eclectic blend of music that was chosen for this release.

Of course, like any great artist, she doesn’t do it alone. While many of the selections on the album may be familiar to you, several songs were written by Kent’s saxophonist, arranger, producer, and husband Jim Tomlinson. One of which was co-written with their longtime collaborator and Nobel Prize winner, Kazuo Ishiguro.

Stacey has album sales in excess of two million, Platinum, Double-Gold, and Gold-selling albums that have reached a series of chart-topping positions and over half a billion Spotify streams—and she joins us on Radar to kick off a new year of conversations with style, grace, and plenty of panache. Happy New Year to Stacey…and Happy New Year to you, dear listener…

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

I’ll tell you what this fool believes—there has never been a song that wouldn’t sound better with Michael McDonald singing on it. The Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen”? Needs Michael McDonald on backing vocals. The Ramones first album? It would really kick ass with Michael McDonald back there singing up a soulful blue-eyed storm. Sonic Youth? Nothing without Michael McDonald. Ditto Lydia Lunch, the New York Dolls, Black Sabbath, Ted Nugent, the Urinals, Public Enemy, and GG Allin.

Ziggy Stardust may be the greatest album ever recorded but it would be an even greater greatest album ever recorded if Michael McDonald was in the mix. I’m sure you agree. Because the McGodfather’s R&B patented rumble—the guy sings like a four-on-the-Richter-scale earthquake that mumbles—will always turn anything it touches into gold. Gold records, that is. What have we done to deserve him? Nothing, so far as I can tell. He’s a form of grace. He’s Michael McDonald. I sure wish he sang on “Holiday in Cambodia.” That would fucking rock.

Of course, why settle for the Yacht Rock Soul King’s singing back-up when he can be right up front and personal? Sure, McDonald enriched songs by Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, Toto, Bonnie Raitt, Stephen Bishop, Wang Chung and others, but he’ll be best remembered for resurrecting those long gone hippies the Doobie Brothers, which let’s face it was a miracle of almost biblical proportions. Come 1975 the Doobs needed a temporary replacement for singer Tom Johnston, and McDonald not only stepped in, he stepped up, lending his trademark resonant mumble to a handful of instant classics. He singlehandedly turned a band on their way down into a first-class Yacht Rock hit machine.

Come 1982 McDonald went the solo route, and while he has recorded some fine songs over the years—including duets with the likes of Patti LaBelle and James Ingram—few equal the power and the glory of such Doobified classics as “Takin’ It to the Streets,” “Minute by Minute” or, let us all fall to our knees and give thanks, the halo-crowned “What a Fool Believes,” one of the few songs I can think of that deserves its own Nativity scene.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Our 2020–2021 release on CD and LP of the 20 albums recorded for the legendarily collectible Black Jazz label was probably the most momentous and successful reissue campaign we at Real Gone Music have ever done. That music recorded 50 years ago could speak so eloquently to the turmoil our society was experiencing during those days of COVID and civic unrest attests to its enduring beauty and the power of its spiritually-tinged message of black empowerment.

Ever since we put out the last Black Jazz album, though, we have wrestled with how to create a compilation of this amazingly varied and rich body of work. And then we realized—why not label producer Gene Russell do it for us? Though Russell is long gone, the compositions he selected for the ten singles the label put out give us a ready-made template for a Black Jazz collection. Thus, we’re releasing this 15-track CD with three goals in mind. First, to offer something of a “best-of” for folks new to the label or for those who want a “sampler” (though we highly recommend delving into the complete album catalog).

Second, for the completist collectors, we’ve included the unique single edits…with a caveat. On those singles that simply faded out the album track on one side and faded it up on the next, we’ve elected to present the album tracks without interruption to ensure a more seamless listening experience.

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Celebrating Michael Stipe on his 64th birthday. —Ed.

It was nearly four decades ago to the day that R.E.M. released their debut EP “Chronic Town,” a crucial step in the evolution of the biggest act the US college rock era ever produced. It is a trim five-song effort bursting with energy and the jangle that would soon come to define the band’s ’80s work, and for a long stretch of time was the stereotypical sound of the Athens scene.

To be clear, the songs that comprise “Chronic Town,” were added to the CD release of the 1987 B-sides comp Dead Letter Office, and they also received their own CD in the 1995 European box set The Originals alongside R.E.M.’s first LP, 1983’s Murmur, and its follow-up, 1984’s Reckoning. They’ve just never been on CD by their lonesome before, which is interesting, since the EP, in retrospect, isn’t a formative work. And unlike their debut single, “Radio Free Europe” b/w “Sitting Still,” released in 1981 on the Hib-Tone label, nothing on “Chronic Town” ended up in the sequence of Murmur.

Around the time of the EP’s release and for a while after, R.E.M. was considered by many to be something of a throwback (not a synth, keyboard, or programmed rhythm in their scheme). And the band did emerge in tried-and-true fashion, announcing their presence with that 45, then raising their profile through “Chronic Town,” and finally making an even bigger splash with Murmur, largely left of the dial but with some commercial rock radio infiltration.

Not only was “Chronic Town” not formative, there was also not a thing tentative about it, with opener “Wolves, Lower” bursting forth with an urgency that the band never managed on a subsequent release. It’s striking to read in Easter’s notes that the decision was made to return to the studio for another take of “Wolves, Lower,” as the initial recording (lost to time, apparently) was deemed to be too fast (notably, the single version of “Radio Free Europe” is a more energetic take than the one that opens Murmur).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “The urgent need to preserve a cornerstone of American culture led folklorists like John Lomax to travel the country documenting early blues recordings and writers like Amiri Baraka to publish Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Although Margo Cooper did not know it when she began more than twenty years ago, she has followed that tradition and produced a documentary project that archives the oral and visual histories of blues musicians, their families, and communities in northern Mississippi and the Delta.” —fayemi shakur, New York Times Lens blog

Deep Inside the Blues collects thirty-four of Margo Cooper’s interviews with blues artists and is illustrated with over 160 of her photographs, many published here for the first time. For thirty years, Cooper has been documenting the lives of blues musicians, their families and homes, neighborhoods, festivals, and gigs.

Her photographic work combines iconic late-career images of many legendary figures including Bo Diddley, Honeyboy Edwards, B. B. King, Pinetop Perkins, and Hubert Sumlin with youthful shots of Cedric Burnside, Shemekia Copeland, and Sharde Thomas, themselves now in their thirties and forties. During this time, the Burnside and Turner families and other Mississippi artists such as T-Model Ford, James “Super Chikan” Johnson, and L. C. Ulmer entered the national and international spotlight, ensuring the powerful connection between authentic Delta, Hill Country, and Piney Woods blues musicians and their audience continues.

In 1993, Cooper began photographing in the clubs around New England, then in Chicago, and before long in Mississippi and Helena, Arkansas. On her very first trips to Mississippi in 1997 and 1998, Cooper had the good fortune to photograph Sam Carr, Frank Frost, Bobby Rush, and Otha Turner, among others. “The blues come out of the field,” Ulmer told Cooper.

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We conclude our deep dive into the Guerssen label’s recent and upcoming output with a proper inspection of two terribly scarce LPs seeing reissue on January 19 by the Nicaraguan psychedelic Latin funk supergroup Poder del Alma (“Soul Power”), their self-titled debut from 1974 and its follow-up from the following year, Poder del Alma II. Cut by an evolving lineup organized and led by Román Cerpas, the records share a dynamic sound that’s intensity and vividness is particularly sharp on the second effort. The Latin groove heat is substantial.

Poder del Alma’s roots are in the devastating Nicaraguan earthquake of December 23, 1972, which destroyed much of Managua and killed over 20,000 people. Understandably, rebuilding was difficult and international help was needed. Nearly a year later, the band Santana came to Nicaragua to play a benefit for the victims. To secure an appropriately powerhouse opening act for a crowd of 44,000 people (Nicaragua’s biggest audience ever), the concert’s promotor Alfonso Lovo Jr. worked diligently to assemble an all-star combo.

A far more thorough accounting of Poder del Alma’s development comes via Ruffy “TNT” in the booklet that accompanies these albums, but it suits this review to say the group stuck together and under the guidance of multi-instrumentalist and musical director Román Cerpas, they desired to cut a record. To do so meant traveling outside the country, as studio facilities in Managua were compromised due to the quake.

To Guatemala they went, but the studio hosting them had fewer instruments than promised, plus equipment issues and a real jerk for a producer. Still, Poder del Alma cut the record, and if not as sonically crisp as the follow-up, the first set is the more psychedelic of the two. This quality is in large part a byproduct of the acid guitar of René “Chapo” Dominguez, heard straightaway in opener “El Valle del Ayatimbo” with its wailing soaring solos.

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Cleethorpes, UK | Cleethorpes record shop sees ‘busiest month ever’ as sales of vinyl soar across the UK: Matt Driver opened Howlin’ Jacks Record Store in early 2021 and has had good business ever since – December 2023 was his busiest month ever since opening. A Cleethorpes record store has had its “busiest month on record” since opening three years ago, as the sales of vinyl continue to soar across the UK. Matt Driver, who owns Howlin’ Jacks Record Store on High Street, said he “didn’t know what to expect” when he embarked on his business venture in January 2021, but has seen a steady influx of both regular and new customers. The store was so successful that within a few months of opening, he had to move to larger premises – and in December 2023, sales were at the highest they have ever been. …Matt told Grimsby Live: “I’ve been open for nearly three years and the sales in my shop have gone up and up. December has been our best month since we opened.”

Hull, UK | How business is booming at Hull record shop as vinyl sales reach highest levels since 1990: Out Of The Attic opened the day the first lockdown lifted in 2020 and has never looked back. If you’re a music lover you may well have unwrapped a turntable or a few new vinyl records for Christmas this year as interest in the decades-old format continues to bounce back. According to the British Phonographic Industry – the trade body representing the music sector – sales of vinyl LPs have reached their highest levels since 1990 in the UK. Independent record stores and the resurgent success of the likes of high-street stalwart HMV have played a pivotal part in the demand. Though more than 80 per cent of recorded music is now heard through streaming, sales of vinyl records have increased 16 years in a row and went up by 11.7 per cent year-on-year in 2023 to 5.9 million units. Even sales of audio cassettes have held up after a recent resurgence, topping 100,000 for a fourth consecutive year.

Uxbridge, MA | Past has presence at new music store in Uxbridge: Alyssa Lincoln grew up surrounded by vinyl records, turntables and music from before her time. Lincoln’s father and grandfather both moonlighted as DJs. The the music of her childhood ranged from her grandfather’s 1930s Mills Brothers records to Amy Winehouse’s then-current but retro-sounding radio hits, which inspired her to come up with her own melodies. “I’ve been writing since I was 6 years old. I can remember writing silly songs that a 6-year-old would write about,” Lincoln said. Now 21, Lincoln is carrying on her family’s musical tradition by founding her own record store in her hometown of Uxbridge. Retro Records will hold its grand opening, set for Jan. 6. Customers will be able to browse a wide range of vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs featuring music released between the 1930s and 1990s. “A lot of people have been asking about it, interested, intrigued by what I’m doing. That makes me look forward to the opening, and I think it’ll go well,” Lincoln said.

UK | Vinyl fans and traders tell of love for LPs as sales soar: While more than four fifths of recorded music is consumed via streaming, vinyl continues to make a comeback. Sales rose by 11.7% to 5.9 million units in 2023, increasing for the 16th year in a row, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade group. BBC News spoke with traders and customers in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire about the LP’s enduring appeal. Tim Laws sifts through dozens of LPs in The Beatles section of Spin-It Records in Hull’s Trinity Market. He’s hoping the Fab Four can add some Sixties sparkle to his family’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. Established in 1993, we are in what the owners claim to be the UK’s oldest vinyl-only record shop. More than 15,000 LPs and 7,000 singles, many with weird and wonderful sleeve designs, adorn the shelves. Mr Laws says: “I’m 64 years old and I’ve loved music and records my whole life. Records are like books—they last forever.”

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