Guitar virtuoso Adrian Vandenberg has been a prominent figure in the world of rock music for decades, thanks to his signature sound and technical prowess on the six string.

Best known for his stint as one of the guitarists in Whitesnake during the late 1980s, Vandenberg has also made significant contributions to many other bands, including Manic Eden, Teaser, and his eponymous band Vandenberg. We recently spoke to Vandenberg to delve into the mind of this legendary musician to learn more about his inspirations, artistic vision, and upcoming projects.

Tell us about the new Vandenberg album Sin. What was the inspiration behind it, and what can fans who haven’t given it a spin expect from it?

Well, every time I make an album, I try to raise the bar just a little bit. This becomes harder over time and especially now because I was really happy with the 2020 album. So sometimes I get slightly intimidated. I go, “Oh man, I got to live up to this.” And then I just dive into the deep so to speak, get more confident and I go, okay—this is going somewhere.

Everything creates a kind of echo in my head, and it makes it really interesting for me to trace back where, what excited me, and what still excites me. And I always come back to the fact that it’s all about inspiration, but especially about expressiveness—rock or blues or any music that’s supposed to be played from the heart and from the soul.

When it doesn’t have that electric spark, especially in rock, then it becomes pop music. And that’s not the idea, because you don’t get that urge to play it in the car, open the window, and crank it all the way up. Whether it’s a great blues artist like Stevie Ray Vaughan, or whether it’s a great Zeppelin album, or a great Van Halen album. That’s what I’m looking for.

How does the current Vandenberg lineup differ from past versions of the band?

Well, in early Vandenberg, it was the same lineup for three albums. When I restarted Vandenberg under that particular name, it was because of the name recognition over so many years. Because of that, people know what to expect from a Vandenberg album and what it’s going to be about. With the current lineup, I was very fortunate to find these guys. The bass player, Randy van der Elsen, and the drummer, Koen Herfst, are from Holland and our singer, Mats Levén, is Scandinavian. They are all top level internationally and could play with any top American band.

How has your playing style evolved since the early days of Vandenberg to now?

I think as an artist, you should evolve. It always surprises me when sometimes people say, “Well, it doesn’t sound like a Vandenberg song from the early ’80s.” You go, “Man, that’s 40 years ago.” It would be very weird if you keep doing the same thing, ran on auto pilot, and keep recreating the sounds of yesterday. You should evolve.

And I’m very critical about my songwriting and about my guitar playing. And you mentioned the playing. Yes, this time I try to dig even deeper to squeeze every little drop of passion out of each and every note. I’m more into how I play things than what I play, even though, of course what I play has to do something with a song.

And in my case, I’m fortunate that I write the music because I know what I want to get across with a solo. It needs to be a little story inside the story. But it still needs to have everything to do with the story that you’re telling in the rest of the song.

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It’s many days until the Presidential Election, and Rudy Ray Moore is not on the ballot; today the man is largely remembered as a key precursor to rap and as the star of the grindhouse classic Dolemite, but way back in 1972 this departed spieler of comedic smut put a topical spin on his rhyming routine by defiantly growling out Dolemite for President. 

Before hitting upon the persona for which he’s best remembered, Rudy Ray Moore worked as a singer, dancer, and comedian. Cutting a succession of solid if not spectacular R&B singles for numerous labels, he also worked up enough material for three comedy albums; ’59’s Below the Belt is accurately pegged as risqué, but follow-up The Beatnik Scene differs markedly from the X-rated style that eventually brought him success.

It’s now well-established that the 1970s ushered in a loosening of mores concerning sexual explicitness, violence, and language; regarding the latter, George Carlin, Redd Foxx, and Richard Pryor rode atop that wave like champs. Moore achieved considerable success as well, but due to the sheer explicitness and yes, blackness of his material, he ultimately didn’t cross over. Instead, his productivity served a tighter-knit community, and he eventually became a cult figure.

According to lore, it was while employed in a Hollywood record shop that Moore nabbed the Dolemite character from stories told by a wino named Rico. Expanding upon the long tradition of the Dozens, Moore adapted Rico’s toasts and gave them jazzy-bluesy musical backing on a string of LPs beginning with 1970’s Eat Out More Often; the raps were dirty, the covers were salacious, and by the start of the ’90s the vinyl was quite hard to find.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings is thrilled to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Violent Femmes’ 1983 self-titled debut with a special reissue of the seminal cult classic. Due out December 1st and available for pre-order now, the deluxe 2-CD and digital formats will feature newly remastered audio and over a dozen demos, B-sides, and live performances from the pioneering folk-punk trio—including alternate versions of iconic songs like “Blister in the Sun,” “Please Do Not Go,” “Gone Daddy Gone,” and “Add It Up.”

A special 4-disc vinyl box set will follow February 9th, 2024, limited to 5,000 copies worldwide. Housed in a lift-top box with die-cut window detail, this collectible edition offers three 180-gram LPs—the original album, alongside the demos, and live material—plus, a replica 7-inch single (“Ugly”/“Gimme the Car”). The original album and single discs are cut from the original analog tapes, while lacquers for the complete set were cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. Both the CD and LP editions will feature an expansive book with new liner notes by journalist and Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke, complete with interviews with Violent Femmes members Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie, and Victor DeLorenzo.

Reflecting on the album’s 40th anniversary, bassist Brian Ritchie shares: “I am frequently stopped on the street by people who tell me, ‘Your album changed my life,’ or some variant. I don’t have to ask, ‘Which album?’ because it is implied that they’re talking about the first one. The uncanny thing is that these people range from early teens to septuagenarians, and they all have the same testimony.” Ritchie adds, “Sometimes music is more than just a pleasing sound that entertains. It takes on greater meaning. Multiple generations have found the songs to be relevant in their life situations. Some people say they had sex for the first time listening to it (which I find appalling but whatever) and someone even said, ‘I was conceived to your music.’ Wow.”

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Texas-born Ornette Coleman was one of the most uncompromising and influential artists in post-war jazz history. He also had a career that carried on long after his supposed heyday with some superb albums on Verve Records in the 1990s. These two Contemporary reissues represent the beginning of his recording career as a solo artist and leader in Los Angeles.

Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman, released in 1958, features Coleman on alto sax, Don Cherry on trumpet, Waler Norris on piano, Don Payne on double bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. All the songs were written by Coleman. This is a swinging affair spotlighting Coleman in an uncharacteristically relaxed place with a joyously often blues-based sound.

His interplay with Cherry is incomparable. Norris, with his tasteful, melodic piano is the most responsible for helping Coleman play more accessible music. Higgins, as always, provides a kick and swing to any session he played on. The longest track, “Jayne,” written for his wife, is beautifully rendered. She was his first wife. The relationship lasted ten years and she went on to major literary success. This is quite an album for a debut release, hinting at the kind of groundbreaking free jazz music he would make in only a few short years.

Tomorrow is the Question! The New Music of Ornette Coleman, released the next year, would reflect the more experimental, dissonant, improvisational and avant-garde side of Coleman’s music and set the stage for his next album in 1959, his Atlantic debut, the groundbreaking The Shape of Jazz to Come. Don Cherry returns and on this album, Shelly Manne handles the drums, with Percy Heath on bass on side one and Red Mitchell on bass on side two. Eliminating piano would be part of Coleman’s new approach. Like on the previous album, all the songs were written by Coleman.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | On December 1, IGA/UMe will release Nelly Furtado’s masterful dance-pop third album, June 2006’s Loose, on vinyl. Catapulted by a trio of No. 1 hits—the suggestive serve-and-volley relationship conversation “Promiscuous (Feat. Timbaland),” the percussive drive of the pleading “Say It Right,” and the sultry declarations of “Maneater”—Loose became an international sensation, having sold 12M copies globally to date.

Loose will be released in two vinyl options. The standard 2LP version comes in a gatefold sleeve and is available on standard black vinyl, while the Limited-Edition version comes in an exclusive red and white color vinyl. Engineer Dennis “Roc” Jones recently used the original master files to create a truly special 2LP edition of Loose. Preorder HERE.

Furtado’s phenomenal, genre-defying album Loose expanded the Canadian artist’s reach both creatively and commercially by testing the boundaries of pop by incorporating a litany of dance-music elements, reggaeton and R&B influences, and hip-hop beats into the tenets of her forward-thinking songwriting and arranging.

Produced primarily by Timbaland and Danja, along with Nisan Stewart, Lester Mendez, Rick Nowels, and Furtado herself, the aptly named Loose bursts forth with an even-dozen winning tracks like the falsetto encouragement of “Do It,” the heavenly ballad “In God’s Hands,” and the touching “Te Busque,” featuring a guest vocal from Juanes. All 12 of the core songs on Loose prove why Nelly Furtado became such an international superstar. (A bonus track, the Spanish version of “Te Busque” (Feat. Juanes), is included at the end of Side 4.)

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Zephire Andre Williams packed a lot of living into his 83 years on this planet, and along the way his name has been attached to a whole lot of records. In the second half of the 1950s he cut a slew of smolderingly low-fi platters for Detroit’s Fortune label, with “Bacon Fat” b/w “Just Because of a Kiss” growing into a national hit. The a-side is amongst the most potent R&B of its era, and it rightfully stands as a classic.

Specifically due to its scarcity, Andre Williams’ early work was once the stuff of legend. Not just his run of singles for Fortune, but his subsequent motions for ventures of differing size and longevity such as Wingate, Sport, Avin, Checker, and Duke. He was also noted for his role behind the scenes at Motown during the first half of the ‘60s and as a co-writer (with Otha Hayes and Verlie Rice) of “Shake a Tail Feather,” the original of which was recorded in Chicago by The Five Du-Tones for the One-derful imprint.

The waxing of that ludicrously swank monster occurred in 1963 during one of Williams’ absences from Motown. It’s now well-established that he and Berry Gordy’s relationship was a highly volatile one, and by ’65 the two men had parted ways for good. His biggest post-Motown success came at Checker, one of the numerous subsidiaries belonging to Phil and Leonard Chess. Hooking up with Ike Turner in the early-‘70s sent Williams’ life into a downward spiral, mainly due to the steady availability of copious amounts of cocaine.

And Williams’ frequent label-hopping combined with his overall lack of national hits to basically insure difficulty and neglect in the anthologizing of his discography, even after he’d made his comeback. In ’84 Fortune Records, still in business against seemingly insurmountable odds, issued the compilation Jail Bait, but by the point of his ‘90s resurgence copies of that slab were long gone.

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PHOENIX, AZ | The All American Rejects and the Wet Hot All-American summer tour made their Phoenix stop playing at the Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre. Along with them, the Rejects brought three bands playing what felt like a mini festival—kicked off by The Get Up Kids, followed by Motion City Soundtrack, and then New Found Glory all before the Rejects even took the stage.

The Oklahoma natives came out swinging, literally by performing their 2002 hit song “Swing, Swing.” After the song a graphic on all the screens displaying what looked like a time warp. All American Rejects lead singer Tyson Ritter announced that we were taking a little trip to the early two thousands. Being thrown back into a time warp, the nostalgia kicked in immediately. Just like that, we were back at the height of All American Rejects releasing music. It wouldn’t look like it because of the dancing and energy on stage, but elements of the show definitely pulled on the heartstrings a bit, reminding us all of the good old days, the entire lineup hit home.

According to an article in Vogue, “The band achieved mainstream success with their debut self-titled studio album The All-American Rejects released in 2003 by Dreamworks Records.” Since then, the band has toured the entire world alongside some of the biggest names from Blink-182 to Bon Jovi. All American Rejects will always be known for their unique pop-punk sound and lyrics that helped shape pop-rock music through the early two thousands.

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In 1954 Nolan Strong & the Diablos recorded one of the great doo wop singles, “The Wind” b/w ”Baby Be Mine.” For years it’s skirted under the radar as a pleasure known by far too few. But this Detroit group impacted two generations of Motown glory, and there is no time like the present to spread the word on this neglected classic.

It’s true that one of the perks of the CD era was the steady proliferation of box-sets, a development that was spurred by both a healthy economy and a general increase in consumer interest in having hefty chunks of music history loaded into their stereo system’s multi-disc changers. Yes, vinyl box sets weren’t uncommon, but in reality labels tended to shy away from subjects that required more than three or four LPs. Often they just broke them down into individual volumes, where most buyers reliably purchased the first few entries and left the subsequent installments (which is reliably where some of the best stuff was found) for those branded as “obsessive.”

This box-set boom included everything from Columbia’s 4-disc Roots ‘N’ Blues Retrospective collection, MCA’s generous stream of single artist and compilation sets procured from the vaults of Chess Records, Polydor’s Star Time, a 4-disc study of James Brown, and maybe the granddaddy of them all, Atlantic’s 9-disc The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1959-1968. Naturally, Rhino Records got into the act with gusto, producing three 4-disc sets of garage-rock in the Nuggets series and a 4-disc collection of vocal group harmony titled The Doo Wop Box that was so successful it inspired two additional volumes.

Doo-wop was particularly ripe for anthologizing, since so much of the genre was about one-hit wonders and obscure classics from groups that recorded a couple of sides at best before breaking up. To my knowledge the LP era was basically bereft of any serious attempts to house the essence of doo-wop’s rich history into box-set form; instead there were a ton of single LP collections, but they frequently lacked much in the way historical focus, oozing mercenary intentions as hit songs took up space on numerous different albums, crowding out lesser known material purely in the interest of sales.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | GRAMMY® Award-winning legendary hip-hop collective and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® Inductees Public Enemy celebrate the 35th anniversary of their seminal sophomore offering, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, with a very special new vinyl edition out November 10, 2023 via Universal Music Enterprises’ (UMe). Fittingly, the release also coincides with UMe’s continued celebration of rap’s 50th birthday, Hip-Hop 50, as well.

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back will be available in either 4-LP 180gram vinyl and 2LP 180 gram vinyl—pressed on limited-run red or standard. The 4LP package features bonus tracks from the Deluxe 2CD, extensive new liner notes penned by Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Q-Tip, and Questlove, and a 12×12 sticker insert of the instantly recognizable Public Enemy logo.

Speaking on this release, Chuck D said, “Thanks to Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and Whodini, we knew that hip-hop albums could explode on cassettes. At about the same time, Hank Shocklee was the manager of a record store, and he would point out how rock bands like Iron Maiden, The Rolling Stones, and even Bruce Springsteen were getting the most out of the album concept. So, we took that and went further with It Takes a Nation, approaching it like a rock band. It ended up becoming a part of rap’s evolution from a singles-driven genre into the dawn of rap’s album age.”

Public Enemy first dropped It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back on an unsuspecting world on June 28, 1988. Nothing would ever be the same in its wake. It not only climbed to #1 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum, but it also carved out a place in history thanks to singles such as “Rebel Without a Pause,” “Bring the Noise,” “Don’t Believe the Hype,”and many more. It yielded an unprecedented collision of jazz fluidity, punchy funk, and fascinating sample alchemy with provocative, powerful, and poetic wordplay about everything from race to revolution.

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