VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino proudly announces a vinyl reissue for Tito Puente’s foundational Latin jazz masterpiece, El Rey Bravo. Originally released on Tico Records in 1962, the album includes the legendary bandleader and percussionist’s iconic hit, “Oye Cómo Va,” plus enduring favorites like “Tombola” and “Tokyo de Noche.”

Set for release November 10th and available for pre-order today, El Rey Bravo features (AAA) lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl. Completing the package is a vintage-style tip-on jacket featuring the album’s classic design. Additionally, for the very first time, fans can experience El Rey Bravo in 192/24 hi-res audio on select digital platforms. In addition, a Canary Yellow color vinyl exclusive, limited to 500 copies, with exciting bundle options that include a commemorative Tito Puente T-shirt is being offered at Fania.com. Vinyl Me, Please is also releasing a 180-gram Orange Crush exclusive variant.

This reissue offers a fitting cap to Craft Latino’s year-long centennial celebration of the influential artist. Throughout 2023, the label has honored Puente’s vital contributions to Latin music through exclusive digital content and a series of releases, including 180-gram vinyl pressings of Puente’s 1972 classic, Para los Rumberos, and his best-selling 1985 album, Mambo Diablo.

In the late 1940s, an exciting new sound was taking root in New York jazz clubs, as Puerto Rican and Cuban musicians settled in the city, introducing Afro-Cuban and Caribbean rhythms to American audiences. Within a few years, everyone was dancing to the cha-cha-chá and mambo, thanks to a host of inspired young artists, including Tito Puente (1923–2000). The Manhattan-born, Puerto Rican percussionist honed his craft under the legendary Cuban bandleader Machito, who was instrumental in bringing Afro-Cuban jazz to America.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Kinks, one of the greatest ever British rock groups, continue the 60th Anniversary celebrations of their illustrious musical journey with part two of their career-defining anthology, The Journey, out 17 November on BMG.

Following the release of The Journey – Part 1 in March this year (featuring hits such as “You Really Got Me,” “Waterloo Sunset,” “All Day And All Of The Night,” “Supersonic Rocket Ship,” and “Dead End Street”) The Journey – Part 2, compiled by the band, will be available on 2CD, 2LP, Digital and HD Digital formats. The physical formats contain a booklet with band photos and track-by-track notes written by original members Ray Davies, Dave Davies, and Mick Avory, sharing their memories of the time and weaving them into The Kinks’ incredible story. Preorder and presave The Journey – Part 2 here.

The Journey – Part 2 includes singles, B-sides, album tracks and, notably, six new Ray Davies mixes, three of which are previously unreleased live performances from the New Victoria Theatre, London in 1975. New digital single “Everybody’s a Star (Starmaker) (Live 1975, 2023 Mix),” can be heard above. Hits featured on the release include: “Lola,” “Sunny Afternoon,” “20th Century Man,” “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion,” “Till The End Of The Day,” “A Well Respected Man,” “See My Friends,” and “Everybody’s A Star (Starmaker).”

This release is accompanied by a brand new Official Kinks merchandise collection that represents their 60 years as a group. The full range of merchandise is available from Backstreet. Visit the store here.

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Celebrating Mark Farner on his 75th birthday. —Ed.

Jesus Funkin’ Christ, Grand Funk. Where does one even begin? Homer Simpson’s immortal description of the band’s members is as good a place as any: “You kids don’t know Grand Funk? The wild shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drumwork of Don Brewer? Oh, man!”

Grand Funk was one of the biggest arena acts of the 1970s, but nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find anyone besides Homer Simpson who will admit to liking them. I’ve never heard a single rocker cite Grand Funk as an influence, and unlike their Michigan brethren the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, Grand Funk scored a big zero when it came to hipness factor. Their talk of revolution was transparently empty jive, they didn’t have a proto-punk bone in their bodies, and in general all they did was fill arenas—something the far cooler MC5 and the anarchic Stooges never came close to doing—and make the people in those arenas (and their bongs) happy.

Of course filling arenas doesn’t prove much, except that it’s impossible to overestimate the ignorance of the American public, but still it’s intriguing—what did all those pothead on reds at all those Grand Funk shows hear that we simply can’t hear in 2014? Did people back then have an extra Grand Funk ear? That closed up around the time of 1976’s Born to Die, which marked the band’s downward slide following seven consecutive LPs in the Top Ten?

That’s right: seven consecutive LPs in the Top Ten. How they managed this feat, given their lackluster body of work, remains a mystery, like what became of Amelia Earhart or how Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitcher Dock Ellis managed to throw a no-hitter while tripping his balls off. It is possible people really did come to hear the shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? Or were they truly that hard-up for entertainment in the Dark Ages of the early to mid-seventies, when rock had become empty entertainment, with the talk of music changing the world having become passé on one side and the soon-to-come (and equally unsuccessful punk revolution the other. Never having seen Grand Funk—they were well into their precipitous fall from superstardom when I started attending concerts, I can’t say.

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If you love vinyl, there’s only one place to be this weekend (9/26–10/1) and that is Haarlem, Netherlands.

There won’t be just one gathering dedicated to vinyl either: the town will host a conference and a festival who have made the wise decision to co-locate in the capital of North Holland. A few months ago on this program we spoke with Larry Jaffee and Bryan Ekus about the Making Vinyl conference that took place last spring in Minneapolis, Minnesota. During that conversation, they gave us a sneak peek at what to expect this week in the Netherlands as they set up shop to hold a European conference there.

But, they won’t be alone. Following the conclusion of the Making Vinyl conference will be the beginning of the Haarlem Vinyl Festival which takes place during the second half of the weekend and which is billed as, “the world’s first multi-day festival entirely dedicated to vinyl culture.” One of the architects of the event is Anouk Rijnders (RHINEJERS) who is the sales manager at the Netherlands record pressing plant, Record Industry.

After working as a producer and director in the television and advertising industry, Anouk joined the Record Industry vinyl pressing plant in 2000. In addition to her role as a Sales Manager for the company, she has produced two books, Passion For Vinyl and its sequel, Passion For Vinyl Part II and will debut Part III this weekend. Anouk is also the Project Manager of Artone Studio which is Record Industries’ brand new mastering room and studio, offering direct-to-disc recording amongst other services.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “I have spoken to many journalists in my time: some good, some bad, some terrible. And it is lovely when you meet someone who is just like you…a huge music fan! Jim Sullivan…is friendly, knowledgeable, forthright, and opinionated! An expert in his chosen field. He is no pushover…if you have faults or are resting on your laurels, he is the first to tell you off.” —Peter Hook, Joy Division/New Order

Trouser Press Books is proud to announce Backstage & Beyond Volume 2: 45 Years of Modern Rock Chats & Rants, the second anthology from award-winning music journalist Jim Sullivan, to be published in paperback and e-book on October 19. Pre-orders are available now.

Sullivan—a 2023 inductee into the New England Music Hall of Fame—spent 26 years writing for the Boston Globe and two decades more writing for national publications. He has interviewed and reviewed countless musicians, many of them multiple times. The second volume of his music-writing anthology focuses on artists who came to prominence in the 1970s and ’80s: punk, new wave, post-punk, and beyond. Eleven of them are already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Over the course of 300 pages, Sullivan shares fascinating profiles of Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Patti Smith, Buzzcocks, The Damned, The Fall, Joy Division/New Order, The Cure, Stiff Little Fingers, Gang Of Four, The Pogues, The Police, The Cramps, David Byrne/Talking Heads, Beastie Boys, Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, The Cars, The English Beat, Morrissey, Pixies, Mission Of Burma, The Feelies, Puff Daddy, Spiritualized, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Swans, and U2.

“My hope is that the recollections contained here trigger some memories,” writes Jim Sullivan in the book’s preface, “bring you back to where you wanted to be—backstage and beyond, as it were. And if you weren’t around then, I hope this transports you back to several golden ages of rock and roll.”

Remembering Jerry Lee Lewis in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

For Jerry Lee Lewis, 1973 was the worst of years and the best of years too; despite a brief turn in prison, the death of a son, a divorce (his fourth), and rampant drug and alcohol abuse, the Killer still turned out two seminal LPs with The Session… Recorded in London with Great Artists and Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis.

The latter LP is nothing short of a miracle; Jerry Lee somehow managed knock off ten galvanizing performances even though he was, by all accounts, out of control even by his own berserk standards. When he wasn’t abusing legendary producer Huey “The Crazy Cajun” Meaux, the heavily medicated Lewis was threatening to kill a photographer and generally being a dyspeptic old cuss. “Do you wanna try one?” asks Meaux doing the proceedings. “If you got enough fuckin’ sense to cut it,” replies the orneriest cage-rattler to ever hail from the friendly state of Louisiana.

Let’s make one thing clear from the start; neither LP comes close to recapturing the anarchic feel and demented energy of Lewis’ early recordings, or the deranged ferocity (subtlety? toss it out the goddamn window!) of his hair-raising live performance with the Nashville Teens at Hamburg, Germany’s Star Club in 1964. His vocals are lazier, and his piano playing less a frenzied hammering at the gates of Hell, the place he’s always figured will be his final destination. It may have been the pills, but the old piano burner almost sounds relaxed at times.

In short, on Southern Roots The Killer proves there’s more than one way to skin a cat. He lays back in the groove and waxes sly and lewd by turns, sounding randy even at his most relaxed and pretty copacetic for a guy who has just threatened to murder another guy for having the audacity to point a camera his way. Whether he’s singing the songs of Doug Sahm or Isaac Hayes or breathing life into novelty tune about a haunted house, Jerry Lee mostly plays it cool but isn’t afraid to blow volcanic hot when the mood strikes him.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Enriched with new anecdotes, insights, and info-morsels, this super-expanded Michael Azerrad classic is a great story made even more gripping. Nirvana’s underground-overground arc becomes a prism for understanding an entire era of rock music and pop culture.” —Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84

Renowned rock journalist Michael Azerrad has unveiled The Amplified Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, a deluxe new hardcover edition “amplifying” his iconic 1993 bestseller, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. A thoroughly original book re-examining and illuminating Azerrad’s original reportage while also providing essential glosses on Nirvana’s musical, cultural, and historical contexts, The Amplified Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana will be published by Harper One on Tuesday, October 24. Pre-orders are available now. In addition, Nirvana: The Amplifications, an official audiobook narrated by Azerrad collecting the new annotations, arrives the same day at all leading audiobook platforms.

In 1993, Michael Azerrad published what stands as the definitive biography of Nirvana and its star-crossed leader Kurt Cobain. Written with the band’s complete cooperation, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana proved a critically acclaimed massive international bestseller lauded by Cobain himself as “the best rock book I’ve ever read.”

Sadly, in April 1994, just seven months after the book’s original publication, Cobain was dead by suicide, establishing Come as You Are as the only book about Nirvana to feature original interviews with Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl. Azerrad has now revisited and reconsidered his original text with exclusive new content exploring the personal and cultural forces that inspired the music, his friendship with Cobain, and why multiple generations remain fascinated today by pop cultural upheaval kickstarted by Nirvana and their landmark 1991 album, Nevermind.

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Lulu Lewis, the NYC-based duo fronted by Dylan Hundley alongside multi-instrumentalist Pablo Martin, are no strangers to this column, and here they are again with their typically terrific new single “Destroy All Data,” which receives some appreciative words below as we premiere its video. It’s a glove-tight union of sound and image that thrives on a rich and edgy approach to a complementary blend of styles, namely early new wave, post-punk, and electro-pop. Check out the vid ahead of their next live show, which is part of the O+ Festival in Kingston, NY on October 6th.

There’s really no disguising that Lulu Lewis’ main inspirations derive from the late ’70s-early ’80s. As listed above, Hundley and Martin tap into the era that found new wave exploding alongside punk as fresh new genres like synth-pop and mutant disco were born under the banner of post-punk. However, it should be noted that far too frequently, contemporary examples of this mélange of genre flaunt a surface brightness that’s ultimately weakened by an underlying sense of the shallow.

But Lulu Lewis are the real deal. A significant part of their lasting appeal is pretty simple, deriving from solid songs well played and confidently sung. But adding considerable value is their refusal to get boxed into one particular stylistic corner. For example, “Destroy All Data” is a terrific body mover, fully embracing a dance club vibe while retaining an atmosphere of subversiveness and alienation.

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NASHVILLE, TN | This was one for the history books. Avatar blew the roof off Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl Sunday night, a stop on September’s “Chimp Mosh Pit” tour. It was exhilarating—top to bottom, not just one of the best shows I’ve been to in recent times, it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m still wiped out.

Leading off on this tour is The Native Howl (Alex Holycross, Zach Bolling, Mark Chandler, and Jacob Sawicki), from Detroit, Michigan. They specialize in “thrash grass,” a newly coined term describing a sound that combines the melodicism and precision of bluegrass with the aggression of thrash metal. To illustrate, a hallmark of their sets is “Harvester of Constant Sorrow,” which mashes up The Soggy Bottom Boys and Metallica—imagine metal with a banjo solo. Live, it’s a sound that is clever and creative—it works extremely well.

In Nashville, The Native Howl were poorly lit to the point of performing in the dark; this was unfortunate as it undermined the crowd’s ability to really see the charisma of singer Holycross. The previous weekend I traveled to Bloomington, IL to catch this tour in advance of covering it in Nashville. The Native Howl had been on my radar for a while, and I was curious about how they would be live.

It was fun to see all three bands on the bill in what felt like a sardine can of a club. When I caught the show in Bloomington, Holycross struck me as a bit of a Joe Cocker type—imagine if Cocker had a Michigan grandson. His expressive eyes and signature bare feet aren’t a gimmick of any kind—this is who this dude is.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Chrysalis Catalogue presents Copperopolis on vinyl for the first time, accompanied by a selection of bonus tracks.

First released in June 1996, Copperopolis would be the final Grant Lee Buffalo studio album to feature the original line-up of Grant-Lee Phillips, Paul Kimble, and Joey Peters. For Copperopolis, the band expanded on the stripped-down sonics from their first two albums, using the studio to create a layered, more powerful sound, as heard on standout tracks “Arousing Thunder,” “Bethlehem Steel,” and the single “Homespun.” Side four features a trio of bonus tracks, the B-sides “Crashing at Corona” and “Mr. Know It All,” plus the original four-track demo for “Hyperion & Sunset.”

Newly remastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios from the original production masters, pressed on two 180g clear vinyl LPs, and housed in a gatefold sleeve with poly-lined inner bags.

Originally released in June 1998 following the departure of long-time bassist Paul Kimble, Jubilee was Grant Lee Buffalo’s fourth and final studio album. For the album’s 25th anniversary, Chrysalis Catalogue presents Jubilee on vinyl for the first time.

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After leaving the group Them and recording one album for the Bert Burns label Bang (Blowin’ Your Mind), Van Morrison recorded two albums (for Warner Bros. Records) that solidified his place in music at that time and forever.

Astral Weeks (1968) is considered Morrison’s most critically acclaimed album and his next one, Moondance (1970), is his most popular and well-known album. While these two recordings often receive the most attention in an evaluation of the immense legend of Morrison, his next three LPs further enhanced and reinforced the enormity of the man’s vast talents. Those albums are His Band and Street Choir (1970), Tupelo Honey (1971), and Saint Dominic’s Preview (1972). His Band and the Street Choir has just been reissued as one of the first four releases from the Rhino High Fidelity Series. This is a great album and the approach taken by Rhino on this reissue is like a master class on how to reissue a classic album.

His Band and the Street Choir was a dramatic change from his previous two albums. On those two records, Morrison was an artist who drew from a range of sometimes tortured emotions to create music of impressionistic, sublime beauty that mixed folk, jazz, r&b, rock, and soul in a sound that was unmatched. On His Band and the Street Choir, Morrison continued to mix those styles, but sounds more relaxed, like he’s truly having fun, and is surrounded by musicians he clearly loves and is inspired by. The songs are shorter and punchier and were clearly recorded mostly live with minimal rehearsal or takes.

It’s a joyous celebration and while it didn’t quite reach the heights of the previous two albums, was an instant classic. The most well-known song from the album is “Domino.” “Blue Money” is another enduring classic from the album and “I’ve Been Working” was a highlight of his live shows at the time. This music very much reflects Morrison’s Woodstock period and the rural, pastoral beauty of that place was certainly a key ingredient in the writing and recording of the album.

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PHOTO: RIO WARNER | In the vibrant and ever-evolving music scene of the 1980s, one name shone brightly amidst a sea of artists, Josie Cotton. With her audacious new wave sound and captivating stage presence, Cotton quickly became an icon of the era. From her popular hits like “Johnny Are You Queer?” and “He Could Be the One,” to her thoughtfully crafted albums that spanned genres, Josie Cotton left an indelible mark on the music industry.

But her influence extends far beyond her catchy tunes; it’s in her trademark style, her public persona, and the significant life events that have shaped her remarkable career. As we dive into the world of Josie Cotton, we uncover a musician who defies categorization, evokes nostalgia, and continues to captivate audiences with her timeless sound.

How did your journey in music begin, and what inspired you to become a singer?

When I was still living in Texas, I was just exploring different bands and writing songs. But I came to California to be in the music business, and once I finally arrived that happened fairly quickly. Even while moving from record label to record label, I ended up, ironically, getting signed because of a song I didn’t write—it was a demo that got me signed. So, that was just an odd way to begin a career.

When did you determine that you wanted to do this as a career?

Well, I really wasn’t planning on being a singer, per se. I was planning on being a songwriter, and so singing was something I did to let people hear the songs I wrote. That was when people seemed to notice my voice. The Paine brothers were one of the first to take notice shortly after I met them. They directed me away from the different styles of music I was experimenting with and asked me to focus on something which was familiar to me, girl groups. And coincidentally, they were working with the Go-Go’s at the time that I met them.

What are your earliest memories of performing on stage?

My stepfather was a ballet teacher, and he was grooming me to be a prima ballerina from the time I was three years old. He had been a famous dancer in Europe—dancing with Maria Tallchief and had run the Harkness Ballet in New York years later. So, my first memory on stage was when I was four years old. I was with a boy, and it was just us on stage with an orchestra. My stepfather would do these major productions with famous ballet dancers coming in from Europe, and so I ended up alone on the stage with a boy with this orchestra, and I just loved it. And the stage ended up being the only place I felt truly comfortable.

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