VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Hidden Cameras in collaboration with Rough Trade Records, today announce a 20th anniversary expanded deluxe reissue of their majestic debut album The Smell of Our Own to be released on April 14th 2023.

A deluxe edition will be pressed as a 2 x LP edition on yellow vinyl and features bonus demos, b-sides, and live session recordings. To mark the announcement of this reissue, both the rarely seen incendiary debut TV performance of “Ban Marriage” and a never before seen document of their first radio session performing “Boys Of Melody” are being shared. Plus newly unearthed is this very early Canadian TV news piece originally broadcast on CBC in 2002 showing Geoff Travis discovering the band in Toronto.

The Hidden Cameras burst onto the Toronto music scene in the early 2000’s boasting an irresistible combination of pop and queer sensibilities. Playing self-proclaimed “Gay Church Folk Music” a new genre of their own making and songs ranging from haunted, aching ballads to foot-stomping anthems, the band’s outrageous stage shows packed such disparate venues as sweaty dance bars, art museums, a working porn cinema as well as many churches. Fronted by lead singer-songwriter Joel Gibb, the ensemble continues its musical provocations to this day, with Berlin now as its center of gravity.

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Even minimalists have a few knick-knacks tucked away, small objects that aren’t particularly useful, but which remind us of a warm memory, time, or place. When purging or decluttering, a lazy gaze at this bric-a-brac makes us wonder if we’re being too hasty considering parting with the item. But before we harshly “Marie Kondo” these objects, it’s essential that we check to see if they “spark joy,” for if they do, we can be certain that it will always have a place in our heart and our home. We all have tchotchkes.

But is Tchotchke—the band—on your shelf yet? If you collect music with girl group vibes or female fronted bands of the ’60s and ’70s, then New York’s Tchotchke is sure to make it to your library. The band has a brand-new self-titled album out now (Tchotchke Records/ORG Music) which was produced by the D’Addario Brothers from The Lemon Twigs and was mixed at the famed Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Musically, however, the group stretches themselves beyond guitar rock’s confines and even flirts with some proggy influences along the way. This first album is familiar enough to assure quick assimilation, but repeated listenings reveal a band equipped with the tools and talent to grow into something extraordinary.

Anastasia (drums, vocals), Eva (bass, vocals), and Emily (guitar, vocals) join me on this episode to discuss the ghosts who may have visited them during the recording process, the assembly of the album, preparing for an upcoming tour with King Tuff, and what songs are on their shared band playlist. You might declutter your record collection in years to come, but when you arrive at Tchotchke’s latest record, you’ll find it hard to part with. It did, after all, provide you with fun, warm sun-drenched memories. It’s a memento of that experience. How could you let it go? It’s sure to become a part of your permanent collection of tchotchkes.

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.

For the longest time I had no use for U2—they were too sanctimonious and self-righteous was my opinion, and Bono stuck me as a frustrated Sunday school teacher. But as the years passed they loosened up, Bono became less of a tight-ass, and I discovered I enjoyed some of their songs, a lot. But there were plenty of haters to take my place, and they emerged from the dank caves we music critics inhabit to litter guano all over the band’s 1988 studio/live LP Rattle and Hum, the soundtrack of a rockumentary released the same year.

To cite just two of the album’s critics, The Village Voice’s Tom Carson called Rattle and Hum an “awful record” by “almost any rock-and-roll fan’s standard.” He went on to add that the LP’s sound wasn’t “attributable to pretensions so much as to monumental know-nothingism.” Meanwhile, David Browne of the New York Daily News said Rattle and Hum “just prattles and numbs.” The phrases “sincere egomania” and “the worst album by a major band in years” were also bandied about.

Rattle and Hum’s chief problem is it’s a dog’s breakfast, and lacks even the cheap glue to keep a model airplane in one piece. But I simply can’t bring myself to hate it—it includes some of my favorite U2 songs. Unfortunately they all happen to be the LP’s studio cuts, rather than the ones recorded during U2’s The Joshua Tree tour of the US.

To begin with the absolute low points, the only thing to be said for the forty-three second snippet of Jimi Hendrix’s “The Star Spangled Banner” is U2 had the common decency not to play the whole thing. As for the thirty-eight second snippet from “Freedom for My People” by Harlem street duo Sterling Magee and Adam Gussow, I guess you had to be there. And the live version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” is ham-fisted, and haven’t we heard the song seven million times too often already?

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Stimela were a popular and successful South African Afro-fusion outfit led by guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, producer, and arranger Ray Phiri. The band was formed under the name The Cannibals during the 1970s when Phiri got together with drummer Isaac Mtshali, keyboard player Thabo Lloyd Lelosa, and bass player Jabu Sibumbe. They initially started out as instrumentalists, but later evolved to Afro-fusion when they joined forces with vocalist Jacob “Mparanyana” Radebe in 1975. The story of The Cannibals ends when Radebe died in 1978 but the Stimela story was only just beginning.

​In 1979, after a life-changing experience in Mozambique (where they were stranded for three months) the bandmembers had to sell all their belongings to take a train home. This trip was a watershed moment as it was here where they conceived the new name for the band: The Zulu word for “locomotive-train” STIMELA.

​Stimela would soon become little short of an institution in their home country of South Africa. With soulful tunes and gripping lyrics, the band has recorded platinum-winning albums such as Fire, Passion and Ecstasy, Shadows, Fear and Pain and Look Listen and Decide. In addition to recording their own material, the group supplied instrumental accompaniment on albums by a lengthy list of legendary artists. Stimela would go on to gain global fame after being featured on Paul Simon’s iconic 1986 Graceland album and the mega tour that followed.

​Ray Phiri would enter into many successful collaborations with major acts and artists such as Harari, Joan Baez, Willie Nelson, and Manu Dibango. In 2017 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died at the age of 70. Phiri has received many awards in recognition for his contribution in the music industry, one of these is the Order of Ikhamanga awarded to him by the South African president. This was to honor his sterling contribution to the South African music industry and the successful use of arts as an instrument of social transformation.

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The 5-piece Lauds hail from Wilmington, NC and Imitation Life is their debut album, its ten songs emanating from the indie pop, jangle pop, and ’80s Alt-rock zone, with the playing energetic and lean. It’s unusually strong for a debut, and what it lacks in originality is more than made up for with the focus and drive of the whole. The 135 gram vinyl in a hand numbered limited edition of 100 appears to be sold out, but hopefully Fort Lowell Records will order a repress. In the meantime, the digital is available on Bandcamp.

Lauds consists of Gavin Campbell, Boyce S. Evans, J Holt Evans III, James McKay Glasgow, and Ross Page. Glasgow and Evans III are the songwriters, with the former a guitarist and lead vocalist and the latter serving as multi-instrumentalist and lead vocalist on three tracks. Amongst their cited inspirations are The Cure, Slowdive, Ride, Chameleons, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. To the band’s credit, they avoid leaning too heavily on any one influence.

Opener “Parallel” does go heavy on the Anglo jangling, the guitars crisp as the track’s progression is full of swelling beauty, as Glasgow’s vocals deepen the Brit aura without going for a full-on imitative trip. “Somehow” follows, the vocals airy a la dream pop and the playing urgent, giving the Cure-like guitar figures a dose of the ol’ shoegaze.

With Evans taking a turn at the mic, the singing is even breathier in “24,” as a rouge ’80s keyboard gets thrown into the mix, conjuring visions of nursing a fountain soda in a mall food court while perusing a copy of Smash Hits. But Lauds smartly retain their intensity in the song, which keeps the attack focused, as “CeeDee Lamb” grows increasingly raucous, and during the post-punkish guitar soloing, reaches the border of downright heavy.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | This 1973 gem is another one of those obscure ‘70s soul-funk albums released on a small independent label that has gone on to become a crate-digging favorite and a huge inspiration to modern-day hip hop artists and beyond.

Chicago-based The South Side Movement began as the backing band for the Sam & Dave-inspired soul duo Simtec & Wylie; their self-titled debut on the Scepter imprint Wand—much of it written by Chicago label owner and producer James Vanleer—scored a top 20 R&B hit with “I’ Been Watchin’ You,” and they went on to make a couple of other records before disbanding in the mid-‘70s. So, your basic one-hit wonder, right?

Well, not exactly. While The South Side Movement never reached the same level of commercial success, that one hit has been sampled by—are you ready for this?—The Beastie Boys, Beck, Erykah Badu, Jadakiss, and many more. The rest of the album is very tasty Windy City soul-funk, with an unexpectedly great cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” a highlight. First-ever LP reissue, pressed in clearwater blue vinyl!

Ace was the debut solo album from Bob Weir (credited here as Bobby Weir). It was a key release in the history and evolution of the Grateful Dead, and it was the second release in 1972 from a member of the Grateful Dead. Garcia, from Jerry Garcia, was also a debut solo album from a member of the group and came out in January of that year. The two albums signified that the group would do outside projects, but the Dead would carry on.

While the Garcia album only featured one member of the Dead other than Garcia (drummer Bill Kruetzmann), Ace featured the entire group of that time except for Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Donna Jean Godchaux. The primary group on the album, along with Weir, consisted of Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kruetzmann, and Keith Godchaux. The album came during a three-year gap in studio albums from the Grateful Dead between American Beauty (1970) and Wake of the Flood (1973).

Ace would launch a long and varied career for Weir outside the Dead that would include albums from groups he led, including Bobby and the Midnites, Rat Dog, and most recently the Wolf Brothers (more on them later). Since most of the members of the Dead were on the Ace album, it did have the feeling of another Dead album during a time when the group wasn’t recording.

Additionally, several songs are included here that would become the official studio recordings of songs that were staples of recent live Dead tours and appeared on the second official live Dead album (Skull and Roses): “Playing in the Band” and on the third (Europe 72); “One More Saturday Night.” Playing in the Band,” clocking in here at nearly eight minutes, is not as long as the typical length of a Dead live workout nor as improvisational, but it is a definitive classic Dead recording which did not appear on a Grateful Dead studio album. Similarly, “One More Saturday Night” works as a fully realized studio recording without sacrificing the magic, spark, and spontaneity of the Dead live on stage.

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By the time John Lee Hooker recorded Burnin’ for the Vee Jay label in 1961, he’d been on the recording and performing scene in and beyond Detroit for roughly a dozen years, wielding a sui generis, some said anachronistic, yet surprisingly adaptable style, both solo and with backing. On Burnin’ the band consisted of the legendary Motown Records studio unit the Funk Brothers, and the results stand amongst the strongest full-length recordings in Hooker’s extensive discography. Hitting the sweet spot where robust R&B and Mississippi Delta jook joint heat mingle in a swampy atmosphere, Craft Recordings’ fresh edition of Burnin’ is out on vinyl, compact disc, and digital February 24.

In September of 1945 Joe Liggins and His Honeydrippers scored a smash hit on the R&B charts with “The Honeydripper, Parts 1 & 2,” hitting #1 in September and staying there into the following year (18 weeks in total). Heard today and considered in the context of its time, the song’s modernity still shines: WWII is over, and with it comes a sense of optimism only encouraged by a record industry, unshackled by the ban on pressing 78rpm discs, that was cranking out musical advancements recently honed on bandstands, and as the war raged on, mostly heard via airchecks.

Flash forward to 1949, and John Lee Hooker hits #1 on the same chart with “Boogie Chillen’” (remaining at the top for only one week, but staying on the chart for 18), the debut release by this renowned bluesman, featuring Hooker solo on electric guitar in a wildly intense update of the rural “country” blues, the song’s rhythm produced by Hooker’s own foot stomping on a piece of plywood.

Hooker wasn’t the only artist to update and mutate downhome blues styles with amplification and harder and sharper edges and angles (see Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson), but he was amongst the most uncompromising in how his style developed. Simultaneously a groundbreaker and a throwback, Hooker’s early success in an undiluted style helped to establish that any changes he made were on his terms.

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