VIA PRESS RELEASE | Six decades later, the music still wows, baffles, and inspires.

What happened over two nights in a tiny, unassuming Chicago club under a bakery was a fascinating and unplanned documentation of a pivotal moment in the evolution of Miles Davis’s leadership and sound. Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, today announce the reissue of these legendary recordings: The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965. Arriving January 30, 2026, as a cornerstone moment in the year-long celebration of Miles Davis’ Centennial to come next year, this comprehensive collection will be available as a 10LP or 8CD box set. Pre-orders are available now.

As a preview of the larger collection, a standalone 2LP set, Live At The Plugged Nickel: December 23, 1965 – Second Set, will be released for RSD Black Friday on November 28.

The recordings capture Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet—featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams—at an inflection point. Wayne Shorter was just over a year into his tenure, and the group, fresh off of recording E.S.P., was solidifying into what would become the most transformative small group in jazz. What unfolded on the stage of the Chicago club was not just a performance, but a provocation.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | If you could actually hear an abstract expressionist painting, it would probably sound a lot like the work of Morton Feldman.

And that’s no accident: Feldman hung out in ‘50s and ‘60s New York with Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston (whose work graced the cover of Feldman’s first album), and Robert Rauschenberg. Like the paintings of his visual artist peers, Feldman’s work emphasized tonal color over structure, rhythm, or melody, the traditional building blocks of music. It also employed the musical equivalent of painterly “negative space” with its use of silence and stasis; that Feldman and John Cale were enormous influences on each other will come as no surprise.

So, it makes sense that Feldman would dedicate probably his two most celebrated compositions to two giants of the New York scene: abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, whose famous Chapel adorns this LP’s front cover, and writer and critic Frank O’Hara, whose own work drew inspiration from the same sources as Feldman’s.

Rothko Chapel and For Frank O’Hara first were released in 1976 on a seminal album from the Odyssey imprint on Columbia Records; for its 50th anniversary and first LP reissue, Real Gone Music had it pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Gotta Groove Records for the quietest listen achievable, using new transfers from the original master tapes. Profound, career-defining work that opened the door for latter-day ambient composers like Brian Eno to walk through.

Remembering Dr. John, born on this date in 1941. —Ed.

I am happy to report there is one town in this God-obsessed land that remains under the sway of the Devil. I am talking, of course, about N’Orleans, that spirit-haunted hotbed of hedonism and home to the legendary likes of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, the prostitute Lulu White, and the never-captured Axeman of New Orleans. God has sent flood upon flood to destroy America’s most depraved and flat-out weird city—where else are you going to find public ordinances banning gargling in public and tying an alligator to a fire hydrant?—but in vain. Either God’s floods ain’t what they used to be, or sin has rendered the birthplace of Jazz, where Lucifer owns a winter home, indestructible.

The Big Easy is renowned for two things: music and voodoo. And no human being has ever combined the two with such funky finesse as Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John Creaux the Night Tripper. Like most people, the only tune I knew by the good doctor was 1973’s funky “Right Place Wrong Time.” Then Kid Congo Powers—who honed his own voodoo chops with the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s Gun Club—suggested I check out the Night Tripper’s 1968 debut LP Gris Gris, and I promptly fell under its spooky Creole spell.

Its trance-inducing, doom-heavy grooves instantaneously transported me to a shadowy Louisiana swamp swarming with snakes and alligators, voodoo drums sounding in the distance, the Axeman of New Orleans hard on my heels. Then to an incense-choked, unpainted wooden shack on stilts situated deep in the bayou’s perpetual gloom, where I found myself shuffling and shaking to the sound of congas and the Night Tripper’s Muzippi-muddy growl. Suffice it to say Gris Gris is one the most haunting slices of hoodoo you’ll ever hear, and one of the most addictive.

A child model (his face appeared on Ivory Soap boxes) turned strip club musician and illegal teen sessions player for such legendary figures as Professor Longhair, Joe Tex, and Frankie Ford, Rebennack turned from the guitar to the piano following an altercation with a pistol-packing club owner that resulted in the near severing of his left index finger. Forced to relocate to LA in the mid-sixties due to the legal consequences of an ongoing heroin addiction, it was there Rebennack adopted his colorful voodoo-headdress-wearing Dr. John Creaux persona and stepped into the limelight with Gris Gris, that incantatory and utterly unique melange of Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, and Mardi Gras Indian-flavored R&B and psychedelia.

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Celebrating Mike D on his 60th birthday. —Ed.

With the Love American Style EP, The Beastie Boys gave the public a small taste of their new and improved direction. Some ears were ready and many were not, but this twelve-inch contained a tidy morsel of a true hip-hop classic.

In retrospect, Licensed to Ill came on like a ton of bricks. Out of the blue the group just seemed to suddenly be everywhere; on stereos and television naturally, but also in magazines, in car tape decks, as the soundtrack to parties, in the parking lot at school. This level of saturation wasn’t all that unusual, for the same sort of situation happened with Purple Rain, Thriller, Madonna’s debut and Born in the USA. Unless you were a hermit, it was ultimately all music the ears couldn’t escape, particularly in a suburban existence. What made Licensed to Ill feel like such a haymaker was its heightened sense of immaturity and its use (some said hijacking) of a musical form that many observers were still coming to terms with.

The Beastie Boys were generation gap music in its purest form. As expected, parents were indignant; Who raised these ingrates, What has happened to the youth of America, Where are the values, When I was your age we thought Pat Boone was risqué, Why I oughta lock you in your room without your stereo for playing that noise in the house, and in front of your sweet, impressionable little sister at that. How does it feel to feel old?

And while these days it seems that every child of the ‘80s got and dug what the Boys’ were laying down right off the bat, of course that’s not a bit true. Tons of kids were horrified or at least highly perturbed that three unruly youths were besmirching the rep of their peers through constant airtime on MTV. And it’s important to understand that The Beastie Boys were many ears’ first prolonged exposure to rap music, especially in the areas of the country not served by cable TV. And to be accurate, before Licensed to Ill MTV played very little rap music, just like before Thriller this supposedly progressive, groundbreaking entity aired almost no black music at all.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Jane Weaver’s illustrious career has produced an expansive library of music that has seen her journey through solo folkloric and pop leaning beginnings through to the psychedelic synth-pop explorations of today. Celebrating her pioneering vision, Fire Records will be deep diving into her early catalogue with a new reissue series set for release in 2026.

On its 15th anniversary, we revisit The Fallen By Watch Bird (out 23rd January 2026) with a special expanded edition double vinyl release that will include “The Watchbird Alluminate”—featuring Demdike Stare, The Focus Group, Anworth Kirk, and Samandtheplants. The album will be performed for the first time ever in its entirety by Jane and the sonic sisterhood group of Septieme Soeur including harpist Serafina Steer (Bas Jan), guitarist and singer Emma Tricca, Welsh folk artist Lisa Jen (9Bach), and guitarist Joel Nicholson (Jane Weaver Band) with accompanying storybook visuals and film.

Originally released on Weaver’s own label Bird Records, The Fallen By Watch Bird is a tapestry of psychedelic femme-folk-rock drawing influences from Eastern European children’s cinema, Germanic kunstmärchen, ’70s television music, and ’80s electronic scores. Steeped in synths and mysticism, the fully realised conceptual record weaves imagery of absent sailors, telekinesis, bird messengers, and white witchcraft alongside pagan themes of death and rebirth.

Presented across seven chapters it features performances from Septieme Soeur, Wendy Flower of Wendy & Bonnie folk pop duo who released 1969’s Genesis, Lisa Jen Welsh vocalist on Gruff Rhys’ Candylion, lost American folk-pop singer Susan Christie and Bosnian Folk music singer and violinist Behar.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | One of the most important events in modern music history remains the late ’80s cross-pollination when rock met hip hop.

From Aerosmith and Run-DMC’s groundbreaking collaboration, the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill use of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath to Public Enemy joining up with Anthrax, Rick Rubin, and Russell Simmons, De La Soul and Third Bass, to the 344 hip hop records that sampled Billy Squier’s “The Big Beat”—this era exemplified creative possibilities and cultural energy that defined a generation. Rap records sampled rock bands, elevating sampling into an art form and influencing all other genres of popular music.

The book When Rock Met Hip-Hop explores the many ways the fusion of rap and rock gave hope to a sense of interracial harmony, confronting sociocultural fault lines, and sparking collaborations that forever altered the course of popular music. In keeping with Steven Blush’s celebrated works—When Rock Met Disco and When Rock Met Reggae—this book illuminates the musical cross collision and cultural fallout that changed the sound and significance of popular music for the better and remains an influence today.

Steven Blush draws from decades of experience as an author, journalist, documentarian, and active participant in the culture at that time. A pioneer in chronicling musical boundary breakers, Blush offers incisive cross-genre analysis and first-person interviews with the visionaries who shaped music history. From documenting the underground hardcore movement to following the evolution of hybrid genres, Blush’s legacy shines in his exploration of the stories, sounds, and intersections that shaped generations.

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Halloween is over, and the last remnants of leftover Mars bars may still remain, but for Frank Zappa fans, every day is Halloween. Frank Zappa’s Halloween shows (which sometimes lasted more than just Halloween night) in New York, at the Palladium, are not just legendary among Zappa fans, but caused quite a stir in the music world at the time and paved the way for many others to do annual theme shows or take up annual residencies in various locales.

What unofficially began in 1972 and more or less went on (although not every year) until it unofficially ended in 1981, is now part of the Zappa mythical allure. While some entertainers are associated with Christmas, and others, like Guy Lombardo and then later Dick Clark, are associated with New Year’s Eve, Zappa became the musical ringleader for nights that brought out the freak in his fans.

This is the fourth in a series of archival Zappa Halloween releases that have included Halloween 77 (which also spawned the movie Baby Snakes), Halloween 73, and Halloween 81. For those who followed Zappa’s live Halloween concert bag of tricks, they know 1978 was the peak, making this release a real treat.

There are several editions of this new release, including an Expanded Super Deluxe Costume Box Set, which features 62 tracks across five CDs. The set comes with a pop-out mask of Zappa resembling the Devil (which was not a stretch), complete with a pitchfork and a UV light, and showcases some supernatural (or unnatural) artwork. There is also a Grimoire book, a book of spells, that includes photos and memorabilia.

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Long based in San Francisco, vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Tony Molina’s stylistic reach spans from hardcore to stripped-back home-recorded acoustic pop.

His new record, On This Day, offers 21 songs in 23 minutes and is a gem leaning to the melodic side of the spectrum, blending folk-pop, chime-pop, and baroque-pop. Molina taps into the essence of these classique sub-genres and works up a succinct, highly digestible whole that positively begs for repeat spins. On This Day is out now via Slumberland Records. The vinyl edition has sold out quickly; until there is a repress, there are compact discs and the digital option.

Many students of classic ’60s guitar pop stylistics home in on the specificity of the era’s high points, and that’s just fine. With them, every song is constructed as a full-bodied radio single that never was, and in turn, every album is loaded with potential singles. That can make for some mighty fine listening if the songs are truly up to snuff and have something to communicate in terms of inspiration over imitation.

Tony Molina can certainly conjure up the sound of ’60s pop, be it baroque, folky, or jangling, at its catchiest. On This Day attests to this, and in particular the folk-pop of “FC ’23,” the suburban garage band Bacharach of “Faded Holiday” (complete with trumpet by Ladybug Transistor’s Gary Olson), the rays of sunshine glistening on the fringes of “Lie to Kick It”’s emphatic chiming, the Brit-folk gentleness of “Despise the Sun,” and the explosive near freakbeat of “Have Your Way.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | A live recording of The Pogues’ timeless Christmas classic, “Fairytale Of New York” from Glasgow Barrowland’s in December 1987 has been rejuvenated by the band and the track’s original producer Steve Lillywhite. This newly released live version is available to stream now.

With the original version recently voted the nation’s favourite ’80s duet by BBC Radio 2 listeners, this unreleased live version will be available on a Limited Edition 12” Zoetrope vinyl EP featuring imagery based on the iconic “Fairytale of New York” music video. Alongside this live recording, the EP includes the original and an instrumental version of the track, and a live version of “Dirty Old Town” taken from the same show. The EP will also be available on streaming and download platforms from December 12.

This recording of “Fairytale of New Yor” is a hugely significant moment in the history of the track. The original version was recorded in August 1987 and released on 23 November. This performance at the Glasgow Barrowland on 17 December that same year was the first time the band played it live and was the first time Kirsty MacColl had ever performed the track with them. Steve, who was married to Kirsty at the time, recorded the performance himself from the mixing desk and it oozes with the raw energy of a Pogues show.

Opening with the crowd chanting Kirsty’s name after she had just simply walked on stage, the track kicks in with that now unmistakable piano intro and Shane’s vocal, the crowd’s presence apparent throughout and then the band kick in—slightly faster than the recorded version—and then Kirsty’s brilliant opening vocal retort hits with conviction!

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | As part of its ongoing series of definitive reissues, Iodine Recordings proudly presents the 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Quicksand’s Manic Compression—a landmark of post-hardcore innovation and one of the defining albums of the 1990s. More than just a reissue, this edition restores the record’s sound and visual art in full, honoring the band’s enduring influence and the intensity that reshaped heavy music’s trajectory.

If Slip announced Quicksand’s arrival, then Manic Compression proved they weren’t just a moment—they were a movement. Released in early 1995 on Island Records, the record built upon the foundation of their debut and expanded it into something sharper, darker, and more dynamic. Its tightly-coiled songs fuse hardcore ferocity, metallic heft, and alt-rock melody into a streamlined 12-track assault that perfectly captured the tension of its time.

Opening track “Backward” throws listeners straight into the deep end with slashing guitars and rhythmic precision that set the tone for the album’s relentless pacing. Lead single “Thorn in My Side” finds Quicksand at their most immediate—raw urgency refined into anthemic form, earning heavy rotation on MTV’s 120 Minutes and carving the band’s place in the wider alt-rock landscape of the mid-’90s. Tracks like “Landmine Spring” and “Delusional” balance jagged riffs with space and atmosphere, proving Quicksand’s ability to stretch hardcore into entirely new terrain.

Upon release, Manic Compression peaked at No. 135 on the Billboard Top 200 and earned the band an invitation to the first-ever Warped Tour—milestones that carried their sound far beyond the hardcore underground and into the broader alternative rock conversation.

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Celebrating Graham Parker on his 75th birthday. —Ed.

Some guys just can’t catch a break. Especially if their name is Graham Parker, who released four stellar albums from 1975 to 1979 and never came close to making the big time. Just how good was he in his prime? The English rocker’s first two LPs (1975’s Howlin’ Wind and 1976’s Heat Treatment) made the top five of The Village Voice’s annual Pazz and Jop poll. But has your average music fan heard his music? Not so much. The guy might as well be invisible.

Parker had his own suspicions about his failure to reach the big time, and it was Mercury Records, who in his opinion did nothing to promote his music. He laid out his argument in the scathing “Mercury Poisoning” with its lines, “I got Mercury poisoning/It’s fatal and it don’t get better/I got, Mercury poisoning/The best kept secret in the west, hey the west.” It’s a great song. It never made its way on to an LP. Parker’s new label, Arista Records, planned to release it as a single in 1979, but ultimately relegated it to a B-Side. Too risky to release–Parker could turn on you next.

Parker’s voice bears a distinct resemblance to that of Elvis Costello, but he doesn’t go in for Costello’s witty wordplay. Parker’s songs address everyday concerns in everyday language that Costello’s clever songs never do. Just check out “Local Girls” (don’t bother with ‘em) and “Saturday Nite Is Dead” (“I used to know a good place to go/But now it’s nothing like it was then”).

Parker had a crack backing band in the Rumour, who would go on to release three albums in their own right. Furthermore, ace guitarist Brinsley Schwarz has gone on to record six well-received solo albums, while rhythm guitarist Martin Belmont has released a neat dozen. Keyboard player Bob Andrews, drummer Steve Goulding, and bass player Andrew Bobnar rounded out the quintet, providing more than enough coloring and backbone to fuel the hard rockers and ample subtlety to add nuances the slow ones.

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