VIA PRESS RELEASE | On September 9, rock icons KISS will release the next installment of their popular Off The Soundboard official live bootleg series with KISS—Off The Soundboard: Live In Des Moines 1977, recorded during the Alive II tour at Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, IA on November 29, 1977.

This is the latest in a series of live releases by the band and will be available to stream and download, with a 17 song 2-LP standard black vinyl set, single CD, and a limited-edition 2-LP set pressed on 180g purple vinyl available exclusively through the Official KISS online store. All configurations of KISS—Off The Soundboard: Live In Des Moines 1977 are available to pre-order, HERE.

KISS—Off The Soundboard: Live In Des Moines 1977 was recorded during the landmark and extravagantly-produced KISS Alive II tour, and the 17-song set features a raw and powerful performance of classic KISS concert staples such as “Let Me Go Rock ‘N’ Roll,” “Love Gun,” “Rock And Roll All Nite,” (No. 12 Billboard), “Shout It Out Loud,” and “Beth” (No. 7 Billboard chart hit and the 1977 People’s Choice Award winner in the Best Song Category) performed by the lineup of Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss. KISS—Off The Soundboard: Live In Des Moines 1977 captures a monumental moment in KISStory and is a celebration of the legendary band giving rock ‘n’ roll fans the ultimate live KISS experience.

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PHOTO: RALF LOUIS | Sometimes, in order to go forward, you must first take a look at your past. Graham Nash has a rich and undoubtedly storied history behind him and he has recently released a live album titled, Graham Nash: Live which features him performing his first two albums—Songs for Beginners (1971) and Wild Tales (1973)—in their entirety. Mr. Nash will also be performing at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, NJ on July 13th.

Nash, however, has often focused on the future and shows no signs of slowing down. While he’s excited about this new live release, he’s also recently published A Life in Focus: The Photography of Graham Nash which showcases his longtime affair with photography. And, as we learn in this interview, he’s just completed a brand new solo album which is due to be released in early 2023. But in this chat, Graham and I talk about why he chose to revisit his first two solo albums and the experience of retracing the footsteps he made nearly a half-century ago.

Of course, we also discuss the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, making long-term musical relationships work and how you can’t really envision where you’re going, unless you know where you’ve been.

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.

Video killed the radio star. Or so it went in the strange and dreadful case of eighties arena rocker Billy Squier, whose fortunes were firmly on the up and up when he released the controversial MTV video for “Rock Me Tonite.” And by controversial I don’t mean it was sexist, homophobic, or racist. No blind people walked into walls. It did not advocate human sacrifice or the clubbing to death of baby seals, and included no footage of Catholic nuns having sex with barnyard animals. No, it was simply so unintentionally hilarious it got Billy laughed straight out of his career.

To say Squier makes a fool of himself on “Rock Me Tonite” video is akin to calling the sinking of the Titanic a minor boating accident. It opens with Billy crawling out of bed, tousling his mop of curly hair, donning a pair of white drawstring pants and pulling on an unspeakably awful pink sleeveless T-shirt. He then proceeds to do things no human being should do in private, much less in front of a camera.

He dances (horribly), pouts his lips, flings what appear to be a pair of pink panties (where did they come from?) into the air, slithers across the floor, rolls onto his back and gyrates his hips like a cross between Gregor Samsa and Shakira in the “La Tortura” video, does some pretty good pole dancing, flaps his arms up and down like a gaudy rooster attempting to defy the laws of nature, and in general does a very bad parody of the aerobics dancers in Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me.”

And more’s the pity, because Squier, while a second tier rocker relegated to opening for bigger and better acts, produced a handful of songs worth a listen. He was certainly peddling the product. The albums prior to 1984’s Signs of Life (which spawned “Rock Me Tonite”) scored big—1981’s Don’t Say No and 1982’s Emotion in Motion went triple and double platinum respectively.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Atreyu’s acclaimed debut, Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses, Craft Recordings announces a special slate of vinyl reissues.

In addition to returning to classic black vinyl, the metalcore masterpiece (which features the singles “Ain’t Love Grand” and “Lip Gloss and Black”) will also be available in three collectible colorways. These include a “smokey clear” edition, exclusive to Revolver and limited to just 200 units, as well as “clear-blue/black swirl” wax, limited to 500 units, and exclusive to Atreyu’s website. Additionally, fans can find a “sea glass clear” edition, limited to 500 units, exclusively at the Victory Records and Craft Recordings websites. All editions will be released on November 18 and are available for pre-order today.

Named for the protagonist in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, Atreyu were formed in 1998. By the time they caught the attention of Victory Records in 2001, Atreyu had already released two EPs—the seven-track “Visions” in 1999 and the five-track “Fractures in the Facade of Your Porcelain Beauty” in early 2001. The latter release would lay the foundation for the metal band’s debut album, with early versions of the songs “Living Each Day Like You’re Already Dead,” “Someone’s Standing on My Chest,” and “Tulips Are Better.”

After signing to Victory, the band entered New Jersey’s Trax East studio with producer Eric Rachel (The Starting Line, The Black Dahlia Murder) to lay down the tracks for their full-length. In addition to re-imagining the three songs off “Fractures in the Facade of Your Porcelain Beauty,” Atreyu wrote a scorching collection of new material, deftly combining honest, reflective lyricism with the sounds of thrash, hardcore punk, and the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Netflix and Diggers Factory are excited to announce the release of the Hustle (Soundtrack from the Netflix Film) LP with music by composer Dan Deacon. The soundtrack is available now for pre-order on Diggers Factory and comes pressed on blue vinyl, with an exclusive red version live on Netflix Shop. Adam Sandler’s Hustle debuted on Netflix’s English Films list at #1 with 84.58M hours viewed and climbing. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92% from critics and 92% with audiences, the film has been getting rave reviews.

Stanley Sugerman’s (Adam Sandler) love for basketball is unparalleled, but the travel weary Philadelphia 76ers scout who has higher ambitions of being a coach remains stuck on the road looking for the next unknown talent. His search around the world leads him to Spain, when he discovers Bo Cruz (NBA player Juancho Hernangómez), an incredible streetball player with a troubled past.

Stanley and Bo connect on and off the court, with their passion for the game and as loving family men who want to prove they can win, in basketball and in life. With the support of Stanley’s wife, Teresa (Queen Latifah), can the underdogs come out on top? Hustle, an inspirational drama, co-stars Ben Foster, Kenny Smith, Anthony Edwards, and Tobias Harris, is directed by Jeremiah Zagar and is produced by Sandler, Allen Covert, Joe Roth, Jeffrey Kirschenbaum, Zack Roth, LeBron James, and Maverick Carter.

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Celebrating Mick Fleetwood on his 75th birthday. —Ed.

Between their start as a standard English blues band and their apotheosis as perhaps the seventies best pop group, Fleetwood Mac wandered from style to style and sideman to sideman, and in so doing put out some very intriguing albums. 1970’s Kiln House is a fine example.

Guitarist Peter Green was out. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer was in, as was (kind of) Christine McVie, who provided backing vocals and wouldn’t be considered a full member until 1971’s Future Games. Bob Welch, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks were all in the future.

Like the other LPs Fleetwood Mac would release during their middle period, Kiln House is a dizzyingly eclectic affair. You get a couple of rockabilly rave-ups, a country music parody, a very, very English folk rock instrumental, an engaging hard rocker in the vein of The Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman” (only gnarlier!), a couple of very likable folk rock ditties, and an inspired cover of “Buddy’s Song,” which is credited to Buddy Holly’s mom Ella but is basically “Peggy Sue Got Married” with new words.

Kiln House constitutes a loving backwards look at rock ’n’ roll’s past, and as such anticipated the “rock ’n’ roll revival” that would inspire albums by the likes of John Lennon, The Band, David Bowie and a whole slew of backwards-looking English glam bands.

Fleetwood Mac doesn’t quite follow through on the concept; songs like “Earl Gray” (the aforementioned instrumental), “One Together” (which could be a Neil Young tune), and “Station Man” (chug-a-lugging blues number with nice vocal harmonies and raucous guitar) are hardly R&R revival fare. And that goes double for the C&W send-up “Blood on the Floor,” on which Jeremy Spencer does an uncanny imitation of a woebegone hillbilly crying tears in his beer.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Pink Floyd are to release two physical versions of their first newly recorded music in over 25 years, “Hey Hey Rise Up.”

The single, which was initially released digitally in April in support of the people of Ukraine and was #1 in 27 countries, will be available on 7” and CD single. Both formats will also feature a newly reworked version of “A Great Day For Freedom” taken from the band’s 1994 album, The Division Bell. The single will be available on 15 July (excluding Japan—released on 3 August—and USA, Canada, Australia and Mexico—released on 21 October).

The lead track sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards and features vocals by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox. When the track was first recorded at the end of March, Andriy, who left his band’s US tour to return home and fight for his country, was in a hospital bed in Kyiv recovering from a shrapnel injury. Proceeds for the physical release and the ongoing digital proceeds will go to Ukraine humanitarian relief.

For this limited edition release, David Gilmour revisited The Division Bell track “A Great Day For Freedom,” he has reworked the song using the original tapes which feature Nick Mason on drums and Richard Wright on keyboards, along with backing vocals from Sam Brown, Claudia Fontaine, and Durga McBroom. The track was composed by Gilmour with lyrics by himself and Polly Samson.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The biggest British psych find of the century!

Think that’s hyperbole? Well, of the 24 tracks on this collection, the only two to be previously issued on vinyl, “Beeside” b/w “Vacuum Cleaner,” comprise probably the rarest and most highly prized single (Deram DM 164) in ‘60s British rock, an original copy having sold for as much as $1600! (And with good reason…the guitar solo on “Vacuum Cleaner” set a new standard for mod-psych feedback freakout.) Indeed, that single was the only recording officially released by Tintern Abbey, and only a small handful of skeletal demos have leaked out since; yet, their legend persists some 55 years later.

Now, after two decades of planning, research, tape transfer, and sound restoration, the full story of Tintern Abbey can at last be told. The 2-LP set Beeside—The Anthology unearths 24 tracks of music recorded by Tintern Abbey between the summer of 1967 (when they spent a month in a Cornwall cottage, rehearsing and taping their performances prior to their London launch) and the end of 1968. Alongside that genre-defining Deram single and those previously-leaked demos are some astonishing treasures.

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With a career spanning back to the late 1960s and a creative breakthrough early in the decade following, vocalist and songwriter Horace Andy is one of reggae’s most respected figures, with his artistry persevering into the current moment largely in connection with UK trip hoppers Massive Attack. Well, Andy has a fresh album in the racks, and don’tcha know Midnight Rocker was realized with producer Adrian Sherwood? Released on the Prisoner’s label On-U Sound, the experience is fully up to snuff, it’s ten songs available now on vinyl, CD, and digital.

Having recently scored a major success in collaboration with the preeminent reggae survivor Lee “Scratch” Perry (two albums, Rainford and its dub companion Heavy Rain, both issued in 2019), Adrian Sherwood follows a similar path with Midnight Rocker, which has its own album of dub versions to come, hopefully released later this year.

Obviously, the vital component here isn’t Sherwood but Andy, who’s in fine voice throughout. To clarify, Sherwood’s presence is certainly felt across the album, adding value along the way, but his input serves the songs, or better said, Andy’s voice, rather than overtaking them, which is worthy of note given that dub techniques are already a significant part of the album’s scheme.

Midnight Rockers has a few fresh recordings of songs well-known from Andy’s repertoire, namely opener “This Must Be Hell” (from 1978’s Natty Dread a Weh She Want), side one’s finale “Materialist” (from a 1977 single), “Rock to Sleep” (from a 1976 single), and closer “Mr. Bassie” (from a 1972 single). While the impulse to re-cut established songs is largely considered a suspect maneuver inside the realms of rock and pop, there’s really no such danger in the reggae field, which (similar to the jazz scene) is simply versions galore.

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