VIA PRESS RELEASE | “The metal band everybody knows—but nobody has ever figured out. Ben Apatoff has taken the ultimate deep dive into the dark legend of Metallica, one of rock’s weirdest and most fascinating mysteries. In this brilliant book, he tells the definitive story of how a band of nobodies took on the world—and why the world will never be the same.” —Rob Sheffield, author of Dreaming The Beatles

With more than 125 million records sold worldwide, Metallica is the biggest metal band of all time. Four decades into their unparalleled career, Metallica is a massive cultural force who drastically changed the sound of popular music by creating their own rules. Yet for all their popularity, Metallica can seem impenetrable, raising more questions and inspiring more discourse as their mythos grows. They’re rarely given the kind of literary appreciation and analysis usually saved for the biggest rock artists, until now.

Metallica: The $24.95 Book looks at Metallica’s cultural significance, with chapters devoted to each member, each album, touring, fashion, books, film, influences, fandom, history, and more, exploring the band’s ideologies along the way. “I wanted it to it to be more than a fact book, and not just something people could just look up on the internet.” Says author Ben Apatoff, a writing teacher and music journalist.

The result is the most complete Metallica book to date, covering their career through 2021 and the first Metallica book written with access to the band’s box set materials. Compiled from years of exhaustive research and decades of fandom, and including previously unpublished photos, a foreword by Laina Dawes, the author of acclaimed 2013 memoir What are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal, new transcriptions of video interviews and magazine quotes previously unavailable on the internet, Metallica: The $24.95 Book finally gives Metallica the thorough biography and analysis the band deserves, providing an in-depth look at the band and their music that both die-hard fans and newcomers can enjoy.

Ben Apatoff is a New York writer and educator whose work has appeared in Metal Injection, MetalSucks, and the Morbid Anatomy Museum. He was born the summer Metallica released Kill ‘Em All.

The early 1980s was a magical time for electronic music. Artists like Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, and OMD were coming on strong and opened doors for other artists looking for the freedom to express themselves in new and untraditional ways.

Born in a dorm room in 1982 in St. Paul, Minnesota, three friends—Kurt Larson, James Cassidy, and Paul Robb—came together to form a band known simply as Information Society. Their 1985 classic “Running” became an instant classic in NYC and helped catapult the band from obscurity to stardom. Future singles such as “Walking Away” and “Peace and Love, Inc.,” cemented their place as one of the quintessential synth-pop bands of all time.

We recently spoke with Information Society founding member Paul Robb to discuss all-things INSOC including their challenging start in the music industry, a storied 40-year career, as well as their upcoming release, ODDfellows.

Share with our readers how you got your start in the music industry?

Well, that’s a pretty long story. In the early days of the band, we really didn’t understand much about the music industry, relying on side ventures in digital entertainment to keep things afloat during those lean times. As a matter of fact, for the first year or two, we kept having discussions about why we weren’t being discovered and were very frustrated, especially when pooling resources from unexpected sources like the best gambling sites reviewed by Esports News to cover basics. Finally, someone pulled us aside and said, “If you want to be discovered, you’ll need to make some recordings in order to put out records.” Sounded fairly easy (laughs), so we eventually scraped up some money—I believe the whole recording budget was $600—went into a studio, and recorded our first self-released EP. Those resourceful approaches carried over, sharpening our hustle in ways that echoed through our later breakthroughs.

Funny thing about that EP, it just wouldn’t sell and most of the vinyl ended up being thrown away. About a year later, we regrouped and tried again with the support of a local DJ along with a small indie label in Minneapolis called Wide Angle Records. And like a lot of fledgling record labels, they started out by owning a record shop. Ultimately, they gave us some money and helped us distribute our next album. It was on that album that our song “Running” first appeared. Fast forward a year and a half later, and that single ended up causing a major stir in New York, ultimately inspiring Tommy Boy Records to license that song and eventually sign us to a first major record deal.

What artists inspired you along the way?

It is so hard to get across the idea to the younger generation how open it felt in the early ’80s. New wave was so important to us, yet we all came at it from different musical points of view. My focus at the time was jazz and funk. Kurt Larson was listening to Styx, The Beatles, and all things progressive. James Cassidy was in a band playing Black Sabbath covers. We were all influenced by what was around us, but when new wave music started to trickle into Minneapolis, which is where we grew up, it really opened our eyes to what was truly possible.

Bands like Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, and a German band called D.A.F., were incredibly influential on us in the early days even though we didn’t really end up sounding much like that kind of proto-industrial music. And then the whole new romantic thing kicked in with a lot of British and German bands. After that, we started hearing “electro” bands in NYC and that really turned us on. Ultimately, we combined the song craft and the romantic overtones that we were picking up from the British bands along with the beats coming out of New York, and that was the two-cent formula that we ended up eventually co-opting as the Information Society sound.

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Seattle’s Blue Glass is headed by Michael Shunk, his outfit having debuting in 2019 with the album Pale Mirror. It was a set undeniably impacted by UK goings on between 30 to 40 years’ time ago (you know, the 1980s), and its contents remain solidly likeable. But with Jardin des Étoiles, Shunk’s approach has undertaken a considerable detour, specifically into ambient territory. This is by no means a complete break from his prior work however, as guitar remains part of the design. Available now digitally, the limited edition (500 copies on double orange wax) ships out August 6 through the Two Roads label.

In giving Pale Mirror a short review a little over two years ago in this very column, I was impressed, if not blown away, by Michael Shunk’s adeptness at conjuring the moodier side of the ’80s Brit post-punk experience while maintaining urgency and heft, and with better than average songs. Cited influences included The Smiths, New Order, and Durutti Column, though sticking out to my ear was The Cure and The Church (who I realize aren’t from the UK, but neither are The Chills, who also made that list of influences). Also, in the drowsy near-rasp of Shunk’s voice, Pale Mirror recalled the Psychedelic Furs.

But what a difference a pandemic can make. There will be no comparisons to Richard Butler this time out, as Jardin des Étoiles is a record without vocals. The scoop is that after Covid scuttled a West Coast tour, Shunk opted for a shift of gears into what’s described as a meditative, healing zone, as he took additional inspiration from the films of director Chris Marker (La Jetee, A.K., A Grin Without a Cat, Take Five, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich) and Shunk’s son’s interest in the stars up above (the album’s title translates to Garden of the Stars).

The impact of Marker, who is frankly one of the greatest of all filmmakers, and in particular Shunk’s love of the masterful essay film Sans Soleil, is a promising sign that Jardin des Étoiles will unfold with positivity. And for that matter, so is taking inspiration from a childhood fascination with galaxies in the night sky (very relatable, as I shared this interest as a youth).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | For its 30th anniversary, Pixies 1991 album, Trompe Le Monde, is being reissued on limited marbled green vinyl, out September 24, 2021 (4AD). Pre-orders can be placed here.

Trompe Le Monde bookended a golden run of landmark records—a mini-album followed by four albums, released in quick succession—that cemented Pixies as one of the best for a generation. Translated from French to mean “fool the world,” Trompe Le Monde showed the band still restless to push their sound forward. Recorded between Burbank, Paris, and London, with producer Gil Norton again at the controls, their fourth album is arguably their most playful, with Black Francis’s lyrics on UFOs and conspiracy theories keeping things weird while power pop creeps in to amplify the space rock established on predecessor Bossanova.

Featuring singles “Planet of Sound,” “Alec Eiffel,” “Letter to Memphis,” and a flawless cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On,” Trompe Le Monde goes full throttle with 15 tracks coming in a quickfire 40-minute salvo. Receiving critical praise at the time and being supported by a huge tour that included playing stadiums with U2, it also proved to be the end of act one for the band, with them taking over a decade before returning to the stage together.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Somewhere amid the sea of pimps and tough guys, Blaculas and Blackensteins that came to characterize the films of the Blaxploitation era was a curious little oddity that defied classification. Not scary enough to be horror, too supernatural to be drama, with far too many animal sacrifices to be a romance, Lord Shango represented a solemn, contemplative, spiritual alternative to the sort of “exploitative” sex and violence-laden criminal storylines that gave Blaxploitation its name.

Released in early 1975, Lord Shango’s marketing materials painted it as a horror movie…but in truth, it’s a thoughtful, deliberately paced blend of genres similar in tone and cultural content (comparable to the spirit and feel of the 1973 film Ganja & Hess, and also starring Marlene Clark) and plays like a “woke” old-timey melodrama in the mold of the “race films” of the early 20th century from pioneering black directors like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams. This racial consciousness is undoubtedly a manifestation of the Afrocentrism and Black Power movement of the ’60s and ’70s.

Writer Paul Carter Harrison, whose playwright background comes through in the literate, dialogue-driven script, was raised in a family that had roots in Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanism movement and the Gullah culture, and a couple of years before Lord Shango, he wrote a book about the imprint of traditional African beliefs on the black experience and the need to reflect this influence in the arts.

Released by Bryanston Pictures who rose to prominence by financing and distributing films such as the crossover porn sensation Deep Throat, as well as big horror and cult films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Bruce Lee’s Return of the Dragon, the Andy Warhol productions Blood for Dracula-Flesh for Frankenstein, John Carpenter’s Dark Star and the animated Blaxploitation parody Coonskin.

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Dolphin Midwives is the recording and performance moniker of Portland, OR-based harpist, vocalist, sound artist, and composer Sage Fisher. Her chosen instrument might lead the uninitiated to anticipate ornate cascades of gorgeous pluck, but woah there, partner; while not lacking in glistening strings, Fisher’s latest gravitates toward the realms of contemporary experimental pop. Huh? But as the record unwinds, the inviting unusualness of its contents make it clear that Fisher hasn’t neglected her strengths. That’s nice. Available digitally, on CD and on either black or limited (100 copies, signed and numbered by Fisher) transparent aqua blue 140-gram vinyl, Body of Water is out now via Beacon Sound.

The cassette Orchid Milk was Dolphin Midwives’ first release, coming out in 2016 in an edition of 100 copies on the Obsolete Media Objects label, though it is Liminal Garden, which arrived early in 2019, that is designated as the project’s debut studio album. Body of Water, produced with Tucker Martine, is its boldly conceived follow-up.

Fisher has been additionally busy since the release of Orchid Milk, with her installation Naturaphones, which featured “large-scale interactive acoustic sculptures, ambient performance, and sculptural prototypes,” culminating a six-month residency for the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon College of Art & Craft. She also formed Dröna Choir in 2017 to realize invisibility ritual, her choral work intended to be performed on the new moon and in complete darkness.

That sounds like the makings of a good time, but it’s Fisher’s 2018 sound art performance/ installation Break: preparations for the apocalypse that’s most pertinent to Body of Water, as “Break,” with lyrics indeed referencing the apocalypse, is the album’s sixth track out of a dozen, standing as a mid-way point showcase that mingles experimental pop qualities, and the pleasantness of Fisher’s singing in particular, with the breadth of ambition that helps to define sound art. “Break” travels a considerable sonic distance, from jungle war ambience giving way to an enveloping vocal swirl, and all in just five minutes.

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Rising like a shimmering fever dream in the middle of the desert, Las Vegas has always been about fakery.

Magicians and impersonators continue to be top draws in showrooms, the best of them mystifying the tourist flocks. Casinos are constructed to emulate ersatz pyramids, Roman coliseums, Parisian skylines, and the whole of New York City. Inside them, you are led to believe you might actually win at the tables.

So as Vegas lumbers to reopen with the rest of the country (though its pandemic numbers and deaths are currently worst in the nation) it is the tribute artist fill-ins who largely fill the musical bill in showrooms.

They currently include a fake Rat Pack, three different fake Motown revues, a generic Queens of Rock show, and a couple of Michael Jackson recreations. There is a rock revue of questionable taste, 27 – A Musical Adventure, impersonating rock stars who died at age 27, from Jimi, Janis, and Jim to Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain. There’s an Australian Bee Gees (though the originals were Aussies too, right?) and the long-running smorgasbord of subterfuge, Legends in Concert.

There’s one show dedicated entirely to Elvis and two for Prince. One of the latter is Purple Reign: The Prince Tribute Show which has been performing around Vegas long before its subject died in 2016. Its star Jason Tenner has been putting on the purple costume for 25 years and generally stays in the realm Prince created in his 1984 film—down to giving a big chunk of the hour long show to Morris Day and the Time. Nothing wrong with that. Prince wrote and produced most of that music as well, their appearance and cavorting allows Tenner to go off and do costume changes.

Adding shimmying dancing girls is probably a law for every show on the Vegas strip so a couple of them gyrate here. Add a singer and they become Vanity 6 (paying tribute to yet another singer gone before her time; Vanity died in 2016 at 57).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | This fall, Matador Records will celebrate the 21st anniversary of The New Pornographers’ debut record and breakout, Mass Romantic (2000), with a limited-edition LP reissue out 12/10.

The album—clocking 3 singers and 12 effervescent and undeniable power-pop gems—will return to us on red vinyl and will include a bonus 7”, “Letter From An Occupant,” which includes two rare B-sides, “The End of Medicine” and “When I Was a Baby.”

What’s more, The New Pornographers will tour the U.S. and Canada this fall playing a series of two-night stands—performing Mass Romantic in its entirety on the first night and running down the equally outstanding Twin Cinema (16th Anniversary!) on the next. Throughout this trip, the band’s lineup will feature AC Newman, Dan Bejar, Joe Seiders, John Collins, Kathryn Calder, and Neko Case, and Todd Fancey.

From Carl Newman: “Everyone wants to be successful but, hand to my heart, I had no delusions of success for The New Pornographers. To be here over 20 years later, still in the game, is something that I simultaneously take for granted (you just get used to it) and feel eternally grateful for. Been here so long that we can do one of those ‘let’s play that old album all the way through!’ gigs.

And we are doing just that. 2 nights per city: 1 Mass Romantic, 2 Twin Cinema, plus assorted ‘hits’ from our storied career. Bejar is coming and God knows if we’ll get him again. When he moved to Spain 2 months after Mass Romantic came out, I thought he was done in the band and now 21 years later we’ve convinced him to come along for another ride. Just the nature of our band that it’s a special occasion when all the singers show up. Here’s to you showing up as well!”

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Given the size and power of the Baby Boomers demo, it’s a wonder the whole of TV isn’t back to back classic rock documentaries. But there are actually quite a lot of them.

The most annoying of the lot are like PBS’ new Icon: Music Through the Lens, an exhaustive and exhausting six-hour (!) celebration of the rock photographers who brag about the work they’ve done, repeat the same points over and over (“It’s about capturing a moment”) and use the word “iconic” to mean “a picture I did that I remember.” Perhaps because it’s Brit-centric, none of the images held up as iconic actually are. Like me, you may have never even seen many of them before.

For all their celebration of rock stars, they’ve neglected to license much of their music, so generic music plays underneath the boasts and florid remembrances. One guy who has stayed remarkably humble despite making music that actually is iconic is Paul McCartney, whose television appearances can be wanting. Even so, it looked like his 2018 Carpool Karaoke with James Corden would ever be topped.

But now comes the unexpected delight of Hulu’s new McCartney 3,2,1, a black and white document of the meeting of the former Beatle with famed and supremely bearded producer Rick Rubin to dissect the old songs. Mulling over the Beatles oeuvre on a mixing board so that individual tracks can be isolated is something their producer George Martin did on a public TV series a decade or so back.

But here it’s McCartney himself who takes the sliders in his hands to hear previously unnoticed aspects of songs we all thought we knew front and back. More often it’s Rubin, an admirer of his guest but never fawning, who takes the controls. From the first of six half hour segments, something as seemingly simple as “All My Loving” is shown to have all kinds of complexity beneath, with John Lennon’s frenzied rhythm guitar parts underlying the entire song.

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Looking for some sophisticated English entertainment? Well put on the old school tie, break out the crumpets and watercress tea sandwiches, offer Viscount Basil Clement-Clawsey a cup of Earl Grey tea, and put 10cc’s Sheet Music on the gramophone. Then unstiffen your upper lip just long enough to say in your poshest English accent, “You’ll love this, old boy. They’re no Foghat, mind you. And by the way, you look quite dashing in your black silk stockings and whalebone corset.”

10cc were an English art pop band whose American success has been limited to two of their most traditional songs: 1975’s “I’m Not in Love,” which rose to No. 2 on the pop charts, and 1976’s “The Things We Do For Love,” which made its classy way to No. 5. Musically, 10cc’s closest American counterparts are Sparks, whose elegantly witty songs look at the world askew, and like 10cc have been rewarded by limited commercial success.

The difference between 10cc and Sparks is the former have a fuller sound and lusher vocals. 10cc is made up of a quartet of multi-instrumentalists and typically utilizes multiple vocalists on individual songs. Sparks is just Ron Mael on keyboards and brother Russell on vocals. The bands share a quirky sense of humor, but Sparks win the cleverness sweepstakes hands down. The trouble with Sparks is that, for all but diehard fans, a little of their music goes a very long way.

On their sophomore outing, 1974’s Sheet Music, 10cc bring another band to mind as well: Bachman Turner Overdrive. Just Kidding. I’m talking Queen. It’s there in the complex song structures (think “Bohemian Rhapsody”) and the vocals, which you can’t hear without thinking the Freddie Mercury of “Killer Queen.” And it’s hard not to detect the Bonzo Dog Band in their music as well, both in the absurdist lyrics and the odd musical touches—one rarely runs across a song (in this case “Somewhere in Hollywood”) that comes complete with tap dancing.

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