Devotees and dismissive sisters alike have long debated which is the worst Jefferson Airplane studio album. But one thing they agree on is it isn’t the obvious choice, The Worst of the Jefferson Airplane, the band’s 1970 best-of compilation. No, the two albums that always come up are the band’s last until their who-cares 1989 reunion, 1971’s Bark, and 1972’s Long John Silver.

Me, I would give the worst-of award to Bark, which is why I’m writing about Long John Silver. Not only is Bark worse than its bite, it’s worse than being gummed to death by a band of toothless hippies, not including vocalist Marty Balin, who split the band before the LP was recorded. He wouldn’t return until 1975, by which time the Airplane had become a Starship.

Long John Silver beats out Bark for two very simple reasons. First, it’s a rocker, and a hard-hitting rocker at that. And I’m not just talking about the title track and “Eat Starch Mom”—possibly the most metallic track they ever recorded. Second, it includes no obvious filler like Bark’s “Thunk” or “Never Argue with a German If You’re Tired or European Song,” and there’s nothing on it as flat-out dumb as “Rock and Roll Island.”

A quick word before we get to the review: The personnel shuffle that began with Balin’s departure continued with Long John Silver. Drummer Joey Singleton departed after recording two tracks, leaving former Turtle John Barbata (who would remain with the band) and Hot Tuna’s Sammy Piazza to play on the rest. Grace Slick, rhythm guitarist Paul Kanter, lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady, and violinist Papa John Creach were all on hand.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Today, UMe announce the reissue of Ringo Starr’s first four solo albums out October 24, 2025. Brand new limited-edition pressings of Sentimental Journey on buttermilk yellow color vinyl, Beaucoups of Blues on baby blue color vinyl, Ringo on molten lava color vinyl, and Goodnight Vienna on psychedelic waves custom color vinyl will be available via his official store. Pre-order HERE.

Bruce Resnikoff, President and CEO of UMe, shared, “For decades, Ringo has shaped music and inspired audiences worldwide, revered for his artistry and for his mission to spread peace and love around the world. We are honored to be entrusted with preserving his body of work, from his early work to his solo albums throughout the years. These reissues highlight his depth, his creativity and his lasting cultural impact.”

Ringo introduced himself as a solo artist with Sentimental Journey, which originally arrived on March 27, 1970. During an exchange with producer George Martin, the artist set the tone for the record when he famously proposed, “Why don’t we take a sentimental journey?” As such, he recorded 12 covers of staples from the American songbook, tipping his hat to the songs that shaped him during his formative years. It showed the world another side of the iconic performer for the first time.

He tracked the follow-up Beaucoups Of Blues at Music City Recorders in Nashville, TN alongside producer Peter Drake. Released on September 25, 1970, the 12-song body of work saw him embrace his passion for country and folk, delivering a benchmark solo offering in the process.

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Remembering Yusef Lateef, born on this day in 1920. —Ed.

There are certain jazz albums that transcend the genre and become timeless classics. Eastern Sounds by Yusef Lateef is one of those albums. It is a stirring, meditative musical excursion of sound, that could be considered a precursor of world music, or even a more nuanced, textured, and varied early new age recording, without the negative baggage of that now almost nearly forgotten musical genre.

The closest album that it shares some musical and spiritual sensibilities with is Something Blue from Paul Horn, released the year before this 1961 release. Both albums are almost musical mantras of sound, but are also very accessible releases that don’t stray too far from mellow jazz.

Lateef had been exploring these kinds of sounds on previous albums as a leader, most notably on Prayer to the East from 1957, but Eastern Sounds galvanizes all of the elements that make Lateef’s take on this sacred jazz sound work so well. While the album starts off with the subtle swing of “The Plum Bossom” and readings of the love themes of the epic films Spartacus (Alex North) and The Robe (Alfred Newman), it’s the other six tracks that reflect more of the contemplative side of this groundbreaking album.

Lateef is supported by the rhythm section of Barry Harris on piano, Lex Humphries on drums, and Ernie Farrow on bass. Farrow also plays rabat (spelled various other ways through history), a lute-like instrument that blends perfectly with Lateef’s work here on tenor saxophone, oboe, and especially flute, the Chinese globular xun.

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Toody Cole has the best laugh I’ve heard in a long time—big, unabashed, spontaneous. We’ve traded emails for a month or two, trying to find room for an interview between my touring schedule and hers. I had purchased some Dead Moon gear to wear for an upcoming book event—the band gets a nod in my latest novel, with Strange Pray Tell in rotation for much of the writing process—and was surprised to find an email reply about my order signed “Kathleen/Toody.” Maybe I shouldn’t have been; Dead Moon has always been a DIY operation.

“We started out with nothing but each other,” Toody tells me of her early life with husband Fred Cole, who fronted so many different bands over the years it’s tough to keep track of them all. Together with drummer Andrew Loomis, Fred and Toody formed Dead Moon in 1987 and soon became cult heroes of the Portland punk scene.

Both born in 1948, the Coles were raised by parents who had lived through the Depression and World War II; Fred was the head of his household by the time he was ten. “That responsibility came early in life,” Toody explains, whether you were putting food on the table or chasing a dream. “If you wanted something for yourself, you had to go out and work for it.” But necessity wasn’t the only reason Dead Moon did almost everything themselves. “90% of it honestly is the pride and the sense of accomplishment of doing things yourself,” she’s quick to add. “It wasn’t just music for us, it was everything,” including “living in a tent for six months” while building a house from the ground up. The Coles were “both basically control freaks,” she admits. “That’s a big part of it, too.”

You might not guess that, listening to any of the band’s records. Dead Moon’s music is unfussy, fizzing lo-fi, the songs by turns brooding and ferocious, most recorded on the same (in)famous disc cutter that produced the Kingsmen’s (in)famous “Louie Louie.” I can’t resist asking to hear the origin story, and it comes with another big laugh. “It used to be in the station at KSAN radio,” Toody tells me. “They had this disc cutter in the studio for the disc jockeys to cut their jingles, their spots, their ads, and the guy who managed the Kingsmen was a disc jockey there.” It eventually turned up at Portland’s Rec Recording, “completely taken apart, all the parts in boxes.” Fred heard about it and “hounded them for a whole year about he wanted to buy it” before finally giving up. Toody decided to try one more time for his birthday. “I talked the guy into giving it to me for $200 bucks. We got it home and it’s heavier than shit!”

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Residing in the Keystone State but with roots in the fertile Athens, GA scene, Giant Day is Derek Almstead, he of The Olivia Tremor Control, of Montreal, Elf Power, and The Glands, and Emily Growden, she of Faster Circuits and Marshmallow Coast. The duo’s second album is Alarm, a generous 14-track set that offers a solid blend of psychedelia, synth pop, contempo indie, and even flashes of prog. It’s out on vinyl (black or limited evergreen) on October 10 from The Elephant 6 Recording Co.

Alarm comes hot on the heels of Giant Day’s debut long-player Glass Narcissus, which was released on August 23, 2024, also on vinyl and also by Elephant 6. In fact, Giant Day delivered the first new recording by an official Elephant 6 band in a decade and a half. Augmenting this significance is how both the debut and this follow-up are tangibly but subtly connected to the psychedelic sound that defines their label.

That is, Giant Day’s sound is distinctive in the grand Elephant 6 scheme of things. The songs have been impacted by the darkness and desperation of our current era, but overall, the mood is anxious rather than gloomy or despairing. Much of the record is quite danceable, including the succinct opener “Out of Hand,” which is also one of the record’s more forthrightly rock-oriented tracks.

“Golden Times” builds up gradually and is impressively layered in its psychedelic comportment, while “Without Warning” is more jagged and infused with guitar haze. “Healthier Families Virginia” shifts into a poppier mode as it radiates an Anglo vibe, and after the intriguing instrumental fragment “Paoli,” the record shifts into the groove zone established on their debut with “King of Ghosts,” combining new wavy bustle harkening back to their Athens predecessors The B-52s with a druggy aura Broadcast fans might dig.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rhino will reissue Randy Newman’s acclaimed 1983 album this fall with Trouble in Paradise (Expanded Edition), a 2CD collection arriving October 17. That same day, the album returns to vinyl as part of the Rhino Reserve audiophile series. Trouble in Paradise (Expanded Edition) features a newly remastered version of the original, a rare live recording making its US debut, and 13 previously unreleased demos for tracks like “Christmas In Cape Town” and “My Life Is Good.” Pre-Order here.

The demos also include “Big Fat Country Song (Something To Sing About),” a track that evolved into “I Love L.A.” after Don Henley of the Eagles suggested Newman write a song about his hometown. The result was a city anthem in the tradition of “Chicago” and “New York, New York,” but sharpened with Newman’s lyrical bite. Despite that edge, it was quickly embraced as Los Angeles’ unofficial theme and is still played at Dodgers games and city celebrations. “I’m happy that it brings people so much happiness,” Newman says. “The little ironies that I have in there are ignored, but not unnoticed by lots of people. They get it.”

Trouble in Paradise (Expanded Edition) also restores Un Samedi En Décembre, a rare live-in-the-studio concert recorded for French television in 1982 and previously unavailable in the US. Taped just before the release of Trouble in Paradise, the performance serves as a career-spanning retrospective, drawing from all but one of Newman’s previous studio albums. He accompanies himself on piano for much of the set, with a string section joining on songs like “Louisiana 1927,” “Love Story,” and “Marie.”

Named one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s, Trouble in Paradise was produced by Lenny Waronker—who oversaw Newman’s first six albums—together with Russ Titelman. The sessions featured some of Los Angeles’ top musicians, including members of Toto, along with guest appearances by Henley, Paul Simon, Rickie Lee Jones, Linda Ronstadt, and Bob Seger. Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham also contributed background vocals on “I Love L.A.”

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Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis died in 1991 at the age of 65. Even before his death, music from various stages of his career had been reissued. From 1955 to 1976, Davis recorded for Columbia, and most of the reissues of his music over the years, in various formats, have been drawn from his fruitful time with the label.

From roughly 1951 to 1961, he had a nearly equally critically successful stretch with Prestige Records. His time with them began during the era when 10-inch vinyl records, from 1951 through 1954, were still a widespread format, and some of those 10-inch albums on Prestige were later released in various ways on 12-inch vinyl records. There is an overlap between the end of the music Davis recorded and released on Prestige and his initial recordings for Columbia.

Last year, Craft Recordings released the acclaimed and bespoke 4-LP box Miles ’54: The Prestige Recordings. The period covered in the box represented a rebirth for Davis, after a time of substance abuse and recovery, which resulted in confident new recordings. The era marked the beginning of his initial key period as a solo artist and group leader, which lasted well into the 1970s. The ’54 sessions served as the springboard for the music he created later, referred to as his first great quintet (Davis, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) recordings, which is more reflected in the music on the new ‘55 box set.

Due to the way much of the music Davis recorded during that period was initially released on 10-inch and then 12-inch vinyl, in addition to overlapping with his first recordings for Columbia, it can be a bit tricky to follow a purely linear recording history. Add to that the reissues of the massive Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings in 1988, The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions in 2006, The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection in 2016, and the recent spate of OJC (Original Jazz Classics) Prestige single album releases, and it becomes downright confusing.

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Amongst other qualities, the music of Australia’s The Necks is hypnotic and always evolving. That is, mesmerizing in the moment and never static over the span of a single long improvised piece or across a nearly four-decade stretch of productivity. Their twentieth studio album Disquiet, available October 10 through Northern Spy, is an appropriately expansive affair, featuring four tracks on three compact discs with durations ranging from 26 to 74 minutes. Massively scaled yet engrossing, The Necks’ brilliance is singular as it journeys once again to unexpected heights. 

Disquiet clocks in at 3 hours, nine minutes, 27 seconds, making it roughly one minute longer than Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson’s feature film released in 1999. Disquiet is roughly four minutes longer than Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon but eight minutes shorter than Kubrick’s Spartacus. These comparisons aren’t particularly significant except to denote the coexistence of the epic and the engaging.

But why choose film rather than music for the purposes of illuminating similarities? Indeed, there are numerous recordings that are of comparable length or even considerably longer than Disquiet. One reason is to acknowledge the reality of difference as it applies to The Necks, whose music has often been categorized as jazz but sounds like no other working group in the wide-ranging history of the form, even as it flows from the well-trodden ground of the piano trio model.

That’s Chris Abrahams on keys of various types, Lloyd Swanton on basses electric and acoustic, and Tony Buck on drums and percussion. They have welcomed guests on a handful of recordings but more often assume the roles of multi-instrumentalists, frequently by adding electronics into the weave.

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DANA POINT, CA | The final day of Ohana Fest 2025 had arrived, promising relentless energy, a lineup stacked with punk’s most electrifying acts, and a surprise performance yet to come. With 15,000 attendees seemingly making a silent vow to leave nothing in the tank, day 3 was kicked into high gear.

1:30PM: Bright, bold, and unapologetically loud, Lambrini Girls brought a jolt of energy to the shores of Doheny Beach. Hailing from Brighton, the trio wasted no time commanding the stage—a whirlwind of snarling guitar riffs, raw vocals, and riot girl attitude that instantly woke up the mid-afternoon crowd. Lambrini Girls didn’t just play Ohana Fest—they shook it up.

2:00PM: The Chats stormed the Tiki Stage with the kind of reckless Aussie energy that can turn any crowd into a mosh pit by the second song. Introduced by Eddie Vedder who shared his long-time admiration for the group—“I’ll tell you, for three, four years I’ve been trying to get this next group up on this stage…”—the anticipation was already high before they even plugged in.

Known for their fast-paced punk anthems and deadpan humor (“I will say, it’s reckless endangerment to put a ginger in the sun like this” lead singer Eamon Sandwith quipped), the group tore through their set with grins as wide as their riffs were loud, delivering pure, sweat-soaked chaos from start to finish.

An Aussie myself, I was curious to dig deeper into their sound and history—only to discover the trio and I had attended the same high school. A small coastal campus half a world away, it turns out the soundtrack to my old stomping grounds was here, shaking the sand at Ohana.

2:40PM: Unleashing a set full of power, English punk rock band High Vis held the crowd in the palm of their hand. As lead singer Graham Sayle punched the air and brought passion to every word, the band fused gritty, hard-hitting riffs with melodic hooks, creating a sound that was as urgent as it was infectious.

3:25PM: Next up: Amanda Reckonwith… Or, so we thought.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Françoise Hardy, who passed away in 2024, had established herself as a major figure in the French chanson scene as early as 1962, revealing a personality both emblematic and discreet. Her voice, her writing, and her ability to surround herself with talented lyricists and composers enabled her to captivate the entire world and, over the decades, to shape a discography of the highest standard, up until her final album Personne d’autre in 2018.

Wishing to pay tribute to her, her estate and the Catalogue department of Warner Music France announce the release, on November 21st, of the first Best Of covering her entire career.

Featuring over 20 tracks on each format, Voilà – The Very Best Of Françoise Hardy will offer her greatest songs, including “Tous les garçons et les filles,” “Le temps de l’amour,” “Le premier bonheur du jour,” “Mon amie la rose,” “Voilà,” “Des ronds dans l’eau,” “Ma jeunesse fout l’camp,” “Comment te dire adieu” (lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg), “La question,” “Message personnel” (co-written with Michel Berger), “J’écoute de la musique saoule” (written by Michel Jonasz and Gabriel Yared), “Partir quand-même” (composed by Jacques Dutronc), “Un peu d’eau,” “Tant de belles choses,” and “Le large” (written by La Grande Sophie).

Her notable duets with Jacques Dutronc (“Puisque vous partez en voyage”), “Étienne Daho (Et si je m’en vais avant toi),” and the band Blur (“To the end – La Comédie”) will also be featured on this Best Of.

Illustrated by a beautiful photo by Jean-Marie Périer, taken in the ’60s, Voilà – The Very Best Of Françoise Hardy will be available in 4 versions: double crystal clear collector vinyl / limited edition CD + DVD / double black vinyl / simple CD. The double vinyl formats will include an additional audio track, “Rendez-vous dans une autre vie,” from the 2012 album L’amour fou.

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