VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings commemorates the centennial of one of the most influential literary figures of the twentieth century with a special vinyl reissue of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark spoken-word album, Howl and Other Poems. Originally released by Fantasy Records in 1959, the recording captures Ginsberg performing many of his most celebrated works, including the era-defining title poem “Howl.”

Arriving September 4 on eco-friendly green blend vinyl, the limited edition reissue faithfully replicates the original 1959 package design. The album is available for pre-order today and can also be streamed across digital platforms.

The set combines recordings from the Big Table Reading at Chicago’s Shaw Festival with additional sessions recorded at Fantasy Studios in San Francisco. Alongside “Howl,” selections include celebrated works “America,” “Sunflower Sutra,” “A Supermarket in California,” and “Footnote to Howl,” capturing the radical candor, urgency, humor, and musicality of Ginsberg’s early performances.

The release arrives as part of a broader centennial celebration honoring Ginsberg’s life and legacy. Additional events, exhibitions, performances, and commemorative programs taking place throughout the year can be found at AllenGinsberg.org.

Born June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, Allen Ginsberg emerged as one of the defining literary voices of the twentieth century. For Ginsberg, the second half of the 1950s marked a transformative period. Following the first public reading of Howl at San Francisco’s legendary Six Gallery in October 1955 and the publication of Howl and Other Poems by City Lights the following year, he found himself at the center of one of the most consequential literary controversies in American history.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Nearly ten years ago we released an album that changed our lives forever,” says JJ Julius Son, lead singer of KALEO. “In honor of the 10th anniversary, we’re re-releasing A/B with eight bonus tracks featuring studio rarities and a few of our most iconic live performances.” A/B (Deluxe Anniversary Edition), a limited edition double-vinyl pressing, will be officially out June 10 via Rhino Records, will commemorate the group’s breakout record with a special pressing that both revisits and reimagines this time.

The debut album spawned hits like “All The Pretty Girls,” “No Good,” and the global sensation “Way Down We Go,” which landed at number one on Billboard’s Alternative Rock chart, has nearly 4 billion streams and featured in over 3 million TikToks worldwide. The deluxe anniversary 2LP highlights the vinyl debut of the “Way Down We Go” stripped version, “Up In The Sky,” a studio track previously unreleased outside of Iceland, and the premiere of a new spin on an old classic, “Still No Good.”

Emerging from Mosfellsbær, a small town in the suburbs of Reykjavik, Iceland, KALEO formed as childhood friends in 2012. Made up of JJ Julius Son (vocals/guitar), David Antonsson (drums), Daniel Kristjansson (bass), and Rubin Pollock (guitar), the group has gone on to global success, amassing over 6+ billion global streams, 70+ international gold, platinum, and diamond certifications, countless sold-out headlining shows, plus appearances at noteworthy festivals including Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and more.

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Remembering Jimmy McCulloch, born on this day in 1953. —Ed.

There are One Hit Wonders and One Album Wonders, and occasionally the paths of those two dubious honors intersect. One such instance is UK group Thunderclap Newman, mostly celebrated for their single “Something in the Air” but also noted for their only LP, 1969’s Hollywood Dream. The record contains that superb single, but it also features a surplus of additional charm, and while its profile has increased substantially, it’s sadly plagued by its reputation as the sole document from one of rock’s notable underachievers.

And to be blunt, Thunderclap Newman is a questionable entry into the club of the One Album Wonder anyway. They have the solitary LP down pat, but a passionate bout of quibbling just might break out over the Wonder part of the equation. For Hollywood Dream, released after “Something in the Air” spent three weeks as a UK number one hit, was something of a stiff in terms of sales. It climbed no higher than #161 in the US album chart, and the single was a bit of an American sleeper, making it to only #37. And in an odd twist, apparently the LP was even more coolly received in their home country.

When the band’s back-story is added into the mix, Hollywood Dream’s landing with a splat of relative indifference becomes something of a persistent head-scratcher. Vocalist/drummer John “Speedy” Keen had previously penned “Armenia City in the Sky” for The Who’s 1967 album The Who Sell Out. Pianist and band namesake Andy Newman looked like a dry run for the likes of Bun E. Carlos and banged on the keys like an auxiliary member of the Bonzo Dog Band. A suitable nickname for their young guitarist would be “The Kid,” or maybe even better “The Face,” for it’d be well nigh impossible to find a more splendiferously Mod figure than the one cut by Jimmy McCulloch on the record’s cover.

Throw in that Pete Townsend played bass on the LP and its lack of performance is indeed a stumper. It’s in essence an album tailor made for Beatles fans, registering at times like a slightly more twee incarnation of Badfinger, though they never cross the line into the precious. Maybe the problem was that at the point of the record’s release The Beatles hadn’t really broken up yet (though the end was certainly near). However, Badfinger’s sales figures in ’70 and ’71 surely benefited from the realization of many that their favorite band was no longer extant.

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Some bands play rock and roll. Van Halen rebuilt it from the studs up, and for more than four decades, Eddie Van Halen’s fingerprints have been all over the blueprint—the tapping, the tone, the grin you could hear in every run. I have loved this band since I was a kid spinning records in my buddy Tommy B’s bedroom on 26th St. in San Bernardino, and I have chased them across roughly 25 shows in every lineup they ever fielded. So, when a record I had never heard of landed in my lap, I did not expect it to knock me flat.

The 5150 Sessions arrives not as a cash-grab, live bootleg but as a defiant act of preservation, a window into Van Halen with the curtain pulled all the way back.

Culled from 2006 and 2007 rehearsals at Eddie’s own 5150 studio, this is Ed, Al, and a young Wolfgang running full set lists twice a week with no singer in the room. Andrew Bennett, the filmmaker who lived inside those sessions, pulled the uncompressed files straight off the soundboard and handed them to producer Howard Wulkan, who mixed and mastered them at Farmadelica Sound.

The result floored me. This does not sound like a soundboard feed—it sounds like a finished studio album, every string and cymbal sitting in its own pocket of air. Wolfgang’s bass is rock solid, locked tight with his uncle and his dad, though I will always miss the rafter-shaking high harmonies and bottom end of the one and only Michael Anthony. What you get instead is something rarer: Eddie and Alex stripped bare, two brothers reading each other’s minds in real time.

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Although they had long since reformed to cut a pair of albums, Urge Overkill delivered their swan song to the Alternative Rock ‘90s in the middle of that decade with Exit the Dragon, the second of two records originally released by the Geffen conglomerate. Now, with its recent double vinyl edition, it joins Saturation in Porterhouse Records’ reissue program. Listening to the set with fresh ears finds it holding up better than expected. Indeed, it now registers as the high point of the band’s major label sojourn. For its 30th anniversary, it arrives in a pressing of 1,000 copies, with options for pink or purple vinyl.

Saturation basked in the glow of Geffen’s abundant Alternative era success through the DGC imprint (Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Beck, Hole, Weezer, Counting Crows, Elastica, The Posies, Teenage Fanclub, The Sundays, that dog, Boss Hog, Veruca Salt) and was the Urge Overkill record that was fresh in the store racks during the extended Pulp Fiction hubbub; the band’s solid cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” accompanies a crucial scene in Quentin Tarantino’s second feature.

Naturally, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” landed on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, but listeners new to the band who were looking for more would’ve likely gotten their mitts on Saturation or the album’s single “Sister Havana,” which was a moderate airplay hit. Saturation was also a charting album, but it’s something of a surprise that Exit the Dragon was their biggest-selling record.

The surprise is mainly due to a certain amount of Alt-rock fatigue setting in by the point of Exit the Dragon’s release. Related to this was the uninhibited gusto in Urge Overkill’s striving for Big Time commercial success and how the boldness of their collective image compounded this, as the band disdained the simple t-shirt, jeans, and Chuck Taylors favored by a large percentage of the indie rock brigade for flashy outfits befitting a trio striving for rock star dominance.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Twenty years on from its closure, CBGBs remains one of the most legendary clubs in rock history, and perhaps THE most important in the annals of punk rock.
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So many of the bands that we now consider the founding fathers of punk took their first unsteady steps onto the stage at CBGBs, although genuine sonic documents of both venue and artists from the most crucial years in their development, 1976-1978, are very thin on the ground. Those who were there speak longingly even of the club’s failings—it was a long, thin room in a ramshackle building in the roughest part of town. It had poor acoustics, served weak beer, and boasted some of the most disgusting bathrooms on the circuit.

But it was home to a long list of names whose music still rings loud today—Television, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads… and the Dead Boys, the Cleveland quintet that arrived in New York in late 1976 with a high octane set that mashed the viscous showmanship of the Stooges with the garage swagger of the New York Dolls, then set it all to a Mach 1 soundtrack. Few people who saw the Dead Boys at CBs ever left with their hearing intact.
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Of course, the Dead Boys had an easy ride into that seething melting pot—venue owner Hilly Kristal was their manager. But they earned the audience’s respect regardless, and in this instance, we do have the evidence.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | DiWulf Publishing is proud to announce its partnership with Earth Island Books for the US promotion and distribution of Tear It Down: How Crossover Bridged Metal and Hardcore Punk, a groundbreaking new work documenting one of underground music’s most influential, chaotic, and often misunderstood movements.

Written by Alexandros Anesiadis, Tear It Down explores the explosive collision between hardcore punk and metal—two genres that refused to stay in separate lanes and ultimately forged an entirely new underground sound and culture. Far beyond a simple history, the book dismantles the idea of a singular crossover narrative, revealing the violence, creativity, rebellion, and friction that defined the movement.

The book examines widely recognized crossover pioneers including Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, The Accused, and D.R.I., while also spotlighting essential but often overlooked acts such as Beyond Possession, Sacrilege B.C., Lobotomia, and Lethal Aggression. It digs even deeper into the underground, uncovering bands like Ugly But Proud, Whoppers Taste Good, Dresden, and Capitalist Alienation—demonstrating that crossover was never one story, one sound, or one scene.

Built on more than 180 interviews with bands from around the world, ranging from original 1980s participants to post-2000 and contemporary artists, Tear It Down focuses on the formative years of 1980–1990 while tracing the genre’s evolution, long-term influence, and global mutations. Expanding beyond musicians, the book also features conversations with record labels, visual artists, fanzine creators, and cultural contributors, presenting crossover not simply as a musical hybrid, but as a full underground movement and identity.

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If there ever was a group that began in the 1970s but whose music was tailor-made for the 1980s, it was The Alan Parsons Project, the brainchild of famed producer Parsons and his partner Eric Woolfson, who passed away in 2009. Their studio-oriented music, which featured a rotating cast of singers and musicians, took full advantage of all the electronic toys available to make music at the time, and had futuristic, thematic concepts that were perfect for what was to come, for good or bad, in the 1980s.

While their 1976 debut, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, was very much a product of the ’70s, their next album in 1977, I, Robot, based on the interconnected short story collection by Issac Asimov published in 1950, wasn’t just the perfect soundtrack for the ’80s, but is even more relevant today.

Pyramid, in 1979, thematically presented eternal questions and used ancient symbols as a guidepost, while musically approached the themes with very modern electronic sounds. Eve in 1979 was a dramatic departure and signaled that the group may have decided to leave the past and maybe even the future behind them. Which brings us to the latest batch of reissues from the group and the first albums they released in the ’80s.

The Turn of a Friendly Card, recorded in Paris and released in 1980, was almost a reset for the group and, in some ways, oddly and conversely, almost a follow-up to their debut. The album had many musical attributes of ’70s music, was a lush, immersive experience, and boasted what turned out to be their biggest hits to date, “Games People Play” and “Time,” eclipsing “Damned if I Do” from Eve. Rather than tackling overreaching themes, the album used a simple game for the thematic metaphor. It’s hard to argue which of the group’s albums is their best, but this one is at least clearly among them.

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Remembering Curtis Mayfield, born on this date in 1942. —Ed.

A great soundtrack album by one artist is a rare thing; they’re generally chock-a-block full of instrumental filler and thin on solid tunes that can stand on their own. Not so Curtis Mayfield’s 1972 soundtrack to that same year’s blaxploitation crime drama Super Fly; it’s a non-stop funk machine that actually outgrossed the film it was created to accompany. Which doesn’t surprise me, because there isn’t a single subpar song on it.

The tale of one Youngblood Priest, an African-American cocaine dealer trying to escape the drug business, Super Fly boasted the great tag lines, “Never a dude like this one! He’s got a plan to stick it to The Man!” and was directed by Gordon Parks, Jr., who also directed that other legendary blaxploitation film, 1971’s Shaft. Most of the album’s songs, amongst them the superfunky title track, “Pusherman,” and “Freddie’s Dead” all directly address the cocaine business, and all are soul/funk standards that sound as fresh now as they did way back in the year of Richard Nixon’s reelection.

As for the LP’s two instrumentals—a remarkably low number for a soundtrack LP—“Junkie Chase” is a fiery jazz/funk number with stabbing horns and some mean, mean wah-wah guitar, to say nothing of some great piano, while “Think,” as its title indicates, is a slower and more introspective piece that boasts a lovely melody is and propelled by some really nice guitar and great horns, including one expressive saxophone. The intro sounds like the beginning of every ballad The Red Hot Chili Peppers have ever written, but I refuse to hold that against it, no matter how much the Peppers disgust me.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Stooges self-titled and Fun House albums reimagined for audiophiles on new reel-to-reel and Dolby Atmos editions arriving today. Fun House’s open-reel debut and The Stooges and Fun House’s immersive audio mix offer fans two fresh ways to experience its chaotic brilliance.

Fun House (Rhino High Fidelity R2R) were both duplicated in real time from a 1:1 copy of the original flat analog master tape. The result is a master-quality listening experience that captures the full dynamics of the recording without the surface noise or groove wear of vinyl. The 15 i.p.s. half-track 1/4” tape is produced to the IEC equalization standard on premium RTM LPR90 tape stock and housed on a 10.5” metal reel. The reel-to-reel edition is limited to 350 copies available exclusively at Rhino.com.

The Stooges and Fun House (Atmos) brings together Dolby Atmos (TrueHD 7.1) and Hi-Res Stereo (DTS-HD MA) mixes of both albums on Blu-ray, newly created by legendary producer Ed Stasium from the original multi-track tapes. Stasium’s immersive Atmos mix elevates the album’s primal energy, placing the listener in the center of the studio floor as the band deconstructs rock music in real time. Rhino will exclusively offer a bundle of all three audiophile titles from The Stooges for $354.98

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi), the leader in high-fidelity audio reissues, will release the definitive audiophile editions of two Doobie Brothers classics: the album that made the group superstars, 1973’s The Captain and Me, as well as 1974’s soulful What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits.

The Numbered-Edition 180g 45RPM 2LP sets are available beginning with the release of The Captain and Me on May 29 (order HERE); What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits will follow on June 5 (pre-order HERE). The Hybrid SACD version of the latter is available for purchase now (HERE).

Sourced from the original analog master tapes (1/4” / 15 IPS Dolby A analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe), pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 45RPM 2LP sets benefit from extraordinary soundstages, ultra-quiet backgrounds, big dynamics, and spot-on imaging. Producer Ted Templeman’s excellent production charms like never before.

Taking off on the commercial success of Toulouse Street, The Captain and Me propelled the Doobie Brothers to superstar status. Having spent an entire year on the charts after its March 1973 release, the band’s third record features one classic after another.

It’s no wonder why The Captain and Me stands as one of the feel-good California quintet’s signature works. Balanced between Tom Johnston’s harder-edged contributions and Patrick Simmons’ rustic excursions, the album displays a stunning array of high harmonies and interlocking rhythms.

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Remembering Charlie Watts, born on this day in 1941. —Ed.

Few albums have been as vilified or written off as colossal missteps as The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request. There’s Taylor Swift Sings the Songs of Captain Beefheart, and Arnold Schwarzenegger Sings Barbra Streisand, but neither of these albums can hold a candle to the Stones’ 1967 answer to the Beatles’ acid-influenced Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their Satanic Majesties Request was quickly dismissed as a shameless attempt to keep up with the psychedelic Jones’s, and the critical blowback was so negative that the Stones promptly hopped to it and followed Satanic Majesties with Beggars Banquet, an LP so down to earth a filthy toilet graces its cover.

Aside from “She’s a Rainbow” and “2000 Light Years from Home” you’re highly unlikely to hear any of Satanic Majesties’ songs anywhere, and the Stones themselves haven’t had much good to say about it over the years. Keith Richards called it “a load of crap,” while Mick Jagger said “there’s a lot of rubbish” on it. But it has its fair share of cultists, whole heaps of them in fact, and they love it to death. And their waxing enthusiastic over the LP finally got the better of me. Just how bad could it be, after all?

Not bad at all is the short answer. Strange, far stranger than Sgt. Pepper for that matter, Their Satanic Majesties Request has more than its fair share of fine moments, along with a few dubious tunes that don’t quite make the grade. Me, I’ll take it over Sgt. Pepper any day, and I think the Stones should be commended for putting out an LP that was even more experimental than its Beatles counterpart. Mick and the boys took real chances on the LP, and if they didn’t always work, at least the Stones tried.

The album’s problems have been variously attributed to there being too many people in the studio, and there being too many hallucinogens in the studio (Mick Jagger once told me, “We were eating whole sheets of acid, just cramming them into our mouths and washing them down with brandy spiked with DMT”). Then there was the desertion of the band’s disgusted producer and manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, which left the band to produce the album themselves. Oldham’s decision to jump ship hurt; Jagger attributed the LP’s shortcomings to the lack of a producer who would say enough is enough, let’s get on with it lads.

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