Remembering Nat King Cole, born on this day in 1919. —Ed.

Nat King Cole’s enduring renown derives from his skill as a vocalist, but he’s also arguably the most underrated of jazz’s great pianists. The seven CDs or ten LPs comprising Hittin’ The Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943) do a stellar job of highlighting Cole’s keyboard prowess while documenting the growth of his superb trio with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince first, and later Johnny Miller. There are also brief visits from the great saxophonists Lester Young and Dexter Gordon and a ton of singing, though the approach lands solidly in a hot and often vocal group zone. 

Back in 1991, Mosaic Records issued The Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio, an exhaustive limited-edition set spread across 18 compact discs or 27 vinyl records. It was obviously produced for hardcore jazz nut collectors, the kind of listener who would know that Cole had worked extensively as a musician prior to his career-defining move to Capitol (an association he would maintain throughout his superstardom until the end of his life) but with very few commercial records detailing said period.

Hittin’ The Ramp features jukebox-only discs, private recordings, and a slew of radio transcriptions along with the handful of sessions that resulted in discs that were available for retail purchase, with the vast majority of the selections here officially released for the first time. There is a smidge of overlap with the Mosaic collection, but it doesn’t arrive until LP eight (or CD six) with “Vom, Vim, Veedle” commencing a smattering of cuts for the small Excelsior and Premier labels which were later purchased by Capitol and serve as the kickoff to the Mosaic set.

This repetition isn’t likely to bother owners of The Complete Capitol Recordings one bit, as it’s a miniscule percentage, specifically ten tracks out of Hittin’ The Ramp’s 183. Yes, that’s a lot of music, but slim compared to the behemoth decades-of-discovery scenario presented by Mosaic’s presentation of Capitol’s holdings, though in its vinyl incarnation Resonance’s achievement is also a limited edition.

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Although Celtic punk can be a very dicey proposition, Boiled in Lead have long been a standard of the hybrid style’s success. Persevering, the band has grown into a Minneapolis institution. The reality is that their sound branches out much farther than a simple blend of Irish cadences and raw and simple riffs. Through lineup changes, Boiled in Lead’s been at it since the mid-1980s, and on March 20, they release their twelfth album King of the Dogwoods on colored vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Omnium Records.

The breadth of Boiled in Lead’s work is varied to the point where they are regularly described as simply folk-punk. It’s a term that can conjure up unpleasant visions of street corner strummer-cussers of a rudimentary sort, either solo or in band formation. To summarize, too many strive for Billy Bragg at his most inspired and stripped down and come up far short. If taking influence from Violent Femmes, the goal is sadly to harness the angsty rather than the eclectic.

If brancher-outers, Boiled in Lead, have never cozied up to the sound of Camper Van Beethoven (well, almost never anyway), in part because the Minnesota crew have consistently kept a loose handle on their Celtic-punk foundation (Irish music was rarely if ever part of Camper’s thing). All the while, Boiled in Lead resists cliché.

For many, Celtic-punk begins and ends with The Pogues. But there is a core difference between The Pogues and Boiled in Lead. The Pogues were the kind of band Elvis Costello would agree to produce. Boiled in Lead are much tougher in comportment, perfectly comfortable on a bill with Hüsker Dü, but never faltering into soused-ass group sing-alongs. Summed up in a word: smart.

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LAS VEGAS, NV | There are rock shows, and then there are moments—those rare, full-body experiences where the music stops being something you listen to and starts being something that happens to you. Saturday night at Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas, Sammy Hagar delivered exactly that.

Flanked by a supergroup that reads like a fever dream written by every rock kid who ever taped a poster to their bedroom ceiling, the Red Rocker tore through 145 minutes and 17 songs of hard rock history with the relentless, joyful fury of a man who has absolutely nothing left to prove—and everything left to give. If you have ever loved Van Halen, Chickenfoot, or the singular, sun-soaked swagger of Hagar’s solo catalog, you owe it to yourself to be in that room. Remaining dates are filling fast, and I am telling you from the front lines: this is one you will be talking about for years.

I have been chasing Sammy Hagar across his many incarnations for a long time now—the solo Red Rocker years, the Van Halen run, Chickenfoot, Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas, and of course Sammy Hagar and the Circle. Each version offered its own pleasures, its own personality. But what he has assembled for the Best of All Worlds Tour is genuinely something else. Anchoring the lineup alongside Hagar are four musicians who, between them, have touched virtually every corner of his legacy: bassist Michael Anthony, guitarist Joe Satriani, drummer Kenny Aronoff, and keyboardist Greg Phillinganes.

This was the third night of a six-night residency at Dolby Live, and the band arrived with the looseness and electricity of musicians who genuinely want to be exactly where they are. I made a deliberate choice on this particular evening to leave the camera behind—no lens between me and the music, no hunting for the perfect frame. Just the show. It was the right call.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The 25th Anniversary edition of Godsmack’s landmark sophomore album, Awake, is available now as a digital deluxe and on deluxe 2LP smoky-green color vinyl and CD via Republic/UMe. This commemorative edition includes a special holographic lithograph of the cover art and features five bonus tracks, including “Why,” which was featured on the Any Given Sunday soundtrack, and a Black Sabbath cover of “Sweet Leaf.”

Following their multi-platinum self-titled debut in 1998, Godsmack returned two years later in 2000 with an album that not only met but surpassed all expectations. The release delivered a powerful collection of songs that quickly became fan favorites, including “Bad Magick,” “Awake,” and “Greed,” and cemented the band’s reputation as one of the defining acts of their era. Building on the momentum of their breakthrough success, the sophomore album’s title track earned Godsmack their first Billboard No. 1 hit, while another standout single, “Vampires,” garnered the band their first GRAMMY® nomination. The reissue celebrates a defining moment in Godsmack’s career, showcasing the enduring legacy of an album that continues to resonate with fans worldwide.

Additionally, Godsmack recently announced their massive GODSMACK — THE RISE OF ROCK WORLD TOUR 2026, a sprawling North American run featuring special guests Stone Temple Pilots and Dorothy. Promoted by Live Nation, the tour will bring Godsmack’s signature high-octane live show to amphitheaters nationwide. The tour kicks off Sunday, May 10, in Bristow, VA, at Jiffy Lube Live and makes stops across the U.S. and Toronto, Canada, including Austin, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, and California, before wrapping Saturday, September 26, at Ford Idaho Center Amphitheater in Nampa, ID.

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Celebrating Michael Bruce on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Alice Cooper, 1971; it’s almost enough to break your heart. Alice put out two LPs that year, Love It to Death and Killer, and both include a handful of incredibly great hard rockers combined with their fair share of duds, including a boring nine-minute workout on Love It to Death (“Black Juju”) and the equally coma-inducing eight-plus minute “Halo of Flies” on Killer.

I know bands were often contractually obligated to produce two LPs per annum back then, and that may or may not have had something to do with the limited number of fabulous tracks on both LPs. But imagine, just for a moment, had Alice Cooper put out just one album in 1971, an album containing the best songs from both LPs. The finished product would have been brilliant, and one of the best rock LPs of all time.

Alas, you can’t turn back the clock—if you could, I’d move it back to the glory days, when I could smoke tons of pot and not get paranoid—and we’re stuck forever with two woulda-coulda been tremendous albums marred by too many weak tracks to be called great.

As for the band, they got their start in Los Angeles on Frank Zappa’s Straight label, but following the disappointing sales of their sophomore LP (1970’s Easy Action) they up and moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where they fit in perfectly with bands like the Stooges and the MC5. Cooper himself blamed the band’s failure to make a mark in LA to drugs; “L.A. just didn’t get it,” he stated. “They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “The third album from the Muscle Shoals singer-songwriter unfolds with the wariness of a social and spiritual outsider who broods his way to graceful defiance.” —NPR

Louisiana singer-songwriter Dylan LeBlanc is excited to announce a special 10th Anniversary re-release of his acclaimed album Cautionary Tale, which is due out on May 15, 2026 via Single Lock Records. To herald the announcement, he has unearthed a demo of fan-favorite track “Roll The Dice (Bedroom Demo).”

Of the song, he shares: “This is a bedroom demo from my house at the time in Nashville, Tennessee. Being young and prideful, I was trying to figure out how to manage my relationships.

‘If pride was a mountain I’d be walking tall but the valley down below is a deadly fall’ just came out because it felt like what was happening to me. There was a version of myself I wanted to be for someone else that I desperately needed to find for the first time for unselfish reasons. It’s a song about second chances.”

This month, LeBlanc is also hitting the road on a US tour, which kicks off on March 13 in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, followed by SXSW in Austin. Find all dates here.

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Progressive rock will never die, but come the eighties panicky progressive rock musicians thought it had, and it led them to do the unthinkable—produce lame, MOR, watered-down pop prog (or in some cases just pop) music that was, and I find this almost impossible to fathom, even more unbearable than the pompous prog-opuses they’d inflicted on the world through their heyday in the early to mid-seventies.

From Tales of Topographic Oceans to “Owner of a Lonely Heart”—in no kind of world could that be called an improvement, and I’d sooner shoot myself in the dick than listen to the former.

GTR never got the traction that Asia or the post-Gabriel Genesis got, and for that reason, it’s a bit easier to hear the quiet desperation—at least the prog rockers turned pop-ulists in Asia and Genesis were scoring hits and getting paid. And one reason could be that GTR held on to at least some of the tenets of progressive rock. Unfortunately, they had no knack for writing hits.

GTR–a five-piece “supergroup” featuring Yes guitarist Steve Howe and Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett (hence the band name), along with journeyman vocalist Max Bacon, sessions bassist Phil Spalding, and sometime Marillion drummer Jonathan Mover—might have seemed like a great idea, but the guitar fireworks you’d expected never happen and the songs are formulaic, generic AOR shlock.

Musician reviewer J. D. Considine’s review of GTR in Musician was both succinct and spot-on. It read, in its entirety, “SHT.” Part of the blame lies with Buggles/Yes/Asia keyboardist Geoff Downes, who produced and went out of his way to highlight the clichéd vocals of prog-everyman Bacon, who never heard a song he couldn’t overemote on. The rest of the blame lies with the songs, which sound like they were written by a committee steadfastly dedicated to writing lowest-common-denominator progressive rock-lite, Starship-meets-Asia swill.

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WORDS AND IMAGES: TODD JUDD in HARRISBURG, PA | Three acts, one sold-out room, and a night that had absolutely no chill from start to finish. Tobyraps set the tone early—a rapper doing push-ups mid-verse will do that—before Artikal Sound System locked down the room with thick riddims and Logan Rex’s powerhouse vocals, leaving the crowd in disbelief. Then Ballyhoo! did what Ballyhoo! does best: delivered their signature chaotic, high-energy party that reminded everyone in the building exactly why live music is worth every penny.

The night’s music kicked off with Tobyraps (real name Ryan Tobbe), and I’ll admit I hadn’t heard his music before. That quickly changed. Toby is a rapper, songwriter, and motivational artist from Cleveland, Ohio, known for his upbeat, community-focused music and freestyle skills. His style has been described as Lil Dicky meets Watsky, and that comparison fits well.

He had the crowd engaged from the start—dropping push-ups, sit-ups, and sprinting across the stage while delivering his verses. His energetic performance and playful flow made him the perfect warm-up for what would become a great night of music.

Next up was Artikal Sound System (A.S.S.). Chris Montague, Fabian Acuña, and Christopher Cope came running onto the stage with a hilarious, choreographed dance to the cheers of the crowd. At the same time, Adam Kampf stepped behind the drums and Logan Rex strolled onstage as the band launched into “Self Sabotage.”

I’ve seen A.S.S. twice before, both times at festivals—Cali Vibes and Reggae Rise Up—so I was excited to experience them in a more intimate venue like XL Live. The question was whether their high-energy festival performance would translate into a smaller room. It absolutely did.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | After wrapping a sold out fall tour with his band, the acclaimed post-hardcore art rock pioneers Shudder To Think, musician Craig Wedren has announced the release of The Dream Dreaming Deluxe on April 10 via his Tough Lover imprint.

The new release from the acclaimed frontman and prolific film & television composer—known to TV audiences as the composer behind the wildly popular series Yellowjackets, among many other projects—is an expanded version of his acclaimed 2024 album which includes the original 11-song album, 5 unreleased tracks, and another 5-song acoustic EP with string quintet, recorded live at the legendary Henson Studios (now Chaplin Studios) in Los Angeles. Today, he also shares the first tease of the deluxe with “Nothing Bad” alongside the official video for the single directed by Craig Wedren, Shon Hedges, and Frank Barrera.

Wedren shares: “Increasingly, we have multiple “at-bats” when putting out a record—the initial release, the deluxe version, plus whatever other clever variations evolve from there. A lot of deluxe releases are bloated and boring, of course. But some of my favorite recent albums have been weirder, redux mutations of the initial, ‘definitive’ product.

I like having access to all of the bonus material that comes with an artist’s output in our current age—it can make an album feel like a dynamic, living thing, rather than a frozen moment in time. I’m happy to sacrifice a little of the mystery that used to be de rigueur for artists, in exchange for insight into process, inspiration, and backstory. That said, the THING is still the music, and if your record sucks, why waste anybody’s time with all the rest of it.

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Remembering Lightnin’ Hopkins in advance of Sunday’s birthdate. —Ed.

Lightnin’ Sam Hopkins remains one of the crucial figures in the annals of the blues. By extension, he recorded a ton, and owning all his music will require diligence and a seriously long shelf. However, there are a few albums that are a must even for casual blues collectors, and his self-titled effort from 1959 is one of them. Recorded by historian Samuel Charters in Hopkins’ apartment while he played a borrowed guitar, it served as the door-opener to years of prominence. A highly intimate gem of nimble-fingered deep blues feeling, Lightnin’ Hopkins is available through Smithsonian Folkways, remastered from the source tapes in a tip-on jacket with Charters’ original notes.

To call Lightnin’ Hopkins the byproduct of rediscovery isn’t inaccurate, but it does risk stripping the contents of its unique story. Unlike Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, and John Hurt (all from Mississippi), Texan Hopkins had only been inactive for a few years when Samuel Charters found and recorded him in Houston, and if he’d been playing since the 1930s, he was still very much in his musical prime.

Hopkins debuted on record in 1946 for the Aladdin label of Los Angeles in tandem with pianist Wilson “Thunder” Smith, the partnership bringing him his sobriquet. From there, a solid decade of studio dates (and some R&B chart action) commenced; his additional sides for Aladdin fill a 2CD set, and the sessions for Gold Star take up two separate CD volumes. Additionally, there were worthy recordings for Modern, Sittin’ in With, and majors Mercury and Decca. 1954 brought a massive spurt of wild, highly amplified material for the Herald label; it contrasts sharply with the one-man circumstance of Lightnin’ Hopkins.

If commercial recording industry prospects had dried up by ’59 and Hopkins’ guitar was in hock, there was no trace of rustiness from inactivity, though the comfort level does increase as these songs progress (the bottle of gin Charters bought likely had something to do with it). What’s shared with his prior electric band stuff is a recognizable, eventually signature style based in the conversation between rural blues verve and more citified boogie motion (in this he shares much with John Lee Hooker).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | A decade on from its initial appearance back in 2016, one of the most in-demand of all Todd Rundgren live albums is being reissued—in complete form, for the first time—on vinyl and in a special 2 CD + DVD package on March 20.

Recorded live at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, CT on December 15, 2015, this incredible concert experience includes some of Todd’s best known songs including “Hello It’s Me” and “Bang On The Drum,” plus fan favorites that haven’t been performed live in decades! In addition, several songs here are new to the CD release—“Love Science,” “Soothe,” “God Said,” and a dynamic soul medley were all omitted from the original issue.It’s a sensational show, opening with a triumphal “I Saw The Light” and, to the surprise of many fans, all but ignoring his most recent album, Global, to deliver an oldies-heavy show instead. But he does not seem to be doing it willingly—indeed, early in the show, Rundgren all but castigates his audiences for ignoring his last few decades of work, and clinging only to the old, old favorites.

Not that he made things easy for his band, either. Joining Rundgren on stage were John Ferenzik (keyboards, guitar), Jesse Gress (guitar and vocals), Prairie Prince (drums), and Kasim Sulton (bass and vocals), and rehearsals for this tour saw them expected to learn some 50 different songs, while Rundgren kept each evening’s set list to himself until right before the gig. But the ploy worked. Two weeks into the tour, and the musicians sound as fresh tonight as they might have at the very beginning of the tour.