Celebrating Jimmy Cliff in advance of his 81st birthday tomorrow.
—Ed.

The phenomenon of the Comeback Album used to be a cringe inducing occurrence, largely because the results would succeed far too frequently in simply getting it wrong. However, as a testament to human development the last few decades have seen a gradual increase in actually getting it right. Happily, Jimmy Cliff’s Rebirth falls onto the successful side of the comeback street, mainly because it picks a smart strategy and then sticks with it. Modestly scaled, it would be hyperbole to call it a true return to form, but it does prove that Mr. Cliff still has the goods.

Yes, the road to a wickedly hot musical eternity is paved with good intentions. No musician deliberately sets out to make a record that’s truly, non-ironically bad, after all. And nobody that loves The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World, a record often cited by journalists scribing for list-happy magazines or websites as one of the Worst of All Time (a musical cousin to Ed Wood’s film Plan 9 From Outer Space essentially), I mean sincerely values it as a musical document and not as the aural equivalent to a velvet painting, would describe it as a “bad” record. And the Wiggins’ Sisters sure as hell weren’t trying to make music that would fall under the (admittedly ambiguous) definition of “bad”.

Again, back in the day comeback records were often just filthy with benevolent intentions. Somebody with contacts in the industry couldn’t shake the nagging insistence that it would be a great idea if a certain artist or band got back into the studio with the aim of recapturing the special magic that for numerous reasons had been lost; maybe the act was a huge commercial entity that somehow lost their way, perhaps a cult musician or group getting a belated push after being afflicted with indifference, or possibly just a name that was around for so long that total disfavor befell them on the road to inevitable rediscovery.

Whatever the circumstance, everything usually moves along rather sweetly until someone has the bright idea to bring in that dude who played bass for a week with Paul Shaffer in The World’s Most Dangerous Band. Things quickly deteriorate from there, and then it’s all over except for the hell and the hand baskets.

Read More »

TERRE HAUTE, IN | On one of the stickiest, sweatiest nights of the summer—complete with a full-blown heat advisory—The Mill in Terre Haute brought the fire in more ways than one. Nestled along the Wabash River, this massive outdoor venue played host to a night of country swagger, songwriting chops, and pure crowd energy that didn’t let the heat win.

Kicking things off was Redferrin, who came in hot—literally and figuratively. A songwriter with grit and edge, he got the crowd moving early, laying down a high-energy set that made it clear he’s not just a name in the liner notes. Next up was Ernest, another songwriter-turned-performer who’s written hits for just about everybody in country music. He brought smooth vocals, humor, and a laid-back cool that somehow made the 90-degree swamp air feel bearable.

As the sun finally started to dip below the horizon (thank God), Old Dominion took the stage and brought the kind of polished, radio-hit-fueled set that reminded everyone why they’re headlining amphitheaters. They cruised through fan favorites, had the crowd singing every word, and genuinely looked like they were having just as much fun as the audience. The breeze off the Wabash finally kicked in, and it turned into one of those perfect summer concert moments—sweaty, loud, and unforgettable.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Daniel Johnston, a singular voice in American songwriting, became a cult icon in the 1990s indie music scene through an extraordinary body of deeply personal, lo-fi recordings. Over the course of his life, he released more than thirty albums and built a devoted international following. Praised by critics and revered by artists from Kurt Cobain to Tom Waits, Johnston’s songs have been compared to the raw emotive force of Robert Johnson and the timeless storytelling of Hank Williams.

His influence can be traced to a series of homemade cassette tapes he began circulating in the early 1980s. These tapes—unfiltered, intimate, and hauntingly sincere—were the foundation of his mythos. Recognizing their importance, Jeff Tartakov began managing and signed Daniel to Stress Records in the mid-eighties to not only help distribute, manufacture, and preserve its handmade spirit but to help the music reach the broader world. Tartakov’s stewardship was instrumental in building Johnston’s legacy, and in defining the cassette as a vital medium for outsider music.

Much like the collapsible paint tube that sparked the Impressionist movement, the cassette tape democratized music-making, enabling untrained voices to share uncensored emotional truths. As a label founded on cassette releases, Joyful Noise is proud to present Daniel Johnston In the 20th Century, a definitive collection of 16 remastered cassette albums, lovingly restored by longtime collaborator Kramer (Shimmy-Disc).

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Let’s start with this fact: this 1973 record is one of the most sought-after collector’s items of its era. Why? Well, first of all, Lyn Christopher’s self-titled release on the Paramount label is a really fine album, a beguiling blend of pop and R&B sounds featuring the artist’s winsome vocals backed by some of New York’s finest studio cats, like guitarist Hugh McCracken, Blood Sweat & Tears multi-instrumentalist Lou Marini Jr., and future Back Street Crawler keyboardist Mike Montgomery.

And “Take Me with You,” the penultimate song on the album, has been sampled by Mobb Deep’s Havoc, LL Cool J, 50 Cent, The Game, and, memorably, by the Smut Peddlers on their 2001 underground classic “One by One.” But there is another very big reason why original copies of Lyn Christopher command a king’s ransom (and no, it’s not because it’s never been reissued in any format). If you know who Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen are, then you probably already know the answer. That’s right…this album marks the first appearance on record of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS! They sing background vocals on two tracks, “Celebrate II” and “Weddin’”; and supposedly that’s Peter Criss doing handclaps.

What’s more, this album introduced legendary engineer Eddie Kramer—who, though unbilled, was engineering the sessions—to Simmons and Stanley, who were still calling their band Wicked Lester. Kramer then produced the four-song demo that got KISS signed to Casablanca, and the rest, as they say, is history! We at Real Gone are thrilled to FINALLY be reissuing this fabled album on CD and light blue vinyl, remastered by Mike Milchner at Sonic Vision and complete with liner notes by Bill Kopp that set the stage. A real slice of pop music history that you gotta hear!

Celebrating Simon Kirke on his 76th birthday. —Ed.

Bad Company played meat and potatoes hard rock for the masses—they stripped things down to the fundamentals in a way that few other rock bands ever have, and the kids in the arenas loved them for it.

Austerity was their calling card; they made America’s Lynyrd Skynyrd—whose Ronnie Van Zant cited Rodgers as his biggest influence—sound like progressive rockers. They were a math problem every bit as simple as the Ramones, but without the zip. Bad Company steamrolled their way to the big time. They were every bit as remorseless as Killdozer, who paid them homage with their cover of “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad.”

Bad Company were formed in 1973 by former members of Free (vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke), Mott the Hoople (guitarist Mick Ralphs), and King Crimson (bassist Boz Burrell), which made them a supergroup I suppose, albeit a low-rent one. Or perhaps I say that simply because Bad Company never scored very high in the charisma department—they weren’t flamboyant, had zero flash, wit or lyrical ideas, and weren’t the types you’d find at Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco in Los Angeles. They may have called themselves Bad Company—and I could be dead wrong about this—but in my mind’s eye I see them going back to their hotel rooms after a show and brushing their teeth. Vigorously.

Their debut LP, 1974’s Bad Company, was their strongest. It boasted five classic cuts, and only one dead carp. Their next one, 1975’s Straight Shooter, had a killer A Side but a B side that kills the album’s forward momentum stone dead—the steamroller runs out of gas. It’s a primo example of the sophomore album curse, and also, I suspect, of a common guarantor of debut album follow-up failure—rushing into the studio too soon after recording the first one. Rodgers and Ralphs, the band’s primary songwriters, obviously lacked sufficient material to fill out the album, leaving them to serve up a clunker or two. Worse, they handed the ball off to Kirke—nobody’s idea of a songwriter—who contributed two tracks. They’re tepid tap water at best.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “I never wanted to be famous, I only wanted to be great.” —Ray Charles

Founded by Ray Charles in the 1960s, Tangerine Records is proud to celebrate the 17x GRAMMY® Award-winning singer, songwriter, and pianist’s singular legacy with the Tangerine Master Series, a new slate of reissues highlighting Charles’ best-known music alongside classic records long out of print, and ready for rediscovery. Each album in the series has been restored and remastered under the direct supervision of The Ray Charles Foundation, painting a vivid new portrait of an artist and icon whose impact continues to expand and inspire. Beginning Friday, August 22, with Come Live With Me, a blend of pop and gospel-infused soul that sees Charles demonstrating his unmatched versatility.

Remastered by 5x GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Michael Graves and acclaimed vinyl mastering engineer Jeff Powell, this long-overdue reissue marks the album’s first appearance on vinyl in over 50 years. Vinyl and streaming arrive August 22, with CDs available September 26. Pre-orders and pre-saves are available now.

Come Live With Me showcases Ray Charles in full ’70s crossover mode, embracing string-laden arrangements, country-tinged ballads, and soulful soft rock. The album plays like Two Sides of a Saturday Night—elegant and introspective at the start, loose and electrifying by the end. Side A, arranged by longtime collaborator and conductor Sid Feller, highlights Charles’s emotive vocal delivery on lush, orchestrated ballads such as “Till There Was You” and the title track, the latter of which proved a Top 20 AC and Top 30 R&B favorite.

Read More »

Who better than John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats to sing a final hymn to the recently deceased Ozzy Osbourne? All kinds of people are writing all kinds of wonderful things about the marvelously complex Osbourne, who proclaimed himself the “Prince of Darkness” while writing songs condemning the real article, but I’ve heard nothing better or more moving about Ozzy the man than the Mountain Goats’ 2019 song, “Passaic 1975.”

You might think the hyper-articulate and all-around nice guy Darnielle would be the last person to write the best all-time song about a guy who bit the head off a dead bat during a concert in 1982 and snorted ants a few years later to awe and appall the members of Mötley Crüe. Darnielle is not a metal guy. He’s as far from a metal guy as you can get and still be on the same planet.

And yet. Darnielle has always been a metal FAN, and a superfan of Black Sabbath; why, he actually sat down and wrote one of those little and normally quite dry (they’re published by Bloomsbury Academic, after all) 33 1/3 books about Black Sabbath’s 1971 tour de force Master of Reality.

But Darnielle’s little book is anything but dry, because being the novelist and consummate short-story-in-song kind of guy he is Darnielle wrote a goddamn NOVELLA about a kid who gets locked up for anti-social behavior and writes a journal addressed to his counselor Gary about how unfair it is he’s not allowed to listen to his Master of Reality tape, and who in the end is sent to another and far harsher institution after stealing the tape from safe-keeping and more or less daring Gary to report him, which Gary does. And in the course of this journal, he asks Gary to LISTEN to Master of Reality while explaining just WHY he loves Master of Reality so much, and it’s mighty fine as you can judge from his description of the opening of Master of Reality’s “Sweet Leaf”:

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi), a leader in high-fidelity audio reissues, proudly announces the definitive audiophile reissue of “The King of Pop,” Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking 1991 album, Dangerous, is available now as both an 180g 33RPM 2LP Set (order here) and a Hybrid SACD (order here).

Dangerous marked a new direction for Michael Jackson, a strategy that paid off handsomely. The 1991 release debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and had sold over 25 million copies worldwide by September 1994, with global sales now nearing 40 million. This 14-song album features iconic hits such as “Black or White,” “In the Closet,” “Remember the Time,” “Jam,” “Heal the World,” and more.

Sourced from the original masters, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 33RPM 2LP set presents Dangerous in audiophile-quality sound for the first time. Jackson’s signature vocals come across with incredible transparency and presence, along with the fullness of his range and the soaring heights of his falsetto. Listeners will also enjoy expansive soundstages, ample instrumental separation, black backgrounds, and broad dynamics.

MoFi’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD also presents Dangerous in audiophile-quality sound for the first time—sourced from the original masters and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Jackpot Records is extremely proud to announce our reissue of the revered reggae album 1976’s War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo & The Upsetters. Originally released on Island Records, the album is considered one of the greatest Reggae albums of all time and was a massive influence on the UK punk movement that was just starting to bubble to the surface.

The record’s incredible power belies an unlikely partnership between one of the world’s greatest producers (and experimenters in sound), Lee “Scratch” Perry, and vocalist Max Romeo (who by 1976 had performed on over 120 7” singles). Romeo had been transforming from his “rude” records to writing lyrics with social themes as the era in Jamaica was rife with poverty, gangs, and politically motivated killings. As he was looking to produce protest music at its most powerful alongside music that would never leave the listener’s souls, Lee Perry and Max Romeo started collaborating together.

Recorded in two weeks in 1976, utilizing Lee Perry’s kitchen sink production, War Ina Babylon is considered part of Lee Perry’s “holy trinity” of Black Ark-produced LPs released by Island Records (Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves and The Heptones’ Party Time are the other classic LPs in the trinity). This LP continues to find new fans with every passing generation.

Celebrating Mick Jagger in advance of his 82nd birthday tomorrow. —Ed.

I’ve been down in the dumps of late; the suicide of a friend, the death of another friend I dearly loved, and a bad case of the blues have all pretty much brought me to my knees. I feel beat down, fucked over, and broken up, and life sure does have a way of tarnishing your eyelids, doesn’t it?

Where to turn in times like these? When you’ve got a foot in the grave and your head in the oven? Exile on Main Street, naturally. It’s as beat down an LP as ever you’ll hear; Mick, Keith and Company are torn and frayed and have shit on their shoes and the whole album sounds like it was recorded in a sub-basement of Hell.

And yet. The Rolling Stones’ 1972 bruised and battered masterpiece (and high-water mark) somehow manages to rise above the bad vibes and general miasma of death and dissolution that surrounded the band at the time. Nothing–not drug busts, the death of Brian Jones, Altamont, tax exile, or Keith Richards’ slide toward junkiedom–could stop the Stones from turning Exile on Main Street into a celebration of hope and soul survival.

And this despite the fact that the album is the aural equivalent of the La Brea tar pits. Mick Jagger has never stopped carping about Exile’s notoriously sludgy mix, but the murk doesn’t just work–it’s part and parcel of the double album’s greatness. You have to trudge through shit to get to the Promised Land, and if you scrape the shit off these songs, well, you find diamonds. “Turd on the Run” anyone?

Read More »

I recently sat down with my old friend John Adams. John is an artist, songwriter, and filmmaker. I first knew him from his punk party band Banana Fish Zero, which was based here in NY. You all may know him more from his incredible work as a filmmaker with his family, Adams Family Films. They have made eight features since 2012 including 2021’s Hellbender which is also the name of the family’s super cool music project (spelled H6LLB6ND6R).

John was first inspired by bands like Black Flag that took him on a journey through punk with many bands and establishing himself and a benevolent master of chaos ceremonies. In 2008, he was cast in a Fuse Channel show called Rock and Roll Acid Test in a stuntman/maniac with a hammer role. This is what first brought the family out to California, where they started making their very distinctive films entirely on their own. Now they have become punk masters of horror.

I encourage you to go track down all his music, all Adams Family Films, and keep your eyes peeled for the next one currently making festival rounds, Mother of Flies, which is being distributed by Shudder Films in 2026.

Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu, a New York-based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

It’s impossible to tell the story of Andrew Gold’s 1976 album What’s Wrong with This Picture? without first telling the story of how:

Death Came to the Princes of LA on a Horse Named Wildfire

Last night I dreamt I was soaking in a hot tub at Glenn Frey’s place in Laurel Canyon with Don Henley, J.D. Souther, Andrew Gold, and Jackson Browne. We were drinking tequila sunrises and talking past triumphs, our seventies chest hair glistening in the otherworldly light of the deadly wildfire that was roaring towards us.

We’d talked about jumping into our Porsches and making our escape, but in the end had decided to stick it out in the hot tub, outlaws with the voices of angels to the very end. The time seemed right. Down in Hollywood glam had been followed by punk, and both groups mocked our mellow vision with their sounds of sneering derision. The world, it seemed, had wearied of our brand of peaceful, easy LA fornication rock. It made fun of the way our turquoise chains perfectly set off our golden chest hair, made fun of our $9,000 Italian-made cowboy boots and our wonderful, beautiful, perfectly blow-dried man beards, made fun, believe it or not, of our entire way of life.

No, we’d decided this was it—California Narcissist Rock’s Last Stand.

So as the flames closed in, we reminisced and talked about what we’d miss. “The girls,” said Don Henley. “The cocaine on the girls,” said Glenn Frey. “My own unacknowledged supertalent,” said J.D. Souther. “My cloying sensitivity,” said Jackson Browne. “My beard, which is the Platonic ideal of Seventies’ LA facial hair,” said Andrew Gold. We all took a moment to admire Andrew’s Platonic Beard. Andrew was right. Andrew’s beard belonged in a beard museum, behind glass.

Read More »