Ever since the late ’50s/early ’60s pop music explosion, session or studio musicians were integral to recording. Whether they be backing singers, soloists, part of such illustrious posses as the famed Wrecking Crew, or the musicians who were the heart and soul of the Motown sound, these formerly somewhat anonymous players have been given their due over the years in books and in such movies as Standing in the Shadows of Motown from 2002, The Wrecking Crew from 2008, and 20 Feet from Stardom from 2013.

For anyone who has followed the birth and evolution in particular of British rock, from the singles-based British Invasion or album-based ’70s, one name stands out for those who read liner notes: British pianist Nicky Hopkins. In 2011 the book And on Piano …Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock’s Greatest Session Man by Julian Dawson was published. The book came many years after Hopkins passed away in 1994 at the age of 50. That book did a lot to recognize what an important musical artist he was and solidified his place in rock music history.

A new film entitled The Session Man: Nicky Hopkins is sure to bring his legacy alive for even more fans of great British and in some cases even American music. The film was directed by Mike Treen who has primarily worked in television. The timing is just right as it was just announced that Hopkins will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the “Musical Excellence Award.”

This is a perfectly crafted musical doc and includes a star-studded cast of interviewees with whom Hopkins worked. There are interviews with Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Peter Frampton, Nils Lofgren, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Jim Keltner, Terry Reid, Chuck Leavell, Graham Parker, P.P. Arnold, Harry Shearer from Spinal Tap, and record producers Glynn Johns, Shel Talmy, and Chris Kimsey, among many others. There’s also an audio interview with Pete Townshend and a previously filmed interview with Mick Jagger.

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PHOTO: JULIA GORTON | I recently sat down with Angela Jaeger to talk about growing up in NYC and her newly released punk rock diaries entitled I Feel Famous. Angela entered the scene as a teen in the iconic summer of ’77 and dove in head first. She was everywhere, saw everyone, was friends with everyone in the punk scene, and is much beloved by all.

I Feel Famous: Punk Diaries 1977-1981 is a girl’s coming of age story set to the pulse of punk rock. The book tracks 17-year-old Angela Jaeger’s exciting discovery of punk music and its accompanying lifestyle in 1977. A music enthusiast living in New York’s East Village, Angela’s story unfolds chronologically, charting her late adolescence in tandem with her transition from observer of the nascent punk scene to eager participant.

Gradually becoming a nightly fixture of her neighborhood’s vibrant underground rock milieu at CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, by 1978 she had continued to fulfill her punk fantasy abroad. She followed The Clash on a tour across England, finally returning home in 1979 to start her own band. Angela encountered an impressive cast of characters on her adventures, including Lydia Lunch, Joe Strummer, Billy Idol, Klaus Nomi, and Sid Vicious.

You can find I Feel Famous where most books are sold. I encourage you to go grab it. Reading it will transport you to your teenage bedroom no matter what era you come from, but this one brings me back to dreaming about stopping at pay phones to make calls, scary East Village bathrooms, and motorcycle boots worn with everything.

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 which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

Formed by Tim Brown and Donna McKean in Oakland, CA, Lunchbox has been active since 1994 with a few breaks along the way. There has also been some productive stylistic twists in the band’s indie pop thrust, and none bigger than their 2002 full-length Evolver, which has just been reissued by the class operation that is the Slumberland label. Drawing influence from the drum and bass techno that was prolific at the time, Evolver takes on a psychedelic edge as its contents are spread out across two LPs with bonus cuts on side four. It’s an appropriately ambitious reissue of an already adventurous album. Compact discs, cassettes, and digital options are also available sans the vinyl bonuses.

The very idea of a guitar-based outfit choosing to incorporate aspects of techno into their sound is enough conjure significant levels of dread, but Lunchbox beat the odds and pull off the combination, mainly because they choose the subtleties of absorption over blatantly grafting one style onto the other. In fact there are numerous styles in this particular Lunchbox, such as the horns from guest Jeremy Goody that bring a Bacharach-ian sunshiny pop feel to songs that often lean into neo-psych-pop.

The results can bring to mind the heyday of the Elephant 6 enterprise at its most catchy and occasionally at its most drugged-up and bent, but the techno aspects, which frequently fold aspects of dub production into the recipe, lend an air of distinctiveness. Injecting those dub qualities into a pop song scheme predates a similar strategy by the Michigan act Saturday Looks Good to Me, though it’s likely they arrived at this similarity through their own devices.

Evolver is a more boldly psychedelic affair, though the album’s title is perhaps a reference to a certain Beatles LP, a hypothesis deepened by the opening title track’s sly resemblance to and jangling invigoration of “Norwegian Wood.” By the end of side three and the original release’s closer “Do You Have Love?,” Lunchbox has drifted into territory that at times connects like Olivia Tremor Control mating with Third Eye Foundation.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Wewantsounds is delighted to reissue another Warda classic from the ’70s, We Malo, originally recorded in 1975 by the legendary Arabic Diva who has sampled by Jay-Z and J Dilla.

The album blends traditional Arabic music with 1970s grooves, showcasing Warda’s distinct vocal style. She is accompanied by a full-sized orchestra, updating the classy traditional sound with modern instruments (electric guitar, organ). We Malo was penned by composer Baligh Hamdi. This reissue features newly remastered audio, original cassette artwork, and a two-page insert with a new introduction by Mario Choueiry from the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris

Warda is widely regarded as one of the greatest divas of the Arab world with Oum Kalthoum and Fairuz. Born in the suburbs of Paris to an Algerian father and a Lebanese mother, she was discovered at the age of 11 by Ahmed Hachlaf, the head of A&R at Pathé Marconi in Paris specializing in Arabic music. She refined her singing skills at her father’s cabaret in the Latin Quarter, Le Tam-Tam (named after Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), and soon gained recognition in Arabic music circles.

In the late 1950s, her family moved to Beirut after the French authorities discovered weapons in her father’s cabaret intended for Algerian independence fighters. While in Lebanon, Warda was spotted by an Egyptian film producer who brought her to Cairo, where she began recording and acting in films. From that moment, her career took off rapidly, and she collaborated with Egyptian icons such as Abdel Halim Hafez and composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino announces the first-ever vinyl reissue of Strikes Back, the GRAMMY®-nominated 10th solo album from legendary singer Héctor “El Cantante” Lavoe. The 1987 title, which marked the artist’s final release during his lifetime, includes such poignant tracks as “Ella mintió,” “Escarcha,” and the salsa hit “Loco.”

Pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the LP features all-analog mastering by Dave Polster and Clint Holley at Well Made Music. Returning to vinyl format for the first time since its original release, this reissue arrives on June 20th and is available for pre-order today. A limited-edition “Loco Green” color vinyl variant (limited to 300 copies), with an exclusive bundle option that includes a classic Fania logo T-shirt, is also available for pre-order at Fania.com.

Perhaps the greatest interpreter of salsa music, singer Héctor Lavoe (1946–1993) was instrumental in popularizing the genre during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Known for his impeccably bright vocals, seamless phrasing, and ad-libbed anecdotes, it’s no surprise that Lavoe earned the nickname “El Cantante” after his 1978 hit of the same name (penned for him by the great Rubén Blades).

Born Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the singer relocated to New York City at 17, where he picked up his stage name and began performing in bands led by Roberto García, Kako, and Fania Records owner Johnny Pacheco. It was through Pacheco that Lavoe met 16-year-old Willie Colón, with whom he would form one of Latin music’s most celebrated partnerships. Beginning in 1967, Lavoe appeared as a vocalist on 10 legendary studio albums with the Willie Colón Orchestra, including the boogaloo classic, El Malo (1967), plus bestsellers like Cosa Nuestra (1970), Asalto Navideño (1971), and Lo Mato (1973).

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Remembering Ray Barretto, born on this day in 1929. —Ed.

If you dig rhythm and are unfamiliar with percussionist-bandleader Ray Barretto, jeepers creepers are you in for a substantial series of treats. And in a sweet turn of events, Craft Latino, the Craft Recordings subsidiary that specializes in reissuing prime Latin heat from numerous labels including Fania (the imprint’s logo a reliable sign of quality), has returned Barretto’s 1972 LP Que Viva La Música to print after a long overdue absence. 

Raymundo “Ray” Barretto Pagán was one of the greats of Latin music, though in fact his considerable rep is further distinguished through his extensive jazz background prior to his mastery of the salsa style, and with pachanga and boogaloo along the way; “El Watusi” was a sizable pachanga hit in 1963 and the man’s Acid LP was a boogaloo breakthrough in ’68.

While no single musician is responsible for salsa’s development, Barretto was a major contributor to its growth, and as the opening title track of Que Viva La Música makes obvious, by the early 1970s his band’s artistry was in full blossom, with Barretto responsible for arranging (on this album alongside pianist Luis Cruz) in addition to hitting the congas and leading the group.

The trumpets soar via a three horn line featuring René López, Joseph Roman, and Roberto Rodriguez, as Adalberto Santiago’s vocals are warm and expressive, Luis Cruz’s piano adds dimension to the whole, and the rhythms, courtesy of Barretto, Johnny Rodriguez on bongos and congas, Orestes Vilató on timbales and percussion, and Santiago doubling on guiro, are in full effect. Bassist David Perez strengthens the foundation with panache.

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It took until 1970 for Sun Ra to play his first European shows, and he did so with a glorious, expansive bang, bringing his Inter-Galactic Research Arkestra to the Fondation Maeght art gallery in St Paul de Vence, France for two performances from which portions were issued on two single LP volumes by the Shandar label in 1971. For Record Store Day 2025 the Strut label has released a deluxe edition of Nuits de la Fondation Maeght as a 6LP set in an edition of 800. The contents spotlight one of the Arkestra’s greatest lineups in peak form and frequently jaw-dropping in its stylistic reach. Copies are still available; it is a lavish prize for dedicated fans and a gripping point of entry for the curious.

The performances documented in this set occurred on August 3 and 5, 1970 as part of a festival of music held at the art gallery of this box set’s title, not the first festival held there but the first to welcome the jazz avant-garde of the USA, with Albert Ayler also part of the festival program that year. Ayler would be found dead in New York City in November of 1970, with his own Fondation Maeght performances, issued in 2022 for Record Store Day as Revelations: The Complete ORTF 1970 Fondation Maeght Recordings, serving as the iconoclastic saxophonist’s final works.

Conversely, Sun Ra’s Fondation Maeght recordings kicked off a particularly fertile decade after long stretches of struggle first in Chicago and then in New York City. The pianist and bandleader had cut numerous albums starting in the late 1950s, but his most successful and highest profile were released by ESP Disk in 1965 in two volumes, both titled The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra.

With the exception of his debut Jazz by Sun Ra, released by Tom Wilson’s Transition label in 1957 (reissued by Delmark as Sun Song a decade later) and The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, released by Savoy in 1962, nearly everything else in Sun Ra’s discography up to the turn of the 1970s was available in small pressings through his own Saturn (aka El Saturn) label (and subsequently reissued by Impulse in the 1970s and Evidence in the ’90s).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Snow Borne Sorrow by David Sylvian | Nine Horses will be released on black vinyl for the first time on June 13, 2025.

Initially released on Sylvian’s Samadhisound label in October 2005, it was previously only available digitally and on CD until Record Store Day 2024, when a limited edition white vinyl version was issued and instantly became a collector’s item. An exclusive signed artcard from designer Chris Bigg is included with purchases made though the official David Sylvian store. This new edition is available to preorder now.

Snow Borne Sorrow was David Sylvian’s project with Steve Jansen and German musician/producer Bernd Friedmann, aka Burnt Friedman. It also features contributions from the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, Swedish singer Stina Nordenstam, saxophonists Theo Travis and Hayden Chisholm, and trumpeter Arve Henriksen.

The 2-LP set features the nine tracks from the original album plus one track from the follow-up EP “Money For All (‘Birds Sing For Their Lives’),” the rare B-side of the “Wonderful World” single “When Monday Comes Around,” and a previously unreleased until 2024 Burnt Friedman remix of “Atom and Cell.”

The 2025 edition of Snow Borne Sorrow has been designed by Sylvian collaborator Chris Bigg (23 Envelope/4AD) and is housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed inner bags.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Are you ready to experience the definitive death metal album?

Deicide’s 1990 self-titled debut is not just one of the genre’s top-selling releases (if it’s not #1, it’s top three); it’s also a staggering philosophical and artistic statement. “Uncompromising” is definitely the appropriate if euphemistic term to describe its stance on organized religion, which doesn’t just include Christianity but also Charles Manson (“Lunatic of God’s Creation”) and Jim Jones (“Carnage in the Temple of the Damned”).

But it’s “Sacrificial Suicide” and “Dead by Dawn,” which references the Evil Dead movie for maybe the slightest hint of levity on what is a very black album, that have become stone-cold classics. The ferocity of the lyrics is matched if not surpassed by the musical attack, featuring piercing twin guitar leads from brothers Eric and Brian Hoffman, and bassist/lead singer Glen Benton’s evil exhortations.

The real hero—or antihero—of the band, though, just might be drummer Steve Asheim, whose double kick drum “blastbeat” barrages defy belief. Remastered for vinyl by Mike Milchner of Sonic Vision, Deicide comes in metallic red and white “centurion” vinyl, complete with an insert with lyrics. Metal was never the same after this record.

Remembering Rod McKuen in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

When the ancient Greeks coined the word bathos, I’m pretty sure they had Rod McKuen in mind. America’s most popular–and worst–poet of the 1960s, McKuen produced books of poetry the way Virginia opossums make babies, each and every one of them catering to the tastes of a reading public deeply suspicious of the filthy beatnik likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

But on 1959’s Beatsville Mckuen does a remarkable thing–he goes from schmaltz to shtick. While he serves up plenty of his trademark mawk along the way, McKuen–who’s obviously using Kerouac’s spontaneous bop prosody as a model-comes on like Maynard G. Krebs on a Benzedrine inhaler high, and I’ll be damned if his tongue-in-cheek observations on subterranean pads and co-existence bagel shops aren’t hilarious.

McKuen’s point varies–sometimes he’s your standard real gone Daddy-O who considers business suits and underarm deodorants a total drag; at others he’s the wistful black beret wannabe who moans, “I try to be a good beatnik but it’s hard/I don’t dig turtle neck sweaters/I can’t grow a beard/And I catch cold in sandals.”

Backed by some tastefully tasteless musical accompaniment–including a metronome and some really hep finger snaps–McKuen had me at “Every time I got torn up on sneaky Pete or high on Thunderbird wine/I wind up hitching rides to Sausalito.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | To celebrate the 30th anniversary of “Some Might Say” this week, Oasis have re-released their seminal single on limited-edition, pearl coloured, numbered, 7” vinyl. They’ve also released a brand-new visualiser for the track. Order vinyl here.

The release of “Some Might Say” was monumental in Oasis’ journey. As the first single released from the indomitable (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? and the band’s first ever number one in the UK Singles Chart, it marked a remarkable beginning to their second album. It was met with widespread critical and commercial acclaim at the time of release, also entering the top ten in Finland, Iceland, Ireland, and Sweden.

(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, also celebrating its 30th anniversary this October, went on to become a cultural phenomenon, elevating Oasis to massive heights on the global stage. It spawned countless era-defining moments, with “Some Might Say” the starting gun to it all.

The single arrived only eight months after the band’s prodigious debut album, Definitely Maybe. In the short intervening period, Oasis were able to capitalise on their initial success, and bring it to new places through the development of their sound. The huge, stadium fillers heard across (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? are beloved by fans around the world with the album having sold over 25 million copies worldwide.

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