Our picks this week. Click the links to order items from Amazon.
Fun Boy Three formed in the summer of 1981 when Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staples broke away from The Specials.
The band quickly hit the UK top 40 charts with their debut single, 'The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum). This was followed in early '82 by two UK Top 10 singles with Bananarama, 'T'Aint What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)' and 'Really Saying Something'.
A further 7 singles (Summertime, The Tunnel of Love, Our Lips Are Sealed etc.) and two albums, The Fun Boy Three (1982) and Waiting (1983), the later produced by Talking Heads front man, David Byrne, were released before calling it a day in the Summer of 1983.
The Complete Fun Boy Three includes 69 audio tracks which brings together all the official recordings (albums/singles/b-sides/remixes/live and previously unreleased outtakes). The 27 track DVD includes all their promo videos, Top of The Pops performances and a live concert from 1983. This is packaged in a DVD Sized hardback book, with newly written sleeves notes by John Earls (Classic Pop/Record Collector) with contributions from the band and photographs.
.jpg)
Duke Pearson's 1967 album The Right Touch is perhaps the finest of his career and a showcase for the breadth of his talents as a pianist, composer, and arranger. Six memorable originals are performed by a dynamic 8-piece band including Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Stanley Turrentine (tenor sax) and James Spaulding (alto sax). Blue Note Tone Poet Series is remastered from the original analog tapes on 180-gram vinyl and packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket.
.jpg)
Lee Morgan's Infinity, which was recorded in 1965 but not released until 1981, finds the great trumpeter leading a robust quintet featuring saxophonist Jackie McLean, pianist Larry Willis, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Billy Higgins to the far reaches of the hard bop tradition and beyond. Blue Note Tone Poet Series is remastered from the original analog tapes on 180-gram vinyl and packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket.
.jpg)
Starship Troopers is a cult-classic sci-fi action film which follows the story of Johnny Rico and his friends as they serve in the military during a war with an alien species known as the Arachnids. This 2-LP deluxe edition marks the first-ever vinyl release for Basil Poledouris' score for the film, and features newly commissioned album art, as well as a fold-out poster, and exclusive new liner notes from director Paul Verhoeven and musician/daughter of composer Zoe Poledouris.
In the 1950s and 60s, the blues was the dominant form of Black vernacular music throughout Texas and the surrounding areas. In segregated neighborhoods, community members gathered in saloons, dancehalls, and each other's homes to hear their neighbors sing their stories of sorrow, heartbreak, jubilation, and triumph.
Robert "Mack" McCormick, an academically untrained but fanatical devotee of the blues, stepped into this world and became one of it's most devout advocates and documentarians.
By photographing Black and Latino Texans and their neighborhoods, as well as recording and interviewing musicians-many of whom never stepped foot into a proper recording studio-McCormick endeared and eventually embedded himself into these communities.
By the time he died in 2015,McCormick had amassed a collection of 590 reels of sound recordings and 165 boxes of manuscripts, original interviews and research notes, thousands of photographs and negatives, playbills, and posters.
Because McCormick never published or released most of these materials, his collection became a thing of legend and intense speculation among scholars, blues aficionados, and musicians alike.
Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958-1971 is the first compilation of music drawn from this fabled collection, which indelibly documents a pivotal moment in African American history.
It features never-before-heard performances not only from musicians who became icons in their own right-including Lightnin' Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb-but also, crucially, performers whose names may be unfamiliar to even the most devoted blues fans and scholars.
Newly mastered recordings and accompanying photographs bring to life many of these forgotten figures: offering insight into their lives and illuminating in new, enlightening ways their joys and anguish, deep social connections, distinctive voices, and cultural networks.
The collection spans gospel, ragtime, country blues dirges, the unclassifiable music of George "Bongo Joe" Coleman, and more, showing that no community, no matter how tight knit, is monolithic.
Accompanying the music is a 128-page book, which contains breathtaking photographs by McCormick and his associates, as well as contextual essays by producers Jeff Place and John Troutman onMcCormick's life, and by musicians Mark Puryear and Dom Flemons on some of the marginalized communities throughout "Greater Texas" to which McCormick devoted his life's work. This release is a partnership with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
.jpg)
Johnny Hammond's jazz-funk opus, Gears, garnered critical acclaim upon its release and was a Top 40 hit onBillboard's Jazz chart. In the decades since, Gears has only grown in its cult status, being sampled by the likes of Erykah Badu and Kendrick Lamar. The album was cut from the original analog tapes byKevin Gray and pressed on audiophile-quality 180-gram vinyl at RTI. The LP is housed in a tip-on jacket, featuring faithfully reproduced original designs.
Could it be you’re falling in love? With six Grammy Award nominations, eighteen Gold and Platinum albums, twenty top 40 Pop singles, and both Pop and R&B chart-toppers, The Spinners more than earned their place in pantheon of American popular song.
Working with producer-arranger-conductor Thom Bell, the five-man group consisting of Philippé Wynne, Bobbie Smith, Henry Fambrough, Billy Henderson, and Pervis Jackson (and later, John Edwards) came to define the sound of smooth and sophisticated Philadelphia soul in the 1970s even as they paved the way for disco.
With Bell’s singular arrangements and the unmistakable musicianship of MFSB supporting them, The Spinners delivered rich, textured harmonies on hit after hit including “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love,” “One of a Kind (Love Affair),” “Sadie,” “The Rubberband Man,” and the No. 1 duet “Then Came You” with Dionne Warwick.
Autonomy is a sensational addition to Ace's long-standing Producer Series. After cutting his teeth as a recording engineer for artists from T. Rex to Shirley Bassey, Martin Rushent broke through in 1977, producing the Stranglers.
From that point, he helped give new wave bands a delicious pop edge, helming seminal recordings by 999, Buzzcocks, XTC, Generation X and the Rezillos to name just a few.
As the 80s dawned he set up Genetic Sound and, armed with the latest technology, his pioneering work with the Human League on Dare defined the sound of UK synthpop and brought him international recognition.
After that, the hits and cutting production work continued. Curated by DJ Gary Crowley, Autonomy takes a welcome look at Rushent's production career.
Kicking off with the Stranglers' '(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)' it powers through some of his finest post punk work including Buzzcocks' 'Autonomy', 999's 'Homicide' and XTC's 'Are You Receiving Me?'. Ian Gomm's US hit 'Hold On' rubs shoulders with the Human League's 'Hard Times', Altered Images' 'I Could Be Happy' and the Members' 'Working Girl'.
There are hidden gems as well, such as the Go-Go's 'Beneath The Blue Sky', the Associates' 'Breakfast' and the electronic perfection of Hard Corps' 'Je Suis Passée'. All told, these 19 tracks give a perfect overview of Martin Rushent's finest years.
Comments
Post a Comment