Our picks this week. Click the links to order from Amazon.
The Who - "Live At Shea Stadium 1982" / The Who's 1982 tour, which was all in North America apart from two warm-up dates at the Birmingham NEC in England, was their last to feature Kenney Jones on drums and they wouldn't tour again until 1989.
The tour promoted the recent "It's Hard" album, which had been released in June 1982, and the set list included a number of tracks from that album, some of which the band would only play live on this tour.
Liam Gallagher & John Squire / 2024 release of this collaboration between former Oasis vocalist Liam Gallagher and Stone Roses guitarist John Squire. The album was preceded by the singles "Just Another Rainbow" and "Mars to Liverpool".
Tzadik is proud to present Asterisms, a beautiful and exploratory instrumental project by Sean Ono Lennon, one of the most creative and versatile musician/composer/producer/songwriters working today.
Sean has written countless songs, composed film scores, produced, and performed on dozens of albums—and here he steps out as the leader of an all-star band of Downtown luminaries.
Years in the making, the music is powerful, trippy, and intensely imaginative, blending rock, electronics, jazz, and more into an exciting new musical soundscape. With driving rhythms, a stunning lyricism, and a brilliant sense of orchestration, this album is sure to surprise and delight music fans the world ’round.
In late 1961, fifteen-year old Jimmy Webb was working as a farmhand in Oklahoma. Every day he would take his lunch to work in a paper bag and dangle a green plastic transistor radio inside the cab of his industrial-size tractor.
One day a song came on the radio called 'Turn Around Look At Me' that blew Webb's mind. Losing concentration, Webb turned the wrong way and careered down the road, wrecking a $20,000 tractor and trashing his boss's front garden. He lost his job, but it made a great anecdote - this had been Jimmy Webb's memorable first encounter with the voice of Glen Campbell.
The southern gothic hit trilogy of 'By The Time I Get to Phoenix' (1967), 'Wichita Lineman' (1968) and 'Galveston' (1969) wove Jimmy Webb's and Glen Campbell's careers together. It was a magical meeting of minds, with Campbell's rich expressive, melancholic voice a perfect match for Webb's widescreen lyrics and complex chord sequences. They would continue to meet up and record on-and-off over the decades.
The results were often frankly beautiful. "I Am A Lineman For The County" pulls together every Jimmy Webb song recorded by Glen Campbell between 1967 and 1982.
At long last, a CD full of the falsetto pop king's wonderful Columbia recordings - including all the singles and 15 previously unreleased masters.
Lou Christie's four-octave range is one of the most exciting and readily identifiable sounds of 1960s pop. Gypsy Bells uncovers a rather confusing and largely buried chunk of the Christie catalogue. His co-manager Stan Polley engineered a switch from MGM to Columbia at the peak of his fame, less than a year after 'Lightnin' Strikes' had been a US #1, and such a monster hit that it had pushed two cash-ins from Christie's previous labels into Billboard's Hot 100 in it's wake.
No question, Lou Christie was hot at the start of 1967. It felt like Columbia couldn't really fail. They wisely kept on producer/arranger Charlie Calello - who, in 1967, was also working with the 4 Seasons, the Cyrkle and Laura Nyro - as he'd given 'Lightnin' Strikes' it's irresistible, dynamic energy. The label sat back and waited for more sparks to fly.
The titles of Christie's Columbia singles alone spelled out a confidence in his unique vision: 'Back To The Days Of The Romans', 'Self Expression (The Kids On The Street Will Never Give In)', 'Shake Hands And Walk Away Cryin', 'Don't Stop Me (Jump Off The Edge Of Love)'.
Commercially, though, the results of his time at Columbia would be a crushing disappointment. If either had done better, then there would have been a Lou Christie album released in late 1967.
Focus On Nature is the new studio album from celebrated post-psyche singer songwriter Nick Saloman and his band The Bevis Frond.
Seventy-five minutes of glorious melodies that span 60s psych, English folk, Seattle art-punks The Wipers, the buzzsaw pop of Dinosaur Jr and Hendrix-esque explorations.
There’s always an element of playful Englishness to their music. Heavily influencing the likes of The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Elliot Smith, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr, the cult icons have produced another off-kilter mix of melodic piano-led melancholy, acoustic ruminations, scratchy garage rock with a punky edge and full-on guitar histrionics.
Like its much-praised predecessor, ‘Little Eden’, the new record studies the world’s weariness but fills out a bigger canvas; fast food and global warming, broken hearts and long gone nights out, everyday immortality and being God’s gift all share space.
Where's My Utopia? is the follow-up to the Leeds band's critically acclaimed debut record, The Overload. The new album is a co-production between Yard Act and Gorillaz member Remi Kabaka Jr.
For almost 60 years Earl Young has been the heartbeat and pulsebeat of soul music in Philadelphia - the drummer on literally hundreds of sessions dating back as far as 1964, and the man who has propelled so much of the City Of Brotherly Love's hit list in that time.
As well as being the drummer for the band that eventually became MFSB Mk. 1 and, subsequently, the Salsoul Orchestra, Earl has also led the Trammps since they came together as the Volcanoes in the mid-60s, and is still leading the group in 2023 (and playing several dozen shows a year) as their bass vocalist.
It's fair to say that the classic 70s Sound Of Philadelphia as soul fans know it could not have existed without Earl Young behind the drum-kit on so many defining sessions. His 'four on the floor' style essentially shaped the sound of dance music as it evolved through the middle of the decade and particularly during the peak years of Disco.
To honour his lifetime of musical achievement, Kent presents "Groove Machine - The Earl Young Drum Sessions" a representative but also all-encompassing selection of Earl's studio work as a drummer and singer from the mid-60s to the late 70s with the emphasis on the up-tempo.
A single CD can do no more than scratch the surface of such an immense discography as Earl's, but we have tried to balance hits that essentially chose themselves with longtime fan favourites and classy obscurities that will please anyone and everyone who has ever danced to any record that Earl played on.
Premium quality black American music from the Golden Age Of Soul, all of it driven by a true living legend and an undisputed master of his percussive craft. Whether you know these records backwards or are coming to many of them for the first time, there's so much to savour here!
Daniel Romano returns with his first new music since the release of the massive, singular, La Luna in those long ago days of autumn 2022.
Too Hot To Sleep is simultaneously a transcendent document of the spirit, and a swaggering, street level blast of power-pop and Stone’s derived rock ‘n’ roll; a surprisingly direct shout down of the corrupt politicians and techno fascists that police our bodies, pollute our world, assault our connections.
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