A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Trying To Become A Millionaire reissue LP by California Playboys, released by Manufactured Recordings/Omnian I know I’ve said this before, but it’s a statement which requires regular reiteration: one of the best parts about records after they’re made and have come out is that they’re there – available to be found when potential listeners are ready to find them. It’s even easier now that the music industry is hurriedly reissuing so...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Vinyl Me, Please reissue of Paranoid by Black Sabbath. Ever since I “got into” metal through the likes of Motorhead and Mastodon, I’ve been trying to fill in the holes in my musical brain with all the awesome metal I’ve missed out on over the years. Unfortunately, I’ve been getting more and more disappointed with what I’ve been finding. Albums from Metallica, Kylesa and Baroness are fine, but I’d much rather...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Battletoads soundtrack LP, released by I Am 8-Bit. I’m going to give you a second so you can process the craziness that you’re seeing here. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Battletoads soundtrack on vinyl. That’s Battletoads – as in the Nintendo game from the Nineties, regarded as one of the hardest games of all time. Is this the 8-bit soundtrack in all its 8-bit glory? Yes it is. Is...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Batman vs. Superman soundtrack LP by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL. One of the strange and cool new side-effects of vinyl’s resurgence (except for the wonderful new 6 month wait for new albums) is the role soundtracks have played in it. Lord knows if vinyl is a legitimate format for soundtracks or if they’re popular just because they make that little nostalgic neuron in our brain fire when we look at...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Vinyl Me Please edition of Super Ape by Lee “Scratch” Perry. Music is a wonderful thing. If you listen to it correctly and put in the time, it can form a sort of six degrees of Kevin Bacon in your mind; bands get interconnected and genres get mixed and involved. As artists borrow from each other, new sounds are created and the inspirational wheel keeps turning. What am I talking about?...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Pride & Tradition reissue by Harrington Saints. Now that the band has reached out a bit and found some fresh and receptive ears (the Fish & Chips EP which came out last year helped toward that end) it’s no surprise that Harrington Saints’ next step was to reissue their Pride & Tradition album to help reel in the new recruits who are excited for more. This reissue goes a long way...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day reissue of At Budokan – The Complete Concert 2LP by Cheap Trick. While the 1970s are known for lots of things which happened musically (like the break-up of The Beatles, the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, John Bonham and Elvis Presley, the birth of both punk and disco and many other events), perhaps one of the biggest deals was the concept of a live album...
A critical evaluation of Funny Girl by Nick Hornby. I owe a great deal to Nick Hornby, partly for writing one of the greatest movies ever (no, it’s not the new one), but mostly for getting me into reading books in the first place. This happened many years ago and even though I’ve had my favorites of his over the years, every book has managed to strike a chord within me. Whenever I thought I’d have a character or a...
A critical evaluation of Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe with Tom DeSavia and friends, published by Da Capo Press While the stories are (almost) never the same, it’s pretty surprising how consistently structured and formulaic most rock biosand scene expositions are; be it the story of one artist or the collected stories of many, the authors of such books often attempt to condense the finer points of “what happened†down into...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the reissued Smash Hits LP by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I’m well-acquainted with Smash Hits by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was the first Hendrix album I ever purchased, to be honest; as a kid of (shall we say) a diminished bank account, Smash Hits looked like a wise buy because it had lots of songs on it that even the most unfamiliar...