TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 112 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Too LP by Fidlar DATE: 12-09-15 WRITER: Bill Adams What is it about punk rock which lends itself to vinyl recordings so effectively? To be fair, Fidlar’s sophomore album, Too, also sounded good on CD, but those who have heard both and have to choose won’t be able to deny that vinyl is the ideal medium for this release. On CD, the music is mastered too high...

TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 109 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day-released ‘If I Can Dream’ single by Elvis Presley. DATE: 11-27-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It’s funny how, under the right circumstance a string section can really take a song to another level. Take Both of the tracks included on the Record Store Day-issued Elvis Presley 7” singlem for example; if you’re familiar with both “If I Can Dream” and “Any Part of You,” dear reader,...

TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 104 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into The Complete Albums Collection box set by Simon & Garfunkel DATE: 11-26-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It’s almost unfathomable how productive Simon & Garfunkel was in such a short time. While the duo first got together in 1957, they released their first album together in ’64 and their final album in 1970; that means the group released five albums within six years and set a legacy in stone as...

ARTIST: John Grant – DATE: 12-06-15 REVIEW BY: Bill Adams ALBUM: Grey Tickles, Black Pressure LABEL: Partisan/Bella Union Drugged. Disconcertingly deviant. Just plain different. These are just some of the words and phrases which leap to mind as one listens to Grey Tickles, Black Pressure – John Grant’s third solo album. Now, words like that paint a very divisive image in one’s mind’s eye – the implication is that you’ll either “get” it and love it or have no...

TITLE: I Wanna Be Literated! 094 A critical evaluation of Nowhere Men Volume 1: Fates Worse Than Death Trade Paperback by Eric Stephenson and Nate Bellegarde DATE: 12-03-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman How exactly does Nowhere Men manage to fit so much into so little? Maybe because it’s the kind of comic that practices what it preaches… at least in the sense that it brings together a super-team which, unlike the protagonists in this story, actually manages to achieve something greater that themselves. ?Nowhere...

ARTIST: All Them Witches – DATE: 12-05-15 REVIEW BY: Bill Adams ALBUM: Dying Surfer Meets His Maker LABEL: New West Records Above all else, the first thing you need to know about All Them Witches is that nothing is exactly as it seems. If all you saw was the album cover, you could justifiably assume it was the work of a metal or stoner rock band – but you’d be wrong. If all you heard was the group’s name,...

ARTIST: Dilly Dally – DATE: 12-05-15 REVIEW BY: Bill Adams ALBUM: Sore LABEL: Partisan/Buzz Records In this age of computer-generated musical perfection, it’s refreshing to hear Sore – Dilly Dally’s debut album. For the first time in what feels like forever, listeners are confronted by a female-fronted (both on vocals and guitar) outfit who is unafraid to have (and bare) some teeth and anger without trying to be cute about it as well as presenting their music exactly as...

TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 110 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into the Live in Denmark, 1971 2LP by Johnny Cash DATE: 12-04-15 WRITER: Bill Adams Maybe the coolest thing about the listening experience of Man In Black: Live In Denmark 1971 is the genuine reality of it. See, the nature of live albums in the twenty-first century has become focused on single artists; modern live albums simply compile a series of tracks which happened to be recorded (often in...

TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 111 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the A Legend In The Making–Live at El Mocambo 2LP by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble DATE: 12-04-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It’s a far more rare event now than it used to be thanks to the internet digitally bootlegging music and making it all available for the downloading, but there are some albums which are regarded as lauded and collectible – even now. These albums are usually...

TITLE: I Wanna Be Literated! 093 A critical evaluation of The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell DATE: 11-26-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman You have got to give props to my main man Bertrand Russell for pulling off such a magnanimous project and pulling it off so well. As he says in the introduction, the key to writing this book involving a rundown of the entire history of Western philosophy is to touch on each of these guys just enough so...