UMe

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 40th anniversary, 2LP reissue of Signing Off by UB40. Maybe it’s just an extension of the unapologetic non-conformist in me, but I have never been able to stop myself from being drawn into music which goes out of its way to challenge expectations and/or just endeavor to go against the grain, defiantly. I know that, at least occasionally, I turn an ear toward music which doesn’t make me feel comfortable, in...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Into The Great Wide Open by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Abraham Lincoln once said (to a delegation from the National Union League who were urging him to be their presidential candidate) that, “It is never wise to swap horses in mid-stream” and, after the popular breakthrough that his solo album made in 1989, Tom Petty clearly took that adage to heart when it came time to...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. There’s no way to say for sure if the reason Tom Petty elected to launch his solo career with Full Moon Fever was because the singer felt like he had a surplus of songs that he didn’t want to bring to the Heartbreakers, or if he was just trying to make a point. If it was because he didn’t want to...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of the Pack Up The Plantation: Live! 2LP set by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It’s far a far less common occurrence now (when virtually every band in the universe releases a live album and, thanks to digital technology,is able to “fix” every flaw in the show in post-production) but, at one time, the release of a live album meant that the band in question was confident enough...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Southern Accents by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Throughout music history, many albums have been made which it is said are conflicted due to tensions apparent within the band Acoming out in the music. Some of those albums turn out to be phenomenal – there was conflict brewing in Nirvana and it came out in In Utero and it was great as were the cases with End...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Hard Promises by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. When it comes to making a follow-up for a career-defining release, the catch is that whatever comes can often feel like a diminished return no matter how good it might be because the new music simply does not have the same spark which ignited the breakthrough of the previous album. It’s kind of heartbreaking to concede that possibility, but...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Damn The Torpedoes by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. It might sound like a grandiose claim to say something like, “Truly and genuinely rare is an album like Damn The Torpedoes – it has really introduced some of the biggest and most respected institutions in the modern music industry” but those who think so simply do not know the whole story of the album. First, it’s important...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Twentieth Anniversary 2LP reissue of Bringing Down The Horse by The Wallflowers. It might not have been the single most obvious thing, but those who remember the times during which The Wallflowers released their sophomore album know the world was a very strange place from an artistic standpoint. At the time (1996), the departure of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana had left an enormous cultural hole that many sounds and bands attempted...

Rob Zombie The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser (T-Boy/UMe) At first glance, one might assume that everything is just business as usual for Rob Zombie on his sixth solo studio album. Its title, The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser, reads like a compilation of words pulled from the titles of his other albums and seems a little laughable and ridiculous, at first. Likewise, the same could be said of all twelve of the titles...