The Fat Angel Sings

John Grant began thinking about “The Art of The Lie” in the Autumn of 2022. Earlier that year, John had been introduced to Ivor Guest, producer and composer at Grace Jones’ Southbank show, the finale of her Meltdown Festival. They began talking about two records Guest had worked on, ‘Hurricane’ for Jones, ‘Prohibition’ for Brigitte Fontaine. “Grace and Brigitte are two very big artists for me,” says Grant. “I love the albums he did for them. ‘Hurricane’ is an indispensable piece of Grace’s catalogue.” An idea was sparked. “I said, I really think you should do this next record with me. He said, I think you’re right.”

A year and a half later, the result is John Grant’s most opulent, cinematic, luxurious album yet: “The Art of The Lie“. As the title suggests, the lyrical ingenuity counterweighted under all this considered musical largesse is as dark as its production is epic and bold. Ivor Guest and his cast-list of storied musicians have brought the drama, flecks of intrigue as beguiling as Laurie Anderson or The Art of Noise. John Grant has earthed it in deeply felt humanity and pitch-black realism. “The clothing that it’s dressed up in makes it more palatable,” he says. “It helps the bitter pill go down. Music and humour are how I’ve always dealt with the dark side of life. Come to think of it, it’s how I deal with the good side too.”

John Grant’s album “The Art Of The Lie” will be released 14th June 2024 via Bella Union

In 1968, an ad from Frank Zappa in the L.A. Free Press read: “The Mothers of Invention cordially invite you to join them on Tuesday, July 23rd, 1968 when they will be taking over the Whisky a Go Go for 5 full hours of unprecedented merriment, which will be secretly recorded for an upcoming record album. Dress optional. Starting sometime in the evening. R.S.V.D.T.” That album ultimately ended up remaining mostly unheard, until now. The live collection “Whisky a Go Go, 1968” is set to finally be released June 21st, 2024, via Zappa Records/UMe.

Ahead of the album’s release, fans can now listen to a previously unreleased version of “The Duke,” which at the time of the Whisky ’68 recording was a brand new composition. Zappa played the track twice that night, and both takes are included on the record.

Produced by Ahmet Zappa and Joe Travers, this extensive collection, 55-plus years in the making, compiles everything The Mothers of Invention played across their three sets that night. The album is complete and newly remixed in 2023 from hi-res 24-bit/96kHz digital transfers of the original 1” 8-track analogue tapes by Craig Parker Adams at Winslow CT Studios.

A Super Deluxe Edition box set will be released on both 5LP 180-gram black vinyl or 3CD, and feature a booklet with many unseen photos from the night’s events, along with copious liner notes by Vaultmeister Joe Travers, an essay by Pamela Des Barres of the Zappa-signed group The GTO’s who played that evening, and an interview by Ahmet Zappa with the legendary Alice Cooper, whose own band made a momentous splash at the Whisky that night as one of the featured acts.

The concert will be released on June 21st via Zappa Records/UMe.

Paul McCartney loves a ‘project’ and in August 1974, while “Band on the Run” was enjoying a seven-week run at the top of the UK album charts, he and Wings headed to Abbey Road Studios for some filming and live-in-the-studio sessions, with a vague idea of turning it into something. A documentary film perhaps? Possibly a live studio album? Like some of Paul’s ideas it came to nothing, but these sessions did acquire a name: “One Hand Clapping”. So some 50 years after the event, they are being released for (almost) the first time, via three different audio formats.

David Litchfield had filmed and recorded (over four days) a new Wings line-up, which featured Paul, Linda, Denny Laine, guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and (short-lived) drummer Geoff Britton. Orchestral arranger Del Newman and saxophonist Howie Casey, were also present to contribute.

The sessions were a mixture of recent hits, such as ‘Live and Let Die’, ‘Band on the Run’, ‘Jet’, ‘Junior’s Farm’, ‘My Love’ and a bit of dipping back into the past for some Beatles classics ‘Let It Be’, ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and ‘Lady Madonna’. Denny Laine sings the Moody Blues’ ‘Go Now’ and Paul also revisits ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ from 1970’s “McCartney”. There’s also some messing around as Paul tackles the Harry Akst/Benny Davis Tin Pan Alley classic ‘Baby Face’ and dabbles with ‘I’ll Give You A Ring’, a McCartney original that would not see the light of day until a re-recording appeared as the B-side to 1982 single ‘Take It Away’.

The reason this is almost the first release of this material is because tracks from it have surfaced, here and there, over the years. The “One Hand Clapping” performance of ‘Live and Let Die’ was issued over 20 years ago on the soundtrack to Andrew Fleming’s 2003 film The In-Laws. Also, when Paul started his Archive Collection series in 2010, with “Band on the Run”, “One Hand Clapping” was mined as a source of bonus material to help fill out the deluxe editions. For example, six performances were on the “Band on the Run” bonus CD (2010), one on the “McCartney” bonus CD (2011) and both DVDs with those packages included “One Hand Clapping” footage.

“One Hand Clapping” will be issued as a 2CD set and a 2LP vinyl set, . A special 2LP+7″ version is only orderable via McCartney/Universal Music channels where the seven-inch single includes exclusive solo performances recorded on the final day of the sessions in the backyard of Abbey Road studios: These include the unreleased track ‘Blackpool’ (a version of which was lined up to be B-side to the cancelled 1983 single ‘The Man’), ‘Blackbird’ and cover versions of Eddie Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock and Buddy Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’ and ‘I’m Gonna Love You Too’.

The latter point begs the question, why do the formats for this reissue include no video at all? Very strange, considering a TV sales brochure for the unreleased film was created at the time!

“One Hand Clapping” will be released on 14th June 2024 via Capitol/UMe.

Record Store Day 2024 is providing music lovers with some of the event’s most covetable releases to date, and certainly the title topping our list of the best Record Store Day 2024 vinyl releases is one that fans of The Doors have long lusted after. This terrific Stockholm show, from the band’s high-profile European tour with Jefferson Airplane in the autumn of 1968, has repeatedly been bootlegged down the years, but it’s been begging for official release ever since it was recorded.

Taped professionally for a Scandinavian radio broadcast, the overall sound is thrillingly matched by the quality of The Doors’ performance. Clearly in a good place and enjoying their European sojourn following the release of their chart-topping third album, “Waiting For The Sun”, the group turn in a rich, fiery performance that takes in hits “Light My Fire”, “The Unknown Soldier”, “Love Me Two Times” and deeper cuts “Love Street”, “You’re Lost Little Girl”, “Wild Child”, performing each and every one with a zest and passion that ensures “Live At Konserthuset, Stockholm” will need to be filed next to other essential Doors live albums such as “Absolutely Live” and “Live At The Matrix 1967: The Original Masters”.

Newly Mixed By Bruce Botnick From The Original Multitracks. This Iconic Show Will Be Available As A 3-LP Set, Pressed On Limited-Edition Translucent Light Blue Vinyl And Will Also Be Available As A Limited-Edition 2-CD Set.  “The Doors’ two sets of music that night are considered among the tour’s best. The band is tight, and Jim Morrison’s vocals are smooth as silk.”
-David Dutkowski, The Doors Archivist

“Live On Tour” was recorded at the Agora in Cleveland on December 18, 1978 and published as promo LP for radio broadcast. It was never officially released for the public. Only three songs “The Girls Want To Be With The Girls”, “Electricity” and “Found A Job” were reprinted in the double live CD “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads”; one song “Psycho Killer” was issued as a 7″ promo single in UK. All the others are still officially unavailable elsewhere.

Talking Heads significantly boosted the image of the live album with their ground breaking “Stop Making Sense”, in 1984. However, even before they issued that celebrated title, they had released a terrific live collection, “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads”: a highly durable double set assembled from several shows the NYC four-piece played between 1977 and 1981.

The first side of that album was culled from an exhilarating gig staged at Boston’s Northern Studios in November 1977, for US radio station WCOZ. However, only those five songs (plus a couple more included on the 2001 reissue of “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads” have officially been available up to now. More than earning its place among the best Record Store Day 2024 vinyl releases, “Live At WCOZ 77” includes Talking Heads’ complete 14-song set from Northern Studios, including energetic and previously unreleased takes of songs such as “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel”, “The Good Thing” and “The Big Country“, which the group would shortly nail for their second album, “More Songs About Buildings And Food”.

Effectively the album that “The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars” could have been had David Bowie not decided to drop four tracks in favour of the songs “Starman”, “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”, “Suffragette City” and a cover of Ron Davies’ “It Ain’t Easy”, “Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth)” significantly redraws the blueprint for the breakout Bowie album fans already know and love.

On Side One, in place of “Starman” (one of the last three tracks recorded for the album, in February 1972), is “Round and Round”, a cover of the Chuck Berry classic, which Bowie eventually put on the B-side of “Drive-In Saturday”, in 1973. Instead of “It Ain’t Easy”, “Waiting For The Sky’s” first side concludes with Bowie’s dramatic version of Jacques Brel’s “Amsterdam“, which would later appear as the B-side of “Sorrow”, the sole single lifted from Bowie’s covers album, “Pin Ups”.

Side Two of this original, 15th December 1971 track-list of “Ziggy Stardust” also featured two long-time non-LP fan favourites, “Holy Holy” and “Velvet Goldmine”. The version of “Holy Holy” that features here is The Spiders From Mars’ re-recording of Bowie’s 1971 standalone single – a take that didn’t officially surface until it became the B-side of the “Diamond Dogs” single, in June 1974, by which time Bowie had long since jettisoned his Ziggy Stardust alter ego.

The cover of “Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth)” features a photo of David taken at an early Ziggy Stardust period session by Brian Ward, and the two sides of the inner bags are the fronts of the two Trident Studios tape boxes. The album’s title comes from the lyrics of ‘Starman’, which, along with ‘Rock ’N’ Roll Suicide’ and ‘Suffragette City’, had not yet been recorded when this variation of the album was compiled.

DAVID BOWIE – ” Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth) “ Record Store Day 2024

First time on vinyl; breakout of live material from Tim (Let It Bleed Edition) featuring the original lineup performing in January 1986 the week of their infamous performance on Saturday Night Live (hence the title).

“Not Ready For Prime Time” was recently released in its entirety as part of the exhaustive deluxe box set edition of The Replacements’ classic album “Tim”. However, with copies of that multi-disc collection retailing for around the £100 mark, this new standalone vinyl edition of this fantastic live show from January 1986 is a positive boon for all serious ’Mats fans.

Featuring 28 tracks in all, it captures a suitably passionate performance from the band’s classic, Bob Stinson-era line-up, with the track-list offering tunes from all the group’s albums, from their debut, “Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash£, up to and including “Tim”, in addition to inspired covers of songs such as The Beatles’ “Nowhere Man”, The Cramps’ “The Crusher” and KISS’ “Black Diamond“. Edgy, tanked-up and just the right side of sloppy, 

“Not Ready For Prime Time” captures The Replacements’ live experience in excelsis.

Nine tracks in length, “Fu##in’ Up” captures a secret, surprise set at Toronto’s Rivoli that Young and Crazy Horse performed last November, reportedly hosted by Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss.

Sure enough, Reiss appears in album credits hosted on the artist’s Neil Young Archives website, which also point to additional guitar, piano and vocals from Micah Nelson — the youngest son of Willie Nelson, who performs and records as Particle Kid.

At the Rivoli that November evening, Young and the Horse were said to have performed their 1990 album “Ragged Glory” in its entirety. “Fu##in’ Up’s” track-list, found below, largely stays true to that LP’s track sequence, though closer “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)” is absent. Save for the band’s cover of “Farmer John,” the new release’s songs have been retitled using fragments of their lyrics.

“In the spirit it’s offered…made this for the Horse lovers,” Young shared of the album in a statement. “I can’t stop it. The horse is runnin’. What a ride we have. I don’t want to mess with the vibe. I am so happy to have this to share.”

Young has shared that “Fu##in’ Up” will first see release as a limited edition, clear vinyl 2LP set as part of Record Store Day 2024, complete with a lithograph print of the album art. This edition will also be available on April 20th via Young’s own Greedy Hand Store, ahead of black vinyl, CD and digital editions arriving widely on April 26th.

Fu##in’ Up:

1. City Life (Country Home)
2. Feels Like a Railroad (River of Pride) [White Line]
3. Heart of Steel (Fuckin’ Up)
4. Broken Circle (Over and Over)
5. Valley of Hearts (Love to Burn)
6. Farmer John
7. Walkin’ in My Place (Road of Tears) [Mansion on the Hill]
8. To Follow One’s Own Dream [Day That Used to Be]
9. A Chance on Love (Love and Only Love)

2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Ramones. This collection includes their earliest known studio recordings for Sire Records, 

Housed in a sleeve featuring a fantastic photo of “Da Bruddas” riding the New York City subway, the self-explanatory “1975 Sire Demos” includes Ramones’ earliest-known studio recordings, helmed either by Tommy Ramone or Red Star Records’ mogul, Marty Thau. Most of the songs “53rd & 3rd”, “Loudmouth”, “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You”, “Chainsaw” would shortly feature in official form on The Ramones’ game-changing self-titled debut album, but even these early takes of the songs fizz with a barely controlled excitement, suggesting something new and extremely seismic would soon be blowing up on a much wider scale.

“The Spotlight Kid” is the sixth studio album by Captain Beefheart. Originally released in 1972, it is the only album credited solely to Captain Beefheart rather than Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, although every member is featured, and its material is considered part of the band’s repertoire. Released for RSD 2024 as a 2LP in gatefold jacket with milky clear coloured vinyl.

Captain Beefheart’s sixth album, “The Spotlight Kid”, is often referred to as his “commercial” album. Admittedly, such a claim is easier to make when one considers that it arrived in the slipstream of such courageous titles as “Trout Mask Replica” and “Lick My Decals Off, Baby”, but even allowing for that, 

“The Spotlight Kid” is atypically linear and accessible by Beefheart’s usual arcane standards. Despite lacking an official credit for The Magic Band, Don Van Vliet’s usual crew were all present and correct for the recording, which includes numerous highlights – not least “I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby”, “Grow Fins” and the splendidly titled “Alice In Blunderland”. Taking its place among the best Record Store Day 2024 vinyl releases, “The Spotlight Kid” now returns to the limelight on “milky clear” double vinyl and in a smart gatefold sleeve.