The Fat Angel Sings

In February 1998, The Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Live At The Oakland Coliseum” marked the debut release of Dagger Records, a unique record label established to bring Jimi’s fans inspired performances that don’t meet the technical recording criteria and sonic high standards Hendrix himself established over the course of his short by spectacular career.

Releases on Dagger Records are not intended for the casual fans.  If you haven’t experienced ground-breaking Hendrix albums like “Are You Experienced” and “Electric Ladyland”, you shouldn’t be listening to this album—quite yet.  Dagger Records album like “Live At The Oakland Coliseum” are specifically directed to fans who have enjoyed Jimi’s authorised masterworks from front to back but still want more.

The underground market for Jimi Hendrix recordings, fuelled in part by the demands of the guitarist’s most ardent followers, is ride with expensive, poorly annotated bootlegs.  These haphazard compilations are often of poor quality, and too frequently deliver far less than they advertised.  Through Dagger Records, Experience Hendrix, L.L.C. plans to service the healthy demand for Jimi’s music with informative “bootleg” releases which are properly annotated, complete with photos and reasonable sonic quality.

Spread over two discs, The Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Live In Oakland” presents the group’s April 27th, 1969 concert at the Oakland Coliseum. Recorded one night after the Los Angeles performance (which was issued as part of the now deleted “Lifelines” box set), The Experience’s superb Oakland performance was capped off with an eighteen minute, extended jam of “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”. Joining the group onstage for this final number was Jefferson Airplane bassist—Jack Casady.

The Oakland concert was recorded by Ken Koga using a single microphone onto a portable Sony reel-to-reel deck. The concert was not professionally recorded, so Ken’s amateur tapes represent the only known documentation of this inspired performance. The monophonic sound is unobtrusive and clear, but far from industry—as well as Jimi’s own—standards.

Fans of The Experience will recognize the set list, as songs such as “Fire”, “Purple Haze”, and “Spanish Castle Magic” were staples of the 1969 US tour repertoire, but there are many intriguing elements marbled throughout the 85-minute performance. 

The group’s mood was upbeat and positive, charged by the large, enthusiastic audience.  From their earliest Fillmore gigs to Berkeley in 1970, The Experience—and Jimi in particular—always seemed to rise to the occasion in the Bay Area.  The Oakland concert proved no different.

Highlights include Jimi’s spontaneous reworking of “Hey Joe”, complete with passages about the “soldiers in Vietnam.”  Jimi’s two blues workouts, “Red House” and “Hear My Train A Comin’” are particularly strong, as is a raucous, extended rendition of “Foxey Lady”. The evening came to a close with a rousing finale, as Casady climbed onstage to join the group for “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”. Nearly 20 minutes later, Jimi thanked the audience and his fellow musicians.  At the close, Jimi mistakenly announced Casady as Jack Bruce, but the mistake was trivial, as the crowd roared with approval.

The Experience never returned to Oakland, as the break-up of the group two months later at the Denver Pop Festival impacted Hendrix’s career in ways which could not have been foreseen on this night.  Nonetheless, “Live At The Oakland Coliseum” captures the original group at the height of their powers.  Many other memorable concerts would follow—some recorded professional, other simply by fans, and some not at all—but on this night The Experience were on it, and thankfully, someone captured it on tape for all of us to enjoy today.

With their debut album just released, Led Zeppelin hit the road for the first time in the US. Their first show was on Boxing Day, 1968, at the Auditorium Arena in Denver, playing unannounced support to Vanilla Fudge and Spirit.

Other landmarks on the tour included a show at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, where they were billed as “Led Zefflin”, and a short run of dates at the Whisky A-Go-Go in Los Angeles with the Alice Cooper band. A coin was to be flipped to decide who would headline as both acts were largely unheard of, but the rising Detroit rockers  graciously acquiesced and agreed to open “because Jimmy Page was in The Yardbirds”. 

The important shows – the ones the band absolutely had to get right – were were the ones promoted by legendary impresario Bill Graham: four bookings (two sets per day) at the Fillmore West in San Francisco supporting Country Joe & The Fish, with Taj Mahal opening, then four shows across three nights at the Fillmore East in New York, supporting Iron Butterfly. 

“The first few shows were a bit shaky and the press wasn’t good to them,” Zeppelin tour manager Richard Cole recalled. “Robert [Plant] used to sing in his bare feet in those days. He was always a fuckin’ hippie. But by the time we got to New York, the whole thing had gotten so solid that it became the one unit that it was to be for many years.”

Amongst the crowd at those Fillmore East shows were several musicians who’d go onto bigger things. And they’ll all tell you how Led Zeppelin got it absolutely right.  

“That show at the Fillmore East changed my life,” said future Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley. “I was 16 when I saw them. A lot of people didn’t know who Led Zeppelin were, although the ‘in’ people did. The lead singer in the group that I was playing with at the time, who was a couple of years older than me told me, ‘There’s this great new band called Led Zeppelin that’s gonna play at the Fillmore East and you’ve gotta see them.’

“I think I got their first album a week or two before the show and I fell in love with it. I was real excited about going to the show. I remember it like it was yesterday. They were using Rickenbacker amps, which you can’t find anymore. Back then Page wasn’t using a Les Paul, he was using a Telecaster.

“Between him and Robert Plant they destroyed. They took over the Fillmore East to the point where, after they went off and the headliner was coming on, half the people walked out and didn’t come back. I still think about that first time I saw Led Zeppelin at The Fillmore from time to time. God, I wish somebody had a video camera back then, it was incredible.”

“I was there when they headlined the Fillmore East [in New York] on January 31st, 1969,” recalled future Twisted Sister guitarist Yay Jay French. “I was only there to see Iron Butterfly, the headlining band. I had a front row seat. Believe it or not, the opening act was a gospel group called Porter’s Popular Preachers [brought in as a late replacement for The Move]. And then out comes Led Zeppelin.

“It was one of the most startling performances I ever saw. Page was playing a Telecaster and they played the entire first album, from start to finish. At one point the band stopped playing and Robert put the microphone aside and sang just through the strength of his lungs and basically filled the Fillmore. It was insane. I ran out and bought Zeppelin’s album on the way to school the next day.

“I ended up burning those Iron Butterfly records. I had the honour of having dinner with Robert Plant in 1988, and we spoke about that show. He asked whether I remembered burst of laughter during Ron Bushy’s drum solo during “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. I didn’t hear it but apparently there was a dressing room-come-balcony that hung over the stage, and [John] Bonham was doubled over in hysterics at how bad the solo was. Zeppelin knew they’d eaten the headline band for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Another wannabe musician blown away by witnessing Led Zeppelin at the Fillmore East was future Ramones drummer Marky Ramone, whose happy memories of the night were somewhat at odds with his eventual career path.

“I first saw Zeppelin play live at the Fillmore East,” said Ramone. “I was 13, 14. I knew an usher and he let me in for free. I was just blown away. Outrageous. They were the ultimate band at that moment. They blew away everybody that came before them: Hendrix, Cream… Bonham’s quadruples around the drum set and his triplets and Page’s triplets. Plant’s range was just amazing. And the bass tones that John Paul Jones used were incredible. They played seven-minute songs. They didn’t do two-minute songs.”

The four nights were an overwhelming success – although Led Zeppelin’s third set started without John Paul Jones onstage after the band left his bass guitar at their hotel – and Bill Graham was happy. The tour wound up at the Civic Center in Baltimore, MD, on February 7th, and when they returned in April for a second US tour, they were suddenly headliners: eight sets at the Fillmore West, and four at the East.

The Dream Syndicate reveal two new tracks from the newly expanded 40th Anniversary Edition of ‘The Days Of Wine and Roses: History Kinda Pales When It and You Are Aligned’ (4xCD) out 23rd June. Collecting 54 songs from the original line-up, including 10 hard-to-find rarities and 31 never released recordings. Listen to ‘When You Smile (Down There EP Version)/Too Little, Too Late (Kendra Vocal, Live)’

This exciting Box Set News! “history kinda pales when it and you are aligned” is a 4-CD collection coming out this summer on Fire Records but we’ll be selling pre-release copies on our UK tour starting next Monday. The box is in the style of the “What Can I Say, No Regrets” reimagining of “Out of the Grey” set that came out last year and is comprised entirely of material from 1982–several dozen early live performances and demos that you haven’t heard before including cover songs by Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin and The Who (!)

One of the most celebrated bands to come out of the Los Angeles “Paisley Underground” scene of the ’80s, the Dream Syndicate adored the intricate wordplay and edgy energy of ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ era Bob Dylan, as well as the noisy guitars and bracing darkness of the Velvet Underground.

An exceptional early ‘80s guitar-powered gem, remastered in full and includes a wealth of unreleased material. This newly expanded 4 CD collection includes tracks from main protagonist Steve Wynn’s earlier combo 15 Minutes, the debut EP, astounding cover renditions (Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, The Who), recordings of the band’s first ever rehearsal, along with several visceral live concerts from the pre-album era.

The deluxe box features liner notes by band historian Pat Thomas and recent interviews with Kendra Smith, engineer Paul Cutler and producer Chris D.

Nine albums in and The National manage to retain their crown of one of the hardest working, and consistently great bands of a generation. Featuring yet more superb songwriting, expert production and some heavyweight special guest appearances, just like Mary Shelly’s classic novel this might just be the indie-rock stalwart’s very own masterpiece.

The National released a new album, “First Two Pages of Frankenstein“, that features guest artists Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, and Sufjans Stevens, and shared its first single, “Tropic Morning News.” They have also announced some tour dates. “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” is due out April 28th via 4AD Records.

The National’s previous album, “I Am Easy to Find“, came out in 2019 via 4AD. Last year the band shared a new single, “Weird Goodbyes,” which was a collaboration with Bon Iver (the project led by Justin Vernon) but is not featured on the new album.

In a press release, lead singer Matt Berninger says that after “I Am Easy to Find” he found himself in “a very dark spot where I couldn’t come up with lyrics or melodies at all. Even though we’d always been anxious whenever we were working on a record, this was the first time it ever felt like maybe things really had come to an end.”

The National’s guitarist/pianist Bryce Dessner says that the band “managed to come back together and approach everything from a different angle, and because of that we arrived at what feels like a new era for the band.”

The band also features Bryce’s brother Aaron Dessner (guitar/piano/bass), as well as brothers Scott Devendorf (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums).

“Tropic Morning News” was partly recorded live in Hamburg. “When Matt came in with that song in the depths of his depression, it felt like a turning point for us,” says Aaron Dessner. “It’s almost Dylan-esque in its lyrics and it’s so much fun to play; everything suddenly felt like it was coming alive again.”

Berninger co-wrote the song with his wife Carin Besser and the press release says it “takes its title from a phrase Besser invented to describe the regrettably routine practice of doomscrolling.”

Berninger adds: “The idea of referring to the darkness of the news in such a light way unlocked something in me. It became a song about having a hard time expressing yourself, and trying to connect with someone when the noise of the world is drowning out any potential for conversation.”

“This was not an easy album to make. It was the first time it ever felt like maybe things really had come to an end. But at some point there was a feeling of all of us leaning into each other in a new way. We managed to come back together and approach everything from a different angle, letting go of attachment and giving way to what we do best. For all of that, we are so proud of this album and how much it means to us.

Summing up “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” as a whole, Aaron Dessner says: “To me the power of this record has to do with the intentionality and structure of the music meeting with a lot of accidental magic.”

Mega Bog (aka Erin Birgy) is releasing a new album, “End of Everything”, on May 19th via Mexican Summer, her first for the label. On Wednesday she shared its third single, “Cactus People,” via a self-directed music video.

Birgy had this to say about “Cactus People” in a press release: “This song is a transparent call to practice addressing what lies at the feared feet of abandonment. All of a sudden I realized I was running away, with a black widow bite, collapsing on a trail several hours out of town, alone. Reacting to something inevitable, something I desired even, and taking notes of images arising while pitting emotionality against logic. At the time they felt like enemies, but somewhere in there was a seed wailing, ‘just watch yourself unfold.’”

Of directing the song’s video, she adds: “While making the video for ‘Cactus People,’ similar thrills and fears had me run to Greece, where I watched old patterns rear their noses once more, but with a brazen clarity—geographically, surrounded by new and inspiring friends, all with that ancient, echoing reminder of the stones we were born to bear, who we’ll have to embrace as company to find any peace throughout this life.”

Previously Mega Bog shared the album’s first single, “The Clown,” via a self-directed music video. Then she shared the album’s second single, “Love Is,” via a music video. “Love Is” featured backing vocals from Westerman. 

Birgy co-produced the album with James Krivchenia of Big Thief, who also mixed the record and co-engineered it with Phil Hartunian. Krivchenia also plays drums on the album, which also features regular Mega Bog bassist Zach Burba, alongside Will Segerstrom, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Jackson Macintosh (Drugdealer, TOPS), and Westerman.

As Birgy got sobre and started to work through her personal traumas, she decided to make a more direct record, writing on piano and synthesizer instead of guitar.

In a previous press release Birgy said she had the need “to feel… instantly. I didn’t want to dig into secret codes. I no longer wanted to hide behind difficult music. I was curious to give others the same with the music I create; to make music someone could use to explore drama, playfulness, and dancing, to shake the trauma loose.”

North London dream-pop ensemble Firestations are back with their first full album in five years. Preceded by the single “Undercover” – an effervescent song about depression and self-discovery ­– “Thick Terrain” will be released on limited-edition 12” vinyl and digital platforms on July 14th, 2023. A clear-eyed and bold statement, deftly combining big ideas with pop sensibilities in a captivating way, it’s the band’s best work to date. It follows Firestations’ expansive and explorative 2021 EP trilogy “Automatic Tendencies“, which garnered extensive support from BBC 6 Music including repeat plays from Gideon Coe, Cerys Matthews, Radcliffe & Maconie and in particular Marc Riley, who hailed the track ‘Small Island’ as “a perfect pop song”.

A song of, “depression and self-discovery”, “Undercover” finds vocalist Michael Cranny looking for happiness and normality in a world that can sometimes feel like it is lacking in both, “is it over? Where is the joy? Still undercover?” Musically, the track feels contrastingly effervescent, the lyrics might be questioning where have all the good times gone, yet Firestation’s music has never sounded more self-confident, adding a Camera Obscura-like pop-swagger to their usual blend of the dreamy and the driving.

This all bodes very well for their new album, a record whose title combines a love of dense milkshakes, a sense of feeling grounded and “cultural research” watching Love Island, and yes you might need to ask them for a full explanation of that, but rest assured it’s going to be excellent!

Firestations are Michael Cranny, Laura Copsey, Martin Thompson, Tom Hargreaves and Neil Walsh. Together they make music spanning genres from shoegazey indie to synth pop and harmony-driven psychedelia.

Taken from the forthcoming album “Thick Terrain” – out on July 14th, 2023 on limited edition 12″ vinyl via Lost Map Recordings

Jess Williamson’s “Time Ain’t Accidental” is the sound of a woman running into her life and art head-on, on her own terms for the first time in a long while. With a vocal dynamic kindred to artists like Linda Rondstadt and Emmylou Harris, Williamson blends the emotional immediacy and story-telling of traditional country with the artful, wholly honest transmissions of songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and Terry Allen. The album’s reckoning with loss, isolation, romance, and personal reclamation signals both a stylistic and tectonic shift for Williamson: from someone who once made herself small to an artist emboldened by her power as an individual.

“Chasing Spirits” is a strong contender for the year’s most striking opening lines, “are my love songs lies now that the love is gone?” It serves as an introduction to a song that asks throughout what happens when you pour your heart into something, and then it ends. Does it invalidate those feelings you once shared, and do you chase those feelings into the spirits in the sky, or sink into the ones you find in a liquor store? In many ways, Jess seems to be picking up where “Plans”, her duet project with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, left off.

This is many ways a classic country song, with cynicism-free emotional out-pouring, bar-room pianos and luxuriant waves of slide-guitar, it is in the lineage of Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams and The Chicks. What really stands out is just how natural this shift seems for Jess, her vocal tone lending itself perfectly to standing tall and proud among the waves of musical emotion. The next stage of a songwriter who with each album never seems content to stand still, this might just be Jess Williamson’s most exciting phase yet.

“Time Ain’t Accidental” is out June 9th via Mexican Summer.

Following its exclusive premiere in London, the trailer for the upcoming documentary film, “Have You Got It Yet?: The Story Of Syd Barrett And Pink Floyd”, has been unveiled. The documentary was made with the blessing of the Barrett estate and the permission of Pink Floyd‘s surviving members, the three of whom feature as interview subjects in the film.

“Have You Got It Yet” was directed by the late Pink Floyd art designer Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis with Roddy Bogawa.

Bogowa issued a statement that reads, “Would anyone care about the story of Syd Barrett if Pink Floyd hadn’t become one of the biggest bands of all time? Would Pink Floyd have existed without Syd?

“I miss Storm probably in the same way as many of those in our film miss Syd, a friend who they dearly loved and shared fond memories and adventures — Syd just happened to become one of the most famous cult icons in music.”

Meanwhile, the official synopsis states, “Cult icon, enigma, recluse … the life of Syd Barrett, founding member of Pink Floyd, is full of unanswered questions. Until now. Piecing together his comet-like rise to pop stardom, his creative and destructive impulses, breakdown, exit from the band, and subsequent life alone, this feature-length documentary is set against the social context of the explosive ’60s.”

Barrett’s sister, Rosemary Breen, stars alongside Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Roger Waters, early managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King and musicians influenced by his art, including The Who‘s Pete Townshend and Blur‘s Graham Coxon. The name of the documentary was pulled from an unreleased Syd Barrett song.

“Have You Got It Yet” will be played in UK cinemas from 15th May, with the film moving to the US in June. At the time of writing, no Australian premiere date has been set. Barrett co-founded the iconic psychedelic rock band with Roger Waters and Nick Mason in 1965. The trio released their debut album, “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” and their second album, “A Saucerful Of Secrets”, in 1967 and 1968, respectively. The sole Pink Floyd releases featuring Barrett, he was replaced by Gilmour in 1968 after dealing with worsening health issues and drug addiction.