An outstanding double-album featuring today’s best artists covering songs from Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and more. Praised by SPIN, NME, TIME, Rolling Stone, Paste, Nylon, A.V. Club, NPR, USA Today, and Pitchfork. This is another fantastic themed compilation from American Laundromat Records. This is a delightful reimagining of songs used in many Wes Anderson movies. A gateway to introduce yourself to new artists through songs you already know and like.
American Laundromat Records is an independent record label based in Mystic, CT. Founded in 2004, the label is known for its critically-acclaimed tribute and themed compilations, award-winning charity albums, and an impressive roster of original artists.
Legendary rock band The Rolling Stones has released two previously unheard recordings of two of their hit songs, “Tumbling Dice” and “Hot Stuff.” The recordings come from the band’s famous secret concerts in March 1977, at the 300-capacity venue in Toronto, El Mocambo. On the nights, naturally, April Wine were themselves the opening act, and so it was that the Stones rolled back the years to the exhilarating club incarnation of their early years. Against all the odds, the band produced two nights of exhilarating music that they still talk about in Toronto, and in Rolling Stones legend, to this day. At the time the group were in between studio albums following the release of 1976’s “Black and Blue“, and prior to 1978’s “Some Girls“.
For 45 years, the Rolling Stones’ “Love You Live” has been one of rock’s greatest teases. About 75 percent of the double LP was recorded in arenas and stadiums during the band’s 1976 tour, and presented competent but rarely exhilarating or necessary renditions of concert warhorses and deep cuts. But tucked away (on side three) were four songs cut at Toronto’s tiny El Mocambo club in March 1977, when the Stones played a surprise set billed as “The Cockroaches.”
Playing in front of a few hundred people, and unable to hide behind props like the giant inflatable penis of the 1975 shows, the Stones had to focus on music, not spectacle. And judging from the small portion of the two El Mocambo shows heard on “Love You Live“, they stepped up to the job. With Mick Jagger unleashing a new style of growl, their crackling covers of Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Willie Dixon songs paid strutting homage to their heroes, and the recordings were so visceral that you felt as if you were in the first few rows of the 300-seat club. The distant crowd roar heard throughout most of “Love You Live” was a metaphor for how removed the Stones had become from the average rock fan, not to mention most mundane household chores. The El Mocambo tracks, pushed on by a clearly audible and enthralled small audience, presented them as a band that wanted to re-connect with those fans and stay relevant, just as punk rock was rearing its spiky head.
The two tracks are set to be released on the band’s upcoming live album, “Live At The El Mocambo“, the group’s two famous secret concerts at the 300-capacity club which is slated to be released on Friday (May 13th). The album will be available on double CD, 4 LP vinyl, and digitally. It will feature the band’s full set from the March 5th, 1977 show newly mixed by Bob Clearmountain.
There will also be three bonus tracks from the gig the day before. The Rolling Stones shared the news on Twitter, writing, “Two previously unreleased recordings from the Stones’ legendary 1977 shows at El Mocambo are out today! “Tumbling Dice” and “Hot Stuff” are out now, Adding: “The two tracks are taken from the upcoming album “Live At The El Mocambo” – released in full for the very first time on May 13th.
The setlist for the live album will include covers of Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy” and Bo Diddley’s“Crackin’ Up,” as well as Stones classics like “Let’s Spend The Night Together” and “It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll.” The band also played covers of Big Maceo’s “Worried Life Blues” and Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster.”Mick Jagger introduced Charlie Watts to the audience. “Charlie’s a jazz drummer,” he said. “He’s only doing this for the money.”
What’s most fascinating about “Live at the El Mocambo” is the way it presents the Stones not as a nascent oldies act but as a working, actively creative band. A few hits from the Sixties are here, but the focus is on their last few albums up to that point. Say what one will about their proto-gangsta, killer-on-the-run saga “Hand of Fate” or the uncomfortably hostile “Crazy Mama.” But the band plays them with deliciously desperate energy, and they overhaul “It’s Only Rock’n Roll‘s” ersatz-reggae “Luxury” into a more typical swaggering stomp. (Wryly, Jagger introduces it “a little-known number we hope to make popular,” which was wishful thinking.) Most of these songs, especially the “Black and Blue” ones, wouldn’t be played again onstage for over 20 years, which adds another level of historical interest to these tapes.
The Toronto club was a fixture in the city’s music scene since the 1940s and the Stones made it their own on some special days.
From Warren Zevon and David Bowie to Gregg Allman and Pop Smoke and Mac Miller, posthumous albums recorded during an artist’s final months have become a sadly inevitable part of the pop landscape. That’s also the case with “Things Happen That Way“, the album Dr. John was working on when he died of a heart attack in June 2019. Now, three years after his passing, the album, which includes covers as well as some of his last newly written songs, will finally be heard when Rounder Records releases it on September 23rd.
Throughout his career, Dr. John — a.k.a. Mac Rebennack rambled through American music, taking in New Orleans funk, boogie woogie, jazz, psychedelic, and pop standards. That musical journey continued right up through the end. Co-produced by Dr. John and guitarist Shane Theriot and cut in Dr. John’s native New Orleans throughout 2018, “Things Happen That Way” adds a new and final twist to his legacy with ruminative, growly voiced versions of country classics: Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Ramblin’ Man,” Jack Clement’s “Guess Things Happen That Way” (made famous by Johnny Cash), and Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away.”
Karla R. Pratt, Dr. John’s daughter and the album’s executive producer, calls those covers “a musical tip of the hat to the greats who preceded him,” like Williams, Cash, and Nelson. “Years ago he talked about how hip Hank Williams was,” says Pratt. “He loved how simple yet emotionally complex Hank’s songs are, that they have a hook with a twist. For this album inspired by listening to the Louisiana Hayride [radio show] and icons of country and western, he was excited to do songs in a way that evokes emotion that sticks with you long after one of the songs done his soulful way is played.”
Nelson also duets with Dr. John on “Gimme That Old Time Religion,” and Aaron Neville joins in on a gospel-flavoured version of the Traveling Wilburys’ “End of the Line.” The 10-track album features back-up by Theriot, former Late Night with David Letterman bassist Will Lee, keyboardists Jon Cleary and David Torkanowsky, and drummer Carlo Nuccio.
Another highlight of the album is a remake of Dr. John’s own “I Walk on Guilded Splinters” with Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real; Nelson also co-produced the track. “In a mystical kind of way, Dad was looking back at the same time he was looking forward, while being present in each moment,” says Pratt.“’I Walk on Guilded Splinters’ is a bit of time-traveling: It’s 1968, it’s now, it’s the future, all swirling through and into their collaboration.”
One final twist on the album: the presence of new songs Dr. John had written during the making of the record. “Holy Water” finds him looking back at his drug bust and jail time in the Sixties, and the rollicking “Give Myself a Good Talkin’ To” (“Find out what I’m supposed to do/Look in the mirror and I’m fed up with you/Give myself a good talkin’ to”) is a good-natured scolding. As Pratt adds, “From a different vantage point and an older stage in his life, this album is truly his most intimate, with original songs as his ‘curve balls.’”
Recorded in June 2021 by Fabian Prynn at the 4AD studio in West London. All instruments were played by Lande Hekt except for drums on Romantic and percussion on both songs, which were played by Fabian Prynn. My new 7” “Romantic” comes out today! I’m playing solo shows in London and Nottingham very soon! They’re both free entry but book a ticket anyway from here – http://dice.fm/artist/lande-hekt-5wgqw ‘Octopussy’ by the Wedding Present is from their 1991 album ‘Seamonsters’.
When the “Solar Motel” record was released in 2013, I had no band. I’d relocated to Philly in 2009 and made the record in 2011 with what was essentially a pickup band of cronies from my Brooklyn oughts days – bassist Peter Kerlin, keyboardist Shawn Edward Hansen, and drummer Mike Pride.
As the first real “rock” record I had made after years of fringe improv and drone with the likes of trumpeter Nate Wooley and my Brooklyn-based trio Peeesseye, “Solar Motel” caught some new ears. There would be gigs on the horizon, and for gigs, I’d need a band.
Thus, I got together with guitarist Paul Sukeena (then of Spacin’, more recently anchor of Angel Olsen’s live band and collaborator of Mary Lattimore) and drummer Steven Urgo, who’d recently logged time touring with a pre-fame War on Drugs, plus future Sunwatcher Kerlin on bass, who commuted down I-95 from his base in Brooklyn.
Material came together fast and our first gigs as The Solar Motel Band came during a residency at fabled Philly jazz bar Ortlieb’s, two sets every Thursday in June 2013. Tapers were present.
“Solar Live Vol 8: Ortlieb’s” presents a selection of residency highlights, largely early stage deep cuts that would surface on my No Quarter releases “Intensity Ghost” and “The Rarity of Experience” over the next few years, and features some rarely heard slide playing, guest spots from Harmonica Dan and guitarist Don Bruno, plus snippets of the canned banter I often deployed in those days in lieu of actually speaking to the audience..
released May 6th, 2022
Chris Forsyth: guitar Paul Sukeena: guitar (1, 3, 4, 5, 6) Don Bruno: guiar (2) Peter Kerlin: bass guitar Steven Urgo: drums Harmonica Dan: harp (4)
While initial ideas for “Endless Rooms” were traded online during long spells spent separated by Australia’s strict lockdowns, the album was truly born during small windows of freedom in which the band would decamp to a mud-brick house in the bush around two hours north of Melbourne built by the extended Russo family in the 1970s. There, its 12 tracks took shape, informed to such an extent by the acoustics and ambience of the rambling lakeside house that they decided to record the album there (and put the house on the album cover).
For the first time, the band self-produced the record (alongside engineer, collaborator and old friend, Matt Duffy). The result is a collection of songs permeated by the spirit of the place; punctuated by field recordings of rain, fire, birds, and wind. “It’s almost an anti-concept album,” says the band. “The Endless Rooms” of the title reflects our love of creating worlds in our songs. We treat each of them as a bare room to be built up with infinite possibilities.”
The anticipation is there in Elizabeth Stokes’ solo guitar riff under the opening lines of “I’m Not GettingExcited”: a frenetic, driving force daring a packed Auckland Town Hall to do exactly the opposite of what the track title suggests. As the opener of The Beths’ Auckland, New Zealand, 2020 expands to include the full band, the crowd screeches and bellows. It’s a collective exhalation, in one of the few countries where live music is still possible.
The album title, and film of the same name, deliberately include the date and location, lead guitarist Jonathan Pearce says. “That’s the sensational part of what we actually did.” In a mid-pandemic world, playing to a heaving, enraptured home crowd feels miraculous.
In March 2020, everything seemed on track for another huge year for The Beths. Home after an 18-month northern hemisphere tour, they had just finished recording sophomore album “Jump Rope Gazers” and were primed for more extensive touring. But within days, New Zealand’s lockdown split the band between three separate houses. All touring was cancelled.
“It was existentially bad,” Stokes says. As well as worrying about economic survival, they lost something crucial to the band’s identity: live performance. “It’s a huge part of how we see ourselves… What does it mean, if we can’t play live?” . The band found an outlet through live-streaming, returning to the do-it-yourself mentality of their early days to connect with a global audience. The album and film have their genesis in that urge to share the now-rare experience of a live show, as widely as possible.
The fuzzy-round-the-edges live-streams pointed the way aesthetically. Native birds, wonkily crafted by the band from tissue paper and wire, festoon the venue’s cavernous ceiling while house plants soften and disguise the imposing pipes of an organ. The presence of the film crew isn’t disguised: much of the camerawork is handheld; full of fast zooms and pans.
With much of the material still fresh, the band was less focused on re-invention than playing “a good, fast rock show”, Pearce says. The tempo is up on crowd favourites “Whatever” and “Future Me Hates Me” (released as a live single on its third anniversary) as both band and audience feed off the mutual energy in the room. Certain songs have taken on special resonance post-Covid. Pearce has found “Out Of Sight”, a tender rumination on long-distance relationships, hits particularly hard with live audiences. Album closer “River Run” visibly brings Stokes to tears as a mix of achievement and relief kicks in. “You can finally relax at that point … You play the last note, breathe out a sigh and look up – and you’re in a giant room full of people happy and smiling.”
“Looking back on the strangest year in living memory for the world I am so grateful to have been able to experience live music here in NZ, a rare privilege. Somehow, through that time the musicians and audiences of Aotearoa /NZ felt closer and more supportive of each other, turned out in greater numbers and celebrated a diversity of talent. The Beths have recorded and filmed one of the pivotal events of the year, their concert at the Auckland Town Hall. Its high energy pop music for the ages.” – Neil Finn (Fleetwood Mac, Crowded House, Split Enz)
released September 17th, 2021
THE BETHS: Elizabeth Stokes Jonathan Pearce Benjamin Sinclair Tristan Deck
The Districts are breaking their 18-month hibernation this fall to hit the road for a string of U.S. dates that will bring them through the midwest and south. They are bringing Girlpuppy (the stage name of Atlanta singer-songwriter Becca Harvey) along for the ride.
Hailing from Pennsylvania, The Districts have perfected their own brand of authentic, soulful rock music and have been packing out venues across the US. “Soulful rock’n’roll at its finest” – nme.com “Their indie-rock dips its toes in Americana influences to convey something that resembles a waltz through the Wild West”
The tour is in support of their latest record, “You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere“, which was released right before the pandemic. An album full of anthemic choruses, dramatic guitar flourishes, and glittering synths, it was made to be played live. Between the explosive vocals of “Velour and Velcro,” and the 80s dance-pop influence on “Cheap Regrets,” it feels like a modern-day meeting ground between disco and punk. The band’s fourth full-length release pushes them out of their scrappy indie comfort zone and sees them experiment, effortlessly crossing genres while still create something cohesive.
Girlpuppy plays the bright indie-pop that you catch yourself singing in the car. With sweet songs about crushing, you can’t help but smile as she recalls first dates and shyly admitting, “I only love you when you’re breathing/or moving/or waking up in the morning.” Growing up wanting to be Hannah Montana or Taylor Swift, her catchy hooks have the same infectious nature as her idols. For her second single, “Cheerleader,” Harvey enlisted the help of Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Better Oblivion Committee Center, Christian Lee Hutson,) who will also produce her upcoming EP.
“Cheap Regrets” from The Districts 4th album ‘You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere’ on Fat Possum Records
Guitar player John McGeoch sent a jolt through the scene with Magazine, Siouxsie Sioux and more. Johnny Marr, James Dean Bradfield and others salute an overlooked musician, In Manchester, 1976, a flat above a fish shop that reeked so badly even thieves wouldn’t approach it, John McGeoch obsessively hammered away at his guitar. When the electricity meter ran out he would play for hours unamplified in complete darkness.
McGeoch was a Scottish fine art student and when his flatmate Malcolm Garrett (who would design artwork for Buzzcocks, Duran Duran and Simple Minds) told Howard Devoto, who’d recently quit punk pioneers Buzzcocks, that McGeoch could play all the parts of Television’s Marquee Moon, Devoto was impressed. “That made me think he would be somebody worth knowing,” he recalls in “The Light Pours Out of Me“, a new biography on McGeoch by Rory Sullivan-Burke.
The pair connected and this materialised into Magazine and their revelatory debut single “Shot By BothSides”. Despite the riff being a hand-me-down from Buzzcocks, McGeoch’s playing on it – as urgent and taut as it was fluid and melodic – quickly grabbed people. Siouxsie Sioux recalled: “everyone was saying: ‘who is playing guitar in Magazine?’”
It captivated a teenage Johnny Marr. “Shot By Both Sides” was so arresting,” he tells me. “The sound and attitude was very modern – it sounded like it had an agenda.” The track was a line in the sand for Marr. “Punk wasn’t the letter A in a new alphabet, it was Z in the old lexicon and then after was a clean slate.”“ He took that artistic big bang [punk] into something so much more than just barre chord thrash,” he says. “He wasn’t pretending to be in some crap spitting punk band. He wasn’t joining in the dumbing down brigade. His intention was to be modern and you hear that in the very deliberate choice of using the flanger on everything.”
The flanger normally a foot pedal, used to bend the notes of a guitar was customised by McGeoch. He adapted it to be attached to a mic stand and controlled by hand, allowing greater control and resulting in a ringing, icy sound that had both cinematic scope and a fierce crunch. “John’s playing was a deliberate modernism,” says Marr. “The flanger modulates the signal so that it wobbles, and the effect is psychedelic. Not ‘oh so trippy 60s man’ or Hendrix, but psychedelic like you’ve taken bad acid or been psychotic after three days of speed.”
Across Magazine’s three albums “Real Life”, “Secondhand Daylight” and “The Correct Use of Soap” McGeoch’s playing was an electric presence. “I had the fortune to watch him execute his talent in the most incredibly dexterous way,” recalls Magazine’s Barry Adamson. “He seemed to be able to take on anything that came to his mind. McGeoch was a versatile player, gliding between sparkling arpeggios, ripping riffs, or simply adding subtle colour, balancing deftness and potency. “John’s playing helped shape the new wave musical landscape by finding a new place for guitar,” says James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers. “Its place became less vainglorious, less heroic perhaps, but still strident, articulate and aggressive when it needed to be.”
To be released April 28th. The first ever biography about John McGeoch. Published by Omnibus Press. Available in hardback (£20) and a limited, hand-numbered slipcase edition of 500 (£45) which includes: A hardback copy signed by contributors Johnny Marr, Paul Morley, Rory Sullivan-Burke, EmilyMcGeoch, Dave Formula and Malcolm Garrett.
“The Correct Use of Soap” was deemed a masterpiece by many, including Marr. It obsessed a 10-year-old Jonny Greenwood who played it on repeat and took notes, but McGeoch was frustrated by the band’s lack of commercial success. McGeoch, Adamson and Magazine keyboard player Dave Formula were poached to play in Visage, who quickly had huge success, providing McGeoch with financial stability as well as a taste for fine wine.
But there was another band who wanted him: Siouxsie and the Banshees. They had just lost their guitarist and drummer and while still with Magazine he was invited to play on “Happy House”, immediately making an impact with a shimmering guitar line that snakes through the song. He was eventually convinced to make the switch permanent in 1980. “The Banshees were his mistress and eventually we got him to leave his wife,” Steven Severin of the band says. “It was like getting George Best on guitar,” says Marr.
“There was a huge gaping hole [in Magazine] as soon as he left,” says Adamson. “It changed the course of the band forever and helped it to its place of ultimate derailment.” Magazine were over a year later.
The albums “Kaleidoscope”, “Juju” and “A Kiss in the Dreamhouse” marked a hugely fertile period for the Banshees with McGeoch-powered tracks such as “Spellbound” invoking “pure invention, grace and bloodlust ballet” according to Bradfield. Marr adds: “The music he made with the Banshees … the word imperial was made for that music.”
Despite the creative peaks, McGeoch’s thirst for booze which was already plentiful was increasing, and plus cocaine was thrown into the mix. Things imploded in 1982 in Madrid when McGeoch was in such bad shape he was playing the wrong songs on stage. “It became obvious that he didn’t know where he was,” Banshees drummer Budgie later said. “I thought he’d just gone too far that night, but much later he admitted that he’d been given a Valium to calm his nerves, cos he was shaking either from withdrawal or too much drinking. If we’d been noticing this we might have said the show can’t go on.
McGeoch ended up in addiction clinic the Priory but was fired by the band after they visited him and instead of being in hospital he’d gone to the pub with the day release patients. “It sounds very callous,” Sioux has said of the move. “I wish it hadn’t happened. But alcoholism is not something that gets fixed overnight.” Severin reflects on the decision: “40 years ago the term rehab was not used yet; there were no support systems available, especially in the music industry. For all we knew John was effectively committed to an asylum until further notice.”
McGeoch then joined the Armoury Show with ex-Magazine drummer John Doyle and ex-Skids members Richard Jobson and Russell Webb. However, yet another iconic post-punk band wanted him: Public Image Ltd. He lasted six years but it wasn’t an auspicious start. Early on his first tour in Austria a rowdy crowd, still acting out the cartoon version of punk, were spitting and throwing things. McGeoch confronted them and in return got a 1.5 litre wine bottle – stolen from PiL’s dressing room – launched into his face. This resulted in laser surgery and 44 stitches; bandmates think he lost about a pint of blood before he could even get off stage.
It wasn’t the first time McGeoch had intervened in the audience’s idiotic parroting of punk’s heyday, once climbing into the crowd at a Banshees show to rip off a Nazi armband. The wine bottle incident rocked him, though, and people noticed a distinct change in him.
PiL came to an end when Lydon accepted a solo deal. McGeoch was a martial arts expert and when he was told by the band’s manager there was no new album deal and PiL was effectively over, he later told a friend that he contemplated taking him out to the pub car park and killing him. Instead, he walked away.
He tried to get a band off the ground with Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory but it never happened and he retreated from music, focused on family life and trained as a nurse. He returned to music later on, writing theme tunes for Channel 5, but at just 48 he died of Sudep (sudden unexpected death in epilepsy). Alcohol had remained a major problem but he was sober in the final months of his life.
A 7″ vinyl 45rpm record featuring a previously unreleased live recording of ‘The Light Pours Out Of Me’ by Magazine (from The Factory, Manchester) b/w ‘The Anti-Hero’ by Dave Formula featuring John on guitar and voices. Plus one copy includes a ‘golden ticket’, which will win the lucky recipient a John McGeoch’s signature SG1000 guitar – worth over £800 – courtesy of Eastwood Guitars.
Australian band Body Type’s debut album “Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising”, out May 20th, is a collection of quietly furious songs that stick two fingers up at a society set up to see them fail. “The Charm” is their answer to a sexist music snob, the kind of missive that should leave the rest of the world in no doubt as to their abilities. After two hugely promising EPs, Body Type‘s debut studio album turns up the scuzz and urgency with glorious results and plenty of “yeah” moments.
Clearer in its convictions – namely, the imperative to stand firm in one’s power despite those that would see you relinquish it – ‘Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising’ is an unflinching and incendiary record, anchored by the band’s extremely sharp musical chemistry.
Of all 2022’s debut albums, Body Type’s had the most scenic route. A half-decade of gigging and EPs had already established the band as a compelling force of Sydney indie music, meaning that ‘Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising’ wasn’t the proving ground most debuts are.
Taken from upcoming album ‘Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising’ – out May 20th via Poison City Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 