Five Essential Black Friday Releases
As is readily apparent, we are vinyl enthusiasts around these parts. As such, we’re excited about the annual Record Store Day 2.0, held as part of the retail behemoth Black Friday. Fighting off bloodthirsty mothers in search of 2012’s hot holiday toy may serve as an excellent exercise in shedding Turkey-day calories, but it proves dangerous and ill-advised. Instead, we recommend a stroll to the nearest record store for a friendlier Black Friday shopping experience. The holiday is marked by a slew of special, limited-edition releases that are sure to brighten any bookcase. Below, we’ve highlighted five can’t miss Black Friday exclusives.
Nirvana – Incesticide: 20th Anniversary Edition
Nirvana’s 1992 compilation release of demos, cover songs and radio performances has received a full remastering in honor of the album’s 20th anniversary. Incesticide is available on 180 gram vinyl at 45 RPM for the first time ever. The release features the Kurt Cobain’s artwork with lyric sheet art housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve. Gold foiled, stamped and individually numbered. Watch a video for the album’s lone single, “Sliver” below.
Miles Davis – Miles Ahead
Miles Davis’s 1957 release Miles Ahead came on the back of his groundbreaking Birth of the Cool sessions, and represented the artist’s first foray into orchestral jazz in collaboration with legendary jazz pianist, arranger and composer Gil Evans. The duo would go on to record a string of veritable masterpieces for Columbia in the form of Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain and Quiet Nights. Listen to where the relationship drew its first breaths on 180 gram vinyl recorded in MONO. Both Porgy & Bess and Sketches of Spain are also receiving Black Friday reissue treatment.
The Velvet Underground & Nico – Scepter Studios Acetate
These rare 1966 recordings feature early, alternate versions of what would later comprise the legendary debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico. The sessions were recorded at Scepter Studios, housed within the warehouse space that would later play home to Studio 54. The album is available on limited edition, 180 gram vinyl, gold foil stamped and individually numbered.
Joe Strummer & The Mescalaros – Live at Action Town Hall
These recordings come from a 2002 live performance by the legendary Clash frontman and his backing band The Mescalaros. The concert – held as a benefit for striking firefighters – is notorious among Clash aficionados, as it featured Strummer on stage with former bandmate Mick Jones for the first time in nearly 20 years. By this time, Strummer’s musical tastes had ventured far from the Englishman’s punk rock roots, influenced heavily by the Afrobeat rhythms, jam bands and electronic music that had risen to prominence around the turn of the century.
Big Brother & The Holding Company – Cheap Thrills
Cheap Thrills was the sophomore LP from Bay Area psych-blues outfit Big Brother & The Holding Company and the band’s last with Janis Joplin as lead singer. In 1968, the album rose to number one on the Billboard pop charts, where it sat for eight weeks. The track listing features several of the songs that would define Joplin’s career, including “Ball and Chain”and “Piece of My Heart.” The album’s cover art was illustrated by legendary underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. Listen on 180 gram vinyl, recorded in MONO.
Written by Rob Peoni
Vintage Track: Faye Adams “The Hammer”
New Jersey native Faye Adams had a string of R&B hits in the early-to-mid 1950s. Born in 1923 as Fay Tuell, she began her career at age five alongside her two older siblings as the Tuell Sisters gospel group, regularly appearing on Newark radio broadcasts. She became a staple of the NYC nightclub circuit after marrying Tommy Scruggs in 1942. However, it wasn’t until legendary R&B songstress Ruth Brown spotted Fay during a performance in Atlanta, nearly a decade later, that the singer earned an audition and was subsequently signed to Herald Records.
Under her new stage name Faye Adams, the singer quickly found success fronting the band of labelmate Joe Morris. In 1953, the group released a pair of singles that reached number one on the U.S. R&B charts: “Shake A Hand” and “I’ll Be True.” The former would be Adams’s biggest hit, sitting atop the charts for eight weeks. She continued to have moderate success both as a solo performer and with Morris’ band over the next couple of years. By January of 1955, Adams had sold more than 2 million records for Herald.
By the end of the decade, the public’s demand had shifted from traditional R&B to the rock n’ roll stylings of Elvis and his African American predecessors. As a result, Adams gave up the game and headed back to New Jersey to focus on family, rediscovering her gospel roots. Adams earned a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation in 1998 for her contribution to the genre.
Her single “The Hammer” has been included in a terrific new compilation called Jukebox Mambo. The compilation is available in a stunning book featuring six, 10″ vinyls on Jazzman Records. Jukebox Mambo is available on CD and digital download for the non-vinyl enthusiast. “The Hammer” was originally released in 1956 as the b-side to “Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere.” The track is bookended by Adams’s haunting howls, with the band working itself up to a confident saunter in between. Listen to the track and check out the packaging for Jukebox Mambo below.
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Written by Rob Peoni
Album Review: Allah-Las ‘Self-Titled’
“We live in a post-authentic world. And today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It’s all just what you’re bringing when the lights go down. It’s your teachers, your influences, your personal history. And at the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that still matters.”
-Bruce Springsteen
Critics have written an understandable narrative around Allah-Las’ debut, self-titled LP that centers around an argument that the band’s sound is of an earlier era. Each review comes with a requisite laundry list of comparisons that chronicle the godfathers of late 1960s garage rock. Fellow Indianapolis writer Justin Wesley summed this up as well as anyone in his excellent review for The Silver Tongue, saying: “The songs get more lived-in with every obsessive listen; soon enough, you’re assuming a rewritten history where Allah-Las had a string of late ‘60s #1s, and you know their iconic history from Little Steven’s Underground Garage, vintage super 8 films, tell-all bestsellers and their late-career resurgence as touring relics.”
This is true. There are certainly traces of The Zombies, The Kinks, The Byrds and a litany of more obscure references in the analog production found on Allah-Las. My dispute has nothing to do with the validity of these comparisons, but rather the assumption that garage rock is something of an earlier time. For 50 years, the genre has been a mainstay in popular music, albeit with relative swells in relevance. At this point, it’s an essential element in the compound that forms our understanding of American culture. As such, bands like Allah-Las serve less as revivalists, and more as participants in an ongoing conversation.
By the same logic, we don’t consider pulling over for a roadside cheeseburger a nostalgic return to 1950s car culture. Cheeseburgers are no more of that decade than garage rock is of the one following. They’re timeless – part of our DNA. It just so happens that Allah-Las is no ordinary debut, characterized by a romantic sloppiness and an excess of fuzz. It’s informed, polished, and deserving of consideration with artists whose work defined the genre, which makes the comparisons all the more tempting.
The songwriting is as timeless as the tube amps that carry it to fruition. On the murder ballad “Busman’s Holiday,” lead singer Miles Michaud crafts a tale of a soldier’s return home to discover his woman in the arms of another man. The storyline is as readily applicable to 1945 or 1975 as 2012. Women are everywhere on this record. “Catalina” contains all of the crystallized regret of The Stones’ 1971 classic “Dead Flowers.” Follow-up “Vis-A-Vis” is a meditation on the sweet, innocence of young love and the pangs of longing that an old photo can inspire. Even the Spanish-tinged instrumental “Ela Navega” calls to mind a tipsy tango in the courtyard at dusk.
Garage rock may not be as cerebral as jazz or as old-timey as the railroad songs that inspired Dylan, but for those of us under the age of 60, this sound is as much a part of our heritage as anything created in the public houses of New Orleans or hills of Appalachia. Grab Allah-Las’ self-titled debut on CD or vinyl from your local record store. Download via iTunes.
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Written by Rob Peoni
Thought on Tracks 