Beatles freaks love milestones, and when it comes to the big one—what moment portended the group’s demise?—there’s no shortage of possibilities. Was it the phone call Paul received chez the Maharishi informing him that the Beatles’ business guru had died of a carbitral overdose? The half-baked Magical Mystery Tour project, Paul’s money-hemorrhaging power-grab that Bob Spitz says “provided the first signs of their fallibility”? John’s first meeting with Yoko Ono in 1966 (after which, John told Jan Wenner, “I decided to leave the group”)? Any of the handful of times a Beatle traipsed out of the Let It Be sessions, swearing off the group forever, only to return?

…or, as numerous rock critics as well as the PR wing of Shout! Factory would have us believe, was it the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival in September, 1969?

Read More “Reviewed: John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band Live in Toronto ‘69” »

Who knew that the best way to enshrine Crosby, Stills & Nash would be to remove the harmonies?

Out today, CSN Demos covers some of the group’s more memorable early takes between 1968 and 1971, including rough cuts of “Almost Cut My Hair,” “You Don’t Have to Cry,” “Déjà Vu,” and “Chicago.”

As outtake/demo discs go, the appeal of CSN Demos is closer to that of the Beatles‘ Anthologies than of, say, the Exile on Main Street Outtakes. (The former offered substantial insight into the songs’ geneses, whereas the latter was a mash of B-takes and unmastered irrelevancies.) All of which is to say that the new disc accomplishes something of which only the best vaultstuffs are capable: re-illuminating the original takes while standing as a damn decent record in its own right.

Read More “Thoughts on CSN Demos:
Record review, streaming, and tour dates” »

Say what you will about Ben Harper; the guy creates a sense of community wherever he goes. Sure, he’s a bit self-serious, and all those dramatic pauses strain credibility, but it’s hard to begrudge the man his Bob Marley complex when people treat him with such reverence. The crowd at the 9:30 Club last week had heard only a handful of these songs before—a Zeppelin cover, a Queen cover, and “Another Lonely Day”; the rest were new and, for the most part, unleaked—but they went nuts (and sang along) as though he’d plied them with a greatest hits medley.

Most of the concert was a live performance of White Lies for Dark Times (released the day after the concert)—material that stands up much better in concert than on wax, thanks to sheer energy of drummer Jordan Richardson, who uses sticks only part of the time, relying otherwise on maracas or hard mallets for a edgy backbeat best exemplified on the record’s first single. Choice cuts like “Number With No Name” got nice, if overlong dueling guitar workouts, and Harper’s lavish slidework made even the duds sound worthwhile. (Including, um, the disco track.) General shredding, melting of faces, the works. It was a great show.

It was also the birthday of Jesse Ingalls, R7’s bassist and a D.C. native. Before the show, he took a few questions…some which he was unable to answer until yesterday. Full Q&A below the jump.

Read More “Ben Harper & Relentless7: Interview with Bassist Jesse Ingalls” »

Sharon Jones‘ first record, Dap-Dippin’ With Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, was a driving soul LP penned almost entirely by her ace bassist, Bosco Mann; metronomically speaking, it clocked in between 100 and 140 beats per minute. Her sophomore effort, Naturally, was a more mannered affair, with Lee Fields doing his best Otis Redding impression (on the soap opera/soul-recitative “Stranded in Your Love”) and the frontwoman expanding her repertoire into down-tempo balladry.

You won’t need a metronome to guess that it was the James Brown-type grooves off the first record that kept the 9:30 Club audience (at $30 a pop) shaking and sweating past midnight on Saturday. Jones’ show is structured along the lines of a gospel revue, a single extended exhortation that includes a lot of flop-sweat and audience participation. Anchored on the low end by a belch-y bari sax and on the high end by squealing trumpet and a two-guitar attack, Jones lays down her brash soprano with the confident intimacy of an old lover who sees right through you (cf. “What Have You Done for Me Lately?”). She sees right through herself too—ribbing things like her age (53) and her height (unspecified, though she notes that her legs are about half as long as Tina Turner’s). That low center of gravity matches a barreling live presence, one not easily effaced by the occasional Wedding-band funk of her otherwise groovy associates.

Read More “Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: Soul-Shakin’ at the 9:30 Club” »

It was hard to cop a buzz from most of the northeast collegiate bands in the early oughts; the music was by and large unexceptional, and most of the musicians spent as much time in front of an easel—or wrapped around a bong—as they did practicing. But then there were the rumors coming out of Harvard: the college’s most convincing band had a retro, jammy thing going on; they performed cheeky pop songs while wearing Bermuda tuxedos; their lead guitarist had a Trey-worthy tone but played with his back to the audience, Miles Davis-style, too aloof or too shy to give a proper rock ‘n’ roll performance.

A year later, I saw Chester French play a stuffed, sweaty Harvard venue known as the Fishbowl, and the guitarist had transformed. He gamboled about the stage, wagging his tongue at the audience and coining a curious update of the Chuck Berry duck-walk. Shredded, too. Their songs were generally OK, their stage presence above average, their ODB cover insolently upper-crust and a total slam-dunk.

The bow-tie, white-boy hooks were enough to catch the attention of rhythmic prepster Kanye West, who called during the spring of their senior year to offer them a record deal. Smart-alecks that they were, they turned him down, opting to become the first white guys ever produced by Pharrell Williams. Two years in L.A. and one trendily short-lived debutante marriage ensued (that shy freshman guitarist? He grew up fast!). And now we have Love the Future, the first full-length from the two remaining members of the undergrad lineup.

Read More “Chester French’s Love the Future: Apathetic Pop With a Brit-Invasion Complex” »

An occupational hazard in music criticism is the inevitable blurbology: over-hyphenated elevator pitches in favor of a new run of B-sides that “totally could have been A-sides” from a band seemingly defined by the number of genres it inhabits.

This was also the case in college. For example: someone mentions a group called, say, Dr. Pain and the Smooch of Death. “They’re pretty cool,” this person shrugs. (The shrug is always a warning sign.)

Read More “Das Mötørbike: How an imaginary band became a merciless send-up of genre-flogging” »

I recently came under fire for being too cruel to the new Gomez record. Specifically, I came under fire from City Lights editor Mike Riggs, who called me a “harsh motherfucker” and who really, really enjoys the song “Little Pieces,” which (he tells me) ran as intro/outro music to yet another episode of Grey’s Anatomy two weeks ago.

While I can’t explicitly tool on Riggs for watching Grey’s Anatomy, I can at least clarify my review. What made past albums from the Southport, U.K.-based indie-rollers special was the very personal glee that came through in even their higher-fi tunes. It always sounded as though they were gathered in some Big Pink-like hideaway, strumming mismatched patterns on a beat-up acoustic, allowing their dealer to sit in on bongos, &c. Their more produced material maintained that glee, got occasionally ethereal in a way that sideswiped Coldplay, and, for all its jangling and twangling, never lapsed into vapid Americana. Take a track from the first record—”Get Myself Arrested,” a little ditty about rock stardom and fast cardom:

Read More “In Defense of Disappointment:
Gomez’s A New Tide isn’t all bad” »

“Trying to show a link between rock stars and drugs is like trying to make a link between mouths and tooth decay,” writes R.U. Sirius—the nom de fume of 10 Zen Monkeys‘ Ken Goffman. This is but one of the many mangy comparisons that frontload Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs*, and when you skim the book’s list-heavy 200+ pages, tooth decay starts to sound like an attractive alternative. OK, maybe that’s not entirely fair—there’s some funny writing amid the run-on analogies, and a few of the anecdotes are worth their weight in angel dust. Hell, it’d probably make a nice coffee table book, if you’re David Crosby.

To save you the buyer’s remorse, here are our favorite factoids, trivia, apocrypha, or whatever:

Read More “Ted Nugent is a Pussy: The CliffsNotes to Everybody Must Get Stoned” »

Dylan/Zimmy/Judas wasted no time after last October’s release of the sprawling retrospective, Tell Tale Signs: on April 28, Columbia will release his new studio album, Together Through Life, Billboard reports.

If label hype is any indicator—which, in this case, it sort of probably is—the record’s packed full of nostalgic, tumbleweed-y vignettes, Chi-town blues, and churning boogie. Plus: banjo, mando, and…accordion! Promo materials go on to explain that on his new record, Dylan’s aiming for a retro-minded fusion of Chess & Sun sounds. Which—correct me if I’m wrong—is what he’s been doing since about 1964.

Read More “New Dylan to Drop April 28; Weird Album Art Already Iconic” »

LOCAL RECORD BLOG MAKES GOOD!

As previously noted, the good people behind Record Store Day 2009 have tapped The Vinyl District to be their flagship blog for this year’s festivities. It’s a commendable move, and seems to have sparked a wave of gratitude over at TVD:

…[It is] an honor for this blog which attempts in a small way to champion the efforts of the brick and mortar record stores and of the medium in general that is: vinyl—to have been designated the blog of record for Record Store Day, 2009.

But it is you, dear reader, to whom we owe a significant debt of gratitude for turning this wee blog, first conceived in pajamas one morning into something the cup of coffee that day never imagined–the blog of record for records. Or something along those lines.

As a thank-you to said “dear reader[s],” TVD is starting eleven (11!!) weeks of vinyl giveaways leading up to the big day on April 18. Check out week one’s Swedish Invasion offerings.