The Best of Muddy Waters
Detroit Rising: A Cosmic Jazz Funk Adventure
The life, music and costumes of Stevie Nicks, rock’s still-reigning witchy queen
Both Sides of the Sky , a new album from the Jimi Hendrix vaults
1960s British folk quintet, Pentangle, get a new boxed set
Sonny Rollins Goes Way Out West
Author Roger Steffens on So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley
Rock Gods: Fifty Years of Rock Photography: By Robert M. Knight
The Cable Guy
Chet Baker in Germany, 1979
Making the Grado
The Gospel of Bob Dylan
Best of 2017
Thank You Tom
Leonard Cohen: One Year After
Blues
Harvey Kubernik talks to Marshall Chess, Robbie Robertson, Andrew Loog Oldham and Bill Wyman about the legacy of Muddy Waters and the 60th anniversary of his debut album, The Best of Muddy Waters By Harvey Kubernik Few pieces of art have been as influential as Muddy Waters’ seminal debut album The Best of Muddy Waters, a humble piece […]
Funk
By RCN Staff Down Jazz Records has forwarded the funk. Detroit Rising: A Cosmic Jazz Funk Adventure, on sea-green vinyl, is the latest tentacle of the George Clinton P-Funk octopus of mammoth proportions. While the man himself continues to tour and excite new generations, his family of musicians — who have been the bulwark of […]
Books
Gold Dust Woman is a cradle-to-golden years slog through the singer’s life Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks By Stephen Davis St Martin’s Press By Suzanne Rush Being a Stevie Nicks fan has always required that one reconcile the conflict between thinking that her Sisters of the Moon act was somehow simultaneously empowering […]
New Releases
Many of these surviving studio recordings find Hendrix working with varying lineups of musicians — including surprises like Stephen Stills and Joni Mitchell By Richie Unterberger For a guy who only put out three true, studio albums during his lifetime, the Jimi Hendrix discography has become massive. Almost 50 years after his death, compilations of […]
Folk
Cherry Red release includes all six LPs and 45 bonus tracks By Richie Unterberger Along with Fairport Convention, Pentangle were the top British folk-rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. True, folk-rock was a label Pentangle were uncomfortable with, and there wasn’t nearly as much rock as folk in their sound. There was […]
Bebop
By Armand Lewis In the 1860s, New York Trib-une editor Horace Greeley saw the opening and settlement of the American West as an unprecedented opportunity and famously wrote in an editorial “Go West, young man.” One hundred years later, people were still heeding that call. And in early 1957, up- and- coming New York saxophonist […]
Books
The definitive oral history of one of the 20th century’s most important artists “If Bob Marley is Jesus in these times, Roger Steffens is Peter.” —Carlos Santana By Harvey Kubernik Ask reggae fans if they would buy a ticket to a panel discussion on Bob Marley by the key people in his life and career […]
Books
By Harvey Kubernik Insight Editions is pleased to announce the recent publication of Rock Gods: Fifty Years of Rock Photography. This new, updated and revised edition displays the rich visual universe of Robert M. Knight’s work, replete with visions of guitar gods, monumental performances, and speaker-shaking solos that chronicle the greatest moments in the evolution […]
Audio
Meet Audio Envy’s Captain Payne By David Thomson Move over Jim Carrey, there’s a new audio cable guy out there who will happily hook you up at a value so affordable that it would be sacrilegious to your music, never mind downright disrespectful to your components, if you didn’t check him out… and you can, […]
Bebop
By Armand Lewis There have been few lives as tortured, yet so prolific as Chet Baker’s. The lyrical trumpeter with the choirboy voice would record literally hundreds of albums while spending much of his life dealing with the horrors of addiction and other personal problems of his own making. Born in Oklahoma in 1929, this […]
AUDIO HONORS
Meet John Grado of Grado Labs who is being honored at this year’s LA&OC Audio Society Annual Gala with the Founder’s Award By David Thomson Does being born into the oldest family-run, audio manufacturing business in the world give one the innate drive to continue in its tradition of excellence? Is it in the DNA? […]
Cult Stars
New: Bob Dylan -Trouble No More -The Bootleg Series Vol. 13/1979-1981 and Dylan’s John Wesley Harding Celebrates 50 Year Anniversary By Harvey Kubernik Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, has just issued Bob Dylan-Trouble No More-The Bootleg Series Vol. 13/1979-1981 this month. The deluxe nine-disc (8CD/1DVD) box set is […]
Kaplan's Korner
KAPLAN’S KORNER Best Soundtrack LP The Man In The High Castle I was a fan of Man In The High Castle author Philip K Dick from an early, impressionable age, I am a fan of the Amazon series as well which takes place in 1963. The soundtrack is the alternative versions of American Pop hits […]
In Rememberance
Remembering beloved rocker Tom Petty who died in October at age 66 By Harvey Kubernik I was very sad to hear of the physical passing of Tom Petty who wrote the introduction to my 2014 book Turn Up The Radio, Pop, Rock, and Roll in Los Angeles 1956-1972. When I was West Coast Director of A&R at MCA […]
Cult Stars
By Harvey Kubernik Canadian songwriter and poet/novelist Leonard Cohen waived a physical goodbye at age 82 on November 7, 2016, just after the release of his 14th album, the uncompromising and urgent You Want It Darker. November 7th will be the one year yahrzeit of his death. December 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the […]
