Mickey Thomas Finally Issues A Yuletide Album

October 13, 2024

For the most part, Christmas albums are boring – how many times can one endure listening to the same old songs, after all – yet when such a record comes from Mickey Thomas, it’s a good thing simply because the last solo offering from STARSHIP singer appeared as far back as 2011. Of course, “Marauder” was followed by a digital-only single “A Classic Christmas” less than a year ago, but now it’s been expanded to a full-length record: also titled “A Classic Christmas” and scheduled for release on CD on November 15th.

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SLAPP HAPPY’s Anthony Moore Continues To Dig Into Archives

October 11, 2024

While Anthony Moore‘s work with SLAPP HAPPY, a band he cofounded in 1972, and his contributions to HENRY COW a few years later are highly valued by the Canterbury scene connoisseurs, and the lyrics he wrote for a few latter-day PINK FLOYD songs as well as his co-penning the “Broken China” album with Rick Wright are well-known, the British experimentalist’s solo oeuvre is less celebrated. There have been quite a few records he issued between 1971’s “Pieces From The Cloudland Ballroom” and “Mare’s Tail” which saw the light of day earlier this year, and what doesn’t get proper attention is his archival series, now on its third volume.

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T Bone Burnett And Elvis Costello Team Up For Comedy Play

October 10, 2024

At first glance, Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett don’t have a lot in common, but in fact, the two share the uncanny ability of creating perfect interfaces which allow them to work with other artists: the former with Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach, the latter with Leo Kottke and Robert Plant, to name but two partners per each half of this pair. Of course, Burnett and Costello worked together on 1986’s “King Of America” that goes deluxe on November 1st, and a couple more albums, yet what the old friends – whose previous equal billing was only in production credits – are coming up with now seems totally unexpected.

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Gavin Sutherland Appraises The State Of The World

October 9, 2024

It would be unfair to fathom an artist’s talent by a single song they wrote, yet it’s a good a method as any if a lot of listeners who love the song aren’t too familiar with its writer’s name. This might be the case with Gavin Sutherland, as many people don’t know, or forgot, THE SUTHERLAND BROTHERS, despite “Arms Of Mary” and a few more of their numbers being hits, but everybody remembers Rod Stewart’s take on “Sailing” which still is Gavin’s most famous piece. Sutherland never stopped working, though, and while his 1982 solo debut “Beat Of My Heart” was followed by a long pause which ended with the appearance of “Diamonds And Gold” in 2000, the veteran’s been speeding up his release schedule ever since, and less than a week ago the Scottish musician issued, after several EPs, a full-length album.

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John Mayall’s Concert With Trout And Montoya To Be Out

October 8, 2024

Having extraordinary players play with him always was John Mayall‘s modus operandi, and his BLUESBREAKERS never lacked for star instrumentalists, yet when the band took to the stage in Frankfurt in April 1987, with Coco Montoya and Walter Trout trading licks, a different kind of dynamics was in play. The “The Power Of The Blues” album that first captured the line-up live immediately following that tour seemed like a great concert document – only it omitted a few cuts which will be out on a separate disc – titled, unassumingly, “The Power Of The Blues, Part II” – on November 8th.

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