Unreleased Set From Jimmy Witherspoon And Robben Ford To Be Out

August 8, 2025

Back in the ’70s, it wasn’t customary for white instrumentalists to back black singers, yet that was exactly the young Robben Ford did when he went on tour with Jimmy Witherspoon before properly beginning his fusion career. The two even recorded together, the former being one of the guitarists on the latter’s “Spoonful” in 1975, but while they co-starred on 1977’s “Live” which remained the sole document of their concerts for decades, there are earlier stage reports from Jimmy and Robben. And the forthcoming album “Jump Blues Live 1972” is one of those.

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THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT’s “I Robot” Boxed Into Another Money-Grab Exercise

August 6, 2025

There are many ways to please fans-turned-aficionados who like to drill into their favorite records to savor every minute detail of it: that’s what super deluxe editions for, with demos, work-in-progress runs, outtakes and the like, plus printed materials to provide context for it all. Only THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT reissues seem to go wrong about it, with the exception of “The Turn Of A Friendly Card” box set which was comprised of CDs and Blu-ray, “Pyramid” and the forthcoming, to be out on October 17th, “I Robot” bundle mix-format content, exacerbating the problem by making the included vinyl copies of the albums a double-LP designed to be played at 45 rpm. A money-grabbing exercise, given how great the originals always sounded, yet the new release is still remarkable in the compilers’ exhaustive approach.

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50th Anniversary Of “Stax Revue” Celebrated With Expanded Set

August 6, 2025

It was amidst the great social unrest that representatives of Stax Records‘ roster arrived in Los Angeles in August 1965, but if was high time for the Memphis label to showcase their artists in the wake of signing a distribution deal with Atlantic. Booker T. Jones, Rufus Thomas and their colleagues played to the packed “5-4 Ballroom” for two nights in a row, yet although those performances got recorded, only a portion of what went down there saw the light of day in 1991. Now, however, more material is ready to hit the shelves on CD and vinyl and also be available for download.

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Fly Free, Terry Reid

August 5, 2025

It just goes to show how little people know about Terry Reid, who passed away yesterday at the age of 75, and how little they were aware of his work, that almost everything written about this great musician boils down to the legend of him turning down invitations to join first LED ZEPPELIN and then DEEP PURPLE. To begin fathoming all the depth of the artist’s talent in earnest, though, one has to watch his appearance at 1971’s Glastonbury Fayre, where Reid delivered a stellar, stunning performance and forged a lifelong creative collaboration with David Lindley, which would pave the way for Terry’s American career, one strewn with failures not of his doing, but still remarkable.

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THE DAMNED Keyboard Player Delivers An Album Of Their Songs

August 4, 2025

If any song’s melodic appeal can be tested by applying its tune to a simple piano, most of the pieces from THE DAMNED catalogue prove to be more than arresting when done that way. Usually these kinds of interpretations come from external sources which have nothing to do with the original artist, but in the case of cuts which Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Rat Scabies and their friends made part of collective consciousness ivories-based readings emerged recently from within the band’s ranks. On September 5th, Monty Oxymoron, who has been playing keyboards with the British punk legends for nigh on three decades and knows their repertoire inside and out, issues a collection of the group’s classics – and more.

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