Covers - Blake Babies - Temptation Eyes (The Grass Roots) / Buddy Miles - You Really Got Me (The Kinks) / Cold Blood with Lydia Pense - You Got Me Hummin' (Sam & Dave) / Dolly Parton & Nickel Creek - Shine (Collective Soul) / Electric Würms - Heart of the Sunrise (Yes) / Little Quirks - Jolene (Dolly Parton) / Marilyn Manson - Sweet Dreams (Eurythmics) / PJ Harvey - Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan) / Two Minutes To Late Night - Candy's Room (Bruce Springsteen)

 Blake Babies - Temptation Eyes (The Grass Roots)

 

 Buddy Miles - You Really Got Me (The Kinks)

 

 Cold Blood with Lydia Pense - You Got Me Hummin' (Sam & Dave)

 

 Dolly Parton & Nickel Creek - Shine (Collective Soul)

 

 Electric Würms - Heart of the Sunrise (Yes)

 

 Little Quirks - Jolene (Dolly Parton)

 

 Marilyn Manson - Sweet Dreams (Eurythmics)

 

 PJ Harvey - Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)

 

 Two Minutes To Late Night - Candy's Room (Bruce Springsteen)

 

Blake Babies were an American college rock band formed in 1986 in Boston, Massachusetts. The three primary members were Freda Love, Juliana Hatfield and John Strohm. They recorded three albums before splitting up in 1991. They reformed to record a new album in 1999, and again in 2016.
The band formed in 1986, while Hatfield was studying at Berklee College of Music. The name "Blake Babies" was provided by the poet Allen Ginsberg; following a reading at Harvard University, the group (which had just begun to play together) raised their hands and asked him to name their band. Their first release was the Nicely, Nicely album, released on their own Chewbud label in 1987.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Babies

 

Best known as the drummer in Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, Buddy Miles also had a lengthy solo career that drew from rock, blues, soul, and funk in varying combinations. Born George Miles in Omaha, Nebraska, on September 5, 1947, he started playing the drums at age nine, and joined his father's jazz band the Bebops at a mere 12 years old. As a teenager, he went on to play with several jazz and R&B outfits, most prominently backing vocal groups like Ruby & the Romantics, the Ink Spots, and the Delfonics. In 1966, he joined Wilson Pickett's touring revue, where he was spotted by blues-rock guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Bloomfield had left the Paul Butterfield Blues Band earlier in 1967 and was putting together a new group, the Electric Flag, which was slated to be an ambitious fusion of rock, soul, blues, psychedelia, and jazz. Bloomfield invited Miles to join, and the band made its debut at the Monterey Pop Festival; unfortunately, the original lineup splintered in 1968. With founder Bloomfield gone, Miles briefly took over leadership of the band on its second studio album, which failed to reignite the public's interest.
 With the Electric Flag's horn section in tow, Miles split to form his own group, the similarly eclectic Buddy Miles Express. Signed to Mercury, the group issued its debut album, Expressway to Your Skull, in 1968, with Miles' fellow Monterey Pop alum Jimi Hendrix in the producer's chair. In turn, Miles played on Hendrix's Electric Ladyland album, and later took part in an all-star jam session that resulted in Muddy Waters' Fathers and Sons album. Hendrix also produced the Miles Express' follow-up, 1969's Electric Church, and disbanded his backing band the Experience later that year; shortly afterward, Hendrix, Miles, and bassist Billy Cox formed Band of Gypsys, one of the first all-Black rock bands. Bluesier and funkier than Hendrix's previous work, Band of Gypsys didn't last long in its original incarnation; Miles departed in 1970, replaced by Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, but not before his powerhouse work was showcased on the group's lone album, the live Band of Gypsys.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/buddy-miles-mn0000943936#biography

 

Cold Blood is a long-standing R&B horn funk band founded by Larry Field in 1968, and was originally based in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The band has also performed and recorded under the name Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, due to the popularity of their lead singer, Lydia Pense.
The band first came to prominence in 1969 when rock impresario Bill Graham signed them after an audition, and they played the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Pense has been compared to Janis Joplin, and it was Joplin who recommended the audition to Graham.
The term "East Bay Grease" has been used to describe the San Francisco Bay Area's brass horn heavy funk-rock sound of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s; Cold Blood was one of the pioneer bands of this sound. Others were Tower of Power (who made an album called East Bay Grease). The Tower of Power horn players have performed with Cold Blood on a regular basis since the early 1970s. Skip Mesquite and Mic Gillette have been members of both Tower of Power and Cold Blood. The band disbanded in the late 1970s. Pense suspended her music career in the early 1980s to raise her daughter Danielle, before re-forming the group in 1988.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Blood_(band)

 

In 1993-1994, Collective Soul’s breakout single was the song “Shine.” It was inescapable. Any kid with a radio and an interest in “alternative” music heard it way too many times. The funny thing about these types of hits is how they get etched into your brain from sheer exposure. I don’t think I even noticed at the time that some rockers had snuck an almost-church song onto the charts.
It’s a prayer. A simple, beautiful meditation. All of this talk and I don’t want to play Collective Soul today. I don’t want to play them because I don’t think I actually noticed the lyrics and felt the weight of the song until 2001 when an unlikely cover broke out… in country. Dolly Parton, backed by bluegrass badasses Nickel Creek, reimagined the song for her album Little Sparrow. Same song, totally different impact, on me at least. And if you’ve never heard her version but you know the original, don’t worry, she kept the “yeah” in the chorus.  From: https://cultishcreative.com/p/sunday-music-heaven-let-your-light-shine-down 

Electric Würms is the side-project duo of longtime Flaming Lips partners Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd, and they've just announced the impending release of their new EP Musik, Die Shwer Zu Twerk, set to arrive later this summer. The EP's first single is a cover of Yes's "Heart Of The Sunrise," a 10-minute prog odyssey that appeared on that band's 1971 album Fragile. The Electric Würms version is considerably shorter, but it's bugged out and psychedelic and discordant in ways that go beyond even the more recent, freaked-out Flaming Lips material.  From: https://stereogum.com/1685826/electric-wurms-heart-of-the-sunrise-yes-cover/news 

Little Quirks is the family that accidentally became a band. Sisters Mia and Abbey grew up not far from their cousin Jaymi on the Central Coast of New South Wales in Australia. At family gatherings they were all about making music for fun, playing whatever instruments were lying around following the demise of their parents’ touring rock band in the late 90’s. The Beatles and Queen would feature heavily. The three teenagers gradually formed a tight musical bond and began performing as Little Quirks.
The youngest in the group Mia (drums) is just 18 years of age and often gets stopped by security entering venues to perform, but what they’ve lacked in fake IDs, Little Quirks make up for in hooks, harmonies and explosive live energy. The band’s boisterous approach to the Folk Rock / Pop genre unashamedly pushes catchy melodies and big rhythms to the fore. While their layered vocals draw inspiration from the sibling charms of First Aid Kit and The Staves, the trio’s direct and often epic songs land them in a space of their very own. Recently that sound captured the attention of esteemed NY indie label Glassnote Records who promptly signed them to a roster that includes some of Little Quirks’ own major influences in Mumford & Sons and AURORA.
With a DIY mindset that would rival any act – the band make all their own recordings, videos, stage costumes, artwork and merch – Little Quirks are a breath of fresh, unbridled and joyful air that is determined to keep the music fun.  From: https://glassnotemusic.com/little-quirks 

Marilyn Manson is an American rock band formed by namesake lead singer Marilyn Manson and guitarist Daisy Berkowitz in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1989. Originally named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids, they gained a local cult following in South Florida in the early 1990s with their theatrical live performances. In 1993, they were the first act signed to Trent Reznor's Nothing Records label. Until 1996, the name of each member was created by combining the first name of a female sex symbol and the last name of a male serial killer, as for the band and lead singer name that combine Marilyn Monroe with Charles Manson. Their lineup has changed between many of their album releases; the eponymous lead singer is the only remaining original member.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Manson_(band) 

 

The noisy bedlam of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” and its quixotic references to the road that stretches between his hometown of Duluth, Minnesota to New Orleans fit in perfectly amid the guitar chaos of PJ Harvey’s breakthrough album, 1993’s Rid of Me. But rather than record a reverent cover of one of Dylan’s most irreverent songs (mercifully, she omitted the original’s irritating slide whistle), Harvey made the tune her own with quiet, almost whispered sections, which sound a bit like a Thirties radio broadcast before they swell into a big, extraverted wave of noise. She adds falsetto harmonies to the Louie the King verse and lets her guitar rumble while wailing the word “highway” in a much more menacing way than even Dylan could have mustered.  From: https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/the-80-greatest-dylan-covers-of-all-time-26132/pj-harvey-highway-61-revisited-1993-26185/  

 

During the past year, the virtual jam — wherein a group of artists each claim their own corner of a 16:9 YouTube screen to rock out in isolation, together — has become as ubiquitous as Zoom conference calls, online schooling, and any other pandemic-era activity. Pearl Jam did it for Covid relief. The Rolling Stones did it for Global Citizen. Metallica did it very quietly. But few virtual jams have been as relentlessly creative and consistently surprising — not to mention flat-out awesome — as the ones featured in metal-themed talk show Two Minutes to Late Night’s long-running Bedroom Covers series.
Want to see Primus bass master Les Claypool, Tool drummer Danny Carey, Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher, and Coheed and Cambria vocalist Claudio Sanchez, all avowed Rush fanatics, take on the beloved Canadian power trio’s 1975 classic, “Anthem”? Or Sleigh Bells vocalist Alexis Krauss lead a motley crew of artists through a metal-ized medley of Nineties Eurodance hits like Vengaboys’ “We Like to Party!” and Haddaway’s “What Is Love”? How about septuagenarian E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg slamming the skins on a furious cover of the Misfits’ hardcore punk rager “Earth A.D.,” alongside members of My Chemical Romance, Hatebreed, and Dillinger Escape Plan? Two Minutes to Late Night’s YouTube channel is the one and only place where these twisted musical fever dreams regularly become reality.  From: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/two-minutes-to-late-night-bedroom-covers-interview-max-weinberg-1164120/

 

 Blake Babies

 

 Buddy Miles

 

Cold Blood with Lydia Pense

Dolly Parton

 

Nickel Creek

Electric Würms

 

Little Quirks

Marilyn Manson

 

PJ Harvey

 

Two Minutes To Late Night

Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen

 Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Part 1

 

 Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Part 2

 

 Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Part 3

 

When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen concert movie premiered on January 22, 1971, cinema audiences were able to experience Joe Cocker at the peak of his powers. The live album from the famed tour of the same name had been released in August 1970. The subsequent film brought Cocker’s unique performance to the silver screen for the second time in a year. He had starred with his Grease Band in the film of the Woodstock Festival of summer 1969, which came out in 1970 and showcased his celebrated interpretation of The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends.”
ong among an all-star event, Mad Dogs, directed by Pierre Adidge, was a two-hour showcase for Cocker as a frontman, and a chance to watch Leon Russell in full flow as Joe’s musical director for the 48-city tour. There are also prominent roles for other members of the band that we already knew, or came to, in their other work. Saxophone maestro Bobby Keys, especially admired for his long relationship with the Rolling Stones, is featured along with another of their collaborators, Jim Price.
Cocker’s keyboard man Chris Stainton is on board, as are prolific sidemen such as Jim Keltner and Derek and the Dominos members Jim Gordon and Carl Radle. The tour, and the film, also did much to announce the vocal talents of Rita Coolidge, who featured on Russell and Bonnie Bramlett’s lovely “Superstar.”
Vincent Canby’s review of the film in the New York Times in March 1971 described it as “a record of the tour featuring Cocker, the young extraordinarily talented, British blues singer, and the largely American entourage (band, choir, friends, wives, children, groupies and a single dog named Canina) that accompanied him. The entire group numbered almost 40 people, most of whom were on stage during most of the performances, making for what seems to have been extremely cheerful and friendly chaos.”  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/joe-cocker-mad-dogs-and-englishmen-film/

 

 

Witch Club Satan - You Wildflower

Firstly, how did you all meet and when was Witch Club Satan formed?

We have all met through different art educations and projects. Both Nikoline and Victoria have studied and worked with theater, while Johanna has her background in literature and writing, but we have all carried a passion and curiosity for music in our life and work. 
During the pandemic we met and started talking about our urge to create something together again. We had a feeling that the three of us shared an energy that we needed to dive deeper into. At that time all of us could feel the stillness of the world as an excuse for apathy. We felt stuck and careless – as the rest of the world. It was time to wake up, learn to play these instruments and scream. 

For anyone not familiar with your music, how would you describe your sound?

We play black metal as people did in the 80s. At that time there were no rules for the sound of black metal, as the genre did not exist yet. Young, experimental bands kept challenging themselves and the rock scene to find the most brutal, disturbing sounds. This is the core to us; the energy and the willingness to experiment. Our sound is raw and primitive, and our way of playing metal is strongly rooted in the genre’s big sister: punk. But our sonic universe is dynamic, unpredictable, and in the middle of the most chaotic noise, you’ll suddenly find a moment of calm in a sacral prayer. 

If you had to recommend one of your songs to a new listener, which one would you choose?

Our songs strongly relate and reflect the world as we experience it, and for that reason we would say that our latest release is a footprint of now. ‘You Wildflower’ is a battlesong, a call to action, to remind us to unite, care and keep fighting.  

You all identify as witches – how do you tie this in to your music and performances?

We look at music as a way of practicing magic. Music has a transformative power that should not be underestimated. We write and perform our songs as spells. As practitioners of performance art for many years, rituals at display feels normal. The whole gig can be watched as one big ritual together with the audience, but we also do smaller ritualistic acts on stage, changing from time to time and the world situation. 

What can we expect from your set at Supersonic Festival?

We will bring our all to Supersonic. As we have understood the festival, the audience are open minded towards the alternative and dark. That makes us feel welcome with the weird and good stuff. We will make sure to take care of the energy, and to create a memorable night. 

Are there any other bands/artists on the line-up you’re particularly looking forward to seeing?

Backxwash has been a huge source of inspiration to us from the very beginning. Her song “Spell” was actually shown to us by Jørn Stubbrud (aka Necrobutcher) from Mayhem, and the three of us instantly fell in love with it. Her newest album is a masterpiece, and the way Backxwash puts politics and the personal side by side is just straight out sexy, and super powerful. Also, Penelope Trappes is a fellow witch that makes music magical.

From: https://loudwomen.org/2025/07/21/interview-witch-club-satan-talk-black-metal-songs-as-spells-and-relentless-touring-ahead-of-supersonic-festival/ 

Vibravoid - On The Outside Looking In Mini-Concert

Vibravoid is one of the longest continuously running Neo-Psychedelic band that influenced the current scene starting from the word “Void” in the name, the lightshows, vinyl records and the graphical design. Why do you think you never played on big Psych Fests and were basically ignored?
Yes, that is something I think it is really weird. My only explanation can be that this “new Psychedelia” has nothing to do with Psychedelia. I think that we are probably not that bad to be ignored especially compared with many hobby bands which do nothing but an instrumental jam sessions due to the lack of abilities to write a song. We predate all these other new bands, released vinyl records before it was hip and even have our own characteristic style.
Maybe we started so early and play a different brand of music (that actually can be considered as Psychedelia) that we are not a part of the current “Psych” scene. Most of the music today is just something else and it seems that the least music people want to hear is psychedelic music. Just have a look at the Psych Fests and you will find all sort of Hard, Indie and Alternative Rock but generally no psychedelic music.
How do you see the evolution of psychedelic music from 1960s to today?
Well basically there is no evolution due to the reason that psychedelic is psychedelic – no matter which period. Generally speaking there is no psychedelic music. It is not the music that is psychedelic it is the people who make the music that make the music to be psychedelic. Psychedelia is no genre – it is a general approach towards things.
In the 1980s there was a big Garage/Mod/Psychedelic scene which basically did not leave safe ground due to the fact of being revivalists. The 1980s also revealed a respect for the original scene of the 1960s by using the term of “Neo-Psychedelic” while today everything is simply “Psychedelic” which indicates arrogance and ignorance of today’s “Hipster-Generation”. Anyway, doesn’t anyone see that everything “has to be psychedelic” by any means? And if you say: hey that’s not psychedelic the usual response is aggressive and people keep asking: how can you say this is bad music? I mean these are people who listened to Metallica and those bands in the 1990s and 2000s, first heard the word “psychedelic” a few years ago, wear Metal T-shirts, tattoos and baseball caps, never took acid but all by sudden are the new experts for this genre… this is really weird. I think if you once had a real psychedelic experience, you want to express this in any way starting from the way you dress and express yourself. Your start to think critically and do not just blindly follow the trends. I do not see anything of this in this new “Psych Rock” or “Heavy Psychedelic”.
The 1990s saw a totally different approach in the Techno culture that actually owed something to the 1960s scene due to the massive use of psychedelic drugs. It actually was a very friendly and open scene compared to today’s “Psych” scene which usually is nothing but hostile, dark, depressive and testosterone loaded.
Like Gary Ramon from Sun Dial stated in another interview the interest in Psychedelia was so low that these classic psych records were extremely cheap in the 1980s/1990s, OK there were some holy grails hunted by hard core collectors but a couple of hundred Euros is nothing compared to the thousands you have to fork out today.
Many of today’s experts also do not know that during the 1990s – when vinyl albums were set to die by the industry and customer – a flood of limited edition bootleg vinyl albums of 1960s psychedelic classics emerged – mostly obtained by collector’s who owned the original albums to prevent these from being played.
As well classic books on the topic like the “The Acid Trip” or “The Flashback” still seem to be completely unknown among today’s Psych enthusiasts and experts. Especially “The Flashback” contains a definition of what Psychedelia is that seems to be tailor made for today: there is a difference between psychedelic and mind altering music.  From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2020/04/vibravoid-interview-2.html

 

Folknery - Karchata

On Monday, the journey begins. The trip will take us back to Ukraine (we've already been there twice) through the traditional song entitled Karchata, masterfully reinterpreted by Folknery. The lyrics and melody will show us how the soul of a nation remains faithfully enclosed in its ancient songs: a treasure often forgotten, but which occasionally resurfaces because there is always someone in the world who recognizes its immense value. Where can we find Folknery? Who knows? The Ukrainian duo is on a long journey… Karchata is an authentic ancient Ukrainian song. The video, lyrics, and melody convey mysticism, evoking an ancient legend etched in the collective memory of this European country. Karchata is the story of two ghost girls. Friends in life, they both fell in love with the same young man, and one day, during tea time in the apple orchard, they poisoned each other by secretly pouring poisonous berry juice into each other's cups. In the garden where the young women died, their ghosts continue to linger, reliving the same unfortunate and fateful event every day for many, many years… Who are Folknery? They are a Ukrainian ethno-folk band formed by two musicians constantly traveling through their country and beyond, in search of authentic traditional songs and new and unpredictable musical collaborations. They travel exclusively by bicycle. Currently, the duo consists of Yaryna Kvitka (vocals, hurdy-gurdy, mridangam) and Volodymyr Muliar (percussion, guitar, vocalist). The aim of the project is to rediscover, but also to promote, folk music and, more generally, Ukrainian culture in the world. Since 2010, Folknery has traveled more than 35,000 kilometers, crossing 22 countries. Their journey is still underway, and who knows where it will take them... Where do they find the strength to cycle every day? Clearly, from the energy infused by ancient folk compositions.  Translated from: https://lookingeurope.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/the-monday-travel-song-karchata-by-folknery/ 

The Juliana Hatfield Three - For The Birds / Spin The Bottle

 The Juliana Hatfield Three - For The Birds

 

 The Juliana Hatfield Three - Spin The Bottle

 

Growing up with an older sister and a nineties-obsessed dad, the Juliana Hatfield Three’s “My Sister” was a household staple. With every petty fight we had over the TV remote, or something equally banal, I’d quietly sing to myself, “I hate my sister, she’s a bitch.” Sure, that’s coarse language to apply to tiffs I’d forget by the next day, but my dad really showed us the song so we’d pay attention to the end: a fervent repetition of “I miss my sister.” Now that she and I live hundreds of miles away, I find myself replaying the song with special attention to that post-chorus, and I wish I could be back in a car with her, singing along to it. I’ve always thought Juliana Hatfield was adept at capturing the messiness of femininity—the jealousy, pain, and insecurity that feels synonymous with teenage girlhood. Especially within the imposing social norms of the nineties, Hatfield has always felt like a fresh voice, playfully flipping off the mainstream.
When Hatfield and her collaborators Dean Fisher and Todd Philipps released Become What You Are in 1993, a new age of female-fronted rock had already gained some traction with the salient breakthroughs of groups like Sonic Youth and Hole. The idea of a female musician as the bubbly pop star archetype was being beaten down by women with electric guitars, and Hatfield threw her hat in the ring with her solo record, Hey Babe, in 1992. Become What You Are is a quintessential guitar album, with unpredictable chord changes and resolutions that scratch an itch you didn’t know you had. Hatfield plays with time and tempo masterfully—between the half-time introduction to “For the Birds” and the starting-and-stopping chorus of “This is the Sound,” she is the master of each song’s momentum. She literally yells out “bridge!” in the middle of the “This is the Sound” as a preface to a musical break. Behind the rougher edges of her rock influence, Hatfield successfully created a catalog of ear worms. Take the punchy melody of “Addicted” or the dizzying repetition of “I Got No Idols” in the track of the same name: Become What You Are is timeless—even after thirty years, it feels totally fresh.
In working on Become What You Are, Hatfield joined in the line of rebellion with songs like “Supermodel,” where she sticks out her tongue at a then-contemporary modeling industry that relegated girls to nothing more than “the highest paid piece of ass.” Hatfield never shied away from confronting the rougher edges of womanhood, a virtual necessity following the magazine-obsessed culture of the eighties. She often depicts herself and other women as wanderers, like the central figure of “Mabel,” who has come to “realize she’s in a different place, realize her lack of social grace.”
Become What You Are came at a time when teenage apathy was the stylish persona. The spirited energy of eighties synth-pop bled into a lethargic mid-nineties, where slacker rock and grunge provided a crash pad for the burnouts to rest. Hatfield surely rolled with the punches of this half-assed brand of angst—her song “Spin the Bottle” was featured in the soundtrack of Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, a quintessential film in the catalog of Gen-X malaise. It’s easy for the artistic output of this period to ring hollow, but Hatfield stands out as an artist whose music has only gotten better with age. Even “Spin the Bottle,” arguably her breakout hit, touts a ⅝ time signature, which keeps the energy of the song alive. Hatfield always championed sincerity above everything, which is why her lyrics have managed to veer away from the self-important. The growing pains of adolescence are omnipresent on Become What You Are, with the appropriate levels of misgiving rounding out songs like “Feelin’ Massachusetts” and “For the Birds.” The former spans the trials of a stifling suburban life, where Hatfield sings “I’m so bored” until the cows come home. But even this song glimmers with earnestness, as Hatfield balances her bitterness with the stirring imagery of an escape: “Take me to the ocean and leave me there, leave me all alone with the sun and the air.”
Hatfield got the idea for the album’s title from a maxim by Nietzsche, which suggests that growth is actually when people become who they truly are. The idea that one’s true self can be uncovered was freeing to her, especially considering how introspective her songwriting already was. She maps the roadblocks of maturity in songs like “Little Pieces,” where she sings, “It’s a mystery how I seem to be something less than myself.” Throughout the album, Hatfield discovers that becoming something else isn’t the answer to her self-doubt. “For the Birds” is an extended plea to leave humanity, but even after Hatfield sings, “If I had wings I’d try to fly,” she acknowledges that “they don’t make it harder to die.”
While I have waxed poetic about the impact of Become What You Are on a generation of women and musicians as a whole, Juliana Hatfield makes no such claims of importance for herself. In “President Garfield,” she repeats the phrase “I’m saying something really deep” as the song comes to a close, in a kind of tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of musicians’ tendencies to aggrandize their insight. She has continued making music under her own name through the past few decades, but Become What You Are is the only record officially released under the Juliana Hatfield Three. While she wrote all of the songs by herself excluding “I Got No Idols,” it feels like the trio struck gold with this record. It’s the perfect storm.  From: https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/stranger-things/needle-drops-ranked

 

Type O Negative - Love You To Death

On March 13, 2007, American gothic metal band Type O Negative released its seventh and final studio album, “Dead Again”. This year marks the 16th anniversary of the record that came out three years before the passing of bassist/vocalist Peter Steele.
Type O Negative has just released the live music video for “Love You To Death” just in time for Valentine’s Day. It contains footage of the band’s appearance at the 2007 Wacken Open Air festival in Wacken, Germany. As an added bonus, the live tracks that were only available on the 3LP and CD reissues, including “Love You To Death”, are now available on all streaming services.
Type O Negative‘s Kenny Hickey comments, “The first casualty of this album was the record company – which promptly went under after its release. Soon after, Peter passed, and then even the rehearsal studio it was written and developed in was burnt to the ground by Hurricane Sandy.  As the black cloud continued its relentless path over Type O, “Dead Again” appeared and disappeared from the streaming platforms for years.  Now that the storm has passed we have some slight hope of establishing a small illusion of permanence with this final release of “Dead Again”. We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused you.”  From: https://www.sonicperspectives.com/news/type-o-negative-releases-love-you-to-death-video/

The Garment District - Left on Coast

The Garment District is the music project of multi-instrumentalist Jennifer Baron, founding member of the Brooklyn band The Ladybug Transistor. Jennifer reached out to me about a new single, “Left on Coast,” from an upcoming album from the band called Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of The World, which is due out via Happy Birthday to Me Records on September 22, 2023.
Writing about Jennifer and The Garment District is a bit difficult because her project encompasses so much. She’s an accomplished musician, and she’s far from the only one who is playing on the new single and album. Jennifer’s first cousin, Lucy Blehar, also supplies lead vocals, and numerous other musicians from Jennifer’s tight-knit circle contribute.
Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of The World was recorded in a friend’s home studio in Western Pennsylvania during the pandemic. Jennifer plays multiple instruments on the album, and it’s interesting to note that her family’s musical roots in Western PA stretch back quite some time. Her great-grandfather immigrated to the area from Zagreb and formed a family band with her grandfather, great-aunt, and great-uncles, who performed in steel towns. Jennifer continues her family’s music-making legacy by working with her cousin Lucy in The Garment District.
I can include much more information about the upcoming album, but I’ll save that for a review I plan to do closer to the release date. In the meantime, check out the new single “Left on Coast,” which also features a fun music video. “Left on Coast” has a radio-friendly sound that should immediately appeal to many listeners, but it’s not bubble-gum pop. The song is nearly five minutes long and has plenty of textures reminiscent of a bygone era of psychedelic music.
The keyboards are very noticeable on “Left on Coast,” along with the beautiful, ethereal vocals that call to us through the haze. The song is catchy but not simple – it veers and loops, feeling mysterious and never pretentious. Perhaps Jennifer and her band are channeling the spirits of her ancestors who played venues throughout Western PA in the past.
Jennifer Baron wrote the music and lyrics for the song and plays guitar, electric piano, organ, and tambourine, and provides backing vocals. Lucy Blehar is on lead vocals, Corry Drake is on bass, Sean Finn plays drums, and Greg Langel provides the outro guitar.
“Lyrically, the song ‘Left on Coast’ is loosely inspired by my love and admiration for the visionary photojournalism and creative process (including his love for jazz music and obsessive drive toward documentation) of W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978), who worked on colossal projects in Pittsburgh and New York City, two cities that play major roles in my life,” Jennifer told me. “The song started as a demo I recorded at home with layered electric guitar parts and a drum machine.”
Jennifer said she’s inspired by the wide range of analog instruments she has collected. For example, “Left On Coast” features a 1967 Vox Super Continental Organ, Wurlitzer electric piano, Fender Vibrolux Reverb guitar amp, Rickenbacker 360, Epiphone Dot, and more.
“One of the things that helped me achieve the fuzz guitar sounds I was seeking for this song are the 1960s and early 1970s guitar pedals I borrowed from my friend Gregg Kostelich of the iconic Pittsburgh garage band, The Cynics, who runs Get Hip Records,” Jennifer said.
Jennifer told me another extremely rewarding aspect of creating the song was working with her cousin, Lucy, who provides the lead vocals. Jennifer’s always been drawn to the concept of family bands, as she plays in The Ladybug Transistor with her brother, Jeff, and what can happen between close relatives who collaborate on creative endeavors.
“For the two of us, we are able to sing backups and harmonies and double certain lines together,” Jennifer said, referring to Lucy. “Since we have a very close bond, a very organic and natural way of working in the studio, and love collaborating in that setting, when a song calls for it, we can expand melodies and harmonies that I write in advance on keyboards when making demos.”  From: https://thirdeyepsychrock.blog/2023/07/28/check-out-the-garment-districts-new-single-left-on-coast-off-their-upcoming-album/

Timechild - Buried In Autumn

“Buried in Autumn” is the second single and official video from Timechild’s upcoming sophomore album “Blossom & Plague”. The song shows the band from a darker and more personal side than on previous releases and is written about the members’ own experiences of saying goodbye to both their own addictions and to loved ones who never managed to escape theirs.
Timechild is a Danish progressive, heavy rock band formed in 2020 in Copenhagen. Their sound consists of a mixture of progressive rock and heavy metal, dominated by a powerful lead vocal and characteristic twin guitars, which together create their unique Scandinavian expression.
Since Timechild released their debut album “And Yet It Moves” at the end of 2021, things have moved fast for the new Danish band. Top reviews from both Danish and international media, Danish tours with Jesper Binzer (DAD), Thundermother and Artillery, concerts at some of the biggest club venues and rock and metal festivals in Denmark. And in 2023, the band will cross the country’s borders for the first time to go on their first EU and UK tours.  From: https://metalshockfinland.com/2023/05/26/exclusive-premiere-for-finland-timechild-buried-in-autumn-official-video/

Throwing Muses - Bright Yellow Gun

"Bright Yellow Gun" was written and sung by Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh. Many of her songs are expressions of an alternate personality that emerged after suffering head trauma when she was 16. Hersh later gave this person a name, Rat Girl, and realized it was part of her dissociative disorder, which was earlier diagnosed as bipolar disorder.
Unlike the alter egos songwriters often use to express themselves in a different voice, Hersh had no control of Rat Girl, and had no idea when the songs would appear. Often, fragments of songs would come to her in the middle of the night and she would piece them together in the morning. This song alludes to this cycle: 
    
I have nothing to offer but confusion
And the circus in my head
In the middle of the bed
In the middle of the night

In a Songfacts interview with Hersh, she explained: "Songs are dreamy, hyper-real takes on life that I don't argue with. 'Bright Yellow Gun' can say whatever it wants to... like one of my kids. I have to let them invent themselves."
The group was a bit too challenging for pop radio, but some modern rock stations supported them, including the Boston station WFNX. Early on, most of the airplay for "Bright Yellow Gun" came from smaller markets; at the time, these stations would be more adventurous with their playlists, and if a song caught on with listeners, the big boys would add it in places like Los Angeles and Chicago.
Two different videos were made for this song, the "umbrella raincoat" version directed by Kevin Kerslake, and another with monkeys in a club with an unknown director.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/throwing-muses/bright-yellow-gun

The Smiths - How Soon Is Now

How Soon Is Now - which Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr described as their "most enduring record" - is about their frontman Morrissey's crippling shyness. It has since become an anthem for the alienated and socially isolated.
Musically, "How Soon Is Now?" is famous for that oscillating guitar riff that opens the song and plays throughout. It started as a rather standard guitar riff, but Johnny Marr and Smiths producer John Porter then played it back through Fender Twin Reverb amplifiers set to different tremolo speeds, adjusting them on the fly to keep them in sync. That slide guitar part was layered on top. After they had the track completed, Morrissey assed the lyric.
The title doesn't show up in the lyric. It comes from a question posed in Marjorie Rosen's feminist film study, Popcorn Venus, one of Morrissey's favorite books: "How immediately can we be gratified? How soon is 'now'?"

You'll recognize the song from the last lines in the chorus:

I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

This was a very complex song to record. Marr broke the process down to The Guitar Magazine: "I wanted it to be really, really tense and swampy, all at the same time. Layering the slide part was what gave it the real tension. The tremolo effect came from laying down a regular rhythm part with a capo at the second fret on a Les Paul, then sending that out in to the live room to four Fender Twins. John was controlling the tremolo on two of them and I was controlling the other two, and whenever they went out of sync we just had to stop the track and start all over again. It took an eternity."
The Smiths installed red lightbulbs in their London studio to create the perfect atmosphere to record this song in.
The oscillating guitar is similar to the one heard in The Rolling Stones' cover of Bo Diddley's song "I Need You Baby (Mona)." Johnny Marr was a big fan of both Bo Diddley and The Rolling Stones, and has cited both as an influence. Another instance of him borrowing a riff from The Stones is in the song "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out."
The attention-grabbing intro was intentional. "I wanted an introduction that was almost as potent as 'Layla,' Johnny Marr told Rolling Stone. "When it plays in a club or a pub, everyone knows what it is."
Morrissey lifted the line, "The heir to nothing in particular," from the 19th century novel Middlemarch by George Eliot, who wrote: "To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular."

Many of us thought the opening line was:

I am the sun and the air
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar

But that first line is really "I am the son and the heir," which makes more sense, with Morrissey implying that his criminally vulgar shyness has been passed down. This is something we learned when we first saw the printed lyrics.
Their producer, John Porter, is one of those who misjudged the lyric. Marr told The Guardian: "I remember when Morrissey first sang, 'I am the son and the heir...' John Porter went, 'Ah great, the elements!' Morrissey continued, '...of a shyness that is criminally vulgar.' I knew he'd hit the bullseye there and then."
Despite being one of their most popular songs, "How Soon Is Now?" didn't always show up in The Smiths' setlists. That's because it was really hard to play live, especially the guitar section that required so much studio sorcery. Bassist Andy Rourke called it "the bane of The Smiths' live career."
"How Soon Is Now?" didn't rate with the band's record label, so they banished it to the the B-side of the "William, It Was Really Nothing" single, which was released in 1984 a few months after their self-titled debut album came out. A few months later it was included on a compilation album called Hatful Of Hollow, and in 1985 it was finally released as an A-side single after British radio DJs started playing it, included John Peel of the BBC, a big Smiths supporter.
By this time the song had lots of fans, but many already owned it on either the "William, It Was Really Nothing" single or on Hatful Of Hollow, so it charted at an underwhelming #24 in the UK, much to the disappointment of Morrissey, who bemoaned to Creem magazine: "It's hard to believe that 'How Soon Is Now' was not a hit. I thought that was the one."
"How Soon Is Now?" helped secure Morrissey's reputation for being a tormented soul, but he earned it with the Smiths song "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," released a short time earlier in 1984. Songs like "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" and "I Know It's Over" fueled this fire, that burned well after the group broke up in 1987 and Morrissey went solo. He told Details magazine in 1992: "I am depressed most of the time. And when you're depressed it is so enveloping that it actually does control your life, you cannot overcome it, and you can't take advice. People trying to cheer you up become infuriating and almost insulting." You won't be surprised to learn that Moz doesn't do social media. His official accounts are run by his management.
Johnny Marr was on a roll when he wrote the music for this song; he came up with it, and also the tracks for "William, It Was Really Nothing" and "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want," over a productive four-day period in June 1984.

From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-smiths/how-soon-is-now

Wicking Ground - Live at Lúnasa Cascadia 2023

 Wicking Ground - Live at Lúnasa Cascadia 2023 - Part 1

 

 Wicking Ground - Live at Lúnasa Cascadia 2023 - Part 2

 

Wicking Ground was inseminated in 2016 alongside little Chico creek and has since grown along the Willamette river and continued to bloom around the Salish Sea. Her music is a direct reflection of thunder song and celestial tears, inspired by wrecker/salvage mentality, nature, and mutual aid, she is one of the local trash witches.  From: https://wickingground.bandcamp.com/album/firebrand 

 

Buffalo Springfield - Again - Side 1

01 - Mr. Soul
02 - A Child's Claim To Fame
03 - Everydays
04 - Expecting To Fly
05 - Bluebird

It’s 1967, and Eve Babitz, then a sometimes-collagist, is at a Paul Butterfield show in Huntington Beach. The only other person in the audience is Stephen Stills. At the end of the set, he asks her for a ride home. Babitz, who saw collaging as a pit stop on the way to becoming the brash, unapologetic writer and muse we now remember her as, jumps at the chance to strike a deal: “I’ll give you a ride if you let me do the art for your new record.” Stills shrugs, “Okay.”
The cover enchanted me long before I knew it was a Babitz creation. It’s surreal and psychedelic and perfectly late-’60s; I spent years searching for an early pressing. For all the half-century-old records in my collection, holding this specific one feels the most like clutching a relic from a lost time. Listening to it transported me to the 1967 Laurel Canyon of my dreams. Babitz perches the band members in their own personal Mount Rushmore, overlooking a glistening body of water. There are oversized butterflies, angels peeking through twisting trees, flowers tracing the borders, and pink birds floating in the sky. The chaotic, layered, stitched-together nature of the cover speaks to the fragments bouncing off each other inside.
Flip the record over, and you’ll find a chaotic, stream-of-consciousness list of dedications: “To our friends, enemies, and people we don’t know from Adam for their influences and inspiration.” The band names Otis Redding, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, Judy Collins, Coltrane, Zappa, Hendrix, “the five Byrds,” and dozens more. It’s a roadmap to Springfield’s splintered musical DNA up to that point—folk, jazz, soul, psychedelia, country.
Buffalo Springfield—Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, and Bruce Palmer—were five wildly different players barely holding it together long enough to make something historic. Buffalo Springfield Again was released just 11 months after their 1966 self-titled debut. It also followed the rerelease of their first LP in March 1967, which included the group-defining single “For What It’s Worth,” their highest-charting hit at #7. That first record leaned towards pop, with tight runtimes, a muffled sound, and clear Troubadour influences.
Stills and Young were 22 and 21, respectively, when Buffalo Springfield ascended the charts. Anxious to capitalize on mainstream success, the pair entered a longstanding pattern of one-upping the other, each musician trying to push their group further sonically. It drove a wedge between them: Young quit and rejoined the group multiple times in those 11 months between albums. That summer, David Crosby (a future bandmate) filled in for him at the Monterey Pop Festival. (Crosby is later credited as inspiration on Buffalo Springfield Again deep cut “Rock & Roll Woman,” a ripping song born out of a Stills/Croz jam, with a melody that has Crosby’s fingerprints all over it.) Young was already buckling to the pressure of sudden fame, retreating into solitary recording sessions (spending 100 hours on “Broken Arrow,” alone). Stills saw it as a chance to showcase his wider range of influences—jazz, Latin music, and beyond. Furay, meanwhile, notched three writing credits on Again, often using his songs to air quiet frustrations with the band’s dysfunction. These were men in emotional freefall, dragging the Wrecking Crew into their mess and emerging with 10 tracks that somehow still resemble brilliance.
And yet, Buffalo Springfield Again starts with Young. “Mr. Soul” bursts through the speakers like a panic attack in a leather fringe jacket. It’s thudding, cynical, snide, and blaring, entering with a jolt and refusing to let go. The liner notes “respectfully dedicate” the track to “the ladies of the Whisky a Go Go and the women of Hollywood,” a knowing wink to Babitz’s cover, herself an original Whisky girl. Underneath the wailing guitar and relentless percussion is Young at his most vulnerable. He wrote the song at UCLA Medical Center after having a seizure on stage with the band in San Francisco. His then newly developed epilepsy gets a nod in the third verse: “Stick around while the clown who is sick / Does the trick of disaster.”
The country tonk, Furay-penned “A Child’s Claim to Fame” stands in almost petty opposition to Young’s unraveling. Where “Mr. Soul” spirals inward, Furay’s song is clean-cut, upright, and sharply directed—likely aimed at Young himself. It’s country in structure but pop in spirit, and it reads as a public eye-roll toward Young’s ego-driven flakiness. You could easily draw a line from this track to Young’s “I Am A Child” on Last Time Around; a quiet rebuttal, matching Furay’s condescension with a kind of wounded defiance. Furay’s tendency to go it alone shows up elsewhere, too: on “Sad Memory,” he reportedly recorded his vocals solo after no one else showed up to the session.
Young spreads his reach further on “Expecting to Fly,” the orchestral, disorienting, and unmistakably experimental composition that layers harpsichord, vibraphone, and timpani over a sweeping symphony. It feels massive, emotionally and sonically, like something off Days of Future Passed. The vocal octaves expand the space even more, giving the impression that the orchestra is playing on a soundstage. (The song later appeared in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, because of course it did.) It’s unsettling and evocative. When Young hits the falsetto on “If I ever lived without you / Now you know I died,” it carries the kind of devastating weight that makes you believe him.
Now, as far as the Young/Stills debate goes, I’m more often than not on Young’s side. But there are times when Stills’s exacting, genre-hopping craftsmanship scratches a part of my brain that is neglected in Neil’s discography. If we’re going song-for-song, Stills takes it for me on Buffalo Springfield Again. His blend of jazz, country, and grittier rock influences feels more immediate, even in all the chaos. Because of it. The first time we get a Stills-written track is “Everydays”—a sleepy, sauntering jazz-rock tune that almost misses its own beat, swaying so loosely it feels like it could collapse in on itself. The recording is messy, like it was done on a second take and left that way intentionally. The keys drag just behind the rhythm, like a Sunday driver zoned out on an oceanside road. But it’s hypnotic. The lyrics drift into existentialism, the monotony of the day-to-day: “Drive in the hills / Forget your fear / Getting it out of / Second gear.”
“Bluebird” hits for the exact opposite reasons. The entire record itself feels like it builds up to and falls from this moment. The jangly, psych-adjacent guitars are consuming, matched in rhythm to the crashing drums. The guitars devolve into acoustics and electrics that chase each other in circles, and a sneaky banjo reprise closes the song.  From: https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/buffalo-springfield/time-capsule-buffalo-springfield-buffalo-springfield-again

Starry Eyed & Laughing - Lady Came From The South

Originally a distinctly Byrds-influenced duo of guitarist/vocalists Ross McGeeney and Tony Poole (and thus instantly comparable to an early R.E.M.), Starry Eyed and Laughing were one of the most individual acts to gravitate toward the London pub rock scene as the 1970s neared their midpoint. Formed in the midlands city of Northampton during 1973, within a year the band had swollen to a quartet comprising McGeeney, Poole, bassist Steve Hall, and drummer Nick Brown and were packing venues across the capital. This lineup survived only a matter of months, but did bring the band to the attention of CBS. With a new rhythm section of Iain Whitmore and the splendidly named drummer Mick Wackford, plus a cast of guests including Russ Ballard, Lindisfarne's Ray Jackson, and BJ Cole, Starry Eyed and Laughing cut their eponymous debut album in mid-1974, alongside the single "Money Is No Friend of Mine."
 A second album, Thought Talk, followed in 1975, together with further singles "Nobody Home" and "Good Love," and that fall, Starry Eyed and Laughing made their U.S. debut with a short, but very well-received tour. Upon returning home, however, McGeeney quit the band -- he was replaced by Roger Kelly for the 1976 single "Don't Give Me a Hard Time," before bassist Whitmore, too, departed. Opting to continue on as a trio, the band abbreviated its name to Starry Eyed alone, but never recaptured the excitement of earlier years and broke up soon after.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/starry-eyed-and-laughing-mn0001192111#biography

Pterodactyl - Hold Still

Pterodactyl’s Spills Out belongs to that rare species of music that could be called indie-shred, if that wasn’t such a dumb thing to write or to say out loud. Despite all the cloaking noise and pop melodies, there’s a lot of right kind of overplaying here: Matt Marlin’s drumming refuses to stick to basic time-keeping, and the overlapping guitars sound like a tangle between J. Mascis and the Scary Monsters–era lead playing of Robert Fripp. All, somehow, nestled into the maximalist pop songs that populate this album.
Of course, with all those elements competing at all times, success is not guaranteed.When it all works, songs like “Allergy Shots” and “The Break” are the result, both of which put me in mind of music that falls between Calgary band Women and that very same band’s earlier incarnation as Veritas, an instrumental prog outfit where songwriter Pat Flegel worked out exactly what it was he liked about music. The guys in Pterodactyl seem to have followed a similar path through the wilderness of prog and the excesses of art rock, but have seized onto the skeletal structure provided by pop songwriting to give
shape to their music.
While the songwriting necessarily lacks tightness, due to the experimentational tugging at the seams that bursts out of the competing instruments and voices, there is a pleasure in the layered stimulation of the noisier songs on the record, such as “School Glue.” The ornate collisions that define those songs occasionally relax into blissfully simple melodic songs such as “Thorn,” where Marlin’s drums finally cease their assault and the guitar noise washes under the vocals instead of complicating them.
Technical music can so often be incredibly boring, but I’ve never subscribed to the idea that there is an inverse relations between high competence on an instrument and songwriting ability. Pterodactyl is attempting to make those two elements meet, and have moments of real success on Spills Out: maybe being able to play your guitar isn’t such a bad thing.  From: https://northerntransmissions.com/pterodactyl-spills-out/

The Small Glories - Oh My Love

The Small Glories make their US debut with Assiniboine & the Red, an album that celebrates the Canadian Prairies. The album title references the junction of two rivers, the Assiniboine (pronounced ‘uh-sin-uh-boin’) and the Red, in the duo’s hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and celebrates the happenstance meeting of members Cara Luft, an original member of the Wailin’ Jennys, and multi-instrumentalist JD Edwards. The duo’s onstage chemistry and humor complements their energetic live performances and buoyant, Americana-inflected folk songs. Luft and Edwards’ exuberant harmonies bring to mind such duos as the Civil Wars and Shovels & Rope, but with a Northern spin. The album’s songs are all inspired by places, from“Alberta,” the opener, to Winnipeg,” a spirited celebration of their hometown. “We’re folk singers, we try to write stuff that people can relate to,” says Edwards, whose looming stage presence and penetrating eyes find him the yin to Luft’s petite, snort-laughing yang. Already known in their native Canada as well as for their performances at festivals including SXSW and AmericanaFest, the duo, both of whom write, have captured the charm and chemistry of their live shows with Assiniboine & the Red’s collection of engaging, memorable songs. NPR wrote, “Luft is a Wailin’ Jennys alum whose work on the clawhammer banjo is to die for, while Edwards’ guitar and vocal harmonies deepen and enrich the duo’s sound.”  From: https://store.compassrecords.com/products/assiniboine-the-red?srsltid=AfmBOoohY3rqLQwD2bbRdLlVskpBTXFjNBblaHk11Rs8ZGe51zVEaRxT 

Curtis Mayfield - Beautiful Brother of Mine

When Prince’s Welcome 2 America rolled out in July of this year, the coverage came replete with comparisons to Curtis Mayfield. Much of that was down to the story that circulated about Dr. Cornel West suggesting that his “brother” Prince was a genius and friend, but no Curtis Mayfield when it came to social commentary, thereby prompting the Minnesotan to embark upon recording material of that ilk.
Listening to that album, it was clear why some people could see those similarities, but to me they were purely superficial. Wrapping things up in wah-wah guitar, strings and the occasional blast of horns may appear to be Mayfield-esque but something was missing to my ears to make that comparison valid. And it was only upon listening to Mayfield’s second solo album Roots in preparation for this piece, that it dawned on me what was the missing piece of the puzzle.
That missing piece of the puzzle is also a key ingredient of Mayfield’s best work, which undoubtedly includes Roots: urgency. Urgency in vocal performance, urgency in horn arrangements and urgency in the stringed interventions. Everything, in my opinion, that the aforementioned Prince album lacked. Of course, Welcome 2 America wasn’t helped by the anodyne, insipid production that mired his later works in mediocrity, but that is a topic for another day.
Roots was released in 1971 just five months after his debut solo live album had managed to reach number 21 in the pop albums chart and just over a year after his euphoric debut album Curtis (1970). To say a rich seam was being mined in the early 1970s by the Chicago legend is to understate it dramatically. When you bear in mind that the era-defining, hugely popular and influential Superfly soundtrack followed closely in 1972, it is crystal clear that Mayfield was among the very greatest artists of his (or any) era.
You wouldn’t know that though if you’d read Rolling Stone’s original review of Roots, which paints it as some kind of failure. But Mayfield demonstrates in all of his work the deep-rooted Blackness that became more pronounced in society and other art forms in the aftermath of the tumultuous 1960s, when hope was extinguished over and over again.
As Questlove’s Summer of Soul points out beautifully, the latter part of that decade seemed to herald the end of a brief yet ultimately forlorn hope that racial equality might be achieved, as leader after leader was cut down in their prime. Emerging from the flames of the uprisings across the US, sprang a greater level of Afrocentric thought that spread into music, fashion and art. One of the most obvious ways in which Curtis Mayfield embodied this was through his use of African percussion. 
“Master” Henry Gibson was responsible for percussion on Roots (and an estimated 1,200 other albums) and he injects the bongo and conga into the works on the album, writhing and wriggling throughout—a non-stop rhythmic masterclass. 
Alongside Gibson were other relatively unsung musical wonders. Joseph ‘Lucky’ Scott contributed bass lines and played a key role in making proceedings as funky as they were with the same percussive techniques that James Brown insisted on in his band (where every instrument was designed to be percussive or rhythmic). 
Arrangements came courtesy not just of Mayfield himself but also Johnny Pate who had been a jazz bassist and arranger before working alongside Mayfield when he formed The Impressions. On leaving Curtom (Mayfield’s record label) in 1972, he arranged for B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Peabo Bryson among others, thereby becoming a hugely important line of continuity through the developmental history of music.
The urgency that was (in my opinion, at least) missing from Prince’s record is evident on Roots from the first few seconds of music. After a few seconds of human groans and exertions subside on “Get Down,” a guttural, brooding bassline kicks in, intertwined with Gibson’s thunderous patter and then Mayfield’s dramatic guitar starts to rip, before the punch of the horns rounds things off. Urgency is not in short supply here—in fact, it drives and surges with purpose and funky intent.
Mayfield’s calling cards were many, but his composition of delicately beautiful melodies was ever-present throughout his career. Here it comes courtesy of “Keep On Keeping On,” a dreamy exhortation to continue the work he always valued (including on the masterpiece from Curtis, “Move On Up”). However, for all that Mayfield wrote some of the prettiest melodies around, there always seemed to be space for some grit and “dirt” in amongst his tenderness.
On “Underground” things turn slightly heavier and less convinced of positivity. It opens with a spoken word intro: “We now have to deal with our own self-destruction / We cannot live on the surface of our Earth any longer / There is now pollution in every natural mineral and material taken from the land / We have truly become a vast wasteland,” before the music takes a similarly downbeat turn. The grumpy bassline and the fuzzed-up guitar combine to create a setting worthy of those damning lyrics. 
It isn’t long before the sunshine returns though, in the form of “We Got To Have Peace,” which manages to flip the feeling 180 degrees. His comforting falsetto once again urges the listener to “save the children,” whilst the horns add impetus to that notion with their heavyweight punch. 
The flourishes of harp that signal the onset of “Beautiful Brother Of Mine” indicate that that brightness continues, but this is actually a perfect example of the melding of his upwardly looking lyrics and the scuzzy funk into one glorious song. The full gamut of his work is contained within the driving funk—the strings (this time given more space to stretch), the rumbling bass and the punchy horns, but this time the impeccable backing vocals and claps add an extra layer of drama to what is already steeped in tension and urgency (there’s that word, again). The final minute of the impeccable groove is given over to those incessant congas and bongos and the beauty of Mayfield’s (massively underrated) guitar playing.  From: https://albumism.com/features/curtis-mayfield-roots-turns-50-anniversary-retrospective

 

Skindive - Love Me Still

The young raven-haired woman sitting opposite me in the bar, her feet tucked under her slight body as she squirms to find comfort in the armchair, is Skindive's Danielle Harrison. And you would be forgiven for asking "Who?"
Two years ago Skindive, the only Irish alternative industrial rock outfit worth a damn, were poised on the brink of success. They boasted a blistering live show with deeply complex, layered songs full of incendiary guitars, tingling orchestral arrangements, and the powerful vocals of Los Angeles-born Danielle.
The release of their eponymous debut album should have sent them soaring - instead they crashed and very nearly burned. The last anyone heard of them was when they played Ozzfest; since then - nothing. One of the reasons for this was the flawed translation of the band's impressive live presence to the humble compact disc. All the songs were there, but some important je ne sais quoi was missing, some essential ingredient found only in sweltering, stinking, smoke-filled venues where guitars were lashed savagely and where the walls, the ground and your very blood rumbled with the cascading sound of Skindive. In contrast, the songs almost meekly seeping from your stereo speakers just couldn't hold a torch to the live versions.
Now it seems Skindive are crawling back from the brink of destruction, with significant casualties. They've switched record company and lost their bassist, Alan Lee, to Turn. In addition, their lead guitarist and the creative power behind the storm, Gerry Owens, has adopted a far less prominent role, instead focusing his attention on new projects and no longer actively touring with the band. Despite this, Skindive released a new single, Falling Down, on September 5th and a second album titled Precious will follow later in 2003.
"The thing with the record company was a long time coming," explains Danielle. "We'd signed with Chris Blackwell's Palm Pictures in New York, and we got on very well with Chris. But one by one it seemed all of the people who had been championing us left the company until we were left on our own. And with them in New York and us over here it was very difficult to keep things moving."
"So we made a decision and asked Palm Pictures to release us from our contract. Chris was very good about it. They could have kept us forever, but he agreed and that was that."
So Skindive eagerly wriggled free of a two-album contract, but found themselves lost and directionless. There was no record company to guide or promote them, and it suddenly seemed like they'd regressed to where they were two or three years previously. 
"We were in limbo, we didn't know what we'd do," reflects Danielle. "I know that for me personally it was a very difficult time. I felt extremely low and I'm sure the others did too."
It was at this stage that the band suffered departures and near break-ups, but did Danielle ever consider giving up, even perhaps throwing in the towel completely and fleeing back to her family in the USA?
"No, never. After so much sacrifice, and so much effort and work, I was determined to see it through. I certainly wasn't ready to go back to the US; this is my home now, I've settled in nicely here over the past six years."
"Gerry was brilliant during that time after we left Palm; he was a fantastic source of strength. He just kept writing and writing and working on new songs, it was crazy. I was sure we'd eventually land on our feet."
And that, it seems, is what they've done, signing with new Irish independent record label AlphaMale Recordings. The new album, Danielle asserts, is a lot more accessible than the last. "It's not as heavy. There's still a lot of heavy rock stuff there, but there's much more variety with this record. On the whole it's lighter."
This, I suggest to her, will certainly help with radio airplay. In previous interviews Gerry Owens has gone on record saying he didn't approach the debut album with a view to releasing singles, and didn't really know what a single was. This tactic doubtlessly damaged Skindive's exposure - a main prerequisite for sales being the ability to get your songs on radio.
"Yeah, it'll help. The new single is already getting a lot of airplay, especially on shows like Pet Sounds, which is really great. But there will always be a problem for bands like us in Ireland because there are no alternative radio stations. The country's full of commercial chart stations all playing the same stuff. The only alternative shows available to promote bands like us are on late at night."
'Precious' is set to be an album of angry retort against the people who held the band back, with themes of "being let down, being pissed off, and sticking two fingers to people". It's indicative of the time in which it was written, and the emotions the band experienced during their various recent crises, says Danielle.
The American singer appears confidently at ease, and admits to feeling good about the record and expecting good things of it. Harrison, who describes herself as "raised on rock" and influenced by such diverse acts as Elliot Smith, Queens of the Stone Age and Metallica, sees a bright future for the new Skindive. "I can't wait to get out there and tour, so we can sell records which will allow us to tour again and keep touring!"  From: https://www.cluas.com/music/features/skindive_interview.htm