Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Howard Tate update!
Since making that last post, I've learned about the Universal off-shoot Hip-O Select, which is similar to the Rhino Handmade label. Hip-O Select has reissued Tate's Get It While You Can with 18 bonus tracks!!! Oddly enough, they still don't have the two bonus tracks featured on the Kent reissue. It's limited to 5000 copies.

posted by Jonathan

Tracklisting and cover art to the previously mentioned Howard Tate Get It While You Can reissue can be found here. The title is set to come out on Kent Records, and you will notice that it has two songs not featured on the 1995 Verve reissue, Get It While You Can: The Legendary Sessions. The songs are "Ain't Got Nobody To Give It To" and "Can You Top This." I don't know anything about the latter track, but "Ain't Got Nobody To Give It To" was originally featured on the brilliant Lost Soul compilation. Kent's website does not have the title listed yet, but hopefully the label will confirm this release in the coming days.

The Kent site has information and the tracklisting to the upcoming James Carr disc, The Best of the Rest. I haven't gone through the tracklisting to see how much of a crossover there is between this release and the other Kent reissues of A Man Needs a Woman, You Got My Mind Messed Up and the Complete Goldwax Singles, but hopefully Kent has unearthed enough unreleased material to make this worth owning.

posted by Jonathan

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Elvin Jones: RIP.
posted by Jonathan

Monday, May 10, 2004

So blogger went and changed up the format. Yikes!

In other news, Nick Southall has written a great review of the new Streets album here. The only quibbling I might have is his suggestion that people won't want to listen to "Blinded By The Light" often. For me, it's one of the many highlights of the album, both lyrically and musically, and as the thumping beats and music swell as the ecstacy takes effect over Skinner, it's easy to get lost in the moment captured by the song. I would LOVE to hear this song in a club!

posted by Jonathan

Sunday, May 09, 2004

Anyone interested in hearing post-Blur Graham Coxon should download his new single, "Freakin' Out." Great pop-punky single, which made me hopeful that his new album would be better than previous solo efforts. I finally listened to the album, titled Happiness in Magazines, and it's worse than I could have imagined. "Bittersweet Bundle of Memory" is just a weak pop song with striking similarities to "Coffee and TV," "Girl Done Wrong" is a horrible garage-blues ala White Stripes rip-off, and "People of the Earth" attempts to be Johnny Rotten-esque, but fails miserably. Also, Coxon's vocals haven't aged well. While he might have sounded refreshing on the odd Blur song (peaking with "You're So Great"), he offers nothing new or interesting here. He also goes all over the map musically, but nothing (except the Skids-influenced single) works. He would be smarter releasing the one-off single, and waiting patiently for Damon Albarn et al. to invite him back to the band.

posted by Jonathan