Today’s confection: Margo Guryan’s 1968 platter of orchestral pop, Take A Picture. We’ve waxed on Guryan’s excellent 25 Demos collection here in the past, but Take A Picture further succeeds in taking the singer-songwriter and placing her compositions within a smart pop context not dissimilar from the headspace Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks were [...]
“Once Bill was making extremely forward statements from behind a veil. Now he’s making veiled statements from a forward position. He’s fundamentally the same person, but stylistically almost everything has changed.” The above quote is pulled from last Friday’s New York Times piece on Bill Callahan. Quoted is Rian Murphy, former bandmate and office manger [...]
Reheated vinyl rip of Grant Green covering the Meters’ “Ease Back” off the 1969 Carryin’ On LP. (via) MP3: Grant Green :: Ease Back (The Meters) ——————— _____________________________________________________________________________________
Via Autumn Tone, we’re releasing Dirty Gold’s debut EP, Roar, today. At five tracks, the EP is a set of shimmering beachside pop, here just in time for the change in season. Get a taste, below. MP3: Dirty Gold :: California Sunrise ——————— _____________________________________________________________________________________
(Diversions, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, catches up with our favorite artists as they wax on subjects other than recording and performing.) One cannot overstate the power of regionalism. Growing up in Georgia, in a rather musical household, I assumed the music of Eddie Hinton was as well known as, say, that of Sam [...]
I’ve been catching up on Ethan Miller’s blog, Silver Currant, over the past couple of months. Sporadically updated, Miller, who fronts Howlin’ Rain, presents a treasure trove of homemade psych compilations (and more) geared toward the obscure and out of print. All very much worth checking out if that sort of thing does it for [...]
An inherited copy, on wax, of Ray Charles’ Live In Concert has been in my regular rotation for years. Last month I read (via the LA Times) that the classic set was finally seeing a CD release. The following bit further grabbed my attention: “The original 12-song LP, which peaked at No. 80 on Billboard’s [...]
Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 26 (SIRIUS), and channel 43 (XM), can now be heard twice, every Friday – Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. SIRIUS 188: Jean Michel Bernard – Generique Stephane ++ Family Portrait – Other Side ++ Kurt Vile – Hunchback ++ Akron/Family – So it [...]
File under awesome. 1973 no-frills, no bullshit, cock rock. This is Zipper—Fred Cole and company’s sicko American twist on Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. MP3: Zipper :: Bullets —————— ____________________________________________________________________________________
Speaking of western Africa…here’s a set I’ve been sitting on since December—Psychedelic Aliens, Psycho African Beat. A funky, early 70s, Ghanaian psych-soul collection culled from a mish-mash of tracks destined to labor in indefinite obscurity prior to the entry of the Academy Records gang. Released at the tail end of 2010, the collection gathers up [...]
