LATEST ADDITIONS

Michael Fremer  |  Dec 26, 2012  |  7 comments
The classically trained Cuban-born jazz pianist Elio Villafranca and his group the Jass Syncopators recorded this album Direct-to-Disk last Winter at the "Least Significant Bit Studios", which is actually a large room in the Sound-Smith.com production facility converted into a performance space/recording studio.

The double LP set is but one of many DirectGrace D2D records produced by Sound-Smith's founder Peter Ledermann to benefit a charity dedicated to helping some 215 million exploited children around the world enduring child labor, or abandoned to the streets due to the AIDS epidemic and other public health catastrophes.

Michael Fremer  |  Dec 26, 2012  |  14 comments
The late Arthur Lee exited a California prison in December of 2001, having served more than five years of a twelve year sentence for negligent discharge of a firearm. The long mandatory sentence resulted from California's ridiculous, now repealed "three strikes you're out" law.

Before being incarcerated Lee had resurrected his moribund career by teaming with a talented group called Baby Lemonade (named for a Syd Barrett song) much as had Brian Wilson with The Wondermints. Once out of prison, Lee took up where he left off, touring the world as Arthur Lee and Love.

Michael Fremer  |  Dec 22, 2012  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  12 comments
Until the publication of this book this past fall, few people have seen this mind-boggling collection of black and white images shot by the late photographer Chuck Boyd in Los Angeles beginning in 1965. Though Boyd passed away in 1991 this set stops with a remarkable double page shot of B.B. King taken in 1978.
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 22, 2012  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  1 comments
Stage photography begins with being at the right place at the right time. Some people have a knack for it. Within a very short time back in the 1980s music fan Jimmy Steinfeldt went from standing on a-chair fan snapshots to having his photographs published in major music magazines like SPIN and Rolling Stone.
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 21, 2012  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  6 comments
It's too bad no one at The David Letterman Show read this book before Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page recently appeared on the show. Dave wasn't prepared, didn't know what to say or ask and so it was all inane small talk.
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 21, 2012  |  11 comments
While The Beatles' musical arc was ever upward, the group's cinematic efforts traveled in the opposite direction. "A Hard Day's Night" was the group's best film. Shooting in black and white was more of a financial than esthetic choice it worked perfectly to capture the staid post-war period the boys found themselves in growing up.
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 20, 2012  |  45 comments
A woman walks into a butcher shop. She says "Can I see that chicken?" The butcher hands it to her. She smells it in front, she smells it in back, she smells it all over and then hands it back to the butcher saying "Mister, this chicken stinks!" The butcher replies "Lady, could you pass a test like that?"
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 19, 2012  |  12 comments
Released in the U.K. November 22nd, 1963—the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, many of the songs here weren't released in America until Capitol issued Meet The Beatles! in January of 1964 but a few bitter months after the assassination. America, particularly its youth needed an emotional pick me up and The Beatles provided it, though more on the Vee-Jay album than on this one.
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 19, 2012  |  5 comments
Recorded live at Abbey Road in fewer than ten hours in February of 1963 at a cost of around £400 and issued on March 22 (my Beatles birthday present), Please Please Me captured all of the raw energy of The Beatles playing live at The Cavern Club, though on stage they didn't put the vocals in one P.A. speaker and the instruments in the other!
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 19, 2012  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  32 comments
With all of the reissues coming from questionable sources or proudly proclaiming their "digital-ness" ala The Beatles Box, we're fortunate to have labels like Analogue Productions, Mobile Fidelity, ORG, IMPEX, Rhino and the others cutting lacquers from analog tapes.

Pages

X