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The Musicangle Interview: Producer Rick Rubin Part 2
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 30, 2004

MF: Just to change the subject, do you know who P.D. Ouspensky is?

RR: Yes.

MF: Did you read “In Search of the Miraculous?”

RR: Yes.

MF: That book changed my life. I don’t live it but he managed to merge mysticism with science and create a music-based universe.

RR: Have you ever listened to the Gurdjieff piano pieces?

MF: Keith Jarrett recorded some, and Thomas D. Hartmann?

RR: Yes. They are so beautiful. I listen to those quite a lot.

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Features
The Musicangle Interview: Producer Rick Rubin Part I
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 30, 2004

Producer Rick Rubin born in Long Beach, Long Island, New York in 1963, graduated high school in 1981. Johnny Cash, born in Kingsland, Arkansas in 1932, graduated high school in 1950. Yet these two, separated in time by more than thirty years, and by an even wider socio-cultural gap, will forever be linked by the music they created together during Cash’s last decade of life. Rubin’s resurrection of Cash’s career with the release of American Music in 1994 is but one fascinating facet of this enigmatic figure’s twenty year career in music.

In 1984, while a film and video student at N.Y.U., Rubin met Russell Simmons at Danceteria—a New York club where downtown hardcore rockers and uptown rappers mixed comfortably—and the two immediately hit it off, sharing a common musical vision of hard beats and hard rhymes, with Simmons drawing from R&B roots and Rubin from hard rock. Rubin had a vision of melding the two seemingly disparate musical forms and though he’d never produced a record, he sought out the duo of T. La Rock and Jazzy Jay, and out of that came a 12” vinyl single, “It’s Yours,” which was released on Partytime/Streetwise records. It featured rhyming raps set to a loud, hardcore beat with metal overtones. Though the track went on to sell around 100,000 copies—an impressive number for the newly emerging musical genre—Rubin was never paid for his work.

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Features
The Musicangle Interview: Producer Rick Rubin, Part 3
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 30, 2004

MF: You seem like the kind of person who looks around and sees what’s bother you in music—things that are not being done—and you do them. I mean, that’s how you got started in music, essentially. So who’s out there now that’s lying fallow that need to be re-cultivated? Don’t say Yoko Ono.

RR: There are a couple, but I can’t talk about it yet. A couple that I think could really be special.

MF: Have you approached any of them?

RR: A couple.

MF: Well they’ve seen what you’ve done so I can’t imagine it will be as difficult as it might have been getting to Johnny Cash. How about Neil Diamond as a person to do a record with?

RR: He’s one of my favorite artists of all time. Incredible.

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DiscographiesFeatures
The Peaceful Glitch Pop of Sketch Show
Malachi Lui  |  Nov 09, 2021
Earlier this year, I wrote a four-part series about Yellow Magic Orchestra, the seminal synthpop trio of Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Of course, that’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg; between solo records, collaborations, other bands, productions for others, and session credits, hundreds of wildly varying releases encompass the YMO-centered extended discography.

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Features
The Perfect Songbird’s Soundtrack: An On-Vinyl Appreciation of Christine McVie’s Six Decades of Blues-Based Music and Chart-Topping Songwriting
Mike Mettler  |  Dec 01, 2022

Christine McVie, vocalist/keyboardist and one of the principal songwriters in Fleetwood Mac, passed away in her native England yesterday, November 30, at age 79, following a brief illness. McVie — who made her initial impact on Britain’s blues-centric concert and recording circuit in the late 1960s under her given name, Christine Perfect — was perhaps best known for chart-ready singalong Fleetwood Mac hits like “Don’t Stop,” “Little Lies,” and “Over My Head,” but her musical legacy runs much, much deeper than that. It seems only fitting that we here at AnalogPlanet salute such a stellar six-decade recording and performing career with highlights of McVie’s work on vinyl — some, if not many LPs and 45s of which are likely in your own collections. Read on to get our take on the legacy of this truly unique songbird on LP. . .

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Album ReviewsFeatures
The Records You Didn't Know You Needed #3: Bert Jansch  (Transatlantic TRA 125)
Joseph W. Washek  |  Mar 18, 2021
On December 9, 2010 at about 11:30 pm, I was standing in front of Johnny D’s, a now defunct and demolished Somerville, Massachusetts club, alone with Bert Jansch who about an hour earlier had finished an hour plus set. It was cold, in the twenties and sleet was becoming snow. Bert was holding his guitar, uncased, by the neck in his right hand.

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Features
The Records You Didn't Know You Needed #4 Tell Mama   Etta James (Cadet LPS 802)
Joseph W. Washek  |  Apr 26, 2021
Etta James was in the heartbreak business. Other singers sold sweet dreams of love, romance, and sex, but Etta James sold pain and she had an endless supply. The pain started early. She never knew who her father was. When she was born, her mother who was fourteen, abandoned her, leaving her with a childless older couple. The woman, called “Mama Lu” by Etta, became her surrogate mother, and she was loved and spoiled by her and they lived happily. But not ever after, because all was not well and never would be. Periodically, her birth mother, Dorothy, who loved the night life, would appear and take the child away. It was always the same. They would live in squalor until a few weeks passed and then, bored and frustrated with parenthood, Dorothy would return Etta to Mama Lu. The pattern continued until Etta was twelve when Mama Lu died. Dorothy appeared, told Etta that she would be living with her now, and took her to San Francisco. There, Dorothy met her brother on a street corner, left Etta with him, and walked away.

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Features
The Records You Didn’t Know You Needed- - - #5:Charlie Byrd at The Village Vanguard—Offbeat 93008, Riverside 9452
Joseph W. Washek  |  Jun 22, 2021
In June 2020, Analog Planet published my article on the great audio engineer, David Jones’ Living Legends Riverside recordings of Black Traditional Jazz in New Orleans during the last week of January 1961. While researching the article, by checking records in my collection I compiled a list of Riverside albums for which Jones had been credited or co-credited as engineer.

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Features
The Records You Didn’t Know You Needed--- #2: Tracy Nelson—Doin’ It My Way—(Audio Directions AD101)
Joseph W. Washek  |  Feb 19, 2021
Tracy Nelson is such a great singer that you have to wonder why she never became a major, “you still hear her on the radio” star. Her deep, powerful, soulful voice is instantly recognizable whether she is singing, rock, country, r&b or blues. The usual vocal comparison is to Janis Joplin, which I’m sure Ms. Nelson got tired of hearing by the late 60s or sooner, but I’d say Nelson, while lacking the Joplin charisma, is a more subtle and technically, a better singer.

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Features
The Records You Didn’t Know You Needed---#1: Chet Baker—My Funny Valentine---(Circle 23581 26)
Joseph W. Washek  |  Feb 19, 2021
When Chet Baker died in 1988, he wasn’t an icon of “cool,” he was a has-been. The biopic with the Hollywood star and the consistent ranking among the top-selling jazz CDs on Amazon was far in the future and long after he was gone. The New York Times obit was perfunctory, misstated his age, and devoted two sentences to his career post-1950s. Baker, in the 1980s, had been the same unrepentant, narco-ssistic junkie mess that he had been since the mid 1950s, but he was working in Europe, playing mostly small clubs, driving from gig to gig, and sleeping on couches instead of the way it had been in the ’50s in the U.S.—playing concert tours, fielding movie offers, topping the jazz polls and charts, his popularity making even Miles Davis jealous.

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Features
The Records You Didn’t Know You Needed---#6: Tubby Hayes The Fontana Albums (1961-1969) Eleven LP Box Set
Joseph W. Washek  |  Jul 23, 2021
On March 6, 1961, world-class tenor saxophonist and vibes player Tubby Hayes (1935-1973) regarded as the finest musician on the British modern jazz scene signed a contract to record for the U.K. Fontana label. He had previously recorded for small jazz specialist label Tempo. Though the new contract didn’t provide for an advance or a money guarantee, Fontana was a major label that issued all types of recordings and could provide for his records better distribution and promotion including possible U.S. distribution. Hayes was the first bop generation British musician awarded a major label contract. Hard as it may be to imagine today, the signing was not only jazz news, but major music news worth of a “Melody Maker” cover story.

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Features
The Reel-to-Reel Revival, Part 1: A Brief History of the Format
Leslie Shapiro  |  Jan 27, 2025

There’s a whisper in the world of audiophiles, a spinning rumble that digital audio is out, and analog is back in a big way. Amongst the spinning of vinyl and the hum of tube amps, another important analog medium is rolling out of the past and right into the hearts of the modern-day sound purist — the reel-to-reel tape player. Read Part 1 of Leslie Shapiro’s in-depth reel-to-reel report to learn more about the history of this important analog format. . .

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Features
The Reel-to-Reel Revival, Part 2: The Format’s Sonic Advantages, Some Major Players, and Why Threading Tape Is a Ritual Worth Learning and/or Revisiting
Leslie Shapiro  |  Jan 28, 2025

In a world of endless Spotify playlists and 24-bit streaming, why are people flocking back to reel-to-reel players and tapes, a format invented nearly a century ago? Read Part 2 of Leslie Shapiro’s insider series (featuring Revox, Ballfinger, Metaxas & Sins, Recording The Masters, and more) to find out exactly why reel-to-reel remains as vital as ever. . .

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Album ReviewsFeatures
The Rolling Stones in Mono Box Set Reviewed
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 28, 2016
You don’t have to be Phil Spector or Brian Wilson to appreciate mono sound, as anyone who’s purchased the recent mono Beatles box can attest. When these records were originally produced, they were meant to be heard in mono both because they were played on the AM radio, which was mono and because the young people buying the music mostly had monophonic record players. Plus that is how The Rolling Stones wanted to be heard, which is the most important reason of all.

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Features
The Roxy Music Box Set: The Rest of the Box ("Avalon" Info Corrected)
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 23, 2015
Finally, here's the second part of the Roxy Music box set review. Read Part One here.

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