Album Reviews

This year for Record Store Day, I joined the Music Millennium line at 5:40 AM. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, they let 10 customers inside the store at once, and enforced social distancing in line. When the sun rose around 6:00, owner Terry Currier handed out tickets corresponding to our spots in line, with specific time slots to arrive back later and shop. I left and arrived back at 8:15, ultimately going over my expected budget and buying 10 records. I’m still processing the Bowie, Tyler, Clipping, and Ron Carter releases (another RSD-themed Review Explosion of those coming soon), but below are reviews of my other pickups (I also bought a copy of Angel Olsen’s latest album Whole New Mess for a general Vinyl Review Explosion).

Newvelle’s Season Five Box is ready, but sorry, we’re behind so here’s coverage of Season Four’s box just in time for the subscription-based label’s Black Friday Record Store Day “open box” specials.

First the specials: eleven individual albums from the label’s first four years, including two from Season Four’s box, will be available exclusively from Wednesday, November 27th to Monday December 2nd, on the Newvelle website. There are albums from familiar names like the late Don Friedman and Ben Allison and others as well including from season four, Billy Lester’s From Scratch and Kenny Werner’s Church on Mars.

In addition, the label is offering during this Wednesday-Monday Black Friday RSD promotion, free shipping when you purchase the full Season Four box set.

AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer is not a classical music authority. If you didn't know that before watching this frantic, somewhat shallow video, you will after!

Don Was, community organizer. Who would have thought? There's long been a Blue Note "community" but it's a loose knit, worldwide group of like-minded label enthusiasts that have kept the Blue Note flame glowing. The fans remained true even as the company changed hands, lost artistic focus, engaged in self-exploitation and occasionally tried to re-invent itself into something it was not.

The second David Bowie box set covers but two years—1974-1976—but for David Bowie that timespan leaped across a few musical universes.

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.

There's something deeply offensive to me about picking apart the sound on the David Bowie [Five Years 1969-1973] box set. The guy is gone, the sadness lingers and maybe it's time to just enjoy and celebrate the music.