Short Cuts

It is time again to relax and float downstream to the psychedelic 1960s with a fine trio of rarity reissues from three top-flight boundary-pushing sonic warriors: Love (The Elektra Singles), Tim Buckley (Happy Sad), and Billy Nicholls (Would You Believe). Read Mark Smotroff’s combo Short Cuts review of all three of these upgraded LPs to see which ones you should get now to feed your analog head in the way you should. . .

Two iconic pillars of fantastic, fast ’n furious funkified artistry are the focus for today’s deep funk ‘n’ soul edition of our ongoing Short Cuts review series: 1) Fire on the Bayou, the Allan Toussaint-produced, Reprise-released July 1975 sixth LP from New Orleans legends The Meters, and 2) The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend, the lone LP from James “Baby Huey” Ramey, an album that went on to become an influential, and heavily sampled, release for the hip-hop generation. Read Mark Smotroff’s combo Short Cuts review to see how Rhino Reserve has brought these two classic LPs new life on 180g vinyl. . .

Several iconic, pop-rockin’, punk-adjacent artists from the late 1970s and early 1980s new-wave era have new albums out now — and there are also a number of encouraging audiophile-oriented reissues as well. For this somewhat thematic Short Cuts installment, Mark Smotroff zeros in on a mixture of both by exploring a pair of fun new releases from The Vapors and Peter Holsapple, plus an AAA reissue of a Violent Femmes album we suspect many of us overlooked at the time of its original 1984 release. . .

The two latest releases in Craft Recordings’ ongoing, and quite superb, Bluesville reissue series sing the joys electric and acoustic blues from two generations of legendary blues artists. The 180g 1LP Bluesville editions of Buddy Guy’s 1968 live Vanguard debut This Is Buddy Guy! and Scrapper Blackwell’s 1962 Prestige Bluesville classic Mr. Scrapper’s Blues are both being released concurrently today, May 16, 2025, so read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if either/both of these blues albums should be instant purchases for your collection and listening pleasure. . .

Before we turn our posting attention to covering AXPONA the rest of this week, we wanted to do a short preview/review ahead of Record Store Day, which is taking place this Saturday, April 12, 2025. Read Mark Smotroff’s review of three key RSD multi-disc LP sets from Resonance Records featuring legendary jazz musicians Charles Mingus, Kenny Dorham, and Freddie Hubbard. . .

Original blues vinyl pressings are cousins to jazz and soul LPs in terms of scarcity and availability in super-clean condition, just a few of the reasons why they are often super-expensive propositions in the collector’s marketplace. That all makes these four truly outstanding Acoustic Sounds-pedigreed reissues from Verve/UMe and Craft Recordings’ Bluesville series all the more important — in effect, bringing a quartet of classic LP rarities back into more widespread availability in a high-quality manner. Read Mark Smotroff’s Short Cuts combo review to see which of these four 180g 1LP AAA releases from John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, and Lonnie Johnson With Elmer Snowden belong in your collection. . .

There is something incredibly compelling about Elemental Music and UMe’s ongoing, affordably priced, and generally well-made reissue series of classic Motown titles. Read Mark Smotroff’s latest Motown Short Cuts combo review to see which of these 140g 1LP editions of classic LPs from The Temptations, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight & The Pips, and Eddie Kendricks belong in your collection. . .