Vinyl Reports

Sean Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon, in conjunction with Mercury Studios and Universal Music Recordings (UMR), have finally answered a decades-long fan request for release of the One To One Concert, a pair of benefit performances at Madison Square Garden in New York City held in the afternoon and evening of August 30, 1972. Long bootlegged, this new release — now officially named Power to the People, in celebration of the Ono-Lennons’ inspiring and tumultuous political activist years in NYC, and officially credited to John & Yoko / Plastic One Band — appears in multiple formats, including a 180g 4LP box set. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if the 4LP Power box set is worth the entry fee. . .

Pre-eminent singer/songwriter Patty Griffin, a two-time Grammy Award-winner, shares a powerful and personal journey with listeners on her latest LP, Crown of Roses. Read Julie Mullins review to see if Griffin and her ace production team deliver the goods on vinyl. . .

Three years into his by-then-annual, highly anticipated Halloween concert celebrations, guitarist, composer, and all-around music icon Frank Zappa pulled out all the stops as a very big “thank you” to his New York audiences in October 1978, delivering an epic, nearly four-hour performance for the ages. The full show has finally been released by Zappa/UMe as a 5CD uber-deluxe box set for the true Zappaphiles amongst us — but there is also a companion, readily digestible, and equally tasty abbreviated 180g 2LP collection for one and all, Halloween 78 Highlights: Live at the Palladium, New York, which was released on October 24, 2025. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see why Halloween 78 is worth spinning, posted here just in time to help us all finish out our aural enjoyment of this most spooktacular holiday. . .

When we first learned there was a new, expansive retrospective focusing on singer, songwriter, and all-around music legend Yusuf / Cat Stevens, we also realized that there indeed was a need for an up-to-date overview of the artist, past to present. Read Mark Smotroff’s review of Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ new On the Road to Findout 4LP collection to see if it covers all the career bases the way we need to hear them on vinyl. . .

Steve Stevens isn’t one for sitting still. As you probably know, Stevens is the longtime guitar foil for iconoclast British alt-punk rocker Billy Idol, who released a killer new autobiographical LP earlier this year called Dream Into It. Read AP editor Mike Mettler’s interview with Stevens to see why sequencing for vinyl is of utmost importance to both him and Idol, how he got that “bullet blast” for his solo on “Rebel Yell,” and why European progressive rock became one of his key influences. . .

One Size Fits All is arguably the peak of Frank Zappa’s acclaimed mid-1970s incarnation of The Mothers of Invention, an assemblage that helped him deliver two smash-hit albums, September 1973’s Over-Nite Sensation and March 1974’s Apostrophe (’). Read Mark Smotroff’s review of both the 180g 1LP and 2LP color-variant special editions of June 1975’s One Size Fits All that have been released in celebration of the 50th anniversary of an album universally revered as one of the maestro’s rock masterworks to see if they pass the “Sofa” playback test, if you will. . .

Two albums recently reissued as part of Rhino’s esteemed High Fidelity Series could not be further apart stylistically, sonically, and emotionally — but in some ways, these two releases are inevitably connected in time and space. In this special Short Cuts combo review, Mark Smotroff explores the value of picking up the Hi Fi Series versions of these platinum-selling hits from Fleetwood Mac and Sex Pistols, and draws some interesting parallels in the process. . .