Vinylism

The Plimsouls' new live album Live! Beg, Borrow & Steal hit the street last week by way of Alive Records. It's a collection of previously unreleased tracks from an early-era gig, showcasing the band in their early Sunset Strip heyday. Singer Peter Case weighs in. by T. Ballard Lesemann The Plimsouls found a place in my vinyl collection decades ago. And they've been with me ever since. Recently ...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Randy Weston's signature recording session Uhuru Afrika, certainly a good time to reflect on that singular record in this Randy's 84th year on the planet.  And Im happy to report that our as-told-to book African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston, composed by Randy Weston, arranged by Willard Jenkins, will be released by Duke University Press this ...

The five albums released by the revived label component of Ardent Studios in the early 1970s were almost exclusively acts that called Memphis home at the time, including Big Star, The Hot Dogs and Oklahoma natives Cargoe. The one outlier is a very atypical sort of album for either Ardent and its distributor Stax/Volt: Wringing Applause by Brian Alexander Robertson.

Set to open to the public in late 2010, the repository includes materials from Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix and other artists, as well as from record company executives and other movers and shakers.

The 45 rpm record is the most important format in all of recorded music. For the consumers who didn't always have the money (and the bands who didn't always have the material), two or three songs could slake the musical appetites satisfactorily. To this day, there are bands known for one or two killer singles and little else. Though largely overshadowed by the digital single, with resurgence ...

A very hep person I know -- I mean, she can pick out a Johnny Griffin sax solo playing on a sound system in a crowded Park Slope bar -- was over at my place earlier today, and going through the vinyl stacks on my floor, and asked, 'Who's Jackie Paris?' She was looking at an Impulse LP called 'The Song Is Paris,' recorded in January and May 1962, arranged and conducted by Bobby Scott. Side one of ...

A top story from this week. We told you about the free Deftones song yesterday, now here is the official word about the new album

"I wanted to see something that wasn't trying so hard to be new."

In Store spotlights San Francisco's quirkiest, most beloved, weirdest, and/or otherwise-most-interesting record stores. Our city's unmistakable friskiness and cultural capital emanate from ...

Whether they are toilet training the family cat or having misadventures on a bicycle, Stuart McLean says his imaginative Vinyl Cafe characters have lives of their own.