Audio Visions South, the Tampa Bay area’s premiere, locally owned, high-end stereo and video store, will throw the second edition of its two-part event called “The Future of Music All Age Access Audio” on Sat., July 25, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The store’s acoustically exquisite listening rooms will buzz with activities.

The gathering will give music lovers a bunch of useful tips on gear, vinyl, accessories and more, and focus on how to maximize your music experience: AVS invites you to bring your digital media, CDs, LPs, iPod and laptop with you. Here are some of the event’s features:

• A Nitty Gritty LP cleaning station will be set up so your albums will be at peak performance levels when you learn to rip them to your computer.

• You will also learn the best way to rip CDs. Once ripped, you can load all your favorite tunes to your iPod and then we’ll help you figure out how to integrate your iTunes library with your in-home Hi-Fi system.

• We’ll go over streaming video and the best download method for your set up.

• You will learn about headphones and headphone amplifiers, tube docks and bookshelf speakers.

• A list of recommended components will be available to help narrow down your options from the vast sea of new technology that’s become available over the last couple of years.

For more information and to RSVP reply to this email or call 813.876.5236.

Or just show up: AVS is at 3655 Henderson Blvd. Tampa,

Uh oh, the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is about a month and a half away. Did you remember? If not, it’s probably due to the distinct lack of buzz, seeing as there is no official concert scheduled, although boosters keep adding “as yet” in hopes that original co-producer Michael Lang will manage to put together a show in New York’s Prospect Park.

A handful of mostly lame events are planned for different parts of the country, and a tour called Heroes of Woodstock — featuring Mountain, Jefferson Starship, Tom Constanten (repping Grateful Dead) and others — has 16 dates on the books (none in the Southeast). In all, though, it would seem as if folks have other things on their mind than memorializing the watershed cultural event.

That doesn’t mean it’s a complete wasteland. Sony Music has released a well-thought-out group of reissues called The Woodstock Experience, five two-CD packages pairing a classic 1969 album and a complete Woodstock performance. Sony catalog artists Santana, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, Jefferson Airplane and Sly and the Family Stone got the treatment.

Thirty-three acts performed at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair from Aug. 15-18, 1969, including such long-forgotten names as Quill, Sweetwater, Keef Hartley Band and Bert Sommer. (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Byrds and a handful of lesser-knowns declined invitations. Jeff Beck, Iron Butterfly and Joni Mitchell canceled.)

Only a handful of the performances have been immortalized, mostly via the 1970 film Woodstock and its soundtrack. And Sony can legitimately boast three of them in this collection: Sly, Santana and Joplin. Winter did not make it into the movie and while Jefferson Airplane were represented with two songs in celluloid, their set has not earned the same historical cachet as the top three.

Let’s have us a closer look at these twofers. I’ve ranked them on their merit as live performances.

Sly and the Family Stone. The runaway winner. Sly’s 50-minute, nine-song show is a balls-out party from the opening “M’Lady” to the closer “Stand!” The group’s rhythm tracks have a collective propulsion that has as much to do with Larry Graham’s rumbling bass and the interlocking guitars as it does with drums. Deep, deep funk — with rock crunch. Sly and company find just the right blend of scripted performance and in-the-moment spontaneity.

A band has to be really tight to play this loose. They accelerate the pace of “Everyday People,” giving it a gospel-tent fervor. The sing-along during “I Want to Take You Higher,” one of Woodstock the film’s crescendos, benefits from the leadup tune “Music Lover” and Sly’s spoken set-up. Even the song “Love City,” in my view a second-tier Sly tune, has an uncommon crackle. The set’s companion CD, Stand!, is a terrific bonus, the best Sly album this side of Greatest Hits.

Santana. The band’s self-titled debut, which is the companion CD in this twofer, was released in May ’69 and reached No. 4 on the charts in late September, so it’s safe to say that a scintillating performance at Woodstock played a big part in putting Santana on the map.

The group’s use of Latin rhythms must have been an exotic treat for the hippie hordes in upstate New York. Santana plays a fairly rote version of the hit-to-be “Evil Ways,” but excels in the dynamic Latin jams, especially “Soul Sacrifice,” with its relentless groove, roil of hand percussion, monster riff and hair-raising guitar solo.


Janis Joplin. The damaged blues-rock songstress had made her bones two years earlier at the Monterey Pop festival. A few months before Woodstock she left the sub-par Big Brother and the Holding Company, went solo and transformed her show into kaleidoscopic R&B revue, heavy on the horns. I generally find Joplin’s vocals akin to a razor blade scraped against a rock, but I’ll give her credit for the unhinged energy and commitment she puts into her ragged performance.

Of all the live CDs in this series Joplin’s most effectively captures the flavor of Woodstock. Before closing with “Ball and Chain,” she launches into a spacey speech, in which she says, “Music’s for grooving, man, and music’s not puttin’ yourself through bad changes. You don’t have to take anybody’s shit, man, just to like music. So if you’re getting more shit than you deserve, you know what to do about it.” Uh, OK. If Joplin’s caterwauling in her Woodstock set wears you out, load up the companion CD, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, where she tones it down considerably.

Johnny Winter. Very few people knew of the reed-thin albino when he took the stage and pumped out an hour of raucous Texas blues, boogie and early rock ’n’ roll. Winter’s set thrust him into pantheon of late ’60s guitar heroes. He played fast, and fast was much revered in that era. As his career has worn on, Winter has spewed so many notes that it’s devolved into chattering, but at Woodstock he brought a lot of slides, slurs and bends into play. His bottleneck work on “Mean Town Blues” still raises goosebumps.

Winter, joined mid-set by his brother Edgar on sax and keyboards, played a show in front of a few hundred thousand people in much the same way he would’ve performed at a roadhouse outside Fort Worth. The second album in the package is Winter’s self-titled debut.

Jefferson Airplane. The San Francisco band’s ensemble vocals always sounded precariously held together, even on this set’s companion CD, the stridently anti-war Volunteers. At Woodstock, the singing came unglued. Grace Slick’s pitch wavered and her already shrill voice turned into a yelp.

The blend of instruments is mushy — and not just because of the recording quality — and the guitars consistently slide out of tune. The rhythms wander, and the extended jams — especially on “Wooden Ships” — come off as rudderless noodling. The band gets a foothold near the end of the set with a sharp “White Rabbit,” but by then it’s too late.

CAUSE WE SEZ SO!

VINYL:

• Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted, limited edition Tori litho w/ purchase (while supplies last)!

• Booker T – Potato Hole

• Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

• Les Claypool – Of Fungi and Foe

Leonard Cohen reissues:

• Live Songs
• New Skin For The Old Ceremony
  
• Songs From a Room
• Songs of Leonard Cohen
• Songs of Love & Hate

180 gram Sundazed reissues:

Combichrist – Heat EP:  All Pain Is Beat
three tracks on a red buzz saw-shaped slab of vinyl.

Crystal Method – Divided By Night

Cursive – Mama I’m Swollen

Eagles of Death Metal - Heart On

Headlights - Remixes
Originally released as a limited edition CD last December and sold out in less than three months. Now comes this limited edition (2,000 copies) LP featuring remixes from The Album Leaf, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and Son Lux, to name a few. Includes digital download code with bonus track.

Horrors – Primary Colours

Iron & Wine – Around The Well (3LP)
Collects songs ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released and spans Iron And Wine’s earliest sessions which yielded the band’s debut (2002’s The Creek Drank The Cradle) through material recorded for 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog. An assortment of hushed home recordings, unedited and raw, and highlighted moments captured in the studio with the help of other musicians, friends and engineers.

Mates of State – All Day

Minor Threat – Salad Days 7″

Subhumans reissues

• Day The Country Died
• From The Cradle To the Grave

Warlocks – Mirror Explodes

CDs:

Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted

regular and deluxe version w/DVD. The DVD is a visualette from each song from the album.  Limited edition litho w/ purchase (while supplies last)!

Apostle of Hustle - Eats Darkness
Broken Social Scene and Feist-related

Busta Rhymes - Back on My B.S.

Carbon Leaf – Nothing Rhymes With

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds deluxe reissues

• First Born Is Dead
• From Her To Eternity
• Kicking Against The Pricks
• Your Funeral My Trial

Each deluxe double disc set contains the remastered stereo album, a new surround mix, a specially commisioned short film, plus the b-sides from the singles!

Kenny Chesney – Greatest Hits II

Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood – Live From Madison Square Garden

Jarvis Cocker – Further Complications
Recorded in Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, Further Complications contains the more roughed up tunes Cocker has been peddling since parting with Pulp.

Dane Cook – Isolated Incident (w/DVD)

Datsuns – Headstunts

Drama – Gangsta Grillz:  The Album Volume 2

Eminem – Relapse
Another skillful collaboration with Dr. Dre.

Field – Yesterday & Today

*Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown (*released Friday, 5/15)
Produced by Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage) 21st Century Breakdown continues American Idiot’s punk-rock opera format.  Limited edition litho w/ purchase (while supplies last)!

Guru – 8.0 Lost & Found

Hot Chip – A Bugged Out Mix

Iron & Wine - Around The Well
Collects songs ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released and spans Iron And Wine’s earliest sessions which yielded the band’s debut (2002’s The Creek Drank The Cradle) through material recorded for 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog. An assortment of hushed home recordings, unedited and raw, and highlighted moments captured in the studio with the help of other musicians, friends and engineers.

Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule
20th Anniversary deluxe edition features the original album remastered with 6 bonus tracks. Disc 2 features a 10 track live performance from a 1989 Boston performance and 2 tracks from a 1990 Amsterdam performance.

Kronos Quartet – Floodplain

Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard – Em Are I
w/ J Mascis.

Jason Lytle – Yours Truly The Commuter
After fifteen years at the helm of Grandaddy, Lytle returns with a new collection of songs that elaborates on the musical and lyrical ideas he explored in that band. Electronic flourishes collide with acoustic guitars and soulful piano parts, recreating Lytle’s signature electro-lo-fi atmospheres.

Steve Martin - Crow:  New Songs
Yes, THAT Steve Martin! New bluegrass songs from the actor/comic/musician/renaissance man!

Method Man & Redman - Blackout 2

Jim O’Rourke - I’m Happy and I’m Singing, and a 1-2-3-4
A solo computer album.  Equal parts schizoid pop, cracked minimalism, concrete drama and melancholic contemplation.

Lionel Richie – Just Go
really!

Sheek Louch – Life On D*Block

Siouxsie & The Banshees reissues w/ bonus tracks

• Hyaena
• Kiss In The Dreamhouse
• Nocturne
• Tinderbox

Subhumans reissues -

• Day The Country Died
• From The Cradle To The Grave

remastered from original analog tapes with restored artwork.

Swing Out Sister - Beautiful Mess
Sorry, we do’t know why either.

Pat Travers – Travelin’ Blues

True Blood Soundtrack
C.C. Adcock, Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, Allen Toussaint, The Legendary Shack Shakers, The Watson Twins and more.

US (Funkadelic) – US Music With Funkadelic
In 1972, as the lineup of Funkadelic that had made the first three albums collapsed, some members shuttled back and forth between Detroit and Toronto and kept recording. One of the projects they embarked upon was an LP by a group called U.S. (United Soul). The original album of five tracks includes some prime era Funkadelic grooves including the outrageous “Rat Kiss The Cat On The Navel” and “Be What You Is” which are both uptempo psychedelic funk, as well as the wonderful gospel-imbued vocals of Gary Shider on the opener “This Broken Heart.”  An album reached test-pressing stage, but was never released until now.

John Vanderslice – Romanian Names

Warlocks – Mirror Explodes

Scott Walker:  30th Century Man Soundtrack
Music influenced by the loner, with covers by Jarboe, Laurie Anderson, Saint Etienne, damon & Naomi and more.  Green Day (and most everyone else) is about 9 centuries behind this guy!

John Zorn – Alhambra Love Songs

DVDs:

Billy Jack
yeah!

Clapton & Winwood – Live From Madison Square Garden

De La Soul – Me Myself & I
1997 concert

King Crimson – Eyes Wide Open

Llik Your Idols
Through steamy excerpts, exclusive interviews RICHARD KERN, LYDIA LUNCH, JOE COLEMAN, THURSTON MOORE, in your face performances and previously unreleased photographs, LLIK YOUR IDOLS retraces the chaotic story of transgressive cinema.

Sia – TV Is My Parent

Paul Simon – & Friends

Sun Ra Arkestra – Points On A Space Age
The Arkestra, minus Ra.