Tampa Calling

Brought straight to your desktops by Lee at Vinyl Fever.

VINYL:

AA Bondy – American Hearts
Their latest (2008) release, now available on vinyl.

Amon Duul II – Yeti
“Yeti” was the second album by Amon Duul II and is quite a musical achievement. This is a double LP set and contains some of Amon Duul’s most impressive work – delivering their thick, full-fledged, multi-layered sound with dense instrumentation and a certain epic vastness. This is Krautrock in the full depth of its power: huge, towering, dark and completely devoid of any happy optimism, but still bound full of energy. An essential bit of the psych/prog era. Released with the original artwork.

Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
Deluxe reissue features the original album remastered and a bonus disc of 12 rarities, live tracks and B-sides.

David Bowie – Man Who Sold The World
David Bowie – Pinups
High-end Simply Vinyl label pressings.

The Clash – The Clash
The Clash – Give ‘Em Enough Rope
The Clash – Combat Rock
High-end Simply Vinyl label pressings.

The Dead Weather – Horehound
The latest musical adventure by Jack White epitomizes the alt-rock ethic: do the music you love, do it yourself, and do it fast. The Dead Weather brings together lead singer Alison Mosshart (half of the London-based lo-fi post-punk duo The Kills), Queens Of The Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita, The Raconteurs’ bassist Jack Lawrence, and White on drums and vocals.

Iggy & The Stooges – More Power
Digitally remastered collection of rare studio recordings from the Raw Power era.

Son Volt – American Central Dust
Now available on vinyl. Read the rest of this entry »

This album looks great on paper:

Legendary organist and Stax Records session mainstay Booker T. joins forces with the Drive-By Truckers, whose Patterson Hood is the son of Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood. Add Neil Young’s lead guitar into the mix, and the result? Gritty instrumental R&B gold, right?

Not really. Potato Hole sounds like a set of 10 rhythm tracks in search of songs — melodies, vocals, that sort of stuff. As a result, while some of the music has a certain scrappy energy, the whole affair ends up being tedious.

Versions of “Hey Ya” and Tom Waits’ “Get Behind the Mule” fare best, mostly because the aggregation has a melody to dig into.

Booker T. is not an improviser, a soloist of any particular skill. (Just listen to the Booker T & the MG’s 1962 hit “Green Onions” — it’s a quick, grabby riff with a good groove, and little else.) Read the rest of this entry »

This review was written by CL Political Editor Wayne Garcia.

Neil Young
Fork in the Road
(Reprise)

Neil Young seems to toss off discs these days like a bad blogger: quick and topical, without much depth or time to think deeper thoughts. That’s a shame, because Young still sounds great, still has a fire in the belly to make hard-grungey music and now has the wisdom of the Old Man that he once wrote so famously about.

Fork in the Road is the latest near-throwaway from Young, a cross between his heavy-handed political genre efforts (Living With War) and the thematic/cinematic concept discs (Greendale). It is ostensibly about his beloved LincVolt, a Lincoln that Young converted to run on electricity. He uses the car as his metaphor for a lot of things that are wrong with the old U S of A, including our addiction to oil. “Fill ’er up/ She’s not the car that she used to be” he intones in “Fuel Line.” Har-har.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome aboard new Tampa Calling Contributor, Vinyl Fever’s Lee Wolfson, who will taking over on each week’s new music releases and other such interesting music tidbits, from what it’s like running an indie music store, to offering info on the latest in new music, to giving the inside scoop on any special promos or giveaways his store may be offering. Here’s his inaugural post, a list of new releases you may or may not be aware of.

Terry Adams (of NRBQ), Holy Tweet

Maria Bamford, Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome

Buju Banton, Rasta Got Soul

Behemoth, The Art of Rebelling Live (CD/DVD)

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, How Big Can You Get?: The Music of Cab Calloway (ahahahahahaha! yeah, really!)

Brian Blade, Mama Rosa

Booker T., Potato Hole (with Drive By Truckers and Neil Young, too — it’s REAL SWEET!)

The Boxmasters and Billy Bob Thornton, The Boxmasters

Braid, Frankie Welfare Boy Age Five (a re-release of the 1995 debut album comprised 26 tracks, each one named using a different letter of the alphabet.) Read the rest of this entry »

A selection of CDs, EPs, LPs, Digital Releases, DVDs and Box Sets that dropped today.

Arcade Fire, Miroir Noir DVD (Merge)
The Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, When Sweet Sleep Returned (Tee Pee)
Bat for Lashes, Two Suns (Astralwerks)
Black Dice, Repo (Paw Tracks)
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Vs. Children (Tomlab)
Crystal Antlers, Tentacles (Touch & Go)
Del the Funky Homosapien, Funk Man: The Stimulus Package (digital self-release)
Doves, Kingdom of Rust (Astralwerks)
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, A Stranger Here (Anti-)
Erasure, Total Pop! (Rhino) [box set]
The Felice Brothers, Yonder Is the Clock (Team Love) Read the rest of this entry »

Various Artists: Covered, A Revolution in Sound: Warner Bros. Records
(Warner Bros.)

To commemorate its golden anniversary, Warner Bros. Records commissioned a dozen artists on its current roster to each perform a favorite tune from the label’s first 50 years. The results, not surprisingly, range from insipid to almost brilliant.

We’ll start with the clunkers: Adam Sandler doing a rote, irony-free version of Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane” whiny vocals and all. WTF? Taking Back Sunday’s “You Wreck Me,” another blatant copy that begs the question: Why would anyone ever listen to this version when you can cue up the Tom Petty original? On paper, Avenged Sevenfold’s covering Sabbath’s “Paranoid” would seem to have potential — but the original, while thinner sounding, is so much heavier and more menacing than this stiff, ProTooled remake.

James Otto’s “Into the Mystic,” while pretty faithful to Van Morrison’s, succeeds because of the sheer commitment in Otto’s blue-eye-soul vocal. Michelle Branch doing Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You?” A recipe for disaster? Nope. Branch proves herself a much more formidable singer than I ever gave her credit for.

Read the rest of this entry »

Who knew that 2009 would be Year of the Young? Not only will Neil Young’s much-delayed ‘Archives’ collection finally see the light of day, but the crusty old rock ‘n’ roll warbler will be featured in yet another concert doc, the second by director Jonathan Demme.

Young’s longtime manager, Elliot Roberts, announced the forthcoming release date of June 2 during a panel discussion at SXSW this past Saturday. Also serving on the panel was Larry Johnson, director of Young’s Shakey Films, who played samples of material from the anthology. The ‘Archives’ collection will be available as 10-disc Blu-Ray set for $299, a 10-DVD box set for $199 and a 10-CD set for $99.

Later that same day at SXSW, Demme presented an in-progress cut of his second Young concert film, Neil Young’s Trunk Show, which was filmed during two December ‘07 performances at Philadelphia’s Tower Theater and is due out officially later this year.

Another week comes to pass and I am a mere two weeks away from heading out west for some snowboarding. I am gonna try to make this weekly Americana(ish) web round-up a regular thing. Is anyone out there reading them? Anyhow, outside of music I have a few things I’m thinking about…

First, what the hell was Radhika thinking on Top Chef this week? The leader of the losing restaurant always gets eliminated in Restaurant Wars. She should have thrown the quickfire.

Second, the Rays went to the World Series, a black man is our president and the Arizona Cardinals are in the Superbowl. I dunno about you, but I spent this week looking up girls from highschool. Hell has obviously frozen over and it’s time for them to make good on some promises.

And finally, is there anything on earth better than VH1 reality TV? I had long thought Rock of Love was god’s gift to us but then they go and one up themselves with Tool Academy. Thank you, VH1, for giving my Sunday’s without football meaning again.

Okay, enough TV talk … on with the music: Read the rest of this entry »

Friday night, Orlando’s Matt Butcher debuted his new album, Me and My Friends, with a perfomance at Ybor’s New World Brewery with support from Will Quinlin and the Diviners and North Carolina-based Bombadil.

The diminutive troubadour Butcher (who sounds more like a young Neil Young with each listen) and crew of six knocked out some great harmonies, especially on the title track. Lead guitar and pedal steel work filled things out nicely. As a friend commented, “it’s just enough country, but never too much country.”

Bombadil overcame some questionable wardobe choices to knock out really tight set of twee pop/Indie/Irish sea chanties for children.

Matt Butcher:

Read the rest of this entry »