Les Claypool has been a busy man to start 2026, with an upcoming nationwide tour, releasing a new double album with The Claypool Lennon Delirium, a new EP with Primus, and now comes another release, Return of the Live Frogs: Volume 1.
Back in 2023, Les donned his Colonel persona again to revamp his Fearless Flying frog Brigade for an amazing tour. This release is a reminder of that magic.
The FFFB for this live offering is Sean Ono Lennon (aka Captain Shiner on guitar), Harry Waters (keys), Mike Dillon (percussion), Skerik (sax), and Paulo Baldi (drums) as the band stretches out and gets loose on four original songs. Each track allows for ample individual solos as the players take their turn in the spotlight.
Category: *editions*
Ava Mendoza is simply one of the best guitarists around today. She has played with a murderer’s row of improvisers and experimentalists over the last 20 years, across styles incorporating rock, blues, jazz, bluegrass, metal, and the avant-garde.
…Alive Alone, Alive Together collects Mendoza’s recent live recordings from four different events. Half are duets with drummer Hamid Drake from the Summer Bummer Festival in Antwerp, while the rest are solo performances from the US and Italy. Despite what might be thought of as a limited sound palette, there is little repetition throughout the album.
‘Sun Gun’ is one of the duets, with Mendoza picking distorted lines in a heavy blues style accompanied by Drake’s nonstop barrages.
Live albums are either superb or meh. Luckily, vocalist Catherine Russell sounds amazing, whether in a studio, jazz club or theatre setting. Live at Jazz at Lincoln Center exhibits the singer’s soulful vocals as well as wonderful backing support from the musicians joining her: guitarist Matt Munisteri, pianist Ben Paterson, bassist Russell Hall, drummer Domo Branch, trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso, trombonist John Allred and Evan Arntzen on tenor sax and clarinet. Russell’s usual style is prevalent throughout the project. The mix of vintage New Orleans jazz, swing, rhythm and blues is always sure to delight a variety of listeners.
Whether it’s a slower melody or an upbeat, toe-tapping tune, the pieces are sung with emotion and sensitivity.
Country boy-in-the-Big Apple, Arthur Russell does folk fusion with his own, peerless verve on a remastered edition of his evergreen 2008 retrospective.
One of the most fascinating, multifaceted, greatest artists of the late C.20th, Arthur Russell is variously known as a disco auteur, virtuoso avant-pop cellist-composer, and bard of the highest order, but maybe less so as a country crooner. Compiled and issued in 2008, Love Is Overtaking Me most ideally framed this lesser-covered aspect of his work with 21 songs recorded under his own name and as part of The Flying Hearts (with Peter Zummo, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson, a.o.), plus in duo with Steven Hall as Turbo Sporty, The Flying Hearts, and Bright & Early.
Mirror Ball is a 1995 collaboration between Neil Young and members of Pearl Jam, released through Reprise Records during the height of the grunge era. Recorded largely live in the studio over a handful of sessions in Seattle, the album captures a loose, raw sound that blends Young’s songwriting with Pearl Jam’s dense guitar interplay and rhythm section.
The project grew out of Young’s friendship with the band following several live performances together in the early 1990s. Songs like “Song X,” “Downtown,” “I’m the Ocean,” and “Throw Your Hatred Down” reflect themes of conflict, idealism, and social tension, while the recordings retain an unpolished, spontaneous feel with audible studio chatter and extended jams throughout.
Introducing a brand new series of ultra rare, vintage concert recordings from notorious NY rowdy punk rockers, Dead Boys, performing their best songs before a homegrown crowd! 2 shows, both recorded at the historic CBGBs club, both capturing one of the rowdiest, raucous musical acts to ever set foot on stage – and digitally remastered to capture all the gory, gruesome glory!
50 years ago this year, the placid seas of British and American rock were disturbed… if not destroyed… by a tsunami of sound arising from the streets of New York City and London. It wasn’t called punk rock yet… just a bunch of bands, disparate in nature and unique in sound, but seemingly bound together by a single common cause. Something must change. Everything must change.
Bruce Springsteen took the high road during his Sunday concert at Austin, Texas’ Moody Center, praying for President Trump in the wake of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting and exhorting fans to uphold American ideals such as honesty, compassion and humility after they went home. Then the Boss rocked the packed arena with such soul-stirring fervor that it would have been nearly impossible not to heed his call.
When Springsteen surprise-announced his current Land of Hopes and Dreams Tour in February, he made it clear he considers this trek nothing less than a battle for the soul of America. He threw himself into the charge on Sunday with the gusto that’s made him one of rock’s most gargantuan stars for the past half-century.
Bruce Springsteen brought his “Land of Hope and Dreams” rock and resistance tour to President Donald Trump’s backyard on April 23 with a plea to unite in “choosing hope over fear.”
In a preamble to the three-hour concert, held a day before Trump is to arrive in Palm Beach for his 26th visit this term, Springsteen asked attendees to pray for U.S. military personnel in harm’s way.
“The Boss” then launched into a scathing indictment of the president, who just this month called the Hall of Fame rocker and music legend a “total loser” and “not a talented guy.”
Springsteen blistered the second Trump administration as “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless” as the sold-out crowd drowned him out with boisterous cheers.
A rare and never before released live performance by Chet Baker and his European quartet, including his long -term associate Nicola Stilo on flute and guitar. Recorded in Ferrara, Italy on the 9th of December 1987, just five months before Chet’s passing, this live performance finds the legendary trumpeter at his creative and performance best and captured in sound quality more akin to a studio session. Captured in superb sound quality, this 2CD set in deluxe digipak presentation includes an extensive booklet containing liner notes and rare photographs. As a first-time release recording, it will, undoubtedly, be much sought after by jazz collectors generally and the legions of Chet Baker fans in particular. Recorded live by Gianni Grassilli on the December 1987, Ferrara, Teatro Estense.
The Irish grunge-pop act, fronted by Dolores O’Riordan, broke on to the scene in October 1992 with their debut single ‘Dreams’, which peaked at No 27 in the UK chart and was swiftly followed by ‘Linger’ (No 14). The singles helped their debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? to (ahem) linger around the chart for over a year, eventually selling over half a million in the UK. Meanwhile, they became alt-rock stars in the US, with the album selling over five million. The new “33rd anniversary deluxe edition” comes in a variety of physical formats. Fans who already have the 2018 super deluxe edition of the album might be forgiven for feeling underwhelmed – that version added early demos, 1990’s Uncertain EP, B-sides and a disc full of live tracks and radio sessions.
Last year, Third Man Records released the reissue of Detroit’s unheralded songwriting genius, Ted Lucas’ 1975 cult classic self-titled album Ted Lucas (OM), as part of an ambitious archival campaign intent on spreading the open secret of Lucas’s genius and putting an end to his unfair anonymity.
Third Man Records released Images of Life, a career-spanning, 3xLP retrospective boxset illuminating the staggering breadth and depth of Lucas’ work, out May 22nd. Disc one, Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965-1970), highlights Lucas’ flirtation with psychedelic major label clout via his bands the Spike Drivers, the Misty Wizards and the Horny Toads. Disc two, Rainy Days (1970-1974) contains the solo acoustic warmth and charm most similar to the music found on his self-titled album.
How do you make a documentary film about a man who was also a myth? About a musician who was more than a musician? About someone who asked us to trust our intuition more than our rational minds? This double LP contains the entire soundtrack to the accompanying PBS documentary! Includes liner notes from executive producer Bradford Smith about the making of Sun Ra: Do The Impossible, interviews from members of the Arkestra and a BluRay DVD of the doc!
Firelight assembled an incredibly talented team headed by Director/Producer Christine Turner, and six years later in June of 2025, our documentary, Sun Ra: Do The Impossible had its world premiere at the Tribeca International Film Festival. Our goal was to make a film…
…features five bonus tracks.
On their third LP, Down in Heaven, Twin Peaks hang on to their rough-and-raw disposition while drawing sonic inspiration from favorite albums of 1968, including, per press materials, works by the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Beatles.
Bolstered throughout the album by the addition of Wild Onion co-producer Colin Croom to the lineup on keyboards (notably organ), the era, if not a specific year, is resurrected from the moment the needle hits vinyl with the sassy, T. Rex-grooving opener “Walk to the One You Love.” Parts of the record capture the more reflective tone associated with the late ’60s, such as the regretful, even-tempered “Holding Roses” and the brass-embellished “Lolisa,” which could…
Appearing like a flash, Jimi Hendrix burst onto the international music scene of the mid 1960’s like nothing ever seen before or since. Born in Seattle in 1942, early life experiences both in the United States Army and as a backing musician for the likes of the Isley Brothers and Little Richard on the Chitlin’ Circuit helped serve as formative groundwork for what was to come.
With the release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first single in December 1966, a never-ceasing whirlwind would envelop Jimi and his music until his untimely death in September of 1970. What’s still fascinating, more than five decades on, is how prolific a creator he managed to be through his not even four years in the spotlight.
Of particular interest is Jimi Hendrix’s…
Ain’t nothin’ like it. Full blast and top down. Less than six years after changing the music landscape with its diamond-platinum-certified self-titled debut, Van Halen repeated the creative and commercial feats. Featuring groundbreaking performances, infectious chemistry, and four enormous singles, 1984 witnesses the band incorporating synthesizer elements that guitarist Eddie Van Halen had been championing — as well as seamlessly bridging pop and metal sensibilities into a cohesive melodic whole. A landmark that’s never aged a day, 1984 feels as fresh, fun, and innovative as it did in the Reagan Era.
Sourced from the original analog tapes and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition…
Alice Cooper’s 1975 Album Welcome to My Nightmare Reissued as Part of the Atlantic Records 75th Anniversary Series on Hybrid Stereo SACD. Mastered Directly to DSD From the Original Master Tape by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
With the 1974 disintegration of the original Alice Cooper group, Alice was free to launch a solo career. He wisely decided to re-enlist the services of Bob Ezrin for his solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare, which was a concept album tied into the story line of the highly theatrical concert tour he launched soon after the album’s release. While the music lost most of the gritty edge of the original AC lineup, Welcome to My Nightmare remains Alice’s best solo effort – while some tracks…
Radioactivity was Kraftwerk’s fifth full-lenght release and their first fully electronic album. It is a concept album centered around radioactive decay and radio communications. As such it boasts a few big theme anthems surrounded by shorter variations of those themes with interconnecting shorter pieces of electronic music, sounds, and digitized voices.
“Kraftwerk built upon the international success of Autobahn by expanding their conceptual concepts to an album-length exploration of radio waves (and the band’s other favorite wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum). Musically, the album represents a quantum leap of pop sensibility; though still distinctly a “prog” soundscape, its brilliant melodic hooks (best represented by the title track and Airwaves) are organized in more traditional – read shorter – form.
Seelie Court – the world’s premier label for rare and previously unreleased archive recordings of underground folk, rock, proto-metal, and psychedelic music presents Too Many Late Nights.
Showcasing The Great Crash’s more experimental and progressive side, these studio sessions emphasise long-form, intelligent art rock compositions, pairing shifting structures with witty, 10CC-like subject matter and a distinctly British sense of irony.
The material impressed John Peel, leading to a BBC Peel Session and placing The Great Crash among the more adventurous voices of the early-1970s UK underground. Formed around the songwriting of drummer and lyricist Piers Geddes, the group blended piano-led…
Looking back on her career in the early 90s, Stevie Nicks described the first track of Rock a Little as “the most exciting song that I had ever heard.” This coming from a superstar who was already closely affiliated with several bajillion-selling Fleetwood Mac albums – to say nothing of her own benchmark solo debut. Her remarks attest to the enthusiasm and effort she invested in her third record, a 1985 work that quickly furthered Nicks’ profile and cemented itself as a piece of 80s pop lore.
Mastered at MoFi’s California studio, strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s hybrid SACD presents Rock a Little in audiophile sound for its 40th anniversary. Helmed by a cadre of producers and engineers, and recorded…
For fans of electronic music, 1977 represents a sacred frontier. It was a time when synthesizers were massive, unpredictable walls of cables and knobs, and live performances were high-wire acts executed entirely without a safety net.
Among the most legendary documents of this era is Tangerine Dream’s performance at the Place des Arts in Montreal on April 9, 1977, during their iconic first North American tour. Performed by the definitive “Sonic Trinity”- Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann- this breathtaking two-hour set captures the absolute zenith of the Berlin School of electronic music, serving as the final, radiant hurrah of their classic lineup right before Baumann’s departure.
Originally broadcast by Montreal’s CHOM-FM…