Take Me Back Live from the Gorge, capturing the band’s performance from Saturday, August 30, 2025 when the band played Before These Crowded Streets in its entirety.
On that night, DMB played a handful of songs, beginning with Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” and including subtle nods like “You Never Know” and “It Could Happen,” before launching into album opener “Pantala Naga Pampa.”
Béla Fleck, who had guested on the album, joined the band for “Last Stop” and “Don’t Drink the Water.” After a long-rumored and rarely played performance of album closer “Spoon,” the band called Jake Simpson onstage to play violin on fan favorites “Satellite” and “Tripping Billies.” The encore closer raised the question everyone…
Category: rock
NRBQ’s 1983 classic and sole release on the Bearsville label returns! The album has been remastered, includes new liner notes and boasts seven bonus tracks making this edition the definitive version of Grooves In Orbit.
Founded in 1966 in Louisville, Kentucky, NRBQ has given their dedicated fan base decades of great recordings and exceptional live shows in countless festivals, clubs, colleges, and concert halls. No style of music is safe around NRBQ—their first Columbia album, for example, ranged from Eddie Cochran to Sun Ra and their own diverse compositions have been covered by artists including Bonnie Raitt, Dave Edmunds, She And Him, Steve Earle, Los Lobos, and Widespread Panic. There are very few bands that have lasted for half a century, and the list…
After releasing two strong albums for Slash, the Blasters had plenty of critical acclaim and a sizable hometown following, but they hadn’t come especially close to landing a hit record, and on the 1985 album Hard Line, they overhauled their approach in the studio in hopes of creating something that sounded more contemporary.
Producer Jeff Eyrich pumped up the sound of Bill Bateman’s drums (and for a few tracks replaced him with Stan Lynch of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), Dave Alvin’s guitar tone got thicker and harder and the emphasis was put squarely on new songs. “Trouble Bound” and “Help You Dream” showed Dave Alvin’s gift for writing in traditional styles was as strong as ever. Alvin’s songs took on a darker tone on Hard Line, especially the tale…
When punk rock began exploding in the late 1970s, more than a few fans of the new music declared the only hope for rock & roll was to throw away its past and start over, but thankfully, a few people knew better than that. Dave and Phil Alvin were a pair of brothers from Downey, California who’d been raised on a steady diet of what they called “American Music” – blues, rockabilly, country, jazz, swing, R&B, and early rock & roll.
The Alvin brothers formed a band called the Blasters that approached the classic styles of the past with the energy and insouciance of punk rock, and their music taught a new generation that rock & roll was hard, wild, and manic fun even before it was called rock & roll. The Blasters, the band’s second album, is divided roughly…
Dive deep into the raw power of rock history with Nuge Vault Vol. 2, a rare and electrifying collection that opens the vault on Ted Nugent’s iconic 1975 self-titled debut solo album.
This release features never-before-heard demo versions of fan-favorite tracks including “Stranglehold,” “Just What the Doctor Ordered,” and “Motor City Madhouse,” offering an unfiltered glimpse into the creative fire behind Nugent’s explosive solo breakthrough.
Also included are previously unreleased live recordings from 1975, capturing the primal energy and guitar fury of Nugent in his early solo prime. Nuge Vault Vol. 2 is a must-have for hardcore fans and rock historians alike—an untamed ride through the birth of a legend.
Jay Buchanan has spent the last seventeen years as the frontman for Rival Sons, where his booming voice, combined with Scott Holiday’s heavy guitar riffs, has created some of this era’s best old-school hard rock. Even as the band’s music over the last three albums has grown more melodic and versatile, it’s remained undeniably heavy. For Buchanan’s debut solo effort, however, he strips the music down to its barest elements. Without heavy riffs and pounding drums, the focus is solely on Buchanan’s voice and storytelling. Luckily, both are strong enough to carry the album.
Weapons of Beauty is an acoustic album that ranges from slow ballads to mid-tempo Americana shuffle, but is always soft. Buchanan’s voice, grainy and soulful, carries world-weary…
…features a newly remastered version of the original double album; rarities; previously unreleased studio and live recordings; and several new mixes by Steven Wilson.
Tales from Topographic Oceans‘ sprawling concept was dug into by frontman Jon Anderson, who was immersed in Paramahansa Yogananda’s bestselling Autobiography of a Yogi. Drawing from a lengthy footnote that described four shastras (Hindu texts outlining basic precepts of social and religious life), Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe primarily conceived four pieces of music that would each take up one side of a vinyl album. Bassist Chris Squire and new drummer Alan White (replacing Bill Bruford after his exit) went with the flow, agreeably retreating to Morgan Studios…
A masterpiece! But also a major turning point in 38 Special’s career. It is with this now ‘classic’ that the band will be recognised. Rockin’ Into The Night, which followed ‘Special Delivery’, benefited from the first seeds sown by the latter, and the first plant to appear in all its splendour was the eponymous title of this new album, released in 1979.
A revolver cartridge transformed into a tube of lipstick sets the tone, far removed from Southern bands. Just like the opening track, co-written by three members of Survivor, including Jim Peterik, which producer Ron Nevison thought was too Southern for his colts. Was it this track that influenced the Jacksonville gang’s songwriting? 38 SPECIAL’s music is becoming smoother and more polished, and even if their Southern roots…
Bloody Head have been lurking at the fringes for some ten years now, occupying a greasy, hard-to-clean crevice where noise-rock and psychedelia begin to intermingle. In this time they’ve tottered, threatened, collapsed and cajoled, their unexpected incursions akin to having a mysterious, slightly cracked ‘character’ glom onto you at the pub. Like said pub weirdo, they charm and bemuse and recount tall tales, all while a violent sense of mania flickers intermittently behind the eyes.
Bend Down and Kiss the Ground comes hot on the heels of last year’s excellent Perpetual Eden, and hews close to that album’s rangier, slightly-more-streamlined sound. Things remain ugly and warped, but they’re keeping up their attempts at sprucing and spritzing: submitting…
In January 2021, unassuming clubbers looking for a Saturday night out at Taipei’s FINAL might’ve been surprised to encounter Taiwanese drone-doom duo Scattered Purgatory flooding the room with noise, in what was billed as their last performance. Yet the duo had already been toying with the boundary between the city’s rock and electronic scenes; guitarist Lu Jiachi, who cut his teeth in the stoner rock band Sleaze, dabbled in deconstructed club music throughout the late 2010s, eventually putting out tracks for local labels like JIN, OverMyBody, and Sea Cucumber. Five years after that cacophonous “farewell” show, the band is back with an album that builds on their foundation of Earth-esque guitar-and-bass rumbling, incorporating more bite-sized song…
Portland-based duo Natural Magic’s II was the final vinyl release that Keith McIvor aka JD Twitch put into production before his untimely departure in late September ’25.
“Having been a long time lover of everything krautrock, space rock, experimental and psychedelic it seems more than fitting that he leaves us this LP as his parting gift; because this sublime album is all these things wrapped up into one and much more.
The album’s opening track “Galaxy Builder”, with its driving tempo, monolithic bass and screaming guitars might give the impression we’re about to hear a Neu for the 21st Century, but no, by the 2nd track we’re already on the first of several wild detours into uncharted territories…
CBGB’s was the center of the N.Y.C. punk explosion, as well as a welcoming place to play for all the artists and bands who followed in the wake. CBGB: A New York City Soundtrack 1975-1986 is a four-disc set that seeks to paint a picture of the original scene as it burst out into the open as well as detailing the various sounds and movements, like no wave and hardcore, that were born in the ensuing years. All the groups one would hope for are here, represented by slightly deeper cuts — Talking Heads’ sprightly live version of “A Clean Break” for one — along with a ton of lesser-known bands and a healthy dose of super-obscure ones. It’s the kind of collection where even someone with a healthy knowledge of the scene will be constantly surprised. One surprise element…
Dave’s Picks Volume 57 contains the complete show recorded at the Uptown Theatre in Chicago on February 1, 1978, and also includes some songs from the previous night’s concert.
…The Uptown Theatre, originally a movie palace, opened in 1925. From 1978 to 1981, the Grateful Dead played 17 shows at the Uptown. The January 30 & 31, and February 1, 1978 shows comprised the band’s first concert run at the venue.
This very first Dead run at the Uptown is infused with bold exploration from the monster first set of classics (“Jack Straw, “Friend of the Devil,” “Me and My Uncle”) with a “Sugaree” reminiscent of May ’77 to close things out, from Bobby’s powerful delivery of “Samson and Delilah,” to the Rhythm Devils’ spacey psychedelic…
Geologist is the nom-de-théâtre of Brian Weitz, whose pursuits have been an active part of the music underground since since he was 15, playing and working in alignment with an organic ensemble of friends that would one day choose to call what they were doing Animal Collective. Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights? migrates from that tradition, containing a number of surprise affects of its own. #1 is that it is the first-ever proper Geologist solo album! For real. Surprise #2 is its pursuit of a musical answer to the not-oft-enuf-ast question: what if, back in the 80s, Ethan James had made a hurdy gurdy album for SST?
Geologist’s affirmative answer to the question begins with another question — Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?.
Electric Cowbell Records announces the launch of Richmond Relics, a new archival imprint dedicated to preserving the city’s musical history. Its inaugural release is a newly remastered reissue of FA3574, the sole album from Richmond, Virginia’s legendary supergroup Famous Actors From Out of Town. Originally self-released in 1986 as a limited-edition, cassette-only title, FA3574 was recorded at Floodzone, a repurposed tobacco warehouse studio in Richmond.
The album features ten original instrumental tracks that capture the group’s kinetic chemistry and their off-kilter blend of late-’70s/early-’80s art rock, jazz, noise, and improvisation. Nearly forty years later, the recordings remain strikingly vibrant. Now fully remastered for vinyl, FA3574…
This is the album that solidified Uriah Heep’s reputation as a master of gothic-inflected heavy metal. From short, sharp rock songs to lengthy, musically dense epics, Demons and Wizards finds Uriah Heep covering all the bases with style and power.
The album’s approach is set with its lead-off track, “The Wizard”: it starts as a simple acoustic tune but soon builds into a stately rocker that surges forth on a Wall of Sound built from thick guitar riffs, churchy organ, and operatic vocal harmonies. Other highlights include “Traveller in Time,” a fantasy-themed rocker built on thick wah-wah guitar riffs, and “Circle of Hands,” a stately power ballad with a gospel-meets-heavy metal feel to it. Demons and Wizards also produced a notable radio hit for the band in “Easy Livin’,” a punchy little rocker…
