The Pale Fountains make a strong claim for being one of the great “lost” bands of the first half of the 1980s on this career retrospective — The Complete Virgin Years — which gathers up their two albums (1984’s Pacific Street and 1985’s …From Across the Kitchen Table), all the singles and B-sides, plus a healthy number of extended versions, rough mixes, and demos.
The group were equally inspired by the mystical garage rock of Love and the sophisticated craft of Burt Bacharach while sharing the smooth production of contemporaries like the Style Council, the psychedelic shimmer of Teardrop Explodes, and the take-no-prisoners approach of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Their songs — like quite a few bands of the day — were full of fretless…
Tag Archive: Cherry Red
There’s no doubt that London during the mid-’60s was one of the swingingest, downright hippest eras in the history of the world. From the fit of the clothes to the look of films, the nifty turns of phrase to the sound of the dazzling records being made, there’s a wealth of brilliance to discover. Numerous compilations have done their best to bring the era to life and this is easily one of the best. What’s It All About? Film & TV Music from Swinging London does what it says on the package and does it with the prerequisite style. It jumbles together TV and movie themes, songs from films, tracks by top bands and underground faves that appeared on both, and the occasional ringer to give a clear picture of just how much fun everyone was having.
Over the last 50 years Scotland has often been the centre of some of the most exciting things to happen to guitar music. Author Grant McPhee has put together this comprehensive 3 CD set which documents 1985 to 1999 when Scottish independent music was thriving. It’s released by the ever reliable Cherry Red and covers a range of scenes and styles. Following on from the beginning of the decade with the mighty Postcard Records label led the way with iconic Scottish guitar bands like Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera. The baton was passed on to many of the groups featured here.
Beginning with Jesus & Mary Chain’s, ‘You Trip Me Up’ we’re thrown right into 1985. Originally signed to Creation Records…
…features a brand new remaster of the original album an additional CD of rare live recordings from 1970 from Dave Brock’s archives along with with seven bonus tracks drawn from a 1969 demo session, both sides of the ‘Hurry On Sundown’ single and a studio out-take and new stereo mixes of the album by Stephen W Tayler.
Produced by former Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor, Hawkwind‘s first album was rightfully compared to Pink Floyd’s early sound: an appealing conglomeration of hippie rock grooves and inter- planetary guitar trips set to the phosphorescent wandering of Dik Mik’s electronics and Nik Turner’s cool sax playing. Hawkwind may not have been their most lucrative album, but it’s where it all began. Hawkwind’s initial…
During the late ’70s, the beginnings of a wave of music heavily inspired by the garage rock and psychedelia of the 1960s began to swell. Chalk it up to many factors — the availability of a number of reissues, especially the Pebbles series, a disillusionment with the restrictive rules of punk rock, the passage of enough time so that the era seemed glamorous, the chance to get cheap vintage gear — but the result was an underground that evolved in many interesting directions and even went quite overground at different times. Cherry Red’s 2026 collection This Can’t Be Today: American Psychedelia & the Paisley Underground 1977-1988 looks to document the scene, gathering together the many strands and sounds of the time to present a comprehensive view.
The Beatles are a singularly iconic rock band. While plenty of classic rock groups, like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and, most successfully, Queen, continue to rack up tens of millions of monthly Spotify streams, no other band remains as relevant as the Beatles. Many YouTubers build popular channels by explaining musical theory through their songs or by delving into the supposed mysteries of how their music was created.
That makes it increasingly more challenging to find a new perspective on the group. With a Little Help from My Friends: Covers of the Beatles 1967-1970 may well provide some interesting new points of discussion. Does it make for an equally enjoyable listening experience?
This 3-disc box set from Cherry Red Records…
…features the original album as well as sessions, B-sides, a live show from the time and a complete disc of demos from Chapel Studios.
Having exorcised enough bile for two bands on their rickety release Interim, The Fall loosen up their attitude, tighten up their delivery, and squeeze out a rocking album that relies heavily on its highlights. Fortunately, there’s plenty, most hitting with the thwack of the “Sparta FC” single or the Light User Syndrome album. “Pacifying Joint” is a punchy exercise in hooks and sheen, “What About Us” is snide Mancabilly of the highest order, and “Blindness” hypnotizes and chugs its way into the Top 25 original Fall tracks ever. Flashiest of the lot has to be a soaring cover of the Move’s hippy anthem “I Can Hear the Grass Grow,”…
…John Mellencamp recently announced the Dancing Words tour, a summer trek through America in July and August that’ll focus on hits he’s not played in a while to audiences in outdoor amphitheaters. A few months before that, Cherry Red’s Lemon imprint issue an exciting new compilation that takes things back to the beginning of Mellencamp’s career – under a different name, and with some enticing unreleased material.
American Dream (The Mainman Recordings 1976- 1977) is a 2CD set that’ll feature both albums he recorded for the MCA-distributed Mainman under the somewhat confounding sobriquet “Johnny Cougar.” Chestnut Street Incident (1976) and The Kid Inside (recorded in 1977 but unreleased for five years) will be accompanied by…
The Long Ryders were once the shit, to use the appropriate slang expression from back in the day. Their albums from the mid-1980s (Native Son, State of Our Union, Two-Fisted Tales) were part of the onslaught of New Wave Cowpunk bands such as Jason and the Scorchers, Green on Red, Rank and File, and the Beat Farmers, that generated excitement among college-age audiences who were turned off by mainstream country acts.
The band took a long hiatus, although they sporadically got together for brief reunions. They released a new studio album in 2019, 32 years after their previous effort. Bassist Tom Stevens died in 2021. The group released their fifth album in 2023 and have been semi-active performing live.
The Long Ryders’ latest record,…
5CD set featuring two solo albums from The Byrds/Flying Burrito Brothers member, plus solo live recordings spanning his career and a live album from the Gene Parsons Band, along with unreleased studio demos.
Recorded between multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons’ membership of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, his 1973 debut solo album ‘Kindling’ is a country rock and bluegrass classic that also features his friend and fellow ex-Byrd Clarence White on several tracks. Parsons demonstrates his versatility by contributing guitar, banjo, pedal steel, harmonica, bass and drums.
Acclaimed author of Are You Ready for the Country, Peter Doggett has written the notes for this box and describes ‘Kindling’ as “a joyous…
Compiling music from throughout continental Europe during the height of psychedelia and progressive rock, So High I’ve Been: A European Rock Anthology 1967-1973 touches on several different styles and movements, from Dutch Nederbeat to Krautrock. This ranges from more blues-based rock & roll and beat music to groups exploring the outer limits, either through cosmic jamming or more ambitious and conceptual means, like French Zeuhl legends Magma, who sing in a self-invented language. Selections by a few groups like the Rattles and Necronomicon are occupied with occult themes, but the music is closer to the dark side of prog, and not heavy enough to be deemed metal. Other material runs the gamut from druggy freak-outs to more…
Wild Horses originally formed in 1978, when guitarist Brian Robertson left Thin Lizzy after the legendary ‘Live And Dangerous’ record, and bassist Jimmy Bain left Rainbow following the double live ‘On Stage’ album, joining forces to create this melodic, hard rock supergroup.
Originally featuring drummer Kenney Jones (Faces, The Who) and guitarist Jimmy McCulloch (Wings, Stone The Crows), the line-up stabilised when Robertson and Bain were joined by drummer Clive Edwards (Uli Jon Roth, UFO, Pat Travers) and multi-instrumentalist Neil Carter (UFO, Gary Moore).
They were signed to EMI following their appearance at the 1979 Reading Rock Festival, releasing their Trevor Rabin (Yes) produced debut ‘The First Album’ in 1980. Featuring the singles…
Backtracking a bit from previously issued volumes of the series, Musik Music Musique 1979: The Roots of Synth Pop functions as a sort of prequel, mapping out the blueprint of the new wave revolution of the ’80s, from synth-heavy post-punk and art rock to some of synth pop’s earliest chart-toppers. It’s not as if electronic instruments weren’t prominent in popular music before 1979, but synthesizers were clearly well on their way to being a defining characteristic of the musical landscape. The set starts with the Buggles’ “Technopop,” proposing a name for the music of the future — Kraftwerk would later give a song a similar title on 1986’s Electric Café, which originally had the working title Techno Pop as well, and decades later, a reissue retroactively bore…
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…
Cherry Red, longtime home for Howard Jones’ catalogue, release an unheard set from the beginning of his career.
Live at the Marquee, finds the inimitable singer-songwriter-keyboardist wowing a crowd at the late London venue just before his commercial breakthrough in 1983.
The wholly unreleased show, was unearthed from master tapes when the label began compiling bonus material for reissues of his former Warner catalogue in 2018, and remixed by Jones himself for this release. (It appears from the metadata that three of these Marquee tracks were originally released as B-sides to early singles.) The packaging includes rare and unreleased photos of Jones from the period.
When the then-28-year-old Jones took the stage…
How do you get the Buzzcocks sound? Steve Diggle says that’s like a chef revealing his secrets, but admits that one crucial ingredient is his old H&H amp. This was acquired almost 50 years ago with the advance the band got for signing to United Artists – you can see it on the cover of Going Steady. “It gives that transistorised valve sound and you can hear it very distinctively on that first album,” he explains. “In Manchester, people wondered why we used these little amps, but it meant you could get distortion at a very low volume and that became our identity. Double track a riff through the H&H amp and you get that unique Buzzcocks sound.”
The double-tracked H&H riff pops up a few times on Attitude Adjustment, a reminder…
House, techno, and garage were respectively invented in Chicago, Detroit, and New York, but the U.K. embraced them and took underground club sounds into the pop charts during the 1980s and ’90s. Burn It Up: The Rise of British Dance Music 1986-1991 explores some of the many developments that took place during the era, from the U.K.’s first attempts at acid house to early rave anthems. Like other Cherry Red anthologies, this one casts a wide net and tries to tell a comprehensive history of its subject, making room for established classics as well as rarities, curiosities, and inclusions that might be kind of a stretch, but hear them out anyway.
The collection starts with Coldcut’s “Beats + Pieces (Mo Bass Remix),” representing…
In late 1967, the BBC launched Radio 1 as an attempt to fill the void created by the banning of the pirate radio stations that had been beaming pop music into homes around the nation. Leaving the more experimental sounds to John Peel at night, the DJs played a bright and sunny mix of pop music, something that the minds behind Grapefruit’s 2025 collection All Things Bright and Beautiful: The UK Pop Explosion 1967-1969 have sought to recapture. Over the course of three CDs, a parade of hooks so sharp they could cut glass do battle with melodies so sweet they would scare a diabetic and harmonies so rich they might need to move to the Isle of Man.
Big names like the Hollies drop in occasionally with big hits like “Carrie Anne,” but for…
As the name implies, Fanny were an uncompromising, take no prisoners, no holds barred, rock ‘n’ roll outfit who tried to grab the music business by the scruff of the neck and squeeze it dry in the early to mid 1970’s. The fact that they were women didn’t seem to bother them… but it certainly bother “the business”.
Formed by sisters June (guitar & vocals) and Jean (bass & vocals) Millington in the late 60’s and signing to Reprise Records in 1969 they were joined by Alice de Buhr (drums & vocals) and Nickey Barclay (keyboards & vocals) to record debut, Fanny (1970), and follow ups, Charity Ball (1971), Fanny Hill (1972), and Mothers Pride (1973), before June and Alice jumped ship triggering a move to Casablanca Records in 1974.
Julee Cruise was a remarkable enough talent in her own right that it seems a shame to emphasize her links with David Lynch, but he’s an inescapable presence on this 2-CD set. That’s because Fall_Float_Love comprises her two albums for Warner Brothers, Floating into the Night (1989) and The Voice of Love on which, apart from one song, all the lyrics were written by Lynch, and all the music was composed and arranged by his collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. With the deaths of both Cruise and Badalamenti in 2022 and Lynch this year, the music takes on an even more spectral and haunting quality (and it started off with plenty of both those qualities), and Fall_Float_Love stands as a fitting memorial to the meeting of three unique but entirely compatible talents.