Best of What’s New

It’s Saturday again and I’m thrilled to welcome you to yet another set of six new tunes – the third week in a row! All tracks are on releases that came out yesterday (April 28).

Country Westerns/Knucklen’

My first pick is by Country Westerns, a rock-oriented three-piece based in Nashville, Tenn. I first featured in a June 2020 Best of What’s New installment. Their origins date back to 2016 when singer and guitarist Joey Plunkett started working on songs with drummer Brian Kotzur. The trio’s current line-up also includes Jordan Jones, the newest member who replaced their original bassist Sabrina Rush. Here’s a bit more from their website: Country Westerns infuse punk rock chutzpah with a classic rock sheen, yielding a sound that’s simultaneously fresh and reminiscent of all the LPs you used to “borrow” from your cool uncle. Their debut album came out in May 2020, beautifully coinciding with… a worldwide pandemic...CW’s varied inspirations are evident on their self-produced “pandemic EP” that features covers by Richard Thompson, Jad Fair, and Dead Moon. This brings me to Forgive the City, CW’s sophomore album, and the nice melodic opener Knucklen’, co-written by Plunkett and Kotzur.

Annie Blackman/Ash

Annie Blackman is a 24-year-old alternative folk singer-songwriter hailing from Montclair, N.J. After she became a fan of Taylor Swift, Blackman was inspired to pick up the guitar and write her own songs in fifth grade. I love it when music grabs kids – so much cooler than video games! She began her recording career while still attending high school and released her debut album Blue Green in 2016. After Blackman had posted some clips of her original music on TikTok, she came to the attention of San Francisco-based Father/Daughter Records. The independent label signed her in 2021 and released her next (third) full-length album All of It in April 2022. Blackman is now out with Bug, her first EP. Here’s the lovely opener Ash, penned by Blackman.

The Damned/Western Promise

English punk rock band The Damned were formed in London in 1976. They have been active ever since, except for a short break-up from April 1978 to January 1979, after their second album Music For Pleasure had come out in November 1977. To date, The Damned have released 12 studio albums, which includes their latest, Darkadelic. As one would expect, they’ve had multiple changes over the years, with lead vocalist Dave Vanian having been the only constant member. The band’s current line-up also features original guitarist Raymond Burns, aka. Captain Sensible; Laurence Burrow, aka Monty Oxymoron (keyboards, backing vocals); Paul Gray (bass, backing vocals) and new drummer Will Taylor. From Darkadelic, let’s check out Western Promise, credited to Vanian and The Damned – it’s certainly not punk, but I love the tune’s sound!

Dave Hause/Drive It Like It’s Stolen

Dave Hause is an American singer-songwriter who performs solo and with his backing band The Mermaid. Starting from the mid-’90s, Hause played in a series of punk and hardcore bands, including Step Ahead, The Curse, Paint It Black, The Loved Ones, The All Brights and The Falcon, and between these groups released about 10 albums and EPs. In 2009, Hause also started a solo career, which has resulted in six albums to date, including his latest, Drive It Like It’s Stolen. After his third solo album Bury Me in Philly had appeared in February 2017, Hause put together The Mermaid. Hause’s solo work is notably different from hardcore and punk, focusing on heartland rock and Americana. Here’s the great title cut of his new album, co-written by Hause and his brother Tim Hause who also is a singer-songwriter.

Glen Matlock/Something ‘Bout the Weekend

Glen Matlock is best known for being the bassist in the original line-up of short-lived British punk pioneers Sex Pistols. While he left early during the recording sessions of the group’s first and only studio album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, Matlock is credited as a co-writer on 10 of the 12 tracks. Since his departure in 1977, he has been very busy. Matlock has performed and recorded with various other bands and artists, including Rich Kids, Vicious White Kids, Iggy Pop, The Damned and The International Swingers, among others. He remains a member of the last group and also joined Blondie’s touring band last year. Additionally, he took part in various Sex Pistols reunion tours. Oh, and in 1996, Matlock started a solo career with the release of Who’s He Think He Is When He’s at Home? Five additional solo albums have since appeared, including his latest, Consequences Coming. Off it, I got the perfect tune for a Saturday: Something ‘Bout the Weekend. The nice rocker is credited to Matlock, Hotei (Tomoyasu Hotei) and Mark Garfield.

Sock/Change Your Mind

This brings me to my final pick, Welsh alternative rock band Sock. From their Spotify profile: Formed in Cardiff, Sock make guitar-driven alternative rock, taking inspiration from psychedelic music. Known for their creative melodic arrangements and blending of genres, the band describe their music as “a rather progressive affair.” Following on from the band’s debut album ‘Fresh Bits’, in 2018, their much anticipated self-titled follow-up is out this April. The album features Jacob on Rhythm Guitar & Vocals, Billy on Lead Guitar, Sam on Bass & Keys, and Simon on Drums & Percussion. Produced by the band, the album was recorded during the pandemic and sees the music move into a heavier and more refined sound. From that album, here’s Change Your Mind – nice sounding tune!

Last but not least is a Spotify playlist of the above goodies plus a few additional tracks – another pretty good week on the new music front, at least in my book! 🙂

Sources: Wikipedia; Country Westerns website; YouTube; Spotify

The Sunday Six

Welcome to another installment of The Sunday Six, my weekly imaginary time travel that celebrates music of the past 60 years or so, six tunes at a time. Today’s post was inspired by fellow blogger and poet Lisa from Tao Talk who is currently doing a great Women Music March series. The reality is the music business is pretty male-dominated, even more so once you go back to the past. But, as many music fans know, there have been amazing female artists throughout the decades. Following are some of them.

Ella Fitzgerald/Rock It For Me

Let’s start today’s journey in the year 1938. ‘Wait a moment,’ you may say, that’s 84 years ago, not just 60. Well, the 60-year span isn’t set in stone. In fact, nothing really is on The Sunday Six, except I have to dig it. I trust everybody has heard of American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. According to Wikipedia, “The First Lady of Song”, “Queen of Jazz” and “Lady Ella”, as she was called, was known for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing (a vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or no words at all – CMM). After gaining popularity with the Chick Webb Orchestra during the second half of the 1930s, Fitzgerald launched a solo career in 1942. Over a nearly 60-year career, she collaborated with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and The Ink Spots, and released an enormous catalog of studio and live solo and collaboration albums. Rock It For Me, co-written by twins Kay Werner and Sue Werner, appeared as a single by the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1938. Wikipedia notes the lyrics include the term “rock and roll,” an early reference to the genre before it existed…Now it’s true that once upon a time/The opera was the thing/But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme/So won’t you satisfy my soul/With the rock and roll…

Wanda Jackson/Let’s Have a Party

Let’s continue our music celebration with some kickass classic rock & roll by Wanda Jackson, one of the first female artists who made a career in rock & roll in the 1950s. One of her best-known tunes is Let’s Have a Party, penned by Jessie Mae Robinson, which Jackson first recorded for her eponymous debut album from July 1958. The previous year, Elvis Presley had released the song as a single in the UK, titled Party. As much as I dig Elvis, Jackson’s version leaves him in the dust! Jackson’s rendition of Let’s Have a Party also came out as a single in June 1960. If I see it correctly, this was her first song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, climbing to no. 37. Jackson, who is now 84, has also released music in other genres, including country and gospel. Apparently, she is still active. Her latest album Encore appeared last year, and you can watch her most recent single It Keeps Right On A Hurtin’ here. What a dynamite lady!

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts/I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll

Speaking of kickass, next our time machine shall take us to the early ’80s and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Yes, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll may be the obvious tune, and it hasn’t exactly suffered from underexposure. But, as we used to say in Germany during my teenage years, this tune is just “geil,” which loosely translated means amazing. Co-written by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker, who shockingly were both guitarists, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll was first recorded by short-lived British rock band Arrows and released as a single in July 1975. After Jett had seen the band perform the tune on British TV in 1976 while touring the UK, she decided to cover it. Her initial rendition was recorded with Sex Pistols guitarist and drummer Steve Jones and Paul Cook, respectively. It appeared in 1979 as the B-side to Jett’s single You Don’t Own Me and went unnoticed. Jett’s decision to re-record the song in 1981 with her band the Blackhearts and make it the title track of the group’s second studio album proved to be a winner. Not only did the tune become the band’s first charting single, but it also turned out to be their biggest hit. I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll topped the mainstream charts in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, hit no. 1 in Sweden, and reached the top 10 in various other European countries. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts still love rock & roll and are scheduled to launch what looks like an extended US tour later this month.

The Pointer Sisters/Fire

American vocal group The Pointer Sisters, who have been around since 1970, have performed songs in multiple genres, including pop, disco, jazz, electronic music, bebop, blues, soul, funk, dance, country and rock – I suppose it would have been easier to list the genres they haven’t done! The song that brought them on my radar screen is one of their biggest hits: Fire. For several years, I didn’t realize this was actually a Bruce Springsteen tune. When I heard the original for the first time on Springsteen’s boxed set Live/1975–85, admittedly, I was underwhelmed, feeling it lacked the great dynamic of the Pointer Sisters. I’ve since warmed to it, though I still prefer the rendition by the female vocal group. Their version was first released as the lead single of their fifth studio album Energy in October 1978. The entire record is fairly rock-oriented and also includes a great cover of the Steely Dan tune Dirty Work.

Melissa Aldana/Elsewhere

Not including an instrumental in a Sunday Six post just didn’t feel right, so I decided to feature another track by my “latest discovery,” Melissa Aldana, a tenor saxophonist from Chile. In case you saw my latest Best of What’s New installment, you may recall the name. Borrowing from this post, Aldana, the daughter of renowned tenor saxophonist Marcos Aldana, began formal saxophone instruction at the age of six. By the time she was 16, she already headlined jazz clubs in Santiago. With the help of Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez, Aldana auditioned at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory, subsequently won a scholarship to Berklee and launched a career in the U.S. Elsewhere is a beautiful tune from Aldana’s fifth studio album Visions released in May 2019. This young woman is so talented!

The Linda Lindas/Growing Up

And once again this brings us to the final stop of our mini-excursion. How many Asian-American and Latino all-female punk bands do you know? I had not been aware of any until I came across The Linda Lindas the other day. This group from Los Angeles, which includes Bela Salazar (guitar, vocals), Eloise Wong (bass, vocals), Lucia de la Garza (guitar, vocals) and her sister Mila de la Garza (drums, vocals), has been around since 2018. After American actress and film director Amy Poehler watched a live performance of the band, she asked them to record a song for her 2021 comedy-drama Moxie. The Linda Lindas also penned a tune for the 2020 Netflix documentary The Claudia Kishi Club. In May last year, they signed with Epitaph Records and released Oh!, their first single with the label. Here’s Growing Up, the title track of the band’s full-length debut album that’s scheduled for April 8. The enthusiasm and energy of these ladies just make me smile. And apparently, they are still so young. I suppose I’m now at an age where I repeatedly find myself thinking, ‘gee, these could be my kids!’

Last but not least, here’s a playlist of all the above-featured tunes.

Sources: Wikipedia; Joan Jett & the Blackhearts website; YouTube; Spotify

From Russia With Love And Rock & Roll

We are an explosive movement of the rock warriors from Russia, and we are melting our socks off with our Army of Rock!

Quite likely that for you Russia is just a cold country full of bears and vodka, and maybe you even heard that every Russian knows how to play balalyka. So, here we are to tell you a bit about our Army of Rock that performs live the world’s greatest rock hits. And, yeah, we do have a balalyka indeed, a really big one!

The above is an excerpt from the Facebook page of Rock-n-Mob, an “orchestra of more than 100 musicians” from Russia, including drummers, guitarists, bassists, keyboarders and vocalists. Established in 2016, Rock-n-Mob was inspired by Rockin’ 1000, a group from the Italian town of Cesena, which brought together 1,000 musicians in July 2015 to play simultaneously and in the process collect enough money to convince the Foo Fighters to perform a concert in that city close to the Adriatic Sea. The band accepted and did a 3-hour show on November 3, 2015, which was dedicated to Rockin’ 1000, as well as all the donors and volunteers involved in the July 2015 concert. Kudos to the Fighters!

And you perhaps thought balalykas can’t rock!

I just love that story, even in case it’s a bit embellished. It just goes to show once again the potential power of music to bridge continents and even different political systems. Russia may be run by a dictator and crook who suppresses freedom of expression and won’t hesitate to intervene in foreign elections to manipulate outcomes. But that’s very different from the Russian people, many of whom have the same dreams and aspirations than we do in the West – and love rock music!

Even when rock was considered to be subversive and therefore officially forbidden under the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union, rock was alive and kicking there. Fans found creative ways to listen to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and other Western bands they dug.

Listen up, all you crooked dictators, whereever you may be, your days are counted and rock & roll will outlive you! With that being said, let’s get to some music from Rock-n-Mob! All of the following tunes were performed in Moscow. Let’s kick it off with a rendition of Michael Jackson’s Beat It, which happened last September. Written by Jackson, the great tune appeared on Thriller, his sixth studio album from November 1982, which to this day remains the word’s top-selling record with 47.3 million units sold.

Next up: Livin’ On A Prayer by Bon Jovi, performed in May this year. I know some rock fans cringe when they hear the name of this artist and band. I’ve said it before and I say it again. I think these guys have written some great songs, which nicely combine rock with pop elements. Livin’ On A Prayer, one of my favorite Bon Jovi tunes, is from their third studio album Slippery When Wet, which was released in August 1986. Like most tracks on the record, it was co-written by frontman Jon Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora and collaborator, American producer and songwriter Desmond Child.

And since this post is about celebrating rock & roll, I thought why not throw in anthem I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is best known by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. This performance was captured in July 2017. The tune was co-written in 1975 by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker, who recorded it with English American rock band Arrows. Jett first learned about the tune in 1976 and initially recorded a version with Steve Jones and Paul Cook, two members of Sex Pistols. She subsequently re-recorded the tune with the Blackhearts in 1981, making it the title track of the band’s second studio album that came out in November that year – and scoring a no. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

There are many other rock songs Rock-n-Mob have performed. Obviously, I can’t cover all of them. I’d like to leave you with one more track from August 2016, which I feel is a great motto for this remarkable group: The Show Must Go On by Queen. Credited to all members of the English rock band, the song appeared on Queen’s 14th studio album Innuendo from February 1991. This was the final record released during the lifetime of  Freddie Mercury, who had been diagnosed with AIDS in the spring of 1987 and passed away nine months after the album’s release from AIDS-derived bronchopneumonia.

Rockin’ 1000 seems to continue being active. And apparently, the concept of these massive rock orchestras of the people is catching on elsewhere. The other day on Facebook, I saw a group from The Netherlands called De Grootste Band Van Nederland playing a great version of Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World. This gives me hope. Rock may no longer be mainstream and selling many albums, but it sure as heck ain’t dead.

Sources: Wikipedia; Rock-n-Mob Facebook; Rockin’ 1000; YouTube