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1961, The Top Ten Club, Hamburg, Germany. 

(Photos by Jurgen Vollmer)

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On this day in music history: February 25, 1973 - “In The Right Place”, the sixth album by Dr. John is released. Produced by Allen Toussaint, it is recorded at Sea-Saint Studios in New Orleans, LA in Late 1972. After recording several acclaimed, but moderate selling albums, the New Orleans born musician and songwriter finally makes his commercial breakthrough with his sixth release. Working with legendary songwriter and musician Allen Toussaint, the producer surrounds John with a group of top notch musicians including The Meters, Ralph MacDonald, and David Spinozza. Sporting a more funk oriented sound than his previous albums, it spins off two singles including “Right Place, Wrong Time” (#9 Pop, #19 R&B) which become his most successful single. It is followed up by “Such A Night” (#42 Pop, #76 R&B), which also become’s another one of Dr. John’s signature songs. The original vinyl LP is issued in a tri-fold sleeve, that is discontinued on later pressings, reverting to a single pocket sleeve.  First reissued on CD in the mid 90’s, “Right Place” is reissued on translucent orange vinyl in 2012. Another limited LP reissue pressed on multi-colored vinyl (orange, yellow and green) is released by Rhino Records in 2015. “In The Right Place” peaks at number twenty four on the Billboard Top 200.

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SRV & Double Trouble - Texas Flood (1983). European first pressing.

I gave this classic gem a spin while cleaning the bathtub, let’s just say it went by smoothly💙No flood though😅

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The Who at the University of Reading, Reading UK ~ October 2nd, 1971 (photos courtesy of Marc Starcke)

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When we can’t sleep, we listen to Baroness.

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Elephant Tree “Elephant Tree”

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I just got the rest of my record collection back (it’s a long story) and this is one of my babies that I have missed! So glad to have it back. 💕

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White Clover in St Joe Missouri (ca 1972).

White Clover is what became the band Kansas that we all know- after they’d recruited Kerry Livgren in early ‘73.

Left to right Dave Hope, Rich Williams, Steve Walsh, Phil Ehart, Robby Steinhardt.

<3 Today is the first time I’ve seen this glorious pic, the first time it’s emerged online. Thanks Debbie Williams for sharing this gem!

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Every day must contain some gritty blue notes👌💙

(Peter Green’s) Fleetwood Mac (1968)

UK first pressing

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RSD Black Friday 2018: The List

We posted our first VJ poll, asking YOU to choose the content for this show. Here’s what’s on tap:

1- RSD Black Friday: The List 2- Quality Control Matters: An Update 3- Blind Picks From The VJ Archive (New Game!) Winner chosen! Keep sharing our content, we’ll keep picking winners.  Thanks for your AMAZING support!

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Can we just talk about John Entwistle’s skeleton suit?

From what I understand, he made it himself. In fact, I believe he made most of his clothes because 1. He was an artist, and 2. There just weren’t any clothes that he wanted to wear so he made them himself.

Also, if I were in a band where I had to compete with this:

And this:

And this:

Then I would def wear this:

And you get a cool nickname like ‘The Ox’ or ‘Thunderfingers’.

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What makes "old" music more appealing to you than contemporary music?

I would adjust this to say that more “old” music is appealing to me than contemporary music; it’s not a binary and you don’t have to choose one or the other. That being said, there are many reasons my tastes often run towards last century. At the risk of inviting the usual strange disdain, here are the main ones: 

Production: Back when we only had eight-track recording you couldn’t stitch a song together from a thousand individually perfect digital moments; you had to play it through and get creative about how you were going to use those eight tracks. The results are much more human, much more organic; if Led Zeppelin had used a click track on “Rock and Roll” it wouldn’t speed up the way it does, and that’s partly what makes the song so awesome. Music which is technically correct all the way through often bores me. I’m not looking for precision. I’d much rather have dynamics and excitement and four dudes so revved up by their music that they can’t help playing faster and faster, consistency be damned.

Albums: Because hardly anyone listens to whole albums anymore, many artists are (understandably) less concerned with making an actual album than turning out ten de facto singles and packaging them together as an album. I like having the sonic narrative of a whole record, with ups and down and highs and lows and different emotional shades and tones. Just because it goes up to eleven doesn’t mean you want to be at level eleven all the time. More on this here, and I do hope you read that post because there are a lot of further thoughts on music in the digital age.

The way we listen: In the shift from analog to digital we’ve lost a lot, and I don’t just mean liner notes and cover art bigger than a postage stamp (though I do prefer to have a tactile relationship with my media). An mp3 is basically a super-diluted and radically compressed version of what you have on a record, or even a CD, because less content requires less space; the smaller you make it, more sonic detail you have to lose. I’m not going to get into the technical minutiae, but in order to reduce a song to mp3 size, some engineers figured out an algorithm for what they could cut from it that the average listener isn’t going to notice (if you’re interested in this, Simon Reynolds does a good job explaining it in his book Retromania). For the way most of us listen to music these days–on the go, with whatever crappy earbuds came with our phone, or in the background through our laptop speakers while we’re doing something else–that’s perfectly sufficient. Because a lot of people under a certain age have never really heard music any other way, they don’t even realize that there are whole layers of their songs that they’re not hearing. However, if you have any familiarity with analog audio, mp3s and other digital formats sound flat and lifeless by comparison. Can you still get good sound with high-quality files and a good stereo setup? Of course. But is it ever going to match vinyl? Nope. More than this, though, I prefer analog audio–and music made expressly for analog audio because nothing else existed at the time–because it’s a much more intimate and immersive listening experience. Take a song you think you know from five years of listening to it on your iPhone and play it on vinyl on a good stereo and I guarantee you will hear colors and tones and textures you never heard before. There’s no such thing as a soundstage with mp3s; in digital music, everything is necessarily smashed together. LPs have room to breathe. And because analog audio is so much more dynamic, it’s much more compelling to listen to. Music made before smartphones and the internet and 5,000 channels of satellite TV is not music for multitasking. It’s music that demands and absorbs all your attention. It refuses to just be background noise. That’s the kind of listening experience I love and want: one that is active, not passive. When was the last time you sat down and listened to an entire album all the way through without doing anything else at the same time? Good music in a good medium demands that. 

These are the generic, qualitative reasons. And obviously, yes, there are exceptions; there are contemporary artists and albums that still manage to tick all these boxes, and yes, I do buy and listen to new stuff as well as old. And yes, there is old music that totally sucks. But (in my opinion) how and why we make music has changed in ways not always for the better. If you’re at all interested in this digital/analog dichotomy, I highly recommend taking a look at Damon Kurkowski’s book The New Analog; it’s a short, fascinating read that’s easy to understand even if you know nothing about audio, high-end or otherwise. 

Finally, I have to add that the biggest reason I mostly listen to music made forty years ago or more is that it’s just what I like, and I can’t give you a neat little reason why. Sure, some of it has to do with my broader cultural and academic interests in the 1960s-’70s, but my love of music and my love of history are mutually constitutive, and art and logic don’t always overlap. I love what I love, and that doesn’t mean I think everybody else’s music is trash or they have bad taste if it doesn’t align with mine. Music is like literature: variety is exactly what makes it so fantastic. Listen and let listen. 

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Songs that never fail to make white people beyond turnt

 Don’t Stop Believing 

Bohemian Rhapsody 

Living On A Prayer 

Come On Eileen 

Sweet Caroline 

Shot Through the Heart 

Pour Some Sugar on Me 

Sweet Home Alabama 

Under Pressure 

Shook Me All Night Long 

Ice Ice Baby 

Cotton Eyed Joe

500 Miles

Wonderwall 

Buddy Holly 

A Thousand Miles 

Teenage Dirtbag 

Red Solo Cup 

Mr Brightside 

Never Gonna Give You Up 

Eye of the Tiger 

Chicken Fried 

American Pie 

I Love Rock and Roll 

Dancing Queen 

Don’t You Want Me

We Will Rock You 

The Time Warp 

Hey Jude 

Piano Man

This Is How We Do It

Drops of Jupiter 

Hey Soul Sister

In The End 

All The Small Things 

Stacy’s Mom 

Kryptonite 

All Star 

You Found Me

Bad Day 

Bring Me To Life 

Dance, Dance

Sugar We’re Going Down 

I Write Sins Not Tragedies 

All The Small Things 

Ocean Avenue 

Dirty Little Secret 

Margaritaville 

Sk8er Boi

Brown Eyed Girl 

Life Is A Highway 

Some Nights 

Little Lion Man 

Breakeven

Hey There Delilah 

Viva La Vida

Use Somebody 

Carry On My Wayward Son 

Take On Me

1985 

Iris 

I’m Awesome 

Seven Nation Army 

September 

Since U Been Gone

Skinny Love 

Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)

Bye Bye Bye 

Say It Ain’t So 

Somewhere Only We Know 

I’m Yours 

Last Resort 

My Girl 

Tiny Dancer 

Roxanne

Shout 

I’m a Believer 

Soul Man

Feel Good Inc 

Check Yes Juliet

Walking On Sunshine 

MMM Bop

Pumped up Kicks 

Hooked On A Feeling 

It’s A Beautiful Day

Summer Girls 

Before He Cheats 

Happy Together

You Make My Dreams Come True

Build Me Up Buttercup

Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

DONTTRUSTME

Shake It (Metro Station)

Juke Box Hero

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

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Holy cow!!!! I’m over 1000 followers??!!? Thanks all!

This was a recent acquisition from Human Head Records for $5. My buddy was asking if this is a good one. I balked and till Jim it’s a rarity comp and he put it back in the stacks. I grabbed it. The Who were my first love and I never had this one. Eventually.

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