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1 week ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
Celebrating Ray Davies in advance of his 81st birthday tomorrow. —Ed.Ah, the Kinks. Of all the great bands to come out of England in the 1960s, they were by far the most English.
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1 week ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
In the sleeve text of their 1971 sophomore album Acquiring the Taste, Gentle Giant made the brave claim, “It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular.” And they succeeded beyond their wildest progressive rock dreams; during a tour opening for Black Sabbath a year or so later, they were booed off the stage—every night! Then again, that “acquiring the taste” means exactly what it says—your average Black Sabbath fan wasn’t likely to...
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1 week ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
Celebrating Barry Manilow in advance of his 82nd birthday tomorrow. —Ed.Back in the mid- to late seventies, when America was flying high thanks to the exalted stewardship of such Churchillian figures as Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, one all-around entertainer bestrode the Pop World like a colossus. Men wanted him. Women wanted to be him.
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1 week ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
Once you’ve grown blasé, as I have, about the Swedes having given us dynamite, Abba, and Swedish meatballs (which they inexplicably just call meatballs), you’re bound to ask, as I have, “What else you blond and perfect people got?” The answer is Viagra Boys, who since 2018’s Street Worms have been making some of the darkest, funniest, and most musically explosive music to come along since, well, Abba accidentally blew themselves up with dynamite while tinkering with a radical new meatball...
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2 weeks ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
From England’s green and pleasant land, an unprepossessing and pleasant band—Squeeze aren’t out to change your life, just to provide you with friendly and understated pop gems, domestic and romantic tableaux of the sort that won me over even when I was at the height of my Anglophobia.
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2 weeks ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
I used to sleep well knowing that the English progressive rock band Family, like Savoy Brown and Steeleye Span, was one of those groups I could spend my entire life ignoring without having to worry I was missing something. I was wrong. True, some of the songs on 1971’s Fearless—their fifth—are just what I expected: drab progressive rock with a folk edge.
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3 weeks ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
Celebrating Tom Jones in advance of his 85th birthday tomorrow. —Ed.What’s new pussycat? For starters, the legendary Tom Jones—that manly hunk of a man with the curly crop of black hair and awe-inspiring mutton chop sideburns—is back with a new LP, 2021’s Surrounded by Time. So what you ask? Well consider this—the world’s most beloved Las Vegas casino lounge act is 80-years-old and still has the mighty baritone pipes that propelled him to fame with “It’s Not Unusual” back in 1964.
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3 weeks ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
I love this album. I love that it’s a sprawling mess, I love it for its good songs and bad songs, and I love it for the demo-like quality of said songs, but I love 2013’s Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter most because everybody’s Prince Charming couldn’t have made a weirder and more contrarian comeback album.
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3 weeks ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
Remembering Tom Evans, born on this day in 1947. —Ed.Talk about your bad mojo. It would be hard to find a band with as tragic a backstory as Badfinger, not one of whom, but two, of its original members hanged themselves. And this despite a string of at least five timeless tunes, and plenty of other good songs to boot.
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3 weeks ago | 
thevinyldistrict.com | Michael Little
Remembering Charlie Watts, born on this day in 1941. —Ed.Step back in time with me, won’t you, to the year 1965, when Dylan went electric, The Beatles went “Nowhere Man,” and a scruffy English R&B band called the The Rolling Stones released The Rolling Stones No. 2, which included a few tentative attempts at writing their own material.
