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Michael Chapman Fully Qualified Survivor (Harvest) and 50 (Paradise of Bachelors) ---The Records You Didn’t Know You Needed #8
Joseph W. Washek  |  Oct 30, 2021  |  2 comments
Michael Chapman died on September 10. He was 80 years old. Pitchfork, NME, and The Guardian published obituaries all of which referred to him as a folk singer-songwriter, best known for the 1970 album Fully Qualified Survivor. Chapman did not like being called a “folk singer” for the excellent reason that the term was inaccurate when applied to him. After fifty-four years as a professional musician, with an unlikely career resurgence beginning when he was fifty-seven, that produced thirty albums including 50, which many regard as his best work, it probably also would have rankled him that that he was mainly remembered for FQS his second album.

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Michael Fremer’s Top 50 Albums of the 2010’s (+Honorable Mentions & Playlists)
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 24, 2020  |  51 comments
Frankly speaking, I don’t like lists. It’s bad enough to pick 5 best albums over a year, never mind 50 over a decade. It’s worse to have to almost arbitrarily list them in descending order, but that’s the self-assignment so that’s what I’ve done. While I was already Social Security eligible a decade ago, many people found my behavior to be that of a 4 year old, so perhaps that’s why my pal Malachi, the site’s other “regular writer” and I get along so well. Plus, while I won’t repeat his political comments, we are on the same page there too, though he’s probably slightly to my left. Clearly we diverge somewhat musically, though both of us agree on the #1 record of the past decade and David Bowie is our favorite artist. He’s encouraged me to listen to Kanye and Tyler, the Creator as well as Frank Ocean and I’m glad he did. I turned him on to Gil Evans and he’s glad I did.

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Features
Mike Hobson and Chad Kassem Reminisce About the Founding and Rich History of Classic Records
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 30, 2021  |  12 comments
Classic Records Founder Mike Hobson and Acoustic Sounds/Analogue Productions/QRP Founder Chad Kassem reminisce about the "old days", and the beginnings of Classic Records, which in 1993 when almost no one was making vinyl, decided to manufacture great records—and maybe even sell a few.

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Features
Mikey Skewers Pretentious Audio Journalism!
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 09, 2003  |  0 comments
NOTE:

This review has been reprinted in its entirety from The Absolute Shower with not one word censored or deleted. The Absolute Shower is the journal of High End Hygiene and reports its findings on hygienic devices and anti-bacterial sources without fear or favor from any large pharmaceutical conglomerate. Its aquatic evaluations take place in real shower stalls, hence, cleanliness is the measure of reference.

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Features
MMM (Malachi’s Mat Mishegas) Felt Mat File Identities Revealed
Malachi Lui  |  Oct 11, 2018  |  9 comments
The file identities of "MMM"are as follows:

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Features
More Notes on the Rolling Stones Reissues
Malachi Lui  |  Jun 13, 2022  |  60 comments
Whether it's the 60s material controlled by ABKCO or the 1971-onward catalog owned by the band, the Rolling Stones' discography is among the world's most tirelessly and excessively reissued; every few years, there's yet another remastered, repressed, repackaged reissue of the same decades-old classics. After several mediocre reissues of the Rolling Stones Records albums (particularly the first and best two, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street), AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer found the half-speed mastered 2018 Studio Albums Vinyl Collection 1971–2016 box set (now available as individual albums) to best capture the original LPs' spirit, even if sometimes lacking in transparent analog sparkle. However, I thought another perspective on the Sticky Fingers and Exile reissues, also taking into account the Japanese flat transfer CDs, would be useful.
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Features
My Physics Teacher Was a New York Record Producer and I Had No Idea
Tom Fleming  |  Aug 06, 2020  |  34 comments
I grew up and went to school in Hereford in the 1980s and 90s - a small, old, and averagely average rural English cathedral city with a bit of a leftie/peacenik 'muesli belt' that definitely included my family. Since a few biggish musicians or bands have had some connection with the town over the years, maybe also because of its hippy side and its proximity to the legendary Rockfield Studios (just down the road near Monmouth), the Herefordshire of my youth seemed to be full of people with tenuous and exaggerated claims of involvement with the music business. Anyone who had ever helped the band that became The Pretenders to unload their van (all of them except the American Chrissie Hynde were local, but had long since fled), played bagpipes on a Mike Oldfield album (he briefly lived just inside the county at the height of his fame) or soldered a jack plug for Mott The Hoople's keyboard player dined out on it for years. It was all a bit tedious and you learned not to be particularly impressed.

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New Label Inner Groove Records Announces Their Inaugural 180g 1LP Reissue Is Lim Taylor’s Lost 1974 Funk/Soul Gem, You Hear Me Knocking
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 12, 2023  |  2 comments

We’re always happy to see when new vinyl-centric record labels crop up with a clear mission, and that leads us directly to the M.O. that’s fueling Inner Groove Records. The fledgling label’s inaugural release is a 180g 1LP reissue of Lim Taylor’s long lost 1974 funk/soul gem You Hear Me Knocking, an album that initially surfaced on Ray Charles’ custom Crossover Records imprint. Read on to see how you can secure your own copy of Knocking before this strictly limited-edition LP is gone, gone, gone. . .

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Features
New Orleans Culture at a Tipping Point Part 2
Roger Hahn  |  Jun 30, 2009  |  0 comments

New Orleans' second-line parade culture and Mardi Gras Indian culture share a number of attributes.


Both emerged as casually formalized neighborhood practices in the post-Reconstruction decades of the late 19th-century, with Indian imagery likely influenced around that time by the popularity in the U.S. of traveling 'Wild West' shows.

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New Orleans Culture at a Tipping Point Part 1
Roger Hahn  |  Jun 30, 2009  |  0 comments
On Saturday morning, April 26, 2008 an overcast and moderately humid day in New Orleans, a small group of neighborhood kids organized an impromptu 'jazz funeral' to commemorate the recent death of a loved and respected local track coach.
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New Orleans Culture at a Tipping Point Part 3
Roger Hahn  |  Jun 30, 2009  |  0 comments
While the corruption-and-reform message that would dominate post-Katrina rebuilding was being crafted in the arena of national politics—delivered through the combined strategies of federal inaction and rabid crime enforcement—the tourism industry in New Orleans emerged as the second gatekeeper of post-Katrina message delivery, energized by a void of local political leadership.
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Features
New Orleans Culture at a Tipping point Part 4
Roger Hahn  |  Jun 30, 2009  |  0 comments
This is part 4 of Roger Hahn's epic musical and cultural look at New Orleans, post Hurricane Katrina. Parts 1 through 3 have been on musicangle's home page since this past summer. The final and fifth part of the piece can also be found on the current home page. Parts 1-3 are available by searching the musicangle site—ed.
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Features
New Orleans Culture at a Tipping Point Part 5
Roger Hahn  |  Jun 30, 2009  |  3 comments

This is the 5th and final part of Roger Hahn's "New Orleans Culture at a Tipping Point." Part 4 is on the home page. You can find Parts 1-3 elsewhere here by searching the site—ed.

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Features
New Orleans Music Festival Turns 40 Part 1
Roger Hahn  |  Apr 30, 2010  |  0 comments

Our Man in New Orleans, Roger Hahn reports from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2009. You'll think you went!

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Features
New Orleans Music Festival Turns 40 Part 2
Roger Hahn  |  Apr 30, 2010  |  0 comments

Our Man in New Orleans Roger Hahn concludes his report from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2009 and meditates on its future. You'll think you went!-ed.

New marketing trends had begun to establish an exploitable connection between highly educated consumers with gobs of disposable income and their fascination for the aura of “authenticity” naturally connected to the “roots” music world.

Corporate leaders began to understand this, too. In 1996, one of the world’s largest software vendors, Computer Associates, began holding its annual trade show in New Orleans and by 1998, had specifically connected attendance at the trade show with a Jazz Fest hospitality tent on festival grounds, spawning an unlikely influx of logo-bearing, polo-shirted Computer Associates employees.

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