Music Record Shop Weekly

Welcome to the new weekly feature (look for it every Friday) called MusicRecordShop Weekly.  Here we take a look at new releases and some hard to find vinyl that will easily satisfy even the most serious record collectors.  Here's five that we think you will enjoy, including some very hard to find picture discs!:

1. Iron Maiden - Maiden England (Picture Disc)

MAIDEN ENGLAND '88. Now available for the very first time on double LP, this live show was filmed across two sold-out nights at Birmingham N.E.C Arena, UK in November 1988 during the band's
"Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son World Tour."

• Label EMI (Import)
• 180 Gram Vinyl Records - 2-LP - Sealed
• Limited Edition
• Picture Disc

Track Listing
LP1
1. Moonchild (2009 - Remaster)
2. The Evil That Men Do (2009 - Remaster)
3. The Prisoner (2009 - Remaster)
4. Still Life (2009 - Remaster)
5. Die With Your Boots On (2009 - Remaster)
6. Infinite Dreams (2009 - Remaster)
7. Killers (2009 - Remaster)
8. Can I Play With Madness (2009 - Remaster)
9. Heaven Can Wait (2009 - Remaster)
10. Wasted Years (2009 - Remaster)

LP2
1. The Clairvoyant (2009 - Remaster)
2. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (2009 - Remaster)
3. The Number of the Beast (2009 - Remaster)
4. Hallowed Be Thy Name (2009 - Remaster)
5. Iron Maiden (2009 - Remaster)
6. Run to the Hills
7. Running Free
8. Sanctuary

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2. Rodriguez - Cold Fact

There was a mini-genre of singer/songwriters in the late '60s and early '70s that has never gotten a name. They were folky but not exactly folk-rock and certainly not laid-back; sometimes pissed off but not full of rage; alienated but not incoherent; psychedelic-tinged but not that weird; not averse to using orchestration in some cases but not that elaborately produced. And they sold very few records, eluding to a large degree even rediscovery by collectors. Jeff Monn, Paul Martin, John Braheny, and Billy Joe Becoat were some of them, and Sixto Rodriguez was another on his 1970 LP, Cold Fact. Imagine an above-average Dylanesque street busker managing to record an album with fairly full and imaginative arrangements, and you're somewhat close to the atmosphere. Rodriguez projected the image of the aloof, alienated folk-rock songwriter, his songs jammed with gentle, stream-of-consciousness, indirect putdowns of straight society and its tensions. Likewise, he had his problems with romance, simultaneously putting down (again gently) women for their hang-ups and intimating that he could get along without them anyway ("I wonder how many times you had sex, and I wonder do you know who'll be next" he chides in the lilting "I Wonder"). At the same time, the songs were catchy and concise, with dabs of inventive backup: a dancing string section here, odd electronic yelps there, tinkling steel drums elsewhere. It's an album whose lyrics are evocative yet hard to get a handle on even after repeated listenings, with song titles like "Hate Street Dialogue," "Inner City Blues" (not the Marvin Gaye tune), and "Crucify Your Mind" representative of his eccentric, slightly troubled mindset. As it goes with folk-rock-psych singer/songwriters possessing captivating non sequitur turns of the phrase, he's just behind Arthur Lee and Skip Spence, but still worth your consideration.

• LABEL LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
• 180 GRAM VINYL RECORD - LP - SEALED

TRACK LISTING
1. Sugar Man
2. Only Good For Conversation
3. Crucify Your Mind
4. This Is Not A Song, It's An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues
5. Hate Street Dialogue
6. Forget It
7. Inner City Blues
8. I Wonder
9. Jane S. Piddy
10. Gommorah (A Nursery Rhyme)
11. Rich Folks Hoax
12. Like Janis
13. I'll Slip Away
14. You'd Like To Admit It

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3. Rodriguez - Searching For Sugar Man 

The story remains one of the music world's most unusual tales of the 1970s: an obscure debut LP by a Detroit singer-songwriter becomes a source of hope and inspiration to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Now, the story of Rodriguez and his cult album Cold Fact is the basis for Searching For Sugar Man, a riveting new documentary by filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul. Light In The Attic Records in partnership with Sony Legacy are honored to announce the release of the original motion picture soundtrack, comprising tracks from Cold Fact and its 1971 follow-up Coming From Reality - both reissued in 2008 and 2009 by Light In The Attic. The soundtrack begins with the otherworldly "Sugar Man" and acts as a primer to this long-overlooked musician's fusion of gritty funk, political poetry and blissful psych-folk.

• LABEL LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
• VINYL RECORD - 2LP - SEALED BLACK VINYL

TRACK LISTING
1. Sugar Man
2. Crucify Your Mind
3. Cause
4. I Wonder
5. Like Janis
6. This Is Not A Song, It's an Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues
7. Can't Get Away
8. I Think of You
9. Inner City Blues
10. Lifestyles - Sandrevan Lullaby
11. Street Boy
12. A Most Disgusting Song
13. I'll Slip Away
14. Jane S. Piddy

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4. Manowar - Lord Of Steel (Picture Disc)

After trying their loyal followers' tolerance like never before with the generally aimless symphonic fluff that surrounded the handful of real songs contained in 2007's Gods of War album, Manowar gratefully adopted a more serious and focused working approach for their eleventh studio LP, 2012's The Lord of Steel. In fact, the intervening 2010 re-recording of their 1982 debut, Battle Hymns, appears to have reined in the group's thunderous hubris to no end. Notwithstanding the power-thrashing attack of The Lord of Steel's opening title track, which predictably prolongs Manowar's delusions about still playing louder, faster, and meaner than innumerable extreme metal bands (not even close), there's a startling simplicity and directness about many of these songs (for good and ill) that's long been absent from Manowar's oeuvre. Take the fast-ensuing "Manowarriors" as a good case in point: it's predictably corny (sample lyric: "In heavy metal we believe; If you don't like it, time to leave"), but endearingly so, and, more importantly, damn infectious, to boot! The same curious attributes pertain to the steady-marching "Born in a Grave" and the staccato-loving "Annihilation," and, while the turgid "Black List" goes absolutely nowhere and the aptly named "Expendable" is exactly that, the absolutely incredible "Touch the Sky" is arguably the best song Manowar's written in 20 years! Of course, since there's always been a very fine line between laughing with and laughing at Manowar, listeners will have to draw their own conclusions about less ubiquitous material such as "Hail, Kill and Die" (one of the band's long-favored mottos rendered career-retrospective), "El Gringo" (tongue-in-cheek Manowar -- could this be?), and especially the majestic ballad "Righteous Glory" (are they yearning for higher ideals or just trying to hump that mythical harpy over there?), which, if nothing else, spells out the band's personality conundrum perfectly.

• LABEL MAGIC CIRCLE
• VINYL RECORD - 2-LP PICTURE DISC - SEALED

TRACK LISTING
1. The Lord of Steel
2. Manowarriors
3. Born in a Grave
4. Righteous Glory
5. Touch the Sky
6. Black List
7. Expendable
8. El Gringo
9. Annihilation
10. Hail Kill and Die
11. The Kingdom of Steel

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5. The Black Angels - Directions To See A Ghost

“The Black Angels bring the aura of mid-1966 the drilling guitars of early Velvet Underground shows, the raga inflections of late-show Fillmore jams, the acid-prayer stomp of Austin avatars the 13th Floor Elevators everywhere they go, including the levitations on their second album, Directions to See a Ghost. Mid-Eighties echoes of Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain also roll through the scoured-guitar sustain and Alex Maas’ rocker-monk incantations. But he knows what time it is. ‘You say the Beatles stopped the war," Maas sings in ’Never/Ever.’ ‘They might’ve helped to find a cure/But it’s still not over.’

Even so, this medicine works wonders." – David Fricke, Rolling Stone

• Label Light In The Attic
• Vinyl Records - 3-LP - Sealed
• Released: May 13; 2008

Track Listing
1.You On The Run
2. Doves
3. Science Killer
4. Mission District
5. 18 Years
6. Deer-Ree-Shee
7. Never/Ever
8. Vikings
9. You In Color
10. The Return
11. Snake In The Grass

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Musicology 101

Let's have a little fun, so here are some rock and roll nuggets so you can win at music trivia games and become a top musicologist!

The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles at a religious retreat in India.

Peter Frampton was the lead guitar player on Frankie Valli's 1978 hit, "Grease."

A luthier is a craftsman who makes or repairs stringed instruments, such as guitars or violins.

According to Bill Harry, founder of the UK music magazine Mersey Beat and personal friend of The Beatles, the rumor that the group took their name from a line in the movie The Wild Ones, is totally false, as the movie was not released in England until 1968. Nor did it have anything to do with "Beat" music, a term that didn't come out until after the band was established. He says it was Stu Sutcliffe who suggested "Let's have a name like The Crickets."

Bruce Springsteen was once the opening act for Canadian singer, Anne Murray, of "Snowbird" fame.

The Dr. Hook hit, "The Cover of Rolling Stone" was written by Shel Silverstein, a best-selling author of children's poems who was also a contributor to Playboy. When the group appeared on the magazine cover, it was in caricature, not an actual photograph.

In Bill Withers' 1971 Billboard #3 hit "Ain't No Sunshine", he repeats the words "I know, I know, I know..." twenty-six times. This rather annoying repetition was originally meant as a place holder until Withers could think up some better lyrics that he never did come up with.

The studio musicians who recorded the music for many "bubblegum" hits credited to The 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Ohio Express and many others, were actually former members of The Shadows of Knight, who had a hit of their own with "Gloria".

Joe South wrote Deep Purple's US #4 hit "Hush", which he adapted from an old American spiritual that included the line: "Hush, I thought I heard Jesus calling my name."