New Music Monthly: March 2020 releases

Spring is right around the corner and as the weather heats up, so too does the release schedule. The month of March promises a bounty of new and renewed music with vinyl reissues of a big chunk of the African Head Charge catalog, new tunes from the legendary Swamp Dogg, Stephen Malkmus, Sass Jordan, Pearl Jam, and Boomtown Rats. Americana fans can rejoice with new albums from talented folks like Carla Olsen, Jim Lauderdale, and Lilly Hiatt while blues lovers will dig new discs by Roomful of Blues and Watermelon Slim. There's something here for everybody, no matter your taste in music! 

Release dates are subject to change and nobody tells me when they do. If you’re interesting in buying an album, just hit the ‘Buy!’ link to get it from Amazon.com...it’s just that damn easy! Your purchase puts valuable ‘store credit’ in the Reverend’s pocket that he’ll use to buy more music to write about in a never-ending loop of rock ‘n’ roll ecstasy!

MARCH 6
African Head Charge - Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
African Head Charge - In Pursuit of Shashamane Land [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
African Head Charge - Songs of Praise [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
African Head Charge - Visions of A Psychedelic Africa [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
African Head Charge - Voodoo of the Godsent [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
African Head Charge - Drumming Is A Language [5-CD box set]   BUY!
Body Count - Carnivore   BUY!
Luke Haines & Peter Buck - Beat Poetry for the Survivalists   BUY!
Cornershop - England Is A Garden   BUY!
Jim Lauderdale - When Carolina Comes Home Again   BUY!
Stephen Malkmus - Traditional Techniques   BUY!
Rose Tattoo - Outlaws   BUY!
Swamp Dogg - Sorry You Couldn't Make It   BUY!
Will Sexton - Don’t Walk the Darkness   BUY!

MARCH 13
Peter Bjorn and John - Endless Dream   BUY!
Boomtown Rats - Citizens of Boomtown   BUY!
Circa Waves - Happy Sad   BUY!
The Districts - You Know I'm Not Going Anywhere   BUY!
Sass Jordan - Rebel Moon Blues   BUY!
Roomful of Blues - In A Roomful of Blues   BUY!

MARCH 20
Brian & Roger Eno - Mixing Colours   BUY!
Game Theory - Across The Barrier Of Sound: PostScript   BUY!
Jon Hassell - Vernal Equinox [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
Morrissey - I Am Not A Dog On A Chain   BUY!
Carla Olson - Have Harmony, Will Travel 2   BUY!
The Weeknd - After Hours   BUY!
Matt Wilson - When I Was A Writer   BUY!

MARCH 27
Duane & Gregg Allman - Duane & Gregg Allman   BUY!
Allman Joys - Early Allman [Duane & Gregg Allman]   BUY!
Rory Block - Prove It On Me   BUY!
Clem Snide - Forever Just Beyond   BUY!
Brian Fallon - Local Honey   BUY!
Hour Glass - Hour Glass   [Duane & Gregg Allman]   BUY!
Hour Glass - Power of Love [Duane & Gregg Allman]   BUY!
Lilly Hiatt - Walking Proof   BUY!
The No Ones - The Great Lost No Ones Album [w/Scott McCaughey & Peter Buck]   BUY!
Alan Parsons Project - Ammonia Avenue [deluxe box set reissue]   BUY!
Pearl Jam - Gigaton   BUY!
Kim Richey - A Long Way Back: The Songs of Glimmer   BUY!
Sufjan Stevens - Aporia   BUY!
Watermelon Slim - Traveling Man   BUY!

Album of the Month: Watermelon Slim's Traveling Man, the first live work from the blues lifer and a double-disc set at that! Underrated, understated, but just plain great Slim is a helluva storyteller, and a mighty fine picker on his National Steel guitar. Traveling Man offers up eighteen lively performances from 2016, just the man and his guitar and the occasional harmonica. The blues doesn't get any better than Watermelon Slim!

The Boomtown Rats – Live In Germany ‘78

The Boomtown Rats never really caught on stateside as they did in the U.K. Formed in Ireland in 1975 by singer Bob Geldof and guitarist Garry Roberts, the Rats were really more of a pub-rock outfit than anything else. Influenced by bands like Dr. Feelgood, the Rolling Stones, and the Who, the Rats delivering stripped-down, raw, unadorned rock ‘n’ roll that pre-dated the British punk scene with which they’re most firmly identified (although they’re also categorized as a “new wave” band…go figure!).

While the Rats’ best-selling U.S. album – 1979’s The Fine Art of Surfacing – peaked at #103 on the Billboard album chart due to the MTV exposure provided the single “I Don’t Like Mondays” (which, criminally, only hit #73 stateside), the Rats scored ten straight hit singles in the U.K., including two number ones, and their first four albums charted in the top twenty in their homeland.

Their lack of U.S. recognition aside, the Boomtown Rats were a damn fine rock band circa 1977-1981, with a brace of solid album releases to their credit. In addition to the aforementioned The Fine Art of Surfacing, the band’s self-titled 1977 debut and the following year’s A Tonic For The Troops (with the cool, Springsteenesque jam “Rat Trap”) displayed a punkish energy and traditional rock influences that sound as fresh and vital today as they did almost 40 years ago. As the band became more accomplished with subsequent albums, their sound would lose the rough edges and take on more artful flourishes. Eventually, the Rats would be overshadowed by the personality and public persona of their frontman, and they’d break up in the mid-1980s.

Damn, those early Boomtown Rats albums rocked hard though, the late 1970s a prolific and productive time for a band whose talents are too often overlooked in favor of contemporaries like the Clash or the Jam. Sadly, few live recordings of the band in its prime have been released. On June 8th, 2015 our friends at Gonzo Multimedia will release Live In Germany ’78, a two-disc DVD/CD set that features thirteen previously-unreleased, high-octane performances from the band’s storied 1978 world tour.

Surprisingly, Live In Germany ’78 is light on tunes from Tonic, the band’s album at the time, featuring only the U.K. hit single “She’s So Modern” from that disc. The bulk of this live set comes from the band’s fine debut LP, including their first hit single, “Looking After No. 1,” and its follow-up hit, “Mary of the 4th Form.” The Rats knock out eight of nine songs from their debut here, as well as a trio of very cool non-album B-sides like “Do The Rat” and “It’s All The Rage” which, to the best of my knowledge, have never appeared on a Boomtown Rats album previously.

The band at the time – Geldof, guitarists Roberts and Gerry Cott, bassist Pete Briquette, keyboardist Johnnie Fingers, and drummer Simon Crowe – were a dynamic outfit with a great chemistry, so this live set should rock the rafters and provide further evidence that the Boomtown Rats were one of the best bands to emerge from the heady and talented U.K. rock scene of the 1970s.        

The Boomtown Rats’ Live In Germany ’78 tracklist:

1. Close As You'll Ever Be
2. Never Bite the Hand That Feeds
3. Neon Heart
4. (It Feels) So Strange
5. Kicks
6. She's So Modern
7. Joey's On the Street Again
8. Don't Believe What You Read
9. (She's Gonna) Do You In
10. Do the Rat
11. It's All the Rage
12. Mary of the 4th Form
13. Looking After Number 1