Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

The 39th set of exclusive vinyl items offered to Platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service was mailed out to the members in March of 2019. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, who is the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather, and is now a solo artist. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (usually one full-length album and one 7” single) to its Platinum members every three months.

The 39th Vault package contained a 4-LP live set from the stoner-metal band Sleep, recorded directly to acetate at Third Man Records in Nashville on December 12, 2018. The four LP’s in this set were pressed in different colors of vinyl: one blue, one green, one purple, and one orange.

Sleep are a California trio who recorded three albums in the 1990’s. The trio’s latest album The Sciences, their first in two decades, was released by Third Man Records in 2018. Their brand of heavy metal is the slow…

Around the time of the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Nikki Sixx said in a Kerrang interview that his band Mötley Crüe were once “told by the Hall Of Fame that we would never get in, because of how we’ve acted”. Although it is understandable if an organization does not want to reward bad behavior, one must wonder what kind of bad behavior keeps someone out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Few art forms have been more frequently associated with bad behavior than rock and roll music, right?

Well, anyone who wants a crash course on the L.A. hair-metal band’s wild and outrageous past needs to look no further than Netflix. The new Netflix movie The Dirt dramatizes the first 15 years or so of Mötley Crüe’s history. The film is based on the band’s autobiographical 2001 book of the same name, and was co-produced by the four band members among others. After watching this account of the band’s out-of-control party life in the ‘80’s, it’s hard to believe that all four of…

In recognition of the Cure's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this month, I wanted to share with you the sessions that the Cure recorded for The John Peel Show on England's Radio One. The band recorded a total of six sessions for the program between 1978 and 1985. The first session from 1978 was released as a legitimate commercial EP in 1988. The fourth session from 1981 was issued as an unauthorized 7-inch vinyl EP. I reviewed both of those EP's on my website many years ago, but I only recently was able to listen to the Cure's other four Peel Sessions, thanks to the modern conveniences of YouTube and Twitter. I would have loved to have been able to embed these videos on my Cure page way back in 2001. Now that we have Web 2.0 technology, that dream is now a reality.

The Cure’s first Peel Session from 1978 features the original trio of singer/guitarist Robert Smith, bassist Mick Dempsey, and drummer Laurence Tolhurst performing live in the studio in Decem…

Pearl Jam have been named the official Ambassadors of Record Store Day 2019. To celebrate this accolade, the Seattle grunge titans are reissuing their rare 2006 EP Live At Easy Street. This recording predates the Record Store Day tradition, but it anticipated the Record Store Day spirit in many ways. The band played a surprise set at the Easy Street Records store in West Seattle in April of 2005, two years before the first Record Store Day. (According to Eddie Vedder, this was the first time the Seattle grunge band played in the western part of the city). The band made this appearance in support of the Coalition Of Independent Music Stores. A limited number of CD copies of the recorded set were distributed to indie record stores in 2006. Now, Live At Easy Street will be issued on vinyl for Record Store Day 2019, and will be limited to 6,000 copies.

The seven songs here were performed with amazing ferocity that recalls the band's early days, with the recorded set clocking in at l…

There are plenty of interesting items scheduled to be released on Record Store Day 2019, which falls on April 13th this year. I am thrilled to see that the vinyl resurgence has not faded away, as some people predicted it would by this time. But I must say I am surprised to see a whole new vinyl record medium being offered this year: the 3-inch single. That's right. These tiny records, which are not quite half the width of the familiar 7-inch single, are able to hold up to four minutes of music. But can they be played on a regular turntable? Apparently not. Special miniature turntables designed to play these records are also going to be offered for sale on Record Store Day this year. Not surprisingly, Jack White's Third Man label is at the forefront of the (re-)birth of this vinyl novelty.

The box set features six tiny singles from the White Stripes' back catalogue https://t.co/SYUJtnVD3V — Exclaim! News (@exclaimnews) February 28, 2019

Here are the details about the 3-in…

Peter Frampton, the British singer/guitarist whose 1976 live album Frampton Comes Alive has sold over 17 million copies, has revealed that he now suffers from a degenerative muscle disease called Inclusion-Body Myositis. Frampton has told Rolling Stone as well as CBS News that he feels he will not be able to play guitar well for much longer, so he has announced a farewell tour, and explained that his upcoming double album was created at a feverish pace because he felt a need to create as much material as possible before he further loses his musical abilities. Frampton said, "I've been playing guitar for 60 years. Started when I was eight and now I'm 68. So, I've had a very good run".

Frampton's public "run" began during his teenage years. After his brief stint as a guitarist for a British beat band called the Preachers, who recorded one 1965 single ("Hole In My Soul" b/w "Too Old In The Head") produced by Bill Wyman, Frampton j…

The Winkies were a British pub rock band from the '70's who are best remembered for their brief stint as Brian Eno's backing band during Eno's first and only solo tour in 1974, which was cut short after six dates and one session for the John Peel radio show when Eno was hospitalized with a collapsed lung. The Winkies also recorded one self-titled album in 1975 before calling it quits.

The Winkies consisted of Canadian-born singer/songwriter Philip Rambow (who was later a solo artist), guitarist Guy Humphries, bassist Brian Turrington, and drummer Mike Desmarais. Their album, released only in the U.K. and Brazil at the time, was produced by Guy Stevens. The album is currently available in the U.K. and Japan in CD and digital formats, but is not commercially available in most countries.

Although the Winkies were technically a part of the early-‘70’s glam rock scene, their music was more reflective of that era’s British pub rock scene. Despite a fairly convincing Bowie…