Real People 13 August 2020

A follow-up to Shattered Dreams, this compilation takes a further look at the underground blues recording scene of the late 60s through to the early 80s when, left behind by the mainstream, blues artists tried to remain relevant by adding touches of soul and funk to their music. Of the 20 tracks, none were hits, although some were issued on bigger labels such as Stax and Modern. Artists such as Smokey Wilson, Lowell Fulson, Jimmy McCracklin used these discs as a calling card to help them gain club dates which is how they earned their living. You may not have heard of Obrey Wilson, Finis Tasby, Shakey Jake and Ice Water Slim, but they were typical of artists who musical fashion had left behind. Their struggle to create something relevant to their time created some of the wonderful fusions found on this disc. Four previously unreleased tracks and also some which appear on CD for the first time.

Mixing well-read indie rock with joyful, Afro-pop-inspired melodies and rhythms, Vampire Weekend grew from one of the first bands to be championed by music bloggers into a chart-topping, Grammy Award-winning act that helped define the sound of indie music in the late 2000s and 2010s. After establishing the foundations of their bright, intricate style with 2008's Vampire Weekend, the band soon became hugely successful; they're the first indie rock act to have two consecutive albums (2010's Contra and 2013's Modern Vampires of the City) enter the Billboard 200 at number one. With each release, Vampire Weekend's music grew more diverse, incorporating ska, hip-hop, and '80s pop influences that nevertheless complemented their signature style. Similarly, the band weathered the loss of founding member Rostam Batmanglij to deliver some of their most polished and ambitious work with 2019's Father of the Bride, their third chart-topper.

The Suburbs is the third studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on August 2, 2010. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Irish Albums Chart, the UK Albums Chart, the US Billboard 200 chart, and the Canadian Albums Chart. It won Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards, Best International Album at the 2011 BRIT Awards, Album of the Year at the 2011 Juno Awards, and the 2011 Polaris Music Prize for best Canadian album. Two weeks after winning Grammy's Album of the Year, the album jumped from No. 52 to No. 12 on the Billboard 200, the album's highest ranking since August 2010.

People living in the early 21st century would do well to consider complete immersion in more than an hour's worth of vintage Vocalion blues records made during the darkest days of the Great Depression by pianist Leroy Carr and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Vol. 4 in Document's Complete Recorded Works of Leroy Carr contains 23 sides dating from March 1932 through August 1934, with three takes of "Mean Mistreatin' Mama" (suffused with a mood that almost certainly inspired Big Maceo's sound) and an extra version of Carr's beautifully straightforward "Blues Before Sunrise." This is not a "get up and shake your butt" kind of collection, and anyone who complains that it isn't has missed the entire point of historic blues appreciation altogether…

For anyone in their mid-teens in the mid-5Os, and into music, it had to be rock'n'roll - American rock'n roll. There was no British equivalent to the sound. In the UK, it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Platters, Alan Freed, Radio Luxembourg, Voice Of America. If the right people get to know about this and hear the quality, this will sell and sell.

"Raw" and "honest" tend to be vastly overused words when it comes to rock music of any stripe, but they may just apply to John Doe's solo debut on the DGC label (spun off from Geffen). In some respects, this was always something of a trademark with Doe's former band, X, but there was always the whirlwind of Exene Cervenka carrying most of the weight of the vocals, and the frontline immediate image, while Doe was always just slightly back in the shadows, seemingly as anonymous as his name…