Speed Tony Holler

Leo Blokhuis is an award winning author and music journalist familiar to Dutch TV audiences as host of a prime time music show ‘Top 2000 a Gogo’. In his latest ‘sound book’ he writes of the period in the 60s and 70s when soul and country music traditions married together to create country soul and vice versa. The book part is 176 pages of Dutch text and since my near neighbours language is not one of the main languages that I can read I am unable to comment on Blokhuis’ writing skills. What I can say is that the text is interspersed with photographs of significant artists, record labels and a page on each featured song that lists studio details and participating musicians. Clearly a labour of love the book looks great and feels substantial.

Spawned from the ongoing renaissance currently enriching and expanding the traditional vocabularies of old time and bluegrass music, Chapel Hill-based maverick string band Mipso put time-honored tools to work on new terrain, with evocative, intoxicating results on their new release Old Time Reverie. Years of constant touring have tightened their attack, lending a new degree of authority and cohesion to their sound. When Mipsos 2013 debut, Dark Holler Pop, rose to #8 on Billboard s Bluegrass charts, the success surprised a lot of people including the band themselves.

Varese Sarabande has announced the full details of the Stephen King Soundtrack Collection. The 8-CD set features 2-CD deluxe editions for the 2003 horror thriller Dreamcatcher directed by Lawrence Kasdan featuring the film’s expanded score composed by James Newton Howard (The Hunger Games, Maleficent, King Kong, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) and the post-apocalyptic mini-series The Stand starring Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Ray Walston, Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis featuring the show’s expanded score by W. G. Snuffy Walden (The West Wing, Friday Night Lights) who received an Emmy nomination for his score. Also included is a reissue of the soundtrack album for 1984’s Firestarter starring Drew Barrymore featuring original music by Tangerine Dream (Legend, Risky Business), as well as the first-ever commercial release of the score for the 1997 mini-series The Shining on three discs featuring music by Nicholas Pike (Return to Me, Captain Ron). Visit the label’s official website to order the box set, which is limited to 1500 copies.