TheVinylPress.com


As some of you know, I have been pursuing vinyl and audio for a long time, and recently decided to write about it. I launched a site called http://TheVinylPress.com which is devoted to older records that deserve renewed attention. The site launched quietly last month with a feature about the U.S.Library of Congress audio-visual restoration archive, and the latest installment features an inteview with Olav Wyper, the creator of the legendary Vertigo Swirl label. For now, this is a labor of love. I hope you find something worthwhile.*
Bill Hart
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*N.B. The powers that be at Audiogon gave me permission to start a thread about the site.
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Oh, my bad, sorry--who's left from Canned Heat? I know Blind Owl checked out ages ago and he was my favorite, far and away.
Larry Taylor, the bass player, Fito, the drummer, Harvey Mandel has been in and out of the recent line-ups (he was at Woodstock b/c Vestine had quit the band at that time) and a couple others. I'll cover it when i post the piece on Monday.
Here's a link to the series of related pieces on Canned Heat, including some background on the band, reviews of four albums of the "classic line-up," an extended interview with Skip Taylor, their long-time manager (whose own history in the biz is pretty wild), and a short "sidebar" about the blues "rediscovery" period, in which some of the band's members were directly involved. http://thevinylpress.com/essential-heat-canned-heat-four-albums-conversation-with-skip-taylor-sidebar-rediscovering-the-blues/
The recent exploration of Canned Heat on TheVinylPress generated some real enthusiasm among readers, one of whom turned out to be Rebecca Davis, the author of “Blind Owl Blues,” an authoritative biography of Alan Wilson. Several readers had asked for a follow up piece on “Hooker ‘n Heat” (which I mentioned only in passing). Rebecca and I also had started to correspond. Who better, I thought, to write about this album than the biographer of Alan Wilson? The album came together in part because of the “Blind Owl’s” love for John Lee Hooker. My thanks to Rebecca Davis for her significant contributions to the body of work on Canned Heat and Alan Wilson. And for her essay on "Hooker ’n Heat," which appears for the first time on TheVinylPress, http://thevinylpress.com/hooker-n-heat-by-rebecca-davis/