Neil Young takes on Starbucks & Monsanto with cleverly catchy anti-GMO tune

Check out Neil Young's clip for A Rock Star Bucks A Coffee Shop from The Monsanto Years due June 29.

Happy Birthday Johnny Paycheck

Remembering the late Johnny Paycheck with a couple of performance clips and a Little Darlin' gem.

Whaddya mean you don't know Massimo Urbani

Francesco Chiapperini's latest recording Our Redemption is a tribute to saxophone great Massimo Urbani. 

Deep digging Parisian DJ Paulo Superfly plays Turning Point @ The Garrison, Saturday

You can check out Paulo Superfly's swingin' Cape Verdean mix "Trapiche Ritmico" for Soul Bonanza right here. 

One For The Weekend: Chief Checker

Colonel Tom & The American Pour CD Release @ Cameron, Saturday

To avoid a Game 7 conflict, Col. Tom has two release parties slated – one at 6-8pm and another at 10pm-2am.

Happy Birthday Arto Lindsay!

Here's a clip of Arto Lindsay performing Blonde Redhead with DNA from the film Downtown 81. 

Whaddya mean you don't know Mickey Hawks

Here's Mickey Hawks & The Night Raiders' 1959 instro ripper Cotton Pickin' penned by guitarist Bill Ballard. 

RIP Marcus Belgrave, 1936-2015

Sadly, Detroit jazz icon Marcus Belgrave passed away earlier today. Here's the Detroit Free Press obituary.

Footprints' Jason Palma & General Eclectic meet The Goods @ The Rivoli, Saturday

Read an interview T.O. DJ deluxe Jason Palma did with Cratery and the Footprints mix below.

Foot Prints LIVE DJ Mix - April 27th, 2013 Part 1 by Footprintstoronto on Mixcloud

Alex Pangman joins Les Petits Nouveaux at La Revolucion, tonight

Alex Pangman gets busy with manouche jazz trio Les Petits Nouveaux at 2848 Dundas St. West tonight at 7 pm.

One For The Weekend: Sone

Enjoy some High Frame Audio from Portland's Sone originally issued way back in 1995. 

The Big Come Up: Black Keys relive their accidental start

The Living Sisters vs. Funkadelic

Here's the Living Sisters' cover of George Clinton's Can You Get To That? followed by the Funkadelic original.

Raekwon, Ghostface & Rza jump on Adrian Younge's Return Of The Savage

Long before Adrian Younge fan club member DJ Premier released his PRhyme collabo with Royce da 5'9" exclusively using samples of Younge's recordings, the multi-instrumentalist composer, arranger and producer was already well-known to beatheadz for his brilliant work scoring Scott Sanders' 2009 blaxploitation salute Black Dynamite and the inspired Philly soul update Adrian Younge Presents The Delfonics. Here's a short documentary about Younge and his work that's worth checking.



Since releasing the amazing faux-giallo soundtrack Twelve Reasons To Die with Ghostface Killah and companion instrumentals set on Rza's Soul Temple label back in 2013, Younge has been hard at work building his own Linear Labs operation on the down low. To preview the four impressive albums he has slated for 2015, Younge assembled the Los Angeles label sampler now available on CD, LP and as a digital download.

Along with  Return Of The Savage (listen below) featuring Ghostface Killah, Raekwon and Rza from the upcoming Twelve Reasons To Die II album, there's the Memories Of War collabo with Stereolab chanteuse Laetitia Sadier off the forthcoming 'Something About April II and a joint called Feel Alive voiced by Karolina and Loren Oden from The Midnight Hour concept album Younge created with Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Additionally, the vinyl version of Los Angeles comes with the bonus track Sirens II (which you can hear in a stripped-down version below) from Bilal's next solo album.

For those playing catch-up, the Los Angeles sampler also includes 1969 Organ from Younge’s 2000 debut Adrian Younge Presents Venice Dawn, Panic (Ali Shaheed Muhammad Remix) from last year's Souls of Mischief / Ali Shaheed Muhammad album, There Is Only Now Remix, The Sure Shot (Parts 1 & 2) which is an instrumental lifted from the Twelve Reasons To Die sessions, To Be Your One from the aforementioned Delfonics set and finally, there's Chicago Wind featuring Toni Scruggs from the Black Dynamite soundtrack. If your local record retailer doesn't stock Linear Labs releases, you can order Los Angeles directly from the label right here.

FYI: Raekwon returns to Toronto to present the music from his new album Fly International Luxurious Art – which could've greatly benefitted from Younge's musical input – at the Phoenix on Friday.

RIP Ugly Ducklings bassist Howie Smith

Ducks bassist Howie Smith (right) passed away Wednesday after being hospitalized with pneumonia. 

Watch Cannonball Adderley live in 1961

Cannonball Adderley discusses jazz and blues with Ralph J. Gleason for Jazz Casual on October 24, 1961.

Happy Birthday Don Martin!

Remembering the late great cartoon artist Don Martin on his day. 

Whaddya mean you don't know Baby Grandmothers

Here's the top side of Baby Grandmother's rare 1968 psych gem Somebody Keeps Calling My Name. 

Tom Waits sends off David Letterman with new tune

Tom Waits performed a new song Take One Last Look for David Letterman handcuffed to George Clooney. 

RIP B.B. King, 1925–2015

Here's B.B. King's reworking of Lowell Fulson's 3 O'Clock Blues which became his first big hit in 1952. 

Watch Can live in Paris 1973

Here's Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt and Damo Suzuki live at ORTF Studio.

Tess Parks & The Auras @ The Silver Dollar, Thursday

Toronto's own Tess Parks joins The Auras for a record release party with Pow Wows & Champion Ski opening. 

Whaddya mean you don't know Alhaji K. Frimpong

Here's the whumpin' Me Yee Owu Den off K. Frimpong's  synth-enhanced 1980 album Me Da A Onnda. 

Pokey LaFarge @ The Horseshoe, Sunday

If you didn't get tickets to Pokey's sold-out gig tonight, he's playing a special JazzFM91 event on Monday.  

Happy Birthday Dick Morrissey!

Remembering late British saxophone great Dick Morrissey on his day with a couple of overlooked swingers.

Eddie Palmieri's Salsa Orchestra @ Koerner Hall, Saturday

Happy Birthday Mahmoud Ahmed!

Celebrating the 74th birthday of Ethiopian great Mahmoud Ahmed with a couple of classics.

One For The Weekend: Sundays & Cybele

The song "Angel" is off the Gypsy House album from Hokkaido's Sundays & Cybele. 

NYC's Twin Guns & Pow Wows play in-store @ Parkdale Platters, Friday

After their Bovine gig Thursday, Twin Guns play a free Boppa do Down show at Parkdale Platters on Friday at 6pm. 

Happy 70th Birthday Bob Seger!

Celebrating the Lincoln Park hotshot's birthday with a couple of early Bob Seger System classics.  

Watch the Handsome Family perform Bottomless Hole in Dublin

OK, who told CMW about the rap music?

D-Sisive joins Clarity, Wordburgler, iLLvibe, Swamp Thing & Fresh Kils at Hard Luck Bar on Thursday.

Happy Birthday Stanley Cowell

Celebrating the amazing Music Inc. pianist's 74th birthday with a performance of his song Prayer For Peace.  

Whaddya mean you don't know Los Tomcats

"A Tu Vera" by Los Tomcats is just one of the Spanish freakbeat rippers on Munster's fab new Algo Salvaje comp.

Straight outta the Hammer: The Zilis hit The Horseshoe, Tuesday

The Zilis will be tearing through their Sketches II album at their 'Shoe showcase tonight at 11pm sharp. 

Happy Birthday Maynard Ferguson!

Here's Maynard performing Chameleon at Rochester's swanky Top Of The Plaza back in 1975. 

Six Organs Of Admittance @ The Horseshoe, Monday

Six Organs of Admittance idea man Ben Chasny isn't content to merely be outstanding in his field. 

Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny has devised his very own system of musical composition, The Hexadic System, which is the basis for his latest album, Hexadic, which Drag City issued back in February.

How The Hexadic System came to be...
Ben Chasny's restless intellect has regularly guided the progress of his creation. A lyrical mastery of acoustic finger-picking would be enough to build a body of work for most musicians; this is just the stepping-off point for Ben. From the earliest days of private-press psych home recordings, Six Organs of Admittance has sought out alternative spaces in which to make music and challenge audiences to keep up with his rapid advances into new terrain. Over the last two years Ben assembled a comprehensive system of musical composition. Designed to free sound and language from rational order and replace calculation with indeterminacy, The Hexadic System is a catalyst to extinguish patterns and generate new means of chord progressions and choices.

Though it was not his intention upon creating this unique system, the structures generated were so compelling, that they soon became the bones of the next Six Organs record. This is the longest time between Six Organs records since Ben started making them in 1998. This is also why Hexadic sounds unlike anything else made this year, and generally unlike most other things made ever.

The System builds all of the tonal fields, chord changes, scales, and lyrics on Hexadic, creating the framework of the songs that the musicians engage with. Yet the System is open; within the framework, Chasny's own personal aesthetics - such as the production mode of loud guitars, the order of songs, the editing of length, were all conscious decisions made to communicate the pieces. The exact same combinatorial patterns used on this record would generate infinite results, depending on the choices of the individual. Ben's years of study have produced an operational agent that has not only built all the songs on Hexadic but is also a system anyone can use to restructure their ways of habit.

With a desire to provoke the unconscious and spring past the strictures and limits of the conscious mind, this was the goal: to use the System to make heavy music with as few "heavy" signifiers as possible. The ones that are left: Volume. Distortion. Impact! This is Hexadic: the sound of the System in the hands of Six Organs of Admittance.

Here's some footage of Six Organs of Admittance raging full-on at The Boot & Saddle in Philadelphia last week prefaced by a clip of a much more introspective Ben Chasny performing the placid Lisboa at London's Café OTO back in October.

Watch the Contemporary Jazz Quintet live in '69

Leon Henderson (Joe's brother) and crew play Number Seven, Snuck In & Number Three prior to their Blue Note debut.

One For The Weekend: Orquesta José Curbelo

Here's Midnight Mambo feat. Al Cohn, Sabu Martinez & Jimmy Santiago.