DR CHRIS & THE REDEEMERS – Stone Cold Redemption

When a band places a bottle of Makers Mark rather prominently in one of their earliest promotional photos and advertises themselves as a blues band, chances are, you’ll get no big surprises when it comes to the kind of sounds they make. For Dr Chris & The Redeemers, the big twist comes from their location. This band comes well versed in the Texas blues, but deliver their rootsy grooves and Stevie Ray Vaughan inflected riffs straight from the heart of Adelaide. In terms of all round authenticity, though, they hit everything absolutely square on. Their debut album is a great release which doesn’t so much present itself like the sound of 2021, but a brilliant throwback to 1990.

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THE ROLLING STONES – Steel Wheels Tour: Atlantic City, New Jersey

When The Rolling Stones released ‘Steel Wheels’ at the end of the 80s, they’d spent the better part of a decade coasting off the back of some average albums and a lot of goodwill.  Although when heard many years later the album now sounds like the Stones on autopilot, in 1989 it sounded sharp and vibrant; streets ahead of both 1983’s ‘Undercover’ and 1986’s absolutely turgid ‘Dirty Work’.  The singles ‘Rock & A Hard Place’ and ‘Mixed Emotions’ harked back to solid rockers like ‘Start Me Up’ and ‘Little T&A’ from almost a decade earlier, while tracks like ‘Hold On To Your Hat’ proved the veteran rockers were still more than capable of cutting loose.

A great album deserves a great tour, and in that department, the Stones really didn’t short change their fans either.  The ‘Steel Wheels Tour’ of ’89 – renamed the ‘Urban Jungle Tour’ in 1990 – took the band around the globe and saw them visiting the US shores for the first time since 1981. Fans have already been able to revisit the Steel Wheels tour via a widely circulated show filmed at the Tokyo Dome in 1990, but the earlier show from Atlantic City in December ‘89 outdoes that in almost every respect.

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Kreator to release new live album in February; 3CD/blu ray box set also available

Next month, thrash metal titans Kreator will release a new live album celebrating their October 2018 headline show at London’s Roundhouse.

The appropriately titled ‘London Apocalypticon – Live At The Roundhouse’ will be released on a variety of formats.  The standard retail edition includes a blu ray and CD soundtrack of the full show and promises to be as good as Nuclear Blast’s similar Overkill live set from 2018.

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Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Out of the Blue’ live DVD to get SD blu-ray reissue

A firm favourite among ELO fans, the bands live concert from Wembley 1978 is to be reissued by Eagle Rock on blu-ray in March. Given the archive nature of the material, the disc will not be in high definition (HD), but SB, upscaling the material to the best quality standards.

Given that SD isn’t always much of a step up from DVD, why should fans buy this reissue? The host of extras are worth the price of admission. In addition to the main feature – a fourteen song, hour-plus performance – there’s a whole lot more ELO to enjoy on the new disc.

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