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L.A.’s Brown Soul Sound!The debut album from Los Angeles duo Los Yesterdays – Sweet Soul music meets Mexican Folklorico.
Contains the LP version of “Nobody’s Clown” and “Love Is A Game For Fools.”
Sixteen Things We Know About Damon is a short film from 2014 by Andrew Gura: a voice and music driven story that uses animated archival stills, stock footage and typography, lo-fi textures, left-field sound design to tell the nearly impossible backstory behind Damon’s Song of a Gypsy – one that encapsulates the last bloom of the flower power movement before it decayed into the haze of the ‘70s underground. It traces the arch of a pop hopeful descending into chaos, becoming the tortured soul who would create an LP to file alongside works by other lost greats of the late ‘60s, from Shuggie Otis to Rodriguez.
Filmmaker and video director Gura (Madvillain, Nas, Saul Williams) first collaborated with Now-Again’s Egon in 2002, for a short film he produced about the search for the Omaha funk ensemble L.A. Carnival. Ten years after that film, Gura and Egon traveled to Fresno, California, to discover more about Stephen David Heitkotter and his legendary psychedelic rock album. It was over the course of working on a Heitkotter short that the two turned their attention to Damon and his landmark Song of a Gypsy album. Although no archival footage of Damon’s sessions exist, Gura created a short film that captures the milieu into which this masterpiece was born, and Egon tells Damon’s story in a series of vignettes that opens the door to investigate more about this lost masterpiece.
Song of a Gypsy is out now as a single LP. Previous iterations included a deluxe, 2LP set with a booklet and a hardbound 2 CD casebook with bonus tracks. You can purchase it via our webstore at Bandcamp.
Pale Shades Of Grey- Heavy Psychedelic Ballads And Dirges – 1969-1976, the third release in a trilogy.
More info and links to buy this psychedelic trilogy at Bandcamp.
With Pale Shades Of Grey, we complete the trilogy Egon started with Forge Your Own Chains and followed with Tickets for Doomsday – another batch of rare, largely uncompiled – and sometimes barely heard – heavy psych-rock. Pounding drums, scathing fuzz guitar and morose, contemplative lyrics will bring you up on a downer.
Pale Shades Of Grey, as the title hints, is and perhaps the most contemplative of the series, ruminations dark themes of love, death, pain and triumph, as performed by high school and college bands, Nigerian rockers an Irish pub band from Michigan and, above, a group of somber land-locked Nebraskans dreaming about being by the ocean. A unique and compelling listen, and surely a worthy companion for these times.
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Joe Bataan’s Ghetto Records catalog includes 7 landmark albums of Latin jazz, deep soul, raucous boogaloo, and heavy salsa. The albums are now available in stand-alone LP format at the Now-Again Bandcamp.
Ghetto Records was Joe Bataan’s way to get over on The Man and out of the ’hood, a bold move by an artist looking for independence and creative control in an industry that had exploited his talents and treated him like chattel.
As Bataan puts it today, “Ghetto Records was part of my journey, a stepping stone to everything else that I’ve done. I learned enough that it enabled me to get out of the box with my thinking, it showed me how to deal with adversity.” Like many dreams and schemes born of the street, this one was audacious, perhaps even reckless to a fault.
Hatched from desperation yet full of hope Ghetto Records came crashing down shortly after its inception. The seven albums in the Ghetto discography languished out of print – until now. These are the definitive reissues of these albums, licensed from Joe Bataan, with his oversight and input into a 15 page oversize book by Pablo Yglesias that details Bataan’s larger-than-imagination life and his little Latin label that could.
“There’s a reason that it took nearly half a century for Joe Bataan to allow these records to be issued again – his label was born out of rebellion and frustration with the music industry. He refused to be burned a second time,” says Eothen “Egon” Alapatt, Now-Again’s founder and president. “It took years to gain his trust, and I knew I would finally earn it – because I, too, wanted to know the true Story of Ghetto Records.” MORE
A Landmark Meeting And Transfer in Easton, Pennsylvania – PM Records Founder Gene Perla Thinks Now-Again Records Is The Perfect Home For His Label’s Future.
On November 16th 2023, Eothen “Egon” Alapatt traveled from Los Angeles to Easton, Pennylvania to conclude a historic moment: the transfer of Gene Perla’s PM Records – the record company known for its issues of albums by Perla’s Stone Alliance, Elvin Jones and other jazz luminaries over a five decade run – to Alapatt’s care at Now-Again Records.
Starting January 1, 2024, PM Records’ musical legacy will be overseen and protected by Now-Again.
Alapatt’s connection with PM Records dates back to the early 1990s, when he first heard a sample of master percussionist Don Alias’s “Sweetie-Pie” which appeared on the Stone Alliance album of the same name. It was through this opening that he discovered the breadth of the PM Records catalog, which is still active, with over 60 releases to date.
Alapatt has already helped bring PM’s catalog to Spotify, Apple Music and all other digital service providers. After he receives the catalog of PM’s master tapes in Los Angeles, his first project will be a vinyl re-release of the Stone Alliance album, cut in an all-analog transfer by Bernie Grundman – the first time such has been done since this sought after album was first pressed in 1975.
The Stone Alliance LP package will also include an oversized booklet written by Perla, providing an overview of the PM Records arc, as well as detailed information about the Stone Alliance band and vignettes from Perla’s life in music.
Alapatt also plans to offer out original, “dead-stock,” sealed vinyl copies of classic PM Records to record retailers alongside the Stone Alliance reissue. MORE