Kudos to The New Yorker for delivering the most deserved (and most surprising) magazine feature of recent years. In its April 28th issue, Burghard Bilger writes about searching for real folk music in an age when no area in America is so remote that it remains untouched by the broad culture. (It stands to reason that the oddest and most interesting folk music is created in a cultural vacuum.) Bilger does so partly by relating the histories of two of folk music’s biggest fans nowadays — Dust-To-Digital label founder Lance Ledbetter and field-recording expert Art Rosenbaum. –>

Fans of country and early rock & roll know that Germany’s Bear Family label is home to some of the most lavish and unbearably completist box sets available. (Only the insanely hardcore are advised to check out the complete recordings of Connie Francis from 1955-1959, especially since it doesn’t include her lovely album of Jewish songs.)

Even the label admits as much: “Bear Family is not a ‘greatest hits’ label, and we’re proud of it…even if our accountants aren’t.” But if you’re aching to hear everything recorded by subjects ranging from Johnny Cash to Rod McKuen (and don’t mind shelling out upwards of $200 for sets with more than a dozen CD’s), there’s only one place to visit.

But now a series of single-disc compilations, titled Rocks, is not only making Bear Family an unlikely paragon of brevity but also providing some of the best rock & roll compilations ever heard. Granted, each edition only features the work of a single artist, but then again, has the world ever seen a Jerry Lee Lewis collection that rocks as hard and as long as the very-appropriately-titled Jerry Rocks? What’s so special about this Jerry Lee collection? (Hint: it’s not the fact that they included “Great Balls of Fire” or even “High School Confidential.”) Jerry Rocks so much because it includes not just his early rock & roll but all of his best ’60s and ’70s killers as well, skipping entirely his admittedly great honky tonk material for only the upbeat and torrid sides.

The series is now close to ten titles strong — with volumes on Fats Domino, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley, and more — plus new editions have been released on Ronnie Hawkins and Bobby Darin. Also, a side series, titled Gonna Shake This Shack Tonight, presents country artists from Patsy Cline to Webb Pierce in all their rocking glory. And believe it or not, even Connie Francis gets into the act.

For more information, check out Bear Family’s website or finer record outlets, and check out the samples below for the unlikeliest of series partners…

Jerry Rocks
“Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee”
“Real Wild Child (Wild One)”
“Pink Pedal Pushers”
“Little Queenie”

Connie Rocks
“Robot Man”
“I Hear You Knockin’”
“Tweedle Dee”
“Mister Twister”

Ahh, ‘tis Spring, when the fancies of young people all over this groovy earth lightly turn to thoughts of…teenage rebellion!

For the teen garage rockers of the ‘60s, it wasn’t war or politics or environmental cataclysm that made them rebel — it was their parents and (most of all) some mean, mistreating women. (Yes, garage rock was notoriously a male preserve, aside from a few girl garage groups, like the Heartbeats and the Feminine Complex.)

All you need for your own smoking soundtrack to teenage rebellion — or a trip down the highway with the windows rolled down — is the playlist below, brought to you by some of the most sullen, angsty rockers of all time. (Bonus points if you can spot the song that lifts “Hey Joe.”)

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In a world where it’s the norm to have a one-off collaboration between a producer and a rapper, something special has to happen to prompt a sequel. Of course, “Crazy” was all the prompting needed for Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse to rejuvenate Gnarls Barkley, their collaboration by mail that sparked the brightest and catchiest single since OutKast’s “Hey Ya.”

Fans and critics have to understand that these two were exactly the types to walk away from a follow-up simply for the purpose of a cash-in, which makes that follow-up, The Odd Couple, such a strange proposition — it’s exactly like St. Elsewhere, and fails to reveal a single new thing. All the hallmarks of a follow-up record are here: similar sounds and themes, for sure, but also a clear lack of innovation, lyrical and production touches that have since become clichés, and more than just a few passages that will prompt a severe case of listener déjà vu. (Of course, many listeners may enjoy that sense of déjà vu.) As before, Danger Mouse’s productions are miniature, modernist spaghetti Westerns, very closely detailed whether their major voice is an acoustic guitar or a choir of unholy voices. These are then chained to amped-up beats and beefed-up basslines to create something that sounds both vintage and up-to-date at the same time. Cee-Lo’s lyrics and vocals again reveal a lunatic (or seer), someone who’s occasionally more lucid than those who are sane, an enlightened psychopath wrestling with his demons and revealing the thin line between crazy and sane. At times, The Odd Couple is a more beautiful record than its predecessor — the duo have never put out anything more moving on a musical and emotional level than “Who’s Going to Save My Soul,” and Danger Mouse’s production work outshines St. Elsewhere on one track (”Open Book”). But all too often Cee-Lo relies on the same sort of lyrical cipher as on St. Elsewhere, although none of them are as effective. “I don’t understand how I’m so understanding”; “I’m goin’ on, and I think they’ll have a place for you too”; “I could be a would be killer” — these are the ramblings of a madman; they may sound deep and profound late at night, but they’re revealed as nonsense with the light of day.

Over the past three years, one of the most neglected classic labels in music — Fania, home to most of the best Latin albums of all time — has happily become one of the most reissued, with multiple compilations on each of their major artists (Ray Barretto, Willie Colón, Eddie Palmieri, Celia Cruz, etc.), plus dozens of reissues of the best LPs from the label and at least a half-dozen excellent various-artist compilations focusing on the best in boogaloo and salsa.

Two of the best compilations on Fania have been released recently — and together, they provide a great look at the twin axes of what made Fania great: groovy boogaloo popcorn and wildly inventive, freeform salsa. The first and best is El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets, the second being New York City Salsa, Vol. 2.

For those who still think Latin music begins and ends with Tito Puente (or Ricky Martin, or Shakira, et al.), these two discs will come as a revelation. Beats and grooves as funky as Funkadelic, singalong vocals and choruses as catchy as Archie Bell & the Drells — all these and more were pumping out of Spanish Harlem by the bucketful during the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Alongside the best tracks from El Barrio and New York City Salsa, Vol. 2 below, check out three of the best single LPs released on Fania or associated labels during the ’60s and ’70s. And got any favorites yourself? We’d love to hear about them…

Ray Barretto - “O Elefante”

Orchestra Harlow - “Rise Up”

Eddie Palmieri - “Helado de Chocolate”

Cabrerita - “El Remolon”

Menique - “Timbalero Mayor”

“Acid”

“Soul Drummers”

“Che Che Colé”

“Sangrigorda”

“Conmigo”

“Mi Guajira”

Rap has come a long way in 30 years, but to most fans, something still sounds perfectly right about the old battle tapes of the ’80s. They may have more hiss than a punctured bike tire, but it’s nearly impossible to beat the energy and joy on display.

One of the best (or best-sounding) is Cold Crush Brothers vs. Fantastic Romantic 5, a tape featuring Cold Crush doing battle with Grand Wizard Theodore’s Fantastic 5. Recorded in 1981 at Harlem World, the early rap mecca, it was later cleaned up and re-released on CD in a beat-the-bootleggers move by Cold Crush’s DJ Charlie Chase.

Although any good rap historian knows that, in general terms, the DJ preceded the rapper, Cold Crush were one of the first rap teams around. In fact, legend has it that the Sugarhill Gang’s Big Bank Hank was rapping to a Cold Crush tape when the owner of Sugar Hill Records, Sylvia Robinson, heard him and offered a chance to record what became “Rapper’s Delight.”

Enjoy the samples below, and feel free to point the way to your favorite battle tapes or mixtapes.

“Yes Y’All”

“Freestyling”

“Taken on Stage”

Assuming there are some who still haven’t heard the good news, Hamilton, Ontario’s best-ever proto-punk band, Simply Saucer, have returned to the studio and are releasing their first new work in 30 years, Half Human, Half Live, later this month on Sonic Unyon.

It’s unclear what the new album will hold, but the band promises a mixture of old songs never recorded and some new songs. Whether the new material equals the original or not, Simply Saucer may finally get the publicity it never got while active originally. (A collection called Cyborgs Revisited appeared to some minor acclaim in the early ’90s.)

It’s better to listen to the music than try to describe the sound, but imagine the Stooges at their snarliest with electronics courtesy of Silver Apples or Suicide. (And anyone thinking that a certain sub-set of metro Cleveland was rocking to the same kind of sound at the time — thanks to Pere Ubu and Dead Boys — would be right on target.)

And as if that wasn’t enough, additional cred comes courtesy of the band’s studio team of the ’70s, a pair of garage-recorder brothers named Bob and Daniel Lanois (both of whom were just getting started on their production careers).

“Instant Pleasure”

“Mole Machine”

“Bullet Proof Nothing”

It can’t come as a surprise that the Mars Volta’s fourth album opens with a bang — sonic terrorism is one of the only things listeners can count on from the band — but it’s genuinely novel that The Bedlam in Goliath never lets go of its momentum, not even after a full hour’s worth of unrelenting war on silence, the wrapping paper for a concept album about the power of the occult.

On their first three proper albums, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez played games of quiet-loud-quiet (or loud-quiet-loud), sneaking around stealthily for minutes at a time before detonating another blast of thrash-metal riffing and piercing screams. The Bedlam in Goliath is simply loud-loud-loud, virtually every song played at maximum volume and tempo. But, in fact, instead of being wearisome or exhausting, it’s an oddly refreshing album. The band gets closer to their roots in thrash and funk-metal than ever before, avoids using electronics except where they can make a big impact, and finally lets semi-permanent guest John Frusciante occupy a readily discernible role.

The “Goliath” of the album title is the name given to a spirit conjured by a Ouija board that Rodriguez-Lopez bought in Jerusalem; the band used the board heavily while on tour, and it supposedly brought bad luck to the entire recording process — including reports of computer poltergeists, flooded studios, and a nervous breakdown for the album’s first engineer (who may have simply been driven over the edge by the band’s musical extremism).

Musically, it’s the funkiest work the band has ever done. No one’s going to confuse them with James Brown (or even Red Hot Chili Peppers), but in a ten-minute streak that runs from the end of the third track “Ilyena,” through the single “Wax Simulacra,” and to the end of “Goliath,” an eight-minute extravaganza, the Mars Volta finally takes the mantle held by Rage Against the Machine for a dozen years (thanks in large part to Frusciante, as well as new drummer Thomas Pridgen). The band also exhibits more patience on The Bedlam in Goliath than they have in the past. While no one who cares about the band should be interested in hearing a “maturing” Mars Volta — you might as well ask for a sun that wasn’t as hot — the band has shown the ability to mature in all the ways they can without losing what makes them unique. The album is as dynamic as ever (it seems to live on a perpetual knife’s edge of tension) but it’s more closely composed than Amputechture or even Frances the Mute. This should have been the album where Mars Volta either wore the formula down to nothing or abruptly turned in a different direction, but instead the band created an album that nearly perfects what they’ve been working toward.