AeroLiner Records is proud to announce its 15th release ‘Staring At The Sun’. This brand new 2-hour DVD is a blistering compilation of live performances spanning Chris Duarte’s career from 1989 to 2009. His searing guitar mastery has sunburned ears of audiences the world over and it is on full burn here with red-hot songs such as “Drivin’ South”, “Catch The Next Line”, “Tailspin Headwhack”, “Watch Out”, “Screenwriter’s Blues” and much more (including surprises along the way).

Not available in stores, this limited edition release is limited to 500 copies, and is priced at $17.00 (U.S) via mail and $18.00 (U.S) via Paypal. These prices include shipping and handling. For more information, and to order go to this location.

AeroLiner Records is proud to announce its 15th release ‘Staring At The Sun’. This brand new 2-hour DVD is a blistering compilation of live performances spanning Chris Duarte’s career from 1989 to 2009. His searing guitar mastery has sunburned ears of audiences the world over and it is on full burn here with red-hot songs such as “Drivin’ South”, “Catch The Next Line”, “Tailspin Headwhack”, “Watch Out”, “Screenwriter’s Blues” and much more (including surprises along the way).

Not available in stores, this limited edition release is limited to 500 copies, and is priced at $17.00 (U.S) via mail and $18.00 (U.S) via Paypal. These prices include shipping and handling. For more information, and to order go to this location.

Thursday morning blues:

1) Doug MacLeod: “(If You Going to the) Dog House)”
2) Cephas and Wiggins: “The Blues Will Do Your Heart Good”
3) Alvin Draper: “Confessin’ the Blues”
4) Floyd Miles: “Mean Heartbreaker”
5) Willie Cobbs: “Stackhouse Rock”
6) Robert “Pete” Williams: “Goin’ Out to Have Myself a Ball”
7) Ramon Goose: “In My Father’s House”
Philadelphia Jerry Ricks: “Change Your Ways”
9) Nappy Brown: “Deep Sea Diver”
10) Little Milton: “Who Can Handle Me is You”

Fiddler Amy Farris, who died over the weekend, charmed my friends and me with her impish wit, her beautiful harmonies and her wicked fiddling when we saw her with Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women in Chicago this spring.

She brought the same spirit to albums by Bruce Robison, Kelly Willis and Brian Wilson. Her own album, “Anyway,” is gorgeous.

It’s especially bittersweet as my friends and I head to her hometown of Austin this week. RIP, Amy.

I am actually ahead of the game for once as I have finished all of the reivews I promised for the week and it’s only Tuesday. I am listening to to a number of new releases in including the new ones from Fall of Troy, Lita Ford and I have a Blaze Bayley DVD that I am looking forward to watching. Surprisingly we are almost down to the final quarter of the year. Which means I need to start working on my top 25 albums on 2009 soon. There are still some prime releases to come out as Slayer, WASP and others are coming and I still have not gotten around to hearing the new Megadeth yet. Here are some questions and my answers.

Album that is going to suck like a Hoover vacum cleaner at the end of 2009-the new KISS

Album that I am most looking forward to at the end of 2009-the new Slayer

Band who is working on an album that I am most looking forward to whenever it comes out-Armored Saint

Band who didn’t realease an album this year, but needs to next year- Iron Maiden and if we are just considering studio releases and if you count their live album this year then I ‘ll say then I would go with Acid King instead.

***Feel free to chime in with your own answers or invent your own end of year questions for others to answer.

Shame on the folks at Chess Records for putting a photo of a naked woman straddling a Stratocaster on the cover of “Gettin’ Down With ‘Johnny’ Guitar Watson.” Talk about false advertising.

Watson doesn’t even play the guitar on the album, originally released as “I Cried For You” and later sold as “The Blues Soul of Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson,” both with different covers. The album’s not really sexy, either, at least in the lascivious way Chess portrays it.

I bought the album expecting to hear some down and dirty funk, like the stuff he recorded in the ’70s. Instead, it’s a jazz album recorded in the early ’60s featuring Watson playing piano, quite well, and crooning on standards such as “Witchcraft,”"Polka Dots and Moonbeams” and “I Cried for You.” There’s an excellent instrumental cover of “Misty,” too.

There is one blues tune, Lowell Fulson’s “Reconsider Baby,” on which Watson channels his inner Charles Brown. “When Did You Leave Heaven” also has some bluesy piano. Those cuts are great, but I like the other ones, too. If you’ve ever listened to Watson’s early blues, you already know he has a nice voice. It translates amazingly well to jazz.

So, yeah, I’m annoyed that Chess used a cover that’s basically a lie, but I’m damn happy to own the album. It’s out of print, but it’s worth searching for a copy.

Here’s a Youtube video that features one of the tracks, “When Did You Leave Heaven,” and shows the cover of “Gettin’ Down With Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson.”

(Jazz Blog Special is a regular feature that examines older jazz albums worth checking out.)

The daily mix:

1) Curtis Mayfield: “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go”
2) The Chambers Brothers: “So Tired”
3) Bettye LaVette: “Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby”
4) Bobby Little: “Delta Nova”
5) Brooklyn Soul Organization: “Trouble in the House”
6) Jimmy Smith: “Big Fat Mama”
7) Hugh Masekela: “Inner Crisis”
Melba Liston: “The Trolley Song”
9) Yvette Summers & Chekere: “Blue Arturo”
10) Blue Harlem: “He May Be Yours”

Bob Dylan, the singer-songwriter who has taken his fans down Highway 61 by way of Lonely Avenue and Desolation Row, is in negotiations to voice a satellite navigation system.

Dylan claimed that he has been approached by more than one manufacturer keen to harness his unmistakable, rasping tones – a voice which one critic memorably likened to sandpaper. He shared the news with listeners to his late-night radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour, which is broadcast on BBC Six Music.

“You know I don’t usually like to tell people what I’m doing, but I’m talking to a couple of car companies about the possibility of being the voice of their GPS system,” he disclosed.

Motorists who follow Dylan’s directions, however, may take some time to reach their destination. “I think it would be good if you are looking for directions and you heard my voice saying something like, ‘Left at the next street…. No, right… You know what? Just go straight.” He added: “I probably shouldn’t do it because whichever way I go, I always end up at one place – Lonely Avenue.”

To read more go to this location.

Billboard.com is reporting that Wolfgang’s Vault, which has amassed the largest collection of licensed streaming live recordings on the Internet, is about to make a treasure trove of those concerts available for downloading.

Beginning Nov. 3, the site will add more than 1,000 titles from 919 artists to the approximately 500 that are currently available for purchase from the site’s Concert Vault section, Bill Sagan, CEO and founder of Wolfgang’s Vault LLC and its parent company, Norton LLC, tells Billboard.com. The additions will include more than 160 Grateful Dead concerts as well as titles from artists such as Santana, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Aretha Franklin, Bonnie Raitt, Hall & Oates, Journey, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jethro Tull, Chicago, Miles Davis, Dolly Parton, Merle Travis and many others.

Leading up to the Nov. 3 “Cracking the Vault Day” blowout, Wolfgang’s Vault — which recently logged its 100 millionth streamed show — is offering a small amount of new shows twice weekly. The site just put up a Grateful Dead concerts (from May 15, 1970 at the Fillmore East in New York City); future releases include Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin and Bonnie Raitt (Oct. 2), Hall & Oates and Boz Scaggs (Oct. 6), Santana and Chicago (Oct. 9), Lou Reed (Oct. 13), Miles Davis, Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra (Oct. 16), Twisted Sister and the Ramones (Oct. 20), the Byrds, Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings (Oct. 23), Cheap Trick (Oct. 27) and Mountain (Oct. 30). Newly streaming shows from Dylan and Pink Floyd will also become available on Oct. 30.

The download prices will run $7.98 and $8.98 for MP3s and $11.98 and $12.98 for Flac recordings. Wolfgang’s vault will also introduce a $48 annual membership which includes a $50 gift certificate, discounts on recordings and memorabilia and unlimited higher-end 192k streaming.

Sagan says that the new rash of downloads are “the result of negotiating agreements with performers and record labels that not only acknowledge our ownership of this material but gives us rights to exploit it” in a variety of formats, including ringtones and satellite radio. Sagan estimates that through the acquisition of a dozen archives — including Bill Graham Presents, the King Biscuit Flower Hour, Silver Eagle and the Festival Network — since its inception in 2002, Wolfgang’s Vault has amassed nearly 10,000 live shows, of which about 3,200 are currently streaming on the site.

The agreements including royalty payments in addition to the mechanical royalties the company routinely pays to publishers.

“The objective is that just about everything we stream we’ll be able to download,” Sagan says. “When we hit Nov. 3, more than half the concerts…will be available for download. By Christmas or slightly after Christmas we’ll be closer to three-quarters.” Sagan also hopes to begin making video footage the company has acquired available on the site in the near future.

There are some holdouts to the downloading plan. Sagan says negotiations are continuing with big names such as Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, the Who and Dire Straits, and he’s hopeful agreements will be reached with most of those in the near future.