In the same week one of my favorite modern bands loses a founding member via “mutual decision” and one of my favorite classic bands loses a founding member recently reunited to the inevitable end. A jazz great leaves us, and sans link I simultaneously began realizing my all encompassing love for one of my favorite artists was beginning to dwindle because there’s only so much you can learn about your idols (I hate that word) before it all turns sour. But hey, that’s only the first four tracks of this week’s playlist – the second half is dedicated to the rock and prog that came in this week from all corners of the Earth.

• The Damned – “Fan Club”
• Mastodon – “Toe To Toes”
• Roy Ayers – “Ain’t No Sunshine”
• Frank Zappa – “Black Napkins”

You simply don’t get to my favorite albums by The Damned without Brian James and that incredible debut. Damned Damned Damned is a classic of the genre, and over the years I put away my Sex Pistols and Clash and really honed in on the flexibility and evolution of the band, and they fast crept to to be of my all-time favorites, still vital today. James was finally reunited with the core group after decades, and I was so looking forward to seeing where they might have gone musically. RIP…Opeth consistently runs neck and neck with Mastodon for my favorite modern metal band, and even though Brent Hinds wasn’t the reason for my love he was a force of nature on guitar, and his vocal contributions always fit perfectly within the band’s music. “Toe To Toes” might be his best performance ever, a classic track from a classic band. No idea where they’ll go without him, but it’ll be interesting to say the least…

Roy Ayers was an absolute giant of the vibraphone, an instrument that doesn’t get nearly enough love, and while everyone mourning his loss talks about his (rightly) phenomenal compositional skills and how influential “Everyone Loves The Sunshine” is, I wanted to focus on his playing and musical interpretation, and so here’s his amazing cover of my second favorite Bill Withers song (Erik knows the first)…I’m still wrestling with Frank Zappa. Between the now seemingly over drama between the Zappa Family Trust and Dweezil, and the recent excellent memoir from Moon Unit, it’s getting harder to reconcile my love for the man’s music without having that baggage in the back of my mind. We all set our own boundaries, and I guess mine might be beginning to change.

• The Damnation of Adam Blessing – “Cookbook”
• Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso – “L’ultimo Moro Dell’Ahambra”
• Goblin – “Goblin”
• Karmakanic – “Transmutation”

A real quick rundown of recent stuff that’s come in. I first learned about The Damnation of Adam Blessing from Scott Seward’s Filthy 50 article for Decibel back in 2007. A mere 18 years later I now have the debut on vinyl. Great underground heavy rock from 1969…The Italian prog of Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso is no stranger to this site; we literally had a cut from them last week. But on Friday their new album Storie Invisibili came out and I wanted to feature a track from that here…Arriving with that in the mail (thanks LaserCD) was Roller, the instrumental non-soundtrack record from the mighty Goblin. After owning their previous incarnation Cherry Five for years, this is actually the first Goblin album I own… Finally we’re staying in the prog realm with a massive 22-track, the closing title tack from Karmakanic, the solo project from bassist Jonas Reingold. He got all his friends on here, including Andy Tillison from The Tangent, Steve Hackett, and Tomas Bodin from their time in The Flower Kings, among others. great track on a great new progressive rock album.

Be safe, be good to each other. See you next week.