6 Great vinyl reissues from Spring 2026
It’s widely believed that vinyl purchases began to increase worldwide around 2007, and during and after the pandemic, those numbers soared. Heavyweight is a column that helps you sort through the worthy and eliminate the meh. It covers archival digs, classic albums, and essential re-releases spanning rock, jazz, and experimental music. Each edition will feature a “Dusty Fingers” pick—something so incredible that you won’t believe it until you hear it. Join us as we indulge in your favorite vinyl addiction.
This is Heavyweight.
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Miles Davis – Miles ’56: The Prestige Recordings
As a major attraction and catalyst for a generation of iconic performers, Miles Davis was undeniably the cornerstone of Columbia Records. He made the label itself a hub for contemporary jazz. He did that and lured other artists—rock, R&B, country, pop, folk, soul, and funk performers—to the prestigious imprint. Santana and Billy Joel, for example, were wooed and seduced by Columbia just to be aligned with Mister Reinvention.
But how does one do that, per se? Reinvent modern music several times over? You absorb, watch, and document the temperature of culture: how the world and your country treat you and your race, and then wield encoded communication via notes, math, and vibes. Sometimes it’s ballads for well…romantic situations. Other times it’s the blues, reflecting America’s sociological growing pains. But the sweet spot was finding a groove, reading energy in the venue, and then playing… reacting to that emotion within the next second. That trick sold tickets. Patrons felt it. Those interactions from the outside world can’t be found in the studio. Anything, good or bad, could and did happen at a show. Performers, who are cultural documentarians, always remember those gifts.
Changing jazz and music in general several times over made Davis a credentialed shape-shifter and influencer for 50-plus years. Without using a screen or a selfie stick. Signed after a stellar performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955, he still had a year remaining on his Prestige contract. So, to fulfill his obligations, he scheduled two marathon sessions at Rudy Van Gelder’s storied Hackensack studio, where he would record enough material for several years’ worth of albums. The tracks they recorded in May and October would be released as four iconic albums: Cookin’ (1957), Relaxin’ (1958), Workin’ (1960), and Steamin’ (1961)—each with a full title that includes “with the Miles Davis Quintet.”
Basically, these sessions captured the hype and heat Davis and his quintet created playing non-stop live dates. This comprises the limited-edition 4-LP box set, Miles ’56: The Prestige Recordings from Craft Recordings. Davis seemed to understand better than others that, to remain in step with the times, a forward-leaning road band would not only keep him personally ahead of trends but also generate a certain type of power that came from risk. Composing on the spot, or improvisation, is a key skill set for rearranging charts in the moment when audiences are giving real-time feedback by way of body language—the ability to turn on that type of focus in a smoky performance space.
That is the reason Miles Dewey Davis always referred to jazz as “social music.” Albums pretty much record what has already been road-tested for mass consumption. All of those intimate engagements that his first great quintet—John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones—played at Café Bohemia in Greenwich Village, New York City, as well as Birdland (New York); The Blue Note (Philadelphia); and The 5 O’Clock Club (Boston), where the unit played a notable ten-day residency in late 1955 under the club’s “Jazzarama” series. All these dates were treated as research facilities, places of experimentation, where ideas were pushed, refined, and cemented Miles Davis as the most dominant small jazz group arranger on the globe. Perfecting and defining the hard-bop genre.
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)
Funkadelic – Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow
It’s almost as if John Cale, a founding member of The Velvet Underground, was speaking directly about Funkadelic when he made the statement “records being made from records.” At some point, whether you are sampling, repurposing, or just absorbing inspiration, Funkadelic will come up.
It’s not the content, but more the concept and the freedom with which funk, acid rock, and avant-garde abstraction were molded and stretched. From the Beastie Boys sampling “I Wanna Know If It’s Good To You” to Childish Gambino just straight ganking the whole vibe of Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow for his 21st-century masterpiece Awaken, My Love, Funkadelic’s sophomore release, with the introduction of Bernie Worrell to the list of killer musicians, felt like a late-night church revival, far left on the terrestrial radio dial, where Black psychedelic expression flowed. Many years ago, in one of my first-ever interviews, George Clinton referred to these years as the era of “we were too black for white and too white for black.” That remains a quotable. Supposedly recorded during a single marathon session on LSD, the album slides through reverberating wormholes and bass-heavy temporal gates. Released just a couple of months before Jimi Hendrix passed on September 18, 1970, Funkadelic was already expanding the bandwidth.
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Cosmic Stash: High Lights
San Francisco weed dispensaries offer massive, rotating menus of premium flower, concentrates, edibles, and pre-rolls for medical and recreational use. Consequently, the musical experts at Jazz Dispensary released on 4/20 this year, Cosmic Stash: their own HIGH Lights, if you will, on splatter vinyl pressing, featuring selections from the original Cosmic Stash, culled from each of the 4-LP collection’s “Blends”—Soul Diesel, Purple Funk, OG Kush, and Astral Travelin’—from ten years ago.
Outside of the coded “smoke sesh” vernacular, this compilation is straight Sativa, ya dig? Uplifting, energizing, and straight-to-the-dome cerebral. Drawing from a bevy of must-have catalogs from Prestige, Milestone, and Fantasy Records, with vibe-boosting cuts by Patrice Rushen, Funk, Inc., David Axelrod, The Blackbyrds, and Rusty Bryant, among others. If you’re a beat-head, you’ve already picked up what I’m putting down. Expect classic breakbeats and sought-after musical atmospheres or energies you’ve been searching for in dollar record bins for years. But the real treat is to understand how artists like Gary Bartz can put together charts that glide and inform both your senses and your intellect. Getting a window seat to the early jazz-funk genius of Patrice Rushen before she became a boogie master, digging in on some chunky Fender Rhodes expanses from the masterful David Axelrod, and experiencing the eerie and melancholic loops and lyrics by The Blackbyrds on their ’70s paean “Mysterious Vibes.” You may actually be reaching for that herbal blend after discovering so much gold on Cosmic Stash; a couple of puffs will ease you down off the ceiling.
Buy: Amazon (vinyl)
INXS – Kick
Despite their new wave Aussie presentation, MTV had no problem billing the late great Michael Hutchence as the 1982 version of Mick Jagger. That lanky heroin-chic confidence? Homeboy Hutch had all the pouty moves and spoiled-brat, look-at-me, camera-ready stances, but it was the band that had me stuck. From “The One Thing” off the forgotten ’80s classic Shabooh Shoobah to the ’80s power anthem “Don’t Change,” INXS‘ arrangements were high-energy and felt like prom songs from Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink. Fast-forward the time-traveling boombox five years. They’d racked up capital-H hits and had at least five more up their sleeves. Their sixth studio album, Kick, came out in mid-October of ’87, and that whole Jagger look-alike thing was gone like mood rings and lava lamps.
The prom became an INXS soundtrack, with the almighty and powerful Bob Clearmountain—who had a magic touch in mixing era-defining albums for Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, and Bryan Adams—fixing those knobs for the Aussies. “Need You Tonight,” “New Sensation,” “Devil Inside,” “Never Tear Us Apart,” and “Mystify.” All bangers on the radio, TV, CD player, and boombox from autumn ’87 to June ’88. Great show in concert; as a matter of fact, Homeboy Hutch used the instrumental of “Need You Tonight” as a segment to cover old MJ’s “Bad.” Not that he had to, but they’d arrived at their big ’80s moment and decided to strut.
Pixies – Complete B-Sides: 1988-87
As nice as it is to get a live version of “Debaser,” everyone’s go-to alt-rock anthem that reminds us of simpler times in the dorm, this Pixies B-side comp, a full remaster of the band’s timeless “other” tracks from their classic 4AD era (1988–91), reissued 25 years after its initial release, works best diving into the gritty ditties that just maybe didn’t make it into the MTV consumption machine.
The quiet, quirky solitude running through the UK Surf version of “Wave of Mutilation” is taken from the single “Here Comes Your Man,” The druggy, whiny pulse of “Bailey’s Walk” and the plucky uptick of “Make Believe.” But the star looming over all this comp is the dart-accurate bass work of the eminently superior Kim Deal before leaving for the Breeders. Their cover of Neil Young’s “I’ve Been Waiting For You” is a supreme reminder of how much this band, when “getting along with one another and life itself,” was one of the best post-Cure bands on the planet. Simpler times indeed.
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Ramones – Summer In the City: Live in San Francisco 1979
Things go in cycles, ya know? Coming off a good five-year run of indie jangle pop, San Francisco is seeing a resurgence, highlighted by a Go-Go’s exhibition titled “A View from the Throne: Gina Schock—Inside The Go-Go’s,” hosted at the Haight Street Art Center. The legendary club Mabuhay Gardens (also known as “The Fab Mab”) is being revived at its historic 443 Broadway location in San Francisco’s North Beach. And of course, there’s the breakthrough emergence of the San Francisco/West Coast self-proclaimed punks, Spiritual Cramp, and their sloppy wet-kiss breakthrough release to Fog City, Rude. It’s official. SF is remembering its punk roots.
Fun fact. There used to be a landmark punk club on Valencia Street called the Chameleon, where local and national punk acts would make the journey, despite at times a lack of running water (fun times at the toilets) and empty beer taps. They would buy 12-packs from the corner stores. Yet it remained packed until the club closed. This was a punk city, people. So shouts and salutations to Rhino Records for converting a heavily bootlegged performance into a Record Store Day must-have for those punk revivalists. A double-vinyl album called Summer in the City features a live broadcast of the classic Ramones lineup of Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Marky at their high-test, atonal, “1, 2, 3, 4” best. Originally broadcast live on KSAN-FM in partnership with BAM Magazine, live from City Hall Plaza on June 8th, 1979, as part of the Summer In The City music festival, The Ramones played a 22-song set with great enthusiasm, quick ad placements from Joey, fast swipes at “disco,” all live over FM radio directly from the mixing desk (with no multitrack recording available for later remixing). The minimal production value gave a strong indication that the thousands of fans who showed up just for this show, where there were no openers or any other bands on the bill, indicated that The Ramones were fiery and still worthy of all CBGB’s accolades earned during a previous era.
Buy: Amazon (vinyl)
Dusty Fingers Pick
Gwen McCrae – Gwen McCrae
It’s getting to that cookout time of the season, so obviously your ear tends to lean in on those tracks that feel heavy with horns, negotiating lyrics, and harmonies that linger on like your favorite BBQ sauce. One of the great things about this column is that you don’t always have to break the bank for incredible releases; however, you may have to dig in the crates a bit. But isn’t that what this whole record thing is all about? So get your fingers dirty and go look for Gwen McCrae’s self-titled debut.
The lead track “Move Me Baby” feels like it could be in a Sig Shore production, IYKYK, shuffling and hustling with minimal effort. There’s a track here called “He Keeps Somethin’ Groovy Goin’ On” that’s just encoded in ’70s talk, which is a beautiful thing. But people, you know why we are here.
I was first introduced to the seminal “90% Of Me Is You” by a then two-step Garage DJ Caspa from Chicago, and it was after a gig in the Tenderloin, late hours, and we were playing our deep crate nuggets. And he throws on this string-laden, ballad cry, that’s funky as all hell with the iconic refrain “what can I do.” Game over. Then the next day, when I’ve sobered up, I realized, this is the sample Large Professor used for the Main Source hip-hop classic “Just Hangin Out”. It’s crazy because despite how many times Gwen’s calling card has been sampled, the song on its own, untouched, played front to back, uninterrupted, can still, in 2026, blow down a dancefloor, bar, club, closing time slot, with everyone in serious headnod mode.
Listen: Spotify
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