Acclaimed guitarists Harry Taussig + Max Ochs reunite for 50th anniversary
There's a world of guitar music pulsating brilliantly just beneath the surface of today's most popular rock and folk tunes. It's a place where original sounds and players from decades ago still sound as fresh and of the moment as a brash instrumentalist seeking to claim their voice today. That's the zone where San Francisco-based label Tompkins Square Records often lives in and what brought label owner Josh Rosenthal to "re-discover" two American primitive guitar masters, Harry Taussig and Max Ochs, back in 2005. Since that time, Tompkins Square Records has released new recordings from both artists. So it only [...]
SF label Tompkins Square Records marks decade of crate-digging for lost masterpieces
Robert Johnson is well-known as a seminal bluesman now, but the musician, who lived from 1911 to 1938, was just another forgotten master until Columbia Records reissued a compilation of his work in 1990. The album was certified Gold, unheard of for a reissue at the time. It also fueled the fire of Columbia exec Josh Rosenthal, who would go on to leave the major label world and start Tompkins Square Records, which for more than a decade has focused on finding unheralded masterpieces from the past and making them available to today’s audiences. Rosenthal, 48, is based in San [...]