The late, great Ex-Byrd Gene Clark never quite had the record sales to reflect the quality of his work. The soulfulness of his material was nearly without equal and the depth of feeling of his voice is truly exceptional. Recorded in 1976 on Clark's own dime, and originally released on RSO Records in 1977, on his fifth solo album Two Sides To Every Story, even if his muse seems to come and go, Clark is fine form.
The album's best original songs; "Silent Crusade", "Past Addresses", "Kansas City Southern", "Home Run King" - the album's lone single - and "Lonely Saturday" all plainly lay bare Clark's greatest strengths. His ability to simplify his lyrics and still be somehow amazingly poetic are over these tracks. The covers of "Give My Love To Marie" and "In The Pines" are well-executed.
Clark is aided by plenty of country rock luminaries; Emmylou Harris, Doug Dillard and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter are all well-accounted for. The album was produced by Thomas Jefferson Kaye who produced Clark's previous album, the legendary No Other album. However, whereas No Other was wonderfully excessive, Two Sides To Every Story is a fairly scaled-back affair.
Reissued in 2013 on High Moon Records for Record Store Day in a limited-numbered pressing of 5,000 copies. It comes with a beautiful twenty-four page booklet and an MP3 download card twenty-one bonus tracks including a full set from 1975 and a twelve-minute promotional interview from 1974. However, it does not contain the album itself, only the twenty-one bonus tracks.
A beautiful package and a must have for fans of The Byrds, Gene Clark or classic country rock from he 1970's.
Los Angeles, California's The Dream Syndicate were one of the leading lights from the early 1980's Paisley Underground scene. The poetic songs of guitarist/vocalist Steve Wynn seemed to successfully update the psychedelic garage rock of The Velvet Underground. The band existed from the early 80's till the late 80's and released five albums and one EP in that time. My personal favorites being their The Days Of Wine And Roses album and The Dream Syndicate EP.
The band had been together for less than one month when they recorded this. It was recorded in an afternoon, ostensibly as a four-song demo to get booked to play shows in the LA-area. "Sure Thing" has distinct Lou Reed feel to the vocals. While "That's What You Always Say" has a really nice late 60's fuzztone guitar part. "Some Kinda Itch" recalls Television. The recordings have a nice, homemade quality to them with controlled feedback and purposeful distortion outlining much of the proceedings.
The Dream Syndicate EP was first released in 1982 on Wynn's own Down There label and was reissued in a limited pressing of 1,000 copies for Record Store Day 2013 on the German label Blue Rose Records. It's a really nice pressing and the artwork is nicely restored and it features liner notes from Steve Wynn himself.
I love the record and would recommend it to anyone interested in the LA scene of the early 1980's.
Kings Of The Wild Frontier was
the album that started “Antmania” in the United Kingdom. It also
contained “Dog Eat Dog” (UK #4), “Kings Of The Wild Frontier”
(UK #2) and “”Antmusic”” (UK #2). The album itself reached #1
in the UK, #44 in the US and earned the band a BRIT award for Best
Album and a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist.
It featured the
Burundi dual drumming of Chris Hughes (aka Merrick) and Terry Lee
Mail. The glam meets art rock guitar of Marco Pirroni. There's shades
of Ennio Morricone all over the album and images of American Indian
meets American Cowboy of the old West. All delivered in a knowingly
cam, post-art school way. By all accounts it is a classic album.
Sony has just
reissued the album on vinyl. It's absolutely 100% faithful to the
original UK release. It even includes the Adam And The Ants
Catalogue, which is basically an awesomely cool magazine all about
the ants and features a ton of photos and paraphernalia of the time.
Highly recommended
for all New Wave lovers. And loves of post-punk and garage too.
This Record Store Day birthed a single
from The Electric Prunes. The Electric Prunes are well-known for the
singles “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” and “Get Me To The
World On Time”. Both songs were recorded in 1966 and were outtakes
for the band's self-titled debut album. The Hollies cover “I've Got
A Way Of My Own” features Byrdsian backing harmony vocals and the
jaunty “World Of Darkness” sounds like an R&B garage rock
standard.
A nice and welcome release from a band
that doesn't have their back-catalog exploited as much as other
bands.
The Shadows Of Knight are one of the
definitive American garage rock bands from the mid 60's. Their most
successful chart entry was their top-ten cover of “Gloria” by
Them. It contained the then-risque lyric “She comes to my room”
which the Shadows Of Night replaced with “She Calls Out My Name”,
which ensured airplay in all markets. Although, in many major markets
the song reached #1. They also made the national top 40 charts with
their cover of Bo Didley's “Oh Yeah”.
The always reliable reissue label
Sundazed Music issued an alternate version of “I Got My Mojo
Working” which was recorded at a 1966 session at Chess Records.
It's a lively, raucous recording and a fine addition to their
released output. The more interesting side here however is the
B-Side. It's a promotional advertisement for Fairmount Potato Chips
that was released on a Flexi Disc on Auravision Records in 1967. It
is the band introducing themselves and then launching into bluesy
proto-punk song about a “Potato Chip”. It's worth the price of
record alone.
The Seeds were allegedly the best live
band from Los Angeles in the 1960's, so it's a mystery why their
label would want them to record a “live” album in the studio and
then overdub crowd noise over the results. In April of 1968 the band
recorded the album at Western Recorders and would be released as Raw
& Alive: The Seeds In Concert At Merlin's Music Box.
In 2014 the UK label Big Beat Records released the album without the
dubbed audience noise plus another earlier attempt at a full-length
live-in-the studio affair, on a two-disc set simply called Raw
& Alive.
The wonderful
Norton Records released a 7” vinyl teaser from the album. “Night
Time Girl” starts off with what sounds like an early synthesizer
but it's probably just an over-modulated keyboard. The song sounds
like The Stooges meets The Doors, which isn't so surprising. You can
hear how Sky Saxon's vocal prowess influenced Iggy Pop on the B-Side
“Gypsy Plays The Drums”. These may be my favorite recordings by
The Seeds.
If you're a fan of
proto-punk, garage rock or rock and roll in general this most very
highly recommended.
In the Autumn of 1965, Brian Wilson was composing and preparing The Beach Boys' legendary Pet Sounds album. 1965 also saw the release of two top-five charting albums (The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)) which both show Wilson's maturing as a songwriter and a producer. By the middle of the Summer Capitol had been hounding the band for a new album to release for the Holiday shopping season. However, the band didn't have anything prepared. So, Brian Wilson came up with the idea of recording an album where the band sounds like they're just hanging out at a party with their friends and just performing acoustic cover versions of some of their favorite songs. The only instruments heard are acoustic guitar, bass, tambourine and bongos.
The album contained covers by Bob Dylan, The Everly Brothers, Phil Spector and three songs by The Beatles. Plus the novelty songs "Alley Oop", "Hully Gully" & "Papa Oom Mow Mow". The band's cover of "Barbara Ann" from this album was rush released as a single by Capitol when the bands' non-album single "The Little Girl I Once Knew" stalled at #20 on Billboards single charts. Apparently, "The Little Girl I Once Knew" was taking too long a time, slowly building momentum, in becoming a hit for the label's liking. "Barbara Ann" reached #2 on the charts. Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean sings co-lead on the track with Brian Wilson.
To add a party atmosphere to the album, the bands recorded an ambient track of just chatter, clinking of glasses and general party noises which pervades the entire album. Capitol record has just released Uncovered and Unplugged, which is the album without the backround ambient track and just the band playing and singing in the studio. The vinyl version is a beautiful reproduction of the album with labels faithful to the original mid-60's Capitol label. And the CD contains two discs of the album itself and virtually all of the outtakes as well. Including versions of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Ticket To Ride" and "California Girls".
The album itself is unwittingly a virtual snapshot of the pre-Pet Sounds Beach Boys. How they were and never would be again.
Highly recommended for the Beach Boys connoisseur and for maybe a listen for the Beach Boys novice as well.
Jerry Cole was one of the most sought-after session guitarists of the 1960's Los Angeles scene. He was a member of The Wrecking Crew and regularly appeared albums by The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Paul Revere & The Raiders and Little Richard. He also had a little band of his own known as The Spacemen. Jerry Cole & The Spacemen released three albums which were all released on Capitol Records. The second of these, Surf Age, has been reissued by the fantastic Sundazed Music (along with Hot Rod Dance Party) in a limited pressing of 1,000 copies on colored vinyl.
Surf Age is an instrumental surf rock album with your standard guitar, bass, drums arrangement. Songs are occasionally ornamented with organs, sometimes saxophones and lots of percussion. The album was produced by Jim Economides (who also wrote about half of the material) and it's a nicely recorded/produced album. The material is sometimes danceable in an old-school way. It's definitely a wonderful relic of its' time. I personally like the bass saxophones but I could do with out the sax solos - they're the one thing on the entire recording that "date" it, oddly enough. Whereas the standard guitar-bass-drums surf rock set-up is fairly timeless. The riffs are great but the material as a whole is somewhat on the forgettable-side.
However, these releases are a guilty-pleasure of mine as I'm way into this period of music (especially surf rock from the West Coast) so I'd recommend this to other like-minded fans as well.
After being passed over by Twin/Tone Records for local upstarts The Replacements, Hüsker Dü entered Blackberry Way Studios in Minneapolis to record their would-be debut 10" EP. They instead paired it down to a more financially-feasible 7" single and released it on their own Reflex Records. Taken long-thought lost safety masters, it has been issued on Record Store Day 2013 as a deluxe 7" EP on Numero Group Records, including the two tracks that were dropped once the 10" release was scrapped.
"Statues" has a nice cyclical flanged bass-line and is a Public Image Limited-esque Grant Hart song about the straitjacket of punk conformity. "Amusement" is live recording of a Bob Mould-penned song that obliquely refers to the band being slighted by Twin/Tone Records. "Let's Go Die" is a Greg Norton song that was previously appeared on the 1993 Rhino Records compilation Everything Falls Apart And More. "Writer's Cramp" is a previously unreleased mid-tempo Buzzcocks-flavored song written by Bob Mould.
It's a fine debut single, and it barely hints at the direction the band would next take. It neither points toward the amphetamine-fueled live album Land Speed Record nor the debut studio album Everything Falls Apart.
Released as part of Numero Group's 700 Line (reissues), limited to 4,000 copies (2,000 on white vinyl & 2,000 on black vinyl) and packaged in a 28pt board gatefold sleeve. The artwork is exactly duplicated from the original Reflex issue on this very nice release. If there are still any post-punk aficionados who have not yet heard Hüsker Dü (which to my mind is like a baseball fan not being all that familiar with who Nolan Ryan was), you need to hear this release, or New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig and Zen Arcade asap.
Here's the video review:
Thanks to Numero Group Records, Fake Name Graphx & Stephen Gersztoff.
Scarsdale, New York's Too Much Joy are perhaps one of my all-time favorite bands. They were most certainly my favorite 90's band (they existed in the public eye from 1987 - 1997). Having said this, it's not so difficult to retain all objectivity when discussing them anymore (or other favorite artists of mine). If I were still a teen, which I haven't been for a few years, this would be a completely different story. My enthusiasm for the band was sincere, as they were all but updated hybrids of various favorite bands of mine. Namely The Replacements, but there were elements of Cheap Trick meets The Clash and The Who meets The Raspberries as well, here and there.
There was a subversive element where the vocals were concerned. They approached their backing vocals as maybe The Beach Boys filtered through the Beastie Boys, but they were a guitar-based proto-pop-punk quartet. Or just a punk-y power pop band. Their lead singer/lyricist Tim Quirk had a fairly unconventional voice. It's pretty obvious Lou Reed was a template for him. Or at least it was an excuse to talk-sing his vocals, some of the time (this is probably most obvious on the band's debut album Green Aggs And Crack). Guitarist Jay Blumenfield had the best voice in the bunch and could hold his own with either R.E.M. jangle or Clash-infused barre chords. Sandy Smallens was a dexterous bassist and whose over-emoted vocals acted as a perfect foil the sweet vocals of Blumenfield and talkier vocals of Quirk. Now-retired NYPD Sergeant drummer Tommy Vinton was basically modern-rock's answer to Keith Moon. Instrumentally, he's possibly the finest in Too Much Joy. He could play small, understated parts and loud, overstated ones with equal skill.
When I heard Too Much Joy for the first time it was in my friend, the late-Eddie Byrne's living room. On the stereo we had on WDRE 92.7 FM in the Summer of 1991. "Long Haired Guys From England" came on, and it was a complete breath of fresh air from what seemed like a stagnant programming-time on my favorite station. The song was four chords (A-E-G-D) repeated for two-minutes and forty-five seconds. It was loud, catchy, memorable, clever and funny. It sounded like it was going to go off the rails toward the end, yet somehow gained momentum and ended no sooner than it began. However, the song segued into a stream of commercials and there was no mention of the artist's name when the D.J. returned to announce the next block of songs. Regardless, I loved it.
And then I forgot about it for about a year, until bonafide Too Much Joy fan and fellow alternative music lover Doug Mashkow loaned me Too Much Joy's third album Cereal Killers (along with their second, SonOf Sam I Am). For some reason Cereal Killers was a difficult listen at first - I initially found there to be too much separation between the vocals and the music, why is the lead singer singing...like that? What was up with these synthesized glockenspiels? I returned to the album a day or so later. Eventually, the fourteen songs on Cereal Killers sunk their subversive power pop/pop-punk metaphoric teeth in. The lyrics were plainly brilliant, the music was well-written and executed and the band was basically a pop juggernaut.
The songs are basically in something of a loose-thematic cycle. When analyzing/dissecting the album, S. Scott Lessig's apt description in Issue Six of Joybuzzer is "Loneliness leads to alienation (which) leads to rage". He basically sums up the entire album with that one sentence. I'd have to add "Resignation" to that description as well. The alienation in the songs, "Pirate", "Goodbye Ohio" & "William Holden Caulfield" also contain the element of rage. In fact, you could easily make a pie chart with which songs fall into which part of the pie (alienation/resignation/loneliness/rage), and have a ridiculous amount of overlap. It was fairly unique at the time - recorded in the Summer of 1990, released in the Spring of 1991 - for an album this dark to have such a pop sheen. Having said this, for the listeners who wanted to wade in the shallower waters of the material; there are plenty of references to getting drunk, getting stoned, and having sex.
Produced by Paul Fox, who also produced XTC's Oranges & Lemons, Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians' Perspex Island and They Might Be Giants' John Henry, the album was a critical success. Its' only flirtation with the charts was the power pop single "Crush Story" (which also stealthily recycles the same chords from "Long Haired Guys From England" for the verses) peaking at #17 on Billboard's Modern Rock Charts. It also contained the Replacements-like single "Susquehanna Hat Company", the somewhat true-story "Thanksgiving In Reno", the frat-rock classic "King Of Beers", the completely-in-denial "Nothing On My Mind" and the bands' very own "Theme Song".
Side One Dummy Records has done vinyl-loving TMJ fans the service of reissuing the album on vinyl. Its' only initial vinyl release was in Germany which awkwardly contained the 1990 single "That's A Lie" from SonOf Sam I Am. It is a limited pressing of 500 yellow and 500 blue copies. The release contains newly-penned and plenty revealing liner notes from Tim Quirk. Some orders made through www.sideonedummy.com will contain a brand new issue of Too Much Joy's Official Fanzine Joybuzzer. Side One Dummy did a really nice job with the release - the vinyl looks really nice and the record sounds beautiful. The packaging is faithful to the artwork of original release. Hopefully Side One Dummy will one day release the band's follow-up album Mutiny as well (which would be making its debut on vinyl, if they did).
Highly Recommended for fans of snarky modern rock (the then-term for such bands), pop-punk and power pop alike.
Here's my video review of the album:
Special thanks to Clive Young (for the nice blue vinyl), Joybuzzer Zine and Doug Mashkow at CD Island (for the informal introduction to the world of Too Much Joy).
