Random mumblings and mundom ramblings on music (mostly), and whatever else pops into my mind . . .
[The files attached here are for review only, and should be deleted after two weeks. If you like the bands, go buy the albums . . . like I did!] . . .
And yes - EVERYTHING posted here is still available!
Holy smokes - this seminal compilation is THIRTY YEARS OLD this week!
To understand why this disc is so essential, and so celebrated, I direct you to Stereogum's writeup on it from ten years ago, on No Alternative's twentieth anniversary - can't add a word to this superb summation.
I'll just save my breath, and instead provide you all with possibly the best and timeliest collection of then-rarities and unreleased songs by some of the giants of alternative music of that period. Here's No Alternative, released on Arista Records on October 26th, 1993. Enjoy this great throwback to an interesting and exciting era in modern music, and, as always, let me know what you think.
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Looking back, 1969 was a pretty important year for me. It was the beginning of my formal schooling, with my entrance into kindergarten that fall. And it was the summer I met the best friend of my childhood, when Ricky and his family moved in just down the street. All in all, it's the first full year I can remember fairly clearly even now, not just fleeting bits and pieces from my earlier toddlerhood.
1969 was also pretty memorable for the rest of the world - one of the most pivotal years, full of significant historical and cultural events both here and abroad. As such, this current year (2019) has been chockablock with fiftieth anniversary tributes to that time and era. Over the past twelve months, there have been celebrations and memorials, movies, films, books and museum spectaculars commemorating events as various as the Stonewall riots, Chappaquiddick, the 'Miracle' Mets of baseball, the Manson Murders... and the first artificial heart implantation, 747 flight, ATM machine, and successful moon landing. Culturally,
1969 is remembered for The Beatles' final public performance as a group (the legendary Abbey Road Studios "rooftop concert"), the debut of Monty Python's Flying Circus on BBC1, Woodstock, Altamont, the rise and fall of 'supergroup' Blind Faith, and the deaths of Judy Garland and Brian Jones. It was the year of the debut of beloved children's series like Scooby Doo, The Wacky Races/Penelope Pitstop, Sesame Street and The Pink Panther, and the final seasons for programs fondly recalled to this day. like Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Star Trek, and the ignominious demise of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. And as can be judged by the spate of "50th Anniversary" box sets being released this year, 1969 was also a big year for music, with the release of celebrated classics such as The Beatles' Abbey Road, The
Band's Music From Big Pink, The Doors'The Soft Parade, Aoxomoxoa by The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, King Crimson's In The Court Of The Crimson King, The Who's Tommy, The Kinks' Arthur, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and debut albums by Santana, David Bowie, The Stooges, Led Zeppelin, The Jackson Five, Elton John and Chicago.
However, there's one culturally significant golden anniversary this year which seems to me hasn't received that much attention: The Brady Bunch premiered on ABC TV fifty years ago today, on September 29th, 1969.
This show was a rite of passage during the early '70s; EVERY kid I knew - shoot, probably every kid in America - watched this show religiously. On Fridays during the summer, the streets would clear of children early on those evenings, as everyone would be inside viewing the program. The critics at the time hated it - but I and ten of millions of other kids like me didn't know about or care about TV pundits panning the show or putting it down. We all just loved seeing kids on screen, doing kid stuff in a bright Day-Glo California world, where the weather was always perfect and the problems always happily resolved in thirty minutes.
The inspiration for The Brady Bunch was a magazine article that longtime TV producer Sherwood Schwartz read in 1966, stating that a third of all U.S. families had at least one child from a previous marriage, Schwartz, the creator of Gilligan's Island and It's About Time, two comedies running on CBS-TV at the time, was searching for a new project as both of these programs were reaching the end of their network TV runs (both were cancelled in 1967). So he wrote up a 30-minute pilot episode about a blended family - a man with three boys marrying a woman with three girls, along with several other potential story ideas regarding the joys and problems this new family would face. Schwartz then shopped it around to the three major networks at the time (ABC, CBS and NBC), where all three expressed a modicum of interest but insisted on changes to the situation and story. The producer, who felt he got burned by the networks with the changes he was forced to make with Gilligan's Island, refused to compromise, and shelved the concept for the time being.
It was two years later, in the wake of the success of the Desilu/United Artists motion picture comedy Yours, Mine And Ours, that the "blended family" show pitch was revived. The movie, starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, was based on the true story of the Beardsleys, a Navy officer with ten children who married a woman with eight children of her own. The film was a huge hit, one of the top grossing movies of 1968 and earning back more than ten times its production cost (my parents took my siblings and I to see it at the old drive-in near Janaf Shopping Center in Norfolk, with all of the kids dressed in pajamas seated in the back of the VW van). Of course, nothing changes a corporation's mind like the prospect for huge financial gain... so it was then that the TV networks changed their minds about Schwartz's pilot, and came calling. ABC won the bidding war for rights to the program, and production/casting efforts began immediately. [side note: The real Beardsley family ended up settling in the Monterey, California area and ran several businesses, including a donut shop near the Naval Postgraduate School that I used to regularly patronize as a high school student there.].
The producer began by casting the children; his vision was that of three blonde girls and three dark-haired boys. Over 1,200 kids auditioned, with Schwartz personally interviewing more than a third of them, looking for the right mix/fit. In the end, he cast Maureen McCormick, Eve Plumb and Susan Olsen as Marcia, Jan and Cindy Brady, and Barry Williams, Christopher Knight and Michael Lookinland as Greg, Peter and Bobby Brady (this despite the fact that Lookinland had blond hair; it was dyed dark for the duration of the program).
The adult roles were more of a problem. Originally, Schwartz had his eyes on longtime radio and TV veteran Monty Margetts in the role of Alice, the housekeeper, Joyce Bulifant as mother Carol Brady, and for the role of patriarch Mike Brady... none
other than Gene Hackman. But the network balked on Hackman, who, despite his Best Supporting Actor nomination the previous year for his role in the movie Bonnie & Clyde, they considered a relative "unknown" with little TV experience. And Schwartz replaced Bulifant with Florence Henderson after Henderson gave him a phenomenal screen test for the role. With Henderson as Carol Brady, the producer determined
that the role of Alice should be more comedic, serving as the mother's foil, and replaced Margetts with award-winning TV comedy veteran Ann B. Davis. With the network balking on Hackman, Schwartz turned his attention to actor Robert Reed, a Shakespearean-trained actor who had recently completed five seasons on the courtroom drama The Defenders and who was at the time appearing on
Broadway. Reed was under contract to both Paramount Pictures and ABC, and as such was semi-obligated to accept the role of Mike Brady... a decision that Schwartz would soon regret. At any rate, with the cast in place, filming of the Brady Bunch pilot occurred during the second week of October, 1968, with the show destined for an early Friday slot for the upcoming (1969-70) season.
Most of the storylines and overall focus of the series centered around the Brady kids and their trials and tribulations, the ordeals of growing up, both serious (sibling quarrels, parental restrictions, and adolescent love) and somewhat trivial (breaking Mom's favorite vase, missing dolls and treehouse admittance) - all semi-relatable to most kids around that period, which made the show that much more popular with the preteen set. Despite the "blended family" premise of the show, during the first season this aspect was rarely mentioned, and in the following seasons, not at all. The two halves of the family integrated relatively seamlessly - for instance, the kids seemed to have no problem calling their stepparents "Mom" or "Dad".
In the first couple of seasons, there wasn't much thought regarding making the Brady children into a singing group (although an album of Christmas standards sung by the kids was released in the fall of 1970). It wasn't until halfway through the show's run, on the "Dough Re Mi" episode (#65) aired during the third season in January 1972, that the first overt moves were made to establish the Brady Kids as a legitimate pop group. Two songs are featured on this episode: "We Can Make the World a Whole Lot Brighter" and "Time to Change" (yup - this was the one where Peter's voice was changing):
Three months later, the first album, Meet The Brady Bunch, was released, featuring those songs plus a number of covers of recent hits, including "Me And You And A Dog Named Boo", "Baby I'm-A Want You" and "American Pie". Pushed by the network and by exposure on the TV show, Meet The Brady Bunch actually charted, peaking at #108 on the Billboard 200.
Over the next year, more episodes featuring the kids singing were aired, including "Amateur Night" in January 1973 (featuring the tunes "Keep On" and "It's A Sunshine Day") and "Adios,
Johnny Bravo" in September 1973 (where the kids warble "Good Time Music"). During that time, the group released two more pop albums targeted to teens/preteens, The Kids From The Brady Bunch in December 1972 and The Brady Bunch Phonographic Album in June 1973 (in addition, there was a duet album featuring just McCormick and Knight released in late
1973) - none of these albums charted. The group (now billed as "The Brady Bunch Kids") also began a national concert tour, with their first public appearance at the National Orange Show in San Bernadino, CA in May 1972, and subsequent shows at places like Knott's Berry Farm, Atlantic City's Steel Pier and various state fairs. Producer Schwartz wasn't happy
with this latter development, as it began to impact the production schedule of the TV show and removed the kids from his constant direct influence. The Brady Bunch Kids weren't music superstars per se, but they were considered a safe and reliable concert draw for the entire family, and with more bookings nationwide, their popularity grew. As the fifth season wound down, the kids and their agents began pressuring Schwartz to include more musical episodes for the upcoming season.
The Brady Bunch was never a critical or ratings hit. The best the show ever placed in the Nielsens during its entire run was during during its third season (1971-72), when it ended the year just outside of the top 30 programs. That was the same year the
Top 5-rated show Sanford & Son began airing on rival NBC, a program The Brady Bunch was paired against for the next three seasons and regularly got stomped by, in terms of viewership. By then, in many ways, the show was set up as sort of a sacrificial lamb by ABC - I assume they figured they were going to lose that time slot anyway, so draw what viewership it could at 8:00 pm on Fridays (primarily preteen) and use it as a "loss leader" for the more popular and successful network shows that came on immediately afterwards (the top 20 programs The Partridge Family in 1971-72 and 1972-73, and The Six Million Dollar Man in 1973-74). That sufficed for a time, but by late 1973 the show's Nielsen rankings were mired into the mid-50s, with no foreseeable prospects for improvement... not that they didn't try. With the kids in the regular cast getting older, Schwartz made an attempt to goose viewership by the show's much-needed younger
audience with the introduction of a new character late in the season: the Bradys' cousin Oliver (played by Robbie Rist). But the new character was whiny and annoying, upsetting the core Brady family balance, and accelerating the program's slide (to this day, "'Cousin Oliver' Syndrome" is a much-recognized and maligned TV trope, the telltale sign of a show going downhill).
In addition, Robert Reed was increasingly becoming a problem for Sherwood Schwartz. Reed had always considered the show silly and beneath his status as a dramatic and stage actor, and held the producer in contempt over the content and premise of this and his previously-produced CBS comedies, full of what Reed saw as "gag lines" and zany scenarios that pandered to the lowest common denominator. Over the years on the program, Reed fought constantly with production staff and directors, and routinely peppered Schwartz with memos complaining about the themes and content of show scripts and detailed dissertations over character motivations. The producer generally ignored Reed's protests, but on occasion, to alleviate on-set tensions, Schwartz allowed Reed to direct some episodes [To his credit, however, Reed did not direct his disenchantment and dissatisfaction regarding the show at his cast members; He was a consummate professional in front of the camera, and got along well with all of his co-stars. He was especially beloved by the Brady Bunch kids, who saw him as a true father figure].
However, by the end of the 1973-74 season, things between the star and the producer had come to a head. The final show of that season, "The Hair-Brained Scheme", had Bobby trying to get rich by selling homemade hair tonic, with the usual "wacky hijinks" ensuing. Reed sent another memo to Schwartz, pointing out in intricate detail the myriad problems he saw in the hackneyed premise of the script, and suggesting changes. The producer, either by oversight or by choice, didn't read the memo nor make the requested script changes in time for filming, leading to Reed walking off the set. Therefore, the family patriarch does not appear at all in the final episode. That was the final straw for Schwartz, who began making plans to replace/remove the Mike Brady character for the show's upcoming sixth season [As Carol Brady's prior marital status (whether she was divorced or widowed) was never explicitly specified, the producer contemplated writing Reed out of the program and bringing Carol's ex-husband back into the family].
While Schwartz was struggling to deal with the twin problems of Reed and the kids' musical desires, ABC cancelled The Brady Bunch at the end of the season, making any such moves unnecessary. With 117 episodes in the can, the program just barely made the threshold for syndication. In hindsight, the show's cancellation was in all likelihood a blessing in disguise for Schwartz, as it prevented him from overt conflict with his show's stars, and improved his bank balance (with compounded royalties from repeated airings of the program). The Brady Bunch entered syndication a year later, in September 1975... and has never left it. Every single day for the past forty-plus years, somewhere in the world, an episode of this old, formerly critically-reviled program has aired, and it continues to charm audiences, create new fans and reconnect old fans to its uncomplicated, wholesome, nostalgic "good clean fun" premise.
By the 1990s, even with The Brady Bunch firmly established as a pop culture icon after fifteen years of reruns, almost all of The Brady Bunch Kids albums (with the exception of Merry Christmas From The Brady Bunch) had long been out of print. MCA Records, eager to cash in on Brady nostalgia, issued the compilation album It's A Sunshine Day: The Best of The Brady Bunch in 1993. This set features selections from all four Brady Bunch albums, along with a cut from the Chris Knight & Maureen McCormick album and an unreleased Barry Williams number (Williams began work on a solo album in 1974; six tracks were completed before both the show and the album were cancelled). Almost all of the fan-favorite songs are featured here, including the one that, for good or ill, The Bradys will be most remembered for - the title track, "it's A Sunshine Day":
[For some reason, what is in my opinion the best song ever done on the show was left off of this disc - perhaps because it featured another cast member other than one of the Brady Kids. It was on "The Show Must Go On?", a fourth season episode aired in November 1972. In this episode, Marcia (Maureen McCormick) and her mother Carol (Florence Henderson) perform the song "Together Wherever We Go" (from the hit 1959 Broadway stage musical "Gypsy") for Marcia's high school talent show, the "Family Night Frolics". Its a bit fondly remembered by aficionados of the program, and cited by McCormick herself as her all-time favorite moment performing on the show. A clip of this performance is located here.]
The Allmusic review of this album sort of says it all:
"If you have fond memories of watching The Brady Bunch while growing up or if you have all the episodes on tape, there's no escaping it -- It's A Sunshine Day: The Best of the Brady Bunch is indispensable. If your appreciation of The Brady Bunch is not so intense, the abundance of bad singing and playing that clutter this disc will not be charming or endearing; it will just be irritating."
I suppose I'm one in the former group; I've owned my copy of this compilation, on either cassette or CD, for decades, and still derive a guilty pleasure from listening to and reveling in these happy, goofy songs. But the attitude by which you decide to approach this album is up to you - I'm just acting as the source for you all! Here for your listening (dis)pleasure is It's A Sunshine Day: The Best of The Brady Bunch, released by MCA Records on March 2nd, 1993. In any case, as always, let me know what you think.
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Another icon lost . . . He had so much left in the tank - creatively, personally and professionally. I know that time is finite for us all . . . but this one smarts.
Nothing much else left to say . . . Here's something by someone well-known, who succinctly expressed the overall feeling of Prince's passing today a lot better than I ever could:
All I can do in tribute to this great artist is to provide his music to you - so here you are: Prince's The Hits/The B-Sides three-disc compilation, released by Paisley Park Records and Warner Brothers Records on September 10th, 1993. I bought mine at the old Echo Records in Christchurch shortly after it came out - just looked at it; it still has the price tag on it all these years later: NZ$87.95. Worth every penny I spent on it, and then some.
My favorite song off of this set is "Erotic City" - this song was theJAM during the summer of '84:
Anyway, have a listen to this set tonight, enjoy, and remember this gifted, innovative and prolific artist as he transitions into the realm of legend. Rest well, Prince.
(Man, but I'm tired of writing these eulogy posts . . .)
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Years ago in this blog, I wrote effusively of my affection for the work of Barbara Manning. A longtime indie music stalwart out of San Francisco, Manning has sadly had little mainstream success in her career. But in indie circles around the world, her name is considered sacred. For more than thirty years, pretty much everything she has been involved in as a solo artist or band member has been nothing more than gold. And this little EP is no exception; it's a weird and wonderful gem of a release.
Apparently, Barbara Manning has always had a thing for baseball. Note the cover of her first major solo compilation, 1991's One Perfect Green Blanket (a poetic euphemism for a ballfield). This album includes a sample from the broadcast of the National League San Francisco Giants' 1989 Western Division victory (the same year they were swept by their cross-bay rivals the Oakland As in the infamous "Earthquake Series"). And after working as a solo artist in the early 1990s, her first post-World of Pooh band was named The S.F. Seals, after the famous minor-league team that represented San Francisco in the Pacific Coast League for more than fifty years. So it was only a matter of time, apparently, before Ms. Manning addressed her love for baseball in song.
Barbara's selections for inclusion on this disc are varied and eclectic. The lead song, "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio", was originally released in 1941 by Les Brown & His Band of Renown (fronted by singer Betty Bonney), just after DiMaggio's famous 56-game hitting streak with the New York Yankees ended (prior to joining the Yankees, DiMaggio played for the Seals). Manning and her band faithfully recreate the jazzy, big-band sound of the original recording. It's a fun, funny record for indie alt-rockers to perform, yet they pull it off brilliantly.
For the stomp-rocker "The Ballad of Denny McLain", Barbara cedes vocal duties to bandmate Lincoln Allen. This song is another cover, originally recorded by the legendary and eccentric Bay Area band Mad V. Dog & the Merchants of the New Bizarre. It documents the story of the infamous Detroit
pitcher, the last Major League pitcher to win 30 games in a season (in 1968), but who got involved with organized crime figures and ended up serving several long stints in prison in the '80s and '90s for various serious charges (his first conviction was for cocaine trafficking, embezzlement and racketeering; his co-defendants were Anthony Spilotro (Joe Pesci's character in Casino was based on him) and later John Gotti, Jr.).
The final (and in my opinion, the best) song on the EP, the fuzzed-out psychedelic guitar workout "Dock Ellis", celebrates the Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who allegedly threw a complete no-hit game on June 12th, 1970 while tripping on a massive dose of LSD.
Soon after finally acquiring World of Pooh's The Land of Thirst in 2000, I went on a big Barbara Manning buying spree, tracking down everything of hers that I could find: much of her solo work, the rest of her World of Pooh stuff, and her collaborations with 28th Day, The Original Artists, The Go-Luckys! and The S.F. Seals - including this disc. I'm glad I did; this is a superb addition to her canon. Check it out and see for yourself.
Here's The S.F. Seals' Baseball Trilogy EP, released by Matador Records on November 1st, 1993. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.
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Hit a new milestone earlier today - 300,000 visitors! All that in less than five years! Thanks a bunch to all of you who have come and continue to come here to read my little stories, and share in the music that I enjoy and I hope that you enjoy as well.
As a 'thank you' for all of my intrepid visitors, here's a little gift: the third Spin Magazine CD sampler compilation, released as a promotion in 1993, shortly before I ended my longtime subscription to the music rag. It's been so long now, that I can't remember what issue this disc was included in - probably the 8th anniversary edition published in April of that year - I simply don't recall. In any event, this comp was never released for commercial sale - the only way you'll probably be able to get it is through here!
Here's the song list:
1. Otha Fish - The Pharcyde
2. Bottom - Zap Mama
3. Dreams - The Cranberries
4. Is It Like Today - World Party
5. Sleepwalk - Pere Ubu
6. Accelerator - Gumball
7. Mr. Blameshifter - The Fluid
8. Mr. Cimbalista - Orangutang
9. Swamp Song - Tool
10. Pickin' Flowers For - The Best Kissers In The World
11. I Should've Known - Aimee Mann
12. City Of Wet Angels - Funland
13. Falling - Straitjacket Fits
14. Under Jets - Murray Attaway
15. Sunshine Smile - Adorable
16. Someone To Talk To - The Devlins
Other than "Dreams" (and possibly the World Party song, which got a lot of play in certain quarters), there aren't a lot of 'hits' on this disc, and nothing particularly vital to music history. Still, it's a pretty good overview of what the alternative music world looked like in the early 1990s, just before (in my opinion) the bottom fell out. Hopefully there's something here that you'll like.
Again, thanks tons to all of you from all over the world for stopping by over the years and for contributing your comments and thoughts on the music. Keep on coming back!
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I've got a few posts pending that I have to finish (so check back in the next few days, as I'll probably be backdating them on this site) . . . But I thought I'd kick off my annual series of Christmas-related posts with this: the Cocteau Twins' uber-rare, hard-to-find Snow EP.
The early 1990s were sort of a rough period for the Cocteau Twins.
The band was just coming off of its enormously successful 1990-91 worldwide tour for their critically-acclaimed album Heaven Or Las Vegas - this was their first tour as a headliner and their first live performances since 1986, so EVERY show was a sold out affair. Singer Liz Fraser and her longtime mate, band co-founder and principal songwriter Robin Guthrie had recently become parents to a little girl. The third member of the band, Simon Raymonde, had also recently married and had become a father. So it seemed that, after years of struggle and toil, the group was finally reveling in the financial and spiritual benefits of their efforts.
But behind the scenes, all was not well in their world. The Cocteau Twins had long been in conflict with their label, 4AD Records, and label head Ivo Watts-Russell, over both financial and artistic differences. And apparently Watts-Russell had finally had enough; nearing the end of their tour, the group was informed that 4AD had released them from their long-standing contract. So at the beginning of 1991, the band was without a representative in the UK (Capitol Records was their U.S. distributor).
But more significantly, Guthrie's life took a turn for the worse. He had been a long-standing alcohol and drug abuser during the '80s, but his addiction became even more pronounced and debilitating during the Heaven Or Las Vegas tour. His problems with booze and dope not only threatened the stability of the band, they caused severe stresses in his family life, resulting in an increasingly dysfunctional relationship with Fraser. The Cocteau Twins were very close to falling apart, personally and professionally, right at the point where they had achieved their greatest comfort and success.
To his credit, upon his return to England Guthrie made a concerted effort to get clean and get his life back on track. But it took damn near three years for him to do so - the band's follow-up to Heaven Or Las Vegas, Four-Calendar Cafe, wouldn't be released until late 1993. During that entire three-year period, the Cocteau Twins made no recordings whatsoever . . . with one exception: the Snow EP.
Simon Raymonde talked about the making of the EP a few years later for a music magazine:
"There's a Christmas record that comes out on Capitol Records (the Cocteaus' US label) every few years. And they were trying to get all their bands to do a cover version of a Christmas song. I didn't think that's what it was at the time. I thought it would be like sitting next to Frank Sinatra. But in fact it would've been, y'know, Skinny Puppy, doing 'Merry Xmas Everybody.' Anyway they'd said, Would you do one? And Liz suggested — it must have been for a joke — 'Frosty The Snowman.' Then Robin went, Yeah, good title, people will think it's a normal Cocteau Twins song with a title like that."
"Once we'd got the music down, I wrote down the lyrics on a piece of paper and said to Liz, Hey, look at these, and we were laughing away. As we were going through it I was listening to Liz's reactions and thinking, this is never gonna get done. She was going, 'He's a very happy soul' — me sing that?! No way, I could not in a million years... 'with a broomstick in his ' — you've gotta be fucking kidding!'"
"I just didn't think she'd do it."
But she DID do it - the Cocteau Twins recorded "Frosty The Snowman" in the fall of 1992. The planned Capitol Christmas album never got off the ground, so the band let the song be included in the December 1992 Volume CD Magazine (issue #5). The response to their version of "Frosty The Snowman" was so positive, that their new label (after 4AD, they signed with Fontana Records) suggested they back it with another Christmas song ("Winter Wonderland") and release it as a holiday single. The resulting Snow EP had an extremely limited release (one day only) in December 1993 in the UK.
I started looking for this release in the late Nineties, and it took me forever to find a copy of this EP. After several aborted attempts, I finally got my hands on a copy just before I left Texas at the end of the decade; I forget what I paid for it, but it was enough. However, it's nowhere near what sellers are demanding for this CD nowadays - I checked a couple of online retailers, who have copies of this EP for sale for $100 or more. Now THAT'S a rarity!
In addition to owning the CD, I also own a 45-RPM version of this EP, pressed on colored vinyl:
I suspect that this vinyl version is even more rare and valuable than the CD - but I don't care. I'm not about to part with EITHER of them . . .
. . . except, of course, to let you all, my devoted readers, have a chance to hear this music! So, for your holiday listening pleasure, here's the Cocteau Twins Snow EP, released in December 1993 on Fontana Records, and distributed in the U.S. by Capitol Records. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:
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Another part of my ongoing fetish to collect anything and everything related to my favorite band, The Fall . . . I picked this one up in the spring of 1993, the last music purchase I made in the US before leaving for New Zealand a week later. I lived in a hotel for my first few weeks in Christchurch, waiting for my household goods to arrive by slow boat from Baltimore. The only goods I brought with me were a bunch of clothes, my CD player with a little set of attachable speakers, and a pile of CDs, including this one - which I played to death during that time.
The four songs on this disc - the title cut (a great cover of a Lee "Scratch" Perry reggae classic); "Gut Of The Quantifier"; "Spoilt Victorian Child" and "Words of Expectation" - were all taken from a live 1992 John Peel session. As such, they have all been included on other Fall anthologies and compilations, including and especially The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004 box set from 2005. But if you don't feel like shelling out the big bucks for that set and running through six discs to find these tunes, here they are, all together in one place.
(And that's not to disparage the Complete Peel Sessions set - it's a simply superb compilation, and a must-have for any diehard Fall fan.)
So, for your listening pleasure - the Kimble EP, released by Strange Fruit Records in 1993. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:
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I got into Pavement sort of ass-backwards, but as it turned out, it was exactly the right way to understand the band.
I learned about the band during that six-month period back in 1993 that I mentioned in my earlier post on The Starlings, just before I left for New Zealand [in hindsight - damn, but there was a lot of good music floating around back then!]. I don't recall hearing them on the radio; I must have read something about them in one of the music magazines I regularly perused back then, like Spin or the NME. Or maybe there was something about them in the DC City Paper that I saw - I just don't recall. Back then, more than now, there were music critics and commentators whose judgment I trusted implicitly; if they said something was good, that was usually good enough for me. So I must've come to the band through something like that, because I purchased the first Pavement album I came across, Westing (By Musket & Sextant), before I'd ever heard a note of their music.
[or, at least I THINK I'd never heard one of their songs up to that point . . . I say this because back in October 1991, my friend Camob came out from California to visit the DC area, and we ended up doing the town a couple of nights, hitting the old college bars along M Street that used to cater to Georgetown students (all of them now long gone) and checking out our old music haunts. We spent a couple of hours in the old 9:30 Club on F Street one evening, listening to some no-name band play . . . and it was years later, after thinking about it, that I became pretty sure that, during their set, those guys played a version of Pavement's "Texas Never Whispers", a year before it came out on the Watery, Domestic EP. I could be wrong . . . but I don't think I am.]
As far as I knew, Westing was Pavement's first album. I listened to it constantly that spring and summer, at home in the DC area and at my new home in New Zealand. Several songs entered heavy rotation on my personal playlist, including "Box Elder" and "Forklift".
Christchurch, New Zealand is pretty well off the beaten path, as far as American acts are concerned; when a Stateside act arrives down that way, it's pretty big news (which explains why I inexplicably paid my hard-earned money to see Tina Turner, of all people, play at Lancaster Park during my first month there . . .). So I felt incredibly lucky when, browsing the local paper one day about two months into my Kiwi residency, I noticed a small ad announcing that Pavement was actually coming to play a show in town. I was so shocked, I stopped, went back and slowly scanned the ad again, just in case I had misread the name. But no, it turned out to be true - a decent indie band that I was just getting fully into was heading my way!
At about the same time I heard about the upcoming show, I discovered that Westing wasn't the band's first album - it was just a compilation of early singles and EPs. Their first official disc was Slanted & Enchanted, released by Matador Records in April 1992 (although copies had been distributed to selected DJs and music critics as early as the spring/summer of 1991 - which makes my conviction that I heard "Texas Never Whispers" a year before its official release not as far-fetched as it appears . . .). I found a copy of the album at Echo Records downtown and took it home to begin absorbing it.
As much as I loved Westing, Slanted & Enchanted COMPLETELY blew me away. EVERY song on the album was strong, and I quickly discovered several new Pavement favorites that began being played constantly around the house and in my car - "Perfume V", "Two States", "Summer Babe" (which sounds almost identical to the one on Westing), and especially "Here", in my opinion one of the three best songs Pavement ever did (along with "Shoot The Singer" and "Box Elder").
By the date of their show in town, I was fully conversant in their music.
However, I still didn't know much about the band, or the players themselves, outside of their names. So I went to the packed show, fought my way to a space near the front, and suffered through the opening band, some no-name Christchurch locals. The following band, who I assumed to be Pavement, came on and started playing. And all through the first part of their set I'm shouting out song names for them to play - "'Box Elder'!" "'Two States'!" The band is giving me dirty looks all the while, and it finally dawned on me that they weren't Pavement; they were Bailter Space, a rightly renowned Kiwi band that, at the time, I knew nothing about. I'd never been to a show that had two opening acts before the headliner, so I made an assumption - a poor one, as it turned out (hell, I didn't know - it's not like there were band pictures in the CD inserts!).
Pavement finally came on, and of course they were absolutely great. The crowd there was going wild - say what you will about the assumed provincialism of New Zealanders, but I gotta tell you: Kiwis KNOW their music. They played everything I hoped they'd play, and more. I left that show a rabid Pavement fan, and from then on was on a mission to track down all of their EPs and obscure 7"s. And to add to this embarrassment of Pavement riches, the band RETURNED to Christchurch less than a year later, for a show at the Caladonian Hall down the street from the Park Royal Hotel - another great show.
For me, this album was Pavement's peak. Their following releases - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Wowee Zowee, Brighten The Corners - have all been critically acclaimed, but to me they all seem to lack the grit, spark and urgency of their earlier material. Others seem to think so as well - in 2002, Slanted & Enchanted was the first of Pavement's albums to get the Deluxe Edition treatment, adding a second disc of B-sides and live versions from that era to the original release. I'm frankly stunned that Rolling Stone would rank this album as high as it did - in my mind, it's more than deserving of this recognition, but I never thought the band's music was 'commercial' enough or accessible enough to warrant widespread recognition like this. Guess I was wrong again . . . and thankfully so this time.
Here it is - the Deluxe Edition, for your listening pleasure. As always, I appreciate your comments:
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In the late winter/early spring of 1993, just before I packed up and moved to New Zealand, I was lucky enough to hear some really great music by some then-unheralded bands. I was living in the DC area at the time, and by then, grunge had been going strong for almost two years. The local 'alternative' station, WHFS, had fully jumped aboard the bandwagon, and was rapidly devolving into an "all grunge, all the time" format (a move that was probably no small factor in the venerable station's decline and failure a few years later).
However, a couple of 'HFS DJs still showed some flashes of the old independent spirit, and dared to play some groundbreaking stuff. In those few months, the station began playing a superb little Pixies-esque LOUDquietLOUD song called "Creep", by an unknown English band called Radiohead. They also occasionally played a roaring guitar anthem, "That Ain't Bad", by a little-known (in the States) Australian band named Ratcat.
They were playing The Cranberries' debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, practically from the moment it came out in March of that year, nearly a full year before that album and its lead single "Dreams" became mainstream U.S. smash hits [side note: I loved that band from the get-go, bought that album immediately, and brought it with me to New Zealand, where The Cranberries were equally unknown. It was amusing when, months later, I bagan to hear raves from my friends in the States about this amazing 'new' Irish band and their great song . . .].
And then there was "That's It You're In Trouble" by The Starlings, another song in semi-heavy indie rotation at WHFS that I really enjoyed:
I think part of the appeal this song had for me was that the band was made up of New Zealanders, my soon-to-be home country, and it made me look forward that much more to moving there and really getting into what appeared to be a cutting-edge music scene.
The Starlings were essentially Chris Sheehan, a young guy originally from Christchurch (the place I was moving to). Sheehan was somewhat of a musical prodigy, so much so that before he turned 18, he became lead guitarist for the popular Kiwi New Wave band the Dance Exponents. He stayed with the Dance Exponents for three years, then followed a buddy to Los Angeles, where he found himself serving as a guest musician on the debut album of his buddy's girlfriend, Jane Wiedlin (ex-Go-Go's). He was in L.A. for only a year or so, before drifting over to London, England and starting to record solo records under the name The Starlings.
Early results were promising, and on the strength of an EP (Letters From Heaven) he released on Rough Trade in 1990, Sheehan/The Starlings were signed to Anxious Records, Dave Stewart's (ex-Eurythmics) personal label. And that's when the problems started.
One thing Sheehan didn't bring with him to London from the States, but picked up quickly, was a very serious heroin habit, which of course significantly reduced the volume and quality of his output. He was in pretty bad shape for the two-plus years following the release of his Rough Trade EP, but in 1992 he began trying to pull himself together. He entered drug rehab and began work on The Starlings' debut album, Valid. Valid is essentially a chronicle of Sheehan getting onto and off of the Horse, and its making was apparently theraputic for him; he got out of rehab the same week the album was released in 1993.
In addition to "That's It You're In Trouble" (my personal favorite here), there are a lot of good songs on this album, and it got glowing reviews upon release. But in terms of sales, Valid sank like a stone. Sheehan was ENORMOUSLY pissed off at his album tanking, and placed the blame squarely on his record label, which did little to promote it (I'm not sure they really had the money to do so). Sheehan was so ticked off, in fact, that he quickly returned to the studio and recorded an album's worth of splenetic, vitriolic songs holding nothing back regarding his anger at and contempt for his label, calling the album Too Many Dogs. In its own twisted way, Too Many Dogs is a "Fuck You" masterpiece, fairly dripping with bile and venom, but it did nothing to endear him to his label executives. They buried this one even deeper than his debut.
Anxious Records got the last laugh on Sheehan, though. Even though they were livid about Too Many Dogs, they went ahead and allowed Sheehan to record a followup to that album, making him think all was well. The moment he wss done, they told him they were NEVER releasing the album, confiscated the tapes, then unceremoniously threw his ass out of the building and off the label. The guy's been on the fringes ever since, working as a guest/backup musician-for-hire for several other bands.
Just goes to show you: if you can't say something nice about someone . . .
Here's the tuneage - enjoy:
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One hot and sunny summer afternoon in January 1994, I was driving past the Dux De Lux (near the Arts Centre in Christchurch) and listening to RDU, the student-run University of Canterbury station (and in my opinion, one of the best radio stations in the Southern Hemisphere). Suddenly, the station played this buzzy, frenetic guitar-and-drum-driven track that made me sit straight up in my seat. I remembered that it was the "Local Music" time slot at the station, so I waited anxiously to the end of the song to find out who the band was (RDU was and is good about IDing every note played, unlike a lot of other stations). Sure enough, the announcer said the song was "Flowers", by a band called Chug.
That was all I needed to hear. I immediately turned the car east, towards the center of town and most importantly, towards the two main music stores in the City, Echo Records and Galaxy Records, located just down the way from one another in the Cashel Mall area. Galaxy didn't have anything by Chug, but Echo had an EP, Kisser, with exactly the song I was looking for. Within ten minutes of hearing that tune, the CD was in my hand.
Chug was formed in 1991 in Dunedin, the birthplace of such well-known and acclaimed (well, in certain quarters) bands as the Chills and the Clean. They quickly signed to Flying Nun Records, and the Kisser EP was their first release on the label in 1993. They recorded an album for Flying Nun, Sassafras, in 1994, and another EP, Little Things, in 1996, before leaving the label for Alias Records in late 1996. Alias roped them into a seven(!)-album deal, which included a rerelease of Sassafras on the label and a new album, Metalon, in 1997. Both of the band's albums and both EPs went exactly nowhere.
Chug's major problem was that they could never keep a consistant lineup going, apparently a familiar problem for Dunedin bands (see "Chills, The"). No less that three different lead guitarists and three drummers passed through the band in its first four years of existence. That's what murdered them in 1995-96, just after Sassafras was released - they spent all of that time rehearsing with another new member, and by the time they were ready, their moment had passed.
The stresses of constant lineup changes, relentless touring, and that humongous record deal hanging over their heads caught up quickly with Chug, and by the end of 1998, the band was history. It's too bad that the band could never again put out anything as strong as "Flowers".
Epilogue: I moved back to the U.S. in mid-1995, and a year or so later, I was watching Nickelodeon on cable, for some ungodly reason. The network's "Coming Up Next" promo came on at one point, and I instantly recognized the background music - it was an instrumental snippet of "Flowers"! It was stunning to see that at least one person in the U.S. was hip enough to find that one cool song by an obscure band from New Zealand, and put it on TV (although I used to laugh to myself, considering what would have happened if Nickelodeon accidently played the vocal part, which prominently features the "F"-word - don't think the parents of the kiddies watching at that time would be too pleased . . . )
Here you go:
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