Alvin & The Chipmunks - The Chipmunks Greatest Christmas Hits

More Christmas music for you . . . This one's all but guaranteed to drive you and your household up the wall! Here's the lineup:

1. The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)
2. Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)
3. Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer
4. Up On The House-Top
5. Silver Bells
6. All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)
7. It's Beginning To Look Like Christmas
8. Jolly Old Saint Nicholas
9. White Christmas
10. The Twelve Days Of Christmas
11. Deck The Halls
12. Wonderful Day
13. Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town
14. Frosty The Snowman
15. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
16. We Wish You A Merry Christmas
17. The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)

This album features selections from two previous Chipmunks holiday albums, 1962's Christmas With The Chipmunks and and 1963's Christmas With The Chipmunks, Vol. 2. Both of these albums were HUGELY popular back in the day; both went platinum (over 1 million copies sold) and made the Billboard charts in their

respective years, with the latter disc making it into the Top Ten and spending three months on the charts. Not too shabby a result for a former down-and-out bit actor and small-time composer, Ross Bagdasarian, who in 1958 spent the last of his cash on a varying-speed tape recorder and started messing around with it, achieving fame and fortune as David Seville with The Chipmunks and other novelty songs (including the hit "Witch Doctor").

The first song, of course, is a classic, with most of the others falling into either the delightful/adorable and/or annoying/execrable camp, depending upon your mood and tastes. The final song on this disc is the strangest one, a 1969 collaboration with popular boogie-rock band Canned Heat, then at the height of their fame. I found this brief description from a Canned Heat band bio:

In an incongruous move, the band next released a Christmas single. The “A” side, “The Chipmunk Song,” paired Canned Heat with their Liberty labelmates, the Chipmunks. The “Chipmunk Song” wasn’t actually the same song as the Chipmunks’ similarly titled 1958 chart-topper, but it was a good-natured boogie containing humorous dialogue between Bob Hite and the Chipmunks (Simon, Theodore and Alvin… named after executives at Liberty).

 
For good or ill, this stuff IS Christmas music - I leave it to you to determine your level of tolerance.

So here you are: Alvin & The Chipmunks' The Chipmunks Greatest Christmas Hits, a "best of" compilation of their first two holiday albums along with a bonus cut, released by Capitol Records on September 21st, 1999. Enjoy, happy holidays, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email

Various Artists - 1-2-3-4: Punk & New Wave 1976-1979 (5 Discs)

For such a precedent-shattering and groundbreaking genre, the Golden Age of punk rock was relatively short-lived. Although it's tough to nail down a definitive start to the punk era, 1975 seems to be the consensus, based on the rise that year of such New York City bands/musicians as The Ramones, Patti Smith and Television, and the emergence of The Buzzcocks and The Sex Pistols in the UK. But long before the end of the '70s, punk was already disintegrating, splintering into several different genres - post-punk, New Wave, hardcore, No Wave, Oi!, psychobilly, etc.

Even during its heyday, "punk" was more about the methods, means and attitude by which these musicians approached their music, rather than defining a uniform sound and approach. The Clash, The Jam, Talking Heads, X and The Damned are all considered some of the classic bands to come out of that era, but you'd be hard-pressed to come up with an all-encompassing description/definition of "punk" from their music. This wide variation in the sound and style of what was considered "punk" is one of the genre's strengths, but an aspect that makes the era particularly difficult to summarize and anthologize.

Now, I own a gazillion single- and multi-disc punk and New Wave compilations: Burning Ambitions: A History of Punk (Vols. 1 & 2); Rhino's D.I.Y. series from the mid-90s; The Number One Punk Album, and so forth and so on. I've got overviews of American punk, British punk, Australian punk - you name it. Some of them are pretty good, most of them are OK/so-so, and a couple are absolutely terrible. None of them serve to effectively capture the entire era. And for years, I figured that there would never be a release of any length that could do so. That is, until the late 1990s.

I recall reading about this set in the late winter/early spring of 1999, when I lived in Texas. There was an article about its upcoming release in one of the UK music magazines I regularly read back then - Q, the NME . . . I don't recall which one. But I do recall the glowing review the magazine gave to this box set; it completely whetted my appetite for it. There used to be a Virgin Megastore at the mall near where I used to live in Grapevine - I made a beeline down to it and immediately put in a special order for the set, since it was not slated to be released in the States. The thing finally arrived in May, a month after its UK release - a long black slab with protruding silver studs numbered "1, 2, 3, 4" on the front of the box, containing five enveloped CDs of music and a mammoth book of liner notes containing details on every single song.

Now, I'm usually against overarching compilations in general; I have been disappointed time and time again by these sorts of overviews falling short of their intentions. In my opinion, the only music comps in the past fifty years that have even come close to thoroughly cataloging and celebrating a specific genre are as follows:

1. The Nuggets garage rock compilation;
2. Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music;
3.  . . . and this one.

The compilers do their best to pull together most of the highlights (and a few low-lights) from those years; check out the song lineup:

Disc 1:

1. Complete Control - The Clash
2. Anarchy In The UK - The Sex Pistols
3. New Rose - The Damned
4. Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramones
5. Shadow - The Lurkers
6. Thinking Of The USA - Eater
7. Ain't Bin To No Music School - The Nosebleeds
8. Borstal Breakout - Sham 69
9. I Hate School - Suburban Studs
10. GLC - Menace
11. One Chord Wonders - The Adverts
12. Right To Work - Chelsea
13. Johnny Won't Go To Heaven - The Killjoys
14. Bone Idle - The Drones
15. Where Have All The Boot Boys Gone - Slaughter & The Dogs
16. C.I.D. - UK Subs
17. Can't Wait 'til '78 - The Wasps
18. Ambition - Subway Sect
19. I'm Stranded - The Saints
20. Orgasm Addict - The Buzzcocks

Disc 2:

1. In The City - The Jam
2. Your Generation - Generation X
3. First Time - The Boys
4. Get A Grip (On Yourself) - The Stranglers
5. Don't Dictate - Penetration
6. In A Rut - The Ruts
7. Big Time - Rudi
8. Don't Ring Me Up - Protex
9. Justa Nother Teenage Rebel - The Outcasts
10. Solitary Confinement - The Members
11. Emergency - 999
12. 19 And Mad - Leyton Buzzards
13. I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher - Not Sensibles
14. Romford Girls - Riff Raff
15. Sick Of You - The Users
16. Gabrielle - The Nips
17. Where Were You - The Mekons
18. Murder Of Liddle Towers - Angelic Upstarts
19. Oh Bondage Up Yours - X-Ray Spex
20. Sweet Suburbia - Skids
21. Television Screen - The Radiators
22. Alternative Ulster - Stiff Little Fingers
23. Teenage Kicks - The Undertones

Disc 3:

1. Teenage Depression - Eddie & The Hot Rods
2. Rich Kids - Rich Kids
3. Baby Baby (I Know You're A Lady) - The Vibrators
4. Suffice To Say - Yachts
5. Roadrunner - Richman, Jonathan & The Modern Lovers
6. Don't Care - Klark Kent
7. Nervous Wreck - Radio Stars
8. Up Against The Wall - Robinson, Tom Band
9. So It Goes - Lowe, Nick
10. Police Car - Wallis, Larry
11. Hard Loving Man - Moped, Johnny
12. Love And A Molotov Cocktail - The Flys
13. Where's Captain Kirk - Spizzenergi
14. Sonic Reducer - Dead Boys
15. Search And Destroy - The Dictators
16. Born To Lose - The Heartbreakers
17. Modern Dance - Pere Ubu
18. Fuck Off - The Electric Chairs
19. California Uber Alles - Dead Kennedys

Disc 4:

1. I Belong To The Blank Generation - Hell, Richard & The Voidoids
2. 10.15 Saturday Night - TheCure
3. Rip Her To Shreds - Blondie
4. I Can't Stand My Baby - The Rezillos
5. All I Want - Snatch
6. Looking After No 1 - The Boomtown Rats
7. Take Me I'm Yours - Squeeze
8. Sex And Drugs And Rock 'n' Roll - Dury, Ian & The Blockheads
9. Spanish Stroll - Mink DeVille
10. Is She Really Going Out With Him - Jackson, Joe
11. Whole Wide World - Wreckless Eric
12. Part Time Punks - Television Personalities
13. Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart - Fitzgerald, Patrick
14. You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory - Thunders, Johnny
15. Psycle Sluts - Clarke, John Cooper
16. Jilted John - Jilted John
17. Kill - Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias
18. Paranoid - The Dickies

Disc 5:

1. Public Image - Public Image Ltd.
2. Warsaw - Joy Division
3. Staircase Mystery - Siouxsie & The Banshees
4. Damaged Goods - Gang Of Four
5. You - Au Pairs
6. How Much Longer - Au Pairs
7. Read About Seymour - Swell Maps
8. Young Parisians - Adam & The Ants
9. Monochrome Set - The Monochrome Set
10. We Are All Prostitutes - The Pop Group
11. Typical Girls - The Slits
12. Mannequin - Wire
13. Shot By Both Sides - Magazine
14. Science Fiction - XTC
15. Do The Standing Still - The Table
16. Another Girl Another Planet - The Only Ones
17. Young Savage - Ultravox
18. Puppet Life - Punishment Of Luxury
19. Jocko Homo - Devo
20. Marquee Moon - Television

As I alluded to earlier, the purpose of box sets such as this one is to provide the listener with an overview of a particular era or type of music. I know full well that it's damn near impossible to include everything - that would defeat the purpose of having such a set. Instead of providing the whole kit and kaboodle, a compilation like this one should effectively answer two questions:

a) "Does this set provide the listener with a insightful look into the genre?" and
b) "Upon completion, has the listener learned something useful about the genre?" 

In the case of 1-2-3-4: Punk & New Wave 1976-1979, the answer to both questions, in my opinion, is YES.

It's been almost fifteen years after the release of possibly the most definitive punk compilation of all time, and you NEVER hear anything about this set. In fact, 1-2-3-4 is currently out of print, which I regard as just another example of the recording industry's insanity and ass-forward thinking. This comp should never be allowed to lapse.

Therefore, it lives on here. For your listening pleasure, I present to you the superb 1-2-3-4: Punk & New Wave 1976-1979, released on April 19th, 1999 by Universal Music (UK) Ltd. Enjoy these one hundred prime cuts of '70s musical goodness . . . and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email

Inch Feat. Mark E. Smith - Inch EP

Found this one at the late, lamented Virgin Megastore at Grapevine Mills Mall in Grapevine, TX in 1999, during my weekly search through the Fall stacks for any new releases. I miss that store - they were always 'Johnny-on-the-spot' regarding new music, and always had the latest/rarest stuff available. Back when I lived there, there were only two decent music stores in the Dallas area - Virgin and Bill's Records in Dallas. The only problem with Bill's was that I found it to be overpriced, compared to Virgin (plus the mall was only a couple of miles from where I lived). So must of my music purchases were made at Virgin.

Sort of a convoluted history behind thie release, the facts of which I didn't know completely until last year, when I read The Fallen, Dave Simpson's excellent book regarding his search for all of the forty-odd former members of The Fall (BTW, I highly recommend this book for all Fall fans). Here's the scoop:

Kier Stewart was a guitarist and studio engineer in Manchester who, with his studio partner Simon Spencer, worked with Fall leader Mark E. Smith on a one-off track called "Plug Myself In" in 1996 (the two billed themselves as DOSE - and BTW, the track can be found on my earlier Fall posting, A World Bewitched). The track was pretty well received, and Stewart and Spencer were eager to produce The Fall's next album (which eventually became 1997's Levitate). When guitarist Adrian Flanagan (a short-term fill-in for the recently departed Brix Smith, on her second and last go-round with the band) left the group in early 1997, Stewart was offered the slot and a chance to join the band. He initially refused, but Spencer talked him into it, thinking that it might lead to their being tapped as producers - which they were (sort of).

The band began recording in West Hempstead, but the sessions did not go well, mainly due to Smith undergoing personal problems that made him extremely paranoid, to the point where he'd sometimes refuse to do any vocals. Coupled with this was Smith's refusal/delay in signing a producer's agreement with Stewart and Spencer, and ongoing lack of payment.

The two finally got fed up and quit the sessions as both producers and musicians; they even went so far as to wipe the tapes of the little that had been recorded up to that point. And they decided to play one last practical joke on Smith: during the sessions, Stewart and Spencer had recorded a track with Smith, "Inch", as a side project apart from what The Fall was doing. After their departure from the Fall sessions, they carefully packaged up the single and shipped it out to John Peel and various major record companies, along with a letter claiming to be from Mark E. Smith, but full of un-Smith like language along the lines of "Golly gee - we really made a super cool record! Have a listen!"

Smith arrived home to find his answering machine full of messages from recording companies, asking about the "new record" that he didn't know existed. While Smith remained confused, Spencer and Stewart got a deal for the track with EMI themselves, only later bringing Smith in to work out the final details.

So, here it is, the Inch EP, released on Regal Recordings (a subsidiary of Parlophone, itself a subsidiary of EMI) in 1999. A version of this song, titled "4 1/2 Inch", made it onto Levitate. But I think the EP version is superior. This EP includes the original song and four longer remixes, all of which are superb. All hail Mark E. Smith!

Enjoy:

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email

Brazzaville - 2002 (a.k.a. Brazzaville)

My younger brother graduated from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in 1999, and the whole family, my girlfriend and I included, flew out the Los Angeles for the ceremony, and to spend a few days having fun. Outside of a day or two here and there in past years, at that point in my life I really hadn't spent that much time in LA. So this trip was my first real immersion into what the city was all about. My girl and I did the touristy things, like visit Sunset Boulevard, Grauman's Chinese Theater, Rodeo Drive and Marilyn Monroe's grave - stuff like that. But with the help of my brother, my younger sister (who also lived in LA at the time, attending grad school at USC) and some old friends of mine who lived out there, we got off the beaten path, and saw and did stuff that the tour books don't really address. For example, that visit was my first encounter with Pink's Hot Dog stand, one of the wonders of the Earth, as far as I'm concerned. We hit a lot of out-of-the-way bars and restaurants, found a beach that was obscure enough to be not crowded . . . just did a bunch of stuff like that. Los Angeles gets a bad rap from a lot of people, but I came away from that visit loving the city.

One night, itching to hear some local music, my sister took my girlfriend and I to a small club close to where she lived in Melrose, the Lava Lounge on La Brea Avenue. The place had the usual dim bar lighting (except around the cleared area where bands would play), and the walls and ceiling were all irregularly stuccoed with a rough blackish red putty, ostensibly to make the interior look like the inside of a volcano. It reminded me a lot of the Volcano Cafe in Lyttelton, New Zealand (near Christchurch), a place I where used to eat every once in a while when I was over that side of town.

We got there fairly early, early enough to commandeer a spacious booth close to both the main bar and the stage, where the band that night was setting up. I honestly wasn't expecting too much in the way of music; I just wanted a place to chill out for a couple of hours, have some booze and hear some organized noise.

Well, the band that night, Brazzaville, COMPLETELY blew me away, from the very first note! There were a gaggle of them up on stage, with varied instrumentation - trumpet, accordion, exotic percussion instruments, guitar. But the sound they made was completely original, and hard to catagorize - it wasn't rock, it wasn't jazz, it wasn't world music or lounge music or alternative . . . and yet, it was all those things at once. I was stunned, and very happy - who would have thought that at some nothing bar in Los Angeles, I would hear something so good?

Here's one of the songs they played that night, "Shams":

During the break between sets, I practically ran up to the stage to speak with the band's leader, David Brown. I'm sure I sounded foolish, gushing on and on about what a great band they were, but he took it gracefully and all in stride. I noticed they had CDs for sale - I couldn't buy one fast enough! Without a doubt, Brazzaville was the best bar band I ever heard in my life.

A little history about the band: Brazzaville was started in 1998 by Brown, a widely-travelled former heroin addict and (at the time) saxophonist for his old friend Beck's touring band (he also played on Odelay). After returning from the Odelay tour, Brown assembled an eclectic group of session players from the LA area and beyond, and began creating his hybrid sound. He released the band's first self-titled album in 1999 on his own South China Sea Records label, and got good local buzz regarding it. Later that year, the album was picked up by Engine Records and rereleased as 2002.

Brazzaville released two more albums in the U.S., Somnambulista in 2001 and Rouge On Pockmarked Cheeks in 2002, before Brown broke up the band, moved to Barcelona, Spain, and assembled a new European version of Brazzaville which is still recording to this day. I haven't heard any of his latest stuff, but I hope that it's as strong as his debut album. Have a listen, and let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email

The Crabs - Sand And Sea

My first offering to my blog is the final album by the nearly forgotten Washington State band The Crabs, who recorded for K Records in the mid-to-late 1990s. I happened upon this band almost a decade ago, mainly due to one song, "End Of The World".

I first heard this song about nine years ago while driving late one evening on I-95 in southwestern Rhode Island, on my way to a rendezvous with the poker tables at Foxwoods in Connecticut. Radio, on the whole, kinda sucks in Rhode Island, with the once-mighty WRIU, the University of Rhode Island's student-run station, a pale shadow of the awe-inspiring and cutting-edge alternative music power it wielded in the '80s and '90s.

(Just as an aside, someone should do a study of the sorry state of college radio in America nowadays. I don't know whether it's the Internet, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, video games, Ipods or general student lackadaisical-ness (is that a word?) that can be blamed. But I think it can safely be said that, in general, college radio ain't like it used to be. Most of the stations seem content to play Top 40 crap you can hear on any Clear Channel station, or watered-down "alternative" bands (like Coldplay or Fall Out Boy). What happened to the groundbreakers, the experimentalists? College DJs broke tons of good bands in this country, bands that went on to become HUGE. Examples? Gee, I don't know . . . how about R.E.M., U2, The Pixies, The Police, The Chili Peppers and The Smiths, for just a small sampling? I remember the first time I heard Gang of Four's "I Found That Essence Rare", on a college station out of the Boston area - I just about died! Even my alma mater's sorry-ass little low power student-run station, WRNV at the Naval Academy, had in its day a fair share of open-minded, hep midshipmen who weren't afraid to play some crazy shit and have some fun doing it. Nowadays, that sort of spirit at ANY college station appears to come along very rarely. But I digress . . .)

Anyway, like I said, WRIU sucks now, and sucked back then too. I started scanning the radio dial, looking for ANYTHING that sounded new and interesting. Somehow, my tuner found a cool little college station called WHUS, run out of the University of Connecticut at Storrs. The song the station was playing was simple but engaging, carried along by a charmingly nagging little Farfisa organ melody and boom-splat drumming. The singer didn't have a classically trained voice, but for some reason, his plaintive tone seemed to fit the song to a T:

"It's not the end of the world, but it sure feels like it when you can't find the words;
It's not the end of time, but the store is closing, and you're locked inside . . ."

I was transfixed for those three minutes, staring out into the night and zooming down 95, all the while taking in every note and word. At the break, the organ launched into a sweetly sad, chiming little thing that just about slayed me! Wow.

The moment the song was over, I grabbed my phone and dialed the station to find out who that band and what that song was. The female DJ who answered told me the song was called "End Of The World", done by a band from the Pacific Northwest called The Crabs.

When I got home from Foxwoods the next day (yeah, I won), I did a little research on the band. The Crabs were originally Jonn Lunsford and Lisa Jackson, who started the band in 1992 in Portland, OR and were signed to K Records, Calvin Johnson's Olympia, WA label best known for being the home of the renowned indie/twee pop band Beat Happening (I think that Beat Happening's drummer, Bret Lunsford, is Jonn Lunsford's brother). The band released three albums (Jackpot, Brainwashed, and What Were Flames Now 

Smolder) as a duo, with Lunsford on guitar, Jackson on drums, and both sharing vocal duties. For their fourth album, Sand And Sea, issued in 1999, they added a new member, Sarah Dougher on keyboards, an addition which radically expanded the band's sound, without entirely changing it. Dougher's organ and harmonies with Jackson on Sand And Sea are brilliant, especially on tracks like "Bricks Of Gold" (another gem) and "I Surrender". "End Of The World" was off this last album, and it is truly the highlight.

Well, that song really got to me, to the point where every time I drove in that part of the state (which was fairly frequently, as I was doing well at the casino poker tables at that time), I would call WHUS to request the song. They almost always honored my request. About a year later, I called the station to make my usual request. The DJ played the song a few minutes later, then after it was over, mentioned on the air that "End Of The World" was probably the most requested song in the station's history! Hopefully it wasn't just me asking for it! Maybe other people heard it and, like me, were captivated enough to ask for it again and again.

The Crabs broke up soon after this last album was released. Nowadays, I understand that Lunsford works as an administrator for the Portland Parks Department, and is an outspoken and controversial environmentalist. Sarah Dougher has a PhD in Comparative Literature, and in addition to being a professor, has released several solo albums. Lisa Jackson? I have no idea what she's doing now.

This is the first in a series of comments on tunes that I own and have feelings about, either good or bad. I'll add more as the mood strikes me. Feel free to comment on this first posting, or suggest other tunes you'd like me to comment on. Thanks for reading!

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email