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!
Sixty years to the day since The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York on their second American tour... hard to fathom that it's been THAT long since that watershed moment in rock history.
I was going to pen one of my extended screeds in celebration of and in relation to this day... but it appears that Rolling Stone magazine beat me to it. I don't think I can improve upon this article, which contains the following summation:
"...Shea was more than just the first high-profile stadium concert. It
showed everyone how huge, untamable, crazed pop music could be. It
destroyed the hopes of everyone who still thought the Beatles — and
their young female audience — were just a passing fad, which was still
the conventional adult wisdom in 1965. The Fabs couldn’t be dismissed
anymore, and neither could the girls. It shattered all the cliches about
how show-biz was supposed to work. Never before had that many humans
joined together in one place to celebrate music — and on a deeper level,
to celebrate each other. That’s why “Shea Stadium” is still the
two-word code for the culmination of pop dreams at their loudest,
lustiest, scariest, and most deranged."
Can't add much else to this phrase, or the overall writeup in general... so I'll just shut up and provide the music!
I was thinking about posting the venerable Purple Chick Sheaken Not Stirred two-disc set - but I think that the one offered here is better. Here's the Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe set, a fan-generated compilation that popped up on a Beatles bootleg site a couple of years ago. This set features the ENTIRE concert, with music from opening acts including King Curtis, Brenda Holloway, Sounds Incorporated and Cannibal & The Headhunters; 1991 stereo versions and 2003 remix/remastering of the Fab Four's set; and bonus tracks.
And speaking of bonuses...
Knowing that the Shea Stadium show was going to be a big deal, NEMS Enterprises (band manager Brian Epstein's holding company) and Sullivan Productions (television host and show presenter Ed Sullivan's firm) arranged for the concert to be intensively documented on film. More than a dozen cameras were deployed in and around the stadium and backstage to capture the frenzy of the moment. The hours of tape generated were then edited down to a fifty-minute-long documentary, The Beatles At Shea Stadium, which premiered in England in early 1966, but not shown in America until January 1967.
The Beatles At Shea Stadium should not be considered a "true documentary", however. A couple of songs played that night were not included due to concerns about the film's length. The remaining songs were heavily edited.in post-production - some being overdubbed, and a couple replaced with studio versions already existing on record or rerecorded by The Beatles at a London session in early January 1966. The Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe set includes the soundtrack from this movie (in mono format)... and I included the film here as well, for your review and amusement.
So, again, for this post, I'm providing:
Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe, a five-disc bootleg set released in 2023; and
The Beatles At Shea Stadium concert film, released to television and theaters in 1966
I hope these offerings help you to either relive or experience for the first time the revelry, euphoria and hysteria from one of the landmark shows in music history! Enjoy, 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:
The Beatles- Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe (5-disc set): Send Email
The Beatles - The Beatles At Shea Stadium: Send Email
[I've been writing this doggone post off and on for over two years now... could never seem to find a time to finish it before the holiday, so I kept holding it over. Finally time to put this one to bed!]
It’s that time of year again - time to me to settle in on cold winter evenings and enjoy one of the many, many holiday movies, cartoons, specials and extravaganzas dedicated to and associated with the Christmas season... with a few exceptions, as noted below.
My Christmas go-to shows have always included the old Rankin-Bass
stop-motion animation specials that I first saw as a kid and still enjoy
to this day - not only the early ones like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (a timeless classic) and Frosty The Snowman, but later productions like Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town and The Year Without A Santa Claus (which presented the immortal Heat Miser and Cold Miser) (I'm not a big fan of their '60s special The Little Drummer Boy,
however - probably because the title character in the story is such a
mopey, whiny little bitch...). And of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas
rates high on the holiday "must-see" list.
In regards to longer-form holiday narratives (i.e., Christmas movies), I personally have never had much use for or interest in the plethora of holiday movies that the Hallmark Channel inundates the airwaves with every year - in my mind, they all seem to have the same basic plot: cold, spiritless, workaholic guy/girl gets into a situation that removes him/her from the hectic, unfeeling city/palace/posh life to a more warm and rustic location, where gradually he/she finds love, happiness, and the true spirit and magic of Christmas dwelling in the hearts and lives of the people he/she is thrust upon and made to interact with. It's the same old formula, time and time again (summed up in this this hilarious (but spot-on) article from a few years ago, "Every 2020 Hallmark Christmas Movie Has One of Twelve Plots"). That hasn't stopped Hallmark from cranking these cliched flicks out over and over - I read somewhere recently that the channel was releasing FORTY-TWO "new" ones this year along alone, on top of the thirty-one premieres last year, and the scores of others released in the years prior to that.
Lord have mercy. Enough already!
The period films I like during this time of year are things like the original Miracle on 34th Street from 1947 (were you aware that this movie not only was nominated for Best Picture at that year's Academy Awards, but Edmund Gwenn, who played Santa Claus, won Best Supporting Actor?) and the immortal It's A Wonderful Life. And I've recently gotten into another classic Hollywood musical, White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye; it's fairly enjoyable, although I still cringe inwardly during the scenes when the duo fondly reminisce in song about the "good ol' minstrel show days"...
But for me, the holiday story that stands the test of time over and over again is Charles Dickens' archetypal yuletide yarn A Christmas Carol. There have been seemingly dozens of versions of this tale committed to film, starring the likes of Reginald Owen, Alastair Sim, Albert Finney, George C. Scott, etc., etc. All of these takes have their proponents, and rightfully so; Dickens' story is so well-written, that it's almost impossible to make a bad movie of it. But if you were to watch just one Christmas Carol this year, which would it
be?
In my mind, a good case could be made for — believe it or not — Mr. Magoo’s Christmas
Carol, starring the voice of Jim Backus as the comically myopic Quincy Magoo.
Not merely a superior musical version, it is a pioneer among animated Christmas
traditions. Before Charlie Brown, before the
Grinch, and even before Rudolph, Magoo
was the go-to Christmas special everyone watched. In fact, it is considered the FIRST animated holiday television special.
But before we go into the show itself, let's start with a not-so-brief history of the production arm that ended up producing this classic.
United Productions of America (UPA) origins began at the Walt Disney studio in the late 1930s and early 1940s. During that time, as Disney expanded into feature films beginning with Snow White, he rapidly expanded his staff with young art school graduates who were generally more progressive and artistically aware than the older, more established, but generally less academically trained bullpen of Disney animators. This led to a schism between the "anti-art", "we owe Walt for where we are" old-timers and the change-oriented, Depression-era molded newcomers who had fewer stars in their eyes about Walt's influence and importance.
This schism came to a head during the infamous Disney animators' strike in the spring of 1941, a result of Disney's resistance to the progressive employees' attempt to form a union. Walt responded to the strike by firing many of his animators (although he eventually was pressured into reinstating some of them and recognizing the new union, the Screen Cartoonists Guild). Many of these fired employees found new positions with other studios (for instance, Frank Tashlin was given creative control of the Screen Gems studio and hired practically his entire staff off of the Disney picket line) or struck out on their own, doing freelance work (safety filmstrips and the like) for industrial corporations.
Shortly after their voluntary exodus from the studio, two former Disneyites, Zach Schwartz (then at Screen Gems) and David Hilberman (with Graphic Films), began renting a small space in a Los Angeles warehouse where they could paint in their spare time. Another former Disney colleague of theirs, Stephen Bosustow, was working in design at Hughes Aircraft. Bosustow convinced his superiors at Hughes to commission a filmstrip on safety, and he brought the idea to Graphic Films - but Graphic turned the job down. Hilberman then talked his way into doing the job with his partner Schwartz, and the resulting product was well-received by the corporation. The three men then formed a loose partnership, calling themselves Industrial Film & Poster Service, and began seeking other production work.
Around that time, the United Auto Workers (UAW) began considering sponsoring a pro-Roosevelt campaign film in the run-up to the 1944 general election. The union got in touch with the Screen Cartoonists Guild, and members of that organization put together a storyboard and began shopping it around to various studio animation production houses. But due to its political content, no major studio would touch it. As a last resort, the unions approached Schwartz, Bosustow and Hilberman's tiny shop to see if they could handle the job. They were awarded the contract for the film, called Hell Bent For Election, in January 1944, with the caveat that it be completed by that August, just six months away.
Overnight, their little warehouse hideaway became a beehive of activity, as all of the trio's friends and professional colleagues heard about what they were doing and ran to help - some working their regular jobs in animation during the day, then spending all night moonlighting on this exciting project. Most of them worked for free, including director Chuck Jones, musician Earl Robinson and lyricist "Yip" Harburg (of The Wizard Of Oz fame). The resulting film was stylish, modern, and a bold move away from "Disney-style" animation. It was also a great success with the UAW. Here it is:
After Hell Bent For Election, the little studio began receiving steady commissions for work on industrial and government films and slides, and started building a full-time staff of animators (including names revered in cartoon history to this day, including John Hubley, Bobe Cannon and Bill Hurtz). It was also around this time that it was decided that the name of the company should change from Industrial Film & Poster Service to United Productions of America, or UPA for short. The new concern was established as a three-way partnership, with Schwartz, Hilberman and Bosustow all owning equal shares. However, by 1946, the partners had a falling out, resulting in Schwartz and Hilberman selling out their interests in the company, making Bosustow initially the sole, then later (as he parceled out shares to key staff) majority shareholder in UPA.
It was also in the late 1940s that UPA took over Columbia Pictures animation duties out from under Screen Gems; Columbia had been dissatisfied for years with the Screen Gems product and was looking to make a change, provided that UPA continue using the studio's signature characters, the Fox and Crow. The new cartoon studio produced two releases with the characters: 1948's Robin Hoodlum and 1949's The Magic Fluke. Both were well received by Columbia, and both were nominated for Oscars for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) in subsequent years. But UPA wanted to get away from "funny animal" cartoons and begin creating its own characters. In the spring of 1949, they proposed a story that Columbia reluctantly accepted, only because the short had an animal in it, as well as a human character. The cartoon was titled Ragtime Bear, released in September 1949, and the star of the film was the curmudgeonly, near-sighted Mr. Magoo, featuring the voice of character actor Jim Backus:
Mr. Magoo was UPA's first successful series (six more Magoos were rapidly produced in the following year), but the film that made the studio a household word and put them in the forefront of the "animation as art" movement was Gerald McBoing Boing, released in January 1951.
With Gerald McBoing Boing, UPA made a clean break from Disney-style animation, and reviewers and the public noticed and approved. From a Time magazine piece in February 1951:
"Everything about the film is simple but highly stylized: bold line drawings, understated motion, striking color and airy design in the spirit of modern poster art, caricatured movements and backgrounds as well as figures... In his own way, [little Gerald's] 'Boing!' may prove as resounding as the first peep out of Mickey Mouse."
Gerald won similar raves from newspapers, highbrow critics and film trade reporters. And that spring, the cartoon won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject, UPA's first Oscar.
The praise and popular success the studio received for Gerald McBoing Boing and the early Magoo cartoons carried through for several years, and kept UPA a dynamic and financially-viable concern. Columbia increased their budget per short by more than 25 percent, to almost $35,000 each, an amount that UPA sorely needed; the firm was run by artists committed to putting a quality product up on screen. Few UPA staff members were budget-oriented; they were film-oriented. As such, the extra money was used to refine and enhance what seemed to outsiders to be "simple" drawings and "limited" animation, but didn't lead to any increased profitability in the company.
However, this approach led to some remarkable releases in the mid-1950s, including a delicate adaptation of Ludwig Bemelmans' popular children's story Madeline (1952); the amazing Rooty Toot Toot (also in 1952; still one of the best-known and remembered UPA cartoons); a faithful reproduction of James Thurber's distinctive drawing style for 1953's A Unicorn In The Garden; and a striking and disturbing version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, also in 1953 (I remember seeing this one in junior high school English class, and it made a deep impression on me at the time). The Magoo series, however, was the studio's bread and butter, and UPA continued to churn out shorts featuring the character (while also toning down/softening much of his cantankerous ways), in the last half of that decade producing six to eight Magoo shorts a year. Despite the increase in volume, these cartoons did not lack for quality; in fact, two Magoo shorts - When Magoo Flew in 1954 and Magoo's Puddle Jumper in 1956 - both won Academy Awards in their respective years.
UPA established a satellite studio in New York in the early 1950s to handle exclusively commercial and nontheatrical work, and initially it was very successful, as businesses were eager to work with an Academy Award-winning company. The commercial studio's biggest triumph was the Bert & Harry Piel beer commercial campaign, featuring the voices of radio greats Bob & Ray. The New York office was so successful, in fact, that much of its profits were siphoned off to keep the theatrical division of UPA afloat (seems that that $35,000 budget increase from Columbia still wasn't covering costs).
However, by the late 1950s, the wheels were starting to come off of at UPA. In 1956, CBS Television commissioned The Gerald McBoing Boing Show, the very first Saturday morning program made especially for network TV. By agreeing to it, the studio committed to producing much more animation than had ever been put out at any one time, and required an immediate hiring frenzy. The resulting show, a mixture of old UPA cartoons and new bits, came off as disjointed, 'soft' and generally unfunny, but it managed to air for two years before CBS pulled the plug. It was also around this period that the New York office, inundated by competition for commercial work, closed its doors, shortly after an ambitious but poorly-conceived London branch was established and also failed within a year.
1958 was also the year work began on a Magoo feature film. There had been talk regarding an animated feature ever since the early award-winning years at the studio, but Columbia would not commit to financing any of UPA's ideas, which included adaptations of Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, Ben Jonson's Volpone, and/or Cervantes' Don Quixote (all of which, frankly, were probably too highbrow for Columbia executives to understand or grasp). Finally that year, Columbia provided the funds to animate a version of The Arabian Nights. Production of 1001 Arabian Nights did not go smoothly - the director quarreled with Bosustow and quit, resulting in a frantic search for a viable replacement (the job went to Disney veteran Jack Kinney). And there were issues with the story - Mr. Magoo's character was sort of shoehorned into the tale of Aladdin, and he comes off as inconsequential and tangential. The film was released in late 1959 to lackluster reviews and tepid box office, and failed to recoup back Columbia's investment.
By the time of the feature film's release, many of the main/founding staff of UPA had by then left the company to create their own studios, including Format Films (future producers of The Alvin Show) and Jay Ward Productions (producers of the hilarious Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons for television). Bosustow saw the handwriting on the wall, and in 1960 he sold his controlling interest in UPA and rights to all characters to producer Henry G. Saperstein.
Saperstein was a longtime cinema owner/operator who had branched out into tie-in/licensed of merchandising of Western TV characters like Wyatt Earp and Roy Rogers, and entertainment personalities such as Rosemary Clooney, The Three Stooges and Elvis Presley. As such, he showed little concern or regard for the artistic pretensions and commitment to perfection of the old UPA; he was just interested in utilizing the remaining staff to churn out as much product as possible, milking the studio's established characters and his animators' talents for all they were worth. Saperstein quickly entered the TV market, producing a Mr. Magoo series for NBC in late 1960 and a syndicated Dick Tracy series in early 1961. The studio cranked out more than 125 episodes of each program over the next two years, destroying the last vestiges of UPA's once renowned reputation for quality - these shows made the contemporary Hanna-Barbera product look lavish by comparison.
The following is excepted from a 2012 New York Times article celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the venerable program:
At the time [of its debut] “Magoo” was a big enough event to warrant extensive
and positive media coverage. As soon as it was over Walt Disney telephoned Mr.
Orgel [the show's producer] to tell him, “Not only is this generation going to watch it, but your
children, your children’s children and your children’s children’s children will
watch this show.”...
“It has the quality of a cozy quilt,” said Adam Abraham, author
of When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA (Wesleyan
University Press). “It’s like figurines of your imagination playing out a very
familiar story against a dreamlike Victorian design.”
“Magoo” is hardly definitive Dickens. Much of the original tale,
especially the entire subplot of Scrooge’s relationship with his nephew, Fred,
was cut to fit the 60-minute running time. For no apparent reason the Ghost of
Christmas Present precedes the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“Magoo” also offers a curious framing device whereby the whole
story is treated as a Broadway production, with Magoo as an actor portraying
Scrooge. The producer, Lee Orgel, feared that audiences wouldn’t accept Magoo
being plucked out of his cartoon context and plopped into the 19th century
without explanation. In retrospect this concern seems absurd. But the result is still good enough to have lasted 50 years.
Alas, the success of the Magoo special wasn't enough to save UPA. Saperstein gradually wound down animation production during the 1960s, finally shuttering the cartoon studio in 1970, and he also sold off the studio library of films (which shrewdly retaining the rights to Magoo, Gerald McBoing-Boing and other characters). The studio then entered into a partnership with Toho Co., Ltd. of Japan, and for the following decade helped distribute the firm's "Giant Monster" movies in the States. After Saperstein died in 1998, his family sold off what remained of UPA two years later. Thus closed the saga of a once-innovative and ground-breaking studio.
Throughout the 1960s, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol was a network staple, appearing on NBC every year until 1969. The show then entered syndication, and for the next couple of decades you had to be lucky enough to catch it on one of your local stations... That's how I came upon the program - I was browsing the stations as a kid one December, stumbled across it, and was immediately charmed, so much so that for every year afterward, I made an effort to track down when and where the cartoon would be played. The show moved to cable TV in the '90s. However, to mark the program's golden anniversary, NBC presented it in 2012, its first prime-time network appearance
in decades.
A lot of the greatness inherent in Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol lies in the excellent songs created for the show by the celebrated Broadway composers and lyricists Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, who between them provided the music for the stage hits Carnival!, Gypsy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl, and penned such classics as "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "(How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window?" and "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked A Cake". Again, from the NYT 2012 article:
The magic of “Magoo” begins with rich songs by Jule Styne and
Bob Merrill. “Ringle Ringle,” a celebration of money, and “The Lord’s Bright
Blessing,” about the true meaning of Christmas, might easily have worked for a
live-action staging.
“Styne and Merrill really understood the characters and brought
them to the surface,” said Darrell Van Citters, author of “Mister Magoo’s
Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special” (Oxberry
Press).
One song in particular underscores this mature sensibility: “Winter
Was Warm,” the lament of Scrooge’s former love, Belle, over how he lost her to
his pursuit of wealth. Mr. Van Citters calls this number “the story’s emotional
core.”
The showstopping number “We’re
Despicable,” a grotesque march of the human maggots who plunder the dead Scrooge’s
estate, features goofy lyrics like “We’re reprehensible/We’ll steal your
pen/And pencible.”
(For years, it was rumored that the song "People" from the musical Funny Girl, a huge hit for production star Barbra Streisand in 1964, was originally written by Styne and Merrill for inclusion in Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. But both composers denied this in their memoirs.)
The music in Magoo... is SO superb, in fact, that it's somewhat surprising that no official soundtrack was ever released by any label. These songs by the two honored composers were slated to be lost Christmas classics, appearing only during rare broadcasts of the program. But in 2010, intrepid individuals released bootleg copies of tunes from the show. It wasn't done in a technically sophisticated manner; they basically just copied the overall narrative/soundtrack into audio and separated/sequenced the tracks. Still, it's nice to have this music available.
So here for your holiday listening pleasure is Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, the unofficial soundtrack of the now sixty-two year old(!) program. Enjoy some woofle-berry cake and razzleberry dressing this holiday with your family and friends! And, as always, let me know what you think.
God bless you, every one! Expect more to come here in 2025.
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
Can you BELIEVE this TV Christmas special is FIFTY YEARS OLD today? Out of all the holiday specials released by producers Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass from the early '60s to the late '80, this show is, in my opinion, part of the great triumvirate of classic Rankin/Bass productions, along with 1964's Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer and 1969's Frosty The Snowman. When I was young, I always looked forward to seeing this one the most (to be honest, I always found Frosty to be a little annoying, as the main character seemed borderline mentally impaired - and having Jimmy Durante as the narrator seemed sort of an odd choice to me... Rudolph is redeemed by the presence of the great Yukon Cornelius and the Burl Ives snowman character).
This program is chock-full of beloved scenes and songs... probably none more memorable than the outstanding Snow Miser introduction and song, performed by the great Dick Shawn::
(that little cymbal 'stinger' that plays as Snow Miser sits in his chair has ALWAYS had a special place in my heart!)
Not to be outdone by his brother Heat Miser's entrance:
I was going to put together a longer, more detailed writeup regarding this show's golden anniversary... (un)fortunately, People Magazine already beat me to it - I can add nothing further to this story, located here.
Unlike a couple of other Rankin/Bass Christmas specials (including Frosty, Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, and 'Twas The Night Before Christmas), no official soundtrack for this program was ever produced. However, over the years, a number of bootleg versions of the tunes from this show, culled from the audio track, have been released. Here's the lineup of songs provided here:
1. Leroy Anderson - Sleigh Ride (Instrumental)
2. The Wee Winter Singers - The Year Without A Santa Claus
3. Shirley Booth - I Could Be Santa Claus 4. Ron Marshall & Mickey Rooney - I Believe In Santa Claus 5. Ron Marshall (ft. The Wee Winter Singers) - It’s Gonna Snow Right Here In Dixie 6. Dick Shawn - The Snow Miser Song 7. George S. Irving - The Heat Miser Song 8. Christine Winter - Blue Christmas 9. The Wee Winter Singers - Here Comes Santa Claus
10. Mickey Rooney – There'll Be No Year Without A Santa Claus
11. The Wee Winter Singers - The Year Without A Santa Claus
So here for your listening pleasure is the unofficial soundtrack to The Year Without A Santa Claus, originally released in 1974. Enjoy, 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:
(Just read this over; this is a pretty meandering post... but it gets to the main point soon enough. Just bear with me...)
I read a lot - that's my thing. I rarely if ever watch TV; I'd much rather spend the evening with a book in my lap and a drink at my elbow, especially on these warm and fleeting summer nights up here when I can do so on my front porch.
My tastes are pretty eclectic; in the past couple of months, I've gone through Patti Smith's Just Kids, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first three novels (This Side Of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned (the ending of which I HATED) and The Great Gatsby (for the first time in more than twenty years)), David McCullough's final book (before his death last year) The Pioneers (which frankly in my opinion wasn't as compelling as any of his previous histories - no offense, but I think he should have hung it up after his second-to-last one, the brilliant The Wright Brothers), Barbara Tuchman's Stilwell and the American Experience In China (superb, although sometimes hard to keep track of all the Chinese names), Nathaniel Philbrick's Battle of the Little Bighorn history The Last Stand, and all three volumes of Edmund Morris' comprehensive biography of Theodore Roosevelt's life and presidency. While taking in these larger tomes, I usually read other shorter/less-serious books for "dessert", such as obscure Jim Thompson hardboiled crime novels I didn't get through the first time (like A Swell-Looking Babe and Pop. 1280), Wild and Crazy Guys (documenting the rise of comedy mavericks like Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy in the '80s and '90s), and a recent compilation of Shary Flenniken's raunchy and insightful Trots and Bonnie comics from the old National Lampoon magazine.
I buy new books practically every other weekend, and have what I think is a pretty decent home library. But I rarely if ever buy books just to "buy" them - I read everything I purchase, because something looks interesting and informative to me.
With that being said, there's really only one series that I collect just to "have", due to one of my childhood obsessions - the Charlie Brown cartoon reprints. In 2004, Fantagraphics Books published the first in a series of books containing the entire print run of Peanuts, Charles Schulz's beloved, long-running and internationally famous comic strip. Starting with the first strip published in 1950, Fantagraphics released two volumes a year, each volume containing two years of strips. Over the next twelve years, the publisher put out what ended up being a total of 26 volumes
capturing every comic printed between 1950 and 2000, along with a final volume containing collection of Schulz strips,
cartoons, stories, and illustrations that appeared outside of the daily
newspaper strip.
It's my personal feeling that Peanuts, and Charles Schulz, peaked in the Seventies. By that time, the cartoonist had been drawing the strip for over two decades, and
had all but perfected the complicated interplay of relationships between
the characters. And most importantly during that period, the character Snoopy had yet to take over and
dominate the strip - the dog still interacted somewhat with the other characters, and his activities complemented those of (ostensible main character) Charlie Brown and the gang.
But by the end of that decade, Snoopy's fantasy lives (the WWI flying ace, Joe Cool, novelist, etc.) began to be the focus of the comic. He no longer needed any of the other strip characters to "be" - he just needed his imagination. In support of this new focus on Snoopy, Schulz began constructing a entire side life for him existing apart from that of the other Peanuts characters, beginning with the 1970 introduction of Snoopy's bird friend Woodstock... and in the years that followed with beagle members of Snoopy's immediate family, including Spike, Belle, Olaf and the like. In my opinion, this shift of focus dragged the entire strip down and completely screwed up the overall dynamic. I was a huge fan of Peanuts when I was a kid, but after around 1980 I ceased to pay very much attention to it.
With that said, over the years I've collected every volume of the Fantagraphics Peanuts series up through the first thirty years or so of the strip, through the early 1980s run - the initial fifteen books. But I've never felt quite "right" about stopping there. As you can probably determine from my music posts, I'm a completist, and I like having a full set, whether that's the total discography of a band I like or all the books in a particular collection. So last year I began a search for the remaining volumes, and found what I thought was the next in the series for sale at a discount on eBay, The Complete Peanuts: 1981 to 1982. When it arrived the next week, I took the new book down to the section of my library containing the other Peanuts volumes... only to find that I ALREADY had a copy of that particular one, which I must've purchased unconsciously in years prior.
I couldn't return it, and I wouldn't just throw it out, so I did the next best thing; there's a really good used bookstore across town from where I live, which has thousands of volumes in various genres on sale and also runs a decent book-buying program. I figured I could take my unneeded tome over to the shop and get a few bucks out of it, or possibly swap it out for something on sale there that I might be more interested in.
That weekend, I went over to the bookstore and made a deal with the proprietor for a reasonable price for my book; it was in almost-new condition, so I did pretty well. Instead of taking the money and running, I took the time to look around while I was there, to see if there was anything that semi-struck my fancy. And I found it in the "Popular Music" section - Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, a 2007 biography of the Clash frontman, written by his longtime friend, music journalist Chris Salewicz. As I've mentioned before, The Clash are one of my all-time favorite bands, so I couldn't buy this book fast enough...
...And I found it well worth the acquisition. Salewicz's excellent book goes through Strummer's life in intricate detail. I found the following review on the GoodReads.com site - I heartily concur with every word, and can add nothing to this succinct and superb review:
The Clash was--and
still is--one of the most important groups of the late 1970s and early
1980s. Indebted to rockabilly, reggae, Memphis soul, cowboy justice, and
'60s protest, the overtly political band railed against war, racism,
and a dead-end economy, and in the process imparted a conscience to
punk. Their eponymous first record and London Calling still rank in
Rolling Stone's top-ten best albums of all time, and in 2003 they were
officially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joe Strummer
was the Clash's front man, a rock-and-roll hero seen by many as the
personification of outlaw integrity and street cool. The political heart
of the Clash, Strummer synthesized gritty toughness and poetic
sensitivity in a manner that still resonates with listeners, and his
untimely death in December 2002 shook the world, further solidifying his
iconic status.
Music journalist Chris Salewicz was a friend to
Strummer for close to three decades and has covered the Clash's career
and the entire punk movement from its inception. With exclusive access
to Strummer's friends, relatives, and fellow musicians, Salewicz
penetrates the soul of an icon. He uses his vantage point to write the
definitive biography of Strummer, charting his enormous worldwide
success, his bleak years in the wilderness after the Clash's bitter
breakup, and his triumphant return to stardom at the end of his life. In
the process, Salewicz argues for Strummer's place in a long line of
protest singers that includes Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob
Marley, and examines by turns Strummer's and punk's ongoing cultural
influence.
One of the main areas of Strummer's life I was eager to get to in reading this book was the circumstances behind the dissolution of The Clash in late August 1983, when Mick Jones was summarily dismissed from the group. Over the years, there have been various conjectures, claims and counterclaims surrounding who exactly pulled the trigger on Mick and why - was it Bernie Rhodes, who reentered the band's orbit as manager in 1981, after being dismissed from that role three years earlier? Was it a decision by Joe alone, or a joint one with fellow band member Paul Simonon? The book is sort of wishy-washy in terms of definitively pointing the dirty stick at anyone in particular, and I won't spoil anything for those of you who haven't had the chance to read it yet... although reading between the lines, Strummer does not come off looking particularly well in this episode.
Mick reflected on the internal politics that eventually split up the
group during an interview for the BBC 2 programme Def II, circa 1990:
“It all started going wrong actually when Topper left…Topper left and
it was never really the same, but we could have carried on, but then I
got fired (laughs)…but we’d really stopped communicating by that time.
We just managed to maintain a grunting level of civility, you know,
before, but it was kind of all set up as well, you know, I was set up
really, and that was kind of political, behind the back.
People were moving and trying to be influential, and different people
were coming between members of the group, you know, things like that.
All the things that start happening, you know, when you become really
successful… you become a different kind of asshole. I turned up the day I
was fired and got me guitar out, you know, and I think it was Joe it
was who managed to muster up the courage to say that he didn’t want to
play with me anymore, and when somebody says that to you…I just packed
my guitar…just whoa… hey, you know, OK bye, and that was it. I walked,
and Bernie came running out after me with a cheque in his hand, you know
like a gold watch or something…which added insult to injury, but I took
it anyway, and about two days mourning, and I started on the next
group.”
The timeline of Jone's immediate post-Clash work has always seemed a bit scrambled to me; memories of participants in that period that I've read are variously contradictory and confused in terms of time periods and activities. So I've tried on my own to come up with a plausible sequence, based on all of the information I could gather...
I'd always been under the impression/assumption that Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite in the weeks after his departure from The Clash. But apparently that wasn't quite true. Jones' initial post-Clash landing spot, within days of his dismissal, was as a member of General Public, Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger's new project formed in the wake of The English Beat's breakup earlier that year. With Mick on board as lead guitarist, General Public became a British New Wave/ska 'supergroup' of sorts, containing former members of Dexy's Midnight Runners and The Specials along with The Beat and The Clash. But Jones' tenure in the group was short-lived; by the late fall of 1983, less than three months after leaving The Clash and halfway through the recording sessions for General Public's debut album All The Rage (where he contributed guitar to "Hot You're Cool", "Tenderness", "Where's The Line?" and many other tracks), he had already moved on.
Jone's next group, Top Risk Action Company (T.R.A.C) came together, it seems, in early 1984. The story, as told by saxophonist John "Boy" Lennard (ex-Theatre Of Hate - Jones was the producer on that band's only LP, 1982's Westworld), is a bit inaccurate in regards to time, in that Jones had departed The Clash six months earlier - perhaps the 'spliff' smoke mentioned below left him somewhat confused:
"T.R.A.C. came about when I was at Mick's place. He got up to phone the press to confirm he was leaving the Clash... He came back, rolled a spliff and said he wanted to start a band with Topper and I."
As mentioned above, Jones also asked former Clash bandmate Topper Headon and Basement 5 bassist Leo Williams to join the nascent band with Lennard and himself, and the quartet began rehearsing and recording demos in the early spring of 1984. But in hindsight, I don't believe that Mick was serious about prepping an actual album for release with this group. He appears to be just exploring and experimenting with different sounds at this time for his own benefit. In addition, Top Risk Action Company almost immediately faced some band turmoil; Headon's on-again/off-again heroin addition made a serious resurgence during this time. As per Lennard again:
"I think [Mick] didn’t feel confident
Topper could hold it together and was feeling overwhelmed and [therefore] closed it
down [by sacking Headon]."
After Headon's firing, rehearsals became more sporadic, and Lennard began drifting away to other projects. With that, T.R.A.C., as a viable enterprise, was over and done with before the summer of 1984 was out... not that this appeared to be any great loss for Jones. It seems clear now that Mick himself wasn't too keen on pursuing his evolving musical direction with that group of musicians, and all of the demos the band recorded were shelved.
Into what remained of T.R.A.C. (namely Jones and Williams),
Don
Letts and Greg Roberts were recruited in July/August of 1984... and from the ashes of that former band rose the phoenix that was Big Audio Dynamite. BAD's first gigs were in October 1984, and their debut LP This Is Big Audio Dynamite was released in November 1985, sparking off a decade of successful and critically-acclaimed albums and gigs.
That isn't to say that what Top Risk Action Company came up with pre-BAD was a bunch of crap. What survived of the band's demos were recently recovered, remastered, and released on a bootleg CD. Stylistically, the songs on this disc are to me somewhere between Mick Jones'
genre-hopping dance songs on Combat Rock (e.g. "The Beautiful People Are
Ugly Too", "Atom Tan", "Inoculated City") and proto-Big Audio Dynamite post-punk dance/funk/reggae (indeed, the demo version of "The Bottom Line" here was reworked and released on BAD's first album).
Here's the full tracklist:
1. The Prolific
2. Winning (Napoleon Of Notting Hill)
3. Gone To The Dogs
4. Ringmaster
5. Astro Turf
6. Interaction
7. Nation
8. Apprentice
9. Ducane Road
10. Fare Dodgers
11. The Bottom Line
12. Euroshima (Edit)
13. Euroshima (Unedited)
Lineup:
Mick Jones: Vocals/Guitar
Topper Headon: Drums
Leo Williams: Bass
John "Boy" Lennard: Sax
On the whole, this release may not be everyone's cup of tea. But at the very least, we can get a glimpse as to what was going in Mick Jones' mind at the time, and get a sense of his music creation process.
I'll leave John Lennard again with the final word regarding T.R.A.C.:
"I thought it was a creative period for him but Mick is slow to bring it up. Great memories!"
Here for your listening pleasure and to add to your musical memories is Nice Up The Nation: The First Demos, a bootleg compilation of Top Risk Action Company tunes recorded during the summer of 1984. Enjoy, 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:
[I began putting this one together back in mid-2018... but discovered
some problems with the discs that took a while to sort out, and by the
time I did so, I'd moved on to other write-ups. Guess I'll finish this
one up now...]
I found this rarity available for download a couple of months ago [ed. note - early 2018], from an obscure music website, Kangnave (which appears to have been actively added to for a couple of years in the mid-2010s, but hasn't seen a new posting since 2015). Here's the description the blog moderator put up regarding this:
This is a pretty insane project put together by my pal Vince B. from San
Francisco a few years back. As the title indicates, this is a homemade
12 x CD-R (!) compilation of punk bands fronted by female vocalists from
1977 to 1989. More like a giant mixtape than a compilation, as he only
made 36 copies which he sent to friends and people who submitted
material. You may notice that some of the bands didn’t have a steady
female vocalist (The Lewd, etc.) but he still included songs that were
sung by another member of the band. This is as international as it gets,
with stuff ranging from world famous Blondie or Crass to the most
obscure Eastern European cassette compilation veterans. The boxset came
packaged in a handnumbered fancy translucent lunchbox enclosing all 12
CD-Rs, a stack of full-colored cards featuring comprehensive tracklist
and artwork/info, as well as a manga pin-up figure! Talk about a labor
of love.
Like the guy above said, this is a pretty incredible worldwide collection of decent to excellent punk vocalized by women - here's the lineup for all twelve discs:
Disc 1:
1. Blutsturz – Schweigen (Demo) (Germany, 198?) 2. Penetration – Money Talks (England, 1977) 3. PyhĂ€koulu – Painajainen (Finland, 1986) 4. VulpeSS – Me Gusta Ser Una Zorra (Spain, 1983) 5. The Comes – Panic (Japan, 1984) 6. Suicide Squad – New Kids Army (Australia, 1980) 7. Rivolta Dell’Odio – Altari Del Terrore (Italy, 1984) 8. Sick Things – Anti-Social Disease (England, 1977) 9. Accident (a.k.a Accidents) – True Detective (USA, 1979) 10. Dishrags – I Don’t Love You (Canada, 1979) 11. Ăltimo Resorte – Hogar, Dulce Hogar (Demo) (Spain, 1981) 12. The Fastbacks – Someone Else’s Room (USA, 1981) 13. Anorexia – Rapist In The Park (England, 1980) 14. Phobia – Pretend You’re Not Crazy (USA, 1978) 15. Androids Of Mu – Bored Housewives (England, 1981) 16. Sort Sol (With Lydia Lunch) – Boy-Girl (Denmark/USA, 1983) 17. Tappi Tikarrass – Skrid (Iceland, 1984) 18. Flowers – After Dark (Scotland, 1979) 19. The Rentals – I Got A Crush On You (USA, 1979) 20. Pariapunk – Double Face (France, 1987) 21. Amsterdamned – Traditie Amme Balle (Netherlands, 1982) 22. Dr. Zeke – Vild I Skogen (Sweden, 1979) 23. The Lewd – Magnetic Heart (USA, 1982) 24. Au Pairs – Kerb Crawler (England, 1980) 25. Mo-Dettes – White Mice (USA/Switzerland/England, 1979) 26. Stripes – Weekend Love (Germany, 1980) 27. Violators – The Fugitive (England, 1980)
1. Pervers – Asozial (Germany, 1984) 2. Hugh Beaumont Experience – Moo (USA, 1983) 3. Inocentes with Meire – Ri Dos Hippies (Brazil, 1984) 4. Ruggedy Annes – Hollow Heroes (Canada, 1985) 5. Blowdriers– Berkeley Farms (USA, 1979) 6. Rap – Accident (Japan, 1985) 7. Decadent – Opposition Proposition (USA, 1982) 8. Warriors – Born To Ride (Japan, 1987) 9. Bambix – Little Miss Sunshine (Netherlands, 1989) 10. Super Heroines – Death On The Elevator (USA, 1981) 11. Cherry Vanilla – The Punk (England, 1977) 12. Hari-Kari – Prey For Peace (USA, 1983) 13. Kleenex – Ă (Switzerland, 1979) 14. Chute De Esperma – No Keremos (Spain, 1984) 15. Revo – Fuck The School (Netherlands, 1980) 16. The Fall – Hotel BlĂŽedel (England, 1983) 17. Der RiĂ– Images (Germany, 1985)
As the compiler mentioned above, in some ways, the title of this set is a misnomer... although many of the bands featured in this compilation (such as The Raincoats, Kleenex, The Slits, Hans-A-Plast, etc.) are indeed all-woman groups, a good proportion of the songs being offered here are by unisex bands that just happened to have a woman as a lead singer (like X, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Chumbawumba and X-Ray Spex) or groups that let one of the female members sing a song or two (like The Fall, 45 Grave, The Rezillos, and the like). Perhaps a better name for this would have been A Reference of Female Voices in Punk Rock 1977-89... but maybe I'm just nitpicking. All in all, the selection here is superb...
Unfortunately, the initial set of downloads burned from this blogger's copies were NOT superb. I had a heck of a lot of issues with some of the song files, especially in the last five or six discs - some files were incomplete, others hopelessly corrupted. So I made the time and took the extra effort to cull out the crap and find replacement files for some of these bands from other sources. Considering the level of obscurity of some of the tunes provided in this set, it goes without saying that it took a while for me to track everything down. But in the end, I think I did. So the set I'm offering here is a clean and uncorrupted as you're going to find out there for the time being.
Apparently, this set was featured on the Dangerous Minds website a few years ago - but still linked back to the Kangnave page, with its wonky files. Here for your listening pleasure is my repaired version of A Reference Of Female-Fronted Punk Rock 1977-89, a fan-compiled boot of twelve discs containing over 300 slices of quality punk and post-punk from the heyday of this music. Enjoy, 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:
[I started this one way back in 2017, but for some reason never got around to finishing it. Here you go...]
Back when I was a kid, my parents discouraged us from drinking much in the way of soft drinks. There was never that much soda in any of the houses where we lived, and that that was present was generally reserved for the grown-ups; the kids had to make do with things like milk, water, juice and occasionally Wyler's and/or (in some cases, stunningly culturally inappropriate) Funny Face fruit-flavored drink mixes. I suppose at the time it was just one of the ways and methods our folks used to watching out for our health and well-being - and being a parent now, I can sympathize with and relate to that attitude. But when I was a child, it felt like a heavy blow, as if we were being unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of something that other kids had ready access to.
However, my grandmother (on my father's side) had no such compunctions; she always had a plentiful stock of stuff like RC Cola, 7-Up and Mr. Pibb readily at hand in big half-gallon (later two liter) bottles at her house, and during our visits there she would spoil us unmercifully with near-unlimited access to this carbonated nectar ("unlimited", that is, until my folks would inevitability step in and order us "not to drink all of Grandmama's soda"). I don't think my parents fully understood that that limited availability only served to make us children desire it more, and make it seem more "special".
Even with all of that, once I got older and began living (and shopping) on my own, I can't say that I became a big pop drinker. To this day, my non-alcoholic beverages of choice continue to be water, milk and OJ (so I guess my parents did that right after all). I do keep cans of soda in the fridge, and have never prevented my own children from having them when they felt the desire. In doing so, I think I've kept them from equating soft drinks as special treats, as I once did, regarding them now as just another choice that they can take or leave. And I think that tactic has been successful; they are not big soda guzzlers either.
I think that this info will not be regarded as good news by the big beverage bottlers - Keurig Dr. Pepper, PepsiCo, and the longtime industry giant, The Coca-Cola Company - all of whom have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue promoting their products and exhorting us to drink more-More-MORE! These companies have gone to great lengths to convince/coerce the public to consume mass quantities, with some campaigns more memorable than others. Those of us of a certain age fondly recall this classic Dr. Pepper commercial:
Or this memorable 7-Up commercial, featuring the talents and voice of the incomparable Geoffrey Holder:
And this, probably the gold standard as far as soft drink commercials are concerned, the 1971 "Hilltop" ad for Coca-Cola, featuring a reworked version of the New Seekers' song "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" - a song so popular that not one, but TWO versions of it, both made the U.S. Top Ten in 1972 and went Gold:
Coca-Cola had long been the industry leaders in innovative, creative product promotion. The company began placing ads in national magazines as early as 1904, and by the end of that decade, their advertising budget exceeded $1 million per year, an extraordinary sum for that time.
The very design of the unique and world-famous Coca-Cola bottle in the 1910s was a deliberate choice to differentiate the brand from that of other cola competitors. Coke was one of the first brands to feature Santa Claus prominently in its print ads, beginning in the 1930s, an association that has remained to this day. And from the dawn of the 20th century, the firm made heavy use of celebrity endorsements, beginning with popular singer Hilda Clark in 1901.
For over fifty years, Coca-Cola engaged the services of the D’Arcy Advertising Company as its official ad agency, and the union was very successful. But in 1956, Coke ended its relationship with D’Arcy and transferred the company’s advertising account to McCann-Erickson, Inc. The aim was to more successfully utilize new media like television, areas that McCann-Erickson was more in touch and in tune with. The new agency proved its worth quickly with the first two Coca-Cola campaigns it managed in the 1950s – “The Sign of Good Taste” (1957) and “Be Really Refreshed” (1959). Pop performers from the period, such as the McGuire Sisters, The Brothers Four and Connie Francis were involved in these successful efforts (note that, at the time, Coke didn't appear to be very interested in utilizing rock 'n' roll stars and making inroads into the youth market... curious).
The next major McCann-Erickson campaign was “Things Go Better with Coke,” which began in 1963. For this campaign, there was an explosion in the number and quality of ads, and the number of top contemporary music stars involved, making up for that dearth in the earlier campaigns. As mentioned in Allmusic.com:
During the 1960s, it wasn't unheard of for rock & roll groups and
music performers to lend their voices to commercial jingles... But in the '60s, artists of surprisingly high stature were willing (and artists of
surprisingly middling stature were asked) to lend their talents and skills to the cutting of product advertising jingles. Any act with lesser stature than The Beatles or The Rolling Stones was fair game to be approached by an advertising agency with some hope of success.
McCann-Erickson (backed by Coca-Cola's huge checkbook, I'm sure) convinced some huge stars of the period to record radio and/or television commercials under the “Things Go Better with Coke” campaign. These artists were asked to incorporate the “Things Go Better with Coke” slogan into a commercial-length song, which was generally inspired by one of their big hits (for example, Tom Jones’ Coke commercial uses the melody and arrangement of his signature tune “It’s Not Unusual”):
Again, from Allmusic.com:
It may seem monotonous -- most of the spots include the phrase "Things Go Better With Coke" -- but the variations are fascinating, and it is a chance to hear these acts having what can only be considered fun with their respective sounds. There is a kind of surreal fun to be found in these sounds -- many of the tracks run well over a minute and are done in each artist's straight style, whatever that might be. The second of three Roy Orbison numbers here, for example, is in his hardest rocking style of the mid- to late '60s, while the third blatantly imitates "Oh, Pretty Woman." [Other] acts... completely absorb the Coca-Cola lyrics into their own respective sounds.
Acts who participated include the aforementioned Tom Jones and Roy Orbison, along with The Supremes, The Tremeloes, Jan & Dean, The Moody Blues, Boyce & Hart, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, The Easybeats, Ray Charles, The Box Tops, The Bee Gees, Aretha Franklin, and many, many more. All in all, the "Things Go Better With Coke" campaign, which ran until 1970, was a smashing success, and to this day the phrase is probably second only to "It's The Real Thing" in regards to a signature, recognizable brand slogan.
Initially, there doesn't appear to have been any great interest in preserving these ads for posterity; I think both the company and the performers themselves considered them to be for commercial use and generally disposable. So the origin and sourcing of this album is pretty scanty and sketchy, to say the least. It appears that these songs were all but forgotten about for over twenty-five years, until someone at McCann-Erickson corporate headquarters pulled them all together in the mid-1990s as an in-house thing, commemorating and celebrating their innovative and successful 60's ad campaign. As such, it was initially produced in very limited quantities (only about 100 copies or so) - it was definitely not done by a studio. It probably would have remained an internal ad agency document if some enterprising and on-the-ball individual hadn't recognized its significance and historical value, nabbed a copy and began marketing it as a hard-to-find blank-label bootleg CD in the late 1990s. However, even that effort was short-lived; this album has been off the market now for close to twenty years and has become a difficult find on the Web, and/or an rare, high-priced purchase from sites like eBay.
With this being an unlicensed, unregulated bootleg, even its format and track listing vary from version to version, with different album covers (as shown here) and song listings. The original boot release listed a total of sixty-four cuts, but actually only included sixty-one, for some reason. I can't recall where or when I ended up acquiring my copy from, but it appears I hit the jackpot - my version of this compilation includes over ONE HUNDRED tracks, both short and long radio commercials done by dozens of artists. The quality throughout this comp is generally good to excellent, although the American material is slightly lower in fidelity for the most part (The Box Tops' tracks in particular reveal some surface noise, and seem to be the only tracks taken from sources other than tape). And the final song, "Come Alive", appears to have been appended on to my version as a joke, as "Come Alive" was the late-60's slogan for Coca-Cola's bitter (no pun intended) rival, Pepsi-Cola.
Anyway, here for your listening pleasure is the hard-to-find but enjoyable bootleg compilation Things Go Better With Coke: Sixties Coca-Cola Commercials 1965-69, original release date unknown. Have a listen to these short but interesting and classic blasts of '60s radio ephemera, and as always, let me know what you think.
(...and, if I may, might I suggest you enjoy this auditory experience while imbibing the thirst-quenching soft drink of your choice; I won't make any recommendations - I'm sure one brand in particular will somehow come to mind...)
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
Saying "Thanks" for the music you receive from here costs you absolutely nothing, and yet is worth quite a bit to me… If you can't bother leaving a comment on this blog for the first album/set we send you, don't bother making a request For a second album…
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