The Fall - Sussex Morning

A continuation of my annual commemoration of the death of band leader, group stalwart and all-around indie music genius Mark E. Smith, who died three years ago today, on January 24th, 2018.  I know I have said this every year since that fatal day, but Smith and his band are still sorely missed, by myself and thousands of other rabid Fall fans.

By now, I've pretty much given up on seeing any 'new' Fall product hit the shelves... As I've mentioned before, in the wake of the demise of a band with such a broad and discerning fan base, usually labels will make every effort to scour their vaults for unreleased or alternative versions of songs to gather into "expanded editions" of existing albums or collections of heretofore unheard music. I mean, heck, look at what's happened with David Bowie's catalog over the past five years - they're still finding and putting out quality sets, like the fine Conversation Piece early-career compilation in 2019. Somehow, that hasn't been the case with The Fall.  Perhaps it may be due to their convoluted recording history across a multitude of labels (although that didn't seem to deter other career-spanning Fall compilations released before Smith's death)... but I'm beginning to suspect more and more that there just isn't that much studio-recorded stuff out there to cull from.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, needless to say, limited the activities of the post-Fall bands. Imperial Wax spent most of the spring and summer of 2020 hunkered down, but during the fall began work on their second album, a follow-up to 2018's Gastwerk Saboteurs. And it appears this band is gearing up in anticipation for the 2021 concert/festival season, assuming that it comes to pass. So good luck to them with those endeavors.

Brix & The Extricated have been silent all year (mercifully so, in my opinion), with no shows or releases in 2020. However, just today Brix announced a couple of new projects for 2021, including a solo album (her first standalone release since fronting The Adult Net more than thirty years ago) and a book about The Fall. We'll see how all of that turns out.

Probably the most significant Fall-related news over the past year was the June 6th death (at the age of seventy-two) of former band manager and Smith girlfriend Kay Carroll. The hard-nosed Carroll ran the business end of The Fall from 1977 until falling out/breaking up with Smith in the midst of a U.S. tour in the spring of 1983 (Mark rebounded swiftly, hooking up with Brix in Chicago little more than a month later). Kay remained in the States and ended up settling in Portland, Oregon, where she worked in nursing for several years and went through a couple of husbands. It's generally understood that the Fall song "An Older Lover" was written by Mark about her (she was eleven years Smith's senior). The Guardian carried an obituary a couple of weeks after her passing; here it is.

Anyway, like I said earlier, I don't think we're going to see any new Fall studio remainders put out anytime soon, if ever. And I believe on more than one occasion I've clearly expressed my low opinion for the various Fall live sets and soundboard recordings that have been released over the years. Receiver Records, Cog Sinister and Castle Music have clogged/saturated the market with sketchy, poorly-captured band gigs from locales worldwide, so much so that I have made little to no effort to collect many of them, finding them not worth my while. However, I will occasionally stumble across a live set that breaks that half-assed mold, and actually brings something to the table. My offering today is one of these.

This disc was the initial offering from a blogsite/poster named Hanleyfender, a site that was active off and on between 2009 and 2013, and specialized in making available live versions of Fall shows.  This recording covers some of the poster's favorite live Fall songs from various locations during the 2006-2007 timeframe; here's some additional information regarding tracks and participants:

1. Intro (Over Over loop. L.A.) 23.05.2006
2. Senior Twilight Stock Replacer. Brighton. 31.03.2007
3. MES Birthday 50 Year Old Man. Bilston. 05.03.2007
4. Over Over. Aberdeen. 15.03.2007
5. Fall Sound. Brick Lane London. 12.03.2006
6. Theme From Sparta F.C. Malaga. Spain. 21.01.2007
7. Hungry Freaks, Daddy. Edinburgh. 13.03.2007
8. My Door Is Never. Reading. 28.03.2007
9. Coach and Horses. Brick Lane. London. 11.09.2006
10. Mountain Energie. Los Angeles. CA. 23.05.2006
11. Reformation. Brighton. 31.03.2007
12. Palais Interlude. Hammersmith Palais. London. 01.04.2007
13. Scenario. Brick Lane. London. 12.03.2006
14. Systematic Abuse. Brick Lane. London. 12.03.2006
15. White Lightning. Brighton. 31.03.2007
16. Blindness. Bournemouth. 10.09.2006
17. Outro (Loop 41. L.A). 23.05.2006

The Fall:
Tim Presley (Guitar). Bab Borbato (Musicmaster Bass). Orpheo McCord (Drums).
Dave Spurr (Bass. He’s not a Yank). Mark E. Smith (Vocals). Elani Smith (Keyboards)

Additional Hanleyfender notes:

"Generally considered by me to be the greatest Fall live compilation ever. 'Mountain Energie' also considered by me to be the greatest ever audience recording ever captured by The Fall."

This recording was originally made into a limited edition (50 copies) of CDs sent out to friends of The Consortium, the music blogging group Hanleyfender was affiliated with. But since then it's become a little more widespread - but not by much. It's still an awful hard Fall comp to track down.

So here it is for you all to peruse: The Fall's Sussex Morning, a fan-assembled compilation of live tracks prepared and released in 2009. This assemblage is offered up both in tribute to and in memory of the great Mark E. Smith, and to keep alive the music he and his band made for over forty years for at least a little while longer. Enjoy, remember, and as always, let me know what you think.

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2020 In Memorium - #4: Millie Small (Born 1947)

Millie Small (1947 - 2020)

One of twelve children born to a sugar plantation overseer in Clarendon, Jamaica, Millicent Dolly May ("Millie") Small's rise to fame began in 1960 when she was twelve years old, with her participation and subsequent victory in the popular and influential Vere Johns Opportunity Knocks Hour talent contest on RJR radio, broadcast nationwide in Jamaica (a show that also launched the careers of Alton Ellis, Desmond Dekker, Laurel Aitken and The Wailers, among many, many other music giants). After her victory, she began working with acclaimed producer Coxsone Dodd, who paired her first with Owen Gray, then with Roy Panton, for a series of well-received Jamaican R&B/"bluebeat" singles. Producer Chris Blackwell, seeing her local success, began envisioning bringing Millie's music to a wider audience, and after stepping in to become her manager and legal guardian, brought her to London in late 1963 for further training in speech and dance in anticipation of an international launch.

Millie's initial recording for Blackwell in England, "Don't You Know", did nothing over there. Searching for a potential hit, Blackwell recalled a record he purchased in the States in 1959, a minor hit in 1956 for an obscure singer, Barbie Gaye, called "My Boy Lollypop".  He changed both the spelling (from "Lollypop" to "Lollipop") and arrangement (from an R&B "shuffle" style to a similar shuffling but modified bluebeat variation called "ska"), and had Millie's version  released in England by March 1964 (not on Island Records, but on Fontana, due to the strain the record would have put on the former record company's resources).  The song was a smash hit, reaching #2 in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, topping the charts in Ireland and selling over six million copies worldwide.  Cconsidered the first commercially successful international ska song, Small's version of "My Boy Lollipop" helped to launch Island Records into mainstream popular music. To this day, it remains one of the best-selling reggae/ska hits of all time.

For a brief moment in time, Millie was the toast of the music world. achieving international fame at the tender age of sixteen.  She appeared frequently on British television during that time, both in musical performances (she was a guest performer on the May 1964 TV special Around The Beatles, and had her own Ready! Steady! Go! special, "Millie In Jamaica" in early 1965) and dramatic performances (she was featured in ITV's Play Of The Week "The Rise and Fall of Nellie Brown", airing during the 1964 holiday season).

In the immediate wake of "My Boy Lollipop", Millie Small followed up with a couple of smaller hits (her next release, "Sweet William", made the UK Top 30 and US Top 40). But her chart presence and attendant fame dwindled very quickly, with her last appearance in the British Top 50 occurring in late 1965, when her song "Bloodshot Eyes" reached #48. Her recording contracts with Island and Fontana ended in 1968. After a brief surge in her exposure in the late Sixties, coinciding with the emergence of reggae music, Small ended her recording career in 1971 and moved to Singapore for a couple of years. She returned to England in 1973, the same time a major compilation of her work was released, then all but fell off the map for several years.

In 1987, a British news service searching for her whereabouts for the past fifteen years discovered that Millie Small was destitute, living in a filthy hostel in London with her toddler daughter. A fund was established for her livelihood, and in that same year came the first of several awards and special recognition to her from the Jamaican government for her pioneering and groundbreaking music career. Millie continued to live in London until this past year, when she died of a stroke there on May 5th at the age of seventy-two.

"My Boy Lollipop" is a great song, a true classic. But to be frank, I seriously doubt that she could have sustained a long-term career... probably because a little bit of Millie Small goes a long way; her high-pitched vocals - described as sounding like "a dentist's drill" or "a chipmunk on helium" - were acceptable enough in small doses, but wearing on listeners over a full album.

But I'll let you determine that for yourself. In commemoration of her life, here's a definitive compilation of all of Millie Small's solo hits, My Boy Lollipop Plus 31 Others, released by Comb A Rama on October 20th, 2011. Have a listen and let me know your thoughts.

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2020 In Memorium - #3: Toots Hibbert (Born 1942)

Frederick "Toots" Hibbert (1942 - 2020)

Back when I was working in the Washington, DC area in the mid/late 2000s, I used to spend a lot of time after work at a bar/coffeehouse called Tryst, in that city's Adams-Morgan neighborhood.  The big, comfortable, rustic old space it occupied was furnished with huge old mismatched tables, sofas and lounges all seemingly scrounged from a garage sale, and local art covered the unevenly painted walls.  Yeah, it was (ant still is) sort of a local

hipster's hangout, a place for people who thought they were cool/bohemian/arty to see and be seen in.  But it has a nice ambience, the staff was great, most of the customers were easy-going, and there was nice coffee and a decent bar/food menu available (one of my favorite drinks there was what they called a Dufrene, which was a pint of Guinness with a shot of espresso poured into it).  Plus, they had free wifi, so if you could find a seat at a table, you could basically sit there all evening, eating, drinking and browsing the Web.

Tryst would host various cultural events from time to time, including art openings, left-leaning political get-togethers and DJ nights - events that I usually tried to avoid, not that I was "anti-" any of that, but since the space required to set up these events would mean less available seating for potential customers, and I generally got there later than most. I hated having to stand around by the wall, strategically positioning myself to commandeer a seating as soon as a current occupant made the slightest indication that he or she was about to vacate.

Anyway, one night in the spring of 2006, they were having another DJ night at Tryst, but this time I had arrived there early enough to place myself at one of the coveted seats/tables. I was sitting there chilling out, with a Greek salad and a Dufrene in front of me, watching Fritz Lang's classic thriller M on my laptop and not really paying much attention to the record spinner, who seemed to be playing a lot of deep house and dub sides... when all of a sudden, one of the cuts he put on caught my attention - THIS one:

Although by that point in life, I was a pretty big ska and reggae fan, somehow I had no awareness of this tune the DJ played that night. I might have heard it before and it hadn't connected, perhaps... but no matter - it DEFINITELY connected that night. Before the song was half over, I rushed to the area in Tryst when the turntables were set up to learn the name of this great song and band.  It was "Funky Kingston", off of the album by the same name, by Toots & The Maytals.

Frederick Hibbert was born in 1942 in Jamaica, the youngest of seven children. His parents were both fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventists preachers, so Hibbert's earliest singing experiences were with church gospel choirs. However, before he turned twelve, both of his parents had died, leaving him an orphan raised by his older brother John, who lived in Kingston in the soon-to-be-famous Trenchtown neighborhood, birthplace and crucible of modern Jamaican music.

There in Trenchtown, with his childhood friends Raleigh Gordon and Jerry Matthias, Toots formed the first version of the Toots & The Maytals trio in 1961, when he was nineteen. The band's early ska/rocksteady songs, such as "Six And Seven Books Of Moses" and "Hallelujah", were rooted in Hibbert's religious upbringing. But the band quickly moved on from those themes and expanded their repertoire. By the mid-60s, Toots & The Maytals were one of the biggest bands in Jamaica, with producers clamoring to work with them and the group producing hit after hit, including "Bam Bam", "54-46 That's My Number" (inspired by Hibbert's 18-month stretch in prison for marijuana possession) and "Do The Reggay", the first song to refer to (and subsequently coin the term) "reggae", the then-new music genre that continues to this day.

 

Toots & The Maytals had released several albums in Jamaica during the 1960s, but by the early '70s they - and reggae music in general - were still relatively unknown in the rest of the world. That international perception began to change in 1972 with the release of the film The Harder They Come, an underground hit in the UK which featured two Maytals songs in the soundtrack. Attempting to strike while the iron was still hot, producer Chris Blackwell hustled the band into Dynamic Sounds Studio in Jamaica, and by the early spring of 1972 had released Funky Kingston, the group's first international album, in Britain and other Commonwealth countries. In 1975, a revised version of Funky Kingston was released in the States, retaining only three songs from the 1972 release and adding six from the Maytals' immediate follow-up album In The Dark, along with the single version of "Pressure Drop" from The Harder They Come soundtrack.

Here's the lineup on the original release:

1. "Sit Right Down" — 4:44
2. "Pomps And Pride" — 4:30
3. "Louie Louie" — 5:46
4. "I Can't Believe"
   
5. "Redemption Song" — 3:26
6. "Daddy's Home" — 5:05
7. "Funky Kingston" — 4:54
8. "It Was Written Down" — 3:04

And here is the track listing on the U.S. release:

1. "Time Tough" — 4:23
2. "In the Dark" — 2:48
3. "Funky Kingston" — 4:54
4. "Love is Gonna Let Me Down" — 3:15
5. "Louie Louie"
6. "Pomps and Pride" — 4:30
7. "Got to Be There" — 3:06
8. "Country Road" — 3:23
9. "Pressure Drop" — 3:46
10. "Sailin' On" — 3:35

Both versions were celebrated, and the album is credited with breaking reggae internationally. The US version is ranked at #380 in Rolling Stone's 2012 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and rightfully so.

The original Toots & The Maytals continued on as a unit until the early 1980s before breaking up, with Hibbert having a long subsequent career as a solo artist, collaborator with the likes of Willie Nelson, Gov't Mule, The Red Hot Chili Peppers (among many others), and reviving the Maytals from time to time with new members.  Toots performed right up to the end, with his final appearances in the spring and summer of 2020, just before he took ill.

 

Frederick "Toots" Hibbert died of complications from contracting the COVID-19 virus in a hospital in Mona, Jamaica on September 11th, at the age of seventy-seven.

 

In honor of his life, I present to you both versions of the seminal album Funky Kingston:

• The original version, released on Dragon Records (a subsidiary of Chris Blackwell's Island Records) in April 1972; and
• The U.S. version, released on Mango Records in mid-1975

Enjoy and pay tribute to one of the founding fathers of reggae! And as always, let me know what you think.

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• Funky Kingston (Original 1972 Jamaica/UK Release): Send Email  

• Funky Kingston (Revised 1975 US Release): Send Email

2020 In Memoriam - #2: Eugene Wright (Born 1923)

Eugene Wright (1923 - 2020)

Longtime jazz double bassist Eugene Wright, "The Senator", the last surviving member of the legendary and classic Dave Brubeck Quartet lineup (consisting of Wright, pianist Brubeck, drummer Joe Morello and Paul Desmond on sax), died just last week, on 30 December at the age of 97.  Wright's steady, innovative play anchored the sound of that group for a decade, from 1958 to 1968, and he participated on nearly thirty albums with the Quartet, including the classic 1959 album Time Out (featuring the hit "Take Five"), the first jazz album to sell a million copies.  

As the only black member of the quartet, he was part of one of the few racially mixed jazz groups during the early years of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.  As such, Wright's presence led to showdowns between band leader Brubeck, a staunch opponent of segregation, and some concert promoters and college officials in the Southern U.S., incidents that Brubeck never backed down from, supporting his bandmate in every instance.

I've already posted something on the quartet many years ago, on the day Brubeck died, so I won't reiterate how great I think this combo was.  Instead, I'll just provide you all with yet another example of the level of jazz mastery this group was capable of, off of one of the quartet's less popularly celebrated but critically acclaimed late-period recordings, Time In.  A reviewer for Allmusic.com, Thom Jurek, described this release as "one of his most musically adventurous. ... of all the 'Time' recordings, this is the least commercial ... Though it is seldom celebrated as such, this is one of Brubeck's finest moments on Columbia."  If you enjoyed Time Out and Time Further Out, this album is going to be right up your alley as well.

So, here you are - The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time In, put out on Columbia Records on June 14, 1966.  Chill out to this cool and interesting slice of '60s jazz, and as always... well, you know.

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2020 In Memorium - #1: Tony Lewis (Born 1957)

In addition to artists who passed on last year that I've already posted about, including David Roback, John Prine and Andy Gill, the following are a series of posts regarding other perhaps less heralded/recognized musicians who died in 2020 who will also be sorely missed.

Tony Lewis (1957 - 2020)

RIP to Tony Lewis, frontman and lead singer for the 1980s English power pop group The Outfield, who died unexpectedly in London on 20 October at the age of sixty-three. This group didn't have many hits during their lifetime, but the ones they did have were stone-cold classics, including this sublime 1985 gem and defining band tune "Your Love" off of their debut album from that year.  This song got played to death on FM radio back when I was in school, and rightfully so - just a great, great tune, eventually reaching #6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 charts.

The song dragged the album, Play Deep, into the US Top Ten as well, achieving triple-platinum status (The Outfield was an odd and rare example of a British band that made it big in the States, but had little success in their own home country). Subsequent albums by the band during the decade led to diminishing returns, and the original lineup of The Outfield broke up in 1992. Various iterations of the group continued touring and releasing albums intermittently over the next twenty years until band cofounder John Spinks died of cancer in 2014. After a short hiatus from music, Lewis continued his career as a solo artist, releasing a solo album (Out Of The Darkness) in 2018 and touring constantly until his own death last year.

To me, "Your Love" is one of the most recognizable and defining pop songs of the mid-80s; movie-makers who include this tune in their soundtrack immediately establish a time and setting for their films. It's the sound of beaches, and cars, and sun, and fun, and summer love... all rolled into a three-minute nugget. So it deservedly lives on long after its debut and heyday, and so does Mr. Lewis as well. Thanks for the music, Tony.

In honor of his life, I proudly present you with Play Deep, the debut album by Lewis' band The Outfield, released on Columbia Records on November 12th, 1985. Enjoy, remember, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Various Artists - Halloween Nuggets: Monster Sixties A Go-Go (3 Discs)

 

I pulled together a lot of my Halloween-related stuff last year, fully intending to have a couple of major music dumps here onto the blog prior to last October 31st... but time just got away from me, and I never ended up posting any of that stuff.  I'm trying to make up for it this year, by actually getting up off my ass and getting some things posted well prior to the holiday for the edification and enjoyment of you all... and here's the first offering: the classic Halloween Nuggets set, three discs of spook-centric rock obscurities from the late Fifties and throughout the Sixties, mixed in with audio from classic horror/sci-fi film trailers of the era.  Here's the lineup:

Disc 1 

1. The Mystrys – Witch Girl (2:03)

2. Teddy Durant – The Beast of Sunset Strip (2:25)

3. The Ebbtides – Seance (2:03)

4. Bela La Goldensetin – Why Do I Love You (2:09)

5. The Phantom Five – Graveyard (2:37)

6. Murray Schafe & the Aristocrats – Tombstone No. 9 (3:02)

7. Jackie Morningstar – Rockin’ In the Graveyard (2:38)

8. Alan Smithee – Halloween Convention of Spooks (0:56)

9. Round Robin – I’m the Wolfman (2:37)

10. Griz Green – Jam At the Mortuary (2:54)

11. The Grim Reapers – Two Souls (2:54)

12. The Connoissurs – Count Macabre (2:19)

13. The Madmen – Haunted (2:00)

14. The Vettes – Devil’s Driver Theme (2:07)

15. Terry Gale – The Voodoo (2:26)

16. Glenda & Glen – Voodoo?Doll (1:50)

17. Daron Daemon & The Vampires – Ghost Guitars (2:25)

18. Jim Burgett – Jekyll and Hyde (2:26)

19. Anton Giulio Majano – Atom Age Vampire (1:18)

20. Mann Drake – Vampire’s Ball (2:31)

21. Bobby Bare – Vampira (2:18)

22. Johnny Anderson – Zoola Zooky (2:24)

23. Alan Smithee – Frankenstein & Dracula (1:14)

24. Peter & The Wolves – Mr. Frankenstein (2:55)

25. Frankie Stein and His Ghouls – Dr. Spook Twist (2:02)

26. George Waggner – The Wolfman (0:33)

27. Gary Warren – Werewolf (1:52)

28. The Frantics – Werewolf (2:02)

29. Chance Halliday – Bury Me Deep (2:26)

30. The Weirdos – E.S.P. Theme For Shock Theatre (3:01)

31. Kenny And The Fiends – The Raven (1:57)

32. the Executioners – The Guillotine (1:59)

Disc 2 

1. Invasion – The Invasion Is Coming (1:44)

2. Ed Wood – Plan 9 From Outer Space (0:58)

3. Boots Walker – They’re Here (2:14)

4. The Quests – Shadows In the Night (2:33)

5. Positively 13 O’Clock – Psychotic Reaction (2:01)

6. The Spellbinders – Castin’ My Spell (2:25)

7. Chance Halliday – Deep Sleep (1:42)

8. Vic Plati Quintet – The Chiller (2:37)

9. Teddy Durant – The Night Stalker (2:11)

10. The Graveyard Five – Marble Orchard (3:17)

11. Glenn & Christy with the Adventures – Wombat Twist (2:15)

12. Billy Ghoulston – Zombie Stomp (2:18)

13. Irvin Yeaworth – The Blob (1:16)

14. Johnny Fraser and the Regalaires – It (2:07)

15. Mr. Baseman & The Symbols – Do the Zombie (2:17)

16. The Shandells – Go Go Gorilla (2:53)

17. Ronnie Self – Go Go Cannibal (2:06)

18. Phil Tucker – Robot Monster (0:50)

19. The Shades – Strolling After Dark (2:07)

20. Jericho Jones – Black Magic (2:07)

21. Karl Freund – The Mummy (0:38)

22. Lee Ross – The Mummy’s Bracelet (2:13)

23. The Contrails – The Mummy Walk (Walking Death) (2:36)

24. Fred F. Sears – The Werewolf (0:11)

25. Carl Bonafede & The Gemtones – The Werewolf (2:08)

26. Johnny Eager – Howl (2:12)

27. Herbert L. Strock – I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1:32)

28. The Keytones – I Was a Teenage Monster (2:17)

29. Lord Luther with The King’s Men – (I was a) Teenage Creature (2:45)

30. Ted V. Mikels – The Astro Zombies (0:57)

31. Sonny Day and the Tony Ray Combo – Creature From Outer Space (2:29)

32. The Sabres – Spider Walk (2:28)

33. The Abstracts – Nightmare (3:07)

Disc 3

1. Ralph Nieson & The Chancellors – Scream (1:55)

2. Bernard Louis Kowalski – Night of the Blood Beast (0:48)

3. Billy & The Dukes – Roland (2:36)

4. Al Saxon – Evil Eye (2:31)

5. Kiriae Crucible – The Salem Witch Trial (2:52)

6. The 7th Court – One Eyed Witch (2:23)

7. Dave Gardner – Mad Witch (2:34)

8. Ervinna & The Stylers – Witch Queen of New Orleans (2:16)

9. Betty Lavett – Witchcraft In the Air (2:36)

10. The Circus – Burn Witch Burn (2:01)

11. Miss L. L.Louise Lewis – Monster’s Bride (1:48)

12. Glenn Ryle – Wolf Gal (2:17)

13. Gary Warren – Midnight Rain (2:33)

14. Jack Arnold – Creature From the Black Lagoon (0:40)

15. Evans Carroll & The Tempos – The Monster (2:08)

16. Billy Taylor And The Teardrops – Wombie Zombie (2:16)

17. Jan Davis – Watusi Zombi (1:59)

18. Terry Teene – Here Comes the Hearse (2:30)

19. Frankie Stein and His Ghouls – Knives and Lovers (2:19)

20. The Blue Knights – Madness (2:52)

21. The Elites – Jack the Ripper (2:09)

22. Larry & The Blue Notes – Night of the Phantom (2:13)

23. The Upperclassmen – Cha Cha With the Zombies (2:35)

24. Bela La Goldenstein – Old Boris (2:14)

25. Chris Kevin – Haunted House (2:03)

26. William Castle – The House on Haunted Hill trailer (0:32)

27. Kenny & the Fiends – The House on Haunted Hill (1:31)

28. Skip Manning – Devil Blues (2:31)

29. The Devotions – Devil’s Gotten Into My Baby (2:42)

30. The Twelfth Night – Grim Reaper (1:52)

31. James Duhon – Grave Yard Creep (2:33)

32. Original Trailer – Godzilla King of the Monsters (1:41)

33. Los Holy’s – Campo De Vampiros (3:12)

34. Richard Rome – Ghost a Go Go (2:12)

Sorry for the abbreviated writeup; just haven't been able to complete a longer form narrative that I was planning.  But no matter; you all are here for the music, not for my long-winded screeds!  

So here you are:  the Halloween Nuggets: Monster Sixties A Go-Go set, 98 tracks of frighteningly good and obscure rock 'n' roll, released on Rockbeat Records on July 18th, 2014.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.  And have a Happy Halloween!

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Various Artists - Ren & Stimpy Production Music, Vol. 1-3

I watched the new documentary Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story earlier this week, an amazing, thrilling, hilarious and ultimately deeply disturbing chronicle of the rise and fall of the groundbreaking and beloved 1990s Nickelodeon cartoon and its creator, John Kricfalusi. Here's the trailer for it:

If you're an old fan of the show, I heartily recommend you see this film. I won't give anything away here, other than to say that it will jolt you to your core... but hopefully not enough to displace your fond memories of this program.

I distinctly recall the first time I ever saw Ren & Stimpy. I moved to the Washington, DC area during the summer of 1991, and soon afterward acquired a new girlfriend. During the first weekend we hung out together that fall, she insisted that we get up to watch this manic new cartoon airing on Nicktoons... it was the "Space Madness"/"The Boy Who Cried Rat!" episode, and by the end of it, I knew that I had just seen one of the greatest cartoons of the age.  From then on, I watched the program religiously every weekend, absorbing multiple viewings of the same shows (Ren & Stimpy's production company, Spümcø, was notorious for missing delivery deadlines, leaving Nickelodeon no choice but to air the same episodes over and over again as a stopgap), and loving every single one of them.

As I mentioned in a previous blog posting, one of my all-time favorite Ren & Stimpy episodes is "Rubber Nipple Salesmen", containing what has to be the most disturbing, off-putting - and yet, hilarious - scene EVER included in what was ostensibly a children's cartoon:

By the start of the second season, it was all over. Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi in September 1992 (for several valid reasons, in my opinion - see the documentary film for details), and Spümcø completed the slate of remaining shows written or directed by Kricfalusi before production of the show was moved by the network to Games Animation. Ren & Stimpy aired for another three seasons, into 1995, but without John K.'s imagination and energy behind it, the later-period episodes were little more than pale echoes of the show in its heyday.

A lot of what made this show great was in its liberal use of vintage "incidental music" from the 1950s and 1960s, that gives every cartoon a certain "throwback" tone to some of the classic animation and studios from that era. Way back in 2006, a great site called Secret Fun Blog and its compiler Kirk D. went the extra mile, and began offering compilations of music from Ren & Stimpy.  To quote from his superb post:

Put simply, these melodies have enriched my life. Play them on your drive to work and you're the star of an instructional traffic safety film, turn it on during dinner and mealtime becomes 80% happier (but be careful.. play the wrong track and you could wind up with a touch of Space Madness). Best of all you can listen and imagine that you live in the world of Ren and Stimpy where the walrus-napping horse is your next door neighbor, where the toy stores are stocked with Log from Blammo, and a visit from Powdered Toast Man is just a complaint away!

The links to Volumes 1 and 2 of this great collection have long been dead on his blog... but fortunately, I took the opportunity at the time to acquire this outstanding music. There was also a THIRD volume of tunes from this show released during that time... this comp was a little harder to track down, and even harder to sort out, since most of the tracks came without track numbers or composer attribution. But I took care of that, to the best of my ability, utilizing various authoritative sources. So what you have here for Vol. 3 is about as complete as you're going to find out there.

Comedy Central announced earlier this month that it had greenlighted a reboot of Ren & Stimpy, featuring all new episodes, for the upcoming season, to air alongside rebooted versions of old 90s cult hit shows like Daria and Beavis & Butthead. My personal feeling on this is that they should just leave it well enough alone.  These shows - especially Ren & Stimpy - were of a certain time and place in the past, and fondly remembered by those of us lucky enough to see them when they first emerged. Ren & Stimpy (at least the first two seasons) was lightning in a bottle, and attempting to recapture that is a foolish and futile exercise - especially so when John Kricfalusi, the creator and lead animator of the original series, is slated to have no involvement whatsoever in the reboot.  Just let it go, Comedy Central - stop trying to "reanimate" the corpse, as it were.

Enough of that.  Here for your listening pleasure are all three fan-assembled volumes of music from this seminal cartoon, released between 2006 and 2008.  I hope that this post brings you plenty of "Happy Happy, Joy Joy!"

(And as always, let me know what you think.)

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Various Artists - Ren & Stimpy Production Music Vol. 1 (2006): Send Email
Various Artists - Ren & Stimpy Production Music Vol. 2 (2007): Send Email
Various Artists - Ren & Stimpy Production Music Vol. 3 (2008): Send Email

House Of Schock - House Of Schock

For the past couple of weeks, they've been hyping the new Showtime documentary airing this past weekend, detailing the rise and fall of the classic early '80s New Wave group The Go-Go's, "the first all-woman group to write their own songs, play their own instruments and have a #1 hit" (as we've been reminded over and over again in recent days...).  Here's the official trailer for the program:

As I've mentioned here before and just recently, I used to be a pretty big Go-Go's fan. I was speaking with my buddy Camob just last week, and he reminded me of when he and I went to see them at Merriweather Post Pavilion near Baltimore during a break we had in U.S. Naval Academy summer training in July of '84, just before they broke up (INXS opened for them). Heck... I'd forgotten most of the details regarding that show, other than the fact we went (I do recall that tickets were something like $14-15...). As I recall, Jane Wiedlin quit the band shortly afterwards, in the fall of 1984, and after a half-hearted attempt to replace her (moving Charlotte Caffey to rhythm guitar and recruiting Giant Sand's Paul Jean Brown as the new bassist), the group had completely fallen apart by the following spring.

After this initial breakup, the band members scattered. I've already detailed in a previous post the careers of both Belinda Carlisle and Jane Wiedlin in the immediate aftermath.  Charlotte Caffey stayed connected to Carlisle, writing songs for Belinda's subsequent successful albums, and formed a band of her own called The Graces (with future star Meredith Brooks); their sole album, 1989's Perfect View, was critically acclaimed but sold poorly. Kathy Valentine sort of drifted around the fringes of the music world for several years, becoming a member of many short-lived, forgotten bands, before forming the blues rock collaboration The Bluebonnets with bassist Dominique Davalos. This group eventually evolved into The Delphines, and released two albums, a self-titled album in 1996 and Cosmic Speed in 2001.

This leaves drummer Gina Schock.  Like Valentine, Schock had long-term professional experience on and competence in her instrument of choice well prior to joining The Go-Go's; also similar to Valentine, Gina had trouble catching on to another band after The Go-Go's broke up in 1985 - which is sort of odd. In any event, Gina noodled around as a drummer for a couple of years for various obscure mid-Eighties now-forgotten bands, at the same time honing her own singing and songwriting skills. By 1987, she was ready to blaze her own trail. She formed a new band called House of Schock and recruited as its first member a transplanted L.A. by way of LA (as in Louisiana) native on bass named Vance DeGeneres.

Vance DeGeneres was/is a very interesting guy. A former Marine in the 1970s, he returned from his military hitch and settled in New Orleans. A local buddy of his, Walter Williams, was creating stop-motion Claymation comedy shorts on Super 8 film in 1974-75, featuring a character

he called "Mr. Bill", and showing them around town; at William's request, Vance stepped in to assist and began playing a character called "Mr. Hands" in some of the films. It was all just a local thing until late 1975, when the new NBC network comedy show Saturday Night Live sent out a request for viewers to send in their own home movies, and Williams' were selected. More than twenty episodes of "The Mr. Bill Show" were produced for SNL, and the character became extremely popular nationwide, generating millions of dollars in merchandising sales annually.

In 1979, DeGeneres (who by then had moved on to a gig hosting a punk/New Wave radio show in New Orleans) filed suit against Mr. Bill copyright holder Williams in federal court for payment from the shows and merchandise sales, claiming that he too was a co-creator of the character and was entitled to fifty percent of the proceeds. After a year and a half of litigation, the courts awarded Williams total control over Mr. Bill and related characters (his dog Spot, Sluggo and Mr. Hands). The settlement said Williams was responsible for 'the basic idea in concept' of the characters in the Mr. Bill show, but added that DeGeneres 'participated in bringing that idea' into being.  As a result, the judgment said Williams would have to refile copyrights on the four characters so that they bear DeGeneres' name as co-creator. The judgment also said DeGeneres would receive 25 percent of all net proceeds of articles produced around the four categories. In exchange, DeGeneres relinquished all claims to copyright and trademark to the characters.

During this period of litigation and radio program hosting, DeGeneres honed a comedy act that appeared in area clubs, and also played bass for a beloved local Bayou New Wave band called The Cold, which performed in and around the Southern Louisiana region until the mid-80s before their breakup. With the radio show also ending around that time, Vance moved west to Los Angeles to try his luck out there in the entertainment field.

Oh, and one more thing I should mention - Vance DeGeneres is Ellen DeGeneres' older brother - yes, that Ellen DeGeneres.

Anyway, Schock gathered up a couple more members for her new band (Chrissy Shefts on guitar, and Steven Fisher on drums, since Gina planned on fronting the band and limiting her time behind the skins), and signed a deal with Capitol Records; the label was undoubtedly happy to add an ex-Go-Go to its roster, to hopefully emulate/rival the success Gina's former band mate Belinda Carlisle was having in her solo career with MCA Records. They even teamed her up again with Richard Gottehrer, the veteran producer behind The Go-Go's multi-platinum debut album Beauty And The Beat (along with other classics like most of Blondie's early albums, The Fleshtones' American Beat '84 and Richard Hell & The Voidoids' Blank Generation... at the time, however, it seemed to have been conveniently forgotten that Gottehrer had sort of dropped the ball a couple of years earlier with The Go-Go's follow-up album, 1982's Vacation...).  Ten of the songs Gina had written over the previous two years were released by the band on a self-titled album in early 1988.

I hadn't played or thought about this album in a while, so I went online to do a little research before I wrote this piece. The very first review I read, on Allmusic.com, was so spot-on it made me laugh out loud: "This album has "record company interference" written all over it..." Yes, it does. It suffers from the same sort of malady that affected Jane Wiedlin's solo debut, which I wrote about earlier this year - it's WAY overproduced, laden with the by-then cliched '80s shimmering, slick-as-grease pop music effects to make the songs ostensibly more "radio friendly"... which is a shame, because buried beneath the gloss and reverb are some decent little tunes.  The opener and debut single, "Middle Of Nowhere", is actually a great song, well suited for Schock's voice.  Here - have a listen:

 

 

Of course, it sounds dated and "Eighties-y" now. However, the tune was a hit in Australia, and could have done well in America as well. But Capitol Records almost immediately disowned this album, putting nary a nickel of money or a line of publicity into sales or promotion, and it sank like a stone, not even charting here in the States. This ended up being House Of Schock's only LP release.

Since that time, Gina Schock has turned her musical efforts more towards songwriting, penning tunes for the likes of Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, and for various movie and TV show soundtracks. Except for the various Go-Go's reunion tours over the years (the first one was in 1990), she had largely retired from live performance. Vance DeGeneres has moved on to bigger and better things in the comedy realm (he was a writer for various shows, including his sister's first network show on ABC, and later served as a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show for a number of years) and in production (developing and co-producing some of Steve Carell's recent films), among other pursuits.

Here's House Of Schock, by the band of the same name, released on Capitol Records in 1988. This album isn't by any means a deathless addition to the overall Go-Go's canon, but it's still worth listening to if you can get past the whizz-bangs it was laden with. Plus, it's kind of hard to track down nowadays... so here you go - put this one in your ears, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Buddy Holly - The NEW Complete Buddy Holly v. 2.0 (Purple Chick) (14 Disc Set + DVD)

Dag nabbit...

A couple of years ago, I posted what was known as the Holy Grail of Buddy Holly offerings, an eleven-disc set compiled by the elusive, reclusive Purple Chick collective purported to contain every known song, utterance and appearance on vinyl or film of the great rock 'n' roll pioneer Buddy Holly. I assumed, as did many of you, that this set was the be-all and end-all, the final definitive word on Holly's vocal and musical appearances, and I presented it as such, in a post laden with stylish poetic trappings and heartfelt tributes to the man and the mass of music he left behind...

Turns out, however, that the Complete Buddy Holly wasn't as complete as all of us thought it was.

Back in 2017, Purple Chick announced that they had put together an even MORE definitive Buddy Holly set, featuring songs that were inadvertently left out or otherwise unavailable for inclusion in the 2005 version. I didn't get wind of this new and improved set until last year... simply because I hadn't been looking for it, since I'd already assumed I had it all. I went ahead and acquired this new version, and started trying to document the changes between new and old for a possible later release on this blog. But honestly, my heart wasn't in it. It took me FOREVER to sort out the titles and tags on the previous set, and I just didn't have the stomach or wherewithal to go through the drudgery of putting together another writeup on this new set, and/or doing a disc-to-disc, track-by-track comparison of the former "Complete" Buddy Holly Purple Chick set and this replacement one. 

Fortunately, the people at Purple Chick saved me the trouble, and already put one together in a text file attached to this compilation. For the sake of my time and my sanity, I've taken the liberty of "appropriating" their narrative/description below:

The original Complete Buddy Holly remains one of our favorite projects. (Some Purple Chick restorations even made it - via Rev-Ola's "Gotta Roll" which added unnecessary processing - onto the wonderful-but-too-flawed Hip-O Select 'complete' collection).

Because a number of new and improved sources have appeared over the last fifteen years or so, we thought it was time for a Purpler Chick Completer Buddy Holly. We redid the whole set from scratch: almost everything has either been sonically improved from the earlier version or - most of the time - is from a different source entirely.

Even better, now that we have a complete* set of Buddy's undubbed recordings we can ignore the posthumous overdubs and present the absolute complete Buddy Holly on just five CDs.

So, if you want, you can completely forget the other discs, depending on how interested you are in their various themes. For example, you might not care about our (completely redone) selection of Buddy's record collection or the experimental stereo extractions and synchronizations. In particular, the "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" stereo tracks need more work but we wanted to get the set out before doomsday.

(*NOTE: we believe the so-called 'lesser dubbed' versions of "Wishing" and "Reminiscing" are actually undubbed versions. Even if that is not the case, any overdubs are so unobtrusive that it shouldn't prevent them from being the sole exclusions from the 'undubbed' section).

AND, here's the thing. Maybe you're not a CD person anymore. Maybe you just like the files. Well, they're all named so you can copy and paste into one folder and have them run chronologically, with session recordings and interviews all mixed with the studio sessions (you'll have to remove the 'i' prefix for the interviews. (You probably want to leave the 'BRC' and 'S' prefixes alone for Buddy's record collection and experimental stereo recordings.)

So here's what we have:

DISCS 1 - 5 - The Complete Buddy Holly

All of Buddy's studio recordings, live appearances, home recordings, and interviews.

Everything comes from the best available source; with many significant sonic upgrades including, for the first (*or second) time anywhere:

- Sonic improvements to the 'first four' recordings;
- An in-line "I Guess I Was Just A Fool" without the acetate skip;
- Un-composited alternate "Don't Come Back Knockin'" take fragments;
- The complete live Maybe Baby from Off The Record*;
- "Drown In My Own Tears" without the wow and flutter;
- A new, upgraded source for the KLLL promos; and
- Many more surprises...

DISC 6 - The Completer Buddy Holly

Outfakes, songwriting and a tribute

This disc collects the important outfakes (complete takes created from incomplete sources or edits patching audio errors); all of the songs Buddy co-wrote but never recorded; plus Buddy's friend Snuff Garrett's radio show from the day the music died.

DISCS 7 - 8 - Buddy For Others

All of the circulating sessions featuring Buddy as a session guitarist, vocalist and/or producer

Featuring numerous additional session recordings compared with our last set. It seems the only significant tracks now missing are Lloyd Call's "Little Cowboy" and Carolyn Hester's "A Little While Ago"

Caveat: some of the session appearances might not include Buddy after all. We excluded tracks that definitively did not include Buddy but otherwise took a 'when in doubt, leave them in' approach (while noting any questions about Buddy's contributions).

DISCS 9 - 10 - Dick Jacobs and Norman Petty overdubs and mixes

All of the posthumous releases from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

DISCS 11 - 12

The rest of the posthumous overdubs - from the 1980s right through the 2010s.
(You'll have to buy the recent Philharmonic Orchestra CD and slot in those tracks.)

DISCS 13 - 14

Buddy's record collection; and stereo Buddy.

The original versions of the songs Buddy recorded, plus a selection of Buddy's songs in synchronized stereo and/or digitally extracted stereo.

(Most of these are Purple Chick creations but some we grabbed from the Internet and, unfortunately, did not keep attribution notes at the time. Sorry!)

DVD

OK, this is just the old DVD. We couldn't face redoing it just for about a half-second of additional HighTime footage; and to change the mistaken "Clear Lake" caption. Then again, we improved the sound of some of the 'live' recordings on the CDs so maybe we should have fixed that on the DVD as well.

So, while I am leaving the old post from 2018 up (I hate taking posts down), I am retiring the request link for the music there (the 11-disc version) in favor of the one provided below (the 14-disc-plus set). I still have the old and now apparently obsolete 11-disc version; if you're still burning to have that one as well, let me know.  Just know that everything on that set is present here as well.

Once again, I proudly offer to you all Purple Chick's new and expanded The Complete Buddy Holly v. 2.0 from 2017, in the hope that this will be the final time they modify this huge collection. Take a look, have a listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Don Dixon - Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To

For some odd reason, an old post from ten years back, Marti Jones's Unsophisticated Time (her solo debut), has been getting a lot of views this week. With that, I thought I'd take the opportunity to pen a few words regarding her future husband's first album, also put out later that year.

Don Dixon was born in South Carolina in 1950, later moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. He got into music while in junior high school there, starting with bass guitar (a cheap Danelectro Silvertone from Sears department store), which he played in a pickup band he formed with some school friends.  Later, while in high school, he moved to upright bass, and began playing with a local jazz band as an established member.

After his high school graduation, Dixon attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where in 1969, with a number of other UNC freshmen, he formed the band Arrogance. Arrogance started out as a covers band, doing versions of songs by The Beatles, Mountain, Cream and Black Sabbath, but soon began penning and performing their own original tunes. The band gained a huge following in the Piedmont area, but despite several attempts to broaden their reach and audience (including a couple of major label releases on Vanguard Records and Warner Brothers Records) and changes in their musical approach (from straight-ahead rock, to early '70s folk, late '70s New Wave/power pop and early '80s post-punk), they never managed to break out nationally. After a final series of local North Carolina concerts, Arrogance disbanded after fourteen years in 1983.

However, in late 1982, with the band obviously on its last legs, Dixon was contacted by an old friend and fellow musician, Mitch Easter, who wanted his assistance in producing the debut album by a band from Athens, Georgia who Easter had worked with the year before, a four-member combo called R.E.M. In 1981 at his small studio located in his parents' garage in Winston-Salem, Easter had produced the band's first single, "Radio Free Europe", an independent release that put R.E.M. on the map and led directly to them being signed by industry giant I.R.S. Records. The group had begun recording their first album with this major label in Boston in the fall of 1982, but the sessions had not gone well, so the band pleaded with I.R.S. to allow them to travel back to North Carolina to let Easter try his hand at producing once again. The label granted conditional permission to R.E.M. to record one song with Easter, that I.R.S. would then assess and determine if it was good enough to allow the rest of the album's recording to take place there. Easter knew he was under a lot of pressure to deliver, and therefore called upon Dixon and his trusted ear to assist him in this tryout.

Well, the rest is history: R.E.M. recorded "Pilgrimage" with Easter and Dixon producing, a song that I.R.S. subsequently flipped over, and the rest of the album, titled Murmur, was OKed for recording with the producing duo. Murmur was a huge critical success, eventually reaching #36 on the Billboard Album charts, and the reputations of both Easter and Dixon were made. From then on, a steady stream of bands came through North Carolina to have their records produced by the pair, or by Easter or Dixon separately, including Guadalcanal Diary, The Smithereens, Chris Stamey, Fetchin Bones, Game Theory, Pylon, The Connells, The Waxing Poetics, and many, many more. The sound being produced by the pair - characterized mainly by minimal/no guitar distortion and "dry" drumming - was described/celebrated as "jangle pop", and in the mid-'80s, it was the sound of college and independent alternative radio nationwide.

[Dixon's mid-eighties work in particular with Fetchin Bones, a North Carolina early proto-grunge band, almost paid big dividends for him a few years later, as he was a top choice to produce the sophomore album by a Washington State group on the verge of superstardom. As Dixon tells the story: "Fetchin Bones was definitely an early, quirky grunge band, you know, pre-grunge, because this was all in the ’80s. I got called to do that Nirvana

record [Nevermind]. Went out to spend some time with them before ”[Smells Like] Teen Spirit.” They were playing some version of it, but it didn’t have any real words yet. That was ’91. We actually worked out a deal, but they ultimately thought I wanted too much money ... Butch Vig was going to engineer, I was going to produce, but they came to their senses and didn’t give me all that money I was asking for. Butch ended up making the record and did a great job ... It only increased my respect for them that they didn’t want to waste money, because they didn’t need me. They really didn’t."]

In 1985, Dixon was assigned production duties by A&M Records for Marti Jones, who had just come off a disastrous stint with Color Me Gone and was looking to establish herself as an individual artist. Her first solo album, Unsophisticated Time, was a great critical success; although it didn't make any big waves commercially, it got her noticed in certain areas (I mentioned before how songs from this disc were in heavy rotation in the Washington, DC area in 1985-86). And it began a longstanding professional collaboration between Jones and Dixon (he produced her next four albums) that blossomed into a romance; the pair married in 1988.

But in 1985, on the strength of his reputation as a producer and residual word-of-mouth praise for his work with the now-defunct Arrogance, Enigma Records gave Dixon the opportunity to release his own solo record. His initial outing, titled Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To, contains recordings and reworkings of songs from his personal music stash of demos and singles written and performed over the previous five years.  Some dated back from his Arrogance days, others were 4-track home recordings and one had been recently recorded at Mitch Easter’s garage studio (a cover of Nick Lowe's "Skin Deep", featuring Easter on lead guitar).   But all of them showcase Dixon's clever, sometimes biting wordplay, vocal adeptness, and affection for ’60s pop and R&B. I found the entire disc to be pretty good.

This album did practically nothing on the mainstream charts (reaching a high of only #162 on the Billboard Album rankings).  But it was championed by alternative and college radio; the disc's lead single "Praying Mantis" was played constantly on DC's WHFS for weeks in late 1985/early 1986.  Here's the video:

Dixon recorded prolifically for the next three decades, mostly between producing duties, releasing eleven more albums either individually or in collaboration with other artists, including his wife.  He hasn't put out a record of his own since 2013's High & Filthy & Borderline. But he still occasionally performs, usually with Marti Jones, and they are both still beloved and appreciated by generations of music fans, myself included.

Despite containing one of Dixon's most popular, enduring songs, his debut album has long been out of print, and rather difficult to track down online.  Therefore, here it is for your enjoyment: Don Dixon's impossibly hard-to-find solo debut album, Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To, released on Enigma Records in the latter half of 1985.   Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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