Sunday, April 25, 2010

Downey Blues- Blues from Wenzel's Music Town



Awesome 60's blue collar blues from Southern California !!...

1. Midnight Bells Are Ringing -T-Bone Walker Jr.
2. Leave My Woman Alone- Ace Holder
3. Chip Chop (My Fair Lady) - Jessie Hill
4. Sorry 'Bout That - Chuck Higgins
5. I've Got News for You - Little Johnny Taylor
6. Woodshed - Jessie Hill
7. Happy Anniversary- Ace Holder
8. Empty Feeling- T-Bone Walker Jr.
9. Understanding - Jessie Hill
10. When You Are Around- Ace Holder
11. Night Scene - Chuck Higgins
12. Down the Street - Jessie Hill
13. Stop Fooling Around - Little Johnny Taylor
14. This Love of Mine- Ace Holder
15. TV Guide - Jessie Hill
16. Sumptin Else- T-Bone Walker Jr.
17. Never Thought - Jessie Hill
18. Doris Tee- Ace Holder

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Another Man's Gold - Lost Treasures from the Vaults 1959-69, Vol. 2




Kim Fowley had been bouncing around the edges of the Los Angeles music scene for a few years when he scored a hit single in 1960 with "Alley Oop," an odd little novelty single credited to the Hollywood Argyles, with Fowley talking hipster style about the once popular comic strip caveman over a simple, clanking backing track. "Alley Oop" convinced Fowley that the public had a taste for the eccentric and gimmicky if it was packed right, and ever since, the man has been delivering the eccentric and gimmicky as a songwriter, producer and occasional recording artist on a regular basis. The cultural archivists at Norton Records have paired up with Fowley to collect some of the more interesting items from his career in the music biz, and Another Man's Gold: Lost Treasure from The Vaults 1959-69: Vol. 2 pulls together 16 oddball single sides Fowley produced during his heyday. Another Man's Gold isn't quite as aggressively quirky as its companion volume One Man's Garbage (which includes Althea & the Memories' inarguably amazing "Worst Record Ever Made"), but that's not to say Fowley doesn't dig up some prize winners here, most notably a head-scratching comedy routine by the Players called "Memories of a High School Bride," the "Johnny B. Goode" parody/ripoff "Surfer's Rule" by the Rituals, and a pair of hilariously dated topical items, "Long Hair, Unsquare Dude Called Jack" by the Hollywood Argyles and Fowley's own "Big Sur, Bear Mountain, Ciro's, Flip Side Protest Song," a folk-rock experiment that goofs on protest numbers while name dropping Bob Dylan and the Byrds. Of course, one of the reasons Fowley was able to get away with cutting crazy stuff like this for so long is that he would occasionally score a hit, and if there aren't any here, a bunch of the songs on this disc are pretty great, such as the killer instrumentals "Ghost Train" by the Renegades and "Teen Machine" by the Gamblers, as well as a couple solid girl group numbers in "Gone But Not Forgotten" by the Cover Girls and "Eleventh Commandment of Love" by Bonnie & the Treasures. And even when he was aiming for weirdness, Fowley's knack for a hook and a witty lyric meant he was better at it than most of his peers, and though Another Man's Gold isn't as strong as its sibling collection, it confirms that the man's archive doubtless merits greater investigation (and his liner notes suggest this man ought to try writing his autobiography one of these days, which ought to be one crazed read if it ever happens).

01 Geronimo 01:48
02 Big Sur, Bear Mountain, Ciro's, Flip Side, Protest Song 02:26
03 Teen Machine 01:48
04 Vaquero Beat 02:19
05 Memories of a High School Bride 03:53
06 Fallout 01:47
07 Gone But Not Forgotten 01:51
08 Heartbeat 01:43
09 Surfers Rule 02:47
10 Eleventh Commandment of Love 02:37
11 Ghost Train 01:43
12 Long Hair, Unsquare Dude Called Jack 02:32
13 Bounty Hunter 02:14
14 Daddy Said 02:20
15 March of the Siamese Children 02:02
16 Gone

Monday, April 12, 2010

Acid and Flowers - 21 Late 1960s Psych Rarities (Timothy's Brain TB-104)




1. Crystal Chandelier - "The Setting of Despair" (2:45)
2. Last Word - "Bidin' My Time" (2:13)
3. Whatever - "The Valley of Death" (2:20)
4. Allies - "I'll Sell My Soul" (2:45)
5. World Column - "Lantern Gospel" (3:27)
6. Hobbits - "Strawberry Children" (3:23)
7. Picture - "Evolution" (4:24)
8. West Coast Branch - "Colors of My Life" (2:30)
9. Morticians - "It's Gonna Take a While" (2:36)
10. First National Band - "When Once It Was Good" (2:42)
11. Savage Genreation - "You're Not Going to Change My World" (3:03)
12. Starfires - "There's Still Time" (1:59)
13. Hindenburg Lyon - "Eden" (2:13)
14. Ford Theater - "Jefferson Airplane" (3:04)
15. Lords - "Death Bells at Dawn" (2:48)
16. United Travel Service - "Wind and Stone" (3:21)
17. Culver Street Playground - "East River Lovers" (2:54)
18. Utopia Carwash - "Loneliness" (3:20)
19. Venus Flytrap - "The Note" (3:14)
20. Rainy Daze - "In My Mind Lives a Forest" (2:49)
21. Zero Tolerance - "Acid and Flowers" (3:24)

Friday, April 9, 2010

A Walk in Alice's Garden - 32 Rare 60's Psych Tunes



01 - BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Dr Who
02 - The Explosive - Miss Alice's Garden
03 - Wonderland - Moscow
04 - Svensk - Dream Machine
05 - Kenny Everitt - Nice Time
06 - Warm Sounds - Birds & Bees
07 - Skip Bifferty - Cover Girl
08 - Andy Kim - Rainbow Ride
09 - Rhubard Rhubard - Rainmaker
10 - Elmar Gantry's Velvet Opera - Salisbury Plain
11 - Andy Kim - Ressurection
12 - Svensk - Getting Old
13 - Rhubarb Rhubard - Money Lender
14 - Kenny Everitt - Another Little Train No
15 - Plastic Penny - Genevieve
16 - Wonderland - Poochy
17 - The Explosive - Cities Make The Country Cold
18 - Everybody - Do Like The Children Do
19 - The Capes Of Good Hope - Winter's Children
20 - The Explosive - Step Out Of Line
21 - The Explosive - I Get My Kicks From Living
22 - Hermin's Hermits - Marcel
23 - The Rainy Daze - In My Mind Lives A Forest
24 - Ola - That's Why I Cry
25 - Everybody - The Shape Of Things To Come
26 - New York Public Library - Got To Get Away
27 - The Garden Of Eden - Got To Get Away
28 - Ola - What A Way To Die
29 - The Hobbits - Everything's Turning Out Fine
30 - The Neat Change - I Lied To Aunty May
31 - Consortium - All The Love In The world
32 - Julie Driscoll - Road To Cairo

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Kim Fowley - Outrageous (1968)




reissue of 1968 Imperial album from the self-proclaimed "MAYOR OF SUNSET STRIP" Kim Fowley, who's produced, recorded with, written songs for or performed with, Frank Zappa, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, The Who, Soft Machine, Jimi Hendrix, Kiss, Alice Cooper, The Runaways, and the list goes on and on...

01. Animal Man (2.42)
02. Wildfire (4.08)
03. Hide & Seek (2.09)
04. Chinese Water Torture (0.43)
05. Nightrider (2.22)
06. Bubble Gum (2.27)
07. Inner Space Discovery (4.01)
08. Barefoot Country Boy (2.01)
09. Up (14.28)
a. Up
b. Caught in the Middle
c. Down
10. California Hayride (1.17)

Friday, April 2, 2010

Kim Fowley - One Man's Garbage- Lost Treasures From The Vaults 1959-1969 Volume One


Kim Fowley is a mad genius if the music business has ever produced such a thing; as a songwriter, producer, manager, and idea man, he's enjoyed steady success over the course of a career that's spanned seven decades (!), but there's always been a wild and sleazy undercurrent in his music that befits a man who has frequently gone out of his way to paint himself as a sex-crazed scam artist out for a buck. (Read Fowley's contributions to Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen's oral history of the Los Angeles punk scene, We Got the Neutron Bomb, or his extended interview in issue nineteen of the garage rock journal Ugly Things for evidence.) Fowley has had his hands in more than a few hit records over the years, but he's also cut at least as many discs that are marvels of perverse inspiration the mass audience could not fathom, and the folks at Norton Records (a label built around inspiration at its most perverse) have given Fowley a chance to share some of his more interesting smash flops in a pair of compilations. One Man's Garbage: Lost Treasures from the Vaults 1959-1969, Vol. 1 features 16 tracks Fowley produced (and sometimes sings) that somehow failed to become hits; in the case of grooving instrumentals like "Bodacious" by the U.S. Rockets or "Inferno" by Johnny C & the Blazers, it's hard to say why they didn't click, but once you get into the joyously dumb "Big Fat Alaskan" by Donnie & the Outcasts, or the oddball novelty disc "The Rebel" by the Players, it seems fairly evident that sometimes Fowley was amusing himself and his friends rather than aiming for the charts, and "I Saw Her First" by Bruce & Jerry (featuring future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston) and "Late Late Show" by the Patterns push the clichés of '60s teen pop into directions that are clearly meant to be parody despite their clean-cut surfaces. And when it comes to stuff like "Surf Pigs" by Fowley and Mars Bonfire and Althea

& the Memories' justifiably legendary "Worst Record Ever Made," the man seems to be making some sort of elaborate inside commentary on the ephemeral nature of pop music that's funny and truly bizarre at the same time. On pretty much every song, it's clear Fowley has a way with a tune and a smart lyric (no matter what the thinking is behind it), and this music comes from the era when nearly every studio in Los Angeles was cranking out great-sounding records on a regular basis, so most of this sounds far more professional than one might imagine. One Man's Garbage is a wildly entertaining ride through the roller coaster of Kim Fowley's mind, and his crazed liner notes only add to the fun.

01 I Saw Her first
Performed by: Bruce and Jerry

02 Late Late Show
Performed by: Patterns

03 Bodacious
Performed by: U.S. Rockets

04 This Is Paradise
Performed by: Rituals

05 Big Fat Alaskan
Performed by: Donnie & The Outcasts

06 Charge
Performed by: Renegades

07 The Rebel
Performed by: Players

08 Daybreaker
Performed by: Kim and the Skippers

09 The Yo Yo Song
Performed by: Mo and Jo

10 Inferno
Performed by: Johnny C. & The Blazes

11 Music Is the Magic

12 Moccasin
Performed by: Bluebells

13 Dedication Time 2
Performed by: Althea & the Memories

14 Undergound Lady

15 Surf Pigs
Performed by: Fowley, Mars Bonfire

16 Worst Record Ever Made
Performed by: Althea & the Memories

The Art of Field Recording Volume 2



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