Wowee, after a coupla weekends of "specialty" posts I'm back doin' the reg'lar roundup of everyday normil recordings that I've received as of late, and as usual I SHORE DO HOPE YOU 'PRECIATE IT ALL!
Got some goodies to share wit'cha as usual, and I just know you'll be rushin' to the corner store to buy up every bitta the treats I've clued you in on because hey...if you're that much of an introvert that your entire week rotates around readin' this trash you're probably goofy enough to take every word and comma that I peck out at face value! Oh well, it could be worse like eh, maybe you take alla my COMPETITORS' blogs for what they spit out as the Gospel Truth an' ya know that really ain't exactly the case with them fakirs!!!
But the real kicker to that 'un was when I decided to check a lower bin and pulled out a Screamin' Jay Hawkins platter with a similar cartoon cover featuring the famed musical pioneer! Now that was a record I recall definitely wanting to snatch up for my collection albeit the dream kinda fizzled out after that!
But even that doesn't top the one I had the morning of September 29th of this year. In this nocturnal somnission I have somehow been selected to join...now get this...15-60-75 the Numbers Band as a guitarist! I'm at the club we are to appear at and have my guitar in hand, nothing spectacular in looks but I am proud of it because I always wanted a fancy instrument like this (procured in a previous dream whilst shopping at a nonexistent music shop in Youngstown Ohio), but then again I realize that I know nada about what music is going to be played or for that fact how to play a guitar which stymies me no end! (Of course a situation such as this would never happen in real life since it was the practice of Robert Kidney et. al. to not only pick a good player for the band but to rehearse the standards until the new member was well versed! But then again how I got selected to join the band, and this dream taking place back in the seventies as well, is a total mystery)
It is evening and we are scheduled to play at some rank 'n rundown outta the way dive. I see the stage where the opening act which was a throwback to the glitter days of yore with platforms and face makeup are playing and strangely enough the rest of the Numbers (I espy Robert Kidney and the other guitarist who wore a long ponytail---maybe Chrissie Hynde's brother too) seem to be acting rather cool towards me though not exactly unfriendly. All I'm thinking about is exactly what I am going to do once I get on the stage...perhaps try to fake my way or make atonal sounds and hope they fit in...but whatever I'm hoping that I can remember all of those bar chords I usedta know just in case...
Tuning the guitar is becoming a struggle, and I step into the men's room which I believe also doubles as the group's dressing room which would figure. Turns out that at the end of the room a door exposing a bee-youtiful lakeside view opens, and I gaze into the lake and can see starfish and coral. The overall scene looks placid enough, and that's all I can remember.
Here's a snap I discovered while pouring through a box of old correspondence from the early-nineties, which is right around the time when this photo was taken come t'think of it. It's a graven image of none other than memeME
and I thought I'd post it here not only just for kicks sake, but because I think I look pretty "cool" here what with my five o'clock shadow to rival Nixon's, that Captain Kangaroo-esque double chin, disingenuous grin and of course the unwashed hair that makes me come off like a real tough guy that most of those stringy bloggers who hate my guts certainly wouldn't want to deal with lest they break a fingernail amongst other appendages! Gazing upon this particular visage sure brought back a whole load of memories that I perhaps would have preferred to have been kept repressed (after all, fanzine publishing isn't the fun la de da life many impressionable youth make it out to be), and if there's anything I really like to share with you its my own personal misery so snivel on pilgrims!
now, eh???
Public Speaking-CARESS, REDACT CD (Floordoor Records)
I've heard a number of similarly styled recordings lately, but Jason Anthony Harris' Public Speaking is one of those platters that I just couldn't pass up mentioning in these hallowed pages. Hard to categorize this 'un since it takes in some rather unfamiliar to myself terrain, but at least to these grizzled ears I can hear echoes of eighties English import pop, seventies English avant garde "serious" sounds (Michael Nyman and This Heat somehow come to mind, and while we're talking avant garde I even heard one definite Conlon Nancarrow reference!) as well as other hoary old musical points only an aged fanabla like I can remember. The results are a quiet if subliminally stirring music that sounds as if it were taken from a forgotten drug-induced dream from the previous night, with a hazy feeling to it that I remember a few Japanese post-rock acts working into their repertoires about fifteen or so years back. It's sure great hearing something created in the here and now that really lacks pretension.
STINKY TOYS CD (Vogue France)
Many a soul warned me not to snatch up anything by this French punk rock aggregation, and I was perhaps aghast at the story about how Stinky Toys' gal lead singer was such a temperamental prima donna of the donna-est kind, but dang if this album just ain't the kinda thing to get my vital juices all in order. Elli Medeiros sings in a slightly offkey twangy punk rock sorta way while the band cranks out early-seventies Rolling Stones cum Velvet Underground rock that sounds so good it coulda been done up like mid-Ameriga 1975 style and you wouldn't have even blinked. Once again proof that the French can play hotcha rock 'n roll and I'll take Stinky Toys over a good portion of the pretentioso flub-a-dub punk musings that have cluttered up our civilization these past few decades I'll tell ya!
Lydia Lunch and Weasel Walter-BRUTAL MEASURES CD (Widowspeak)
Lydia is still at it a good almost fortysome years afterwords, spewing out a whole load of neo-Burroughsian rant and rave that somehow sounds quaint next to the spiritual successors of her "womanist" stylings. Weasel Walter adds drums that recall the Andrew Cyrille BYG album with a tad bit of electronic fun thrown in.
Lydia sounds a whole lot older than the Teenage Jesus self used to, with a heavy cigarette voice that really drives the venom home and the drums are about as fitting as those backings to Emilio Cubeiro on that one album of his that the New Yorkelite scum at up way back when (y'know, the one where he mentioned this vignette about there being nothing wrong with a guy having sex with his five-year-old daughter because she enjoyed it) most certainly were.
If you still take everything that dragon-faced anti-moralist rasper Diamanda Galas says at face value and own a DVD of MONDO NEW YORK you probably will like this---I like it even if I loathe Galas and never saw that film so I guess I am the odd fanabla out, right?
Ed Kuepper-LOST CITIES CD-r burn (originally on Prince Melon Records)
Ex-Saints or something like that guitarist Kuepper really does a nifty re-write of Judy Collins' "Send in the Clowns" on opening track "Pavenne", and his folkie muse continues throughout to the point where you wonder if Prozac being pumped into the water supply wouldn't be a great idea after all. Well it's obviously a singer/songwriter introspective and all that effort, however there's a certain element to it that jibes with my creepier side to the point where I can empathize en toto. Actually the depressing mood of this might have worked enough to get that overly-sensitive gal you knew in college to share more'n her Algebra II homework with you, but considering my current state of mind it ain't exactly like I want to get gloomier'n I can sometimes get during these downer days. Might connect with you serious pre-avant garde jazz-era Tim Buckley fans and people who like to press leaves in ancient books.
THE EDDIE ALBERT ALBUM CD-r burn (originally on Columbia)
Yes its Oliver Wendell Douglas from tee-vee's very own GREEN ACRES cashing in on his notoriety with a hip album containing not only a Simon and Garfunkel cover ("Homeward Bound") but some Dylan and even the Sandpipers fave "Guantanamera" (which the heads of the past used to spoof as "A Ton of Marijuana"...remember that doper humor so teenbo hip back inna seventies?).
Albert even does a new version of the infamous GREEN ACRES theme as well as some then in-style thirties standbys, camping everything up when necessary yet turning on the ol' emote with his deeply moving renditions of "Don't Think Twice" just aimed at the younger portion of his listening audience. Heck, it even comes to the point where you kinda get the ol' intuition that Albert felt that he was performing a "meaningful" and "relevant" duty in bridging the generation gap somehow, or is that just the cover shot with a rather loose looking tee-vee actor posing with his kids including future star in his own right "Edward" Albert?
Whatever the resultant effect may have on you, this personally makes me wish more of the GREEN ACRES cast got to do their own albums with Dylan and S&G covers galore. I mean, couldn't you just imagine a Mr. Kimball album featuring "Hattie Carroll"..."William Zantzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll...well, I don't know if she was that poor since I heard she had quite a lotta money socked away from her numbers racket and maybe he didn't kill her at all, like she could have really died of gastritis for all I know..." Then you can just hear a voice from the control room goin' "What about Hattie Carroll?" "Who?"
THE SUNNY MEADOWS RADIO SHOW 1929 WITH MUGGSY SPANIER CD-r burn (originally on Sunbeam)
More of those old tymey memories that dredge up a few teary-eyed reminiscences of Bus Eubanks. If your heart is marooned in The Jazz Age this li'l spinner should get you a-hoppin' what with the Ray Miller Orchestra blasting a whole load of hip swivelin' dance music while the Meadows Company get the opportunity to plug their low-grade washing machines. So good that I thought I was watching some old silent-era Educational Comedy short that I got via Grapevine Video these songs are that authentic to the late-twenties popular music game. The tenor voiced singer can get to ya a bit (he's kinda nasal-y) but otherwise this offering is just one more good reason as to why someone should invent a Wayback Machine so's we can head back to them really good ol' days and have some fun for once!
Various Artists-LIVE AT THE VORTEX VOL. 1 Cd-r burn (originally on NEMS, England)
O'er in England the kidz were so punk rock crazy that the record labels didn't even know where to START as far as it came to signing and packaging a whole loada young upstart bands. Thankfully there were a whole buncha good documentations of the days there than there were here, what with even the nth-string band getting a recording contract and maybe even a much-coveted mention in one of the weaklies. And if it weren't for alla that hubbub a record like this, recorded at the short-lived Vortex club, probably wouldn't've even existed inna first place. Good thing too because this 'un's fairly good straight ahead punk (at least most of the time) that woulda probably sounded better had Raw or Stiff released it but eh! You get the Wasps doing a version of "Waiting For My Man" that's almost as good as the Imperial Dogs or most of those Ladbrook Grove bands who'd been doing it for the past ten years, while Bernie Torme's heavy metal is pretty good even though none of the critics that I knew of liked him. Other under-the-underground faves like the Art Attacks and Neo show up and considering that this sampler coulda sounded like be glad it's still a straight ahead rock 'n roll item and not just a cheap cash in (which can work on its own funzy level as any serious collector of the form could tell ya!).
John Stewart & Scott Engel-I ONLY CAME TO DANCE WITH YOU CD-r burn (originally on Tower)
The Walker Brothers never did register in my mid-sixties mind the way other mop top maniacs of the day most certainly did, so it ain't like I was that anxious to drag this 'un outta the leaning tower of Cee-Dees that make up a variety of Bill 'n Paul burns cluttering up my burp-laden bedroom these past umpteen years. Turns out this was a pleasant spin even though there's little of the ram-bunk-shuh! that made the mid-sixties so memorable at least for moi. The vocal numbers have that typical neo-Spectorian Walker woosh to 'em guaranteed to get even the frigidest of femmes thawed out, while the instrumental covers of various past hits 'n the like have some shards of past rockist accomplishment even if the originals are better. Of course I wouldn't trade my Sonics or Seeds for this platter, but if I had any Melanie ones I most certainly would!
Ray Anthony-THE TWIST CD-r burn (originally on Capitol)
Talk about crass cash ins! Back inna early-sixties everything was so twist crazy that even Mantovani put out a twist album! Whatever possessed Ray Anthony to do one I'll never know, but the music heard on this album (mostly covers of fairly recent instrumental wonders with some sorta twist motif tossed into the title) is so down pat nada that I don't think that even Jackie Kennedy would've swiveled her bony hips to this! Not that the players don't cook and even a guaranteed flounder like "Hound Dog Twist" appeals in a trashy b&w Saturday afternoon UHF TV sorta way, but only a downright and insanely obsessive twist maniac woulda gone for a platter like this back during those rather up and down days. I smell a 1971 flea market record bin stuffer here!
Lalo Schifrin-"BULLITT" SOUNDTRACK" CD-r burn (originally on Warner Brothers-Seven Arts)
Never did see the film so like this 'un doesn't really register any warm 'n toasties with me like they might with Bill Shute. On its lonesome the music doesn't do a thing for my like the soundtrack to a then-contemporary film like say, CANDY might. General jazzoid jamz that don't exactly thrill this particular pud and frankly I get the feeling that you might be snoozed out by the late-sixties schmooze of it all---unless you're the kinda guy who I used to see hanging out at the bar area of some restaurant complete with one-inch sideburns puffing away on cigarettes watching football. Ya know, the kinda guy who was also buzzed enough that the woman he's chatting up looks like Venus to him even though you could have used her chest for an aircraft carrier. Some memories are best left buried.
Various Artists-RANDOLPH THE ROUGE-NOSED REINDEER CD-r burn (Bill Shute)
It's a li'l too early for Christmas but I have been known to rip into a package or two before its "don't open until X-mas" date. Here's one, sorta, and though the Christmas quota ain't that big it sure would be a good thing to spin during the Holidays 'stead of that dippy Paul McCartney song the rock stations play to death every year. A definite Southern bent to this what with the likes of the Elgins and the Mirrors (both from Big Spring Texas) doing some fairly good early-sixties styled soul that never woulda made it big despite its boffo beat, not forgetting Fred Crawford singing about some football game and Jimmie Riddle who sure SOUNDS Southern. And of course the infamous Justin Wilson (who used to clog up a whole lotta PBS tee-vee time during the eighties) does some not-so-funny thing about safe driving as well as a couple Christmas numbers that do fit into the overall holiday spin of things. This disque even ends with some Country Music Association propaganda platter where Roy Acuff and Tex Ritter shoot the shinola about promoting C&W sounds. Given what drek the whole "new" Country Music scene is I kinda get the idea that had they known they woulda kept their big mouths shut---either that or die from self-inflicted lead poisoning!
Got some goodies to share wit'cha as usual, and I just know you'll be rushin' to the corner store to buy up every bitta the treats I've clued you in on because hey...if you're that much of an introvert that your entire week rotates around readin' this trash you're probably goofy enough to take every word and comma that I peck out at face value! Oh well, it could be worse like eh, maybe you take alla my COMPETITORS' blogs for what they spit out as the Gospel Truth an' ya know that really ain't exactly the case with them fakirs!!!
***Ain't been having that many rock et roll oriented dreams that I can proudly tell you about like I had been experiencing say...a few months or so back...at least the kind that are worthy of repeating in this here blog even if the only one who really has anything to say about 'em is Brad Kohler. Like take the one I had last week where I was at some old-styled supermarket and saw a row of records for sale just like some of those kinda markets used to have when I was a kid! Only instead of just some small bin with a handfulla platters I'd like to get amidst the classical and crooner stuff (such as the one at D'onofrio's which had THE WHO SELL OUT for like $3.50 which was still a humongous amount for a thirteen-year-old like myself to dish out) there was a rather hefty number of albums for sale in a section that would perhaps equal the size of those found in stereo shops around the same time. Anyhoo I pull one spinner outta the pile and it turns out to be a Simon and Garfunkel one with tracks taken from their Tom and Jerry days which I actually pondered getting. It had a nice bright cover too complete with a cartoon-like pic of the two in their mid-fifties teenage days striking a rockin' kinda dance pose akin to them doin' the Charleston...further excursions into the bin popped up other S&G platters with artwork in a drawing style similar to the first one I dug up only with the more early-seventies era-looking twosome in situations that seemed ridiculous, like operating some recording contraption using brainwave power complete with electrodes attached to their foreheads.
But the real kicker to that 'un was when I decided to check a lower bin and pulled out a Screamin' Jay Hawkins platter with a similar cartoon cover featuring the famed musical pioneer! Now that was a record I recall definitely wanting to snatch up for my collection albeit the dream kinda fizzled out after that!
But even that doesn't top the one I had the morning of September 29th of this year. In this nocturnal somnission I have somehow been selected to join...now get this...15-60-75 the Numbers Band as a guitarist! I'm at the club we are to appear at and have my guitar in hand, nothing spectacular in looks but I am proud of it because I always wanted a fancy instrument like this (procured in a previous dream whilst shopping at a nonexistent music shop in Youngstown Ohio), but then again I realize that I know nada about what music is going to be played or for that fact how to play a guitar which stymies me no end! (Of course a situation such as this would never happen in real life since it was the practice of Robert Kidney et. al. to not only pick a good player for the band but to rehearse the standards until the new member was well versed! But then again how I got selected to join the band, and this dream taking place back in the seventies as well, is a total mystery)
It is evening and we are scheduled to play at some rank 'n rundown outta the way dive. I see the stage where the opening act which was a throwback to the glitter days of yore with platforms and face makeup are playing and strangely enough the rest of the Numbers (I espy Robert Kidney and the other guitarist who wore a long ponytail---maybe Chrissie Hynde's brother too) seem to be acting rather cool towards me though not exactly unfriendly. All I'm thinking about is exactly what I am going to do once I get on the stage...perhaps try to fake my way or make atonal sounds and hope they fit in...but whatever I'm hoping that I can remember all of those bar chords I usedta know just in case...
Tuning the guitar is becoming a struggle, and I step into the men's room which I believe also doubles as the group's dressing room which would figure. Turns out that at the end of the room a door exposing a bee-youtiful lakeside view opens, and I gaze into the lake and can see starfish and coral. The overall scene looks placid enough, and that's all I can remember.
***
and I thought I'd post it here not only just for kicks sake, but because I think I look pretty "cool" here what with my five o'clock shadow to rival Nixon's, that Captain Kangaroo-esque double chin, disingenuous grin and of course the unwashed hair that makes me come off like a real tough guy that most of those stringy bloggers who hate my guts certainly wouldn't want to deal with lest they break a fingernail amongst other appendages! Gazing upon this particular visage sure brought back a whole load of memories that I perhaps would have preferred to have been kept repressed (after all, fanzine publishing isn't the fun la de da life many impressionable youth make it out to be), and if there's anything I really like to share with you its my own personal misery so snivel on pilgrims!
***Now if you have any old pictures of yourself YOU'D like to see posted here do send them along. However I just might post 'em in order to get a rise outta the blog's reg'lar audience because we do need to inject a li'l humor into this thing. Until I can dredge up a chuckle or two howz'bout just giving this post a read
I've heard a number of similarly styled recordings lately, but Jason Anthony Harris' Public Speaking is one of those platters that I just couldn't pass up mentioning in these hallowed pages. Hard to categorize this 'un since it takes in some rather unfamiliar to myself terrain, but at least to these grizzled ears I can hear echoes of eighties English import pop, seventies English avant garde "serious" sounds (Michael Nyman and This Heat somehow come to mind, and while we're talking avant garde I even heard one definite Conlon Nancarrow reference!) as well as other hoary old musical points only an aged fanabla like I can remember. The results are a quiet if subliminally stirring music that sounds as if it were taken from a forgotten drug-induced dream from the previous night, with a hazy feeling to it that I remember a few Japanese post-rock acts working into their repertoires about fifteen or so years back. It's sure great hearing something created in the here and now that really lacks pretension.
***
Many a soul warned me not to snatch up anything by this French punk rock aggregation, and I was perhaps aghast at the story about how Stinky Toys' gal lead singer was such a temperamental prima donna of the donna-est kind, but dang if this album just ain't the kinda thing to get my vital juices all in order. Elli Medeiros sings in a slightly offkey twangy punk rock sorta way while the band cranks out early-seventies Rolling Stones cum Velvet Underground rock that sounds so good it coulda been done up like mid-Ameriga 1975 style and you wouldn't have even blinked. Once again proof that the French can play hotcha rock 'n roll and I'll take Stinky Toys over a good portion of the pretentioso flub-a-dub punk musings that have cluttered up our civilization these past few decades I'll tell ya!
***
Lydia is still at it a good almost fortysome years afterwords, spewing out a whole load of neo-Burroughsian rant and rave that somehow sounds quaint next to the spiritual successors of her "womanist" stylings. Weasel Walter adds drums that recall the Andrew Cyrille BYG album with a tad bit of electronic fun thrown in.
Lydia sounds a whole lot older than the Teenage Jesus self used to, with a heavy cigarette voice that really drives the venom home and the drums are about as fitting as those backings to Emilio Cubeiro on that one album of his that the New York
If you still take everything that dragon-faced anti-moralist rasper Diamanda Galas says at face value and own a DVD of MONDO NEW YORK you probably will like this---I like it even if I loathe Galas and never saw that film so I guess I am the odd fanabla out, right?
***
Ex-Saints or something like that guitarist Kuepper really does a nifty re-write of Judy Collins' "Send in the Clowns" on opening track "Pavenne", and his folkie muse continues throughout to the point where you wonder if Prozac being pumped into the water supply wouldn't be a great idea after all. Well it's obviously a singer/songwriter introspective and all that effort, however there's a certain element to it that jibes with my creepier side to the point where I can empathize en toto. Actually the depressing mood of this might have worked enough to get that overly-sensitive gal you knew in college to share more'n her Algebra II homework with you, but considering my current state of mind it ain't exactly like I want to get gloomier'n I can sometimes get during these downer days. Might connect with you serious pre-avant garde jazz-era Tim Buckley fans and people who like to press leaves in ancient books.
***
Yes its Oliver Wendell Douglas from tee-vee's very own GREEN ACRES cashing in on his notoriety with a hip album containing not only a Simon and Garfunkel cover ("Homeward Bound") but some Dylan and even the Sandpipers fave "Guantanamera" (which the heads of the past used to spoof as "A Ton of Marijuana"...remember that doper humor so teenbo hip back inna seventies?).
Albert even does a new version of the infamous GREEN ACRES theme as well as some then in-style thirties standbys, camping everything up when necessary yet turning on the ol' emote with his deeply moving renditions of "Don't Think Twice" just aimed at the younger portion of his listening audience. Heck, it even comes to the point where you kinda get the ol' intuition that Albert felt that he was performing a "meaningful" and "relevant" duty in bridging the generation gap somehow, or is that just the cover shot with a rather loose looking tee-vee actor posing with his kids including future star in his own right "Edward" Albert?
Whatever the resultant effect may have on you, this personally makes me wish more of the GREEN ACRES cast got to do their own albums with Dylan and S&G covers galore. I mean, couldn't you just imagine a Mr. Kimball album featuring "Hattie Carroll"..."William Zantzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll...well, I don't know if she was that poor since I heard she had quite a lotta money socked away from her numbers racket and maybe he didn't kill her at all, like she could have really died of gastritis for all I know..." Then you can just hear a voice from the control room goin' "What about Hattie Carroll?" "Who?"
***
More of those old tymey memories that dredge up a few teary-eyed reminiscences of Bus Eubanks. If your heart is marooned in The Jazz Age this li'l spinner should get you a-hoppin' what with the Ray Miller Orchestra blasting a whole load of hip swivelin' dance music while the Meadows Company get the opportunity to plug their low-grade washing machines. So good that I thought I was watching some old silent-era Educational Comedy short that I got via Grapevine Video these songs are that authentic to the late-twenties popular music game. The tenor voiced singer can get to ya a bit (he's kinda nasal-y) but otherwise this offering is just one more good reason as to why someone should invent a Wayback Machine so's we can head back to them really good ol' days and have some fun for once!
***
O'er in England the kidz were so punk rock crazy that the record labels didn't even know where to START as far as it came to signing and packaging a whole loada young upstart bands. Thankfully there were a whole buncha good documentations of the days there than there were here, what with even the nth-string band getting a recording contract and maybe even a much-coveted mention in one of the weaklies. And if it weren't for alla that hubbub a record like this, recorded at the short-lived Vortex club, probably wouldn't've even existed inna first place. Good thing too because this 'un's fairly good straight ahead punk (at least most of the time) that woulda probably sounded better had Raw or Stiff released it but eh! You get the Wasps doing a version of "Waiting For My Man" that's almost as good as the Imperial Dogs or most of those Ladbrook Grove bands who'd been doing it for the past ten years, while Bernie Torme's heavy metal is pretty good even though none of the critics that I knew of liked him. Other under-the-underground faves like the Art Attacks and Neo show up and considering that this sampler coulda sounded like be glad it's still a straight ahead rock 'n roll item and not just a cheap cash in (which can work on its own funzy level as any serious collector of the form could tell ya!).
***
The Walker Brothers never did register in my mid-sixties mind the way other mop top maniacs of the day most certainly did, so it ain't like I was that anxious to drag this 'un outta the leaning tower of Cee-Dees that make up a variety of Bill 'n Paul burns cluttering up my burp-laden bedroom these past umpteen years. Turns out this was a pleasant spin even though there's little of the ram-bunk-shuh! that made the mid-sixties so memorable at least for moi. The vocal numbers have that typical neo-Spectorian Walker woosh to 'em guaranteed to get even the frigidest of femmes thawed out, while the instrumental covers of various past hits 'n the like have some shards of past rockist accomplishment even if the originals are better. Of course I wouldn't trade my Sonics or Seeds for this platter, but if I had any Melanie ones I most certainly would!
***
Ray Anthony-THE TWIST CD-r burn (originally on Capitol)
Talk about crass cash ins! Back inna early-sixties everything was so twist crazy that even Mantovani put out a twist album! Whatever possessed Ray Anthony to do one I'll never know, but the music heard on this album (mostly covers of fairly recent instrumental wonders with some sorta twist motif tossed into the title) is so down pat nada that I don't think that even Jackie Kennedy would've swiveled her bony hips to this! Not that the players don't cook and even a guaranteed flounder like "Hound Dog Twist" appeals in a trashy b&w Saturday afternoon UHF TV sorta way, but only a downright and insanely obsessive twist maniac woulda gone for a platter like this back during those rather up and down days. I smell a 1971 flea market record bin stuffer here!
***
Never did see the film so like this 'un doesn't really register any warm 'n toasties with me like they might with Bill Shute. On its lonesome the music doesn't do a thing for my like the soundtrack to a then-contemporary film like say, CANDY might. General jazzoid jamz that don't exactly thrill this particular pud and frankly I get the feeling that you might be snoozed out by the late-sixties schmooze of it all---unless you're the kinda guy who I used to see hanging out at the bar area of some restaurant complete with one-inch sideburns puffing away on cigarettes watching football. Ya know, the kinda guy who was also buzzed enough that the woman he's chatting up looks like Venus to him even though you could have used her chest for an aircraft carrier. Some memories are best left buried.
***
Various Artists-RANDOLPH THE ROUGE-NOSED REINDEER CD-r burn (Bill Shute)It's a li'l too early for Christmas but I have been known to rip into a package or two before its "don't open until X-mas" date. Here's one, sorta, and though the Christmas quota ain't that big it sure would be a good thing to spin during the Holidays 'stead of that dippy Paul McCartney song the rock stations play to death every year. A definite Southern bent to this what with the likes of the Elgins and the Mirrors (both from Big Spring Texas) doing some fairly good early-sixties styled soul that never woulda made it big despite its boffo beat, not forgetting Fred Crawford singing about some football game and Jimmie Riddle who sure SOUNDS Southern. And of course the infamous Justin Wilson (who used to clog up a whole lotta PBS tee-vee time during the eighties) does some not-so-funny thing about safe driving as well as a couple Christmas numbers that do fit into the overall holiday spin of things. This disque even ends with some Country Music Association propaganda platter where Roy Acuff and Tex Ritter shoot the shinola about promoting C&W sounds. Given what drek the whole "new" Country Music scene is I kinda get the idea that had they known they woulda kept their big mouths shut---either that or die from self-inflicted lead poisoning!
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