Undiscovered Gems of the First Psychedelic Era

Various Artists - "Nuggets, Volume 3: Pop" (1984) - Rhino Records

Hello Friends,

We recently picked up this Rhino Records compilation featuring a variety of poppy treats from late 60's garage/punk bands.  Its a little more commercial-sounding than many of the Pebbles records we've been listening to lately with many of the bands sounding as if they wanted to emulate the super-successful British Invasion bands of the time.  

You can put this record on and probably fool your hipster friends into thinking its an LP of "Apples in Stereo" B-sides!

SIDE A

1. Lies - The Knickerbockers
2. Sugar And Spice - The Cryan' Shames
3. I Feel Good (I Feel Bad) - The Lewis & Clarke Expedition
4. Sunshine Girl - The Parade
5. I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight - Boyce & Hart
6. Turn Down Day - The Cyrkle
7. You're A Very Lovely Woman - The Merry-Go- Round

SIDE B

1. Let Her Dance - The Bobby Fuller Four
2. Can I Get To Know You Better - The Turtles
3. Red Rubber Ball - The Cyrkle
4. Baby What I Mean - Spiral Starecase

5. Time Won't Let Me - The Outsiders
6. I Love You - People
7. October Country - October Country

The Knickerbockers' Beatles-sounding "Lies", The Cryan' Shames' cover of The Seachers' "Sugar Spice" and, of course, Cleveland's The Outsiders' "Time Won't Let Me" are all garage rock classics (and also appear on Rhino's fantastic 1998 4-CD set, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965 - 1968.)

The Lewis & Clarke Expedition's "I Feel Good (I Feel Bad)" and The Parade's "Sunshine Girl" are kinda fluffy-sounding, with the latter incorporating some pretty good Beach Boys-style harmonies.  Boyce & Hart were better known as songwriters but they had recording career of their own and "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" is probably their best non-Monkees hit.

Easton, Pennsylvania's own, The Cyrkle, had two minor hits with the psychedelic gems, "Turn Down Day" & "Red Rubber Ball" (written by Paul Simon), both included here.  They also opened for The Beatles on their 1966 tour.  

"You're A Very Lovely Woman" from L.A.'s The Merry-Go-Round sounds like something that might have been recorded by another L.A. band, Love. Likewise, Bobby Fuller's rockabilly-tinged "Let Her Dance" sounds a lot like The Music Explosion's "Little Bit of Soul."

"Can I Get To Know You Better" by The Turtles sounds like, well, The Turtles.  This song being one of their lesser known hits.

Spiral Starecase's "Baby What I Mean" is forgettable and way too horny (literally!)

The highlight of the record for us is the San Jose band, People, with their cover of The Zombies' early hit, "I Love You." Its like 10 degrees outside and listening to this makes us long for the warmer days of summer, surfer girls, bikinis, beach parties and ice cold beers.

October Country's "October Country" (from the album "October Country"!) closes out the record.  Decent song, but we much prefer their pop-punk classic, "My Girlfriend Is A Witch".

RATING: 4 Kisses Sweeter Than Wine out of 5

Movie Night: The Sapphires (2012)

Hello Friends,

Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its Movie Night again on Vinyl in the Valley!

Tonight we're watching a nice little film from 2012 called, The Sapphires, about an Australian girl group who takes their soulful show on the road to 1968 Vietnam to entertain the troops.   Its like an Australian version of The Commitments! 

Directed by Aussie Wayne Blair, the movie is based on a true story of four Aboriginal teenagers who leave behind the bitter racism and hostilities of their Outback homes to a world even more hostile and dangerous.  Billed as the Australian Supremes, the soulful quartet grows up pretty quickly as one is wont to do when bullets are flying past your head!

Irish actor, Chris O'Dowd (pretty amazing as always) who plays the group's scrappy, whiskey-swillin', R&B loving arranger/manager, has a great line about soul music:

Before we go than, girls when I met you you were doing all country and western thing and that's fine we all make mistakes. But here is what we learn from that mistake. Country and western music is about loss. Soul music is also about loss. But the difference is in country and western music, they've lost, they've given up and they are just all wining about it. In soul music they are struggling to get it back, they haven't given up.

Good acting performances all around and some pretty good tunes throughout!

Fun Fact: One of the film's writers and producers, Tony Briggs, is actually the son of one of the original Sapphires!

We give The Sapphires two cocktail glasses up! 

We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.  

(* not really)

number 9... number 9... number 9...

Beethoven - "Symphony No. 9" (1962) - Everest

Hello Friends,

We're classing things up tonight in Vinyl in the Valley.

Often considered (by people smarter than us) to be one of the most important works in all of Classical Music, Beethoven's last Symphony, aka The Ninth Symphony aka "The Chorale" Symphony, was a real game changer.  Like "Potato Head Blues", "Rocket 88", Sgt Peppers or Nevermind, the Ninth Symphony really turned the music world on its head and things haven't been the same since! 

Completed and premiered in 1824, when good ol' Ludwig Von was probably totally deaf, it's a Symphony in four movements which was pretty typical for the time.  What wasn't typical is that the Fourth and Final Movement incorporates the use of a vocal chorus-- something that had never been done before.  The Fourth Movement, often referred to as "The Ode To Joy", had lyrics based on a popular drinking song by the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller in 1785.    

Austrian Josef Krips conducts The London Symphony Orchestra.  In 1960, Krips would begin recording all 9 Beethoven Symphonies for the Everest record label.  Overall its a great listen.  Very Beethoven-y.  It goes from subdued, pastoral passages to larger-than-life sounding, bombastic themes.  This is a symphony not to be f'd with.   

Perhaps Alex from A Clockwork Orange puts it best on hearing the Ninth:

Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!

Well said brah!

RATING: 5 birds of rarest-spun heaven metal out of 5

Frijid Pink

Frijid Pink - "Frijid Pink" (1970) - Parrot Records

Hello Friends,

Tiki T. and I picked this little treasure up at a flea market over the summer.  We got home, poured ourselves some drinks and dropped the needle down only to be emotionally devastated when we realized the copy of the record we just bought was warped and littered with skips!  

ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Now its winter and we're freezing our asses off!  Luckily, we found another, more pristine copy on Ebay and we just couldn't say no!

So crank up the distortion to 10, kids, the order of the Universe has been restored!

Frijid Pink's debut album is an unsung psych-blues rock classic!  This band was so well received in their hometown of Detroit that they shared bills with such legendary acts as The Stooges, The MC5 and The Amboy Dukes; they even had a British band of young upstarts going by the name of Led Zeppelin opening for them at Detroit's Grande Ballroom. Motor City madness!

The opener "God Gave Me You", a bluesy ballad, features some passionate growling vocals by lead singer Kelly Green which builds up to a blistering guitar solo. The songs, "Crying Shame" and "Drivin' Blues" both sound very Cream influenced.  (Tiki T. hears a lot of "Tales of Brave Ulysses" on the former!)  "I'm On My Way" is a fun boogie-blues number which includes vocal shout-outs to blues-rock contemporaries like Canned Heat & Savoy Brown (who were also Parrot Records labelmates.)  

The album's high point is the band's cover of "House of the Rising Sun".  It cranks!  

"I Want To Be Your Lover" sounds like a second-rate (and white) Otis Redding imitator singing lead for Big Brother & The Holding Company.

The album closes out with the slow boozy blues number, "Boozin' Blues" featuring some good old fashioned Motor City shredding on lead guitar courtesy of Gary Ray Thompson-- another unsung guitar hero! 

RATING: 4.5 Gotta hit another city, get drunk, before I get home out of 5

Force Fields at Home

Teenage Guitar - "Force Fields at Home" (2013) - Gbv Inc.

Oh Boy Friends,

We got a weird one going tonight.  

Teenage Guitar is the name given to Bob Pollard's latest lo-fi project and according to the record's press release:

"Teenage Guitar offers experiments in spontaneity and lo-fi witchiness and wizardry, exploring multiple moods and styles."

Low-fi Witchiness & Wizardry? I'll say.  

Its not that its terrible, its just really scattered & underdeveloped (even by Guided By Voices' standards).  Some of it sounds like the songs have never been rehearsed.  Some of it sounds like its being recorded in a tin can.  Most of it sounds like late night bedroom demo recordings of early Who songs. When you look at it this way, I guess the name Teenage Guitar is apropos.

Still, Side Two's "Atlantic Cod" is pretty goddamn amazing. 

RATING: 3.5 Postcards to Pinky (wish you were there) out of 5

If You Have Ghost

Ghost - "If You Have Ghost" (2013) - Republic Records

Hello Friends,

Great vinyl EP here courtesy of Swedish doom metal band, Ghost (or Ghost B.C. as they are known here in the States!)  

Five songs here including a tremendous cover of Roky Erickson's garage classic, "If You Have Ghosts" as well ABBA's "I'm a Marionette", Army of Lovers' "Crucified", Depeche Mode's "Waiting For the Night", as well as a live version of the bands original, "Secular Haze."

Kurt Cobain famously praised the song "Crucified" by Swedish Dance band, Army of Lovers, in his posthumously published journals.  Back in the day, Beavis & Butthead also liked the video but that was mainly because of boobs (video here and here's Ghost's version.)

In related Nirvana news, Dave Grohl produced this EP!  

Basically, here on Vinyl in the Valley, any band who's lead singer dresses like a Papal ghoul and goes by the name Papa Emeritus II is alright by us!

Hail Satan!

RATING: 4.5 Nameless Ghouls out of 5

To All The Girls

Willie Nelson - "To All The Girls" (2013) - Sony Legacy

Hello Friends and Happy New Year!

We've got a great double LP on 180 Gram Vinyl on the platter tonight!  Its a 2013 release by Willie Nelson featuring 18 songs (new & old) that he duets with some of his favorite female singers (new & old).

Normally, we're pretty skeptical of "duet"-type albums because they usually wind up sounding gimmicky, over-produced and with no chemistry between the artists. When we saw "Top 40" names like Miranda Lambert, Sheryl Crow & Carrie Underwood among the list of performers we were a little skeptical to say the least!  But fear not friends, our old pal Willie pulls this record off with near perfection and it sounds just as good as any one of his many classic records! 

You don't need to go too far beyond the very first track to fall in love with the album! It kicks off with an amazing acoustic duet with Dolly Parton on a song called, "From Here to the Moon and Back."  Instant Classic!!  Dolly (who wrote the song) sounds great!  Willie sounds great! And this sets the stage for the rest of the record which features unobtrusive production and laidback arrangements with Willie's velvety vocal chords and his signature acoustic guitar playing providing a backbone for the rest of the album.

Side One is also home to duets with Miranda Lambert, The Secret Sisters, Roseanne Cash & Sheryl Crow.  Side Two kicks off with a raucous update of Nelson's own, "Bloody Mary Morning" (with Wynonna Judd) which is followed by a fairly saccharine-version of Nelson's classic, "Always On My Mind" (with Carrie Underwood).  Not a great version, but certainly not enough to ruin the album.  Side Two also has a great duets with Loretta Lynn (Merle Haggard's "Somewhere Between"), Alison Krauss ("No Mas Amor"), and Melonie Cannon (honestly, we're not even sure who that is!)

Side Three opens with the stunning "Grandma's Hands", a fiery and heartbreaking Bill Withers song featuring R & B singer, Mavis Staples.  Side Three is rounded out by songs with Norah Jones ("Walkin"), Shelby Lynne ("Til The End of the World") and 18 year old, Lily Meola ("Will You Remember Mine").

Side Four starts out with Emmylou Harris joining Nelson on a cover of the seldom-heard Bruce Springsteen song, "Dry Lightning".  Alt-country singer, Brandi Carlile, joins in on the Kitty Wells' classic, "Making Believe" and Willie's own daughter, Paula Nelson, joins in on a sublime versions of Creedence's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain?" (video here.)  

This would have been a very sweet and sappy end to this great album but Willie was never one to wallow too long in sentimentality.  The last track is an upbeat update of the Loretta Lynn-Conway Twitty cheater's duet, "After the Fire Is Gone" performed by Willie and Tina Rose (who, according to Google, is Leon Russell's daughter!)   

And there's nothing cold as ashes / After the fire is gone...

RATING: 4.5 Bloody Mary Mornings out of 5