#but it may not be the same album as the one that's listed on discogs cuz the discogs page says 2001?? who knows man

[fobarchiveteam]

The Fall Out Boy 2001 Demo... and the fact that there's actually two of them!

A few years ago, the wonderful Dave Hofer, who owns the DuPage County Hardcore Archive, uploaded the first Fall Out Boy demo from 2001 onto his archive, revealing its existence to the world. Dave was able to locate both a copy of the CD and the cassette versions of this demo, finding out that limited amounts of CDrs and around 100 cassettes were ever made. The CDr has uncut and unmastered versions of the recordings that later appear on the Project Rocket split, but the cassette contains completely different recordings for the first two songs, while an original song that is found nowhere else called “A Nice Myth” replaces Moving Pictures. The truth is that these are actually two separate demos: the cassette recordings came first. These demos were both made in 2001. For the first demo, the band consisted of Patrick on vocals, Pete on bass, Joe on guitar, and two other members who only lasted for a short time in the band: Ben Rose on drums, and John Flamadan on rhythm guitar. It was recorded on an 8-track in Ben’s basement. That 8-track was later turned into the cassette, of course. Both Ben and John left shortly after, and Jared Logan and TJ Kunasch replaced them on the CDr recordings respectively. What you may not know is there was an even rarer version of the CDr demo made: two types of lathe cuts.

These lathe cuts were posted on Discogs as pictures years before Dave’s discovery, so they sat dormant and undiscovered by FOB fans for a long time. After researching the cassettes and CDs for our archive, we stumbled upon these pictures and were perplexed that nobody has mentioned this version elsewhere before. Although this was not really a “new” discovery, we were still intrigued. We contacted the uploader of the picture, and this is what he had to say:

Hey!! Yeah it's honestly a crazy story on how I acquired it, but I believe it's legit. Basically, a few years back (I think 2018 or 19? The listing on the page for the clear version that sold for $0.50 or something crazy was from me, that's how I bought it). I messaged a guy on here that had the CD added in his collection if he would be willing to send me the mp3s/WAV files for his copy, and he did. We talked for a bit about the band and he said I seemed knowledgeable about the band and asked if I wanted his second copy of the lathe (he had two, one clear, one black). I obviously was like "hell yeah dude" and he said he would ship it to me. Fast forward a few weeks (he lived in Australia or some shit) and low & behold, I actually got the damn thing in the mail, plus two promo trading cards from the TTTYG album cycle, one with Andy & one with Joe. A few years later he messaged me that he got in touch with the dude that made the lathes for the band (he was based in Chicago which makes sense). Apparently 26 copies were cut & only 20 got labels thrown on them, members of the band slapped them on themselves. They were only in white paper sleeves, not any picture sleeves unfortunately. The sound quality on them is actually pretty decent for a lathe made in 2001, which is what leads me to believe it's legit. Also, like you had mentioned, the songs didn't leak until a few years back, when I got it I had never heard these versions (it's just the Project Rocket split versions uncut & unmastered essentially, same versions as the ones that leaked from the CD version. That is pretty much all the info I have on it, I hoped that helped some!!

Cheers from Florida - Jake

He later followed up with:

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the guy I got it from got both the clear and black copies verified to be legit by the guy that made them. Also small detail I forgot to include before, he obtained both copies through a lot of FOB merch from eBay. He was looking to get a complete set of TTTYG trading cards, which is why he bought it. But I know in the lot he also got the two lathes & a demo CD, I forget what else he had mentioned. It's odd that the band hasn't spoken of their existence, maybe they forgot? The lathes were probably more of a novelty item than anything, considering that vinyl wasn't very popular in 2001 & they weren't packaged as "properly" as the CDs & tapes, plus they made a lot less of them. I'm assuming they just kinda got tossed around between friends of the band or got sold at random at their early shows. Either way, it's been one of my prized possessions since I've acquired it, let me know if hou have any other questions on it haha

Currently we have no idea who this elusive Chicago lathe maker is, but maybe we may find out one day. These lathe cuts may possibly be the rarest FOB merch in existence.

Side note: The fact that the top title on the cassette specific insert says "Fallout Boy - Growing Up" and then later lists Growing Up as a song below, it may have been intended to be the title of the cassette, and the song was a title track. This is unconfirmed though.

[estradasphere]

Every time I think I've discovered everything Estradasphere-related that's left to discover I find More. The thread just keeps unraveling forever

[tenderlady]

I prefer let it be naked but I don’t like the lyric change in Long and Winding Road (though both can be read as equally heartbreaking just in different ways I guess)

I hate Phil Spector’s sound personally so it’s better to me

Sober enough to answer this now! (Don't drink with your mom, folks.)

As much as I hate Spector as a person, I largely fuck with his production choices. The whole wall of sound/Brill building thing really works for me, especially with the girl groups that he tortured into creating timeless pop bangers. The thought of pulling him onto a Beatles record--especially one conceived to be intentionally stripped-back and DIY--is kind of nuts to me. I especially hate what he did to Long and Winding Road; those goopy strings and canned choirs really distract from the emotional devastation of Paul's performance to me. Overall, I definitely think Naked SOUNDS better, and I wonder if more people were familiar with it, if it would rehabilitate the popular consensus around Let It Be as a minor work in the Beatles' catalog.

I find Let It Be...Naked to be kind of a fascinating artistic project; it was released over 30 years after that material was originally recorded. John was dead, and while George gave the project his blessing while he was still alive, he was dead too by the time it actually came out. The idea of reappraising that material with the benefit of age and hindsight is so interesting to me, particularly with the changes that Paul decided to make. I'm going to get more into psychoanalyzing this under the cut, because bless your heart anon, but this is going to be where I sort through all my Thoughts.

The idea of reapproaching Let It Be is one that really intrigues me. Aside from the aforementioned relative bad reputation of the album in the Beatles discog, it was also recorded at a time of some of the Beatles' greatest interpersonal enmity with each other, something that can very much be felt in the material. If Naked were just stripping back the Spector production, I'm not sure it would be stuck in my craw the way that it is.

The original track listing for Let It Be always seemed a touch odd to me. Opening with Two of Us makes a degree of sense, but closing with Get Back always felt kind of strange. The album doesn't have much of a sense of flow or narrative, which is especially odd considering Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper, which are both masterclasses in album structure.

To me, Naked has both a very clear structure and a very clear narrative. To start, we open with Get Back rather than closing with it, foregrounding the whole experiment as a meditation on homecoming, which is what it was always intended to be.

Imagine returning to the material you and two of your dead pals (and one living pal, obv) recorded at one of the worst moments in your relationship, thirty years on. How do you metabolize that? To me, Naked is particularly concerned with recontextualizing the relationship between John and Paul, and not just because I've got my tin hat on. While Let It Be opens with Two of Us, which has its own unique significance as an opening track, Naked places Two of Us (the song nostalgically reminiscing about--whether Paul is totally aware of this or not--the relationship he has had with John, while acknowledging that its halcyon days are ultimately over ["you and I have memories LONGER than the road that stretches out ahead", something I always found kind of odd to say in a song that is supposedly about your new boo]) immediately after The Long and Winding Road (the song about the dissolution of that same relationship and the futility of trying to salvage it). Let It Be opening with Two of Us presents that relationship as tragedy: it used to be beautiful, but that was then and this is now. Placing Long and Winding Road BEFORE Two of Us flips that narrative: it may be crumbling NOW, but it is still something beautiful and we can reflect on that beauty with fond sentimentality.

So as for the swapped lyric in TLaWR: Let It Be has him singing "and anyway you'll NEVER know the many ways I've tried." Again: Lennon-McCartney as tragedy. This portrays the dissolution of their relationship as a breakdown in communication, something I think the fandom largely agrees upon. They no longer understood each other; like a people-pleasing girlfriend (speaking from experience here), Paul feels he has given all he can give and nobody knows how hard he he's worked to keep it together. He gave all he had to give it was both not enough, and went completely unnoticed to boot.

Naked, on the other hand, flips this too: "and anyway you've ALWAYS KNOWN the many ways I've tried." TLaWR is still fundamentally the same song, but this one change completely reframes it for me. It's still tragic of course--in this version, John fully understands the work that Paul has put in, and it still isn't enough to save them--but it isn't quite so bitter. Rather than the fresh burn of a breakup where you are blaming the other party for their negligence, this version is able to acknowledge that while they loved each other, it still wasn't enough. It's a more balanced, adult perspective to me. I suppose this is tragedy of a different flavor than Let It Be's; it's almost Shakespearean, placing Lennon-McCartney as starcrossed rather than disintegrating due to their own human failings.

Honestly, the whole run of tracks on Naked from TLaWR through to Don't Let Me Down (obligatory Naked Is Better If For No Other Reason Than Don't Let Me Down) seems to be reframing Lennon-McCartney. We've also got I've Got a Feeling, a joyous duet about not knowing what you need until you've found it and moving past a hard year into a place of communion and celebration. That's followed by One After 909, the oldest song on the record, and a joyous throwback to John and Paul's musical origins.

I have less to say about the placement of the George tracks on this record, but ending Naked on the back-and-forth of Across the Universe and Let It Be--both John and Paul trying to find metaphysical solace in a moment of personal crisis and isolation--is incredibly touching. I always felt that Let It Be should be the closer, and Paul proved me right here.

Anyway, thank you, anon, for letting me use your question as an excuse to get all my Thoughts about this down. Naked has been haunting me the last few weeks, and I think I've come down on the side that it's a better and more representative compilation of the material from the Get Back sessions than Let It Be. But, more than that, it's also a corrective for parts of the Lennon-McCartney narrative, ending in the more sentimental, fond place that Paul seems to have been in since the turn of the 21st century.

Tl;Dr: Let It Be...Naked good

[philharmonica]

may music round up 🎵🎠

a selection of songs I've really enjoyed this month. trying to focus on songs that are new to me, whether it be a recent release or an old gem (basically, not the same 5 songs that are always in my rotation).

what about by louise post ft. veruca salt algorithmically recommend to me based on my previous listening of veruca salt, it's exciting to see louise on her own and i'm eager to *hear* what she does next

third uncle - single edit by bauhaus i find the band somewhat intimidating since i associate them with a harsh industrial/gothic sound but this is right up my alley and i desperately need to do a deep discog dive

you could easily have me by metronomy as embarrassing as it is to admit, i found this band while brainstorming names for my sims baby. if i had to describe it in the most rym-esque way possible, i'd say it's a quirky electronic instrumental

warsaw - 2010 remaster by joy division this has a much more raw/punk sound (to borrow another typical rym phrase) and it's really fun to uncover things like i'm a musical archeologist

reptile by the church a recommendation from a pal <3 and it truly is a song that i wish i could hear for the first time again, highly recommend the entire album to everyone

head on by the jesus and mary chain as beloved as "just like honey" is, i think this is better and it's got everything in terms of influences (according to wikipedia): post-punk, new wave, and the beach boys

undone and unashamed by the murlocs thought of this an early birthday present <3 it was hard to choose just one song, so everyone pls listen to the entire album

the look by metronomy okay i already featured them on this list but it was truly my newest discovery as i'd never hear of them before (or at least don't remember)

poncho & lefty by townes van zandt this is a song i would tell my dad that i listened to and that's all i have to say

beautiful james by placebo one of the best parts of music posting on tumblr is that I’m introduced to new songs :) on my old blog i had a mutual who really loved placebo, I hope they’re doing well <3

the rhythm by xtc this isn't entirely new to me so maybe i don't have great self control but i think this song could work as a musical scene in true stories

everything's gone green by new order this is an honorable mention since it came on while i was working on this post

first of the monthly installments of my music round up :) i hope i didn't mess up the links (they should open on spotify). to stalk my listening habits, you can find me on last.fm. i don't properly rate music on rym but i just ramble like in this post so you can read those here. that's enough self promo thanks if you read all this or listened to any of these songs <3 until next time

[randomvarious]

Today’s compilation:

Street Survivors 1988 Hard Rock / Heavy Metal

The pre-grunge late 80s and early 90s period for hard rock and metal may have represented rock music's lowest creative point, overall (Warrant's "Cherry Pie" comes to mind), but a lot of that era's biggest successes seemed to disproportionately spawn from the city of Los Angeles: Guns N' Roses, Van Halen, Poison, Mötley Crüe, Ratt, and a whole lot of others. So, it certainly doesn't defy reason to think that the city was actually brimming with a wealth of rock palatability that was waiting to be unearthed.

At least that's the conceit of this album. Here's a slate of tunes from LA-based rock juggernaut Metal Blade Records, presenting a showcase of ten bands that were either unsigned or had just recently signed, and trying to convince you that LA still had yet to be fully carved up and hollowed out by major labels and big indies like Metal Blade themselves.

But guess what? It's a big fucking lie. Say what you will about any of those bands I listed above, but they are *magnitudes* better than any band that appears on this throwaway comp. Just a bunch of tired, uninspired, lame, disposable crap on this album; unremarkable tunes that are fit to run during the end-credits scroll for a shitty and forgettable made-for-TV action movie from the same time period. And none of them would be the one to kickstart that credit roll, either, of course. They're not good enough for that. These are the ones that play after you already changed the channel in order to catch the last few minutes of something else before the top of the hour hits and your TV gets blessed with a whole new crop of fresh programs to imbibe.

There's only one song on here that's at least semi-redeemable: "The Devil in You," by a band called Black Cherry. The metal solo on that one is genuinely pretty good, but those few, fleeting, satisfying seconds don't make up for the sonic diaper rash and inexplicable use of a Roger Troutman-esque talkbox(???) that surrounds them 😩.

And come to find out that someone actually paid almost *eighty-seven dollars* for a CD copy of this thing on Discogs at some point. Whoever you are, I really would like to grab you by the shoulders and furiously shake you.

No highlights.

[mywifeleftme]

198: "Various Artists" // Box

Box Boots / C.C. / Snake & Remus 2006, HP Cycle

For more than 25 years the gloomy weirdo unknown folk artist who created Box has released his music from behind a veil of secrecy, changing his alias and “record label” with each recording. In 2002, Rojvi (credited to Terry) and Music Performed by the High Mass (credited to Jim Collins) trickled out into the market, distributed without fanfare on the mail order lists of record collectors Paul Major (of Endless Boogie) and Stan Denski; in 2017, a dozen lathe-cut 7” and 12” records appeared in a thrift store, all credited to different artists, each possibly the only one of its kind in existence. His music has tended to be unearthed rather than released, with the exception of 2006’s Box, which collects three LPs originally discovered separately in 2004: Boots (Boots), No Tape Outside (Snake & Remus), and Live at the Rainbows End (C.C.). Box was distributed in an edition of a few hundred by HP Cycle, a Canadian label that, while miniscule, has endured longer than the cicada’s flight enjoyed by each of the artist’s own enterprises. In this sense, it is the closest thing the artist has provided to an intentional entry point to his work—the black peak marking a dark berg beneath the waves.

Mysteries naturally draw adventurers, and I’m indebted to the Discogs user known as envious for the information above, which I’ve drawn from his blog Rabbit Run Down the Hole of a Skull (which also hosts a near-complete digital archive of the artist’s known music). I think it’s helpful to parrot his research here not only because the story is in itself interesting, but because when I post this it will create another node for other seekers to access the next layer beneath the surface. According to envious, the first of the artist’s known pseudonyms Robyn Nice, and this name has become the catchall his small following uses to refer to him. (envious also occasionally refers to Nice as the Crystal Spider, which yes, instantly made me cum.) It’s thought that in his youth Nice spent time living on an acid-drenched Louisiana artist’s community called the Compound. The Compound was led by Damien Youth, himself a somewhat enigmatic folk musician, until harassment from suspicious local police forced its dissolution. Much of Nice’s work seems to call back to the image of an idyllic community, though its frequently bitter, despairing tone suggests the posture of an Adam mourning in exile—or a Manson in the making. envious’s blog digs much more deeply into the Nice mythos than I can here—one of my dream projects after I finish this year of record reviewing is to listen through Nice’s 15-hour catalogue in its entirety.

Moving on to Box itself, we find three 12” records in plain white sleeves, each hand stamped with a title and alias. All three records have a similar structure: free form, acoustic outsider folk songs on the A sides, lengthy jams or field recordings on the flip.

The individual records are packaged in plain sleeves with labels in blue print, like the original 2004 releases.

On the self-titled Boots record, Nice’s voice hits somewhere between early Peter Gabriel and Dylan, but the lyrics are wacked out ravings. On one track he snarls about “shitcaked corpses” and raped children before proclaiming “I’m a farm” and imitating a braying donkey. On another he bellows at what sounds like the top of his lungs about “compromised smells.” His deft progressive folk-inclined guitar playing tends to follow the emotional arc of his vocals, reserved at the outset, ragged and battered by the end. The B-side (“New Earth”) is roughly five minutes of faux-tribal New Age followed by 13 of minimal synth.

On No Tape Outside by Snake & Remus, the artist sounds somewhat older, which may indicate the albums collected in Box don’t all come from the same period. At any rate, Nice is in a more pensive mood, the trancelike songs expansive and beautifully played on guitar with various minimal piano/synth/percussion accompaniments (suggesting Snake & Remus could be a duo project). In place of Boots’s misanthropic rage, No Tape Outside is shrouded in despair at failing relationships, a fallen world. The B-side is fully instrumental, sharing the autumnal feeling of the vocal tracks but skewing more psychedelic, building through passages of rippling echo to a climax like a dozen clocks having a quiet disagreement over the exact time. Unlike the other records in the set, this record has no track names stamped on the disc’s label, leaving you with few moorings. I recall certain passages of inspired playing, snatches of strange poetry (“voice from across the sea / drips red into me / says my mother was wine”), a general sensation by record’s end of doomed peace.

The outlier here is C.C’s Live at the Rainbows End, which clearly features a different (considerably more technically proficient) vocalist. Good news, it’s also weird, though it sounds less like it was recorded by the guy on the cover of Aqualung than the others. envious speculates C.C. may be another Compound personality who used the alias Chris Cologne and recorded a CD called Horn for Blackberry, Nice’s early stab at a conventional indie label. C.C. is either a Brit or affecting an accent (I think the latter), and has a gentle, sighing way with his phrasing that suits these hushed ballads in a Nick Drake-ish mode. There is some downright gorgeous fingerstyle acoustic playing on this one and more conventional musical structures, even a few refrains (though no choruses). The guitar could plausibly be played by Nice, though the technique is cleaner and less shamanic than what we hear elsewhere on Box, but even if it isn’t Live at the Rainbows End shares a certain paranoid energy that somehow marks it as a product of the same artistic camp. The B-side offers one more short romantic tune followed by “Paul’s Jennifer is Dead,” a fifteen-minute field recording of a bonfire and distant, indistinct conversation. envious once again offers an astute guess here, suggesting this may reference the nighttime bonfires where members of Youth’s Compound once communed at the end of each day.

Overall, your mileage with Box will vary depending on your yen for the wilfully obscure. My interest in a savage, disoriented record like Boots is ultimately curious (maybe even prurient), in the same way I like to collect strange postings on street poles around my city. No Tape Outside on the other hand is a genuinely entrancing avant-folk record, while Live at the Rainbows End houses a delicate collection of misty-eyed tunes forked by morbid suspicion and trembling yearning. I think both are superb in their own ways. I am haunted by my questions about Box’s provenance, but also by its contents—both of which make for a strong endorsement to new listeners attuned to similar currents in the musical underworld.

198/365

[cureforbedbugs]

MIX 5: She Could Hold Back a Glacier

Cadallaca - Your One Wish

The Donnas - Rock 'n' Roll Machine

The Rondelles - Safety in Numbers

Kim Lenz & Her Jaguars - Devil on My Shoulder

Bangs - He's a Groupie

The BellRays - Changing Colors

Juliana Hatfield - Down on Me

Tori Amos - Spark

PJ Harvey - A Perfect Day Elise

Liz Phair - Perfect World

Cat Power - You May Know Him

Drugstore - El President

Blonde Redhead - Speed x Distance = Time

Slapp Happy - Moon Lovers

Eleni Mandell - Sylvia

Team Dresch - It's a Conversation

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Moe Tucker

Sue Garner - Intuition

Holly Golightly - Serial Girlfriend

Melt-Banana - F.D.C. for Short

The Frumpies - Eunuch Nights

Edith Frost - You Belong to No One

Saint Etienne - Lose That Girl

Korea Girl - Under the Sun

Uzeda - Stomp

OOIOO - Asozan

Hard to determine where the line between alt and indie was in 1998, so there are two mixes that straddle the line. This is the one I came up with first, as many Women Who Rock (not necessarily Women in Rock, though there are a few) as possible. It mostly came together with a lot of borrowing from Rob Sheffield’s 1998 mix, which was a nightmare for my arbitrary “is this really from 1998?” perspective (a lot of what hit in 1998 is technically from 1997) but yielded some invaluable picks—Rondelles and Korea Girl. (I found the Rondelles eventually on Discogs, but never saw Korea Girl there as far as I know.)

A stroll through Kill Rock Stars got me Bangs and the Frumpies and Team Dresch, only one of whom I’d heard of (I am team Team Dresch). Recognized the Donnas by sight and Cadallaca by sound early in the Discogs process–Cadallaca is a great “Sleater-Kinney for people who don’t like Sleater-Kinney” album, and if you’d asked me if I’d have liked a band with the music of S-K and new vocals or vice versa, I wouldn’t have guessed keeping the vocals and switching up the band would unlock the appeal for me. Chuck Eddy’s list for 1999 introduced me to the BellRays who I think sound just as good in 1998.

Some of this stuff I knew pretty well, including a track off of my ‘98 album of the year whitechocolatespaceegg, which I really only fell in love with this year, when it unexpectedly became a hit in the car with the kids. (I think they think the song is about “shiploads” of money?) I was eager to put PJ Harvey and Cat Power and Blonde Redhead on, was surprised that I ended up liking Tori Amos and Juliana Hatfield and Saint Etienne more. Would have slotted Tori Amos into the same mix as Hole and Garbage, but she sounded great on this one and had the perfect line for the title.

I had passing familiarity with Drugstore, Slapp Happy, and Holly Golightly, and OOIOO, who show up on my Spotify recommendations a lot but sounded best in ‘98/’99 I think. I had no idea Melt-Banana were a going concern so early. Totally new and seemingly random finds to me: Kim Lenz (the rare, as far as I can tell, woman-fronted rockabilly band), Eleni Mandell (Jon Brion-produced), Sue Garner (Thrill Jockey art-rock with a couple other folks I saw a lot in my lists, including Alan Lichtman, whose very pretty experimental jazz stuff I couldn’t find space for), Edith Frost (Drag City alt-rocker, Royal Trux produced), and Uzeda, the John Peel-championed post-grunge Sicilian rock band that is the only find on this mix that stormed my albums top ten. Everything on this mix rocks, but Uzeda fucking rocks.

[em-htiw-klaw-erif]

ok,I’m pretty high so I thought like, why not make a post? It’s only been what, 3 years since my last Original Content? Anyway. Here’s a list of bands in my record collection that I think are great but have less than 100k listeners on Spotify:

Gary Myrick & The Figures/Gary Myrick: Monthly Spotify Listeners - 9.6k/4.6k

Gary Myrick is great and one of the few artists on here that I knew before picking up random albums at estate sales that def looked synth-poppy and 80s. Kind of toes the line between straight 80s rock and new wave, but he does it well. 

Listen to: She Talks in Stereo; I’m Not a Number; Guitar, Talk, Love & Drums (solo)

SALEM: Monthly Spotify Listeners - 84k

The only recent band to make it on the list, i picked up their first release at a socially distanced garage sale this summer and when I punched it in to discogs the genre told me I made the right decision: WITCH HOUSE. Now if that’s not a tumblr genre idk what is. Regardless, it’s actually a pretty great album, and I kiiiiind of understand where they got witch house from? I threw it on at Halloween and grooved.

Listen to: King Night; Trapdoor; Traxx

Romeo Void: Monthly Spotify Listeners - 74k

ok....wow. I actually accidentally clicked on Romeo Void because I had really, really expected them to have way more than this many listeners. Romeo Void is kind of a staple of darkwave, at least at the goth dance club I used to go to on Saturdays back when things were open (please hold out late bar I love you). Not only that but their POC frontwoman, Debra Iyall, is a fucking BOSS.

Listen to: Never Say Never; A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing); Shake the Hands of Time

Quincy: Monthly Spotify Listeners - 70. NOT A TYPO. SEVENTY.

This band only put out one album, in 1980, and were actually super big at CBGB until Quincy Jones saw their name on a marquee and got super litigious at them, which i think is unfair. They had to change their name and never really recovered but damn is that a shame bc this album has some legit Elvis Costello vibes and I love it. Plus the cover art is so great I have it hanging in my basement.

Listen to: the whole album, there’s only one and they only have 70 listeners, don’t be cruel. But especially Stop Now and Critic’s Choice

Paul Collins Beat: Monthly Spotify Listeners - 1.5k

I’ll be honest, I picked up a 12″ single of his by mistake. See, the actual name of Paul Collins Beat back in the day was, The Beat. Which would’ve been fine, if another band in England called The Beat (225k listeners) weren’t active and rising in status at the same exact time. You may know them by the name they took in America, The English Beat and they are an amazing two-tone band for sure. But Paul Collins, poor guy, just couldn’t compete with his punkier garage rock sound in the 80s. 

Listen to: Give Me the Drugs (I only have a single so I don’t have many recs sorry)

Joe Gilbert & Eddie Brown: Monthly Spotify Listeners - 521

Most of the bands/artists on here belong to a pretty specific set of genres but this one breaks the mold which should go to show you just how good they are. Joe and Eddie were a black folk duo in the early-mid 60s, and there’s only one studio album and one live album existing by them on spotify. Now I tend to dislike live albums. But every once in a while one comes along and just really wows me, whether with the raw talent/musicality, or the stage presence, or other factors. This one had all of them.

Listen to: Skillet Good and Greasy; C.C. Rider; You Can Tell the World

[jacensolodjo]

Free Or Cheap Music on Bandcamp

(There’s a lot of vaporwave/plunderphonics on here. I’m not as into it as it seems it’s just what I’ve easily found while searching for cheap music to share thru the sheer nature of what plunderphonics IS. Long post incoming! And obviously I would suggest at least paying for one from an artist you like when and where available. I also will probably be updating this occasionally so check back later!)

In case anyone has been looking for cheap/free metal music, Metal Bandcamp (not an official bandcamp site but allowed to use the name) has a giant list of metal labels and is pretty good about mentioning which ones have free or NYP albums. It has all sorts of sub genres of metal laid out and will also tell you if a label focuses on other genres too. 

If you’re looking for vaporwave/plunderphonics/synth, you can get businesscasual’s entire discog (over 250 releases) for $1.

Synthwave: AWITW has mostly a flat €2.99/3.99 per or €17.77 for the discog of 102 releases. (€17.77 is about $19.20 at time of posting)

Vaporwave/Chillwave/Jazz-ish: Haircuts for Men is basically also all PWYW/Free but with no discog option it may take a while to get thru.

If you want ambient, Desolate Horizons is basically all PWYW/Free but without a discog option it may take a while to get thru them all. They have a few dozen.

Ambient/Meditation: Lee Rosevere is PWYW/Free or you can pay for the convenience of fewer clicks with a $6.90 discog.

Soundtrack/Ambient/EDM/Space/etc.,: Aural Films has basically all PWYW/Free or you can pay $5 for the whole 259 release discog (again mainly it’s a convenience tax/a tip for the label for their work).

Ambient: Loki-Found has a few free/PWYW albums but the difference here is that they actually tell you which ones are free on the main music tab. 

Rock/Metal/Lots of other genres: Artoffact has a number of free/PWYW albums scattered among various artists of varying genres. And that is a HIGH number of albums in total to sort through with no discog option. 

Ambient: Oliviaway has either PWYW or a flat $1 per album. Or you can go for the 175 release discog for $13.90

Synthwave/Retrowave: Synthwave Radio has gone mostly PWYW. No discog option and a few dozen releases.

Folk/Metal/Synth/Goth/Darkwave: At Sea Compilations has all 60 releases at PWYW. No discog option.

Synthwave/Darkwave: Eyeshadow 2600 FM has a low per-album price (usually less than $5) or you can pay $7.15 for the 20 release discog.

Synthwave/Soundtrack: Jupiter-8 has around $1 per or $6.40 for the discog of 82 releases. Soundtracks for movies that don’t exist.

Ambient/Chillwave/Space: Astropilot is both the artist and the label with a few other bands attached that do the same kind of music. A few albums on the label’s page itself are PWYW, Astropilot the artist has a few. 

Ambient/drone/modern classical: Hidden Vibes has a few... hidden PWYW albums or get the discog for $30. 

Ambient/drone: Energostatic is all PWYW/Free but no discog option. 

(From this point I haven’t listened to much personally so can’t necessarily endorse/suggest anything)

Vaporwave/Plunderphonics: OccassionallyTapes has 62 releases for $1 

Vaporwave/Synth/Plunderphonics: Sunset Grid has 320 releases for $4.20 discog, or free/PWYW per album. 

Vaporwave/Synth/Plunderphonics: BogusCollective is as far as i looked PWYW/free or you can go for the discog for $5. Which might be easier and less time draining as it has 407(!!!!!!!!) releases

Vaporwave/Synth/Plunderphonics/Retrowave: Bedlam Tapes is PWYW/Free for $1 for the 51 release discog

Vaporwave/Drone:  Vice98 has a relatively small collection of releases, numbering only 17 of them compared to the multi-dozen and hundreds of other collections. They are PWYW/Free or $0.50 for the discog.

Vaporwave/Plunderphonics: Waterfront Dining is PWYW/Free or pay $15 for the 66 release discog.

Vaporwave/Plunderphonics: DMT Tapes FL has 830(!!!!!!!!!) releases all PWYW/Free or you can go for the giant discog for $1.60

Vaporwave/Plunderphonics: Clear Vision Dream Production is generally PWYW/Free or you can get 76 releases in a discog purchase for $2.80

Ambient/Drone/Lo-Fi: Pizza Beast is all free download with no option anymore to add to your collection. 

Vaporwave/Plunderphonics: Sunset Recordings has PWYW/Free or else pay $1 for the 35 releases.

Experimental/Electronic/IDM: Fami Mursyid has PWYW or $15 for discog of 73 releases.

Electronic/Punk/Lo-Fi/etc.,: Hjördis Britt Åström has PWYW or €1.30 for the 295 release discog.

Electronic/Vaporwave/Plunderphonics/Lo-Fi: Color Squad has PWYW but no discog option for dozens of releases

If you have some of your own, please feel free to share! I’m currently looking for some more synthwave and metal. Ok to RB.

[radwolf76]

FLASHBack: Week 25 - Savlonic

Time for us to check in with the titans of the Flash Animation genre, as the first Thursday of the month means First-Class FLASHBack. Because there was a request for this, we're again turning our sights on Weebl. Music has always been a big component in Weebl's Flashes, all the way back to some of his earliest Flashes from 2003 such as Scampi, or Bonjour (Caution: pixelated penis), to more recent works such as 2013's Business Cat (a song very similar to one that another of FLASHBack's "First Class" artists, Weird Al, would release a year later, Mission Statement, except Weebl's song contains 100% more cat.)   So, it was a natural fit, when in 2008, the exciting new electro-pop band Savlonic asked Weebl to make a music video for one of their songs. Electro Gypsy was released on July 17th of that year. Two thirds of the band, Roscoe Thunderpants and Evangeline D'isco, also did an exclusive interview for Weebl's Stuff website. (Drummer Kandi Flaus had a prior commitment. The video is loaded with references to pop culture, from a Flux Capacitor on the titular Gypsy's robotic horse (mounted in the orientation that Doc Brown originally sketched it, no less), to a Matrix homage (specifically the "We need guns. Lots of guns." scene), to a recreation of the Astro Cat Meme from 2006 using Evangeline as the cat, to a shout-out to Weebl's own parody of the trailer for the first Michael Bay Transformers, in the form of a movie poster for Big Ass Badgers II.   Except of course, there was no exciting new band. Savlonic was merely another invention of Jonti "Weebl" Picking's. He provided the voice of Roscoe Thunderpants, although the singer's look was modelled off of the keyboardist from the band Sparks, Ron Mael. Evangaline D'isco was voiced by his wife, Sara Darling, who was a radio presenter on the Station XFM, a title she shared with the likes of Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais, and Simon Pegg. Originally voiced by a pitch-shifted Sara Darling, Kandi Flaus's role would be taken over by Katt Wade. Virtual Bands were nothing new in the animation world though, not even in Flash Animation, as the Brothers Chaps, creators of Homestar Runner (and also "First Class" alumni), had spawned their own Virtual Band, Limozeen, six years earlier.   Savlonic's next song, Tiny Japanese Girl, was released on 22 April 2010. This video would take on a predominately red color casting for it's background, something that would become a signature in future videos (perhaps in an effort to distinguish Savlonic videos from Weebl's other songs). Mr. Thunderpants assumes the guise of the king of the kaiju, Godzilla, while Evangaline and Kandi don kimonos. Other Japanese clichés include cherry blossom trees, geta sandals, and Mount Fuji. At the end of the video, in keeping with the theme of the song: tiny Japanese girls, D'isco and Flaus take on the role of the two twin fairies that accompany Mothra, activating the giant lepidopteran to save Godzilla/Roscoe from the militarized monster patrol.   Their third song, Wandering Eye would be put out on 8 June 2011. This video marked Weebl handing animation duties over to another Flash artist, Peabo, who departed from the chibi stylizations of the previous two, rendering the band in more realistic proportions while still being generally cartoonish. For the first time Evangaline's bangs are lifted to show her eyes. Roscoe's moustache is given more width to make it less Hitler-like. Like last week, there is an implication of rodents being used for lewd purposes.   On 26 March 2012, Savlonic's fourth song, The Driver hit YouTube, and Newgrounds, as well as Weebl's own site. Roscoe's moustache has gone full-on painter's brush to further deter the Hitler comparisons. Peabo shows off some high technical prowess in this one, with panning rotations around complex-shaped vehicles, as well as some wonderful wind effect on everyone's hair and Roscoe's tie.   Computer Guy, their fifth song, would drop on 27 May 2013. Heavily inspired by the Tron franchise, this was also their reddest video yet. The band are performing at the whims of the titular Computer Guy, literally hardwired in to be peripherals to his system. Midway through the video, when he cranks up the rock out percentage sliders, we see Kandi Flaus actually drum with both sticks for the first time, showing how he has total control over them. No one machine is meant to handle that much rock however, and there's an overload and an explosion that disconnects the band. They bust out with some hoverboards (real hoverboards, the kind that don't have wheels because they actually fucking hover instead of just rolling on the ground like a decapitated segway), and fly over to his tower to do some perfect superhero landings (hard on the knees). At the end is a huge plot twist which I won't spoil here.   On 11 February 2014, a Kickstarter was launched for a Savlonic album in digital and physical forms. It raised £34,768 against it's £12,000 goal, resulting in an album titled "Red". It consisted mostly of the existing five songs plus remixes of the same. A sixth song was produced new for the album, and on 22 August 2014, Spelunker was released. Peabo gave Evangaline a new hairdo this time around, and Kandi has a new style as well. Roscoe's and Evangaline's cave explorations are supported by top-side assistants Damian Bevan and Andrew Neidig, who both donated £1,000 or more on Kickstarter to be in the video.   On April Fools day of 2016, Savlonic launched another Kickstarter for a second album, titled Neon. This time around they shifted their branding to the retrowave/synthwave/outrun aesthetic. Weebl also brought in another new Flash animator to collaborate with, Anthony "Kr3id" Price. They were able to raise £40,778 of their £30,000 goal. On 19 September 2016, a video for the track Broken was released. As before, the video featured cameos by the highest paying kickstarter backers. The song is about hard feelings over a strained relationship and the video's premise is that these feelings come out in the middle of a recording session. Kandi, upset over the band being on the verge of falling apart, again begins to use both drumsticks, and as before, eventually destroys the stage with the force of her rockin' beats. Before that happens however, Evangaline and Rosco both use their keytar and microphone as futuristic weapons to trash the studio. When the band is plunged into the undeground tunnel below their studio when everything falls apart, D'isco and Thunderpants turn their musical weapons on each other while a disgusted Flaus decides to hop into the band's car and drive off, homaging both The Driver (the car), and Wandering Eye (her keychain).   2016 was a busy year for Savlonic, as there was also a release of a remix album for Neon, and also an album called the Rosco EP, which was a collaboration between Jonti Picking and Daniel "Kaspar Funk" Dobbs. Then, at the beginning of 2017, the second video from the Neon Album was released on 6 January. Hi-Lights picks up where Broken left off, with drummer Kandi Flaus driving away by herself. This marks the first time that Katt Wade takes over voicing Kandi. While the video starts out as a pure example of the Outrun aesthetic, two thirds in, there are hints of her car being chased by some ghostly green-eyed dark specter of some kind. We're only shown hints of it following behind her car, with Kandi glancing worriedly in her rearview mirrors. At the end of the video, she's apparently captured, and shown bound to some kind of sci-fi table as we catch more reflections of the ghostly green faces in her eyes. The video ends with "To Be Continued."   However Savlonic's next video would not pick up that storyline. Instead, on 19 January 2018, I Was Made for Loving You would be released to promote the band's cover tunes album, Emulat0r. The video itself is not much to speak of as it's just the band painted up to look like the song's original artists, KISS. They stand there while an elaborate stage rotates around them. It was a bit of a return to form for Weebl, as many of his early Flashes were based on simple looping visuals. A few weeks later on 2 February 2018, a video would drop for Johnny Massacre's track Beastman Blitz, which featured samples from Savlonic's Broken. This video marked the first time that the virtual band had been integrated with a live action person.   In May of 2018, Weebl went back to kickstarter to raise funds for yet another Savlonic album, Black Plastic, raising £37,055 of a £32,000 goal. Nearly eleven months later, on 18 Mar 2019, Weebl would team up with Arkanell to release a video for the song Action Causes Reaction, animated not in Adobe Flash, but in the Unity 3D engine. The change in toolsets was needed to support the making of a video in 360 VR. The video is heavily Tron themed, but it also has a blocky, voxelated look similar to Minecraft.   That's about all I have on Roscoe Thunderpants, Evangaline D'isco, and purple-haired drummer Kandi Flaus. Next week, a different purple haired girl, and her angry squirrel.

[kikikid1412]

So, I’m doing some investigation on an obscure novelty record from 1978 by Soupy Sales

Decided that I’ll document my findings here and give updates because why not? It’s interesting.

So, I was looking for novelty records to play on my radio show and while looking through Spotify for ideas I happened to come across a song called “It’s My Ego” by TV show host Soupy Sales. https://open.spotify.com/track/6x1jZix7oGDxUcGm62tMHq Now, here’s the thing about this song...

It says it came out in 2009, but the production on the song sounds nothing like it, and I swear I can hear record crackles as if it were ripped from vinyl to be posted online. So, because of this, I suspected that the year listed on Spotify was probably just the year it was posted online, not the year it was actually released. So, I looked it up on Google to find a proper year. 

First off, I found out this song isn’t even selling for 99 cents on Amazon.

And it listed it as 2009, as well. Most streaming websites did. But I wasn’t buying it. Eventually I came across a Discogs page that listed it.

Now I know that there was a vinyl release of it. Also, the page said that it came out in 1978, but I felt this was not a good enough source, especially without any pictures. So, I continued searching and eventually found a listing on eBay that showed a picture of the record...

Now I finally have a year! I was only looking for the year originally so I knew when it came out (My radio show focuses on music from 1950-1989, so anything past that cut-off date isn’t allowed unless it’s a parody of a song from the era). However, this is the point where I realized this was a promotional record for radio stations only. I checked around to see if there were any for sale copies anywhere for the masses, but I couldn’t find it either as a single or on an album... So this is where I started to get even more curious; Did this thing actually have an official release? And if not, why doesn’t it? So, I decided to try and get in contact with the pressing company Wizdom Records, and the producer. 

I found a Wizdom Records on Twitter... However I kind of doubt they’re the same Wizdom Records as shown above. I decided to try sending them a Tweet, anyway, in hopes that it may have been them after all.

I also found the producer, Joel Diamond of Silver Blue records, and asked him, too. I have never heard of him before, but apparently he’s won a lot of awards and worked with people like Mama Cass, Tony Orlando, Jay-Z, Gloria Gaynor, David Hasselhoff, Tom Jones, Barry Manilow, and a ton of other big people (My question about an obscure novelty record by a children’s show host is probably going to get at least somewhat of a strange look). Unfortunately I didn’t get a screenshot of the message before I sent it because I couldn’t get a picture of the whole thing (it was one of those website forms you fill out with a message, and it cut off 2/3 of the message). What I sent him was the following: "Hello, Mr. Diamond! My name is Kiki Willows. I have a radio show called That Gosh Darn Hippie Show that plays classic rock, oldies, novelty records, parodies, and rare music. I happened to come across a record called "It's My Ego" by Soupy Sales that had a promotional record released in 1978 under Wizdom Records that says it was produced by you, and I have found almost no information about it besides the year and what the record looks like. I also can't seem to find any in-store releases of the song, as a single or on an album, other than on streaming services such as Spotify or Amazon. I am dreadfully curious about the fate of this song and what happened to it, so I'm asking around for any information. Did it ever have an official release? If not, what happened where it didn't get one? And how did it find its way to these streaming services years later in 2009? Thank you very much in advance for your time and patience. I hope that the New Year is treating you well.  Peace and love, -Kiki" That’s where I am in this little adventure at the moment. I’ll give you updates once they reply (if they do). Wish me luck. 

[musiconanironingboard]

7 May 2022: Curtains, The Balancing Act. (IRS, 1988)

In 1988 I sent off a dollar or a SASE (talk about a term no one remembers) or something to get a sampler cassette from IRS Records’ new subsidiary Primitive Man Recording Company. I’m sure I learned of it in the classifieds section of Rolling Stone. I don’t know what the philosophy was about who would be on Primitive Man and who would get to be on IRS, but I do know the subsidiary’s initials were meant to mock the PMRC, the Parents Music Resource Center behind the effort to get records labeled with content warnings.

The promo cassette, titled Musical Biscuits Vol. One, included two songs apiece by the four acts on the label’s roster: The Bears (Adrian Belew’s new band at the time), reggae singer Pato Banton, NYC-via-Kansas City rock band Tirez Tirez, and Los Angeles quasi-acoustic group The Balancing Act. I enjoyed the cassette, but my favorite song of all was “3 Cards,” from The Balancing Act’s full-length 1987 debut Three Squares and a Roof. (They also had a 1986 EP called New Campfire Songs on the tiny L.A. label Type A.)

I am certain the promo cassette is in one of my numerous boxes of old tapes in one of my closets; all these many years later, “3 Cards” remains a favorite song. Several years ago I finally bought a copy of Three Squares and a Roof so I could have a more accessible copy of the tune, and I was happy to finally learn more of the band’s material. When my neighborhood shop got a copy of the band’s next (and final) album, shown here, I snagged it. 

Primitive Man bit the dust quickly; Discogs shows the label’s final releases as happening in 1988, the same year they offered that promo cassette. The Balancing Act is on plain-old IRS Records for this release.

Above we have the front and back covers. 

Next are both sides of the lyric sheet.

Here we see some views of the inner sleeve, a particularly crazy variation on the classic clear IRS catalog sleeve. It is difficult to read, but the sleeve shows a long list of shirts, posters, and videotapes you could buy.

Here is side one’s label.

And, last, here is the front cover of the promo cassette that started my interest in The Balancing Act more than thirty years ago. There was never a second volume. (Image taken from Discogs)

[randomvarious]

J-Live - “Hush the Crowd” Bomb Worldwide: International Rap Compilation Song released in 1996. Compilation released in 1997. Hip Hop

J-Live stormed on the New York underground in 1995 at the age of 18 with his 12″ single Longevity / Braggin’ Writes. Armed with boom bap beats, a butter-smooth flow, and thoughtful lyrics, he was one to look out for. The Source thought so too, labeling him as the magazine’s “unsigned hype,” a coveted title for any young up-and-comer that had been bestowed upon legends such as Biggie and Common before him. Though, for what it’s worth, a lot of people went nowhere with their “unsigned hype” cred. J-Live has been fortunate enough to be one of the most recognizable names from that list from its first issuance in May 1990 to when he was crowned in November 1995.

He followed up his mesmerizing debut single with another one the next year in Can I Get It?, which featured “Hush the Crowd” on the B-side. On this track, at just 19 years old, J-Live displays just how wise he is beyond his years. Think about how smart you were at 19, that is if you’re over 19 and reading this, and then think of all the wisdom J-Live is imparting on this track. He sounds like an old, grizzled vet who’s been doing this for twenty years and is trying to give the youngins some career advice. 

Throughout the track, J-Live is telling all the new emcees out there to wait their turn. You may be dope as hell but barely anyone knows who you are. If you’re the opening act at a show spitting some raw shit and no one seems to be gravitating towards it, it’s because they’re not there to see you. They’re there for the person who’s coming on after you. Them’s the breaks, kid. This is the hip hop ladder. Don’t give up. You may never make it, but everyone started from where you are, so don’t get discouraged. And even though the crowd appears entirely apathetic, there’s probably a few cats in the crowd who see you and feel you. You do it for them. 

This is for the heads that’s on some next shit

In other words, this is you building your fan base, one show at a time. This is how you make it. You are the “next shit,” not the “now shit”. Eventually, if the chips fall right, you’ll be the “now shit,” but you have to wait and put your work in. Success doesn’t come overnight. It takes years, not a handful of shows.

Production-wise this mantra is on display, too. From the jump, before the beat kicks in, a sample of Stark Reality’s “Shooting Stars” plays and is drowned out by sounds of a disinterested crowd. This little piece slyly speaks to the message of “Hush the Crowd” in a couple of ways. 

One, Stark Reality put out one album, 1970′s obscure The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop, billed by Wikipedia as “a heavily-improvised reinvention of a 1958 children's album by songwriter Hoagy Carmichael to be used for the show Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop which aired on PBS.” According to that same Wikipedia article,  “they played as a quartet in Cambridge, but the audiences were either tiny or nonexistent. A tour in California failed to meet their expectations, so the band broke up.” Compare Stark Reality to that emcee J-Live is speaking to. Disillusioned early on because no one seemed to be interested in them, Stark Reality quit early. Imagine what they could’ve achieved had they kept at it and tried to garner a fan base.

Two, Stark Reality, though still pretty obscure, is known to a lot of hip hop producers now. Their album is on sale at Discogs right now with the lowest price set at $1,500. Good things come to those who wait. In 1970, Stark Reality weren’t shit, but 26 years later, here’s some 19 year old kid sampling their music in his own song. In this case, their music truly was for “the heads that’s on some next shit”.

And the beat, my goodness. Co-produced by the unknown Georges Sulmers and Chairman Mao, co-founder of hip hop magazine Ego Trip, columnist in XXL, and soul and funk beat junkie, really did a lot with a little here. A subtle, humming, low note pervades the track. Along with that is a simple drum beat, some hits of bass, and infectious twinkling chime melodies. Voila, a piece of perfection. So simple and yet so good.

And lastly, and perhaps most remarkably, though he didn’t know it at the time, the advice that J-Live gives in “Hush the Crowd” would serve him well for his future. His debut album was supposed to drop in 1998, but was notoriously shelved due to label politics. Labels kept getting eaten up and a major label had his album and decided against releasing it, despite the music press already having an advanced copy and writing about it glowingly. But J-Live kept at it and since then has released eight albums, headed a couple labels, produced, and played shows worldwide as both a DJ and an MC, despite that major setback, which would have deaded many careers. But taking the wisdom from one of his earliest songs, he persevered and is still doing what he loves to this day. How many musicians today, let alone hip hop artists, can say they’ve been in it for almost 25 years?

Remarkable mid-90s hip hop music. One of 1996′s best tracks and from a guy whose longevity has been doubtlessly earned.

[mywifeleftme]

182: Billy Joe Shaver // Billy Joe Shaver

Billy Joe Shaver Billy Joe Shaver 1982, Columbia

Billy Joe Shaver had a reputation as your favourite songwriter’s favourite songwriter, but although he recorded over a more than 40-year span, his reputation largely rests on a small collection of songs he wrote in the early ‘70s. Waylon Jennings recorded nine of Shaver’s songs for 1973’s Honky Tonk Heroes, a collection that would energize Jennings’ career and make Shaver’s; that same year Billy Joe released his own renditions on his debut LP, Old Five and Dimers Like Me. Shaver recorded intermittently throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, but largely subsisted on royalties from other artists covering those early songs. By 1982 I guess he’d figured it’d been a long enough time that he might as well take another shot at them himself. (“Where do you want it”, he may even have said.)

Probably record label pressure had something to do with it too. Billy Joe Shaver was Shaver’s second album for Columbia, and half the songs on it can also be found on Shaver’s first two LPs. Still, as I’ve underlined a few times already, those five songs are legitimate outlaw country classics, and the five new ones match them in quality, making this arguably the most satisfying record he ever cut. “Bottom Dollar,” a dialogue between a man and his last greenback, could be a standby for any good country singer from the 1940s to the 2040s; “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train” remains a rollicking jam with an hysterical chorus (“Got a good Christian raisin' and an eighth-grade education / Ain't no need in y'all a’ treatin' me this way”); “Tell Me Virginia” is the most writerly slut-shaming in the country canon; “One Moving Part” nods to the Guy Clark motif of the workshop as a metaphor for the self: “See, I learnt real young down on the farm Simplicity don't need to be greased I got it all down to one moving part And that moving part is me.”

I could go on. The songs, both old and new, have that simplicity of craftsmanship that gets connoisseurs going (both Bob Dylan and Norm McDonald were big fans), and if your kink is stuff that works, Shaver’ll be one of your guys. Whether you prefer this one or Old Five and Dimers may come down to whether you like Dimers’ back porch vibe or the self-titled’s hellraising (and slightly polished) swagger, but if this ends up the only Billy Joe in your collection, it won’t disappoint.

(As an aside, Discogs is a very silly place. This record was only issued twice on physical media in a US and a Canadian pressing, both 1982. The albums are identical, but the US version is currently being listed at $75 USD and up, while the Canadian goes for about $15. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.)

182/365

[lastchancevillagegreen]

Not Now Playing Wednesday 22 December 2021:

Broomtree Downy Mildew (Texas Hotel) (released in 1987)

“Hi! I’m from Downy Mildew and we’ve got a new album out called Mincing Steps.”  That’s the first I ever heard of the band Downy Mildew and that commentary comes from first Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens and then Grant McLennan, also of the Go-Betweens, who chimes in on the album title.  Both men say it in such a voice that it sounds distinctly as if they might be making fun of the band and the members.  But then Forster adds, “We remember those guys, lovely people.”  And you realize that the entire moment in time they are discussing is actually a heartfelt memory in which they had quite a pleasurable time.  This entire commentary comes from the promotional Go-Betweens live album Live On SNAP With Deirdre O’Donoghue and it captures the Go-Betweens promoting their forthcoming 1988 album 16 Lovers Lane doing six acoustic versions of songs from that album.  The chat between Forster, McLennan and Amanda Brown (the third Go-Between in this live performance) and DJ Deirdre O’Donoghue is so endearing and so off the cuff that I am absolutely charmed by this entire performance.  I play this live promo regularly and I get such a kick out of Forster and McLennan’s statement concerning Downy Mildew (who evidently went out with The Go-Betweens while all were in LA in 1987) that I finally decided maybe I need to hear a Downy Mildew album. 

And in typical fashion, why buy one album when you can get the band’s entire catalog for a song?  A dealer on discogs had the band’s first two albums for sale, still sealed (and no cut out marks) for ten bucks each.  Discogs lists the first two Downy Mildew albums as “ethereal” and I cannot pass that up!  So, I decided to test the Downy Mildew waters and buy both albums from the same dealer. 

This is the band’s debut album Broomtree.  But since it is the 1980s, you must remember that most band’s of that era often put out an EP before they ever put out a full length album.  The 80s were a wonderful musical time despite what most are led to believe and so frequently those introductory EP were crucial to a band’s legend and their future impetus on their audience.  I think of REM’s introductory EP Chronic Town, Los Lobos’ ...And A Time To Dance and Let’s Active’s Afoot, important and must buy music if you are fans of those bands.  (There were many other introductory EPs and none of them can I call to mind!)  Downy Mildew delivered an eponymous EP in 1986 on Texas Hotel and yes, I have a copy of it forthcoming (also sealed) and it may even arrive before Christmas. 

My photos are of the album cover and the back of the album.  The labels I culled from discogs because I’ll not open these until I play their self titled EP from 1986.  I’m so looking forward to 2022 (and not just because of the catalogs I will be playing but because I am hoping for a much better year than 2020 has been--especially since August). 

[cruiseloading902]

Youtube Celine Dion Songs

Youtube Celine Dion Songs From Titanic

Youtube Celine Dion Songs Non-stop

Youtube Best Of Celine Dion

Celine Dion - It's All Coming Back To Me Now (Official Video)Listen on Spotify: Listen on Apple Music: http://smarturl. An incredible video of Whitney Houston singing 'Greatest Love Of All' in a duet with Celine Dion singing the song 25 years after the original, has resurfaced on YouTube. One day after Whitney Houston 's death on February 11, 2012, Celine Dion took the stage at the Grammy Awards to pay tribute to the sensational singer with a rendition of.

(Redirected from Breakaway (Celine Dion song))

'Breakaway'Single by Celine Dionfrom the album Loved Me Back to LifeReleased5 December 2013Recorded

2012

Studio at the Palms, Las Vegas

RMV Studios, Stockholm

GenrePopLength4:38LabelColumbiaSongwriter(s)Producer(s)Play ProductionCeline Dion singles chronology

'Loved Me Back to Life' (2013)'Breakaway' (2013)'Incredible' (2014)

'Break Away' is a song originally recorded by German singer Ivy Quainoo for her 2012 album, Ivy.(1) Titled 'Breakaway', it was covered by Canadian singer Celine Dion for her English-language studio album, Loved Me Back to Life (2013). 'Breakaway' was co-written by Johan Fransson, Tim Larsson, Tobias Lundgren and Audra Mae, and produced by Play Production.(2) The song was released by Dion as a promotional single in the United Kingdom on 5 December 2013 and in France on 22 January 2014.(3)(4)

Background and release(edit)

'Breakaway' and 'Somebody Loves Somebody' are two songs on Dion's album Loved Me Back to Life produced by Swedish trio Play Production (Johan Fransson, Tim Larsson and Tobias Lundgren). Both songs were co-written by Fransson, Larsson, Lundgren and Audra Mae, the great-great-niece of Judy Garland.(2) On 2 December 2013, Dion's official website announced 'Breakaway' as the second UK single.(3) Two days earlier, it was chosen as a 'Record of the Week' on BBC Radio 2.(3)(5) The official audio for the single was released onto Dion's Vevo channel on 3 December 2013.(6) Two days later, 'Breakaway' was added to the A-List on BBC Radio 2's Playlist in the UK.(5) The song peaked at number thirty-eight on the UK Radio Airplay Chart in mid-December 2013 but did not enter the UK Singles Chart.(7) On 22 January 2014, 'Breakaway' was announced as the second single in France and was sent to radio stations on the same day.(4)

Critical reception(edit)

'Breakaway' received positive reviews from music critics. Jim Farber of Daily News wrote that it 'balances modern R&B with '60s lounge music in a way that would flatter Adele'.(8)USA Today editor Elysa Gardner included this song in her download list and added 'Dion starts out low and sultry, then lets her big, creamy soprano rip — a pattern she follows on the 'Wall of Sound'-inspired Breakaway'.(9)Gary Graff from The Oakland Press praised the vocal buildup 'from the lower reaches of her register, a husker tone that sounds just as good as the more pristine approach that's her stock in trade'.(10) Andrew Hampp of Billboard also praised 'Breakaway' calling it 'powerful' and the song which features 'arguably the grittiest, most authentically 'rock' vocal we've ever heard or would expect from Dion'.(11) Deban Aderemi of Wiwibloggs commented that 'Breakaway' is a beautiful piano-led track. The song's orchestration is rich, Dion's delivery is dynamic, yet she remains committed to a performance that comes from the soul.(12)

Live performances(edit)

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In early November 2013, Dion performed 'Breakaway' for the UK show, Strictly Come Dancing which was broadcast during the semi-finals on 15 December 2013.(13)(14)(15)

Track listing(edit)

Promotional single

'Breakaway' (Radio Edit) – 3:39

Charts(edit)

Chart (2013–2014)Peak positionUnited Kingdom (Airplay Chart)(7)38

Credits and personnel(edit)

Recording

Vocals recorded at Studio at the Palms, Las Vegas, Nevada

Strings recorded at RMV Studios, Stockholm

Mixed at Larrabee Studios, North Hollywood, California

Personnel

Songwriting – Johan Fransson, Tim Larsson, Tobias Lundgren, Audra Mae

Production – Play Production

Vocals recording – François Lalonde

Vocals recording assistant – Mark Everton Gray

Mixing – Manny Marroquin

Mixing assistants – Chris Galland, Delbert Bowers

Programming – Tim Larsson

Piano – Johan Fransson

Electric bass – Daniel Lykkeklev

Acoustic and electric guitars – Andreas Johansson

Background vocals – Tobias Lundgren

String arrangement – Johan Fransson, Henrik Janson, Ulf Janson

Strings conductors – Henrik Janson, Ulf Janson

Orchestra – Stockholm Session Strings

Technician – Bernard Löhr

Release history(edit)

CountryDateFormatLabelUnited Kingdom(5)5 December 2013Promotional singleColumbiaFrance(4)22 January 2014

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References(edit)

^'Ivy Quainoo – Ivy'. Discogs. 31 December 2013. Retrieved 31 December 2013.

^ ab'Breakaway'. celinedion.com. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 2 December 2013.

^ abc''Loved Me Back To Life' Certified Gold And A New Single in the UK!'. celinedion.com. 2 December 2013. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 2 December 2013.

^ abc'Celine Dion a choisi 'Breakaway' comme 2ème extrait de son album Loved Me Back to Life'. Twitter. 22 January 2014. Retrieved 23 January 2014.

^ abc'Record of the Week'. BBC Radio 2. 30 November 2013. Retrieved 30 November 2013.

^'Céline Dion - Loved Me Back to Life'. Vevo. 3 December 2013. Retrieved 3 December 2013.

^ ab'The UK Radio Airplay Chart'. Radiomonitor. 19 December 2013. Retrieved 19 December 2013.

^Farber, Jim (5 November 2013). 'Celine Dion, 'Loved Me Back to Life'; Midlake, 'Antiphon': Album reviews'. Daily News. Retrieved 2 December 2013.

^Gardner, Elysa (29 October 2013). 'Celine Dion dials it down for 'Loved Me Back to Life''. USA Today. Retrieved 2 December 2013.

^Graff, Gary (4 November 2013). 'Listening Room: Approach may draw new fans to Celine Dion's 'Loved Me''. The Oakland Press. Retrieved 2 December 2013.

^Hampp, Andrew (29 October 2013). 'Celine Dion Shows Edge, and Tries Out New Characters, on 'Loved Me Back to Life''. Billboard. Retrieved 2 December 2013.

^Aderemi, Deban (16 December 2013). 'Review: Celine Dion Owns Her New Single Breakaway'. Wiwibloggs. Retrieved 16 December 2013.

^'Celine On Strictly Come Dancing'. celinedion.com. 11 November 2013. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2013.

^'Celine On Strictly Come Dancing This Sunday'. celinedion.com. 14 December 2013. Archived from the original on 14 December 2013. Retrieved 14 December 2013.

^'Celine Dion Breakaway Strictly Come Dancing HD 2013'. YouTube. 15 December 2013. Retrieved 15 December 2013.

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External links(edit)

'Breakaway' (Audio) on YouTube

Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics

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