Compilation Lps. Can't live with 'em. Can't do without 'em. Always a mixed bag. But the good ones balance out the duff tracks with stuff of such wonder you tend to forget that you wasted four minutes of your life on some terrible crap waiting for the good stuff to happen again.
Case in point:
In the heady days before Newbury Comics was the beloved Boston institution that it has become it was a scrappy little hole in the wall on Newbury st that had a selection of otherwise hard to find punk and new wave records in the front and comic books in the back. Either of which, if you'd been a more savvy consumer at the time could be worth a small fortune now. I wasn't, but I did buy records from a young Aimee Mann. I have that going for me.
So here Newbury Comics teamed up with WBCN (in those heady pre-Clear Channel days when radio stations could play stuff not chosen by middle managers) to put out a compilation of local alternative bands (from when "alternative" meant an actual alternative to mainstream AOR rather than a marketing term used by mainstream AOR to sell you other shitty music).
This was the result.
It's not perfect. It does have some chaff and an inexplicable double dose of Bound & Gagged, but I defy you not to come away from a listen without humming "Psycho Blonde" at some point in your day. Other highlights are the Outlets good and fast punk rocking, the Vacuumheads snarky "Preppie Girls" which my friend Jim and I thought was hilarious in high school. And the recorded debut of Young Snakes featuring the previously mentioned Aimee Mann being all angular and new wavey. (The actual ep they'd release a bit later is fucking genius). All in all a solid compilation of a small fraction of what was actually going on in town. Omissions galore but they were starting a record label an had an agenda. I'm ok with it.
Limbo Race? Got any Limbo Race?
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