I'm Still Trying to Save your New Year's Party

 

Ok, I don't have any Fleshtones albums for you this year. 

But I have something that might work and will ring in and or out the year quite nicely.

Show World (1996)

Redd Kross.

I've seen the brothers McDonald and all who sail with them a number of times over the years. The last time in, I want to say, 2017. I brought the wife and even knowing fuck all about them she had a good time.
They grew up in Hawthorne, California which also birthed brothers Wilson who became the Beach Boys. There must be something in the water.

Those late 80s shows were something. More hair waving than a metal show. And so much fun.
And those Cds from their brief stint with major label are really hard to find these days after languishing in cutout bins for so many years. Whenever I can find one at a reasonable price I pick it up and curse myself for not doing it sooner.

Criminally underrated stuff.

See you on the other side.

I Gotta Work Tonight

 No Time.

Twice (2003)

The Tyde. Ric Menck on drums. Is very good. Yes.

I'll Find It Someday

 

I've spent a few hours tonight poring over the new arrivals and playing some of them while doing it.

I've got Arson Garden on in the background while I type this. (I think it's likely to be something to add to this pile at some point.)

Anyway.

Let us continue from where we left off.

The Oranj Album (1998)

The second and unfortunately only other album by the Oranj Symphonette.

Here they do a version of  "Dreamsville" which I discussed in the previous post but they've also expanded their repertoire to cover tunes by Duke Ellington, Marvin Hamlisch and Burt Bacharach among others.

All with the same manic glee. All tongue in cheek and arranged in entirely unexpected ways. Things shine differently when they're reinvented and  rearranged. It's the wonder of taking music that exists and making it your own. And so long as everyone's having fun it's all game.

Which doesn't mean that everyone gets it.

Christopher Howard in the Jan. 21, 1999 issue of the Orlando Weekly certainly didn't.

"The jazz parodists of Oranj Symphonette have their work cut out for them. This eclectic troupe performs oddball renditions of Henry Mancini film scores, tongue-in-cheek versions of revered jazz standards, and even a deadpan take on the absurd pop hit “Up, Up, and Away.” The opening track of The Oranj Album, a cover of Quincy Jones’s “Call Me Mr. Tibbs,” combines the cheesy Farfisa organ of a B-movie surf band with disco funk. The second tune resembles the background music at the Olive Garden, and Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll” is blasphemed with banjo, Mellotron, and fuzz bass. The Oranj Album puts the concept of elevator music to very good use. But do we really need to hear “A Man and a Woman” twisted into a cruise-ship classic or a forty-second breeze through the theme from Woody Allen’s Bananas? As entertaining as this CD is, I hope these versatile, talented players rise above novelty status."

He certainly sounds like he didn't get invited to a lot of parties.

Anyway. This is actually the second copy of this I've bought.

At some point I had been playing the first copy and when I switched to another compact disc. The actual case for it wasn't handy for whatever reason. I was in the middle of doing something else that I didn't want to interrupt by getting up to look for it. But I also didn't want to just leave a loose disc lying around unprotected. So I stuck it in the case with another disc that I'd been listening to and had every intention of putting it away properly when I was done with whatever it was that I was doing.

I didn't.

And then I forgot that I'd done that and subsequently the cd it was put in with got filed.

Now I can't remember which one it was. 

So there's an extra copy somewhere among the 2.5k compact discs I currently have.

I'll find it accidentally some fine day before I die.
(Maybe.)

Jumping the Line

 

I got two packages of records and miscellaneous compact discs and a smattering of seven inches in the mail today. Including the other two volumes of Duke Ellington live at the Click Restaurant in Philadelphia in 1948. Plus one of the two Jethro Burns solo singles from after Homer's untimely death with a song called "Dolly Parton's Sweet on Me"

But I also got a replacement for a disc I lost somewhere along the line and I'm jumping over everything to just put both of them up because they are both fucking brilliant fun.

I will also warn regular viewers that this is something more akin to Jazz than the usual rock and roll based nonsense that is the most regular feature of this exercise in silliness.

Plays Mancini (1996)

The Oranj Symphonette were all part of the backing band for Tom Waits so first off you know that they are/were some really talented and versatile musicians. Secondly Henry Mancini was a really amazing composer who had an incredible knack for writing indelible hooks and earworms but for some reason gets kind of lumped in with a kitsch mindset because of it's association with campy movie soundtracks. But there it is ingrained deeply into people's pop culture back brain such that you can instantly hum along with the "Pink Panther Theme" or "Moon River" without consciously knowing you're doing it.

I mean, I used to sit in for a while with a local "Jazz Workshop" for a bit. Everyone got to pick a tune during the session. One time I chose "Dreamsville" (from the "Peter Gunn" tv soundtrack) for my pick. There was some grumbling amongst the serious folk until they played it. It's a fucking beautiful and lush song. There were no grumbles after.

So there's this. 

A group of A-List musicians who then take up some of these well known and not so well known songs and then proceed to turn them inside out with a mixture of equal parts love, respect and malicious glee.

 
I live for shit like this.

Just Take my Word for It

 
Finishing up personal quotas and rounding numbers up.
Google your own shit.
As of this I have exactly 75 posts in the pipeline.

6/8 Lullaby (1992)

Swirl. Manchester UK

 

Travesty Befalls the Snow Queen (1996)

the Snow Queen. Los Angeles, CA
 

 

1993

 

Doing Flexis. Can't talk right now.

 

 Another Year, Another Town (1993)

Malcolm Ross was pretty much in or played with folks from every Scottish band your hipster friend is likely to namecheck to appear like he knows something.

He's right, but still a pretentious dick.

Nowherica (1993)

S.F. Seals

It's a Barbara Manning thing named after a long lost baseball team.
Try it. You'll like it.

or else.

I Hope I Remember How

 

There's a new interface with Blogger that I wasn't fully prepared for.

It's actually been any number of months since the last time I set up some posts.
It's September of 2020 for me now.
What a fucking shitshow.

Anyway. It's been so long that I had to spend an hour going through the singles boxes to figure out where I left off and what needs to be filed and what needs to be done.

I think I've got it under control now.
Not that it really matters since I'm actually going through a pile of a couple dozen recent acquisitions rather than the regular boxes.

 

 

 

 

Red Dye No. 5 (1995)

Red Dye No. 5 were from San Diego.
They do an admirable cover of "Heart of Glass" on the flip here.

Everyone Liked that.

 

Push Kings (1994)

The Push Kings were from Cambridge, Massachusetts because apparently saying you were from Boston proper is not snooty enough or something.

They made a number of records in their short existence.

This is the first of them.

I like it a lot more than the new Blogger posting configuration, I can tell you that much.
Push Kings seem a lot more intuitive and user friendly.

I Don't Know What to do with Splits pt 4

It's still that same night about a year ago.

I can smell that chicken and it's making me very hungry.

Rose Melberg/Magpies (1994)


A flexi on "I Wish I Was A Slumberland Record"

Rose Melberg's musical resume speaks volumes.
Here she tackles the Sam Cooke classic.

Meanwhile the mysterious Magpies take a stab at a Temptations song.

Superlove vs. Teen Anthems (1997)



A couple of soccer/football songs for you from Superlove and Teen Anthems that I'm too distracted and hungry to hunt down links for.
So there's that.

I Don't Know What to Do with Splits pt 2

[brief rant removed]

Castaway Stones/Dearly (1998)

Castaway Stones were from Washington DC and one of the hundreds of really great bands that involved Pam Berry (Black Tambourine).
Add it to the list.

Dearly were from Minneapolis. That's about all I know. Maybe it's all I need to.

Test Pilot Meets Origami (2000)



Another fine release on Kittridge.

About a year ago I tracked down the dude who ran the label and completed the label discography. He also sent me a Cdr of the unreleased Going Stagg cd (he played guitar in the that band) which is fucking wonderful stuff that at some point blah blah blah...

Which is kind of besides the point of this single, but information is very slim about the origins of both of these bands. This being the only vinyl appearance for both. (though Test Pilot did release a number of cassettes)

Two more contenders for the Indiepop compilation...

I scanned the insert.

I Don't Know What To Do With Splits

I'm roasting a chicken stuffed with onion, apples and sage.
I'm going to throw the remaining apples and onions that wouldn't fit along with beets around the chicken to roast with it and in the juice in a little bit.

I've got potatoes ready to go as well.

A nice rounded meal.

But in the meantime, I have a little time to kill.
I also realized that there were a number of split singles & flexi discs clogging up the epic SSC folder that I wasn't sure what to do with.
I'd vaguely considered using them for Compilation Days, but also realized I had a fuckload of compilations so that it would be unnecessary.

So I'm just going to post them over the next several posts and have fucking done with it.

Here we go....

 Mates of State/Fighter D (1999)

Mates of State have moved around a lot, but were based in San Francisco at this time according to the address. I saw them sometime in the late 90's at the 400 Bar touring with Apples in Stereo if memory serves.

Fighter D seems to have been from Oakland.

Orange Cake Mix/Füxa (1997)

Orange Cake Mix is Jim Rao and all who sail with him.

 Füxa were from Detroit, Mi

Mysteries for the Mists of Obscurity.

Or something like that.

I actually had to do some internet sleuthing for this one.

And in the end you have to wonder if it was worth it.

I suppose. It's some useless facts that can roll around in your head when you listen.

So there's that, I suppose.

 Indicate Your Love (1981)

Sensible Shoes. This one was from L.A.

There is fuck all for information about this particular band anywhere on the sleeve. Just a few names and a date on the back.

I found something anyway.

It's trivial but puts some kind of context on it, I suppose.

 The singer on this little seven inch of New Wave Pop is David Baerwald who would achieve a decent paycheck briefly in the middle of the 80's as part of  David & David when they had a Top 100 release with a major contender for all-time most 80's production sound "Welcome to the Boomtown"

Not exactly my cup of poison, but hey, they hopefully got paid for it.
So there's that.
I doubt that DB saw any sort of money out of Sensible Shoes.

Good on him for having a song that peaked even at #37.
That's still better than you or I have ever done.

Red Balune (1979)


Red Balune. There's a bunch of Henry Cow connections which should give the savvy listener some expectation of the Avant Garde scratchy artsy damage that will be contained within.

You have been warned.

History Repeats Againt Modernity.

This next installment of Boston/LA wasn't intentional.

It just happened because both of them have "Modern" in their name and ended up next to each other in the SSC file folder.

Man in Black ep (1983)

Toxic Shock records. West Coast punk rock circa 1983.

It's everything you hope for and expect from that tidbit of info.

Not the best. Not the worst of the bunch.

If I were Robert Christagau, I might give it a B-/C+

New England (live) (1977)

In the middle 70s the Modern Lovers 2.0 did a jaunt through the Old Country (or "Old World", you might say) and came away with a really sweet live Lp out of the deal.

I picked up all those sweet and goofy Beserkley lp out of the cut-out bin and the Musicsmith at the Hanover Mall sealed for a couple of bucks a pop and treasured them through high school.

It wasn't until I got to college that I finally secured a copy of the first Modern Lovers lp. That was a game changer.

Anyway. Jonathan was trying to move forward from the previous incarnation of the band, but he kept "Roadrunner" as an encore (which was put on the b-side to a different single from the set) He also apparently thought enough of "Astral Plain" to keep it available  and it ended up as the flip to the live version of "New England"

It's a really sweet version too. I have no complaints about it.

Not Quite the Same, But Close Enough

I can't help it.

I like patterns.

So here we are again.

Massachusetts vs. California in the 80s.

Round 3.

 The Spirit's Still There (1984)

Boston. A bit Goth.

These guys were the first local band I ever saw back in high school. Some friends and I hopped into somebody's parent's car and drove into the city for our first ever all ages show at someplace in probably Allston. (I seem to vaguely think it was in an empty storefront somewhere around Commonwealth and Harvard st, but it's more a feeling than a fact.)

I believe I still have a flyer for the show even packed away.
The bill was Primitive Romance, Native Tongue and Boy's Life.

We were young and it was fun and cool to see bands live and up close and approachable and close.

To Know Him is to Love Him (1980)

The Wigs.

San Diego.

Never had the pleasure, but this is a really sweet slice of 60's style dayglo pop.

You can never go wrong with a Farfisa.

A Side is a cover of an early Phil Spector tune originally recorded by the Teddy Bears.

I like this better.

Deja Vu All Over Again

When I was in the process of typing out the "labels" while setting this post set up I realized that I was repeating a Boston/LA post from approximately the same years.

Small world.

Love is the Lesson (1982)

Monad.

From Boston. Some seriously frantic art damaged wonderful weirdness.

I scanned the inner sleeve.
You know what that means.

You should want this.

Beak (1979)

Monitor.

From Los Angeles. Some seriously art damaged wonderful weirdness.

There wasn't an inner sleeve.
Just a postcard of James Mason that seemed nonessential.

You should want this.

4 Sides. No Shit.

As per usual I'm typing this up months and months previous to it posting.

I might not normally even be doing this tonight but unfortunately for me the television I would otherwise be occupying my time with wasting my life playing some worthless video game on suddenly crapped out on me in the middle of watching something on Netflix. (Well, not exactly "watching" so much as it was on while I fiddled around with a guitar which is my personal form of "practice")

So here we are. I have to wait it out until such time as I can get to a store and replace the fucking thing that I probably depend too much on for my personal entertainment.

In the meantime I've decided that for the sake of my own personal karma I'd drop a post of the most wonderful old school punk rock shit I had in the SSC folder.

Here's some fucking lemonade.

Achin' (1981)

The Plugz.

I could blather on about the importance of this band in terms of who they were and what they accomplished and became and all that crap. But you can read up on the Wiki if you need. I don't really care.

What I do care about is how fucking great a song "Achin'" is.

And that's really all that matters.
Trust me.

The flip is a nod to their Hispanic heritage and where they fit in as young punks and thus perfect in its own way.

This was a present to myself for working some long ass overtime. It wasn't exactly cheap for what I usually am willing to spend, but I have zero regrets.

The band would later rerecord a version of "Achin" for their second Lp "Better Luck" but it really lacks the raw immediateness and passion of the original.

Accept no substitutes.

White Stains (1979)

The Molls.

I'm pretty sure this has been comped multiple upon multiple times. Deservedly so.

They were from Boston and were led by Tristam Lozaw who would go onto lead Someone and the Somebodies that I posted a while back.

This is much better.

It's loud, crass, funny and punk fucking rock.

The flip on this is a song about the famous 70s exotic dancer known as Chesty Morgan who was endowed with an extremely large bosom. (And if you're wondering is still in fact alive as far as the internet tells me.)

Also fortunately for me, I didn't have to pay a premium for this one. I got it for a couple of bucks in the 90s because it was from Boston and Peter Prescott from Mission of Burma played drums on it.