TROTTERBOOKS.COM
POP & ROCK
updated: 01/23/2006
[Like I said, we’re branching out into new genres, and eventually you’ll find hundreds of cool, off-beat recordings listed here. This stuff is just a place-holder.]
THE AMBOY DUKES:
Marriage on the Rocks – Rock Bottom [Ted Nugent’s first band! You can have this album when you pry it from my cold, dead hands…]
Badfinger: "Magic Christian" Music. T. 45:19. [Arguably one of the worst films of the Seventies, The Magic Christian helped nail Marlon Brando into his professional coffin, and probably finished off what was left of Terry Southern’s short literary career, too. That said, I saw it five or six times when it came out; always laughed my ass off; and still find portions of it hysterical. The director’s patent incompetence, and the phoned-in cameos by a dozen major stars, actually work in the movie’s favor. It’s worth watching just to see Richard Burton lurching drunkenly through a Dylan-Thomas-style poetry reading and Yul Brenner in High Drag trying to pick up guys at a bar. Oh, the music? It’s a lot better than the movie, actually, if you like Beatles’ parodies…)
BANSHEE: Thinkin’. [They were popular in Europe…for about six weeks.]
"THE ENIGMA VARIATIONS" [This is the kind of pop/rock/punk/Out-There stuff I used to order when I managed a feisty but hopelssly under-capitalized independent record store near the campus of UNC-G ("On Tate Street, that Great Street, La-la la- la-laaaah!"). It was called "Platterpus Records" and we specialized in – wait for it! – esoteric classical and hardcore punk. The clientele was as colorful as the deteriorating neighborhood and the store only survived for two years. There was only so much head-banging hardcore punk I could handle at a time (although I dearly loved the Dead Kennedys, The Butthole Surfers and Iggy Pop), but some of the other bands I discovered during that second-adolescence struck me as being fully the equal to most any second-tier group in the Sixties. This two-LP compilation is an insanely variable compilation of the anti-Disco pop music scene at the time, and there are some dynamite cuts on it. The contents will fit on one CD, so you get a huge amount of stuff for the money, a veritable cross-section of the "Alternative Music" scene of the late Seventies. I ain’t listing the songs, just the bands’ names:]
Cathedral of Tears; Plasticland;Screaming Sirens; The Pandoras;
SSQ; Get Smart
Rain Parade; The Leaving Trains
TSOL; Green on Red
The Jet Black Berries; Game Theory;
John Trubee; 45 Grave;
Naked Prey; The Effigies;
Tex and the Horsehads Kraut;
Redd Kross; Channel 3
Greg Sage; Passionnel;
The Divine Horsemen; The Untouchables
Scott Goddard The Pool;
Francoise HARDY: Je Vous Aime.
[Yeah, doncha just wish… If you’re over 56, and male, you probably remember drooling over her album covers – she established the lissome, pouty-lipped Julie Christie paradigm before Julie got around to it. Funny how a mass-media sex symbol whom one formerly thought of as an "incredibly erotic, sensitive, alluring goddess-in-blue-jeans" now looks like a "sullen, humorless, Euro-Trash slut"? C’est la vie, Francoise, baby; c’est la vie…]GAME THEORY: LOLITA NATION [A two-disc set. No, I don’t remember what they sounded like, either, but, hey, it’s a two-disc set!]
KENNY & THE KASUALS: "Live at the Studio Club". Source: Impact Records LP in near-mint condition. [I’ve seen this puppy sell for $300 on E-Bay – a classic case of a cult band, one which enjoyed a devoted regional following but never quite broke into national prominence. If these kids sound this good on a minimalist home-taping job inside a smoky noisy bar, they must’ve been dynamite in person. What do they sound like? What would you like for ‘em to sound like? The Kinks? Creedence Clearwater? Buddy Holly? Early blues-period Stones? Yep, sometimes they do indeed sound "like fill-in-the-blank" but they had enough energy to light up Dallas, their home town, and tons of raw musicianship. It short, a great rock album and a very very rare one. No., I will not sell the LP itself, which I was incredibly lucky to find, but I will print out the liner notes and include them gratis with each copy ordered – fair enough?]
THE LIVE KINKS (Warner Brothers RS-6260.
{I’m told this is a first pressing of the lot; nice truculent group portrait on the album; surfaces in VG to Fair shape; disc has a general look of tiredness to it, but sounds perfectly good to my tolerant ears.RANDY PIE: Kitsch
"Renaissance" Live at Carnegie Hall: Super-cult band’s entire Carnegie Hall retrospective concert in June, 1975. Worth it for Annie Haslam’s vocal arabesques. Cuts:
"Prologue" (7:35)
"Ocean Gypsy" (7:55)
"Can You Understand" (10:20)
"Carpet of the Sun" (4:15)
"Running Hard" (9:41)
"Mother Russia" (23:50)
"Scheherazade" (28:50) [Wretched excess, but I still dig it…]
"Ashes Are Burning" (23:50)
SADISTIC MIKA BAND.
[Their first, if not only, album. Terminal Japanese weirdness.]Phil Spector’s Christmas Album.
[OK, so the crazy f****r appears to have offed his girlfriend (and boy, should that trial be juicy!), but until proven guilty, he stands convicted only of being the most influential and inspired rock/pop arranger of all time. Here’s a VERY strange compilation featuring some truly surreal combinations, to wit: The Ronettes singing "Frosty the Snowman", and "Here Comes Santa Claus" sung (?) by Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans. Mark you, when Phil’s trial commences albums like this are going to go sky-rocket in value. And when they do, yours truly is gonna put this puppy (which is in super condition) up on E-Bay. If I get a few orders, I’ll burn a master CD; if nobody orders it, I’m selling it. Last chance, dudes and dudettes. The contents are:]"White Christmas" …………………. Darlene Love
"Frosty the Snowman" ……………….The Ronettes
"The Bells of St. Mary’s" ……………. Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans
"Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town" ……..The Crystals
"Sleigh Ride" ……………………………The Ronettes
"Marshmallow World"…………………..Darlene Love
"I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" …….The Ronettes
"Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" ……………..The Crystals
"Winter Wonderland" ………………………Darlene Love
"March of the Wooden Soldiers" …………..The Crystals
"Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)……….Darlene Love
"Here Comes Santa Claus"……………………."Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans
"Silent Night" ………………………..Phil Spector & All the Artists
T. REX: Futuristic Dragon [Am I the only person who thought Marc Bolan looked like a bigger sissy than Donovan?]
TENKUJIN: Far East Family Band [35:34]
UNIVERS ZERO: "1313" [31:59]