This here blog is to share the mp3s I've been collecting since 2012, when the world was supposed to end as some predicted--via the Mayan calendar or the bible. Or both. I don't know, but I do know they were all wrong--so far. We can be grateful because now I have plenty of music to share since that doomed year of Our Lord. Amen!
First a dollop of history: My passion for instrumental music began innocently enough with surf music. In the '80s my father brought home a K-Tel issued LP of hits from the golden era of surf. It had the usual stuff, but I frickin' loved it as a little snot. The music took me out onto a vast ocean, carried by swells of vibrato, reverb and a steady snare beat. I had always loved the beach and the sea--having spent countless summers with Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop at their condo in Ventnor, NJ. Nonetheless, The Ventures, The Centurions, or whatever else was on that K-Tel piece of wax brought the salt water back into my South Jersey suburban home.
Little did the pre-teen child know that lurking beneath the melodic surface of the gentle, lapping waves were sex-crazed beasts and hard-boiled chain smoking maniacs.
[I'm going to jump ahead in this history and skip talking about the resurgence of surf, swing, and the like from back in the Pulp Fiction era of the mid-'90s, which included my own foray into instrumental madness with my sax blowin' days in The Vipers. Maybe I'll get to it another day. Let's just say this time served to reignite my original love for the exalted instrumental.]
It was now 2012. I was working Saturdays at my job and began to collect songs from blogs, podcasts and youtube channels that posted their 45 rpm records. The life of the inter-webs had matured and I was harvesting the fruits of nut-jobs with similar passions.
My collection of instros grew to where I had to start putting them into volumes. Now that I'm at Vol.14 I figured I'd better start uploading and sharing before the world really does perish by crop collapse, economic meltdown, Donald J. Trump, or evaporating oceans.
[As a moral note, I try not to have many songs that can be found on other comps. If it can be bought, I usually buy it.]
Going back in time again to the theme of this blog.
My whole craze for ribald, exotic, novelty and R&B instrumentals started with the Las Vegas Grind series from Strip Records. As a commix fiend in the early 1990s, the Dan Clowes cover for one of their CDs caught my eye at a Tower Records in Philly so I bought it without hesitation and took it to a friend's in Camden. As soon as that disc started spinning a 94-proof shot of something stiff spun straight into my nascent Psyche. It was a bloody revelation. It was coming home to hear this new (to me) old music. This was shortly before the whole Pulp Fiction thing came along.
As I wrote above, I had my exposure to surf as a kid, and of course I was familiar with "Tequila" and a few others instros that reached the charts of the day. Yet the realization that the Champs hit merely scratched the surface of a whole era of instrumental sides was a lightning bolt sent by the Saxophone Gods, striking my college buddy's pad that day. It was a step into the premier nite club of Wildsville. A we're not in Jersey anymore experience. A mish-mash of sleaze and swing from the curious musical era (late '50s and early '60s) where jazz, R&B, and rock & roll met, danced, partied, and slept with each other solely to give birth to a bastard child with post-war ennui, exoticism, guitars, saxes and freedom infused into its DNA.
Following the Las Vegas Grind volumes, I soon found Jungle Exotica (also Strip records) & the Frolic Diner series (from Romulan) in the mid-90s. I didn't even know what the *&%$#@ I was hearing! The tunes on those volumes were even more of a goddamn life saver. Vegas Grind was more or less R&B, but the Jungle Exotica comps was from another hemisphere! And, Christ, the Frolic Diner tunes came from realms I didn't even know existed in American music. The first song was about dog food for crying out loud!
Poinciana by the Nite Caps is by far, one of my all time favorites. The dark sax lines and wordless female vocals blasts me straight into an Atomic-age vision of driving a long Cadillac convertible with the top down and a blood orange sun illuminating the desert road ahead. A cold pistol sits in my glove box and two suitcases of plutonium pack the trunk. -- It's one sublime instro.
I've been constantly collecting CDs (and, more recently, mp3s) since those musically apocalyptic days of my youth. Yes, I haven't owned a turntable in quite some time, but until the day the world ends and all that's left is dusty analog hardware among the rubble, I'll keep hunting for that unheard tune in the wilds of the internet. The sheer limitlessness of 45s seem infinite. It's unbelievable that I continue to find more of these tunes after nearly 25 years of exploring and hearing every instro I thought that era produced. I have faith in humanity--sort of.
Some BIG THANKS to those that have added to this ongoing discovery: Howie Pyro, Kogar the Swinging Ape, DJ Tom LG, Office Naps, DJ Diddy Wah, WFMU Ichiban (now Boss Radio 66), Halsey B. Gone, Sophisticated Savage, Buzzsaw Joint, Action Patrick, ChockInstrumentals, Cicodelico, DJ Lucien, ScratchyOldies McVinyl, DJ Ginger Fizz, and Moldie Oldies.
[A few more notes and comments.
All tracks are vintage tunes from the classic era--I don't think any are beyond the late '60s, but let me know. There are also vocal tunes here and there.
The first few volumes were around 60 songs each, so I divided them into "Disc 1" and "Disc 2" although I don't know if they'll split them on MediaFire. The rest I kept to about 30 tracks.
They're not numbered, so by default they are listed alphabetically. The first track of the first volume is numbered because I figured it was appropriate to the World's End theme. Also, on volume 1, El Diablo is by Scott Walker under a different pseudonym--not even The Devil and His Disciples. I found this out later, but kept this tag anyway.]
Volume Two of these 2012 instros came quickly, even along side of the first gathering of tunes. 
