Volume 26 - Winter 2019

Got a match?

It's time to light up, folks, and get lost in what used to be the darkest time of the year. This collection has been half started since before Santa time, and yet your trusty Bloodstone blogger waited until the literal last day of winter to get his stuff together to finish this draft. So, if there are funny bits about snow and the most wonderful time of the year just pretend it still is. Nontheless, the world is as dark as ever and we'll need all the luminosity and tobacco we gots!

This set has a very special treat--my first vinyl rip! King Bloodstone is no longer pretending to collect and share all this vinyl to the dying masses while actually just digitally pilfering them from cyberspace. I finally procured a turntable--my first in decades. I have Frankie Fink to thank for giving me an LP of his latest platter of doom surf (I just made up that genre). His gift was the impetus that led me to shell out for a trusty spinning platter. I'll reveal the little gem later on, as my belated Krampus gift to you, dear listener.

Let's enter the smoke shop, on our first blind date. What better place to get acquainted? Make sure to purchase the tobacco blend called Flea Español. It is not for the weak of heart. Burn this and surely you will be left with "Epic" scars on your fingers, lips and lungs. You'll leave the tobacconist and begin a Ghost Walk into the blackness of the evening. Bill Whittley and his Westernaires remind you that as great as the West is, it holds the dark, sad past of those who've walked before us. This ain't no laughing matter, buster! 

Let's pause for a moment and go ahead to award The Westernaires with the Sidemen Band Name of the Month Contest. They had close competition from The Rhythmaires (and Barbara) doing The Lizard but the ghost walks away with the prize!

Where's my hint of mint?

Your date then asks if you're Going Steady. You hear a wailing tenor and taunts from frat dudes with cardigans in your head. You are disoriented and can only think of a single thing--reaching for a Nat Sherman. Totem and taboo are precisely what is in that store you just left.

I generally try to track-list and write about the songs alphabetically, so I'm going to back up and touch upon the unique addition to our songs to end the world by. The Nite Caps were the ones to enrapture my soul back in the mid-'90s when I heard their version of Poinciana off the transcendent Frolic Diner comp. So, once I got a record player back in my life, my first purchase was to have the Nite Caps' 45 in my hands. I especially wanted to hear the flip side because it was not to be found anywhere on comps or on video--until now. And...yes, there's a reason it was never posted anywhere. It's not that good. But that's not my point including it here! It's not that bad either, so here's Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer for all the world to hear and sin by.

Speaking of Frolic Diner, Got a Match? by The Daddy O's is a nice companion piece to The Moocher by The Lancers, which was also on my favorite comp. This one's a bit corny and the punch line is anticlimactic. You're telling me some cad bumming a light just gives up that easily? At any rate, I had to include it given my ongoing (and seemingly endless) matchbook covers used as the images for each volume. (If you go to youtube be sure and check out the comment in the video below by the daughter of Larry Smith, one of the Lancers.)

Google maps what have you done?!

Island in the Sky by Benny Banta is a beautiful tune to take us off this Earth and into the nether-sphere. Which leads us to our quartet of songs to get lost by. I collect these songs simply as I stumble upon them across the cyberwebs, some stick and I add them to the next set. It was fate that we get a foursome of Lost tracks. The first, in order, by Jerry Merritt and the Crowns (uh, maybe they should've won the sidemen band name, awarded by KING Bloodstone) is a delicious jangley guitar ditty. Johnny Bernero is mad, man! It's the drunken fever dream of Dean Moriarty once he awakens after a night of who-knows-what in you-know-where. Lost Horizon by The Countdowns is the sublime, luminous guitar surf ballad that I want played during the last moments OF Earth or my last moments ON Earth, whichever comes first. Finally, what better tune to end the fourpiece--Lost World by Holly Kristen and the Elmer Schalitz Orchestra. The electronic sounds you hear at the start is the mid-century interpretation of the singularity. Then my ultimate, the wordless vocals! That sound you hear is the angels calling you home to the next world--map and compass not included.
 
And speaking of other worlds, we have the hippest underworld as depicted by Mike Minor. Satan's Waitin' sounds like the dark one is such a swingin' red devil that I'd consider hanging with him--or her.

See you folks next time! I have more 100% genuine Bloodstone 45 rips coming soon (i.e. by October at this rate...).

This volume 26 is dedicated to two of the newly late and fantastic greats: Dick Dale (1937-2019) & Andre Williams (1936-2019). Dick, may you be riding the best wave into the next world, KING of the SURF GUITAR. Andre, you hold the memory of one of my absolute best live shows ever, with The Sadies somewhere in the Tenderloin in NYC somewhere in the '90s. May both of you rest while your music lives on endlessly.

Get lost here.