Volume 30 - Fall 2020

Welcome once again to music for the dark days, the dark age, the manifested and symbolic reality trip that is our demise---otherwise known as 2020. This month may be joyous for some and sad for others, but we can all agree it's some degree of terrible for all of us!

One thing I'm happy with is to reach my 30th volume! I'm pleased to commemorate this set's cover image from my now-growing matchbook collection. This was recently passed down from my parents. Out of the dozens upon dozens of books shipped from the remains of my South Jersey family home this had just the right look and, even better, was from a local joint. I don't think I was ever there once I turned drinking age. Nonetheless, the early '60s era look is as good as the name of the bar is lame. If anyone knows what the 1 and a half circle is about I'll light one of the matches for you in your honor.

This set came really quickly thanks to a slew of tunes pilfered from a site with a ton of posts of Ivan Ward sides. However, I was kinda, you know, distracted with 2020. Nonetheless, to get right to it, I'm handing out the sidemen-band-name-of-the-month contest winners tout suite to The Swingsters! Some of you may know their song Congo Glide on the Frolic Diner comp. That song was second to last on the CD and I always felt it would've been a great closer. The Swingsters have two sides here with Ivan Ward. Baby Sitter and The Clique. I like the latter particularly, as it evokes the same chug chug, melancholic feeling of Congo Glide. But, how about Cal & Ivan's Lazy Pt. 2? That song, despite being a clear Sleepwalk rip-off, is a great tune. Maybe they saved that blatant pilfer for the B-side, hoping no one would notice.

Betty Blue

Blue Star by Betty Turner begins with a solar explosion that alters the DNA in my heart every time I play it. I may just have to seek out this stellar gem on 45. It's Phil Spector's wall of sound as if it were built to surround my kingdom and never let me out--to live the rest of my life in solitude. I'm okay with that as long as I have this song in my heart. This article states it was recorded in a garage studio, but it sounds like the cavernous locale of a aircraft hangar. Amazing.

I'll take the aisle seat.

Next up, Holiday by Del Kent has the great introduction that's the strange surf equivalent of Denny's Quiet Village. Take me on that vacay anytime! Say the word and I'll gas mask-up, take a flight and meet you there. 

I'm please to state both our vocals in this set are women, both are about stars, and both of them make me weep. Magic Star has Margie Singleton giving us the vocal version of Joe Meek's classic. Be sure and check out the Omnibus podcast's show on the tragic Mr. Meek. The podcast is a favorite of mine, so I want to give it a plug. And it's about the end of the world, so it has to be worth mentioning here, no?

That's all for now, folks! I'm cutting it short because it's already overdue and my right hand is fakakta due to a pinch nerve. See you in 2021!

 Take a sip here

 

Volume 29 - Spring-Summer 2020

Once again, welcome one and all (or maybe just two or three, depending on how many folks really make it to this end of the internet). Here we are with another installment of tunes to lift your spirits, purge the viruses of your soul, and to raise your head and ears up high.

This set seems to have come together not far behind volume 28. However, I think I'd been sitting on volume 28 for a while before I had published it. At this point, volume 30--a milestone of kitsch, coolness, darkness and swingingness is nearly complete. It should definitely be out before the end of the world—depending on how many of you think mask wearing is for sissies.

I'm proud to announce this set is available for streaming on mixcloud! Yes, dear listeners, while I'm not dispensing with the old school (using this loosely, of course) method of downloading mp3 files, for those into the whole spotification thing, you can simply press play below as the world ends. My eschatological goal is to eventually publish all of the 28 other volumes on mixcloud, but the way things are going, who the hell knows. Check the volume 1 post and go from there.

Haven't seen you in some time...

This volume includes only one ripped song from my collection, which I'll get to later. Nonetheless, I am pleased to add another matchbook cover from my personal stash to this series. I scored it at an estate sale in San Francisco. I seem to have a glacially slow-growing matchbook collection, made easier by the fact I quit smoking back in March. Moby Dick's is apparently from Santa Barbara's Stearn's Wharf (where it still stands). My first time in Santa Barbara was in graduate school, about two years after transplanting to the Left Coast. At the time I was certainly seeking my own white whale, attending a Jungian institute for psychology. I battled many demons and many a tsunami of the psyche but I'll save that for another blog altogether.

Some classic-rockers-to-be have a hand in a few of the tunes on this collection, starting with Aurora by The Squires. This was an early band of the Old Man from Canada himself, Neil Young. Not sure what the surf was like on the coast of our Northern neighbor, but the spirit of the surf gods ran deep. So deep, you can hear it in dude's voice making sure we know the title of the song at its conclusion.

Later in the set, The Squires give us another smooth instro with The Sultan. And speaking of the Middle East, let's hop onto the Camel Train! We have two—count ‘em, two--Camel Trains. The first, by Fargo Wells is clearly immersing us into the aural delights of a caravan. Or is that the sound of a train engine powered by two humps? The second, by The Fortune Tellers, reminds me of some tracks from the Ernie Kovacs show, not that I was alive when it aired, but I know my kitsch history, folks. Or shall I say kitschtory? The dainty camels are moving more slowly at first, pick up speed, and eventually get to the oasis, which thankfully is the end of the song. (Clearly, I’m more fond of the first train.)

 

Who needs love when you have a pool?

Curson Terrace is from Mike and Tony. That’s Mike Nesmith, in his pre-Monkees days. The crowd sure loved him back then. Curson Terrace is a swanky area/property in the Hollywood Hills so there's lots to be happy about for rich white people.

Patty McCarthy’s melancholic ode, The Death of Love, hits the spot in this set. It gets to just the right place in the small, tender fissures of our torn hearts for us to take a moment and recognize how fragile we are.

I’m going to pair the next two because they are the juicy center of this volume. By juicy, I mean dripping with steamy sax blowing. Had by Steve Douglas is music to get lost by. By getting lost I mean being down and out. Out in the middle of Nowheresville. A dead beatnik lying in the gutter. You’ve been had. The whole world has screwed you over. (I can keep going with this, you see. Just look around.) The second growling brass is High Noon from Pearl Reaves with the Paul Farano Trio. It’s the modern Western transplanted to the dirty urban jungle. 

Frank Zappa lends his subversive hand to the Inebriated Surfer by the Hollywood Tornadoes. The flip of this found its way to Volume 3, with Moon Dawg.

Walkin' to Mother’s by Ray Anthony comes from my own collection. It was a recent find at an estate sale. This is on Anthony’s Like Wild LP. The record execs were really pushing hard for the young kids to ignore the white dude with the gyrating hips and focus their ears on the hep cats. Lynn Oliver’s tune Tribal Waltz is a similar story. It’s LP title is even more blatant, as it’s called Teen-Age Jazz. "Like, sell out, daddy-o!"

Finally we get to our sidemen-band-name-of-the-month contest to close out this volume of tunes. We only have two contestants, both vocals, where the backup singer might even be heard here: The Lavenders (with Robin Lee) doing their stroll song Walk Away and The Dreamers (with Jean Luk) singing You Are My Love with so much ache I have to give them the prize. I guess it’s really just Jean Luk screamin’ his heart out, but with a name like the Dreamers, I had to hand it to ‘em.

The pandemic rages on--along with a lot of other people raging. Stay safe, speak up and keep dreaming.

Spear the white whale here or listen down there 👇.

Volume 28 - Winter 2020

Welcome to the end of the world. For real this time! Let the music touch your face, your eyes, and your ears as we cross the threshold while everything perishes. Your soul will thank you for it when the clock strikes. Wash your hands, don't wash your hands. Nothing matters.

Nonetheless, I have some lovely tunes once more ripped from the interwebs and from new (old) vinyl of mine that I'm eager to share with you all. I hope you are enjoying the devastation while in isolation.

The matchbook image for this volume is a special one. It comes from Bimbo's 365 club in SF. I was fortunate to go for the first time late last year. Man, I could spend the next 365 days in that joint and think I was stuck in 1961, except a 1961 where no one smoked cigarettes. Despite nobody lighting up, they do provide packs of matches with this same image. However, for our vintage purposes I found a pleasing, original matte version for this collection. Bimbo's was also featured on one of the Las Vegas Grind CD covers and it had to be pointed out to me by a native after I had already been living in the Bay Area for some time.

Our first silver nugget to highlight is the ineffable Ballad of the Surf by Richie Allen. I've been trying to find this one out there for a while. There was a poor quality version on video, but a crisper version recently showed up. The 45 was not easy to find and any copies were beyond my means. Elegiac surf tunes are my favorite kind if you've learned anything from reading this blog, and this one serves its purpose. Allen vividly conjures the image of a tsunami slowly churning towards the land. The speck of a surfer sits atop of the aquatic mountain just moments before the destruction. Gotta love the finger cymbals and, of course, my truly heart-touching wordless vocals.

Before we go any further, maybe someone can give Bandido a drink? Bandido is not observing social distancing and thinks the bars are still open. Somebody tell Bandido to be like Clift.

Monty doing great in his self-quarantine.

Bermuda by Ray Sharpe is only one of two vocal songs in this volume. Let the lilting sounds bring you gently into the coming warm weather. Just don't mess with the coral. They're having a hard enough time as it is.

And now, ladies and gentlemen gather round for the big fight of sidemen-band-name-of-the-month! Let's get ready to Link Wraaaaay! We have a head to head this month: In the red corner we have The Illusions (with Marlow Stewart) doing their version of Earthquake which sounds nothing like the other Earthquake. And in the blue corner coming in at a cold 32 degrees we have The Sinkers (with Ronnie Rae) doing their take on the sultry vocal standard. This time, The Sinkers bring the temperature way down to freezer-burn the hell out of that fever!

Drum roll please...our winner is The Sinkers with Chills! How can I not select such a downer name for this downer of a blog? This may even be the first time a vocal song won the contest. The vocalist is irrelevant anyway since we're talking about the side band.

We have an unusual entry into our macabre omnibus of songs with a few tracks by Elmer Bernstein. They're from his score to the (until recently unknown to me) TV show, Staccato. My man Frankie Fink turned me on to these dark tales of a swinging detective played by John Cassavetes. Normally, I don't go too far into the crime jazz territory for these collections but I recently happened upon the vinyl soundtrack at a craft fair in San Francisco.

"I'll have the heart attack of the day."

The SF wax-slinger also had another 45 that I picked up called The Greasy Spoon by Hank Marr. This one was a nice discovery. It is the perfect music to picture yourself sliding into a booth, ordering a small stack a pancakes, a cup of black java, and a side of pulmonary heart disease.

Night comes: you find yourself walking after dark, along the empty asphalt. And when they see you coming they walk away, toward oncoming traffic to keep the 6 feet distance. You're lonely, your heart throbs and you wish for, long for love. Hear The Viscounts as the sax screams in aching desire: the sound of your soul crying out. Night for Love is the piece de resistance of this set. After hearing it I was compelled to find it in its truest, perfect, 7 inch form. And now I share it with you.

Finally, we close our entry with a nod to my pal Shankey, the Fink with the Farfisa. Although Wade Curtiss likes to spell it as Shankie, it was close enough to recall my former Viper. This sweet rockabilly instro comes from a Norton comp. I shelled out the 298 cents after hearing it on Little Danny's show. Throw some cold cash Norton's way. They deserve it and then some.

Thanks for listening, reading, breathing and living. This took a while to post even though we're a month into Spring, which means the next set might be close behind.

Best regards to everyone. Stay safe and stay away.

Sanitize your ears here