Great Power Pop from the end of the seventies! The Sweat - No More Running (1978-80), 2007 (FLAC & mp3)

Here's another real great Power Pop effort of the end seventies. For me a real cult album with not one weak song. Don't miss it! The album is a contribution by Javier, a friend of the blog and a very nice pal. Thanks man!
I use the review of spavid of the wonderful 'Wilfully Obscure' blog. If you don't know the blog look here

Clive Culbertson was the driving force behind Ireland's The Sweat, but if you don't recognize either of those names you're hardly alone, especially if you find yourself Stateside.  For that matter, given the bent of No More Running's reissue liner notes, you'd get the impression they didn't make a dent in the British Isles either, due to a poor distribution effort on the part of The Sweat's label, Double D.  Furthermore, this is one record that really deserved an entry in John Borack's Top 200 power pop albums roster in the 2007 Shake Some Action book.  No More Running is sincerely that white-hot of a contender, entailing such deftly crafted, melodious salvos as "You Gotta Lotta Nerve," "How Much Longer" and "Isn't Anything Sacred Anymore."  Culbertson's aptitude often borders the same hallowed turf as Shoes, Jesus of Cool-era Nick Lowe, and the Nerves (yes, that Nerves).  When you place this high a premium on hooks the results are bound to be good, and in this case they're veritably off the charts.
Sonically, the fidelity on No More Running dangles towards the "lo" end of the spectrum, oozing warm, analogue hues that couldn't be replicated in this day and age no matter how much effort was put forth to do so.  In short, this is power pop as it used to be made, and Culbertson happens to be an immensely unheralded practitioner of the medium.  The 2007 reissue on the Japanese 1977 imprint includes seven bonus cuts, including four from Clive's precursor act No Sweat.  Additional material from this era was also committed to tape under his own name, and is available on a separate release that I can hopefully attend to later (and you shouldn't have to wait a whole 'nother year to partake in it).(by Spavid, Dec, 2016)

This is great fun,
cheers
          SB1          Flac part 1  &   Flac part 2   &   Flac part 3
                          You need all three parts!
                                                                        mp3@320

New links and a very rare Mark Wirtz!

Hello again Folks, i hope everything is running well for all of you and you will enjoy the coming weekend.

I have tried to renew all the links people ask me in the last few days. For the most i found only today time. And i hope that i haven't forgot any link. Please look all of you who asked for a new link if it's up. If not please remember me again (...i am an old man... :-) ) I have still a lot of work here in the new house and today was a really bad day for me. So i stopped the work in the house and have done a little nice work here for the blog.

My first new post in my new home is a very rare one .

''Mark Wirtz and the Teenage Opera - The Fantastic Story Of Mark Wirtz And The Teenage Opera'' RPM 2001 (Flac)
(This time no mp3 files. Please don't ask in this case for it.)

The title might be taken by some to imply that this double CD is producer Wirtz's never-issued-in-completed-form Teenage Opera (excerpted on Keith West's hit single "Excerpt from 'A Teenage Opera'"). Actually, it's really a collection of Wirtz's more ambitious and enduring productions from 1964 to 1972 (with one Wirtz recording from 1996), sometimes featuring Wirtz himself as the artist, though some of the songs would have been used had the opera taken final shape. It's a wildly inconsistent collection that doesn't quite make the case for Wirtz as a genius on the order of Phil Spector, or even Joe Meek. Still, there's interesting British pop and rock here, traversing quite a gamut of styles, from British psychedelia (with Tomorrow) and relatively straight pop to Gene Pitney-esque balladeers, go-go background music (sometimes played by a young Steve Howe), and American-style arrangements for female vocalists and pseudo-Spector-ian sides.

Unlike, say, Meek or Spector, Wirtz didn't have immediately identifiable signature sounds, other than being prone to lush, sometimes orchestral density that sometimes bore similarities to Californian sunshine pop. Some of these songs are superficial trifles or unmemorable pop tunes, yet others are good matches of offbeat, melodic pop/rock with imaginative production.

Elmer Hockett's contemporary calypso of "Love Is Happening to Me," the very early David Bowie-ism of Mike Sedgewick's "The Good Guys in the White Hats," the Abbey Road-on-sugar textures of Philwit & Pegasus, even the early-'70s ambitious Muzak of Wirtz's early-'70s tracks: All have something to recommend them.

Keith West's two singles from the Teenage Opera concept, "Excerpt from 'A Teenage Opera'" and "Sam," are both here too, though they've been reissued elsewhere.(Richie Unterberger)

Most of you know that it's quite rare that i have the same or similar opinion about a musical work and (you guess it) it's in this case again a very different position. But i confess it's maybe because i am a giant fan of Mark Wirtz :-)

Hope you will enjoy
Cheers
          SB1     Link Flac