Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums - 11) The Doctor (1986) Flac

If any one record sums up all the ludicrous indulgence of ‘80s record-making it’s The Doctor, Cheap Trick’s utterly botched ninth album. The band managed to navigate new wave with the assistance of Todd Rundgren, and even scored a slick AOR hit in 1985 with “Tonight It’s You,” but all their commercial instincts soured on The Doctor just as Rick Nielsen entered into a significant songwriting slump. Of the two problems, the former is the hardest to bear, as the very sound of The Doctor is egregiously unpleasant. Cluttered with cacophonic electronic drums and clanking with cheap overdriven synths, the record is cavernous and hollow, every instrument echoing endlessly in a fathomless digital stage. As sonic archaeology, this holds some interest, as it contains every bad record production idea of the mid-‘80s -- it’s as garish and ugly as its record cover -- but even then the relentless march is wearying, as it's married to an exceedingly weak set of songs. Whenever Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander have a good idea -- the cheerful sleaze of “Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere),” the slow grind of “Take Me to The Top” -- the song is bludgeoned by Tony Platt’s production, making The Doctor a memorably unpleasant album.(allmusic. com)

Enjoy it,
            SB1         Flac1    You need both tracks!   Flac2

Fotomaker - Vis' A' Vis' 1978 (2005 Wounded Bird) Flac & mp3

After the first very well received album by critics and the audience the band released the Vis' A' Vis' album in 1978.It was not the success the band had expected. It have not the complete strength of the first album but anyway it is an album with some good songs on it.

Enjoy,
         SB1       New Flac Link        mp3@320 

Thanks to Javier for this contribution!

At Request: Game Theory - Real Nighttime (1985) (2015 Omnivore) Flac

Released in 1985, Real Nighttime wasn't Game Theory's first album -- they'd self-released the home-recorded Blaze of Glory in 1982, and a pair of EPs had been fashioned into the 1984 LP Dead Center -- but it was the first record that truly fulfilled Scott Miller's ideas and ambitions for his music. With Real Nighttime, Miller and his bandmates had a bigger budget to work with, as well as a talented and sympatico producer, Mitch Easter, who tightened up the music and helped Miller work out the angles of his sweet-and-noisy smart pop. While Easter's studiocraft helped Game Theory improve their game, Real Nighttime more importantly contained the best and most cohesive set of songs Miller had written to date, and this loose song cycle following a young man's journey from romantic bliss ("24") to soul-crushing disappointment ("I Turned Her Away") plays like the indie pop answer to Pet Sounds. Like that album, Real Nighttime gave Game Theory a great canvas for experimentation; the ominous clouds of slide guitar on their cover of Alex Chilton's "You Can't Have Me," the caffeinated guitars and drums of "Friend of the Family," and the interplay of fuzztone and Farfisa on "Rayon Drive" showed Game Theory were learning new ways to color their surroundings, especially as the more aggressive numbers turned around quieter pieces like "If and When It Falls Apart" and "I Mean It This Time." And while Miller was clearly the leader of this band, the outstanding percussion work from Dave Gill, the evocative keyboards from Nan Becker, and the solid, propulsive bass of Fred Juhos played an invaluable role in making these songs work. Game Theory made good records right out of the starting gate, but Real Nighttime was where they proved they could make truly great ones, and it's not just one of the band's finest works, it's a watershed work in '80s paisley underground pop.(allmusic.com)

Can't say anything about the album because to me nearly everything what Scott Miller with his musicians did back then, is great for me. Also Real Nighttime. Wonderful wave arrangements with enough power pop in the songs. Maybe in the eighties Miller was the most modern pop musician in power pop style. No other understand like Miller to blend parts of the common power pop with the new pop styles of the time back in the early till mid eighties (Costello was more in new wave at that time like many others). The pop music lost an important influence with his untimely death.
Hope you will enjoy
                                SB1     New Flac link
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Rachel Sweet - B.A.B.Y.; The Best Of Rachel Sweet (2001) Flac and mp3

It's very easy to remember Rachel Sweet as little more than a juvenile novelty within the Stiff Records canon, one more in a long line of headline-grabbing oddities who vanished from the radar around the same time as people stopped caring what the label itself was up to. To do so, however, serves up a dreadful injustice, to Sweet of course, but also to anyone who actually sits down to listen to Sweet's Stiff Records output and discovers there a treasure trove of excellence.

Her Fool Around debut album, in particular, was a masterpiece, a country-new wave hybrid a decade ahead of its time, and littered with some sensational performances -- "Who Does Lisa Like" is only the most obvious, the almost shockingly mature "Wildwood Saloon" only the most surprising. Of course there were a few obligatory bubblegum boppers in there, but when the novelty factor gets too grating, it's the songs ("Cuckoo Clock," "Girl with a Synthesizer") that jar, not the singer. Sweet's second album, Protect the Innocent, was less enthralling, although a lovely cover of the Velvet Underground's "New Age" and a strange take on the Damned's "New Rose" both thrill, while Sweet also unleashed a positively beautiful take on the oldie "I Go to Pieces."

All of which lines B.A.B.Y. up as an excellent collection, and a fitting tribute to a singer who should never have been allowed to fade away as she did. At her best, she really was one of the best.(allmusic.com.)

Rachel Sweet was great in the four years from 1978 till 1982. I must confess that i don't know later stuff ( i.e. the album ''The Look'' , released without calling her name on the album).

If you don't know Rachel Sweet give her a try.

Cheers  SB1   New Flac link           mp3@320

The Hollies At Abbey Road 1973 - 1989 (Remastered 1998) Flac

If this 20-song, 78-minute compilation is less compelling than its two predecessors, it's only because it represents a period in the Hollies' history in which the group lost its decade-long grip on the pop charts, even as they retained their fan base. The producers have interspersed the key hits and B-sides with what they regard as important album tracks and throw in a handful of previously unissued songs for a good cross-section of what is probably, for many of us, the least familiar period in the group's history of recording. The first track, "The Day That Curly Billy Shot Down Crazy Sam McGee," was an attempt to emulate the sound of their earlier hit "Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)," which succeeded only part way, reaching the Top 30 in England. "Transatlantic Westbound Jet," a rare Bobby Elliott/Terry Sylvester collaboration, in this version featuring Allan Clarke on lead vocals, and the bouncy (and previously unissued) rocker "Iceberg" lead us to the group's last major international hit, "The Air That I Breathe."

The album and B-side tracks that follow are enjoyable enough, the Calypso-flavored "Layin' to the Music" being the best of the cuts leading into "4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)," which is followed by a delightful rumba-style rock number, "Come Down to the Shore," which sees its first release on this CD, although they never succeeded remotely the way "The Air That I Breathe" did. Another superb (and previously lost) outtake, "Samuel," makes its debut here as well, featuring some newly-recorded Tony Hicks guitar parts. An unusually large portion of the rest of the disc is devoted to tracks off of the Five Three One-Double Seven O Four album from 1979, but these pale next to the radiant harmonies and overall exuberance of the group's 1981 reunion with co-founder Graham Nash on "Take My Love and Run," which deserved a lot more chart action than it ever saw. As late as the mid-1980s, as this compilation shows, the group was creating brilliant pop/rock, and it's worth getting to "Too Many Hearts Get Broken," "Find Me a Family," and "No Rules." The sound is state of the art, and the annotation is informative and entertaining.

The first Hollies - At Abbey Road 1963 - 1966 you will also find here on the blog.
Enjoy
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Classic Album: Chris Bell - I Am The Cosmos (2009 Rhino HandMade Records, Deluxe Edition) Flac

Unreleased for over 15 years, I Am the Cosmos is nevertheless an enduring testament to the brilliance of Chris Bell; lyrically poignant and melodically stunning, this lone solo album is proof positive of his underappreciated pop mastery. While cuts like "Get Away," "I Got Kinda Lost," and "Fight at the Table" recall the glowing, energetic power pop of Bell's earlier work, the majority of the songs on I Am the Cosmos are more reflective and deeply personal; the title track is a harrowingly schizophrenic tale of romantic despair, while other cuts like the lurching "Better Save Yourself" and the lovely "Look Up" are infused with a spiritual power largely missing from his Big Star material.

The album's highlight, "You and Your Sister" -- which features backing vocals from none other than Bell's Big Star mate Alex Chilton -- is simply one of the great unknown love songs in the pop canon, a luminous and fragile ballad almost otherworldly in its beauty.(allm,usic.com)

At first: I will post tomorrow the mp3 version, too. About the album is nothing more to say. Too much people had everything told about it and Chris Bell. You better listen to it! It's with full Rhino artwork. They have done a very good job together with the people (Chris' brother, the people and friends from Chris by Ardent) who was involved in the realisation of this expanded double disc set.
If you like it you can buy it here.

Have fun
               SB1                                                    mp3@320                                           Disc 1 Flac 
You need both mp3 links, too!                         mp3@320 2                                         Disc 2 Flac

The Flac links will expire 2017-04-20          

Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums - Album 10) Standing On The Edge (1985) Flac

Standing on the Edge's only highlight comes from the silvery-sounding "Tonight It's You," which peaked just outside the Top 40 at number 44 in the fall of 1985. Like 1983's Next Position Please, Standing on the Edge finds the band without any pizzazz or rock & roll exuberance. The tracks are dull and colorless, with only the single sporting any signs of enthusiasm from any of the band's members. Sleepers like "This Time Around," "How About You," and the ridiculous "Wild Wild Women" are subpar considering what Cheap Trick's capabilities are. Both Zander and Nielsen lack the cohesion that they usually have, and the writing comes off as weak and disregarded. Although Todd Rundgren tried his hardest to get 1983's Next Position Please off the ground, Cheap Trick opted for producer Jack Douglas this time around, whose efforts fared quite the same. It wasn't until 1988's Lap of Luxury that Cheap Trick was finally back on track, scoring their first number one hit with the dreamy-sounding ballad "The Flame."(allmusic.com)

Today only two albums of the Trick.  The last three albums follow tomorrow.
Cheers
           SB1  Flac1  You need both links!   Flac2

Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums - Album 9) Next Position Please 1983 [2006 Authorized Version] Flac

Cheap Trick attempted to ride the new wave on 1982’s One on One, but wound up with a wipe-out, so they recovered by hiring Todd Rundgren, one of the few ‘70s album-rockers who proved that he knew how to negotiate the treacherous waters of the early ‘80s, for 1983’s Next Position Please. Rundgren wielded a heavy hand during his production, pushing Cheap Trick toward making a record that could easily be mistaken for a Utopia record -- so much so, the Todd composition, “Heaven’s Falling,” slips onto the second side without calling attention to itself. The bright surfaces with the guitars and keyboards melding so tightly with the vocal harmonies they’re inseparable, produce a sound that is uncannily reminiscent of Oops! Wrong Planet, but Rundgren also helps keep an eye on quality control, letting Robin Zander’s terrific “I Can’t Take It” open the album, coaxing the band to cover the Motors’ “Dancing the Night Away,” and editing Rick Nielsen’s best set of songs since Heaven Tonight. Next Position Please is still very much a new wave-era Cheap Trick album -- this is shiny surfaces, not kicks to the gut -- but it’s the best of the lot, and one of their best-ever albums.

Disc 10, Next Position Please from 1983 is a good album with a lot of good songs.
Have fun
              SB1  Flac1  You need both links!  Flac2

Psychedelic Pop from 1969: Apple - An Apple A Day 1969 (1994 Repertoire Records) Flac

 Psychedelic Pop from Apple. An Apple a Day was released in 1969. This is the Repertoire release from 1994 with four bonus tracks.

Enjoy
         SB1             Flac1   You need both tracks!   Flac2

Game Theory - Lolita Nation: Flac links added!

Hello, i added at request today for the Lolita Nation album (that you can find here on the blog)  by Game Theory the Flac links (for only two days!). If you interested in this fantastic masterpiece in Flac format, hurry up. You find the links in the Lolita nation 320 post.

Cheers
           Frank

Honeybus - Story 1970 (2008 Rev-Ola) Flac & mp3

Honeybus' sole album was recorded in 1969 and released in early 1970, by which time "I Can't Let Maggie Go" was fading from the memory of the British public, original leader Pete Dello was long gone, and the band itself had been inactive for months. It's therefore not entirely representative of what the group was about. Honeybus did show themselves to be one of the few bands that could emulate the lighter and quieter sides of the 1968-1969 Beatles with a degree of competence, although as is usual when the Beatles were imitated, the songs and execution were much more lightweight than what the Beatles themselves recorded. At times it sounds like Badfinger without the muscle or occasional outstanding songs that made Badfinger recall the Beatles without sounding like tepid wannabes. The Beatlesque harmonies are nice and the lyrics sometimes clever, and the arrangements are tasteful, sometimes employing substantial traces of country music and subtle orchestration. All of the songs are available on the 25-song compilation At Their Best (which also includes a B-side recorded around the same time, "The Right to Choose"), which is a far better alternative than finding a copy of the original album.(Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com)

The story of Honeybus is almost a cautionary tale. Considering that most have never heard of them, it's amazing to ponder that they came very close, in the eyes of the critics, to being Decca Records' answer to the Rubber Soul-era Beatles. The harmonies were there, along with some catchy, hook-laden songs and usually tastefully overdubbed brass and violins. The pop sensibilities of Honeybus' main resident composers, Pete Dello and Ray Cane, were astonishingly close in quality and content to those of Paul McCartney and the softer sides of John Lennon of that same era. What's more, the critics loved their records. Yet, somehow, Honeybus never got it right; they never had the right single out at the proper time, and only once in their history did they connect with the public for a major hit, in early 1968. Their best known lineup consisted of Pete Dello (vocals, keyboards, guitar), Ray Cane (vocals, bass, keyboards), Colin Hare (rhythm guitar, vocals), and Pete Kircher (drums, vocals), with Dello and Cane writing most of their songs.

Dello and Cane, songwriting partners and ex-members of various minor early-'60s rock bands, most notably Grant Tracy & the Sunsets, were the prime movers behind Honeybus. In 1966, they formed the Yum Yum Band with ex-Them drummer Terry Noon, which became popular in the London clubs and released five singles on the English Decca label. A collapsed lung put Dello out of action in early 1966, and it was during his recuperation that he began rethinking what the band and his music were about. He developed the notion of a new band that would become a canvas for him to work on as a songwriter -- they would avoid the clubs, working almost exclusively in the studio, recreating the sounds that he was hearing in his head. Those sounds mostly featured lush melodies and lyrics that suddenly blossomed with the upbeat radiance of flower power and the Summer of Love. It was a novel strategy, paralleling the approach to music-making by the Beatles in their post-concert period, and all the more daring for the fact that they were a new group, without the unique hitmaking history of the Liverpool quartet.
Out of this came Honeybus, with Noon stepping aside to manage the group and being replaced by Mike Kircher. The group was one of the best studio bands of the period, reveling in the perfection that could be achieved through multi-tracking and overdubbing, and an approach that also mimicked the Beatles' breadth, playing with either admirable taste or reckless abandon, depending on the song. They were duly signed to England's Decca Records and assigned to the company's newly organized Deram label, which was intended to represent their new generation of pop/rock acts, oriented toward sunshine pop, psychedelic, and what was later designated "freakbeat" sounds. Their debut single, "Delighted to See You," which was cut with the help of Roulettes members Bob Henrit and Russ Ballard, sounded more like the Beatles than anything heard in British pop/rock since the Searchers had faded from view in early 1966. The B-side, "The Breaking Up Scene," could have been the work of the Jimi Hendrix Experience or the Creation. Actually, if anything, they sounded a great deal like the Bee Gees, who had just begun establishing themselves as something more than Beatles sound-alikes -- the difference was that the Bee Gees were a performing band as well as a top-notch studio outfit, fully capable of doing (and willing to do) most of their output on-stage.

The critics were quick to praise the band and the record, but it never charted, and their second single was also unsuccessful. Then Honeybus hit with their third release, "I Can't Let Maggie Go," in March of 1968, which rode the British Top 50 for three months and peaked at number eight. One of the most fondly remembered examples of psychedelic pop/rock to come out of England in 1967, with a richly textured, reed-dominated arrangement (with a bassoon very prominent and a break played on oboes and clarinets) and a pleasant McCartney-esque lead vocal surrounded by gentle high harmonies, all wrapped up in a melody that wore well on repeated listening. The record should have made the group, but instead it shattered them.
Pete Dello resigned during the single's chart run. He had been willing to play live on radio appearances and the occasional television or special concert showcase -- during which the group used a Mellotron to replace the overdubbed strings and other backing instruments on their songs -- but he couldn't accept the physical or emotional stresses of performing live on a regular basis, or the idea of touring America, which would have been the inevitable result of a British hit of that size. Perhaps a Brian Wilson/Beach Boys-type solution, with an on-stage replacement, might have worked, but instead Dello left, and with him went his songs.(excerpt by allmusic.com)

This is a very fine album full of songs with a light psych touch, great melodies and good songs.
Give it a try if you don't know the album. With 11 bonus tracks.
Enjoy
          Frank            New Flac link
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Psychedelic Pop/Folk/Sunshine Pop - Paper Bubble - Scenery 1970 Flac

This obscure trio -- Terry Brake (guitar, vocals), Brian Crane (guitar, vocals), and Neil Mitchell (bass) -- made a little-known album of somewhat precious British folk-pop-rock, 1970's Scenery, dominated by Brake and Crane's vocal harmonies. The record was produced by Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper of the Strawbs, and engineered by Tom Allom, who later produced many Strawbs recordings.(allmusic.com)

This quite obscure British pop-folk-rock effort might hold some interest for intense fans of British folk-rock of the late 1960s and early '70s, if only because it was produced by two members of one of the major bands in that genre (Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper of the Strawbs). Compared to the Strawbs, however -- and, for that matter, most British folk-rock acts -- Paper Bubble were far more lightweight. Emphasizing the close, merry harmonies of guitarists Terry Brake and Brian Crane, many of the tracks have a bouncy, singalong feel that's too happy-go-lucky, in fact, if you're in the wrong mood, though there are occasional breaks into more wistful numbers. Though bassist Neil Mitchell was the only other member of the group, the sound is thickened with some piano, light orchestration, and vague psychedelic textures. Like much American sunshine pop of the period, however, it has an upbeat vibe that verges on the sappy at times, even if this particular record isn't too strongly related to the sunshine pop style, with an innocent childlike escapist quality found in much British psychedelia of the time. And like many such efforts, it has pleasant surface qualities, but lacks memorable depth or truly standout compositions.

In this context, the least characteristic track, "Mother Mother Mother," rocks like the devil, with berserk organ breaks, effective distorted electric guitar licks, a hard cheery folk-rockin' verve absolutely missing from the rest of the LP. It's the standout number on the record -- and was, in fact, anthologized in 1983 on the Broken Dreams, Vol. 3 compilation of psychedelic British rock rarities -- but, unfortunately, was the only hint of such brazen energy Paper Bubble ever displayed.

Very good Folk PopSunshine Pop with catchy melodies. It is a really good album and the compositions are maybe not standout but pretty good. I recommend it if you are in sunshine pop/british psychedelia.
Have fun
               Frank                   Flac1  You need...yes...both links!  Flac2