Sunshine Pop a little different: Doug Randle - Songs For The New Industrial State (1970) (2009 Lights In The Attic) Flac & mp3@320

Wow, i have not hear the record for a very long time until today and like every time it's great to listen to the album of Doug Randle, a musician from Canada. It's really a great album of sunshine pop with critical lyrics. The lyrics are not about the usual themes in this kind of music. The music is great orchestrated pop and sunshine pop. I highly recommend the album. To me it's a little masterwork!
Enjoy
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"I think there's a hell of a good buck to be made out of solving our problems. So we'll probably solve them for better or worse."
--Doug Randle, quoted in the original liner notes to Songs for the New Industrial State.
There's a funny mix of cynicism and optimism in that quotation from Canadian songwriter Doug Randle that nicely sums up the prevailing sentiment of his lone album. Originally recorded only for broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1970, the record was ostensibly given a new lease on life when the Kanata label picked it up the following year for release, but poor distribution ensured its quick trip into the recesses of Canadian music history, where it remained until now.

On its surface, Songs for the New Industrial State is a sunny pop record adorned with many of the baroque trappings of adult-aimed light music records and California pop-psych, but there's much at work within that glossy interior. Randle turns his background composing music for advertisements inside-out with lyrics that carefully dissect the very methods he employed to sell things and lay their phoniness bare. In the late 60s and early 70s, lyrics decrying the artifice of a plastic world and environmental degradation weren't uncommon, but Randle does it differently, sometimes with a charming awkwardness that leaves the notion of rhyme scheme behind. He'd written musicals for the CBC, and that background is evident here, too-- the album as a whole feels something like an inversion of the industrial musicals that large companies frequently staged at shareholder meetings and sales events from the 40s into the 80s.

Randle doesn't sing or play anything on the album, instead serving as the composer/conductor while steady studio hands take care of the instrumental parts. The dual vocals of Tommy Ambrose and Laurie Bower, which alternate between harmony and unison singing, give the record a distinctive, plush feel. They help to sell Randle's vision of commerce trampling nature and peace of mind amid the fanfare of trumpets and strings as surely as the lady who sang "My Bathroom Is a Private Kind of Place" sold American Standard fixtures. Randle's open-hearted sincerity and tendency to say exactly what he's thinking without irony means that a lot of modern listeners will have to make a bit of an adjustment for lines like "Warm wood/ It looks like warm wood/ Touch it/ It feels like colored plastic."

"Nicolston Dam" has some of the album's best imagery as Randle contrasts the pace of modern life with just sitting and watching trout leap over a dam, which nicely ties in the environmental themes that are also on his mind. On the odd, harpsichord-stuffed "One-Way Swimming" he offers to a hypothetical partner a way to get even further from the modern world: swimming out into the middle of the ocean. It doesn't quite advocate suicide, but it does suggest that falling off the edge of the world might be a nice escape. At the other end of the record, "Vive La Company" is a satirical portrait of a company man and his wife who tailor their interests and conversation to help him up the corporate ladder while their children walk to school singing commercials.

Randle's battle between cynicism about modern life and wide-eyed optimism is ultimately won by the latter, as he ends the album with "Life Will Be Worth Living". Naturally, many concerns on the record still ring true today, even if our ways of talking and singing about them have evolved as our society has moved from industrial to post-industrial. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but the album is a work of singular vision that earns its second airing through Randle's inventive sense of arrangement and to-the-point honesty.(pitchfork.com)

         
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The 13th Floor Elevators - Bull Of The Woods 1969 (1993 Collectables Records) Flac & mp3@320

While the 13th Floor Elevators' debut album caught them as they were still buzzing with the excitement of their musical journey through inner space and Easter Everywhere found them exploring the possibilities of the recording studio as well as their own creative process, their final studio set, 1969's Bull of the Woods, documented a band that was running out of gas. Legal problems were dogging the Elevators and preventing them from touring, they were justifiably unhappy with their record company, lead vocalist Roky Erickson was beginning to buckle under the group's steady diet of LSD, and lyricist and founder Tommy Hall was growing tired of the demands of the group after the difficult process of writing Easter Everywhere.

As a consequence, guitarist Stacy Sutherland became the de facto leader of the group during the recording of Bull of the Woods, writing most of the songs and singing lead on several numbers, and in his hands the 13th Floor Elevators were a very different band. Sutherland's compositions on Bull of the Woods are more languid and pastoral than the material that dominated the first two albums, and while there's still a psychedelic undertow to this music, Sutherland's music was gentler and his lyrics more solidly grounded in the real world than what he created in tandem with Erickson and Hall. At the same time, Bull of the Woods also showcases Sutherland's consistent strength as a guitarist, and his fluid lead lines and melodies rooted in country and blues figures are Texas psychedelic music at its purest and most refreshing; after the psychic roller coaster of the 13th Floor Elevators' first two albums, Bull of the Woods is a relatively quiet trip to the countryside, and it's joyous, frequently beautiful stuff. Unfortunately, the sessions for Bull of the Woods were recorded quickly, and producer Ray Rush overdubbed an incongruous horn section on several numbers at the insistence of International Artists Records, but even in compromised form, Bull of the Woods is a testament to Stacy Sutherland's talents and his often overlooked role in one of America's trulyvisionary rock bands.(allmusic.com)

In my ears a very comfortable album by the band and maybe it was the right step into the right direction at the right time. And i think the band and the environment had known that some things must change. If you are interested in the Elevators and don't know the album give it a try.

Have fun
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Psychedelic, Jazz, Pop, Folk, Rock: Roger Bunn - Piece Of Mind 1969 ( 2013 Airmail Archive Japan mini LP CD) Flac & mp3@320

Roger Bunn was hardly ever a household name in music, even at the peak of his career during the last three years of the 1960s. He somehow managed to play with lots of important people and bands, and at major gigs -- and intersected with the early career of David Bowie, as well as playing a role in the founding of such outfits as Roxy Music -- but he only ever got known especially well among musicians, rather than to the public.
Bunn was born in 1942, the son of a deceased and highly decorated war hero. By his own account, his childhood -- during which he was mostly separated from his mother -- was lived out either in relative emotional isolation or, at brief moments at annual public ceremonies, in the shadow of his father's war record. By the end of the 1950s, he was enjoying the skiffle boom -- which was represented locally in Norwich by a band called the Saints -- and also gravitating to the work of the American beat poets and jazz musicians. Bunn had started playing guitar in his teens, and by the end of the decade had taken the lead guitar spot in a group called the Bishops. In the early '60s, however, he made the switch to playing jazz bass, and was working for Cockney rockabilly icon Joe Brown. He was back on guitar for a stint with Wee Willie Harris in Hamburg, and later bounced back to East Anglia and a soul outfit called the Bluebottles, whose members included Mike Patto.

Bunn's real love lay with jazz, and not the trad style that was dominant in commercial circles -- he was a serious Charlie Parker devotee. But he found most of his opportunities playing rock and soul, and the Bluebottles got gigs with the likes of Manfred Mann and the Animals; working in those musical surroundings, Bunn spent most of what free time he had at Ronnie Scott's jazz club. During the mid-'60s, he worked with a wide array of players, including Graham Bond, Zoot Money, and Joe Harriott, and crossed paths with Jimi Hendrix. By his own account, he also used a massive amount of recreational, often hallucinogenic drugs across the years leading up to the late '60s, which caused a memory lapse on aspects of his life that lasted well into the 1980s. He played with the Ken Stevens dance band and in Marianne Faithfull's backing band, and also lost out to Mick Taylor in a bid to join John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. After a stint playing with the expatriate South African Blue Notes, Bunn ended up working alongside Glenn Sweeney and Dave Tomlin in a trio called Giant Sun Trolley, which played on the same bills as Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and Procol Harum at the UFO Club. He was, through the trio, part of "The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream," a renowned psychedelic extravaganza. Bunn spent a significant chunk of 1967 and early 1968 traveling around the Middle East, especially Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Back in England, he founded Djinn, a quartet that became a footnote in music history (but missed out on a page of its own) by allowing a youthful David Bowie into its ranks very briefly, part of a professional liaison that didn't last, though it led to Bowie taking up the song "Life Is a Circus" as part of his repertory for the next several years. Alas, Bunn somehow managed to lose control over the copyright and never saw any reward or recognition come from his use of the song. He also enjoyed a short-lived collaboration with lyricist/singer Pete Brown.

Bunn's solo career seemed to take off after he walked into the Apple offices on Baker Street and -- apparently based on the fact that Paul McCartney remembered him from the Beatles' days in Hamburg -- was able to talk his way into getting the use of one of their studio facilities to cut a series of demo sides. Those eventually became the basis for his recording contract with Philips Records, which resulted in the album Piece of Mind. Even that release wasn't simple and straightforward, however, as Philips licensed the new recording to Major-Minor, a tiny outfit that went bankrupt soon after. It took some doing to get the album issued a couple of years later, and in the interim Bunn received an invitation from an old friend, drummer Laurie Allen, to join the progressive rock band Piblokto, which brought him back to Pete Brown's orbit and made a brief musical splash in the turn-of-the-decade art rock world. It was after leaving them and forming his own outfit, Endjinn, that Piece of Mind was finally issued, but his work with the group proved more fortuitous at the time. Endjinn led to Bunn's most musically important gig, as the original guitarist for Roxy Music, from November of 1970 to the summer of 1971. He was long gone by the time they were signed to a recording contract, but his name has occasionally come up in recollections by Bryan Ferry. Since the early '70s, Bunn had more or less dropped out of music, apart from one-off projects such as one album by McCartney's brother, Mike McGear, and much later, releases by Davy Graham and Peggy Seeger.

He became much more focused on politics, and was especially concerned with issues of national and corporate malfeasance and greed, and the specific issue of South African apartheid; he also happily helped to inform anyone who would listen of the CIA's complicity in the Afghan opium trade, among other nefarious goings on around the world, and sides to the West's involvement in the Middle East that are almost never discussed. Bunn passed away in July of 2005, just a few days after his 63rd birthday, in the same year in which the CD reissue of Piece of Mind -- long regarded as one of the great lost albums of the psychedelic era -- had finally been arranged.

Wonderful album and highly recommend.
Enjoy
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The Beach Boys - Sunflower 1970 (1990 Epic Records)

After Reprise rejected what was to be their debut album for the label, the Beach Boys re-entered the studio to begin work on what would become a largely different set of songs. The results signaled a creative rebirth for the band, a return to the beautiful harmonies and orchestral productions of their classic mid-'60s material. Though the songwriting didn't quite reach the high quality of "California Girls" or "God Only Knows," Sunflower showed the Beach Boys truly working as a band, and doing so better than they ever had in the past (or would in the future). Many of the songs were co-compositions, and the undeniable songwriting and performance talents of Dennis Wilson and Bruce Johnston were finally allowed to flourish: Dennis contributed "Slip On Through," "Forever," and "Got to Know the Woman," while Bruce wrote "Deirdre" and "Tears in the Morning." After a succession of spare, unadorned lead vocals on rock-oriented albums like Wild Honey and 20/20, Sunflower returned the Beach Boys to gorgeous vocal harmonies on the tracks "Add Some Music to Your Day," "Cool, Cool Water," and "This Whole World." And the arrangements, tight and inventive, showed Brian Wilson once again back near the top of his game (though the production is credited to the entire band). Sunflower is also a remarkably cohesive album, something not seen from the Beach Boys since Pet Sounds. As with that album, Sunflower earned critical raves in Britain but was virtually ignored in America. [Sunflower was made available in 2000 as half of the two-fer collection Sunflower/Surf's Up.](allmusic.com)

I don't know what Reprise rejected but it looks like a good decision if i hear what they recorded after re-entering the studio. On the album is not one weak track and also no average song. You can listen to twelve top notch songs, all different, all with great arrangements and strong vocal lines.The album is a conglomerate of a lot different songs but all with a positive musical feeling. This was for years their strongest work and one of their best. I highly recommend it.
You will have fun
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The Two Last Volumes: A Collection Of Rare '60s British Psychedelic And Mod Era Singles: Various Artists - A Perfumed Garden 1965 -1973, Vol.4+5 (2003 Past & Present Records) Flac & mp3@320

Hello Folks, it's weekend once again and i am very glad about it. The last week had a lot work and other aggravating things so i am now ready to enjoy the weekend.
I want start today with the last two volumes of the marvelous ''Perfumed Garden'' series and i hope you enjoy the music as well as i do. Enjoy it and here are the links:

  Vol.4 Flac p1 &  Vol.4 Flac p2        Vol.4 mp3@320

 Vol.5 Flac p1  &  Vol.5 Flac p2        Vol.5 mp3@320

Have fun
              SB1 

Cupid's Inspiration - Yesterday Has Gone 1969 (1995 Repertoire) mp3@320 only

Based in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England, and initially known as the Ends, this pop attraction secured a recording contract with NEMS on the strength of vocalist T. (Terry) Rice-Milton (b. 5 June 1946). The line-up was completed by Wyndham George (b. 20 February 1947; guitar), Laughton James (b. 21 December 1946; bass) and Roger Gray (b. 29 April 1949) and featured on ‘Yesterday Has Gone’ (1968), a song originally recorded by Little Anthony And The Imperials. Cupid’s Inspiration’s cover version rose to number 4 in the UK chart, during which time pianist Garfield Tonkin (b. 28 September 1946) was added to the line-up.

However, despite enjoying a subsequent minor hit with ‘My World’, the quintet was unable to repeat the success of their powerful and catchy debut single. The line-up was disbanded at the end of the year, but within weeks Rice-Milton and Gray re-emerged alongside newcomers Bernie Lee (guitar) and Gordon Haskell (b. 27 April 1946, Bournemouth, Dorset, England; bass, ex-Les Fleur Des Lys). A new-found, more ‘progressive’ style, failed to reverse declining fortunes and the band disintegrated.

Rice-Milton began a short-lived solo career in 1970 with a revival of Cilla Black’s ‘You’re My World’. Haskell joined King Crimson and recorded several low-key solo albums, before emerging from obscurity in 2001 to almost hit the top of the UK Christmas singles chart with ‘How Wonderful You Are’.(allmusic)

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Unfortunately only in mp3. Fine pop album from the late sixties. I think the band was better as their reputation.
Enjoy
          SB1

A Collection Of Rare '60s British Psychedelic And Mod Era Singles: Various Artists - A Perfumed Garden 1965 -1973, Vol.3 (2003 Past & Present Records) Flac & mp3@320 + Complete Artwork 1-5

Hello Folks,
today comes the artwork for the series. I post it here together with vol.3. There is a lot of information about the bands the songs and all the other worth knowing things.

Enjoy
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                                                                                 Artwork Perfumed Garden 1-5

Glen Campbell - Reunion: The Songs Of Jimmy Webb 1974 (2001 Capitol Records, remastered) Flac & mp3@320

It doesn't really matter if Glen Campbell was Jimmy Webb's best interpreter or if Webb gave Campbell his best songs -- in other words, it doesn't matter who helped the other more -- because it doesn't change the essential fact that the duo fit each other so naturally. Webb's intricate, idiosyncratic compositions sounded warm and accessible in Campbell's hands, while the songs revealed Campbell's musical range and ambition. Other singers had big hits with Webb's songs and Campbell made tremendous music with other people's songs, but there was something special about their collaboration that was evident on their big hits of the '60s: "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," "Where's the Playground, Suzie?."

These songs provided the background for Reunion, the 1974 album where Campbell and Webb reunited for a set of Webb songs. Well, that's not exactly accurate, since Webb never produced or arranged the hits Campbell had in the '60s, and the record isn't entirely written by Webb, since it features Susan Webb's "About the Ocean" and Lowell George's "Roll Um Easy" (here retitled "Roll Me Easy")

 

So, this marks the first time that Webb arranged a full album of Campbell's, along with providing the majority of the songs, a move that in many ways made this closer to a Jimmy Webb record than a Glen Campbell LP. Certainly, it favored Webb's idiosyncrasies, particularly his elliptical songs with winding melodies and no straightforward songs.

Not a song here outside of "Roll Me Easy" announces itself as a potential single (which very well may be why this tremendous song was added to the play list, particularly as the first single, since it might be the easiest way into the record for most listeners). Since most of the songs share a similar easy mid-tempo pace and have similar lushly interwoven arrangements, it's not necessarily the most accessible of Campbell's records; it doesn't set out to alienate, it's just that Webb's songs and arrangements call for close listening, which is precisely why it's an album beloved by Campbell/Webb connoisseurs.

So, it's not entirely surprising that the record didn't make much of an impression, certainly nothing close to their big hits of the '60s, but rather that it's become a cult item, with some fans regarding it among Campbell's best work. And, in many ways, they're right. Reunion has a quiet power that grows with repeated listenings since it does indeed showcase Webb at his best as songwriter/arranger and Campbell as an interpretive singer.

But this is very much a record for the dedicated, those that are already convinced of the strengths of both men, because it reveals its gifts slowly, and even when they're out in the open, the songs are so delicately, if exquisitely, crafted they're best appreciated by listeners with an eye for detail. Those listeners will surely find Reunion among Campbell's best work, and it is certainly among his most consistent and ambitious records, but it's just a little too reserved to play to an audience outside of the already converted.(S.T. Erlewine, allmusic)

This is one of his best albums as a whole but it's hard to claim that because Glen Campbell's body of work is huge and there were a lot of great albums he recorded in more than fifty years. Nonetheless, for me personally it is one of his best efforts. How can i give reasons for my claim? The most touches me the arrangements of the songs and how Campbell perform the vocals in the songs. The songwriting here is on a very high level for this kind of music and all this things together working like a precise clockwork on an emotional flat. And this album touch me very very close if i listen to it in the right moment and/or situation. I think that's it why i rate this album on a very high rank in my personal Campbell album charts. Okay folks, enough said. I hope you like it as much as i do and will have fun with the album.

Enjoy
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A Collection Of Rare '60s British Psychedelic And Mod Era Singles: Various Artists - A Perfumed Garden 1965 -1973, Vol.2 (2003 Past & Present Records) Flac & mp3@320

Here is the second volume of ''Perfumed Garden''. I hope you enjoy this truly fine collection of rare sixties singles. Tomorrow the next volumes will follow and the complete artwork.

Have fun
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Marshall Crenshaw - Field Music 1983 (1983 Warner Brothers) Flac & mp3@320

Following his critically acclaimed 1982 debut and successful single "Someday, Someway," Marshall Crenshaw returned with the following year's greatly anticipated Field Day. Crenshaw doesn't fall prey to the sophomore jinx, delivering nine more brilliantly crafted pop/rock originals and a terrific cover of the Jive Five's "What Time Is It?"

Though the record meets the high standard that Crenshaw, his brother Robert Crenshaw (drums) and bassist Chris Donato, set with the first album, many had trouble warming up to producer Steve Lillywhite's dense, more muscular production, especially Robert's explosive snare and bass drum. But while it may lack its predecessor's immediate sparkle and charm, Field Day is equally infectious. It also shows a newfound depth and maturity in Crenshaw's writing, which Lillywhite's sound reinforces. Like Marshall Crenshaw, the majority of Field Day deals with time-honored themes of loves lost and found, albeit from a slightly less innocent viewpoint, much like the lyrical growth of the Beatles in late 1964, early 1965, or Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways" and "Learning the Game." Previously, he would move on and "find someone better" or "feel the need to go "Rockin' Around in N.Y.C."

Now, he's willing to "try with all [his] heart every day," seeing a night on the town as a "duty" that must be done before slipping back into comfortable domesticity and responsibility. Crenshaw realizes now that even true love "makes demands" amidst the fun and summer evening walks. This album brims with deceptively simple, pure pop pleasures that continue to unfold with repeated listens. Though Field Day didn't match the commercial promise of the first album, it was the perfect second step in Marshall Crenshaw's artistic evolution. (allmusic)

Great second album, great songs, great artist. Highest score!
Enjoy
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A Collection Of Rare '60s British Psychedelic And Mod Era Singles: Various Artists - A Perfumed Garden 1965 -1973, Vol.1 (2003 Past & Present Records) Flac & mp3@320

This volume of truly rare British singles of the psychedelic and mod eras contains 17 cuts that are so hard to find that some music historians of the era have never seen or heard them. This is the third time this volume -- first of the original two -- has been released; it initially appeared on vinyl only in the early '80s, and was released on CD in 1991 -- also when Vol. 3 first appeared.

No, it's not Children of Nuggets, nor is it Electric Sugar Cube Flashbacks, but there is some great stuff here -- all of it is at least worth hearing: Vamp's "Floatin'," Open Mind's "Magic Potion," and Nimrod's "The Bird" are just three examples of a slew of psychedelic and mod tunes to be found here.(allmusic.com)

I want post in the next days this wonderful 5 disc collection full of singles from the sixties with psychedelic, garage and mod style sounds. Today i post the first two volumes and the other three volumes will follow in the next days. It's with complete artwork that i post in the next days as well.
Have fun
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