Fake THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO Playlist: Second-Hand Songs

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl is simply too large a concept to be neatly contained within a mere three-hour weekly time slot. Hence these occasional fake TIRnRR playlists, detailing shows we're never really going to do...but could.

Second-Hand Sound is one of the ongoing gimmicks I use to fill space...er, provide engaging content here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) . The boilerplate intro for Second-Hand Sound explains the series' raison d'être:

Trash becomes treasure in appreciative hands. Second-Hand Sound examines used records I picked up over the years, albums that someone else discarded as unwanted or unworthy. 

My opinion differed from theirs.

So far, I've only gotten around to writing two Second-Hand Sound entries, both celebrating albums by the Monkees (Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. and a two-in-one post about Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees). But the concept also seems suitable for a very cool fake TIRnRR playlist.

Each of the selections in today's exercise in fakery is a track that was introduced to my music library via a used record purchase. The only cheat is the Beatles' "Thank You, Girl"--which I did own on a reproduction of The Beatles' Hits EP before snagging my beat-up copy of The Beatles' Second Album--but the jumpin' US mix of that song is what matters, and that came on the American album, not the British EP.

I'm arbitrarily excluding various-artists sets, and for kicks I'm sticking strictly with vinyl acquisitions. Trash into treasure. ALCHEMY! Sounds good to me.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl--y'know, the real one--airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at westcottradio.org You can read all about this show's long and weird history here: Boppin' The Whole Friggin' Planet (The History Of THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO). TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS are always welcome.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

You can follow Carl's daily blog Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) at 
https://carlcafarelli.blogspot.com/

Fake TIRnRR Playlist: Second-Hand Sound

THE KINKS: Tired Of Waiting For You (Reprise, Kinda Kinks)

THE NEW YORK DOLLS: Personality Crisis (Mercury, New York Dolls)

RICK JAMES: Super Freak (Gordy, Street Songs)

THE BEACH BOYS: Wild Honey (Warner Brothers, 20/20 & Wild Honey)

JONI MITCHELL: Free Man In Paris (Asylum, Court And Spark)

THE MONKEES: Love Is Only Sleeping (Colgems, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.)

--

CHUCK BERRY: Johnny B. Goode (Chess, Greatest Hits)

CHEAP TRICK: I Know What I Want (Epic, Dream Police)

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: I'll Be Your Mirror (Verve, The Velvet Underground & Nico)

MOTT THE HOOPLE: Sweet Jane (Columbia, All The Young Dudes)

PAUL REVERE & THE RAIDERS: Just Like Me (Columbia, Just Like Us!)

THE RASPBERRIES: Play On (Capitol, Starting Over)

--

THE ROLLING STONES: Jumpin' Jack Flash (London, Through The Past, Darkly)

PAUL McCARTNEY: Maybe I'm Amazed (Apple, McCartney)

THE TURTLES: Outside Chance (Sire, Happy Together Again)

THE FOUR TOPS: Something About You (Motown, Greatest Hits)

FOOLS FACE: Nothing To Say (Talk, Tell America)

ALICE COOPER: No More Mr. Nice Guy (Warner Brothers, Greatest Hits)

--

LOVE: Can't Explain (Elektra, Love)
THE WHO: The Punk Meets The Godfather (MCA, Quadrophenia)

THE MC5: Shakin' Street (Atlantic, Back In The USA)

KISS: Rock And Roll All Nite (Casablanca, Alive!)

BADFINGER: We're For The Dark (Apple, No Dice)

HACKAMORE BRICK: Radio (Kama Sutra, One Kiss Leads To Another)

--

THE OHIO EXPRESS: Had To Be Me (Cameo, Beg, Borrow & Steal)

PRINCE: When You Were Mine (Warner Brothers, Dirty Mind)

THE SEARCHERS: Take Me For What I'm Worth (Kapp, Take Me For What I'm Worth)

ON THE AIR: This Can't Be Real (Pulse, On The Air)

DAVID BOWIE: Panic In Detroit (RCA, Aladdin Sane)

THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES: First Plane Home (Sire, Jumpin' In The Night)

--
PARTHENON HUXLEY: Double Our Numbers (Columbia, Sunny Nights)
TALKING HEADS: Life During Wartime (Sire, Fear Of Music)

HERMAN'S HERMITS: A Must To Avoid (MGM, Hold On!)

THE ANIMALS: The Other Side Of This Life (MGM, Animalism)

ERIC BURDON & THE ANIMALS: White Houses (MGM, Every One Of Us)

THE COWSILLS: Hair (MGM, In Concert)

--

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

HEART: Kick It Out (Portrait, Little Queen)

THE YARDBIRDS: Heart Full Of Soul (Epic, Greatest Hits)

ROCKPILE: Teacher Teacher (Columbia, Seconds Of Pleasure)

THE DAVE CLARK FIVE: Don't You Realize (Epic, Having A Wild Weekend)

THE BLUES MAGOOS: Love Seems Doomed (Mercury, Psychedelic Lollipop)

JUDAS PRIEST: Heading Out To The Highway (Columbia, Point Of Entry)

--

VAN DUREN: Oh Babe (Big Sound, Are You Serious?)

GUNHILL ROAD: Back When My Hair Was Short (Kama Sutra, Gunhill Road)

THE SMITHEREENS: Only A Memory (Capitol, Green Thoughts)

BLUE ÖYSTER CULT: (This Ain't The) Summer Of Love (Epic, Agents Of Fortune)

ARTFUL DODGER: It's Not Enough (Columbia, Honor Among Thieves)

THE REZILLOS: Top Of The Pops (Sire, Can't Stand The Rezillos)

SUZI QUATRO: Love Is Ready (RSO, Rock Hard)

STEVIE WONDER: I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever) (Tamla, Talking Book)

--

THE PANDORAS: It's About Time (Bomp, It's About Time)

THE DOORS: Break On Through (Elektra, The Doors)

TEENAGE HEADS: Tornado (MCA, Teenage Heads)

THE MUSIC EXPLOSION: Little Bit O' Soul (Laurie, Little Bit O' Soul)

GRAHAM PARKER & THE RUMOUR: Discovering Japan (Arista, Squeezing Out Sparks)

WRECKLESS ERIC: Take The Cash (K.A.S.H.) (Stiff, The Whole Wide World)

THE RAMONES: Swallow My Pride (Sire, Leave Home)

THE BEATLES: Thank You, Girl (Capitol, The Beatles' Second Album)

--

AL HIRT: The Green Hornet Theme (RCA, The Horn Meets "The Hornet")

THE BYRDS: My Back Pages (Columbia, Younger Than Yesterday)

POP-A-LOOZA: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! T. Rex, "20th Century Boy"

 

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives, Recognizing the truth that an infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made (as long as they take turn), this latest shared post turns the GREM! spotlight on "20th Century Boy" by T. Rex.

This T. Rex piece was prepared for inclusion in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), but is not a part of that book's current plan. The chapter mentions an oddball 2-LP various-artists collection called Heavy Metal, which I picked up in the '70s and wrote about here. 

My Heavy Metal album retrospective (which is also quoted in the T. Rex chapter) was originally posted as part of my Rescued From The Budget Bin! series. The only other Rescued From The Budget Bin! piece published so far waxed blubberific over The Very Best Of The Hollies. 

Rescued From The Budget Bin! is one of several blog series I put under the (slightly) wider category of My LP Appreciations. The My LP Appreciations umbrella encompasses used albums in Second-Hand Sound (the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. and Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees), greatest-hits sets in The Best Of Everything (Monkeemania--plainly, I like writing about the Monkees--and The Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four), perfect albums in Love At First Spin (Drop Out With The Barracudas, Mr. Tambourine Man, and Rocket To Russia), albums received as gifts in Groove Gratitude (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and The White Album), a missed opportunity in The One That Got Away! (the Dave Clark Five's Glad All Over Again), and a separate admission that Beatles VI and Beatles '65 are my all-time favorite albums.

Yeah, I like a lot of stuff, including T. Rex. A Greatest Record Ever Made! celebration of T. Rex's "20th Century Boy" is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

SECOND-HAND SOUND: Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees

Trash becomes treasure in appreciative hands. Second-Hand Sound examines used records I picked up over the years, albums that someone else discarded as unwanted or unworthy. 

My opinion differed from theirs.


THE MONKEES
Headquarters
The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees
Colgems, 1967/1968

The 1970s represented a lost decade for fans of The Monkees. And really, we should expand that period to more than a mere ten years: from the point that The Monkees TV series was canceled in 1968 until at least the early-to-mid '80s, at the flashpoint of resurgent Monkeemania, sponsored by MTV. But during that in-between period? The Monkees were personae non gratae in pop culture. You weren't supposed to like them. Unclean! Unhip. Move along. Yeah, the '70s were just a freakin' wasteland for Monkees fans.



Understand: there was literally no Monkees product available at record stores. Zip. Nada. Um...zilch. Bell Records' perfunctory 1972 best-of set Re-Focus occupied vinylmonger racks briefly if at all, and its reissue on Arista Records (under the new title The Monkees' Greatest Hits) wasn't released until 1976. In the mid '60s, the popularity of The Monkees had briefly rivaled that of The Beatles; less than ten years later, it was if Monkeemania never happened, at least as far as retail was concerned.



By, I think, 1975 or '76 (when I was 15 to 16 years old), some years after reruns of The Monkees had disappeared from the TV networks' Saturday morning/early afternoon programming, I started to occasionally catch the show on weekday afternoons. WNEW in New York City was carrying the reruns, and we sometimes received that signal via cable in the Syracuse suburbs. Sometimes we didn't receive it; I guess reruns of The Monkees weren't part of whatever licensing agreement allowed the cable outfit in North Syracuse to transmit WNEW's offerings. Most afternoons, when it was time for The Monkees on WNEW in New York, our signal in North Syracuse would unceremoniously switch to on-screen bulletins and PSAs. Often, I would be teased with the opening moments of a Monkees episode--a fleeting glimpse of a starry-eyed Davy Jones, a wool-hatted Michael Nesmith, a friendly Peter Tork, and/or a manic Micky Dolenz--before the image would shift abruptly to text listings of job openings and upcoming community events. 

But every once in a while, someone musta been asleep at the console, and a complete episode of The Monkees made its way into my living room. As weeks passed into months, eventually The Monkees became part of our daily scheduled cablecast, even in the suburbs of Syracuse. Perhaps, like The Beatles before them, The Monkees had finally passed the audition.



At this point, my collection of Monkees records consisted of their first two LPs, The Monkees and More Of The Monkees, records my brother Art had left behind when he got married and moved out of the house. Watching the TV reruns, I became increasingly aware of the fact that there were a number of Monkees songs beyond those heard on my lonely pair of Monkees albums. And they were pretty good songs. 

I had to have them.

The record stores were no help. The great Gerber Music had no Monkees albums for sale at its Penn Can Mall and Shoppingtown Mall locations, nor were there any to be found at Camelot Music, Record Theatre, or even Walt's Record Shop. I wasn't really aware of used record stores yet. My deliverance could only be sought via one method: 

The flea market.

My first-ever visit to the weekly Sunday flea market at Syracuse's Regional Market was probably in 1975, maybe as early as '74, but...no, '75 sounds right. I was unfamiliar with the concept; I thought the name "flea market" was weird, but I quickly embraced this idea of finding and buying old stuff one couldn't get at retail outlets. I think my first flea market acquisition was an old '30s or '40s pulp magazine, Dime Detective, probably followed by some science-fiction paperbacks and a trade collection of two pulp novels starring The Shadow. I started picking up some records, too.

The precise chronology is blurred in memory, but some time within this '75-'76 timeline was when I bought my flea-market copies of two Monkees LPs I'd never seen before: Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees. 




I felt as if I'd found the ark of the covenant.

Remember: I had absolutely no idea of how many albums The Monkees had released; there was no handy-dandy reference book to all things Monkee, at least not as far as I was aware. I knew The Monkees and More Of The Monkees; with this flea-market visit, I had magically doubled my Monkees library in one fell swoop. And I couldn't wait to get 'em to my little turntable at home.



As I examined the covers of these two LPs, the graphics struck me as both a part of a continuity with The Monkees I already knew--bright, happy, agreeably goofy, too busy singing to put anybody down--and as something...different. I dunno, more mature? More serious? By this time, I had heard the rumblings of how The Monkees were a make-believe band that didn't play, but the sleeves of these records seemed to imply otherwise, politely but firmly. Headquarters especially seemed to insist otherwise. Hmmm.



Although the release of Headquarters (1967) predated 1968's The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, I think I listened to the 1968 album first, perhaps drawn by the familiar songs "Daydream Believer" and "Valleri." The LP's opening track, a Davy-sung ballad called "Dream World," was less than thrilling to this young, nascent rock 'n' roller. I felt an immediate kinship with the second track, "Auntie's Municipal Court." For one thing, the song's title just screamed MONKEES! to me for reasons I can't quite articulate, evoking the fast-paced schtick of the TV show and calling to mind "Your Auntie Grizelda" on More Of The Monkees. The song itself didn't go with the title at all, but I loved its mix of Michael Nesmith's stream-of-woolhat words and music and Micky Dolenz's sublime vocals.

"We Were Made For Each Other," another Davy ballad, was but a speedbump on my path to Nesmith's "Tapioca Tundra," which I adored. I already knew the greatness of "Daydream Believer," but alas, I found Nesmith's side-closing "Writing Wrongs" too long and meandering. I doubt I would have admitted that at the time. Psychedelic...!

Side 2 opened with "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet," an absolute winner sung by Micky. The track's intro reminded me of a scene on the TV show, where songwriter Charlie Smalls (later to craft the music for The Wiz) gave Davy a lesson in soul. My copy of the LP skipped on this song, usually truncating the line "I won't disappear" to "I won't --pear." No refunds on flea market finds, prime mates. Neither "The Poster" nor "P.O. Box 9847" meant much to me on first listen. Nesmith's '20s pastiche "Magnolia Simms" had an intentional skip, and I generally preferred to just skip the entire track anyway. The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees closed with an effective one-two punch of "Valleri" and "Zor And Zam," the latter an anti-war tune that I embraced with the whole-hearted fervor only a sensitive teen like me could conjure so quickly. War is bad. But, in spite of some missteps, I thought The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees was good. On to Headquarters!



Headquarters was The Monkees' bid for respectability in '67, their first opportunity to play as the musicians on the tracks that bore their name. I didn't recognize any of the songs by their titles, but was eager to investigate. "You Told Me," "I'll Spend My Life With You," and "Forget That Girl" combined for an easygoing, compelling introduction, leading into the silly (in a good way) short instrumental "Band 6." I should have known Nesmith's "You Just May Be The One" from TV, and that became one of my all-time favorites. The wistful "Shades Of Gray" felt deep to this teen, and it prompted me to wonder why I hadn't heard more lead vocals by Peter Tork. On the other hand, "I Can't Get Her Off My Mind" felt like a throwaway.

Side 2 continued the good times, commencing with a song I certainly knew, at least in part. An abbreviated version of "For Pete's Sake" had been used as the show's closing theme during its second season, and in the syndicated reruns of both seasons. In this generation/In this loving time/In this generation/We will make the world shine. I loved hearing the full version on my first spin of Headquarters, flowing seamlessly into "Mr. Webster," "Sunny Girlfriend," the quirky spoken rap "Zilch," the rockin' "No Time," and the hypnotic "Early Morning Blues And Greens." Finally, I did recognize the ranting "Randy Scouse Git" from my WNEW reruns, and with that I had completed my first spin of Headquarters.

Looking back, I'm tempted to refer to these first exposures to Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees as revelatory. And they were, even if I can't proclaim either as immediately life-changing in the moment. I liked them both, and I was delighted to have them, but I liked individual tracks more than I liked each album as a whole. That opinion would evolve over time, especially in regard to Headquarters.

But they were a revelation to me nonetheless. Previously, I had heard evidence of undiscovered, unknown Monkees songs in my cherished TV reruns; now, I had physical evidence that some of them existed in the marketplace, or at least had existed in the marketplace at one time. Maybe there was even more of The Monkees out there...somewhere. I was still trying to identify and locate at least four songs I loved from the TV show: something about a penny-whistle van, something about love only sleeping, something about a star collector, and some droning psychedelic thing where Micky sang of finding questions but no answers.



All four of those tracks--"The Door Into Summer," "Love Is Only Sleeping," "Star Collector," and "Daily Nightly"--would turn out to be on yet another Monkees LP I didn't know, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. In the spring of my senior year in '77, my friend Linda would introduce me to that album, plus the soundtrack to Head, and to The Monkees Present. And even that wasn't the end of the story. Revelations were awaiting me. Here they come, walking down the street.



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Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).

The Eventual Return Of MY LP APPRECIATIONS

It's been a bit since I've posted any new pieces under the broad heading of My LP Appreciations. In fact, it's been more than a year since my most recent LP appreciation, a Rescued From The Budget Bin! look back at an odd 2-LP set called Heavy Metal, shared here on 11/9/18. I'll be getting back to more of My LP Appreciations in the near future. Here's a list of what we've already seen, and a glimpse at some of what we may see in the not-too-distant future.



My LP Appreciations is actually an umbrella category for a number of different series, each offering a look back at my memory of a specific record and what it meant to me. Let's review those categories.

RESCUED FROM THE BUDGET BIN!



Record stores used to have cut-out bins, overflowing with deleted albums that the labels had given up as lost causes. The cut-out LP covers had been deliberately damaged: a corner chopped off, a puncture, some sort of premeditated defacing to mark them as clearance items, as soon-to-be discarded product that had been written off, as Grade B, as "other." The cut-out bin was a record buyer's last chance to grab a record on the cheap before it slipped into the out-of-print zone. In addition to the cut-outs, there were also budget albums, produced and priced for discount sales.

Cut-outs. Budget albums. I may have purchased a few of these over the years.

The origin of My LP Appreciations! Who I am and how I came to be! Sort of. Rescued From The Budget Bin! began with a post about The Very Best Of The Hollies on March 15th of 2017, and didn't see another entry until the 2018 Heavy Metal piece mentioned a few paragraphs back. Possible future entries may discuss Nuggets, Shake Some Action by The Flamin' Groovies, Suzi Quatro, The Real Kids, and the soundtracks of That Summer! and Stardust. Some other already-published bits (and some still to come) could have just as easily been classified as Rescued From The Budget Bin!, but I chose some more specific designation instead.



LOVE AT FIRST SPIN



Love At First Spin looks back at albums that I immediately loved, from start to finish, the first time I heard them.

This category was suggested by Steve Stoeckel, and first described in an introduction posted on 3/17/17. Yep, just two days after The Hollies kicked off Rescued From The Budget Bin! The first and most popular Love At First Spin was about my favorite album of the 1980s, Drop Out With The Barracudas, posted on 3/24/17. Subsequent editions of Love At First Spin cast spotlights on Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds (3/31/17) and Rocket To Russia by The Ramones (4/29/17, and this blog's 500th post). Oh, there'll be more of these, possibly including The Jam's Setting Sons, Tell America by Fools Face, Mad Monster Party, and separate entries about two more Ramones LPs, Road To Ruin and It's Alive!




SECOND-HAND SOUND



Trash becomes treasure in appreciative hands. Second-Hand Sound examines used records I picked up over the years, albums that someone else discarded as unwanted or unworthy. My opinion differed from theirs.

So far, there's only been one post published in this series, a love letter to Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. by The Monkees (6/1/17; yes, I posted about a Monkees record on Sgt. Pepper's 50th anniversary). Second-Hand Sound will return to Micky, Davy, Peter, and Michael for a two-in-one discussion of Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees. An eventual post about The Turtles' Happy Together Again could be done as a Second-Hand Sound or as The Best Of Everything, while The Velvet Underground & Nico would definitely be Second-Hound Sound.



GROOVE GRATITUDE (A GIFT OF MUSIC)



Groove Gratitude (A Gift Of Music) looks back on albums I received as gifts. A gift of music can be greater than even the gift itself or the music itself, reflecting the circumstances of who gave us the record (and why) and what it meant to us, then and now. A song can transport us back in time within a single spin. But an album that's connected to a specific someone who gave you that chance to listen and experience? That album has a story to tell.

The first published Groove Gratitude was about The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper, posted on 6/2/17, one day after the above-mentioned Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. testimonial. But the series was introduced on 3/29/17, and the first post (about The White Album) was distributed privately to my paid patrons on 4/17/17, and finally made available to the public on 6/8/17. There are number of others under consideration: Armed Forces by Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Rock And Roll Over by KISS, Raspberries' Best, Live And Sleazy by The Village People, Give 'Em Enough Rope by The Clash, and Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols. Moving from LPs to CDs, I may do something about the Otis Redding boxed set Otis!, Step Up by The Flamin' Groovies, and/or Powerstance by The Fleshtones.



THE BEST OF EVERYTHING



Sometimes only the best will do. The Best Of Everything looks back on specific greatest-hits and best-of LPs and what they meant to me.

The concept of this most recent addition to My LP Appreciations was introduced on 10/3/17. The series debuted on 1/27/18 with a reverent recollection of the 3-LP Austalian import Monkeemania, and Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four followed on 4/17/18. Still to come: Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) by The Rolling Stones, Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy by The Who, and The Kinks' Greatest Hits. And more.


Also within the broad category of My LP Appreciations were posts about Beatles VI and my modest bootleg collection. 



Some of my potential and pending subjects may shift from category to category, both within My LP Appreciations and to other series like The Everlasting First, which may be the best forum for me to discuss, say, The Velvet Underground. Some of these I'll get to, and some will never be done. I appreciate 'em all nonetheless.

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).