George Jones - Musicor Years

Great news from Bear Family:

George Jones' classic Musicor recordings have been out of circulation for years while a lawsuit was resolved. Jones' Musicor recordings were never issued systematically or in full until now! Jones' Musicor recordings were never issued in premium sound quality until now! This CD boxed set includes all-time classic George Jones hits, such as 'Love Bug' (revived by George Strait), 'Take Me', 'Four-O-Thirty Three', and 'Walk Through This World With Me'. Includes two complete George Jones sessions with false starts and alternate takes. Be there with George in the studio! The first of two boxes that will eventually include every Musicor recording, except the duets with Gene Pitney (available elsewhere on Bear Family)! -- These were George Jones' truly classic years. After more than a decade as one of country music's top stars, newfound maturity and soulfulness augmented what was already the greatest voice in country music. The six years from 1965 to 1971 that Jones spent on Musicor Records were marked by personal turmoil and unprecedented success, but through it all he kept minting one country standard after another. This is the first part of Bear Family's comprehensive two volume edition of Jones' complete Musicor recordings, covering all sessions from 1965 until mid-1967. Until now, the Musicor sides were randomly packaged and many were unavailable, but the two Bear Family boxes (plus one CD of duets with Gene Pitney available elsewhere on Bear Family) will tell the complete story. Here are the fabulous original albums, including his tributes to Dallas Frazier and the duet albums with Melba Montgomery, plus such all-time George Jones standards as 'Things Have Gone To Pieces', 'Love Bug', 'Take Me', 'I'm A People', 'Four-O-Thirty Three', and one of the greatest ever country classics, 'Walk Through This World With Me'. It's all here in stunningly restored sound together with ten previously unissued recordings, including fabulous early versions of 'Love Bug' and 'Take Me', recorded in Houston. -- In all, this set includes 142 songs on five CDs, plus two complete sessions from Houston with false starts and alternate takes. -- This set includes liner notes by Rich Kienzle and a complete discography by Don Roy, Kittra Moore, and Richard Weize.

I probably have a dozen of George Jones' Musicor LPs, but not anywhere close to all the music he recorded for the label. Also, while the quality of the songs on these albums tends to be quite high, the LPs themselves are another matter. The condition of the LPs is variable (not all of Possums' fans are also audiophiles apparently), and there are many, many tracks that are repeated across LPs. Anytime I buy a Musicor album I didn't already own I get on average three or four new songs because of the high percentage of repeats.

Of course I'm gonna hold on to those LPs, if for no other reason than to keep all those beautiful pictures of George in all his buzz cut, nudie suit splendor. Now how about a complete Starday/Mercury set?

Bob Dylan - Together Through Life

If you're trying to decide if it's worth shelling out for the new Dylan double LP versus the cheaper CD, these pictures might help you decide.

"Beyond Here Lies Nothing" CD Version

"Beyond Here Lies Nothing" LP Version

I've kind of burned out on talking about what these differences mean (see previous posts tagged "loudness wars" for my thoughts on this subject). On average the LP version of this track has about 4 dB more dynamic range than the CD. This despite the fact that technically (as I've mentioned before) CD is capable of around 30 dB more dynamic range than the LP.

The difference between the two versions isn't as dramatic as I remember it being with Modern Times, so perhaps we're seeing some progress. But at around -11 dB average RMS the CD, while not the worst offender in the loudness wars, is still (in my opinion) too loud to sound really good. By comparison, with the peaks normalized to 0 dB, the LP version is around -15 dB average RMS, which allows for a more exciting, dynamic presentation.

The pressing quality of my LP was pretty good with only a few stray clicks and pops. I could quibble with the packaging: shoving two 180 gram LPs into a single, flimsy cover will quickly lead to seam splits. For $26, a gatefold cover would have been nice, but at least the CD is included as a bonus (if you can call it that).

BTW, I'm really loving the music. Dylan just keeps reaching further and further back in time for musical inspiration. But you don't need me to tell you Uncle Bobby is great and that he's on a serious late-career roll.

A Request...

Sony/Legacy has a reissue request feedback forum. You can go there and request specific reissues. Users can also "vote" on other requests. I put in a request that Sony start using their original analog master tapes rather (or at least hi-rez DSD digital copies) for their LP reissues. I don't see much point to buying an LP that has been mastered using a CD resolution digital file (which is apparently what Sony has been using for their recent LP reissue series).

So if you agree that it would be preferable to master LPs from the original analog master tapes, stop by the Sony/Legacy forum and vote for this request. You must register, but the process is quite painless, you can even use your google/yahoo/AOL ID.

While you're there you can also vote for my suggestion to reissue Sly Stone's High On You and Heard Ya Missed, Well I'm Back. You can also put in a request for vinyl reissues of some of Bob Dylan's more recent albums, and a reissue of Neil Diamond's complete Bang recordings, or add your own suggestion.

Great Moments In Flexi-Disc History

While searching for the Kendra Smith flexi-disc, I came across this one, given away with a different issue of The BOB Magazine. I had totally forgotten I had this, but it's a good one.

The A-side "I'll Meet You Halfway" by Redd Kross is an outtake from 1993's Phaseshifter. It sounds to me like the boys were going for a kind of Neil Diamond vibe here (quite sucessfully, I might add). This also appeared on the B-side of "The Lady In The Front Row" 7" single (but not on the 10" EP that I own, go figure).

Side two has a then 48 year-old Moe Tucker performing "Teenager In Love" accompanied by her daughter Kate on violin and sax. Like everything else Moe touches, the results are completely charming.

The other B-side track, "So So Sick" appeared in a slightly different version (titled "So Sick") on Unrest's fantastic 1992 album Perfect Teeth. I believe this version also appeared on a limited edition Teenbeat 7" box set of the album. It's criminal that Perfect Teeth, one of the best albums of the 90s, has fallen out-of-print. It's not even available as a download, although a compilation of some of the better tracks and rarities from the same period, B.P.M. (1991-1994), is available at iTunes. "So So Sick" (possibly the same version as this one) is also available there, presumably sans flexi-disc induced distortion. Once again, I've done my best to clean up the sound without negatively impacting the music, I hope you enjoy the results.

[link expired]

Kendra Smith - Alle Morgens Parties

I'm still here.

I recently got a request to re-up Kendra Smith's German language version of "All Tomorrow's Parties," which I originally posted long ago. It's worth hearing again, but I thought I would also take the opportunity to re-record the track, and apply some of what I've learned about digitizing vinyl in between time. This was taken from a flexi disc given away with The BOB Magazine. It's never going to sound like the kind of recording audiophiles use to demo interconnect cables, but I think it sounds a lot better than the first time I did it. (Long time readers who downloaded this back in 2006, let me know what you think).

I don't have a lot to add to what I said originally, which wasn't much to begin with. It's uncanny how fully Kendra Smith and Steve Wynn were channeling The Velvet Underground when they recorded this track back in 1981. If I didn't already know better and someone told me this was an alternate take from the Velvets' session that produced the Norman Dolph acetate, I would believe it. Slavish imitation? Sure, but also great.

I'd like to apologize to my regular readers for not posting in a while. I've been suffering from a case of what might charitably be called writer's block. But I'm going to keep posting, if not necessarily at the rapid pace I once did.

Alle Morgens Parties (click to download)

Robyn Hitchcock - Goodnight Oslo

Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 release a new album, Goodnight Oslo, in the U.S. tomorrow (it was released in the UK last week). I pre-ordered the vinyl directly from Yep Roc so that I could get a bonus CD with a few non-album tracks (somehow, I feel it is important that I add to my seemingly bottomless well of Hitchcock obscurities). I just noticed that the release date for the LP is not until March 3, so hopefully Yep Roc will give me access to the digital tracks tomorrow.

From the bits that I've heard of the album, it sounds very good. It's clearly the most carefully produced and pop-friendly album we've heard from our hero since his stay at A&M ended in the mid-nineties. The production sounds crisp, but not overdone. Certainly it's not fussed over to the point that the music will sound dated in a couple years.

In the meantime, I finally picked up the Luminous Groove boxset (on CD). Despite my uncharacteristic foot dragging, it's an essential purchase for any Hitchcock fan. The three albums presented in the box, fegMANIA!, Gotta Let This Hen Out!, and Element of Light, were among my first Hitchcock purchases and remain favorites. Between cassettes, LPs, and various CD editions, I've probably bought each of these albums several times over at this point. No doubt I'll buy them again when they're offered as implantable nano-crystals, or whatever format lies on the horizon beyond digital downloads.

Yep Roc currently has all three of these CDs on sale for $5, but the boxset (despite being pricey) is easy to recommend because of the excellence of the bonus material found on the double CD Bad Case of History album. The first CD focuses on (mostly) previously unreleased studio material. Much of it dates from 1987, the period between Element of Light and the Egyptians A&M debut, Globe of Frogs. Another excellent batch of previously unreleased songs dates from 1994. The material sounds too well produced to be demos, but not as polished as what appeared on the official releases from the period. It's hard to figure out why these songs wouldn't have seen release sooner. The liner notes are of no help in this regard, because there are none to speak of. Highlights include, "Bad Case of History," "Poisonous Angel," "Evil Guy," "Ivy Alone," and one of my all-time favorites "Surfer Ghost." The second CD collects live tracks recorded at various gigs from 1991 to 1993, think of it as Gotta Let This Hen Out! Mach II!

Here's another Egyptians obscurity from Hitchcock's A&M years that is not represented on the boxset. "Watch Your Intelligence" was released on the b-side of the "So You Think Your In Love" promo 12" in 1991. Perhaps this song will see official release on some future CD boxset chronicling Hitchcock's A&M recordings, but of course we might have moved on to nano-crystals by the time that happens. Stay tuned.

Watch Your Intelligence [right click to download]

Songs The Cramps Taught Us: Psychedelic Jungle

Well when I die don't you burry me at all, Just nail my bones up on the wall, Beneath these bones let these words be seen, "This is the bloody gears of a boppin' machine" Roll on...

I've spent a lot of time the past couple weeks thinking about what made The Cramps so great. Perhaps this should be an easy question to answer. I could just say "it's the music" and move on. But I think there's more to it than that.

Part of what makes The Cramps' music so powerful is the way in which Lux and Ivy were able to create a kind of alternative universe that their fans could inhabit. And the world they created is more tangible, more real, in part because it has been stitched together--like some beautiful Frankenstein monster--from things that are real (twisted rockabilly, garage punk, budget horror films, etc.).

The music The Cramps covered is an important part of their aesthetic. With their choice of covers, it was as if Lux and Ivy were pointing us toward a secret history of rock'n'roll. It was a history in which the music never became homogenized and corporatized, a history where rock'n'roll remained the music of outsiders, freaks and deviants. The Cramps were not alone in this attempt to reclaim rock'n'roll from the normals ("Gabba gabba we accept you, we accept you, one of us"), but they brought a powerful sense of history to the project.

It's a fight Lux kept up till his last breath, and for that I salute him. Rock on.

Songs The Cramps Taught Us: She Said

Like Flies On Sherbert was recorded, mostly, over three nights in 1978, mixed over the year that followed, and released to an unsuspecting world in 1979 by Selvidge's Peabody label. While it takes only three minutes to record a song, Chilton emphasizes that sorting it out takes a lot longer, "especially if you cut things that're really crazy." Only five hundred of the album were pressed (a British label subsequently pressed a version), and I suspect that through a series of phone calls over a short time, one could locate the individuals who own four hundred of them. Peabody had little distribution, but Chilton’s ardent fans managed to acquire their copies.

- from It Came From Memphis by Robert Gordon

During high school, I suffered from an extended case of insomnia. I spent most nights watching bad horror films on TV and listening to Nuggets-style garage rock, punk and 50s music. During my sophomore year, at the behest of my good friend, Bill, I bought Songs The Lord Taught Us by The Cramps. This took some convincing, I am ashamed to admit, as I was skeptical of any band that wouldn’t have a bass player. Anyway, when I finally listened, I heard songs that mixed Nuggets-style garage rock, punk and 50s music with lyrics about insomnia and horror movies. It was as if some sick pranksters had recorded a platter especially for me.

I became, and remain, a Cramps fan.

At that time, Lux & Ivy's last "real album" was 1981's moody Psychedelic Jungle. Since that creepy crawl, they had bestowed upon us a great live EP (Smell Of Female) an import comp (Off The Bone) and a US comp (Bad Music For Bad People) but no new stuff.

Despite being virtually identical to Off The Bone, Bad Music For Bad People was somehow my favorite. It was less expensive, for starters. More importantly, it had some of the greatest cover art of all time. In addition, it arrived on IRS Records, a label I (ahem) trusted. Finally, I got real gone on "New Kind Of Kick" and "Can't Hardly Stand It" -- both became mixtape favorites.

A highlight of Bad Music For Bad People was "She Said," a rockabilly shudder that sounded like the product of a drunken night. Lux Interior hectored listeners through a disposable cup he had lodged in his mouth to give the chanting an appropriately incoherent quality. At the mall, my friends and I would shout its maddening chorus, "Whoo Ee Ah Ah!," at each other like some catch phrase along the lines of "Where’s The Beef?" or "Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls."

Around this time, (I'm not sure of the exact date) a compilation entitled Rockabilly Psychosis & The Garage Disease marched in on Big Beat Records It contained original takes of songs later covered by The Cramps, such as "She Said," "The Crusher" and the unbalanced "Love Me." Shards like The Legendary Stardust Cowboy's infamous "Paralyzed," The Sonics' "Psycho," and a cool number by The Gun Club made the disc all the more enticing. The coup de grace (coup d'etat?) - it held within its vinyl etchings, The Cramps, themselves, performing "Red Headed Woman" alongside Jim Dickinson, who I may or may not have heard of at the time. I have to assume "Red Headed Woman" was done by the group during a sojourn to Memphis to record with Alex Chilton. It's a fun song, and it features the the very talented Mr. Dickinson on lead vocals - but, darn it, I wanted Lux.

Still, I played the record to death.

With that...

"She Said" startled me. It was dramatically different than the version on Bad Music For Bad People that I had become used to. The Cramps' rendition, while obviously screwy enough, at least sounded like it was taped in a studio. There were discernible guitar parts and somebody had taken the time to set up a drum kit. This "She Said" however, as played by somebody named Hasil Adkins, sounded like a field recording of a mentally ill man. The Whoo Ee Ah Ah! bit, instead of being fun and catchy, was raspy and feisty - an evil whoop. There was no way of recognizing the instruments. Instead, I caught a simple rattling behind the lyrics that I assumed was intentional. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before.

I examined both versions of "She Said." Over and over. One against the other. As if by voodoo, I began encountering mentions of Hasil Adkins in magazines. He was some Appalachian nut who lived in a disused bus and howled about "hunching" and hot dogs. A basic misunderstanding of the recording process led Mr. Atkins to believe that most rock & roll musicians were one-man-bands who played guitar and percussion at the same time, which is precisely what he learned to do.

I quickly realized that the punkabilly and psychobilly I had been listening to for the past year represented fairly refined, or at least distilled, versions of maniacal sounds which had emanated from a vanishing America.

I figured I should hear more.

I learned about Hasil Adkins from The Cramps. I learned about a masked, musical polygamist who recorded under the alias "The Phantom" from The Cramps. I heard about Irving Klaw and Russ Meyer. I found out which numbers Carl Perkins was alleged to have recorded while tanked.

That's the effect The Cramps had on a lot of listeners. Lux & Ivy were infinitely hip people - always a few steps ahead of their audience. By listening to their records - which, frankly, there are too few of - we got a brief view into their unique world. Enticed by those flash glimpses, we always wanted to see more - they were magnificent carnival barkers; we were suckers stumbling by. We flatfoots knew our world could never be as wild or as groovy as theirs, but they inspired us to try.

The late, great Lux Interior and his brilliant partner, Ivy Rorschach, fired up a generation of oddball kids to search for the real and the campy and the artificial and the ugly and the beautiful and to find something/anything that rolled them all up into one fun, scary mess.

I miss him already.

Songs the Cramps Taught Us: Tav Falco's Panther Burns

A year after working with the Cramps in Memphis to produce tracks that would appear on Songs the Lord Taught Us and Gravest Hits, Alex Chilton was working with Tav Falco to create a masterpiece of wail and reverb on Behind the Magnolia Curtain.

1979 also happened to be the year Chilton released his polarizing Like Flies On Sherbert LP. This is one of those albums you love or hate and critics mostly hate it. I happen to love it, warts and all. "Hey Little Child!" is simply one of Chilton's finest moments. And while there are a few missteps, it's a really enjoyable record that explores rock and roll, country and blues in it's most basic forms.

Tav Falco's Panther Burns Behind The Magnolia Curtain also happens to be one of those records that you'll write off as a lo-fi mess or can't get enough of. The parallels between "Bourgeois Blues" and "Teenage Heart" with what the Cramps were doing during this period is obvious. I've also included the track "Red Headed Woman" from The Unreleased Sessions recorded at Kingsbury High School in Memphis.

In contrast, the track "Pantherman" from the ep Blow Your Top was recorded at Radio City Music Hall and represents Tav's New York period. The guitar on this track does have a nervy, edgy sound that was much more typical of New York than Memphis at the time.

Go man go!

Lux Reading

Available for free this week on Rock's Back Pages three cool interviews with Lux Interior by Paul Rambali (1978), Cynthia Rose (1983), and Susan Compo (1995).

One quote from Rambali's piece really jumped out at me:

For us, we've loved rock'n'roll all our lives, and this band is the end of it. We're not using the band to get into galleries or become mime dancers or anything. We want to be a rock'n'roll band, and I'll do it till past when I'm dead.

Made back in 1978, it's a promise Lux more than kept. Rock on Garbageman.