Bodacious screams Joe Meek and all the spacey connotations that come with that, but oddly enough if you take a look at that cover you'll see that it's produced by Bobby Vinton of all people. Apparently one of the members was friends with Bobby. In any case, a killer instrumental, one of the best I've posted on here
El San Juan is a sleepy latin-tinged surf dreamer, great in it's own right but way less Joe Meek.
So one of my favorite 45s I've picked up recently was Mody-Vation's "Ghetto Kung-Fu" on Phil LA of Soul, a sort of dreamy, idiotic rip-off of Kung-Fu Fighting. I wanted more, and I found that there was ONE more Mody-Vation recording out there. Way out there in Germany on the Hansa label. Well, with a cover this stupid, I had to spring.
I don't know if I can say whether they quite match Ghetto Kung-Fu musically but they're fun enough. Friends might actually be my favorite of the two, reminding me of that Ween EP that came out in 2007 or so.
Brother Monkey.
and Friends
This has gotta be the best thing I've pulled in a long time. Greasy instrumentals from Lafayette, Louisiana, covered in loud fake cat meows. As evidenced by the Crazy Cajun music (and this site here), this was a Huey Meaux joint, and from a little more internet digging it seems they're entirely separate from the Fabulous Continentals found on the Las Vegas Grind compilations, despite fitting right in.
Pussy Cat Part 1:
And Part 2:
Plain ol' 90s surf, fast and fun. I can't find a single thing about this band other than what the liner notes say, which are included so I won't say all that much more. It's off a split 7" with The Dimitri Gurevitch Quintette, which I deemed to be less of interest.
Escape to Bikini Island (strikes me as a terrible place to escape to)
Infiltration
Rendezvous in Red Bank
(pssst I got a scanner and a new sound card, this blog's posts may be rarer than they once were, but higher quality!)
This post is going to be easy. While I'm not going to kid myself, most people checking out this blog have some interest in the forgotten art of Rock & Roll and have some sort of savvy, often more than I do, but I explain the albums all the same. The Champs, however.... I think anybody can sing along to Tequila.
This here's a split LP, though you can hardly tell by the cover. And honestly, the cover is sort of correct in doing so; The Cyclones side is far less fun, but we'll get to that later. Aside from Too Much Tequila, which got a proper 45 single treatment and was on their album Tequila these songs don't really appear anywhere else except for a rarities collection called Wing Ding (in the case of the last three songs) and a Greatest Hits collection which features Streamliner. However, these are excellent tracks, all with the signature Champs sound and with a healthy dose of humor. Club House was the immediate standout to me, and it apparently had some affect on Quintron as well since he did a loose cover on his album "These Hands of Mine". Quintron, why are you so great?
I haven't heard a direct cover of Lowdown myself, but it's got a great slow and dirty vibe to it that reminds me of this Eddie Angel song that I'd might as well throw on here
As for the Fabulous Cyclones, whose name got an even smaller typeface than their song titles on the cover, they're up against some hard competition but the LP is still worth flipping over. It's simple rock & roll instrumentals, reminding me of Joe Houston. If you wanna dance, The Cyclones will provide and you'll have a great time, but if you want something to whistle while walking down the street I'd stick with the A side. The real disappointment here is that the song Moon Journey has no sci-fi tone to it, because with the Quintron mention I would have another rare post fulfilling the Louisiana, Rock & Roll, Sci-fi trifecta in this blog's mission statement.
this album isn't the cleanest one I've got but the songs are about 97% listenable, the only pops that I found were as one song faded out. Otherwise there's sort of a fuzz going on, but the music prevails. I don't have a back cover included since it says nothign about the album, just other albums on the label. The tracklist looks like:
Side A (The Champs):
Side B (The Fabulous Cyclones):
I'd been meaning to upload it's Twistin' Time for a little while so when I pulled out my thrift store purchase of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" and found George Hudson's "Dance Time" instead (UGH, ROOKIE MISTAKE) I figured it was a sign that this must be posted.
That's not to suggest it's exactly mindblowing. These are twist records number a-billion and a-billion and one and though plenty of fun and worth it if you want another two twist records, there's not too much to make them stand out. Dance Time is the better record of the two, with a better swing and more exciting recording sound. However, if it's your thing It's Twistin' Time has a couple of pretty good organ-fueled instrumentals, where Dance Time only has one bluesy one. A whole lot of covers on these... and plenty off rip-off-might-as-well-be-covers. But who really cares?
Who is George Hudson anyway? I've been trying to get to the bottom of this and been kind of confused with what I've dug up. One site claims that his "Kings of Twist" are a supergroup including Hank Ballard, Jack Hammer, Chubby Checker and Joey Dee. If ze means that literally I don't know where that info's coming from and it seems way too sonically consistent for that to be the case. One site has said that he was a New York DJ and most of the singers, including Hoagy Lands, were uncredited.
I've even had a little trouble finding the cover for Dance Time because mine looked like this
Ugh, you got me this time, Al
It's Twistin' Time (Capitol T-1578)
A Side:
B Side:
Dance Time (1962 Capitol ST-1697)
A Side:
B Side:
These are zipped together here
I'd reckon over the past year I've probably played more off of Sublime Frequency's Bollywood Steel Guitar Compilation over the radio than anything else, with a possible exception of the extremely similar Sound of Wonder. But I never really followed up on any of those artists because I figured chances of coming across their works were pretty slim. New Orleans' Domino Sound Record Shack strikes again, with this artist featured on Bollywood Steel Guitar! And it was so cheap too (cover's pretty beat up I guess (and looks like a half-assed attempt at a Boston album)).
It's not exactly tough to figure out what a surf enthusiast would enjoy about an album like this, but that's hardly to suggest that their similar. Ganguly actually plays a Hawaiian steel guitar, and a lot of this is a lot more relaxed than most surf, though a little more exciting than your average 50's Hawaiian album. Some of these are funky, some of these are really weird. The real paragon of everything that makes this great is the sixth track, Hari Om Hari, featuring frantic drums, wild steel guitar and punctuated by goofy electronic effects.
If you want to know more about Sunil Ganguly he's really not that obscure, wikipedia page and everything. There are a few MP3 downloads of his other work, a few blogs mentioning him, but as far as I could tell know way to hear this album. And man, you should, I'd post a ton of this sort of stuff if I had any idea where to find it. This one, you can find here
When I showed this to my friend Ben he asked "have you listened to it? It looks too good to be true". I know what he means, and I think back to 45s I bought on a gut like "Hell Yes I Cheated" by the Virginia Dare Gang on Dare Records (maybe I'm mixing two records up in my head). That sounds bad-ass! But it ended up being mopey over-twangy country
Well, it's not as 100% funky as hoped, but it's about 80% there. Totally intending to be funky with all the attitude you'd expect from a label called Ghetto, it's just not guaranteed to set the dance floor on fire. But I don't want to undersell it either: it very well could
I don't know anything about any part of this 45 and searches for "Ghetto Records" really don't help. As always, info appreciated
Lee Allen was a huge part of the New Orleans sound during the R&B era and backed up an absurd amount of new Orleans big names on his saxophone, and this is a sample of his instrumental outing. You can read about it all down there on the back cover or anywhere really, I just said that in case blog links wanted a blurb of this post.
I was looking for this for a while, mainly because I loved my 45 of Cat Walk/Creole Alley and had to find the LP it was put out on. Not to mention the outrageous cover, with a tasseled stripper clearly pasted on to make this look CRAZIER. As I expected, this isn't a proper full-length and was made well after the fact, what I didn't really realize after when I bought it was that almost all of these songs were on his main LP "Walkin' With Mr. Lee". So what's the point? Cat Walk/Creole Alley are in my opinion his best two songs, it has a CRAZY cover, and a much fatter (and in this case scratchier) recording than my CD copy of Walkin' With Mr. Lee, which seems to have all the fun sucked out of it. And I suppose if I post it up here, the rest of y'all won't drop $40 on this just to hear the difference. Purchasing music is good, go buy the actually available Walking With Mr Lee. In fact, do it tomorrow on Record Store Day.
If you've never heard any of this instrumental stuff, I'll give you a warning. Some of this can get very laid-back. If you want some jumpers, just follow the track titles. If it sounds jumpin' it probably is. When he's good though, I think he's one of the great examples of how the saxophone was once king in Rock & Roll, a fact now forgotten.
I can't show you the real cover of this 7", but I know I'm not the only one that sees a barebreasted human female on a cover and thinks "this is probably pretty good". Don't worry, it's included with the songs. This is a simple 7" of a trashy rock & roll band with one instrumental ("Drag"). Joe Truck has been in a couple of bands such as Chop Shop and Scarecrow and the late Paul Morden has been in The Brickbats and The Memphis Morticians.
Outstanding EP? Maybe not, but I've been digging the bands I just mentioned and I never mind a little pornography
The Black Sea Surfer just posted Aki Aleong's excellent 1963 surf album which pushed me to get this up here. I bought it intrigued by the monster surf instro "Body Surf" but is there more to him than that? Just look at the guy in the picture down there (and the blurb) of course there is! He looks so happy to put this album out! This 1962 album is full of dance scorchers at a high energy level. Just listen to that yell introducing "Mashed Potatoes". It makes me wanna do it! New Orleanians, dig the cover of Eddie Bo's "Popeye". There's some great instrumentals too, including "The Fly" and "Pony-Time". Seriously, this is one of the more fun twistin' albums I own. And you would hope so if he really has a 20 piece band backing him up (no, it doesn't sound that way). Then again if they're all teenagers who knows.
I've got to be completing my Crown Records collection by now. This is the same gist: a few instrumentals amongst some pretty good vocal tracks, backed by Jerry Cole and a whole lot of engine sounds. I can't say that any of these really stand out to me, but it's still a solid enough album. I know y'all go nuts for anything surf or drag related anyway, so it's not like anything I say about it really matters. Here, see what Pipeline magazine has to say:
For the “Shut Downs” album I was already pretty aware how it was going to sound before the needle touched down into the grooves, having previously heard to rest of the Crown hot-rod releases – and I wasn’t wrong ! Acclaimed studio sessionman Jerry Cole was once again the uncredited main force behind the long-player and his distinct single-layer vocals, coupled with his rhythmic guitar and an accompanying sax, are the most noticeable factors in all of the label’s auto releases – and in fact, such is the similarity between each offering that I’m sure many of the melodies are simply adapted and re-used accordingly (it’s just that I haven’t worked out which ones they are yet …). Yes, they sound under-produced and fairly basic … but each release does manage to stick one or two tunes in the memory bank and they’re all worth a listen – but not one after the after for sanity’s sake.
In the instance of this particular album it’s the opening number, “With My Baby”, that gets the feet tapping and makes you wonder where on earth you've heard it before (answer - Cole rewrote it and included again on the later album by the Winners - see elsewhere) whilst the subsequent track has Cole clearly thinking in Dick-Dale-mode … and that’s not a bad thing …
By the way, this is not to be confused with the Del-Fi records Deuce Coupes. In fact, I'm not entirely sure whether the artist here is The Deuce Coupes or the Shut Downs.
Anyway here's a link to it and a tracklist
Side A
Side B
For somebody so in love with his city I realize I don't post much New Orleans R&B. Well, that's because other people have taken care of that for me pretty thoroughly. However, I haven't seen this one around, and can't tell you much about it either, other than that the A-Side is far and away the less exciting side.
