Category Archives: Blog

Preview: The Philles Album Collection

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Coming on October 18th is a box set that many Phil Spector fans have been waiting for. The seven-disc set will include six original albums from Spector’s Philles label:

  • The Crystals Twist Uptown (The Crystals, 1962)
  • He’s a Rebel (The Crystals, 1963)
  • Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah (Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, 1963)
  • The Crystals Sing the Greatest Hits, Volume 1 (The Crystals, 1963)
  • Philles Records Presents Today’s Hits (Various, 1963)
  • Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica (The Ronettes, 1964)

and a bonus disc,

  • Phil’s Flipsides (The Phil Spector Wall of Sound Orchestra)

This represents six of Philles’ first seven albums (the seventh, A Christmas Gift for You, has been reissued separately and as part of box sets several times), and includes numerous non-hit album tracks that have not been included on standard Spector anthologies. The bonus disc provides sixteen rare B-sides that Spector used to pad his hit singles (and, with no commercial appeal, to ensure jocks stuck to the A-side). On the same day, a two-CD hits collection, The Essential Phil Spector, will be released.

You can pre-order the box set at www.philspector.com and Amazon.com, or find it through standard retail on October 18th. Check back here for a review in October!

Robert Quine, Guitar God

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As great as was everything Matthew Sweet gave to his third album, Girlfriend, what turned it up to eleven were the twin guitars of Richard Lloyd and the late Robert Quine. Here’s a vintage live performance of the album’s title track, with Quine’s unassuming appearance matched by the utter ferocity of his guitar playing.

New Album Coming from The Shants!

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Word from Oakland, California is that the Shants (whose earlier Russian River Songs was reviewed here) will release their first full-length album, Beautiful Was the Night, in September. There’s a release party scheduled for Viracocha (998 Valencia St., San Francisco) on October 8, for those of you in the Bay Area. The band writes:

The album is called Beautiful Was The Night (which is a phrase taken from Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline). It was recorded in Oakland at Rec Center Studios and Tones On Tail Studio by Eliot Curtis (who has worked on records for Bare Wires, Nectarine Pie), with some vocal harmonies from Brianna Lea Pruett & Quinn DeVeaux, violin by Howie Cockrill, and horns by Ralph Carney (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Black Keys) as well as the Blue Bone Express. Half the album was funded by our fans, via Kickstarter.

As an appetizer for the album, they’re offering the track “Baton Rouge,” of which they write “It’s basically a letter to the city of Baton Rouge, as though it were an ex-lover.” Enjoy!

MP3 | Baton Rouge

Big Star Tribute to Alex Chilton

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A couple of months after Alex Chilton’s passing in May, 2010, the latter-day lineup of Big Star (Jody Stephens, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow), along with a number of special guests, played a tribute concert at Memphis’ Levitt Shell. Though the entire concert was recorded, clearing the performance and song rights for release has proven too difficult to undertake all at once. Instead, Stephens, along with mastering engineer Larry Nix and Big Star’s engineer, John Fry, have released an initial EP of John Davis’ three performances: “In The Street,” “Don’t Lie To Me” and “When My Baby’s Beside Me.” Fortunately, the sound is terrific; unfortunately, it’s only being released on 7″ vinyl at this point. You can pick it up from Ardent Music, and hear a sample of the music on the video, below.

Stream the release on Muxtape

Eddie and the Hot Rods

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Some days it feels as if Eddie and the Hot Rods was the hardest rocking band of the 1970s. Rising between the craft of pub rock and the back-to-basics energy of punk, the Hot Rods had chops, hooks and fire, especially on their second album, Life on the Line. They weren’t afraid of guitar solos, stretching out on record and stage with tremendous magnetism and power, but never falling into to the hackneyed antics of arena rock.

Where in the world is Richard Buckner’s next record?

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It’s been five years since Richard Buckner release his last album, Meadow. Five years filled with crushed opportunities, murderous accusations, larceny and equipment failure. Finally, on August 2nd, Our Blood, hits the shelves in both digital and analog form. Here’s the press release:

Since 2006’s Meadow, fans of Richard Buckner have been clamoring for new material and wondering what was keeping their hero from releasing the new songs he would perform on the road. Well, it’s a long story!

First, there was the score to a film that never happened. Then there was a brief brush with the law over a headless corpse in a burned-out car that had all eyes in Buckner’s small hometown in upstate New York turned toward him and his long-suffering truck. Shortly after a move to a safer, less popular corpse dumping ground, the death of his tape machine led to yet another reboot. After Richard called in pedal steel and percussion players and put new mixes on his laptop, his new “safer” place was burglarized. Goodbye, laptop.

Buckner says: “Eventually, the recording machine was resuscitated and some of the material was recovered. Cracks were patched. Parts were redundantly re-invented. Commas were moved. Insinuations were re-insinuated until the last percussive breaths of those final OCD utterances were expelled like the final heaves of bile, wept-out long after the climactic drama had faded to a somber, blurry moment of truth and voilà!, the record was done, or, let us be clear, abandoned like the charred shell of a car with a nice stereo.”

And so finally, we present Our Blood, to be released on CD and LP on August 2, 2011. This is the first Richard Buckner album to be released on vinyl!

Check out this track from the upcoming album.

MP3 | Traitor
Richard Buckner’s Home Page

Ashton Shepherd and Drinking and Boating

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Where Ashton Shepherd comes from, drinking and boating apparently go together like “Beer on a Boat.” She has this to say about her new song:

Buddy Cannon, the people at the record company and I all really, really liked this song. We just weren’t sure how it would come across coming out of a female’s mouth. Each song on the record has its own little spot. Well, down where I live in the summertime, everybody goes to the river and hangs out. That’s going to be their song, I can tell you. When I listen to it, I just want to turn it up.

But a few seemingly harmless drinks can quickly lead to intoxication, and BUI (“boating under the influence”) can be just as deadly as DUI to the intoxicated, their passengers, and those who have the misfortune to cross paths with a drunken boater. Alcohol is reported to be the “leading contributing factor in fatal boating accidents.” Public awareness organizations such as BADD work to get the message out, but it’s an uphill battle when major label music stars like Shepherd celebrate drinking and boating as harmless weekend revelry. Shepherd’s home state of Alabama recognizes that boaters can be impaired long before they get to 0.8 blood alcohol content, and that even a couple of beers can be a problem. How many weekend skippers really wait for their buzz to fully clear before throttling up? Shepherd’s not endorsing or promoting boating under the influence, and would no doubt disavow such behavior, but do we really need to celebrate the combination of alcohol and boats?

The Making of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”

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Perhaps the most perfect pop single of all time. Here are some YouTube videos that play the song in various stages of completeness. The first features the instrumental backing, and really highlights the emotional power of Hal Blaine’s drumming. The second adds in the backing vocals, which standout more than in the final, full production, which is third.