Country Rock Cancer Risk "Overstated" - AMA

Today's hayseed hoedowns come to you courtesy of our new sponsor - Big Irv's Kosher Feed n' Forage Store, Yadkinville, NC. When in Yadkinville, be sure to drop by! There's a 5% discount on out-of-season dry goods if you mention False Memory Foam©!

Pan is a swell album. Gee, is it ever swell. Ron Beau Brummels Elliott is here, and Keith Barbour, whose 1969 album Echo Park I do want. It's from '73, just a couple of years from the end of the 'sixties in '75. Leave a comment if you have more than the bare minimum Discogs information - the only mention I can find of it on the internets - and increase global smartness!

At least Yellow Hand garners an Allmusic review for their lone album from '70 - utterly insignificant, run-of-the-mill, unmemorable. Yeesh. You'll come for for the intriguing Buffalo Springfield covers, including an otherwise unavailable Stills song, but stay for its competent pleasantness, which is sometimes enough.

EDIT: One of you four or five guys has left a link in the comments for a Pan-related album - thanks, Muddy!

Mom's Boys Blow Their Minds

Another in our much-vaunted (ever vaunted? try it some time - why not start your own Vaunting Club? Invite the gang around to your secret Vaunting Clubhouse and issue swell Vaunting Club pins and membership cards! Oh boy!) series featuring wholesome young fellows who fall in with the wrong "set" and enter a downward spiral of drug addiction, psychedelic "rock", and sexual promiscuity!

The Tokens you know about, uh-wim-o-wey  uh-wim-o-wey, but did you know that their moms got together and thrashed record label boss Jerry Blaine with their purses in his office, so enraged were they by the direction their boys were taking? "Those dames put me in hospital!" Blaine reminisced yesterday. "Me, an old man already! Still, I'm dead now and in Heaven, I should thank them. They was right - I ignored my duty of care. These were good boys!"

It's not only the world that was happening - The Happenings sure were "happening" when they made this album! Getting the taste for psychedelics recording Psycle [here somewhere - look for it yourself fer crissakes - what am I, a search engine? - Ed.] they decided to overdose with Piece Of Mind, which is exactly what their moms gave them. "You were so happy doing weddings! You looked so nice and made your mothers proud!" 

The Tradewinds were New York's premier surf group. They could often be seen waxing their boards at Coney Island or riding the Big Kahuna at Rockaway. Then some long-haired weirdo spiked their root beer with acid and look what happened - they took a Mind Excursion. But that hippie freak woke up to find himself at the bottom of the Hudson River, courtesy of a concerned uncle with "connections".

Rogenius

Here's a swell gift for that special frail in your life! Picture her delight as you gift her this Roger Miller box set! She will sure be lost for words, although cheap bum might occur to her. "Now see here, toots," you enthuse, "it's had the shit remastered out of it, there's eight unreleased, tracks, and it's got River In The Rain on it, which is like the best song he ever writed."
If she responds with "Big deal! Where's The South? Where's Wanda Iguana? Dems is my favrits!" divert her attention by pretending to faint.

Pandering To The Bass

Who doesn't, in these times of uncertain times, want to loosen their coronal sutures with weapons-grade low frequency vibrations? Luckily, ordinary household items perform the task at low, low cost to you, Mr Consumer!

What you need: headphones, and these here albums. What could be simpler? Harness the power of the domestic internet and experience sound-induced nose-bleeds and bowel malfunction in the privacy of your lovely home! Today's swell long-playing records have been chosen specifically to test your lower end response, and at your age this is an offer you're not going to hear every day!

Lalo Schifrin's Bullitt soundtrack is the re-recorded version that had the bat-eared hi-fi wine tasters flapping their pale hands in horror. They prefer the original vinyl for its warmth and dynamic range, the silly things. But this sounds better. It sounds sensational. Ooff.

The Gladiators' Once Upon A Time In Jamaica is Old School roots reggae recorded with the clarity of 21st century technology, forty years into their peerless career. If you love reggae, you'll love this. If you don't love reggae, you'll love this.

Rhythm, Sound and Movement, it says here, is "a collection of remixes of tracks from Pitch Black’s Rude Mechanicals album, which, reflecting the duo’s wide ranging tastes and styles, encompasses nearly every genre of electronica and dance music there is." But don't let that put you off.

These fine, fine albums provide a reference standard for in-store hi-fi equipment testing. Watch customers and staff alike run screaming as you crank them up to eleven! Boy howdy! Are we having fun yet?

Sunday Sin Job

Sinatra's partnership with Antonio Carlos Jobim was made in heaven. The first album dates from '67, and its success encouraged a follow-up in '69, and here's where the mystery starts.

SinatraJobim was briefly released on 8-track before Sinatra aborted the whole thing - as he had the right to do, owning the label. Acetates of the album exist, and the cartridge followed the track order, but the vinyl album was never pressed, not even as a bootleg [citation needed - Ed.]

As far as I can tell, nobody is 100% sure why. Sinatra had sudden doubts about its sales potential. He hated the cover. Whatever, he belatedly released most of the tracks in '71, but it wasn't until '91's Complete Reprise Studio Recordings that all the tracks from that second collaboration appeared. The last of them - Desafinado (Off Key) - may have had more to do with the cancellation of the album than is generally credited. Half of it is sung deliberately, and agonisingly, off key. It's a musical joke that doesn't come off.

And then there's that hated cover. It's a fairly crude, pre-Photoshop montage of Frank and bus unconvincingly parked in a forest for no good reason. Jobim is entirely absent. Here's an image from a recent publication, showing the bus in the Warners lot, taken from a photo shoot which supplied covers for other albums. Spot the differences? For some reason, the bus number is removed, and a different face, with a chirpier expression, 'shopped in. At least it looks that way. Why? Beats me.

And here's the back cover of the vinyl album that was never made. Another mystery. Made all the deeper by the fact that the track order does not follow the acetate and the 8-track. Nope, me neither. The track order on today's offering is the original.

Whatever, it's a superb album, although its Deodato arrangements are less bossa than the first, so it makes sense to have them separate rather than bunched together on a comp.