It appears that I inadvertently deleted every Workupload link on the blog last night in the course of uploading some new files. So bear with me if you're looking for something specific. I'll start working backwards from "Where Is My Mind" tonight, but if you're looking for something older, leave me a comment, and I'll bump it up in the queue.
Update: 10/12/26, 10:48pm - everything back to June 1 has been re-uploaded. Let me know if you have any issues downloading any of those.
It's hard to believe that I've been doing this blog for this long and have yet to really talk about how Stax Records fits in my fandom. I was raised listening to Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and the Staple Singers. I played "Theme From 'Shaft'" at the midway point of every episode of my radio shows. I just bought a second copy of David Porter's "Victim Of The Joke?" at an estate sale because my first copy is buried and boxed in my storage unit. I'm not a completist, but I'll happily buy the same Stax or Enterprise release in multiple formats. I may have problems...not bad ones, but ones I might need to work on.
"Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos" came out in 2023 and unleashed a wealth of never-before-heard recordings on the world. Seven discs, 146 songs, 140 of which had never been released commercially. I've yet to buy a physical copy; too rich for my blood, but the day may yet come. Instead, I've enjoyed this Mojo sampler at great length. There are a pair of Eddie Floyd-penned classics: "634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.)" and "Stay With Me", which never got released. Mack Rice's solo version of "Respect Yourself" is one of my all-time Staple Singers favs. The box set shares two versions of the unreleased Banks/Jackson composition "Too Much Sugar For a Dime"; I really dig the Bettye Crutcher version that appears here for the first time.
Memphis soul is the one that speaks most to me, and this sampler is a fine, economical way to dig into what remains one of my favorite catalogs. Enjoy yourself!
This one's in honor of the record-slinging, mixtape-making hydra over at Jonkyblog, who are a daily visit for me, and have recently kicked out a pair of killer tributes to tribute records. They've been lauding tributes as long as they've been around, but, oddly enough, today's share didn't have a track represented in the last couple of blogs. It's been in my on-deck circle for close to a year, and, clearly, the blog gods have deemed it a good time to post up.
This serves as a snapshot of the last days before emo broke out into the mainstream or, as I like to remember it, 1999. Weezer was in between "Pinkerton" and "The Green Album", Far was breaking up, Eve 6 was breaking out, and Sense Field was recording their first record for Warner Bros. The Get Up Kids were negotiating with Mojo, who had made a mint off of Reel Big Fish and were about to give Weston a platform. Samiam, Nada Surf, and Superdrag had all had their moments, and would all be dropped before they released another record. It was a heady time to put out a Pixies tribute, whose BBC recordings had come out the year before, but were still half a decade away from reuniting. Yet Glue Factory, who'd put out a well-received Operation Ivy tribute and a killer emo comp in "Songs For The Brokenhearted", saw the future well enough to put this together. And I'll be damned if it doesn't still sound pretty good.
Big Wheel Recreation and Doghouse Records teamed up to release this on vinyl. Discogs says that this had multiple vinyl pressings, but I'll be damned if I've ever seen one in the wild. And that's weird to me, since I bought almost everything that came out on BWR and Doghouse in the late 90s/early aughts.
Here's a bulleted list why "Action!" is my Mojo Monday pick this week:
That's enough reasons. This is a good 'un, front to back.
We carry on with another pairing of Martin Denny classics. This time, I present 1959's "Hypnotique" and "Exotica Vol. III", as collected by the good folks at Scamp! SCAMP!: the exclamation point means it's quality!
While all of Denny's covers are great, "Hypnotique" is probably my favorite. The font used for "Hypnotique" is so distinct and evocative of the time. The cover layout is quite bizarre; an exception to his other releases with its clutter and lack of regional specificity. It references surrealism in a way that few other mood music records do; the exception coming to mind is Jackie Gleason's "Lonesome Echo", released four years prior and featuring a Dali painting.
Anywho...one more Denny two-fer to go, then it's on to more Scamp! catalog.
I like to play this little game when I come across this, a sampler that came from the missus' collection. It's "which record did she buy to get this free with purchase?"
Was it Superchunk, whose "Majesty Shredding" was a heavy spin for the two of us in our first year dating each other? She's always been a big Ben Folds fan, with loads of CD-R filled with live sets. I bought her a copy of his 2010 collaboration with author Nick Hornby, "Lonely Avenue", during a record-buying binge before she went home for Christmas that year. It seems unlikely it would have been the recent releases by Robert Plant (not a Zep fan, as far as I know) or Jerry Lee Lewis (she's a Sun Records purist). Maybe it was KT Tunstall; she's the right age to have blasted "Suddenly I See" while bombing down I-97 to her job in Annapolis. Or perhaps Anberlin, as she listened to a fair amount of emo-adjacent alt rock for years before meeting me. A Stone Sour purchase would confuse me. A late-catalog Ice Cube CD would be very out of character for her. And Maroon 5? Well, in this house, that's grounds for a serious conversation.
With any luck, it was a Mark Ronson record that I've yet to turn up in our shared collection. Or maybe somebody just tossed it in her bag to be nice, one fall day in 2010.
The third Scamp reissue of Martin Denny's Liberty output was this, a two-fer of his third and fourth 1958 releases, "Forbidden Island" and "Primitiva". Everything you might love about a Martin Denny record is present. Julius Wechter plays the vibes, Sandy Warner is on both covers, and the air is heavy with the "exotic".
Fun trivia for ya: "Primitiva" the song appears on "Forbidden Island", NOT "Primitiva" the album. What do I know about sequencing?
This is a late post. I blame the missus, who distracted me with her feminine wiles while I was in the middle of writing this up. Mea culpa: I am quite susceptible to feminine wiles.
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might think that I came to ZE Records via no wave. I've written about James Chance multiple times over the years, and the tag has a number of entries associated with it (I should probably remove it from the Screamers' live set). And that's not a terrible assumption. However, it was David & Don Was's Was (Not Was) that poisoned my brain with their mutant disco and led me to the venerable downtown label. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but every time I heard the Waitresses during the holidays, or the DJ spinning "Mr. Softee" as part of a Friday, 5pm closing shift, I was getting introduced to the downtown sounds of ZE.
And this is why I like both types of music: hardcore and disco.
This two-CD set came out back in 1989, an early digital collection of ZE's five-year heyday. I'm not entirely certain where I found it, but I'm sure I plotzed when I found it on the shelf. The combined set was only available in Europe; each disc got its own release here in the States. The artwork on said 2CD set is a horrible merge of the American releases' covers; I've subbed in the vinyl cover below.
All this is to say, I got a good deal when I turned this up for a few bucks.
It seems like the great Blogger blogroll blackout of 2026 has yet to resolve itself. I haven't seen Primitive Offerings pop up in anyone's lists (or The List) in a couple weeks. So if you're stopping by: thanks for making me not feel alone in visiting the same 30 blogs every day to what new stuff they posted.
This aluminum slab came over as part of a major Mojo buy a few weeks back, and it's fair to say that it's one I won't be regularly listening to until my end of days. Steve Marriott played with some cool people, but, truth be told, I'm only really familiar with Small Faces. Humble Pie is defined for me by a reference from "Almost Famous" and by Peter Frampton's involvement. Everything else shared here is beyond the scope of what I'd typically seek out. So maybe one of you, my kind visitors, can point me in a good direction what I might dig.
We're going to skip Scamp 9711 for now, choosing instead to focus on the next number in the catalog and the record I acquired minty and new when it came out in 1996. Martin Denny's first two LPs on Liberty, "Exotica" and "Exotica Volume II", came out in 1957, and it seems like every house with a hi-fi had a copy. There's a good reason for that: these are outstanding examples of mood music, foundational exotica records. I'd argue that, in spite of their nebulous origins, these are as crucial to a record collection as James Brown's "Live At The Apollo", Nina Simone's "Pastel Blues", and Fugazi's "In On The Kill Taker". When I listen to these, I get transported through both space and time to an idealised 1960 where I'm a few inches taller, a hundred pounds lighter, with a Lucky in one hand and a Zombie in the other. Martin Denny remains incredibly cool, nearly 70 years on. There aren't a ton of records that can claim that.
I've never really given much thought to A&M Records as a particularly interesting label. They were the world's biggest indie label for decades, which is a weird thing to call the home of the Carpenters, Burt Bacharach, and Captain and Tennille. But they also hosted Billy Preston, Quincy Jones, Phil Ochs, the Human League, OMD, and (for a day) the Sex Pistols. There's intrigue to be found in any entity that's been around since the early 60s.
This 1994 sampler is headlined by a pair of cuts from the then-new "If I Were A Carpenter" tribute...arguably my favorite two on the initial release, and the two most enjoyable here. It also has two songs from "Superunknown", soon to be Soundgarden's biggest, most inescapable release. Meat Puppets, Love Battery, Monster Magnet, and Paw all made up recent alternative signings, while Fretblanket and Kitchens Of Distinctions were English indie bands soon to be sacrificed to a mostly-uninterested American public. Blues Traveler's contribution, "Run-Around", is tucked away in the last third of this sampler, and would break out in a big way when its video hit MTV the next year. Rounding out the roster review were songs from the Neville Brothers, L.A. Guns, and Jackopierce (JACKOPIERCE?).
I held onto this one mainly because I enjoyed the cover, which gave me real Frank Kozik feelings.
It took from May to August 2000 to go from 100 to 200 posts. Then I hit 300 posts two days before Christmas 2000. And now I'm here, anot...
