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.
I'm a big believer in a birthday boy giving gifts on his big day. And thus we present the third official mixtape from Primitive Offerings LLC, selecting one song from each year I've been on the planet that means something to me. 50 tracks, 141 minutes. I also just noticed I've also been at this blog for eighteen years. 18 YEARS! Inconceivable!
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to all of us. Stay alive, friends.
Here's a look back to when people still thought the Red Hot Chili Peppers were edgy, when college rock meant you could loop Fields of the Nephilim, Robbie Robertson, and Kool Moe Dee together, and funk metal was the next big thing. Truth be told: I kept this because I found the cover art so goddamned charming. The Cabaret Voltaire song is pretty solid, Lion was on the "The Transformers: The Movie" soundtrack, and I'm not sure I'll ever get Bryan Ferry solo. 1987 was weird for music, man.
I'm writing this blog about 35 minutes before it's scheduled to post. It's less than an hour to Labor Day, so I don't feel particularly obliged to do much more than post something up.
One of the homies over at Twilight Zone originally posted this up last year. Apparently, very early on in Mojo's history, Jon Savage made a list of 50 songs predating punk that led to its explosion. It's a list that runs from 1969 (Gong) to 1977 (Richard Hell & Devo). And it is an incredible playlist. For every "T.V. Eye" or "Final Solution", there are songs like Lucifer's "Fuck You" or George Brigman's "Jungle Rot"; total outsider rock that never made it to the cut-out bin.
My contribution was properly dating each song, attaching the original release it appears on, and adding a genre. Put this on today and tell the boss you ain't coming in.
We know why we're all here. And this third volume of Scamp's John Barry collection hands it to us right off the jump. It also bookends with Barry's collaboration with Duran Duran from 1985's "A View To A Kill". In between, it's a cavalcade of Barry's film score work, with a smattering of light music/pop/easy listening/however you care to label it. If you have the first two volumes, then what are you waiting for? You know what you want.
2001 was a very good year for music to come out of Gainesville. No Idea put out all-timers from Planes Mistaken for Stars, Ruination, Gunmoll, and celebrated their 100th release with a tri-colored slab of wax that I still love to pieces. Fueled By Ramen released Frodus's final full-length, EPs from Cadillac Blindside, the Impossibles, and Jersey, along with records from the Stereo and Blueline Medic. Trust me when I say these records were EVERYWHERE. And we were happy for it.
But I hadn't seen this sampler until I added a copy for less than a buck on a recent Discogs order. That blows my mind, considering how many goddamned copies of "Back To Donut!" I ended up owning over the years. The samplers I'd get with my No Idea orders were crucial not only for guiding my listening, but helping me decide what I wanted to book and travel to see over the next five years. So it seems really weird that I wouldn't have had a copy of this until 2026.
Here's another one of those, "This-is-what-I-absorbed-as-a-kid-now-I'm-going-to-write-about-it," -type blog posts. But there's no denying that my dad's favorite band was the Allman Brothers Band, that I grew up with Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin constantly playing on the radio, and I knew exactly how to get to Muscle Shoals from my childhood home. And so, as summer staggers to an end, I've been playing this on the regular.
This here's a collection of songs recorded at Fame and Muscle Shoals Sound. If you don't know why that matters, then you've come to the right place to find out. Sure, Dave Henderson could have just focused in on the heyday of Paul Simon and the Rolling Stones coming south. But it was a savvy move demonstrating that these are places that still generate classic records. Jason Isbell, the Raconteurs, and St. Paul & The Broken Bones all cut records at Fame over the past twelve months, and when it's not serving as Alabama's top tourist attraction, MSS still offers a killer studio space, hosting Jesper Lindell's latest recordings.
It's a week 'til Labor Day here in the States, so I know the temperature most places is still pretty hot. So play something that fits the weather and hits you right there in your soul.
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...
