101 Strings - Astro Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000

Remember, like, a month ago, when I was all, like, "Hey, I have all the Scamp Records releases now. I think I'll do a write-up and post about each and every one!" Hey, good times, right? Whatever happened to that?

What happened is a combination of: A) my external hard drive, which holds the vast array of my MP3 collection (and, yeah, don't think I don't get a little douche shiver every time that phrase comes up), has disappeared in one of five different places in Mrs. Ape's and my apartment; B) the hard copies of each release are spread across any number of 14 X 14 X 14 boxes in one of my storage units (that's right, units, dude); and C) I cannot be arsed to tear either the apartment or my storage units apart to rectify the situation.

Did I write that run-on sentence to justify the use of the phrase "cannot be arsed"? Damned right, I did.

So I replaced my beater, 128kbps listening copy of SCP 9717-2, 101 Strings' "Astro Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000" with a physical CD the week before last, not only to honor my commitment to you, the kind reader, but also because it was a decent price, and the seller had a copy of that Mission To Burma comp that I posted a few days back. And now I have good cause to post one of my favorite space-age/Now Sound records of all time.

This exists as one of those grail records that would turn up in more thrift stores than record stores, because as any crate digger knows, hitting a vein of 101 Strings records means you're about to dig through a fat stack of budget mood music. When I've talked to buds about this in the past, and shown them the cover, they've all collectively slapped their heads. They've seen it, handled it, even, but few ever actually bought it. Those who did snag it immediately encountered truth in advertising, a record consisting of psychedelic instrumentals, swinging, modern sounds...the kind of stuff your grandparents got loaded and spouse swapped to.

I love this shit so much. It's so much cooler than most of the rest of 101 Strings' extensive catalog; hell, I'd put it up against the best of Esquivel are far as being "far out" and "outta sight". It presages everything from Isaac Hayes' "Hot Buttered Soul", to AIR's score for "The Virgin Suicides", to the various beats of Danger Mouse, all the way up to J.G. Thirwell's most current work. The good folks at Modern Harmonic did a nice reissue of this in 2017; it was the first American vinyl reissue in nearly 50 years. However, I copped this because the 1996 Scamp release, albeit not on vinyl, came with three extra cuts from 1970's "The Exotic Sound Of Love", which has yet to be reissued since its original release. One can only hope that day comes in the near future...or I just turn one up while mining one of those veins of otherwise garbage vinyl.

Discogs

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Symarip - Skinhead Moonstomp

As novelty records go, this is a pretty good one. Definitely up there with the works of "Weird Al" Yankovic.

You take Prince Buster's touring band, add Alton Ellis's half-brother on vocals, market them to the skinhead youth who were buying up every JA import they could find, and you get Symarip, aka the Pyramids, aka the Bees, aka Seven Letters. You ask them to write topical songs about said skinhead youth, throw in a slightly-altered Lee Hazelwood classic, and somehow you end up with a classic one-off. Is this a purely British phenomena, the knock-off record? I see some parallels between this record and the "faux punk" records of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias or F.U.2. They're all proficient and memorable and existed (initally) to fill a void in the marketplace.

In retrospect, it's the Philligree production that really seals the deal for me. Graeme Goodall ran Doctor Bird, Sioux, and Pyramid Records, as well as helped found Island Records. Along with Phil Chen, Goodall gets a bass-heavy, skankable sound that just jumps out of the speakers. I listened to this all the time in 1995 & 1996. It was "the heavy, heavy monster sound", in the parlance of the time.

A double disc set, including the "Monkey Business" compilation, came out in the UK in 1988 and was the first CD release of either record. There's a really nice 2xCD Symarip discography that contains every cut they recorded during their initial tenure; you can probably cop one for less than $15.

Discogs

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