It's a lovely mod revival giveaway, bookended by a pair of Jam cuts and named after a Curtis Mayfield song. The cover evokes "Sound Affects", and all this is missing is a Geno Washington contribution and a set of keys to your own Vespa. Spinning this one makes me miss the late night dance parties at Lithuanian Hall in West Baltimore, the homebrew hooch we'd do shots of, smoking cigarettes, dressing sharp, and greasy eggs the next morning. Move on up, indeed.
Jimi Hendrix was my first musical obsession. Sure, there was the "Top Gun" soundtrack, populated with Giorgio Moroder and Harold Faltermeyer production, which came along with my first boombox on my 10th birthday. But the purple cover of "The Essential Jimi Hendrix" became burned into my mind when I first found it in my parents' record collection. I remember taking my grass cutting money to buy blank tapes so I could dub a copy to listen to while mowing more grass. I started finding Hendrix's posthumous Reprise releases, produced with overdubbing by Alan Douglas, in cutout bins. So I snapped them up. In 1993, MCA gained the catalog in the States, bringing a fresh remastering to the three Jimi Hendrix Experience releases and adding a compilation of remastered "Blues" tracks. I gobbled them all up. By then, my musical pallet had grown. But by the time I moved to Baltimore in 1994, I was still a sucker for any out of print Hendrix record I could lay paws on.
We all move on, right? Every piece of vinyl, every tape on Reprise, they've all gone to other collections over the years. I just didn't care as much any more, and there were hardcore shows to go to and girls to impress and Impulse reissues to track down. But Jimi, the god who made magic with a guitar, who said he hailed from Seattle but more like came from Neptune; he still had a place in my heart. So that's why this Mojo Monday is for "Experienced!" You get Hendrix-penned songs, his contemporaries (the John McLaughlin track is a favorite), and his descendents, all in one package.
Long before Steve Aoki became a famed cake thrower, but after he booked HC & emo bands to play shows in his dorm room at the Pickle Patch at UCSB, he was a purveyor of some renown for the cutting edge of indie rock. This 23-year-old relic comes from just before he linked up with Bloc Party and helped break them here in the States. So it has sprinklings of fun stuff from Pretty Girls Make Graves, Panthers, the Gossip, Die Monitr Bats, and the Von Bondies. I'm partial to the contribution from post-Huggy Bear outfit the Phantom Pregnancies, as well as a live Soledad Brothers cut. It's a fun reminder of the time when the hardcore kids were playing house records alongside riot grrrl, and coke mirrors with the logo of your band were a crucial element of your show merch.
I am not a particular fan of the Black Keys. I came by the opinion honestly; I've owned, at one time or another, most of their records through "El Camino". I'm pretty sure they played the Ottobar at least once while I worked there. And they play a brand of heavy blues that should fit well with my tastes. Yet for the money spent and the decibels incurred, I just don't rate them very highly. Taste being subjective and all, you know?
So it's with a bit of reluctance that I share this, Mojo's companion release to the Black Keys' 2010 album "Brothers". Not that it's bad, but it doesn't get the ol' blood pumping like I feel it should. There are parts that I can co-sign; a live recording of "Have Love Will Travel" by the Sonics from 1964, a deep cut Nathaniel Meyer track, a Captain Beefheart track. But, on the whole, it's a lot of Black Keys rarities, as well as some related bands, and that ain't my cup of tea.
But let's not let that get between us, friendo. One man's trash is another's treasure. So I hope you dig this one.
What the hell do I know about the Mods? Not much; something about Vespas and amphetamine and soul music. Youth culture, loving the blues and jazz, preceding the skins. They made a few movies about 'em. I know a lot more about the mod revival (White Trash Soul recently posted some Purple Hearts demos that are just out of sight) due to its proximity to punk and 2 Tone. So I take this 17-year-old compilation's title with a grain of salt. Is this indeed "Heavy Mod"?
Well, look; I have no clue if the 13th Floor Elevators and David Axelrod were getting played on the same turntables as the Small Faces, the Who, and the Yardbirds. But as with all the Mojo freebies I've gotten, this one works for me. I really dig the sequencing here; there's a real flow present that stood out to me as I listened for the first time in a long time. I'd say this one hews closer to the sort of mix CD you aspire to make for a friend than the typical "free with magazine purchase" giveaway.
It's clearly a Phil Alexander joint. You get a good mix AND a really nice explanation why these were grouped together in the liner notes. It's something I've been missing on the few Mojo releases from 2023 & 2024 that I've turned up recently.
It's a quiet Sunday, the first weekend of April, here in the PNW, a bit rainy and grey. A wonderful day for laundry, the Criterion Channel, and a bit of light blogging. We're back in the saddle again, picking up where we left off with this, the soundtrack to a documentary about one of the all-time great shops/labels/institutions, Belfast's Good Vibrations. And while I've not seen the doc, this is one I couldn't leave behind on the Central Coast last winter when it crossed my path at $7.
Is it nitpicky to ask why Protex isn't here? Yeah, it is, but "Don't Ring Me Up" was G.V.'s sixth release. Its absence seems a bit pointed. But I can't find any fault with what was compiled here. A mix of Good Vibrations releases ("Teenage Kicks", "Big Time", "Just Another Teenage Rebel"), inspirations (Bert Jansch, Bowie, Niney The Observer, the Shangri-Las), and contemporaries (S.L.F., the Saints, Suicide) make for a really great record of what made the shop so special in its relatively short life.
I've been laying pretty low on purchases since the first of the year. But I broke edge a few days ago; a record nerd can't stay out of the thrift store for long. I stumbled across this now-31-year-old sampler from Spin Magazine, and immediately flashed back to seeing the video for "Undone (The Sweater Song" in my neighbor's den for the first time. His folks kept the shades well drawn, so what natural light made it in had this yellow tinge to it. We stopped what we doing at the first beats from Patrick Wilson; it was unlike anything we'd ever heard up 'til then. Fuckin' Weezer, man. Always brings a smile to my face.
Plus: Mazzy Star! Frente! covering New Order! Major label Meat Puppets! Morphine! Guided By Voices! Plus a bunch of stuff that 30 years on I still don't recognize outside of a radio station giveaway bin. Kinda perfect for this space. I can never resist throwing a buck to a animal rescue or a job's program in return for something like this.
I'll never quite wrap my head around Atlantic distributing Amphetamine Reptile back in the mid-90s, and this record is evidence I'll present to support my argument. Sure, Helmet made some serious inroads with the kids of 1995, but I'm not sure who thought Hammerhead or Cows were a fit alongside Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, and Foreigner. It's so perverse; I kind of love it.
And speaking of perversity: here's the soundtrack to a documentary on New York publisher and pornographer Al Goldstein entitled "Screwed". It makes sense to have a bunch of AmRep luminaries provide the score to such a downer of a movie. Halo of Kitten (a collaboration between Halo of Flies and Free Kitten) and the Melvins offer alternate views on porn: one likes it, the other hates it. There's tracks from Guv'ner and Big Chief and Boss Hog and the almighty Mudhoney, all XXX-themed and just rightly written to play behind a view of a porn king's crumbling empire.
It was Meg White's 50th birthday a few weeks ago, and it reminded me of the first time I heard the White Stripes. And the Dirtbombs. And Clone Defects, Bantam Rooster, the Detroit Cobras.ymp
It was 2001's "Sympathetic Sounds Of Detroit", compiled, produced, recorded, and mixed by Meg's "husband" and bandmate, the former Doc Gillis. If the goal was to put together a humdinger, then consider it a success. Longtime readers can guess which bands I favor here, but there's not a dud in the entire bunch. Even someone like the Von Bondies, who I otherwise never dug, really bring it on "Sound Of Terror".
(It's the Dirtbombs and D.C.'s, for the record.)
Learning things about the blues is fun. For instance, I post this mainly to take the opportunity to note that it's taken more than 30 years to wrap my brain around the fact that "harp" is synonymous with "harmonica". It was on acquiring this that I realized there are at least three different "Sonny Boy Williamsons", all working wihin the milieu. There is only one Howlin' Wolf, and while "I'll Be Around" isn't "Back Door Man" or "Tail Dragger", it's still a pretty great song.
Finally, this is generally my least-favorite volume of "Blues Masters" that I've acquired. Only time and expense will tell if this remains the case, but I guess the presence of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Fabulous Thunderbirds knock this down a few points.
Or I'm just jealous I'll never blow the harp the way these wailers do.
There was a time in my capricious youth where I balked at paying $7 for a sampler of preivously-released songs. And, thankfully, there was someone there to help me pull my head out of my spacious rectum.
You see, this one has gotten a ton of play in the approximately 20-some-odd years since I nabbed my first copy of it. When I first encountered it, I only knew the JSBE and Thee Headcoats, both via some late night MTV encounters and Spin magazine backpages. But the Oblivians and Gories, a pair of Memphis creeps if ever there were such a duo, were what held onto me, with "Nitroglycerine" and "Sunday You Need Love" making their way onto a few turn of the millenium mixtapes.
While my initial copy eventually disappeared in one of the periodic cleansings I conducted back then (I miss my old tape collection), it was one of the first things I downloaded when I got my first iPod and high speed internet connection. Which long-dead blog did I find this on? Who was the keeper of sleazy punk that provided me with a digital copy in gleaming 128kbps? The name and place has been lost to the ages, but whenever I needed a fair swath of 90s underground rock, I'd turn to this, and turn it up loud.
A few months ago, I was trawling eBay for inexpensively priced CDs (as is my habit). A seller in Ohio had a stack of sixteen Crypt CDs for $100 for sale. It was a pretty fair price for a bunch of records I owned digitally, but no longer held physical copies of. I saved it, and a few days later came an offer to pick it up for $80, I couldn't turn it down. Both New Bomb Turks full-lengths, both Gories LPs, the Raunch Hands, Pagans, and a pair of Lazy Cowgirls CDs? How could I pass? I'm not made of stone. And to cap it off, a copy of "Cheapo Crypt Sampler", here to be re-ripped at 320kbps and shared with y'all.
I didn't even have to pay $7 this time around. How's that for a good time?
First things first: how's Kraken working for everyone? I don't ever have issues downloading Kraken-hosted files, but I'm but a singular man. Drop a line in the comments if you have a suggestion for an alternativel The homies have spoken! I'm starting to move over to a new host. Hang tight, friends!
I think Kings Of Leon are corny as hell, but if these are indeed the artists that shaped them, then they have some pretty good taste. There's a lot to like here, and the best part is that "Sex On Fire" won't sneak up on you. I'm partial to the Band and Woody Guthrie; this also got me to drag out/seek out Soledad Brothers records.
And that's how I feel about that. You're welcome to your own opinions, as always. I'M NOT TRYING TO TAKE YOUR POWER AWAY, LISA!
Look, you really shouldn't need a reason to download this, populated, as it is, with some sick Chicago Blues, early rock & roll, and a couple of random blues rarities, none of which are younger than 35 years old.
But if you do need a reason, do it because it has Blind Willie Jefferson's "Dark Was The Night - Cold Was The Ground", a song so exemplary that Jack White regards it as the finest example of slide guitar to be recorded, and one of a handful of musical pieces to make it onto the Voyager Golden Record, wedged between pieces by Kesarbai Kerkar and Beethoven. Fine company, to be sure.
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...
