Wednesday 26 June 2019

Girls Pop music of the sixties: The Girls Of Cameo Parkway Vol.1-5 (2014-2016 ABKCO)



Hello, folks,
here as promised (although a bit late) ''The Girls Of Cameo Parkway, Vol.1-5''. In my opinion this collection is much stronger than ''The Boys Of Cameo Parkway''. The collection offers Pop, Soul, R'n'B, Psychedelic Folk Pop (Me And You - Let The World In), and other interesting sounds and great songs.


To name some of the artists: Evie Sands, Me And You, The Lovenotes, Jerri Michaels, Jo Ann King, Janie Grant, Christine Cooper, The Bitter Sweets, Toni Stante, Patti LaBelle, Antoinette.The collection often (of course not only) moves beyond the ''mainstream'' and on a high class level. My favourite volumes are 4 and 5 at the moment. If you like good pop music, this collection is for you! Enjoy.(Frank)




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Sunday 23 June 2019

Sixties Pop: Various Artists - The Boys From Cameo Parkway Vol.1& Vol.2 (1964-1965, 2014/15 ABKCO Rec.)



ABKCO released this compilation of artists and their songs, which appeared in the sixties on the famous Cameo Parkway label. Vol.1 was released in January 1964, Vol.2 in early 1965. You can find some obscure titles here and the range goes from ''A to Z''. Just to name a few of the artists: Johnny Freno, Mark Dinning, Johnny Maestro, Len Barry, Don Covay, Bobby Sherman, Bobby Ellis.
Favorite songs in this collection are "Okay Girl" and ''All Through The Night'' by Tom Burt. Also great is ''Out In The Country'' by Mike Clifford. But there is more to discover here. In my opinion Vol.2 is the stronger collection but, of course, it's a question of taste. By the way: The Girls Of Cameo Parkway will follow tomorrow. Anyway,...Enjoy.(Frank)

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Saturday 22 June 2019

British Pop From The Late Sixties: Richard Barnes - Take To The Mountains (1969-1970, 2007 RPM Records)


Richard Barnes was a vocalist with the U.K. pop group the Quiet Five before departing for a solo career in 1969, and over the next four years he cut a handful of supremely glossy pop records before launching a career in the musical theater in the London cast of Jesus Christ Superstar. Twenty of Barnes' solo sides are collected on Take to the Mountains, and listening to them it seems it was his destiny to be a West End star -- while he doesn't exactly go overboard on these songs, there's a strong sense of brio in his vocal style, and Barnes isn't afraid to play to the last row of the balcony. Gerry Bron produced these sessions, and he clearly didn't hesitate to pull out all the stops, ordering up elaborate orchestrations and top-shelf studio craft on the Latin flavored "Maria Elena," the almost-psychedelic "High Flying Electric Bird," and the plaintive "I Think I'm Getting Over You."


Barnes and Bron were also shrewd judges of material, and along with a number of songs from the catalog of Tony Hazzard, Take to the Mountains also includes some impressive interpretations of the works of Harry Nilsson ("Maybe"), Emitt Rhodes ("Live Till You Die"), Cat Stevens ("Hard Headed Woman"), and Paul Simon ("Homeward Bound"), and one surprise gem is a version of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's "It's Getting Better," which was a hit for Mama Cass Elliot. Most of Take to the Mountains could pass for easy listening for casual listeners, but while Barnes was no rocker he was a gifted and intelligent interpretive singer, and this collection represents British pop at the peak of its form.(Mark Deming, allmusic.com)

Single

Mark Deming's review describes very well what awaits you. Wonderful late sixties british pop. Barnes is a great performer and the songs are first class orchestrated and arranged. The song selection is also only the best. Tony Hazzard, Mann & Weil, Roger Greenaway, Mark Wirtz to name a few. If you like great pop ballads with orchestral sound, you've come to the right place. Enjoy.(Frank)


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Friday 21 June 2019

70s Glam/Pop/Rock: Marc Bolan & T. Rex ‎– Dandy In The Underworld (2002 Edsel) 2 Disc Edition (Bonus Disc ''The Alternate Dandy In The Underworld'' ("Prince Of Players")



Marc Bolan welcomed the advent of punk rock with the biggest smile he'd worn in years. The hippest young gunslingers could go on all night about the influence of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the Ramones, but Bolan knew -- and subsequent developments proved -- that every single one of them had been nurtured in his arms, growing up with the ineffable stream of brilliant singles he slammed out between 1970-1972, and rehearsing their own stardom to the soundtrack he supplied.


With tennis racquet guitars and hairbrushes for mikes, they stood before the mirror and practiced the Bolan Boogie. Of course, most punks only knew three chords. That was all Marc ever taught them. Dandy in the Underworld, released early in 1977, confirmed Bolan's punkoid preeminence. Still retaining its predecessors' demented soul revue edge (most successfully via the yearning "Soul of My Suit") but packed solid with powerful pop (the previous summer's hit "I Love to Boogie" included), Bolan's personal predictions for the punk scene literally exploded out of the grooves.


 The title track and the churning "Visions of Domino" all bristle with revitalized energy, while "Jason B. Sad" cheekily medleys Bolan's own "Bang a Gong" and "Telegram Sam" melodies into a dead-end drama utterly in keeping with the new wave's own belief that the future was futile. By the time the album wraps up with the rock'n'armageddon-flavored "Teen Riot Structure," Bolan was not simply wearing the mantel of punk godfatherhood, he was happily sticking safety pins through it and preparing his next move, the driving "Celebrate Summer" single -- absent from the original album, but included now as one of five bonus tracks appended to the Edsel remaster. Riding in on buzzsaw guitar and thundering bass, it packed a killer chorus and an uplfting message ("Hey little punk, forget that junk and celebrate summer with me") and it really was the greatest record he'd made in years.


 It was also his last -- a month after its release, Marc Bolan was dead. Sorrow immediately imbibed Dandy in the Underworld with a dignity that, had Bolan lived, it probably wouldn't have otherwise deserved -- it is not, overall, one of his strongest albums, and the demos and outtakes included on the later volumes of the Unchained series suggest that his proposed next album would have left it far behind. But conjecture, like hindsight, can be a dangerous gauge. At the time, Dandy not only seemed bloated with promise, it was pregnant with foreboding as well. Listen again to the lyrics of the title track -- self-mythologizing autobiography and not a happy ending in sight. Just like real life.(Dave Thompson, allmusic.com)

...and about the ''Alternate Dandy...''

Upon its original release in spring 1977, Dandy in the Underworld was widely applauded as Marc Bolan's best album in three years, a blending of his own recent moves toward a rootsier, R&B-inflected sound and the sudden shock of punk rock. It is no surprise, then, to discover that Bolan's demos and rough mixes for the record echoed those same discoveries. Prince of Players (its title taken from a lyric in the title track) follows the standard Edsel procedure of unearthing each of the original album's songs in alternate form, offering up a glimpse of how Bolan arrived at the final cut, but also showing just how disciplined that process was.


 None of the demos vary too much from the finished thing, but they do pack an unexpected freshness -- the distorted guitar solo which bisects "I Love to Boogie" is positively overwhelming, while the speed with which Bolan was moving is illustrated by the fact that several tracks no longer exist in early studio incarnations, and are replaced by live renditions instead. Equally startling is the realization that for the first time in some years, Bolan was actually recording material as he wrote it, rather than relying on existing compositions as he had in the past. Only two songs on the completed album predated the sessions -- the previous summer's hit "I Love to Boogie," of course, and "Visions of Domino," recounted from the earlier "Funky London Childhood."


 The regular album is accompanied, as usual, with a smattering of associated singles and B-sides, again in varying states of incompleteness. Most are entertaining, and a couple are vital -- fast-forward, for example, to the rough take of "Celebrate Summer," the last single Bolan released during his lifetime. It was intended as a celebration not only of the season, but also of all the seismic shocks that had shaken British music that year (summer was heaven in 1977) and, if you can get past the tape hiss which betrays the track's homegrown origins, "Celebrate Summer" captures why. Bolan is in his best voice in years, and if you want further evidence of his newfound fire, an instrumental take of the same song is all but indistinguishable in places from the Damned's "Neat Neat Neat."


Neither is that an accident -- the young punks supported T Rex on their final U.K. tour. Prince of Players is the final album in Edsel's re-examination of Bolan's 1972-1977 album catalog, meaning that the six albums that Bolan recorded during that period have now spawned 23 different collections -- and, it has to be said, the barrel has been scraped down to the woodwork on more than a few occasions. The alternate, almost-instrumental version of "To Know Him Is to Love Him" is no better than the completed take, and the closing "Weird Strings" is just that. Weird strings and freaked electronics. But even in the face of material that Bolan himself would never have allowed off the shelf, everything is, in its own way, irresistible. And why? Because everyone still loves to boogie.
(Dave Thompson, allmusic.com)


I remember the first time I heard the Soul Of My Suit single and thought, ''Wow, Bolan is back'' (although he never really left for me). The album could have been the most important of his whole career. But it was his last one. 
Marc Bolan was often disparagingly called a pop star for teen boppers during his career. With this reduction to a partial aspect of his career, he was certainly wrong.
For me personally Marc Bolan belongs to the most important personalities of Rock'n'Roll. So, that had to be said as well :-) . Enjoy.(Frank)



Thursday 20 June 2019

Psychedelic/Sunshine Pop, Rock: Crystal Circus - In Relation To Our Times 1968 ( 2001 Akarma) Vinyl



While not a major find, this collection of material -- all previously unreleased, save the two songs ("In Relation (To Our Times)" and "Merry-Go-Round") from their 1967 single -- isn't at all bad pop-psychedelia. It's rather like finding an unreleased Strawberry Alarm Clock album that might make a decent candidate for the best LP that group ever made, had it borne the Strawberry Alarm Clock billing. Indeed, the Strawberry Alarm Clock influence is pervasive, especially on "In Relation (To Our Times)," but also on "Don't Say I Didn't Warn You," which sounds like the ultimate cross between the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the hardest-rocking sides by Paul Revere & the Raiders.

Most of the other songs have nice, bouncy tunes with major/minor melodic alternations; pleasing sunshine pop harmonies; and appropriately psychedelic organ, fuzz guitars, trippy orchestration, vocal distortion, and odd effects. The lyrics might be superficially far-out, but again, impressions like those recorded in "Circus and Zoo World" are a good complement for this kind of candy pop-psych. Occasionally, they get into more of a straightforward garage-ish hard rock-soul blend, like on "Never Again," but it's the more ethereal and poppy numbers that stand out.(Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com)


The band was a lot more unwieldy than usual on their album. And that makes their songs really worth listening to. Enjoy.(Frank)


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@Request: Brotherhood Of Man - Oh Boy+Images 1977 (2009 7Ts Records)



From wiki about the original release of ''Oh Boy'' :

The album was released in March 1977 in the UK and unlike their previous album, failed to make the chart, despite featuring two hit singles. It was released in Europe in November 1976, under the name Midnight Express, without "Oh Boy (The Mood I'm In)", but with another song, "Bag of Money" in its place. On some copies, this album was issued simply as Brotherhood of Man.

This album featured the singles "My Sweet Rosalie" and "Oh Boy (The Mood I'm In)" which were hits in Europe and reached No.30 and No.8 in the UK respectively. Album tracks "I Give You My Love" and "New York City" were released as singles in various European countries in October 1976, with a planned release for the former in the UK, but ultimately abandoned. "New York City" was released in France, but it was the single's B-Side "Tell Me Tell Me Tell Me" (another track from the album) which became the more popular, reaching No.42 in the French singles chart in late 1976. Closing track "Guess Who's Taking You Out Tonight" was covered by The Drifters, albeit unreleased. It was later included as a bonus track on a re-release of their 1976 album Every Nite's a Saturday Night.
The style of the album's tracks followed in a similar vein to the pure pop introduced on "Save Your Kisses for Me" with member Martin Lee taking the lead vocals on many songs, a trend which was largely discontinued after this album. Like the group's other albums, the songs were produced by manager Tony Hiller.

Oh Boy! was released on Compact disc in a double set in May 2009.

excerpt from wiki about the album ''Images'' :
This album saw the group adopt a more pop and in particular, ABBA-like sound, which was often commented on in the media at the time. Contemporary reviews of the album drew on the comparison, with Brotherhood of Man usually being seen as inferior.[4] Unlike previous albums, all lead vocals were handled by female members Sandra Stevensand Nicky Stevens. This was a definite shift away from the more soul-like productions of earlier albums such as Love and Kisses. The album, like the others was produced by manager and co-songwriter, Tony Hiller. All twelve tracks were written by group members Martin Lee and Lee Sheriden alongside Hiller. The subject matter for some of the songs was curious in that it features three songs about female infidelity ("Safety First", "Highwayman" and "The Night of My Life"), while two feature stories of elopement("Angelo" and "Tonight's the Night").


Tuesday 18 June 2019

70s Pop, AM, Bubblegum: Brotherhood Of Man - Good Things Happening & Love & Kisses 1974 &1976 (2009 7Ts Records)


The Brotherhood of Man ranks among the United Kingdom's most successful pop groups of all time, their long career spreading across two very separate incarnations of the band, together with a string of highly infectious hit singles that carried the group through much of their first decade together, and success at the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest. The original Brotherhood of Man was formed by record producer and songwriter Tony Hiller in 1969, specifically to record a song he had recently written with vocalist John Goodison, titled "Love One Another." The original lineup comprised Goodison, fellow songwriter Roger Greenaway (better known as the songwriting partner of Roger Cook), and session vocalists Tony Burrows, Sue Glover and Sunny Leslie, the latter were already established as the duo Sue & Sunny.

Surprisingly, "Love One Another" flopped, but the band's label, the Deram subsidiary of Decca Records, kept faith and early in the new year, a second single, "United We Stand" became a hit in both the U.K. and U.S. A follow-up, "Where Are You Going to My Love," made the U.K. Top 30 in July (and has since been covered by Olivia Newton-John , the Miracles and the Osmonds), before Burrows quit. He was replaced by American singer Hal Atkinson, whose debut with the group, "Reach Out Your Hand" continued the Brotherhood of Man's American chart success.

Greenaway was the next to depart; he was replaced by Russell Stone, but when further singles failed to chart, the band was dropped by Deram. The other members drifted away, but Hiller retained the group name for various television projects, with a new lineup of Martin Lee, Lee Sheridan, Sandra Stevens and Nicky Stevens gradually coalescing from a pool of session vocalists.


Brushing off accusations that they were little more than a cut-price ABBA (who had themselves risen to prominence that same year), Brotherhood of Man returned to the studio in 1974 to record a new single. "When Love Catches Up on You" was a flop, but their next release, "Lady," scored in Holland and Belgium and, over the next couple of years, Brotherhood of Man were working regularly across the continent, scoring another hit with Barry Blue's "Kiss Me Kiss Me Baby." It was Eurovision, however, that brought the Brotherhood of Man back to prominence in the U.K. Composed by Hiller and bandmembers Lee and Sheridan, "Save Your Kisses for Me" not only romped away with the contest, it also topped the chart in no less than 27 countries, including Britain. The song was subsequently awarded the 1976 Ivor Novello awards for the Most Performed British Work, the Best Selling British Record and the International Hit of the Year.


While an album, Love and Kisses from the Brotherhood Of Man rose into the Top 20, "My Sweet Rosalie," a near carbon-copy of its predecessor, returned the quartet to the singles charts that summer, but climbed no higher than number 30. It was with "Oh Boy (The Mood I'm In)," early in the new year, that Brotherhood of Man truly took a stranglehold on the U.K. charts and, over the next two years, four further hits included the twin chart-toppers "Angelo" and "Figaro," the Top 20 "Beautiful Lover" and, finally, "Middle of the Night" in late 1978.


The group moved to Hiller's own Dazzle label in 1979, but further hits remained elusive until they shifted to EMI in 1982, the same year that Sheriden quit the band. With new singer Barry Upton on board, Brotherhood of Man returned to the chart that summer with "Lightning Flash." The group was firmly entrenched in the country's cabaret circuit by now, however, and the following year saw Lee and Sandra and Nicky Stevens all depart the group. Ironically, the quartet had just been short listed to represent the U.K. at that year's Eurovision Song Contest when the decision was made. Their song, "When the Kissing Stops," was eventually performed by another band, Rubic, but did not make it out of the qualifying competition. Brotherhood of Man were not out of the picture for long. Reuniting with Sheridan (but not with Hiller), the quartet continues to perform today. They appeared at Eurovision's 50th anniversary concert in Copenhagen in 2005, where "Save Your Kisses for Me" was, deservedly, elected the most popular U.K. entrant of all time.(Dave Thompson, allmusic.com)

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Monday 10 June 2019

Links Will Changing !! II


Hello, folks,
I want to come back to "Zippy" for a second. As you can hear zippyshare is blocked in more and more countries. At the moment there is still the possibility to access Zippyshare via the Opera Browser. The browser has its own VPN. I use this possibility myself. Nevertheless I will provide alternative links if you don't want to use this possibility (Opera). Otherwise have a look at the comments of ''Links will changing''. There also reader Pete have a different tip, too. Okay, have a nice day to all of you

Frank

Friday 7 June 2019

Links will changing !!!

Hello folks and friends,

i will change all the zippy links on the blog to a different hoster. This will take some time but i think a lot of you folks can't reach zippyshare. I don't know what happened the last five weeks into the www, but i think it's time to make a change from zippy to a different hoster. It will take time before i can post new (old music) music again but i hope we will meet here again in some weeks.

I will start to change the z links tomorrow and day by day some more. Okay that's it for the moment.

All the best to all of you folks

Greetings
Frank