Julie Felix "Heaven Is Here" b/w "Soon" - UK/USA 1970

It's exciting how much music is out there.  No matter how much I think I know, there are always new artists and even whole genres to dig into of which I was previously unaware.

This is yet another one of the 7" discs I picked up in Rome at a used bookshop 4 per 10 euro.  Like the Chris Spedding single I opened the blog with, I picked this up in part because it was a Mickie Most/Rak label production.  This is the second post on the blog already of an Italian pressing of a single I assumed was a British artist, but is an American who had been working in Britain for a substantial period, becoming better known there than here.

I'm too young to have caught the '60s, but I have a pretty massive collection of '60s recordings, and you would think that I would be familiar with Julie Felix for one of any number of reasons.  The cover art plus the year gave me a pretty good idea of what this was going to sound like while I was still in the store, not knowing the name.

She played the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969, recorded several (mostly folk) albums in the UK beginning in 1964, was the resident singer for David Frost's BBC show, had her own TV show where she hosted performances of The Kinks, Jimmy Page (check out this video!) and Leonard Cohen.  This was the second Top 40 hit (#22) of hers in the UK for 1970.

Yet I'd never heard of her!  Ms. Felix is American but has lived in Britain for about 50 years.  She has an extensive website with info about her ongoing performances, ways to order CDs that cover a lot of her material spread over some years, and even join her fan club.

"Heaven Is Here" is an excellent pop-folk-rocker that Americans should hear.  The B-side is an OK typical B-side, providing a more introspective, slower song.  At times when Felix is really belting it out her voice reminds me of Joan Baez, but that's a starting point of reference and she has her own sound.

Give it a listen.

The Naked - "One Step Forward Towards Reality" 7" EP - UK 1983

At long last, the first truly punk post of the blog.  This EP is on the Bluurg label, which has been continuously putting out punk since 1980, likely making it one of the oldest operating DIY labels on Earth.

If you follow the link to the label above, they have a CD out with what I'm sure is a better quality version of this EP plus four demo tapes of this band.  A few years back I checked out the website and this material was not apparently available in any format.  I'd like to order the CD myself, this sounds like a band that should have been able to record more than one record.

As early '80s punk/hardcore/thrash goes this is relatively melodic/ "musical" stuff.  Bluurg is the label run by Dick Lucas of Subhumans UK/ Culture Shock/ Citizen Fish fame.  That's about as solid a punk pedigree as exists, more than 30 years of DIY dedication and likely more benefit gigs than can be counted.

Lucas seems to have a fixation on fish and the catalog numbers all begin with that word, thus this record is fish 4.  At least it might be; according to the label's included ordering sheet that's the number for a cassette by a band called Organized Chaos; the record's label is marked fish 4 too.

I bought this 7" EP many years ago solely because it was on this label, and generally whatever was on the label displayed more talent and more thoughtfulness than most punk offerings of the '80s had available.  I wish I knew more about the band other than that they were English (County Kent) and on Bluurg, but that's what I've got.  Any additional info is welcome.  Some sources online have this as a 1982 release but the sleeve states these songs were recorded in 1983.

My two favorite tracks are "Smile" and "Alienn", and I have no idea why the latter is spelled that way.

Side A:

One Step Forward
Alienn

Side B:

Frightened
Smile
Evil Faces

Located here.

Bruce Foster "Platinum Heroes" b/w "(I Remember) The Revolution" - USA 1976

Don't those song titles scream glam?  This just has to be some T. Rex-style, jams-kicked-out rock, huh?

Unfortuately it isn't.  What you have on the A-side is a 5+ minute homage to The Beatles, running down their career from '64 into their '70s solo stuff.  The song borrows liberally from Beatles tunes throughout and is interesting mainly for that reason.  Somehow in 1976 people were already nostalgic for less than a decade earlier.  Some Beatles tunes actually charted a second time in various countries in the early '70s upon rerelease.

This A-side ends up sounding like a more restrained David Bowie or even Kim Fowley track, minus the melodrama or the palpable insanity respectively.  This is totally something Fowley would do, only his take would be somehow menacing.  The B-side is a ballad to the good ol' hippie activist days and the post-hippie "doin' my own thing" cultural miasma.  Not bad pop overall and an interesting artifact of people knowing even this early that a major wave had crested, and the blahs had set in.

The lyric to the A-side is on Foster's personal website, which gives a bio and plenty of other info and photos.  Foster is apparently descended from arch American songwriter Stephen Foster.  He was a session musician in the UK and in the US, and played keyboard for Status Quo, Gladys Knight and KISS.  Later he teamed up with a very young Richie Sambora and wrote material for/with him.  The album the single is drawn from is reviewed in a 1977 Billboard magazine you can read here.

I don't have my Billboard charts book handy but the claim is that the A-side did chart and received a lot of radio play, and still is played on radio, but I have no recollection of having heard this before.  Perhaps this was a bigger song in Europe than in the US.  It's also very possible that the single charted on the lower end of the Top 40, which for an artist who isn't a household name can absolutely bury you with the oldies and classic rock programmers.  My pressing is Italian and is another single from the stack bought in Rome, 4 per 10 euro.  I had assumed Foster was British.

The lyric states "I was there at Shea for their last show."  The Beatles' last live show was actually in San Francisco, unless you count the "rooftop concert."  Extra points for mentioning the "Paul is dead" craze and LSD use:

"We dug for clues back in 1970
They crossed the road but we just couldn't let them be
We saw the hangman, priest, and the prisoner
followed close by the gravedigger
Dropping tabs and playing back hidden incantations
Revelation's # 9
and counting black carnations"

Nice.  Grab it here.

Space - "Magic Fly" b/w "Ballad for Space Lovers" - Italy 1977

This single was purchased at a used bookstore in Rome, Italy, less than 10 minutes' walking distance from Vatican City.  From the sacred to the profane, eh?

The hope was that this was some late glam stomper or a "Space Oddity"-type cosmic rock ballad.  No such luck; side A is a synthy instrumental probably meant to be played as a disco dance tune, and the flip is a less interesting instrumental synth ballad that at times reminds me of the theme from Last Tango in Paris.  I'm not even sure how I recall that, never having seen the movie but having seen the trailer once or twice.  I suppose the melody made an impression as images of a chubby, aging Marlon Brando were burned into my brain.

The faster side is interesting enough to merit inclusion on the blog, and might appeal to fans of the less funky tracks of Kraftwerk, or maybe even Depeche Mode.  The pic sleeve is a winner, and one wonders which part of speech "Fly" is in this context.  Just three posts in and I've already introduced a genre beyond the bounds I laid out for the blog, although in fairness I bought the record hoping for a rock gem and now maybe you won't make the same error if this doesn't float your boat.  Once I started playing a side on the wrong speed and it sounded equally interesting and slightly menacing.

This was likely a producer's studio project.  No musicians are listed and the composition is by "Ecama", no first name listed.  Between that name, the Vogue label apparently being Italian, most of the language on the label and sleeve being Italian and finding the record in Italy I conclude, using my advanced cognitive powers, that this was probably of Italian origin.  If someone knows otherwise, do tell.

This is one of a number of singles I picked up at this store at 4-for-10 euros, most of which will eventually end up here.

Blast off to '70s Euro-electronic-discoland here.

David McWilliams - "... Pearly Spencer" b/w "Harlem Lady" - UK 1967

Most psych fans at this point are familiar with the A-side of this single, "Days of Pearly Spencer", at the very least because it was featured on the second/international Nuggets box set.  Europeans in general and our British friends especially might well know the song from various versions which charted, including the original by McWilliams himself in 1967.

McWilliams was from Belfast and wrote this compelling tune about a homeless man he met in the mid-'60s, where it became a British hit via the famous pirate station Radio Caroline.  This relative success doesn't seem to have manifested itself in the sort of financial success one might hope.  Americans are likely not familiar with the song unless you, like me, own that second Nuggets box.

He died at the rather young age of 56 in County Antrim.  A brief bio is available on Wikipedia and a quite nice tribute site is located here.

This is a French pressing of the single which I found in - are you ready for this? - a used bookstore in Essaouira, Morocco.  It was one of the cheapest records they had, likely because the management had no idea who the artist was.  By my estimate this was probably the rarest and most valuable disc in the store, and it was mine for around US $3.

"Harlem Lady" is a less dramatic pop piece than McWilliams' most famous song, but like many B-sides of the era it's well worth the effort of flipping the record.  Both songs are on his retrospective CD, which you should buy if you like these tunes, but outside of that I've never seen the B-side comped anywhere.

Grab it here.

Chris Spedding - "Time Warp" b/w "Bored Bored" - UK 1978

Sorry folks, no pic sleeve for this one.

I am not very familiar with the solo work of Chris Spedding, who appears to have played with a wide array of rock royalty as a '60s/'70s session musician.

Judging by his YouTube videos, as a solo artist he had a foot in glam, the pop/New Wave end of punk and that range of guitar music in the UK in the mid- to late-1970s.

I was attracted to this single, scored for just $1, at a garage sale because it's on the glam label Rak and was produced by '60s/'70s ace producer Mickie Most, who owned the label.  This didn't disappoint.

"Bored Bored" is a nice mid-tempo pop-rocker with an obviously '70s punk-inspired lyric, but the flip is the star here.  "Time Warp" features everything but the kitchen sink, a slow burner with loud backward guitar, synthy "robot" vocal effects and an echo-laden space lyric.  It has nothing to do with the song of the same title from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Both sides of the single actually do end this abruptly, there are no technical difficulties, which I take it was also punk-inspired immediacy.

Do I sound enough like a music snob in my first "real" post?

Listen (two zipped mp3s, photo) right here.

Greetings

Welcome to the dancehall!

After having drunk deep from the wells of endless awesome rare tracks the past several years, caringly provided by hundreds of anonymous rock-crazed music bloggers, I finally enter the party from the supply end.

Please feel free to add comments about the music, ask questions and what have you.

The aim of the blog is to shine a light on releases in the punk, garage, psych, other and related rock genres released primarily in the 1960s-1980s.  I will attempt to post those items from my collection that I have not yet seen elsewhere, and/or releases I can provide a higher quality rip from than what I've heard.

The blog roll contains many of my favorite blogs which themselves alone hold more music than anyone could ever reasonably hear in a lifetime.  Enjoy this addition to the buffet!  If you like what I'm doing feel free to link to this blog.

I will be zipping folders with 7-Zip, which is available for free download at that link.  You can unzip them with same.

Extra special thanks to my wife for finally providing me with a digitizing unit that works!  Hooray!