And I don’t mean any mix CDs or tapes that you may have put together yourself (So “Have Yourself a Euty Little Christmas” is out. ) I mean the commercially available stuff that usually ends up in the far back lefthand corner of Newbury Comics.
My own favorite is one I had to get mail ordered from Warner Brothers back in the 70’s : Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies. (Here, third row down. No, it wasn’t cartoon music, but a three disc set that Warners’ basically gave away for $3.00 as advertisement. Zappa … Beefheart … Little Richard … Ry Cooder … Fleetwood Mac before they went pop … a then unreleased Jimi Hendrix track … Van Dyke Parks … what’s not to love?
This isn’t one specific compilation, but a series of them. The Oxford American magazine puts out a cd of (mostly) southern music once a year to go with their music-themed issue. Always amazing, a good mix of rock, soul, funk, bluegrass, gospel, even some punk or hiphop.
I’ve got 4 sitting next to my computer right now. The first one I grab has, among others, tracks by: Mississippi Fred McDowell, Toots Hibbert, Victoria Williams, Ralph Stanley & Bob Dylan, Kevin Gordon, Linda Lyndell, The Gants, Steve Young, the Delta Rhythm Boys, Ann Peebles, and Bill Nettles. And the magazine ain’t half bad, either.
My cousin bought this (on cassette, no less) when we were young, and I found it years later in a used record store (on vinyl). I’ve been able to transfer or find most of the songs I really like, but the song (and info about) the Fields song continues to elude me. The Sweathog song, “Hallelujah” is not the Leonard Cohen song, but pretty rockin’. And how can you not love a song called " I’m On The Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep" (by the same band that gave us “She’s As Beautiful As A Foot”)?
Thanks for starting this thread, it got me to go buy a cd I haven’t had in forever! Anyway mine is “Saturday Morning Cartoons”, with The Ramones covering the Spiderman theme song, Helmet covereing “Gigantor”, Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donnelly doing “Josie and the Pussycats”, etc., etc. I used to play it to DEATH, can’t wait for it to come in the mail!
God, I remember the Warner Bros. samplers – I had Zapped, which tells you pretty much all you need to know about me in high school.
I listen to a lot of African music, which I often get in the form of compilation albums. This is a particularly excellent one. Volume 1, which I got later, is also good – Volume 3 came out late last year, but I haven’t seen it for under $50 yet, and since I’m unemployed, I can’t justify buying it at that price. Definitely on my wishlist, though.
I used to LOVE those Warner Loss leaders - I had (and still have) Record Show, Big Ball, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and the Whole Burbank Catalogue.
You had to clip the coupon, mail it in with either two or three dollars (a dollar per disc) and wait “four to six weeks for delivery.” But when the album came in the mail, it was a red letter day. It all sounds so quaint now, doesn’t it?
V. 1975 double LP sampler of artists on the Virgin label, which at the time was still strongly identified with progressive and experimental rock. It featured then-unreleased music by Hatfield and the North, Tangerine Dream, Steve Hillage (accompanied by most of Gong), Captain Beefheart, Robert Wyatt, and Mike Oldfield (though this last was a very silly cover of an old music hall ditty). It took an interesting left turn on the second half of side three with Tom Newman’s wacky calypso “Superman” forming a transition between the prog rock and a couple of Caribbean and African tracks. Some of the music on this sampler, including the 11-minute Tangerine Dream piece, is otherwise unavailable to this day.
I liked Zapped – nice stuff, with things like early Alice Cooper, Captain Beefheart, and Wild Man Fischer – but my favorite from that time was The New Spirit of Capitol. Steve Miller when he was good, Pink Floyd, plus Linda Ronstadt before she hit it big and Bob Segar long before.
Zappéd was indeed a great one–but didja know that there were two different versions with different tracks? The one that I got back in the day had “St. Nicholas Hall” as the Henske & Yester track, “Refrigerator Heaven” as the second Alice Cooper track, “Governor Slugwell” as the Lord Buckley track, and “Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown” as the Mothers of Invention track. I believe this was the second version. On the original version, the tracks in those positions were “Horses on a Stick,” “Reflected,” “The Train,” and “Valarie,” respectively. The cover was also different. My copy had Zappa scowling directly at the viewer; the other cover had Zappa smiling and collaged with the other artists.
I got Ska The Third Wave when I was 16 or 17 and it totally blew me away. Getting in to ska totally changed my life, and this was the album that introduced me to everything I’d been missing.
FYI, “Refrigerater Heaven” sort of got continued as “Cold Ethyl” on Welcome to My Nightmare" and Reflected" got a lyric change and a tempo revamp and became “Elected”.
Other favourite tracks: Dig doing the Fat Albert theme, Reverend Horton Heat doing a Johnny Quest/Stop That Pigeon medley, Sponge’s Speed Racer cover, the Butthole Surfer’s version of the Underdog theme, and Sublime’s Hong Kong Phooey.
The K-Tel “Goofy Greats” and “Silly Songs” from my childhood. I remember so many of the songs…“Beep Beep”, “Nashville Cats”, “Birds And The Bees”, and the song that taught me to whistle, “I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman” by Whistling Jack Smith.
) I mean the commercially available stuff that usually ends up in the far back lefthand corner of Newbury Comics.