Sardines & Turnip Greens

Here’s another 45 that I know almost nothing about. I pulled it out of a box at the Limestone County Flea Market a long time ago. It’s got some surface noise but I’ve gotten used to the pops and clicks. I really like these two songs. “Sardines And Turnip Greens” is a great song title. Fortunately the music is good enough to go with it, it’s a great instrumental. The B-side is good too, I like the organ part.

I tried to find something out about the Dynamic Eight. There’s not much to report. I did find a couple sites that said the band was from Nashville. Also, the record is sometimes credited to James Stuart & The Dynamic Eight and sometimes just the Dynamics. I wonder if the same record was released under different names or if the sellers came up with new names on their own? Also there is a 45 on Sound Stage 7 by the Dynamic Seven. Same guys after somebody left the band? James Stuart & The Dynamic Eight had another 45 on J&J records, I’ve never heard or seen it. Anybody out there got a copy?

There are a few copies of this 45 available to anyone that wants to spend 10-40 bucks. Or you can order a CD-R of the song from these guys for $67.98!!!! Yow!!! It looks like you do get a vinyl copy of the single with the order though.

In 2003, Atlantic released “Sardines & Turnip Greens” on a British comp called BLUES & SOUL POWER. It looks like a pretty good set, anybody got a spare?

Lucifer Sams

THE REBEL KIND is one of my favorite compilation records. After I got it in 1984, I bought every record I could find by the bands included on the LP including The Fuzztones, The Last, The Long Ryders, Plasticland, The Nomads and others. Records by the Sickidz! and The United States of Existence were impossible to find in Chattanooga.

Imagine my surprise and delight the first time I looked through my then girlfriend’s record collection and found that she had a copy of THE REBEL KIND too! It was a French copy with a different cover but I knew that she was a keeper anyway. Twenty years later, I'm listening to her copy of the album.

The cover wasn’t the only thing that was different, My copy was on Sounds Interesting Records and had True West doing a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Lucifer Sam”. Melissa’s THE REBEL KIND was on Lolita Records and had “Lucifer Sam” by The Three O’Clock. That was strange but not as strange as the liner notes which were the same for both bands!

So depending on which copy you prefer add The Three O’Clock or True West at the relevant points: “We want to be a great guitar band" says _____ _____ and it's refreshing to hear a musician say that instead of giving us more boring synthesizer dance rock. Melodically, ____ _____ often recall early Pink Floyd (with Syd of course)but musically their brash soaring sheets of guitar seem to be flashbacks of Quicksilver, Television and Yardbirds. More of the music may be found on their must have albums.”

I always thought that the notes were really about True West (I’ve never heard the Three O’Clock sound like any of those bands) and Sounds Interesting owner Chip Lamey confirmed this. Chip told me that True West was signed to Paris based New Rose Records when Lolita got the rights to release his comp, and Lolita didn’t want to give exposure to a rival label’s act. So they replaced True West’s “Lucifer Sam” with the Three O’Clock’s version. Chip put the record together and did all the work but when Lolita released his comp, they left his name of off the notes. Nobody told him about the bootleg CD version that came out on Revenge Records either.

I like both versions of “Lucifer Sam” but prefer The Three O’Clock version. It shows that they really could rock out when they wanted to. The band never officially released the song in the U.S. but it was included on the French issue of BAROQUE HOEDOWN and on a fan club single that came out in 1983.

R.I.P.

Nikki Sudden

I don't know any details. Check here and here. Another one gone. Crap.

Run on

for a long time.

R.I.P.

Buck Owens

I've seen you around for long, long time

I remembered you when you drank my wine.

Lemonaide and I were still walking

Here's a post that I ran about Kak last year. Lately, there have been a lot of Google hits from people looking for Gary Yoder and Dehner Patten and this is what they get. I decided to run it again so they won't go away empty handed. Blue Cheer's website is not up currently but I'm leaving the links just in case they get it running again. Enjoy!

I found the Kak LP in a box of records that a guy dropped off at Sunburst Records. He just dumped them in front of the store, told Jay he didn’t have time to sell them and he didn’t want them to go into the trash. So Jay was giving them away and I grabbed this one.

Kak was formed in 1968 by Dehner Patten and Gary Lee Yoder, two Davis California guitarists. The pair had previously played in The Oxford Circle. Kak played shows around California and recorded one LP for Epic. The record is very good and I think it’s better than some of the psychedelic records that were popular in 1968. Some of the songs had hit potential. The label did not push the record and it flopped.

The failure of the record led to Kak to breaking up. Gary Lee Yoder did a solo 45 and then joined Paul Whaley, his old drummer in the Oxford Circle, in Blue Cheer for one album.

Gary Lee Yoder still plays guitar in Davis. Dehner Patten is living in Portland, Oregon and playing in bands there.

Carry you away

This record is the only single I know of by Dr. Janet, an indie supergroup from the time before the members were famous. Or somewhat less obscure anyway. Screaming Trees guitarist Grant Lee Connor sings and plays guitar. Connor wrote the excellent a-side “Ten Years Gone” Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo plays bass & guitar and I’m pretty sure that’s him singing “Starry Eyes”, the Records cover on the b-side. Lyle Hysen, the drummer for Das Damen, played ‘drums and wires’. Matt Sweeny, who played bass and guitar on the songs that Kaplan didn’t play on, had been in Skunk who did a couple of great records on Twin\Tone in the late 80’s and later played in Chavez.

I don’t know any of the history around this record or the band. The songs were recorded at Water Music in Hoboken in 1990. The record was the first release on Ringers Lactate Records. The way the songs cut off at the end makes me think that the band wasn’t recording the songs deliberately, it’s more likely that they were fooling around in the studio while the tapes were rolling. I wonder what else Dr. Janet recorded that day?

Where are they now? Gary Lee Conner recorded a few more albums with Screaming Trees and became famous. I don’t know what he’s been doing since the Trees broke up in 2000. Ira Kaplan is still playing guitar and singing for Yo La Tengo. After Chavez, Matt Sweeny played in Billy Corgan’s Zwan and Guided by Voices. Currently, Matt is touring and recording with Bonnie Prince Billie. Lyle Hysen worked at Matador Records and then he moved to Bankrobber Music. Hysen’s name was in the news a few days ago which reminded me of this 45 and led to this post.

Lousy name for a band

but what a great song!

Since I laid my

burden down.

R.I.P. King Floyd

I just read over on Soul Sides that King Floyd died on March 6. Crap.

Creepy bad acid vibe

Some psych fans really like this record and there are some good bits but its mostly loud fuzzy stuff. The kind of stuff that gives loud fuzzy psych records a bad name. The guitars aren’t loud enough and the songs aren’t long enough (actually, that’s a good thing) to compete with Iron Butterfly or Vanilla Fudge. Maybe if the songs were better. They feel unfinished.

I have a feeling that The Head Shop wasn’t a real group. Maybe they were but this LP looks and sounds like a record company cash-in to me. “Kids are buying loud fuzzy guitars, let’s give ‘em loud fuzzy guitars! And play slower! Nobody likes that rock and roll stuff anymore.” Milan (The Leather Boy) produced the record in some way and wrote all of the original songs. Milan’s own records are better than this one.

The band may have been from New York, Milan was based in NYC.

I did a web search for ‘Head Shop’ and didn’t find any websites for the band so nobody (with web access anyway) is willing to admit they were in the band. Unless they were also running a real head shop, I didn’t even look at those websites. I did find about half dozen e-bay auctions of this ‘incredibly rare psych LP’! My favorite description was the one that described the Head Shop record as having a ‘creepy bad acid vibe’.

Birdies sing,

summer winter and spring

It's a long way from the Famous Door

I was kinda surprised when I found this LP at the Breaking Free Rescue Mission, I didn’t know that Louis Prima was still recording in 1972. For some reason, I thought Jungle Book was the last thing he recorded. THE PRIMA GENERATION ‘72 wasn’t Louis Prima’s last LP but it’s close to the end of the line. Sam Butera is still on board and that’s good (get any Sam Butera records that you see). By this point the Witnesses line-up was not carved in stone, members were coming and going. The wah-wah guitar playing is not what you’d expect to hear on a Louis Prima record. But then I would never have expected to hear “Sympathy For The Devil” on a Louis Prima record, either. If that's what they're playing. Whatever it actually is, Jagger/Richards get the songwriting credit.

There a few songs that are keepers. There’s a cool medley of “Cold, Cold Heart/Little Mother”. There’s a pretty good version of “Up A Lazy River”, a song that Prima and the Witnesses had recorded years before. My favorite song on the record is an instrumental that Prima wrote with guitar player Ronnie James. It's a long way from the Famous Door club on 52nd Street.

My copy of THE PRIMA GENERATION'72 is on Brunswick Records. Prima’s website says that everything he released after 1964 was on his own Prima Records. Hmmmm. All of ‘em are was available on CD from the Louis Prima website.

Going to a place

where I'll have nothing to do.

I wanna flip out

I wanna fly high.

Now what does that mean?

By request, here’s some live R.E.M. stuff from a few old singles. Some of the words are a little bit easier to hear and understand than the studio versions if you care about that sort of stuff.

The first two songs are from the 12” of “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville”. The songs were recorded live to cassette in Paris France on April 20, 1984.

Next up are a couple songs recorded 2 months later in Seattle, Washington. The whole was recorded for a radio show called the Source. I remember hearing the concert when it was broadcast on Rock 105 in Chattanooga but I wasn’t smart enough to record it so I was glad when these b-sides came out. “Catapult” was on the back of the “Rockville” 7” and “Driver 8” was one the “Wendell Gee” 12” b-sides.

These songs were left off of the DEAD LETTER OFFICE b-side compilation, probably because there wasn’t enough room on the vinyl. The CD version had the CHRONIC TOWN EP included as bonus tracks. There was another singles collection a few years ago that had one or two of these songs, I don’t have it or remember which songs. Or what the CD was called. I heard that all of R.E.M.’s IRS albums are going to get deee-luxe reissues, these songs will probably show up then. And maybe the Hib-Tone version of “Sitting Still”, I hope.

Rippin' it up

A while back I posted of couple songs by a Huntsville garage band called the Wombats. At that time, I had a warped copy of a later record by the same guys and promised that I would post the songs if I found a playable copy of the record.

A playable copy has been found.

Two of the Wombats formed a new band called The Poor Souls in 1966. They recorded two originals for Woodrich records, the same label that released the Wombats 45. They are great! As far as I know, none of these songs have been ever been comped.

Poor Souls drummer Jedge Daniels (he sings too, that's him on "You'll Be The One To Suffer") has been playing since late Fifties and is still playing. He’s got some great stories. Like the one about a wild night in May 1965 when his band was playing a club in Birmingham, Alabama. The Rolling Stones had played their first Alabama concert earlier that night and showed up at the club where Jedge’s band was playing and ended up jamming with the band. I wonder if Keith Richard played a song he had just written a few days before? He had just written a couple days before. The Rolling Stones recorded the new song - "Satisfaction" - later that same month.

In case anyone missed them, here are the two songs from the Wombats 45.

You must have

that pure religion.

I've been waiting to read this story for years.

Oops... This bike wasn’t a pipe bomb.

Kling

Klang

Happy Birthdays!!!

Lou,
Joy &
Dave!!!