Monday, February 24, 2025
(Tracks from) The Unforgettable Years, Young and Warm and Wonderful (1968, 1974)
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Top Six--The Teenagers (sic) Choice: Beatlemania (1964)
DOWNLOAD: Beatlemania--Artists Unknown (Top Six TSL 1; 1964)
Fake Beatles tonight. (That sound like the title of a Broadway comedy.) Why fake Beatles tonight? Because fake Beatles are fun, and faked Fab Four records were pretty much an industry unto themselves, so they're a big part of sound recording history. A big part of the underground thereof, anyway. And because it's giving me a break from stressing. Hope it can perform that feat for some of you, too. This 1964 British LP, titled Beatlemania (no attempt at exploitation there), has its expected bad moments (and bad tracks, like Please Please Me), but considering the rushed nature of the product, it's fairly amazing. As in, legitimately good overall. It captures the George Martin production sound with much skill--maybe by accident; I don't know. But it is by far the best Beatles copy I've yet heard--and it's a whole LPful, which is not a word, but so what. I read someplace the name of the group that allegedly did these tracks, but of course I've been unable to re-find that info. It may not even be true. But I can say without Google confirmation that these guys are good--the lead guitarist, especially. This very used copy played amazingly well with my entry-audiophile cartridge and stylus at 1.5 grams (which I did not expect), and VinylStudio did superbly on the many clicks. The sound is bright and full.
The front jacket says (I believe) eleven shillings and one pence, which was a little over half a pound. That was for twelve hits. Top Six singles (with six hits, of course) were six shillings and eight pence. In pure junk-label fashion, there are no liner notes, and the back cover contains only an unpunctuated track listing and an ad for Top Six singles. My kind of LP!
I wonder what the L in "TSL" stood for. "Top Six...?" Lemons? Laugh riots? Hm. Probably "Limited." At any rate, if you can forgive the absurd moments, I think you'll find it a remarkably good effort. And, if you don't, I still will. Note how the mystery studio group messes up a line (actually, two) in the first number. It's supposed to be, "When I'll say that something: I want to hold your hand." Even as a kid, I got that, except I thought "I'll" was "I." As did these guys, too. Anyway, they sing it, "When I say that someday, I want to hold your hand." Huh? The singer is expressing a present desire, not a future one. "I assure you that someday I'll want to hold your hand. But only after this pandemic is over." Anyway, the Beatles were known for doubling words: "something" shows up twice in the first verse. It's as if these underpaid pros were rushing to junk-label deadline. Come to think of it....
Money is maybe the finest fake of the bunch, in good part because the lead singer sounds uncannily like John Lennon. This LP is the definition of fun. And proof that fake hits sometimes transcended the awful-to-medium curve. Enjoy!
UPDATE: Apparently, the drummer on this LP was Jimmy Nichol, who subbed for Ringo with the Beatles in an international tour when Ringo had tonsillitis. Read about it here. Some info on Top Six, too. I'd read about this before at various sites but suspected it was an urban legend. I guess not!
Lee
Back to the blog!
And what a journey it has been. It started with the sudden demise of my HP laptop in the midst of Christmas blogging. Then, the challenge of a new laptop (a lovely Samsung Galaxy, on sale, and minus an instruction manual), Windows 11 (which I've nicknamed "Let's see--how can we make 10 worse?"), a new audio analog-to-digital interface (nice enough, but no Roland Duo-Capture), an external keyboard (I hate typing on a flat one), an four-jack USB extension hub, and... the return of my big and superb Omen monitor. I'd have stuck with the Samsung display, which is gorgeous, but the cause of too much eyestrain when I'm editing images and audio. An aging-vision issue? Very possibly.
And some glitches too complicated to explain. Or too boring to describe, at least. For instance, my Behringer U-Control interface has no internal volume control, and the VinylStudio program, sensing the lack of an internal volume adjustment, shuts off its OWN. AND, though my MAGIX software has an auto-adjust feature for the (very loud) Rec Out signal from my vintage Sony amp, stereo input is channel-summed to monaural. I have no idea why. I've studied the settings, but no clue.
Oh, and despite what the Best Buy Geek Squad assured me, the data-retrieval process (from my old tower to my Samsung) went poorly, with many C-drive items lost--and ALL of the D-drive data--kaput. Meaning, any number of this blog's ZIP files. Truth is, I had tried to move D-drive data to my whatever-it's-called Microsoft cloud storage. (Oh, yeah--OneDrive.) But I couldn't figure out how to do it. The ways of OneDrive are strange. I was happy, though, that my C-drive data all went into the cloud quickly and automatically. Meanwhile, the Geek Squad managed to retrieve C-drive data I had long ago deleted. It's all too complicated.
Anyway, a post in progress, and--meanwhile--a repeat of a 2020 offering whose ZIP somehow still remains at Box.com. It is, in my fake-hit-authority opinion, the very best Fab Four knockoff of all time. The LP dates from a period when U.K.-to-U.S. postage rates were still reasonable. Stay tuned.
Wolf: I just can't explain it, Dr. Hood. This drive to gobble up grandmothers--I just can't control it. You must think pretty badly of me. Especially since I just ate YOUR grandma.
Dr. Hood: I'm here to listen, not to judge.
Lee
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
The One Horse Open Sleigh (James Pierpont)--repost from 2011
Christmas Eve, and no word from Best Buy, which is allegedly transferring data from my deceased PC (the motherboard is "crap," said the tech) to my new laptop. I'm currently on an ancient Lenovo (c. 1912-1913), and it's taking years to do anything. But it's an old PC, so I shouldn't speak too unkindly of it. It's a miracle that it runs at all. Yes, I feel like tossing it down the bank, but that's my German and Irish blood speaking.
Saturday, December 14, 2024
From 2020: A Pickwick, SPC, and Spear Records Christmas!
So, before I could ask, "What else can go wrong?" my main desktop PC (the one set up for track-ripping, editing, etc.) conked out--and it's currently at Best Buy, getting fixed. Well, I hope, anyway. That is, I hope it's a fixable issue. Naturally, I have yet to receive a progress report...
Meanwhile, on this sluggish but still-working downstairs PC, I discovered a handful of Christmas zips that I had, for some reason, downloaded here. This is one of those zips, which was twice deleted by Workupload. At least two repeat tracks, but...
Four Pickwick LP tracks, followed by various 45 rpm singles and EPs. Now, let us travel back to 2020 (echo: 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020...).
This time, more kiddie stuff, some of it performed by kiddies, including three Pickwick tracks which appeared on both Playhour Records (in mono) and on this two-record set (in stereo):
The Joyous Season was a Pickwick special, by which I mean it was Pickwick at its... Pickwick-est. Not only are there no artist credits to be found, there isn't even a label name--that is, unless The Joyous Season was supposed to pull double duty as both the set title and the label name. With Pickwick, any act of cheapness is possible. By the way, my copy made it to Goodwill with only one record in the fold-out packet, so I guess I could call mine The Semi-Joyous Season. Miraculously, the single, sleeveless record is in like-new condition. Except for the missing record, someone took good care of this. (Maybe they never played it.)Next, Spear Records, which Discogs tells us was connected to Spear Products. Going to Spear Products, we learn that Spear Products was connected to Spear Records. Going to Spear Records, we learn that Spear Records was connected to Spear Products. So, going to Spear Products, we... (Somebody stop me... Help!!) Whew. And, so, we--or, at least, I--know zilch about Spear Records, except that it was a very, very cheap operation which managed to convince some talented folks to record for it, which only goes to show that there are more talented people than labels to feature them. Something like that. The Spear sides are fun and short. Their 45s were co-released with six-inch 78s in the manner of Golden Records. Which was connected with Golden Products, which was connected with Golden Records, which was connected with... just kidding.
Next, La Dee Dah and Love Is Strange. And what are these two numbers doing in a holiday playlist?
And here are four later (post-1950s) SPC efforts, from an EP whose sleeve art makes me cringe. I don't know why. Rudolph is supposed to look cute, but... I don't know. Something's wrong with the art. For one thing, he doesn't look like a reindeer. Maybe that's it. And did I say post-1950? Yes, except for the same ol' Johnny Kay version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, which likely showed up in so many different issues, someone could write a book about it. Or at least a long chapter in Johnny Kay--a Discography. Kay was the SPC singer with Perry Como's voice but not his looks--he looked more like Johnny Desmond, but with less sex appeal. Not knocking his looks--Kay had nothing to worry about in that department, but we all know that singing stars need more than excellent pipes if they're going to make it big. Oh, and Rudolph's Christmas Party may not set new standards for terribleness, but then again... Other than Kay (who, of course, is not credited), the artists on Rudolph are the usual unknown kid singers. We have to wonder if there was a special musician's union for uncredited artists.