Twilight Zone for Your Listening Pleasure

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Yesterday I came across this incredible Web log, Twilight Zone for Your Listening Pleasure. This guy posts tons and tons of great garage and rock ‘n’ roll records with large cover scans and links to the full albums in MP3 format. Usually, you just click in to the comments of each blog post and you are given a link the the MP3s in zip format. Cut-n-paste the link and you can grab the files for free. There is a limit of one package download per hour, but it’s worth the wait to get your ears on some of these comps.

Revisiting Old Music Part III (Ch-De)

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Happy New Year! My overview of my entire CD collection continues.

The Challengers – Lloyd Thaxton Goes Surfing with The Challengers
One of the best of the early Sixties surf bands. A very polished sound.

The Challengers – K-39
Another great Challengers record with even more focus on Delvy’s drums.

The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Ferociously Stoned
Great song writing, lots of hopping big band-ish numbers and the wonderful The Lifeboat Mutiny. A couple of funk laden stinkers, but aside from that and maybe some thin production on the drums, I love this record.

The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Rapid City Muscle Car
A far more consistent album than the previous, and just as good. The best tracks here aren’t quite as good as the best ones from Ferociously Stoned, but nothing to complain about.

Chrome – Half Machine Lip Moves / Alien Soundtracks
Contemporaries of Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome were just about as noisy. Chrome stuck to a more traditional guitar, bass and drums for the core of their sonic abstractions. There are some toe tapping tune hidden in here.

Circle Jerks – Group Sex / Wild in the Streets
A punk band that everyone had to have listened too when they first discovered punk. The songs don’t hold up that well these days, but they are short and it’s over before you get bored.

Circle Jerks- Wonderful
I think I bought this CD for 2 or 3 dollars used. The lyrics are funny and the musicianship is improved, but the songs are really stale compared to my favorite Circle Jerks’ record, Golden Shower of Hits.

The Clash – London Calling
I don’t know. I think this may be one of the most overrated records ever. It’s not awful, I guess. But it just doesn’t clique with me. There are plenty of memorable moments, but outside of The Guns of Brixton I find this stuff plain boring. It’s like fairly proficient bar-band music with (politically) revolutionary lyrics. Meh. And if I never hear the excruciating anthem Death or Glory again, it will be too soon.

Chris Connelly – Stowaway
RevCo / Ministry singer does his best David Bowie impersonation yet.

Coyle & Sharpe – On the Loose
Incredible man-on-the-street gags. Pure genius.

Coyle & Sharpe – Audio Visionaries
More Candid Microphone weirdness. Not as good as On the Loose but still is hilarious.

Criswell – The Legendary Criswell Predicts! Your Incredible Future
Be amazed as Criswell gets about 99.9999% of his predictions wrong. Nakedness is a key element of many of them. Funny and weird and mastered as a single 45 minute long CD track.

The Dave & Deke Combo – Moonshine Melodies
Hillbilly bop. Great musicianship and a great sense of humor.

The Dave & Deke Combo – Hollywood Barn Dance
More swinging hillbilly music. Better than the first CD. A whole barnyard of fun.

Sammy Davis Jr. – Greatest Hits
I have a real soft spot for Sammy Davis Jr. There’s a lot of delicious cheese mixed in with the big band numbers, and man was that guy an Entertainer (with the capital “E”). The live version of Come Back to Me will blow your socks off. It makes any live rock band you’ve heard feel like a 2 hour conference call with regional HQ.

The Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
When I started this project, I was dreading revisiting these DK albums. Jello became soooo annoying later on in his career. Anyhow, I was surprised that much of this was still pretty good. It holds up much better than the drab SoCal punk of bands like Black Flag. Inventive guitar playing and more abstract political snarkiness make this a classic. Even though the CD I got is mastered like crap.

The Dead Kennedys – Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust, Inc.
More awful sounding production/mastering from the DKs. The music is still pretty good. In God We Trust, Inc. is the weaker of the two albums on this CD. Not quite as inspired as Fresh Fruit but good.

The Dead Kennedys – Frankenchrist
This album sounds great. Too bad most of the songs are crap. The lyrics are forced and the songs are starting to get too long without going anywhere.

The Dead Kennedys – Bedtime for Democracy
Jello is in full on annoying mode on this record. Again, the songs are too plain or just go on too long.

The Dead Kennedys – Give me Convenience or Give me Death
A great compilation of singles and imports. Mostly from before the band went sour.

Death Valley – ¡Que Pasta!
Nice Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western inspired instrumentals.

Deke Dickerson – More Million Sellers
Wonderful collection of rock ‘n’ roll and country numbers from Deke.

Deke Dickerson – Mr. Entertainment
A collection of extras and rarities. As one might expect, not as consistent as his albums but includes some of his best songs such as Double Zombie and Muleskinner Blues.

Deke Dickerson – In 3 Dimensions
Another great record from guitar geek Deke. Nicely divided into three groups of styles: rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly and hillbilly.

The Denison/Kimball Trio – Walls of the City
Jazzy guitar-drums combo. Some pretty off-the-wall guitar work, but suffers from every song sounding pretty similar.

The Denison/Kimball Trio – Soul Machine
Much more diverse and interesting than the previous CD.

Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
An all-time classic from the definitive new wave band. Quirky, energetic and flat out genius.

Devo – Freedom of Choice
My favorite Devo album. The perfect blend of electronics and standard rock instrumentation. Most punk-types prefer their 1st album, but this one works much better as a whole for me.

Devo – Total Devo
The “comeback” Devo album that was a flop. It’s not awful, but the spark is gone. Too overproduced and sequenced, unlike the early era albums which were a melding of man and machine. This was the first DDD CD I ever owned.