B-Sides in the Bins #28: Amazon.com part 2 – Limited Warranty

Neon, tissue box, sexy legs, and moody band shots...

Neon, tissue box, sexy legs, and moody band shots...

Limited Warranty – Limited Warranty (CD, Wounded Bird WOU 513, 2007) ($8.89)

It’s with slight trepidation and risk of any “cred” that I may have gained over the years that I write about this purchase. Limited Warranty is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me and is probably tainted and tinted by the gathering fog and mist clouding my memory of this band.

Limited Warranty was a band from Minneapolis that won the Star Search bands competition in 1985 which landed them a big cash prize and a single that was pushed for radio play. That single “This Is Serious” b/w “Never Enough” was recorded with former Psychedelic Furs drummer Vince Ely producing. The single enjoyed lots of airplay in the Midwest and toured extensively. They were eventually approached by ATCO, a subsidiary label of Atlantic to record their first album released in 1986.

This album, produced by Brian Tench who also worked with Orchestral Manoevers in the Dark, Bow Wow Wow and other New Wave Acts,  along with its first single “Victory Line” seemed to do really well. The album certainly got a lot of play in Dubuque on KLYV-105. Some of this, I believe, was because one of the member’s uncle was the station manager. Limited Warranty played in the Dubuque area quite a bit as I recall. I saw them play the Dubuque County Fairgrounds for a M.A.D.D. benefit with a couple of other bands. My brother Steve used to have the poster for this show “Fun-Tacked” to his bedroom door. We also saw them play the Circle in East Dubuque in the winter.

According to this very informative site on Limited Warranty, the band was recording demos for its follow-up album on ATCO when they were dropped from the label. Some of this material was included on their self-released EP called Domestic 7. They came to Dubuque around this time and made an in-store appearance at TJ’s Music World and did an interview on KLYV around this same time telling their story and pushing the EP. I bought the EP on cassette, and I still have it. I also picked up the album on cassette out of a cut-out bin at Musicland in Dubuque. I had always intended to rip these two releases to CD or mp3 but never got around to it.

Apparently, if you wait long enough eventually everything will be released on CD. While I was looking on Amazon for the Wounded Bird releases of the Del Fuegos first three albums, I was looking at the Wounded Bird site and found that the Limited Warranty album had already been released on CD since July of 2007! So, I ordered this one along with the first Del Fuegos.

Listening to it now, it certainly brings back a lot of memories. It is the pop hook-laden album I remember it to be. I had a co-worker listen to it, and his comment was that while it was pretty good and well-done, it was missing something that would have pushed it to the levels of label-mates INXS. I think it has something to do with the missing teenage angst or some level of darkness. It sounds as good as some of their contemporaries like the Psychedelic Furs, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Duran Duran, or OMD would have been turning out. The closest they get is the song “Domestic 7” about old folks homes with its samples of old people talking. The production is a bit thin, unfortunately, but very clean. I think this is a result of this album never having been released on CD so we are getting the limited bandwidth of the cassette or vinyl master. So, it could stand a remastering. Nevertheless, it’s cool to hear these songs again.

Thanks to Brian’s World for his Limited Warranty website— complete with mp3 samples of all of the releases!

B-Sides in the Bins #28: Amazon.com part 1 – The Del Fuegos – The Longest Day

The Del Fuegos – The Longest Day (CD, Wounded Bird WOU 5174, 2008) ($7.33)

This was the week where I revisited my favorite music from the 80’s in my purchases. I was reading the very helpful Monday post from Largehearted Boy that lists the Tuesday CD and DVD releases and was surprised to see that the first three albums from 80’s roots rock band The Del Fuegos were listed as being reissued! WTF?

In 1985, probably watching Night Tracks on WTBS or Night Flight on the USA Channel, I encountered The Del Fuegos and their breakout single “Don’t Run Wild.” We didn’t have MTV in my hometown so these shows in addition to Radio 1990 and Friday Night Videos were the only music video sources available to me. “Don’t Run Wild”‘s opening muted guitar and bass riffs and snapping fingers made me a believer and this little band from Boston became one of my favorite bands and is still one I listen to.

In the summer of 1985 I discovered R.E.M. during a family vacation in California which triggered in me the desire to search out bands that other kids in my hometown of 1200 people hadn’t heard of. That summer I was 16 and with driver’s license clutched firmly in hand I would cruise around town with friends listening to a lot of bands that had this retro Midwest 60’s garage sound– The Smithereens, The Del Fuegos, The BoDeans, Los Lobos, Violent Femmes, R.E.M. and others– and this would be the sound that would carry me to the “alternative” college rock bands after high school.

The Del Fuegos were a hard-working, hard-rocking, and apparently hard-drinking bar band from Boston who were signed to indie label Slash Records which at this time was being distributed by Warners. Their first two albums The Longest Day and Boston, Mass were well-regarded critically, but it wasn’t until they were approached by Miller Beer to appear in a commercial representing a hard working blue collar band that they grabbed national attention to the din of longtime fans’ cries of “sellout!” In 1987 they followed up with Stand Up, their third album with the winning partnership of Mitch Froom at the boards.

That summer my family and my best friend Kurt went to Chicago to see The Del Fuegos along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and The Georgia Satellites as part of Petty’s “Rock and Roll Revival Tour” at Poplar Creek on June 20, 1987. The Fuegos, the band that didn’t have a hit on the charts at the time– unlike the Satellites was made the opening act. We were really excited to see the band and to see Tom Petty. Unfortunately, dwarfed by the huge stage in the hard light of the afternoon and possibly seventeen dates into a 33-date long summer tour their abbreviated opening slot seemed to lack the magic we’d expected from the band we listened to regularly over the last two years. I was also hoping that Petty would have joined the band to reprise his harmony vocals from the album on “I Can’t Take This Place” but that wasn’t meant to be, either.

According to this biography of lead singer and founder of the Del Fuegos Dan Zanes, following that tour Warren Zanes and Woody Giessmann quit the band and the band was dropped from Slash. That Fall I went to College and focused on other bands I was being exposed to by new friends I was making there.

In 1989 Dan and bass player Tom Lloyd attempted to revive the band– this time with members replacing brother Zanes and Giessmann with a new guitarist and drummer and new label RCA. I didn’t purchase Smoking In The Fields initially– my brother Steve had a copy of it and listened to it quite a bit as I recall. Producer/Engineer Dave Thoener provided a more lush, updated version of the sound of three previous records and it yielded a rocking first single in “Move With Me Sister” which got to #22 on the Modern Rock charts. However, it died quickly with a lack of support from the label or it’s A&R army– a record out-of-time in some respects. It sadly made its final rest among the cut-out bins which is where I got my copy. Listening to it today as I write this article, it is a solid record from beginning to end and sounds as good as some Tom Petty records in his catalog and shows Zanes as the strong songwriter and frontman that he was. Smoking in the Fields is as deserving of a reissue as the other three albums in my opinion.

In 1994 he came out of a period of retirement during which he started a family and quit drinking by providing a very short instrumental titled “Moon Over Greene County” to the soundtrack to “Natural Born Killers.” This was followed in 1995 by his first solo album Cool Down Time which was released on short lived Private Music which was bought by BMG the following year and has been out-of-print since. (There are a bunch of copies for under $5 on Amazon, BTW). This record was a return of Mitch Froom at the helm and brought his clank-and-rattle percussion and odd keyboard sounds he developed in the Latin Playboys to Dan’s trademark roots sound. I love this album and it’s shared production style with the Latin Playboys, 99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees from Froom’s ex-wife Suzanne Vega, and Colossal Head from Los Lobos is an interesting mix. Dan provided an e-mail address in the CD booklet and he and I exchanged a few e-mails which was cool.

The story has been told a number of times elsewhere on the net about Dan being disappointed with the children’s music available and how he has reinvented himself as a children’s/family-friendly artist and this path gave him a Grammy in 2007 for Catch That Train! in the Best Musical Album for Children category.

In 2001 Warner Brothers sort of righted a long-standing wrong by providing The Longest Day on CD. The two following albums had existed been released on CD, but not Day. They did this strangely by including the whole album as part of an import Best of the Del Fuegos : The Slash Years which also had tracks from the subsequent two albums. I hadn’t gotten around to purchasing this album and now I don’t need to since it has been reissued by a label I hadn’t heard of called Wounded Bird.

Wounded Bird is a reissues label that has been in existence since 1998 and has a pretty impressive catalog of releases including most of Bread’s catalog, Marshall Crenshaw, the solo work of the Cars and many others. It appears based on the two CD’s I bought so far that they are licensed and manufactured by Rhino Entertainment. So, this implies that they have access to the original masters to make them. I have read some reviews on Amazon that people have been disappointed with some of the releases’ sound quality. So, I think releases from this label come with a bit of buyer beware in that they aren’t re-mastering these recordings, so if there hasn’t been a CD transfer done these are coming from LP/Cassette masters. In the case of The Longest Day the production sounds great, so I’m assuming they are using the masters that were used for the 2001 Best of release. In the case of Boston, Mass and Stand Up they would be using the CD masters.

It’s great to have this on CD, finally and completes my collection. I have the Slash catalog of the Del Fuegos on vinyl as well so I feel that my collection is pretty complete with this band.

Click Here for Dan Zanes’s Website

Free Download : Break Up The Concrete by The Pretenders

As reported by Billboard yesterday, Chrissy Hynde and company, aka The Pretenders have a new album titled Break Up The Concrete which will be released 10/7 on her new label Shangri-La Music. The album was recorded in 10 days with a mostly-new version of the Pretenders. In addition to original Pretenders bass player Nick Wilkinson, she added James Walbourne and Eric Heywood on guitars and notorious session drummer Jim Keltner. Coincidentally, this week I was just listening to super-group Little Village from 1992 that had Keltner on skins!

The first track “Boots of Chinese Plastic” a rollicking roots-rock twang-fest is available for free download from AOL.com’s Spinner.com site via the Pretenders site.

Visit the Pretenders site and sign up for e-mail notifications because the plan is to release one track per week leading up to October 7th from Concrete as mp3’s through other website partners including QuickTime, clearchannel.com, cmt.com, ilike, imeem, mp3.com and others. The track available today is a surprising 320Kbps mp3! I hope that the rest of the tracks will be of the same quality! I can’t find a track listing for the new album anywhere. Based on the 1-track-per-week, I guess there will be 10 tracks.

Here is the tracklisting (Thanks to user Mark666!):

01 Boots of Chinese Plastic (download from Spinner.com)
02 The Nothing Maker (download from iLike)
03 Don’t Lose Faith in Me (download from C|Net download.com)
04 Don’t Cut your Hair (download from imeem.com)
05 Loves A Mystery (download from CMT.com)
06 The Last Ride (download from WindowsMedia.com)
07 Almost Perfect (download from Yahoo! Music)
08 You Didn’t Have To (download from iheartmusic.com)
09 Rosalee (download from VH1.com)
10 Break Up The Concrete (download from thepretenders.com GarageBand Contest Page) – fill out your info in upper right area of the page which will bring you to a page to download.
11 One Thing Never Changed

Fleetwood Mac to Fly in 2009 Without Crow

Right on the heels of Lindsey Buckingham’s announcement of his new solo album due in September we get the announcement that while Fleetwood Mac will tour in early 2009, they will do it without Sheryl Crow as previously and extensively reported.

In Billboard today Lindsey was quoted saying that the reports of Sheryl Crow as a member of Fleetwood Mac “kinda got out of hand.” There were original discussions with Crow, but the group decided that although they had previously felt there was “too much testosterone on the stage” during their last tour in 2003, the most appropriate direction was to focus as the core foursome.

The plans are to tour after rehearsals in January as a means to warm up to working in the studio– “maybe even sowing some seeds musically that would get us more prepared to go in the studio rather than just going in cold,” said Buckingham.

I saw Fleetwood Mac in 2003 in Madison, WI during the Say You Will tour and was very impressed with how the band carried the live show without Christine McVie. I will certainly be seeing them in 2009.

Free Download : “Two Silver Trees” by Calexico from Carried to Dust

Today we get to hear and download the full track “Two Silver Trees” from the upcoming Calexico release Carried to Dust which will be released September 9th. You might recognize this track from the first trailer that I reported about on July 11th. In addition to the free download, there is another one of these great trailers. This one is an instrumental, so I can’t begin to guess what it’s called.

Click Here to download “Two Silver Trees”

(Almost) Free Download : Paul Westerberg 49:00

When I stumbled into this during my daily diet of music blog cruising I went out and immediately purchased Paul Westerberg’s new recording 49:00 from Amazon for $0.49!!!

As one track clocking in at a confusing 44 minutes, it is apparently the “tip of a really large creative iceberg.” The songs were recorded  The recording is a cut-and-pastishe of new songs, older songs and samples of classic rock songs. It’s lo-fi sensibility and Westerberg’s signature vocals gives it a feel that reminds me of the early Replacements. The jarring editing of the recording has songs sliding in and out sometimes edging the previous song out of the speakers from the left or right which might be why they are suggesting that you don’t listen to this while driving (LOL). The snippets of songs reminds me of Lolita Nation’s little soundscape. The Classic Rock mix at 40:00 or so is pretty great– especially since he would likely have recorded full versions of these songs to create this.

I stopped following Westerberg– who at one point was kind of a personal hero of mine– some time after his second album Eventually in 1996 completely missing his Grandpaboy catalog (BTW: Eventually is available used from Amazon on CD for $0.37!!!!)

Anyway, Paul is a genius and this is an amazing gift to his fans and would-be fans. For $0.49 what are you waiting for?
Download the whole damn thing from Amazon

Update: Likely due to the cover songs included, this has been unceremoniously yanked! He has provided an addendum track called “5:05” at TuneCore that gives us the missing minutes and kind of an explanation.

B-Sides in the Bins #27 – 7/19/08 – Lindale Mall Starbucks (R.I.P.)

As word of the Starbucks in Lindale Mall closing as part of a larger store closing move by Starbucks to close 600 stores nationwide including six in Iowa to “weed out unprofitable locations” rumors at Lindale on Saturday were spreading that the location was giving away drinks. Sherry and I were going to visit our daughter RaeEllen at her last day at Kitchens and Koffee so we stopped at Starbucks to see what was going on. While they were giving away drinks– they were samples of chocolate banana smoothies with shots of espresso in them (yum!).

While we were there, I was surprised to see that Starbucks was having a “Summer DVD and CD Sale” where ALL CD’s and DVD’s were $7.95 — inluding the new Coldplay! The Starbucks retail price for CD’s is typically an inflated $12.95 or better. I guess this shouldn’t be much of a surprise after the announcement that Starbucks was going to dump or dramatically reduce the number of CD’s they are going to sell. So, I expect there is going to be a purging of inventory across the chain.

One of the downsides to Starbucks getting out of the music biz is the Starbucks Entertainment business that partnered with the Concord Music Group to create some not-shabby compilations of artists and notable record labels. I wrote about the great Prestige Jazz compilation last year. In the CD racks at the doomed Starbucks was a couple of other compilations including a Buddy Holly one and a John Coltrane one in addition to the Stax one I picked up. They had some new titles- including John Mellencamp’s recent one, too.

Coldplay – Viva La Vida (CD, Capitol 509992 16886 0 7, 2008) ($7.95) I thought that this was about the price I’d want to pay for this — new at used price. I like a couple of the songs I’d heard on this album including “Viva La Vida” which was used in the iPod commercial as well as the new single “Violet Hill” which Sherry likes as well. Tired of the comparisons to Radiohead, Coldplay switched its sights to U2 with the “sonic landscapes” from erstwhile-and-again U2 producer/collaborator Brian Eno. I really liked the overplayed Rush of Blood to the Head and was as confused as everyone else about the X&Y followup. This is a very strong release from the band and solidly positions them as alterna-rock for the softening Gen X crowd.

various artists – “Soulsville, U.S.A.” – Stax Classics 1965-1973 (CD, Starbucks Entertainment CDS-131, 2008) ($7.95) This was the one I was pretty excited about. I’m becoming more of a fan of the legendary Stax Records catalog as time goes. The scrappy label from Memphis that represented was the “dirty South” answer to the more “clean” Motown and Philly labels of the time. I started as a fan of label houseband Booker T. & the MG’s and slowly expanded to include artists that they recorded behind. Working with Concord gave Starbucks the licensing power as well as the extensive catalog knowledge required to put these excellent comps together. This release stayed away from the big hits from Stax that have been represented in about a million other comps. Instead of including “Soul Man” we get “Hold On I’m Comin'” from Sam & Dave. Instead of “Green Onions” from Booker T. & the MG’s we get “Soul Limbo” and their instrumental cover of “Groovin’.” Incidentally, “Soul Limbo” has the distinction of being the first release on the freed-from-Atlantic Stax. Sadly, this was the beginning of the end for the label. Instead of “I’ll Take You There” from the Staple Singers we get the sound-alike “If You’re Ready.” Every track on this comp is a winner and a good mix for about any occasion with Otis Redding, Albert King, Eddie Floyd and Mr. Hot Buttered Soul himself Isaac Hayes. Hayes weighs in with “Walk On By” which I only recently realized was sampled by Portishead for its biggest hit “Sour Times” from 1994’s Dummy with its repeated “Nobody loves me– it’s true.”

So, if I run into any other interesting comps while traveling I may pick them up at this price. I’m hoping some company like Half Price Books will pick them up for sale in their stores as cut-outs.

B-Sides in the Bins #26 – Cedar Rapids Half-Price Books

Wanting to take advantage of one of the coupons I got in the mail for 40% off one item, I stopped off at Half-Price Books in Cedar Rapids last night. Half-Price Books has a deal a couple of times a year where they send out one week of coupons where you start out with 40% off and it decreases 10% every two days through the course of the week, but then ends up with a 50% coupon on Sunday. There wasn’t much in the CD bins this trip, but there was a lot in the vinyl area and I had to make some judicious selections. I’ll be back on Sunday with some stuff to sell to take advantage of the 50%.

Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison (LP, Columbia CS 9639, 1968) ($2.99) This was the one I got the 40% off on since it was a $4.98 one. Is anyone else noticing that the prices are going up at Half-Price? The record is in very good condition with only a slight bit of surface scratches. The sleeve has some edge wear and some face wear, but no ring wear which is incredible considering this record turned 40 this year! This record was a popular one around the house growing up. Dad was a big Johnny Cash fan in the 50’s and 60’s. I love this cover with Johnny big as life on the cover looking askance and sweat running down his face. On the back are hand-written liner notes describing the day-to-day of a prison inmate in the 60’s as well as explaining how he had to convince Columbia to release a live recording made in a prison. In retrospect it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but I guess it must have been kind of shocking at the time. The movie “Ring of Fire” uses this show as its point of departure for the flashback that makes up the movie of Johnny’s life. This record is pretty interesting from the standpoint that it doesn’t have all of the “big” hits on it. In includes classics like “Folsom Prison,” “Jackson,” and “Orange Blossom Special” but doesn’t include “Walk the Line” or “Ring of Fire.” When this was remastered and re-released on CD in 1999 they added the missing songs “Busted,” “Joe Bean,” and “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer.” A brilliant, landmark record that really transcends time and the genre of Country music.

Neil Young – Harvest (LP, Reprise MSK 2277, 1972) ($3.98) Wow! This was a big find. This copy is pristine! In a dust jacket, NO sleeve damage, includes the lyric sheet. The paper sleeve is torn, but there isn’t any printing on the sleeve so no art loss. What is there really to say about this record that hasn’t been said before? Brilliant record, regarded by most to be the pinnacle of Neil’s career and certainly his commerical high-point with the #1 single “Heart of Gold.” The story goes that Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor were appearing on the Johnny Cash TV show in 1971 and Neil coaxed them to come over and put vocals on “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man.” The country/folk-ish formula that created Harvest was so successful that Neil was able to base his 1992 album Harvest Moon from it and in my opinion repeated the commercial and critical success.

Buckingham’s Gift of Screws to Deliver in September

Gift of ScrewsThe “more rock” follow-up to Lindsey Buckingham’s 2006 Under the Skin was announced today. Given the title of the aborted solo album Gift of Screws which was supposed to be released before the last Fleetwood Mac album Say You Will to which it donated five tracks. The original Gift of Screws donated three tracks to Under the Skin. The new Gift of Screws only shares its title track with the original version, but two songs were reworked. “Shuffle Riff” became “Wait For You” and “Twist of Fate” became “The Right Place to Fade.”

So, what we have now according to a news item from Billboard today is a mostly new Gift of Screws to be released September 16th on Reprise that also has the rhythm section of McVie and Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac on a number of songs.

The new track listing for Gift of Screws:

“Great Day”
“Time Precious Time”
“Did You Miss Me”
“Wait For You”
“Love Runs Deeper”
“Bel Air Rain”
“The Right Place to Fade”
“Gift of Screws”
“Underground”
“Treason”

Click here for my 2006 article comparing the aborted version of Gift of Screws to Under the Skin.

The plan is for Buckingham to tour in support of Screws this Fall and for a possibly-augmented Fleetwood Mac to tour in early-’09.

Visit lindseybuckingham.com to see the list of tour dates.

Upcoming Show: Bo Ramsey and Band at Blues Before Sunset

Bo with Telecaster

The State Historical Society of Iowa and the Central Iowa Blues Society will be wrapping up their 7th season of Blues Before Sunset on Friday, August 1 with a rare appearance of Bo Ramsey performing as a frontman.

Blues Before Sunset shows are put on in front of the State of Iowa Historical Building at 600 E. Locust in the middle of East Village in Des Moines. The show will start at 5:30PM and end at 7:30PM and is free. Food and beverage vendors will be available on site. They recommend you bring your own seating.