You’d think that as many times as I’ve reported that Wye Oak was going to play in Iowa somewhere, I’d have seen them at least once! They even played here before the release of their new album The Knot at some performance space in Iowa City some months back, which I also missed.
And so it is that Wye Oak will be back playing the Mill in Iowa City just over a year from the last time they played there! As it turns out, they will be taping another Daytrotter session, too!
Wye Oak will be playing The Mill on Sunday September 20th. Doors are at 8PM, $6 cover. Opening will be Chicago band Netherfriends, and Iowa City singer Alexis Stevens.
Thrill Jockey has announced a 12″ Subscription Club! The first series (optimistically keeping my fingers crossed for future ones!) will be for 7 very rare 12″es– some of these you can only get in the subscription, some of them guarantee you to get one before they are generally available. The lineup of acts providing releases is great– a mixture of long-time acts on the label and some new and future acts!
Already the demand has been so great that they have had to substitute a release that ran out. Although this isn’t too surprising because some of these releases are less than 500 pressings! In the case of the Pit Er Pat 12″ there was only 300!
The subscription ships in three packages.
Package #1 (Ships immediately)
Pit er Pat – “High Time Remix” (thrill 12.31) Early subscribers got in on the remainder of the 300 hand-numbered pressings of this release which included remixes of tracks off the band’s new album High Time. Cool hand-assembled sleeve with art cards glued to each side.
The Fiery Furnaces – “The End is Near” (thrill 12.32) The rest of the orders will be filled with the remainder of this release– so now this is OOP! One album track, one “radio” edit, an alternate version and an unreleased track make this a great replacement for the Pit er Pat 12.
Tortoise – “Beacons of Ancestorship Remixes – Eye / Mark Ernestus (thrill 12.34) Tortoise’s first new remix 12″ since 1998’s T.N.T. pair of 12″es. This one has a gorgeous cover done by Andrew Paynter who did the cover of Beacons as well as the video for “Prepare Your Coffin.” The Eye remix is the same remix that is available on the Japanese version of Beacons. “Gigantes” remixed by Mark Ernestus. This is a 45 RPM pressing! 1500 copies, so I’m sure this will be available on tour and on the Thrill Jockey store.
Package #2 ( Ships in October)
Thank You – “Pathetic Magic” (thrill 12.35) Limited edition pressing of 300. Two new studio track and three remixes.
Pontiak – “Sea Voids” (thrill 12.33) Limited press of 500 with hand-printed covers. New material recorded before they went on tour with Earthless.
White Hills – “Dead” (thrill 12.36) 1000 copies. Three brand-new songs and a remix of “Oceans of Sound.”
Package #3 (Ships in November)
Javelin – TBA (thrill 12.37) Limited edition of 500. Just found out about Javelin through this club. A pair of guys from NYC who craft J Dilla-influenced electronica (my opinion). Their self-released CD was raved about by Pitchfork. Cool stuff I wouldn’t have expected from Thrill Jockey. 5 song release with covers that are recycled from vintage album jackets they found at thrift stores (hopefully they don’t smell musty!!).
Mi Ami – TBA (thrill 12.38) One of the casualties of the stop of new releases from Quarterstick/Touch and Go was Mi Ami. Their newest album and debut on Quarterstick was released the same day the label announced layoffs and ceasing new releases. It appears that Mi Ami just took their business across town to Thrill Jockey and will have a new release next year.
The price of the subscription is $84 (U.S.–$98 Canadian, $122 International) for the seven 12″es which includes shipping! In addition club member will get one of the Thrill Jockey 15th Anniversary record bags that were sold at the shows in December 2007.
Click Here to Read More about the Thrill Jockey 12″ Subscription Series.
Richmond, VA quartet ILAD had released two albums before I had heard of them. Their second album National Flags— released in 2007– was recorded at Soma Studios in Chicago and produced by John McEntire of Tortoise and The Sea and Cake.
In an interview with RVA Magazine, singer/guitarist Clifton McDaniel said that they wanted to work with McEntire because they felt a connection with the Chicago scene. In fact, their brand of country folk psychedelics reminds me a lot of Califone, so the affinity for experimentation and working with sonic textures makes sense. Clifton went on to say that after they recorded National Flags and handing the reins of production over, they decided that they wanted to take a different approach with Here//There, their new album which was released on July 28th, again on the band’s own label SYJIP Records. Some of this change in direction lies in a pride in being part of the growing Richmond, VA music scene which I think motivated ILAD to record with local producer Lance Koehler and studio at Minimum Wage Studios.
Listening to National Flags and Here//There side-by-side shows that National Flags has a more cohesive feel to it– certainly the sign of the band turning itself over to McEntire. Here//There seems to show the ILAD’s ability to transform itself for each song. Ultimately this makes for a difficult sitting with the album if you’re looking for a record that has one mood or feel to it.
The band has an impressive array of styles to draw from and I bet a live show from them would be quite an experience. I will say that they did a good job of sequencing and mastering this record because even though they shift stylistically throughout– it isn’t jarring.
Here//There kicks off with an Eastern-influenced “TV Sutra” that reminds me of a raga. Layered percussion and persistent shaker and dreamy almost stream of consciousness lyrics cover long-distance voices. “We’re All Boiled Over” is the mantra. A very smooth complimentary seque to “Conservation” is accomplished by arpeggio-picked guitar in the same beat as the previous song. The 4/4 beat that is introduced here which sets us up for the swirling and driving “Magazine.” The vocals are distorted and urgent with the only recognizable phrase being “Jesus Christ.”
Once we’ve hit the loping “Mexico” we’ve moved into the most conventional part of the album. “We’d all go down to Mexico where the women taste like wine, bathe in sunshine, drunk with hope” the song starts. The song has an aching beauty to it that reminds me a bit of the best songs from My Morning Jacket– but not content with the direction of the song, ILAD at 3:50 or so decides to send the song into a Doors-like jam led with electric piano and nature sounds that carries the song to its 6+ minute conclusion with a fade out.
At this point we are propelled into the driving possessive and pissed-off rant fueled with slide-guitar and shuffle that is “Blackgold.” “Please don’t call me liar– asshole! Please don’t call me liar– asshole!” I don’t presume to know who the narrator is, but clearly his lady has been infringed upon and he’s retaliating with guitar and drums!
But, the anger doesn’t last long as we drop into the floating “I Just Stopped By” with its percussion and guitar lifted deftly from “Over My Head” by Fleetwood Mac. Indeed the song itself echoes its sentiment of “I’m just passing through” as it is a momentary stop before it hits the very proggish and climbing instrumental “Wish For a Flood” which provides the complimentary beat to the following song “Lou Dobbs.”
“Lou Dobbs” kicks off with an interesting driving snare and cymbal that reminds me a bit of “Gotta Jibboo” by Phish but never really delivers on the anticipated crescendo and in fact just falls apart at the end. The lyrics seem to be making a statement about government fueled war, but does nothing but make a weak and unsubstantiated accusation.
We are given another great prog track at the beginning of “I’m Not Mean”– I realize at this song what a great drummer Scott Clark is, and it’s his ability to be amazingly diverse that provides the framework and backbone to the explorations ILAD undertakes. I love the transition “I’m Not Mean” makes at the 2:28 mark. The song switches completely into a jazz workout that is one of the glimmering, unexpected and transcendent parts of the record.
From here we’re moved to a stripped-down, vocal-and-acoustic guitar arrangement in “Everyone Hurts (Everyone). The slightly off tune delivery helps deliver the song’s plaintive meditation– “I can’t tell whose side I’m on anymore.”
This mournful emotion is followed by “Extraordinary Machine” with the opening slightly above a whisper mantra where every line ends with “ary.” “Nature is so imaginary/nature’s so imaginary/machine so extrodinary/, etc.” At two minutes the snare kicks in and helps drive the song, and a 2:43 we get kind of a disco 8’s on the highhat with slinky bass and shimmery electric piano mellow groove. The song doesn’t really ever change keys or even switch in sections– it just builds off the previous one. Around 4:30 that groove breaks and reveals a snippet of a different song with its refrain “I’m coming home.”
“Everybody” is another song that rides a single groove throughout its four minutes. It’s almost a transitional song to get us to “Tiny Dream.” “Tiny Dream” is another chanting song with organ and picked guitar riding on a funky-drummer beat providing a pleasant groove, that builds to a “Bittersweet Symphony-ish” string crescendo. It’s over in a 2:32– I would have liked to hear that song explored a bit further.
The album closer “Church” is a stripped down slow tempo gospel-of-sorts that presents a reflective message to wrap things up. Whoever is singing this song reminds me of Daniel Ash of Love and Rockets a bit on this one.
Taken in total, Here//There is– to coin a cliché– a musical journey. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that this album is a concept album, but all of the songs seem to make more sense in the context of the other songs. It is an album that really demands consuming in one sitting. I can see the challenge the band would have promoting this album in that no one song on the album is really representative of the rest of it.
It sounds like the Richmond, Virginia area is rich with a growing music scene that is trying to make its mark. ILAD shows the DIY attitude of the area and the potential it has. I think ILAD is a band to continue to watch and based on the performances I’ve seen online so far, delivers a great live show and one I’d like to catch if they make it this far inland.
I saw Garaj Mahal guitarist Fareed Haque last November as part of the Kirkwood Community College Performing Arts Schedule. He did a “master series” class at the college in the afternoon and performed with the Kirkwood Jazz ensemble and the C.R. Jazz Big Band that evening. Fareed is a noted Jazz guitarist in addition to his role in Garaj Mahal and has releases on Blue Note, Haven, and Pangea– which is Sting’s label. The show was great with Fareed providing entertaining stories and commentary in between the songs. In addition to his accomplishments as a musician, Fareed is also a professor of Jazz and Classical Guitar Studies at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb where he lives and owns The House Cafe.
Garaj Mahal released their latest album w00t in 2008.
Certainly, don’t miss an opportunity to see Garaj Mahal in one of Cedar Rapids’ newest restaurants.
The ever-touring machine that is Cracker will be making another stop in Eastern Iowa at the end of this month at The Mill in Iowa City. Cracker is touring behind their new rocking release and debut on 429 Records Sunrise in the Land of Mint and Honey. Their stop at the Mississippi Moon bar in Dubuque in February was great– they played a handful of the new songs, but I’m hoping to hear more of the new album in a live setting.
The show will be at 9PM on Sunday, 8/30 with doors at 8PM. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here. The opening act is garage rock band The High Strung.
One of the great records of this year for me is the new Wendy & Lisa joint White Flags of Winter Chimneys. It is a self-released record, and the promotion and distribution is handled by their little-but-mighty camp. Talking with them earlier this year I could get the sense that this release and their truly-independent approach to managing their careers was going to be a developing blueprint that other acts could look to for inspiration. They twitter, they blog, they podcast, they Facebook, they Amazon.com.
Today they released the video to the rawking “Salt & Cherries (MC5)” which features Wendy & Lisa in a live setting interspersed with fans lip-synching to the song. They asked for submissions from fans and they apparently got some really creative results!
“This is Spinal Tap” is one of those movies that people either love or are largely disinterested in. Anyone who is a scholar of or takes an active interest in the history of rock bands dating back to the 60’s are usually fans of this “Rockumentary” by director Marti DiBergi (Rob Reiner) that pokes fun at a lot of stories and mythology of the big rock artists in the story of a washed out metal band who is desperately trying to make a comeback against seeming disinterest and plain bad luck.
“This is Spinal Tap” was released to theaters in 1984. In this time of ultra-mega-smash blockbusters the box office statistics are pretty small– The opening weekend of March 4, 1984 had the movie only playing on 3 screens netting only $30,000. It seemed to have done a slow spread through that spring growing to maximum of 206 screens by the end of April, and then dropping off until July 1st. Total net for “This is Spinal Tap” was $4.5 Million that year. In retrospect it was the promotion that Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer did by making appearances on places like MTV and the fact that they wrote and performed the songs that cemented Spinal Tap the band and catapulted “This is Spinal Tap” to the cult status that it is today. Spinal Tap became a “real” band because it was a real band– the story is fiction, but how different is that from many bands that have a legend about them? The Wikipedia article on Spinal Tap is a humorous one in that it maintains both fictional and actual account. Under band members we get a list of the drummers and their untimely demise as well as actual people who performed or recorded with Spinal Tap. In a similar fashion we are offered a list of fictional and actual records recorded by the band.
2009 is the 25th anniversary of “This is Spinal Tap” and on July 28th it was re-issued on Blu-Ray Disc by MGM. The Blu-Ray edition of the movie is based largely on the excellent DVD version from 2000 that added over an hour of bonus material in the form of outtakes, real and fictional promotional material, TV appearances and an interview “Catching Up with Marti DeBergi.” It is worth sitting through the movie commentary which appropriately has Guest, McKean and Shearer in character.
The Blu-Ray edition of “This is Spinal Tap” is a 2-disc release with one Blu-Ray Disc and a bonus DVD . The Blu-Ray Disc is essentially the same content as the original 2000 DVD with new menus and the movie remastered to glorious high-definition. The bonus DVD includes the “Stonehenge” performance at Wembley Stadium as part of the Live Earth concerts and the National Geographic interview with Nigel Tufnel regarding his theories of Stonehenge. Pretty funny. I only wish they would have been able to include the rest of the Live Earth show that included a performance of “Big Bottom” with a number of guest bass players including Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield from Metallica and Adam Yauch (M.C.A) of the Beastie Boys.
It appears that the bonus material wasn’t remastered to high-definition, but I’m not sure that it would have benefitted much from remastering since most of it is made to look like old television appearances. Comparing the DVD of the movie to the Blu-Ray of the movie certainly shows that the Blu-Ray is providing a much sharper and brighter version of the film. Although the movie was only shot on standard 80’s filmstock, and since it was in a documentary style it isn’t like the cinematography was geared for breathtaking wide shots of landscape or special effects. The audio portion seems to be the same Dolby Digital version from the DVD. But, it sounds fantastic! The live performances in the film sound great. A word of warning– I found myself having to ride the volume button on the remote as the live performances are dramatically louder than most of the movie dialog. A couple of times my wife had to ask me to turn the movie down (sorry, Honey!).
The last time I sat down to watch “This is Spinal Tap” was in 2000 when the DVD release came out. Watching the movie on its 25th anniversary it is interesting to note how much of this film is still funny in a 2009 context. It falls under the “It’s funny because it’s true!” context. The airport security scene where Derek Smalls is trying to smuggle an aluminum-foil covered cucumber is even more funny in these post-9/11 airport security days. The depiction of Polymer Records as a largely clueless organization run by stuffed shirts is an effective commentary as we watch similar stuffed shirts struggle with a new music economy. Bumbling concert promoters and label PR still exist in the real concert landscape. The situation where Sears is threatening to not carry Smell the Glove due to its “sexist” album art which causes the label to release the record with a totally black sleeve echoes the same strongarm tactics WalMart implements on releases it deems to be “not family friendly.”
From a purely guitar-head perspective I’m really impressed with the guitars the guys are playing in the movie. McKean is typically seen playing a white Gibson SG with humbuckers or a Gibson Les Paul Standard in Red Sunburst and at one point playing a goldtop Les Paul with P90’s. Christopher Guest is seen with a large collection of classic guitars in the “This One Goes to 11” scene which includes a beautiful three humbucker black Les Paul with gold hardware and a Shoreline Gold Fender Stratocaster. In a continuity problem, the black Les Paul is the guitar that Nigel Tufnel grabs for the “reunion” scene. If he was out of the band, I wouldn’t assume that his guitar would have been with the band– but whatever, my geek is showing.
“This is Spinal Tap” is one of those movies that has defined how we look at rock music and bands today. As long as there are bands touring and fans that follow them, this movie will continue to be watched. Every day I expect another generation of music fans and musicians are watching the movie for the first time.
David St. Hubbins says in the movie, “It’s a fine line between stupid and clever” which seems to be a good way to sum up why “This is Spinal Tap” is the classic film it is.
“This is Spinal Tap” Blu-Ray Edition on MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is out now with a suggested retail price of $34.99 U.S. / $37.99 Canada.
In what would seem to be an intersection of coincidences, a band out of New Jersey gaining a lot of indie-lovin’ blog praise will be playing a barn ballroom outside of my childhood home of Bellevue, IA.
Roadside Graves is a seven-piece band serving up a hearty stew of folk and rock with a heapin’ helpin’ of rootsy country with a pinch of Celtic reel to taste. Listening to their new album My Son’s Home on Autumn Tone, I’m impressed how this band packs all of these flavors in. But, as with any good stew, the longer it sits, the flavors mingle for every spoonful (hmm… it must be time to eat). Music blogs reach to define this band and include references like Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, Springsteen, John Prine, Son Volt– and certainly all of those influences are heard.
Mooney Hollow Barn is a music institution in Jackson County, IA. Built in the 1930’s, it was a farm until 1977 when it was converted into a place to have monthly barn dances. In the 1980’s Mooney Hollow Barn played host to many Nashville legends including Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Faron Young, Porter Wagoner, Kitty Wells, and Bill Anderson. Bill Anderson will be back to the Mooney Hollow stage 27 years after his first appearance on 9/19. In 2006 Kevin Petesch bought the barn reopened it after being closed for five years.
Last week the inaugural Daytrotter.com Barnstormer tour stopped in Mooney Hollow bringing with it a line up of some of Daytrotter’s favorite acts. It was this appearance that brought Mooney Hollow to the attention of Roadside Graves who were looking for an overnight stop on their tour between their Milwaukee and Chicago appearances (and I bet a Daytrotter session in Rock Island just south!).
Somehow the idea of this newer band standing on the Mooney Hollow stage playing their unique blend of country, rock and folk in the same place the old guard of Nashville greats is comforting. “Will the circle be unbroken,” indeed!
It would be worth the trip to see this amazing barn, and possibly check out the sights in this great little Mississippi River town.
Click Here to listen to “Far and Wide” by Roadside Graves from My Son’s Home
Click Here to listen to “Ruby” by Roadside Graves from My Son’s Home
Daytrotter.com— the purveyor of freely-downloadable mp3’s of sessions recorded by a wide-range of artists and bands– have decided that they want to take a handful of their favorite acts on a mini-tour through some Iowa towns with a stop in Madison (just because they love that place!). These shows are FREE and ALL AGES. All the bands are hoping for are some new fans, and possibly sell some merch.
It is a move which gets its tradition from the “Caravan of Stars”-type tours that happened during the 50’s and 60’s where bands would roll through a bunch of cities stopping of at ballrooms across the midwest– back when places like Melody Mill in Sageville, IA outside Dubuque would get bands like Johnny Cash, The Ventures, and the Everly Brothers. If the bands didn’t tour like that, these little towns and cities wouldn’t have been able to get this kind of entertainment.
Daytrotter reached out a couple of months ago looking for barns they could play in– I made a couple of suggestions, and one of the stops will be just outside my hometown of Bellevue, IA at Mooney Hollow Barn!
While exchanging e-mails with Sean from Daytrotter, he said that some of the impetus of this tour is to let people in Iowa know about Daytrotter. Certainly when I’m talking to folks I know about this they have no idea what Daytrotter is– even though the work that they do is world-reknowned and has been accurately suggested to be the successor to the BBC Peel Sessions!
I’ve said on more than one occasion that we Iowans should be proud of Daytrotter and its “little studio and website that could” success!
Hopefully, this will be successful enough that this becomes a yearly event!
The lineup of bands is pretty interesting and varies slightly for each of the five stops. However, San Diego band Local Natives will be performing at all of the shows. From this lineup, I was familiar only with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Paleo. Someone Still Loves You is a great indie pop band from Springfield, Mo that has done two Daytrotter sessions already (which is how I found out about them initially) and Paleo is known as the “song a day for a year” guy. So, it will be interesting to hear those acts in a live setting. Snowblink is a pretty dreamy type of music driven by the breathy vocals of Daniela Gesundheit.Snowblink has been compared to Cat Power, and I hear that. Catfish Haven is a surprising R&B powerhouse from the Windy City that reminds me of Mad Dogs and Englishmen-period Joe Cocker, frankly. I can’t wait to see them in a live setting! DAYUM! They’re going to be at the Bellevue stop, which is super-duper! Mac Lethal is an MC from Kansas City, MO. He has a great flow that reminds me a lot of Chief Xcel or Chali 2na.
So, a pretty wide swath of indie goodness represented. I’m going to hit the Bellevue stop and shoot some pix and provide some coverage. If you have the ability and are in the region, stop out to one of these shows!
SCHEDULE:
July 25
11 am — Davenport, Iowa: Morning performance at the Bix 7 road race course at the turnaround: 110 McClellan Blvd. (Performing — Local Natives) Local Natives Daytrotter Session
In what seems to be a gobsmackingly obvious move, the major labels in conjunction with digital music retailers like Zune Store, Amazon, Rhapsody and iTunes have announced “Digital 45s” on the 60th anniversary of the 7″ 45 record.
The big announcements are really in conjunction with Apple’s iTunes Store that they are calling “D45” and use that nifty logo pictured on the left. Digging through the press-releases shows that Warner Music Group is represented by Rhino which should represent the full compliment of WMG labels which includes Atlantic/Atco, Elektra/Asylum, Warner Brothers, Reprise and Sire– so this should bring a very wide and deep catalog and the first releases are already showing some promise.
EMI stepped up with a press-release as well although they don’t have a site dedicated to their Digital 45 initiative. EMI stable of labels include EMI, Apple, Capitol, Virgin, Blue Note, Manhattan– and interestingly, Caroline, Mute, Definitive Jux, and Astralwerks making for some potentially interesting releases.
The Concord Music group has titles released as well, but no press release. According to the Wikipedia article on Concord, UMG handles the physical distribution of Concord, but I don’t think that would apply here. Concord includes Fantasy’s labels– Fantasy, Stax/Volt and a number of jazz labels (Riverside, Prestige). There is a Sam & Dave Digital 45 of “Soul Man,” I hope this means we see some interesting Creedence Clearwater Revival releases– they were on Fantasy. There has been a long-standing Stax/Volt Singles box set with b-sides, but these Digital 45s would allow someone to pick and choose if they released the whole Stax catalog.
SonyBMG have brought some Digital 45’s as well, but I couldn’t find a press release on it. SonyBMG is a significant collection of labels as well with Sony, Epic, Columbia, RCA, Arista and all of their associated spinoff labels. One of the first Digital 45’s is a Michael Jackson single for “Billie Jean” b/w “Can’t Get Out of the Rain.”
A quick review of the online retailers shows a pretty impressive participation– iTunes, Amazon.com, Zune Music Marketplace, Rhapsody mp3 store, but eMusic seems to be the lone holdout– or shut out. Sony just signed an agreement with eMusic to be able to sell older titles, but apparently this doesn’t extend to Digital 45s, yet.
Comparing the offerings between the retailers shows that mostly everyone is adopting the $1.49 for 2 tracks, with the individual tracks at standard pricing of $0.99. Zune Marketplace has the 2 tracks at $1.69, with individual tracks at $0.99. The Sony titles seem to be priced differently– “Billie Jean” 2-track is $1.99 with “Billie Jean” at $1.29 and the b-side at $0.99. Right now it looks like iTunes is the only retailer who has the SonyBMG titles. I’m not sure what the future holds about this situation, since all of the retailers have other SonyBMG titles.
All of that detail aside, there are some pretty cool titles available already and based on an interview with Rhino Marketing Veep David Dorn by Billboard, they will be releasing “bundles” of Digital 45’s monthly, so there will be many more to come!
Some releases of interest to me:
Prince and the Revolution- “Kiss” b/w “Love or Money” (Warner Brothers) This is a single I own in 7″. Interestingly this was a B-Side left off of the 1993 3 CD compilation The Hits/The B-Sides, so its existence here is welcomed.
INXS – “What You Need” b/w “Sweet As Sin” (ATCO) During their heyday, INXS used their b-sides to provide songs that were a bit more experimental. “Sweet As Sin” is a two-steppish country tune. Not a bad track, but certainly didn’t fit on Listen Like Thieves. One of my favorite b-sides from INXS from this period is the jazzy instrumental “Begotten” and the really out-there “I’m Coming (Home)” from the “I Need You Tonight” single.
Erasure – “A Little Respect” b/w “Like Zsa Zsa Zsa Gabor” (Warner Brothers) Another great bubbly dance track from Erasure. Could have easily been on The Innocents, really.
The Cure – “Just Like Heaven” b/w “Breathe” (Elektra) The Cure is a veritable treasure trove of b-sides. This is most evidenced by the amazing 2004 Rhino/Fiction box set Join the Dots : B-sides and Rarities, 1978-2001. I had this on cassette single. According to one of the reviewers on iTunes, the “Just Like Heaven” mix is the mix by Bob Clearmountain used in the video.
Steve Martin and the Toot Uncommons – “King Tut” b/w “Hoedown At Alice’s” (Warner Brothers) I have this 7″– in fact you can see it in the header picture on this blog. With Martin’s new 5-string banjo album The Crow out, it makes sense for this b-side to show up as it is a banjo workout by Martin.
The Cars – “Let’s Go” b/w “That’s It” (Elektra) The lead single from Candy-O in 1979 had the non-LP track “That’s It” with Benjamin Orr on lead. This track was included in the 1995 Just What I Needed : Cars Anthology.
What I would like to see for singles (which is really about the b-sides)
INXS – “Listen Like Thieves” b/w “Begotten” (Elektra) I mentioned this one above.
Terence Trent D’Arby – “Sign Your Name” b/w “Greasy Chicken (Sony) My brother Steve was a big fan of TTD when Introducing the Hardline came out. He had the cassette single to “Sign Your Name” with the really funky workout “Greasy Chicken” as the b-side.
Bruce Springsteen – “One Step Up” b/w “Roulette” (Columbia) The Boss is pretty famous for having some really great songs “in the can” that eventually showed up as b-sides to singles or elsewhere. “Roulette” is a great example of this. Recorded in the Spring of 1980, it is a galloping song about nuclear holocost that just never made it to an album. This song eventually showed up on the very cool Tracks boxset. In fact, you can download it now from Amazon.com and other places.
Men At Work – “Who Can It Be Now” b/w “Anyone For Tennis” (Columbia) Another favorite around the house. My brother had this 7″ and played the b-side all the time. For some reason Sony Legacy omitted this song from the bonus b-sides appended to their 2003 remaster. “Anyone For Tennis” is a quick-tempo slightly ska-ish track demonstrates how much Men at Work owed the Police.
The Rolling Stones – “It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (But I Like It)” b/w “Through The Lonely Nights” (Rolling Stones Records) When you’re a kid and your mom picks up records for you– you play the crap out of them. In my mind the flip side of the rocker “It’s Only Rock N’ Roll” is as notable as the A side. “Through The Lonely Nights” is a slinky, almost funky country rocker. Mick does his best American drawl. An absolutely gorgeous classic and largely ignored. This song was resurrected in a 2005 remaster done for a Starbucks compilation that is now out-of-print called Rarities 1971-2003. Really, I think that a box set of singles similar to the Singles Collection : London Years should be done for the post 1971 period.
Prince – All of the Warner singles! While it’s true that the 3 CD version of The Hits/The B-Sides is relatively available, they don’t seem to be available for digital download! So, this would be an inventive way to remedy this! Plus, there are still songs that didn’t make that 3rd disc– “Alexa de Paris” for one. In fact, maybe it’s time to reissue the Prince protegee bands’ singles as well!
Richmond, VA quartet 
“This is Spinal Tap” is one of those movies that people either love or are largely disinterested in. Anyone who is a scholar of or takes an active interest in the history of rock bands dating back to the 60’s are usually fans of this “Rockumentary” by director Marti DiBergi (Rob Reiner) that pokes fun at a lot of stories and mythology of the big rock artists in the story of a washed out metal band who is desperately trying to make a comeback against seeming disinterest and plain bad luck.
In what seems to be a gobsmackingly obvious move, the major labels in conjunction with digital music retailers like Zune Store, Amazon, Rhapsody and iTunes have announced “Digital 45s” on the 60th anniversary of the 7″ 45 record.