ILDT37 – Iron Leg 2011 Year In Vintage Pop

Playlist

Unrelated Segments – Where You Gonna Go (Liberty)
Spats – She Done Moved (ABC)
Underdogs – Loves Gone Bad (VIP)
Pretty Things – Don’t Bring Me Down (Fontana)
Tweeds – We Got Time (Coral)
Bruce Johnston – Jersey Channel Islands Pt7 (Columbia)
Beverley – Where The Good Times Are (Deram)
The Gas Co – Your Time’s Up (Mirwood)
Thorinshield – Wrong My Friend (Philips)
PJ Proby – Don’t Forget About Me (Liberty)

Pt2

Chad and Jeremy – Rest In Peace (Columbia)
Don Agrati – Protoplasm Blues (Elektra)
Mama Cass – Talking To Your Toothbrush (Dunhill)
Grace Markay – Sally Go Round The Roses (Capitol)
Bobby Vee – The Passing of a Friend (Liberty)
Incredible String Band – No Sleep Blues (Elektra)
MFQ – If All You Think (WB)
Sonny Curtis – The Straight Life (Viva)
Marian Segal and Silver Jade – Amongst Anemones (DJM)
Peggy Lee – Is That All There Is (Capitol)

Listen/Download -ILDT37 – Iron Leg 2011 Year In Vintage Pop – 115MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome to the 231st annual Iron Leg Year In Vintage Pop.

Of course it hasn’t really been that long, but this being the intertubes and all there’s always the chance that some gullible soul will happen by and think they’ve stumbled on the first blog ever.

That said, what we have here is a cross section – as determined by the management – of the best stuff featured in this space during two thousand ought eleven.

What I’ve done, instead of stirring too vigorously, is allowed the vibes to separate as it were, with the heavy stuff up on top and the lighter, slightly deeper stuff resting on the bottom end.

It has been a very interesting year hereabouts, with me tracking down all kinds of groovy music that was new (at least to me), getting the rare chance to DJ Iron Leggy stuff out in the world and dealing with a serious “outside world” crisis that almost put the kibosh on the blog for the second time in two years.

Things seem to be rolling along nicely at the one-post-a-week pace, allowing me to keep my shit together outside the blog, and still get to post some cool stuff here as well.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it together for another year, or at least until Iron Leg celebrates it’s fifth anniversary this coming June.

So, I hope you have dug what I brought you this year, and continue to dig what comes up in the future.

Happy New Year to all, and I’ll see you all in 2012.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Bobby Vee – The Passing of a Friend / One

Bobby Vee

Listen/Download – Bobby Vee – The Passing of a Friend

Listen/Download – Bobby Vee – One

Greetings all.

Welcome to another week here at Iron Leg.

I hope you all had a chance to pull down the ones and zeros on Episode #8 of the Iron Leg Radio Show, and if you have not, that you take the opportunity to do so.

The tunes I bring you today are from an album I found a few months ago during an unexpected digging opportunity.

While I was certainly familiar with the early, big hits of Bobby Vee, like ‘Rubber Ball’ (1960) and ‘Take Good Care of My Baby’ (1961) with the latest thing I’d ever heard being 1967’s ‘Come Back When You Grow Up’.

I had no inkling that he’d done anything after that, assuming (incorrectly, of course) that he had gone out to pasture like any number of oldies acts, playing state fairs, revues and the like.

So, when I happened upon the album ‘Gates, Grills and Railing’, and took a look at the song titles I was suitably intrigued, forked over my three dollars and took it home.

Now, early-period rockers making a stab at late-period relevance is certainly nothing unusual.

Things evolved and styles changed so rapidly in the 1960s that anyone that didn’t keep up with the flow was often left behind, and many of them, whether out of record company hopes or simple self-preservation, tried to step back into the zeitgeist.

I haven’t been able to nail down the release date of ‘Gates Grills and Railings’, but it includes Vee’s 1968 single ‘(I’m Into Lookin’ For) Someone to Love Me’, so it’s a pretty safe bet that the LP came out around the same time.

What’s really groovy about this album, is that it shows that Vee was an artist with taste and imagination, and unlike so many others from the early 60s, really had something to offer a more mature and sophisticated listening audience.

The album features a variety of era-specific style points, but its finest moments arise when things edge up against baroque pop with just the tiniest hint of psychedelia.

The first track I bring you today is especially interesting because it was penned by a pre-Bread David Gates. ‘The Passing of a Friend’ is a fantastic bit of chamber folk, with moments that almost anticipate the sounds that Nick Drake would soon be working with.

The second cut is an interestingly arranged (by Artie Butler) cover of Harry Nilsson’s ‘One’. I’m always game for any Nilsson covers (more coming I assure you) and this one is especially nice.

While I wouldn’t go as far as to label ‘Gates Grills and Railings’ as some kind of a lost classic, I would say that it was unjustly ignored and certainly deserves reappraisal.

It has been reissued on CD paired with 1972’s ‘Nothing Like a Sunny Day’ which he recorded under his full name, Robert Thomas Velline.

I hope you dig the sounds and I’ll see you all next week.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #8

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Hawkshaw/Mansfield – Action Scene (KPM)
Turtles – Outside Chance (White Whale)
Tommy Roe – Leave Her (ABC)
Van Dyke Parks – Vine Street / Palm Desert (Warner Brothers)
Van Dyke Parks – Music For the Ice Capades Pt1 (WB)
Van Dyke Parks – Music For the Ice Capades Pt2 (WB)
Van Dyke Parks – Music For the Ice Capades Pt3 (WB)
Zombies – Beechwood Park (Epic)
Who – Rael (Decca)
Mindbenders – Getting Harder All the Time (Fontana)
Cheetah Club Promo

Hour Glass – The Power of Love (Liberty)
Heather Black – She’s My Woman (Double Bayou)
Heather Black – Bill (the Black Militant) (Double Bayou)
Tygers – I Still Love Her (Teen Town)
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – Heart Full of Soul (Liberty)
The 10:15 – Joes Acclamation (Private Press)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Alley Oop (Verve)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Head Inspector (Verve)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Chelsea Morning (Verve)
Nobody’s Children – I Can’t Let Go (Bullet) Maryland
Rolling Stones – Rice Krispies Commercial

Small Faces – Tin Soldier (Immediate)
Small Faces – All or Nothing (RCA)
Unchained Mynds – Going Back To Miami (Buddah)
Walker Brothers – Hurting Each Other (Philips)
Scott Walker – Mrs Murphy (Philips)
Marian Segal and Silver Jade – Amongst Anemones (DJM)
Marian Segal and Silver Jade – Fly On Strangewings (DJM)
Bob Seger and the last Heard – Sock It To me Santa (Cameo)
Hals Record Shop Commercial

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 8 – 155MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome to Episode #8 of the Iron Leg Radio Show, your home for all things vintage pop.

We’ve got some very cool stuff for you this month, including some rare, early Van Dyke Parks, wherein he wrestles with a Moog, pages from an unheard chapter in the history of Dave Van Ronk, a lost bit of groovy acoustic guitar from a very odd source, vintage garage and pop 45s and exactly one Christmas record.

I hope you dig the sounds, and if you haven’t picked up on any of the previous seven episodes, get your download on and luxuriate in the wonderfulness.

See you next Monday.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

The Hour Glass – The Power of Love

The Hour Glass

Listen/Download – The Hour Glass – The Power of Love

Greetings all.

I hope the new week finds you all well.

The tune I bring you today is something I picked up recently, and while I have been a fan of the band in question for a long time, their vinyl output has eluded me until recently.

I should start by saying that of all the stereotypically classic rock of my youth, much of which has (rightfully) fallen by the wayside, the music of the Allman Brothers has remained in favor.

They are, much like the Grateful Dead, unfairly lumped in with a lot of bands that look the way they do, with little regard for how they actually sound.

This probably has a lot to do with the bare-chested, greasy haired fan base, many of them wrapped carelessly in little more than tattered Confederate flags, which is truth be told more an accident of geographical proximity than anything else.

It’s a wonder how many hillbillys forget that the Allman Brothers Band was integrated, not to mention that fact that for all of the so-called jazzy improvisers of the late 60s and early 70s, few of them did it as well as they did.

Sure, they have hung on tie-dyed life support long since they should have, but that shouldn’t diminish their early greatness, which brings me around to the band that I being you today, the Hour Glass, which is as early and great as the brothers Allman (specifically Gregg and Duane, i.e. brothers in actuality) get.

Formed in the mid-60s from the ashes of the ill-named Allman Joys (like the candy bar, dig?), the Hour Glass were far less jazzy (and jammy) that the Allman Brothers Band would become, and much more a fusion of blue-eyed soul and 60s pop.

They emigrated to Californ-y where they hooked up with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Liberty Records axis, which is where they found stellar material like the Jackson Browne-penned ‘Cast Off All My Fears’.

The tune I bring you today ‘The Power of Love’ is from the band’s second album (which also bore that title). Written by the legendary Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, the song is a great showcase for Gregg Allman’s always wonderful voice, and manages to encapsulate all that was good about the Hour Glass into just over two and a half minutes of sweet, vaguely psyched out soul.

Both of the Hour Glass albums have been reissued on CD with copious bonus material, and are definitely worth hearing.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.