Easy listening soundscapes of the orchestral nature, Sounds Unlimited by Marty Gold and His Orchestra packages itself as a futuristic, oscilloscope-ish, other-worldly collection yet, instead, is an intriguingly misleading RCA Victor stereo recording of your run-of-the-mill 1963 family jazz compositions. Worth the $1? Absolutely. Does the cover represent the material, hell no… but the the time is well worth the journey.
Monthly Archives: November 2016
Latin Lingo
Back before their unscheduled hiatus, Los Angeles’ Cypress Hill unleashed a one-two punch with 1998’s Tequila Sunrise and Dr. Greenthumb, resurrected here. The latter was a personal favorite on and around the time of this 12″ release, but the former is / was just as good. Here’s hoping you had a 120 proof day… Lord knows we needed it!
America… don’t fuck this up.
Hot Topic Exclusive
The day isn’t green, I’m just happy not to have to worry about acquiring this damn album ever again. Been holding out for the, ANY, green vinyl version of Green Day’s Dookie, and little over a year ago, I finally pulled the trigger. Happy Monday from the Caribbean, kids.
Jimi on the Beach
I’m not sure if Jimi ever played Cancún, but if he did, he certainly stayed at Now Sapphire. Swim up pools and exotic cocktails starting at 9am. Bring the kids.
Full Moon Fever
Shedding the Heartbreakers (for the most part… some members contributed throughout), 1989’s Full Moon Fever marks Tom Petty’s voyage into a very lucrative solo career. His debut album was, not entirely surprisingly, produced by Jeff Lynne (of Electric Light Orchestra), Tom Petty (of Tom Petty… k’mon), and Mike Campbell (of Don Henley and Stevie Nicks fame), and features the still-to-this-day radio hits, Runnin’ Down a Dream, I Won’t Back Down, and Free Fallin’. Classic rock for a modern age (well, as far as the late 1980s were concerned), Full Moon River is essential listening material for any decade.Vital Idolatry
This 1987 reissue of the 1985 compilation of the same name features on its US release an extra track (To Be a Lover), and an alternate track order, but still features, like its older original, massively successful remixes of the chart-topping singles from Billy’s first three albums. Songs like, Mony Mony, Hot in the City, Dancing with Myself, and both parts to White Wedding help make for a very enjoyable, slightly edgy spin (in that pop, mid-1980s type of way), and does its job of perfectly capturing the rock-synth-pop radio-friendly hits of this bygone era. One doesn’t hear much from Billy these days, but we’ll always have our White Wedding.
Disco is Dead
Every once in a while I’ll stumble across a record in the ol’ collection that 1) I had no idea I had and, 2) have no recollection of acquiring. Gloria Gaynor’s Love Tracks is one of these albums. The $0.99 price sticker on the cover offers a clue that it was purchased at a thrift store in Oxnard, CA in / around the mid 2000s, but that’s left to speculation. Anyway, disco has always gotten a bad rap from the corners of where I came from, but as an avid fan of electronic music of all sorts, I can get behind this drug-induced display of excess in a big way. 1978 was a good year for this lifestyle, and I halfheartedly believe that ol’ Gloria was speaking for the genre when she cried, I Will Survive, the feature track from this roller-disco favorite. Anyway, don’t forget to dance, kids.
Clearly, the Right Decision
As clear as an unmuddied lake, this 2016 reissue (from The Netherlands region) recently popped up in the US Epitaph online store, and was swiftly nabbed by staff here at The Prudent Groove. We now own Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent a total of five times, and the way Epitaph is kicking out short runs of color variants, that number is likely to increase very soon. Although not as prolific as their opus, 1998’s The Shape of Punk to Come, this 1996 precursor couples perfectly to create the uncompromising, one-two, hardcore punk-punch. Epitaph still has copies at the posting of this blurb, so jump on in.
The Unique Rhythms of…
Richard Marino and his Orchestra, straight from the pre-British Invasion days of 1961. Titled, quite magnificently, The Magic Beat!, this easy-listening, metronome-pace-keeping, jazz-pop (corn) masterwork features finger-licking tracks like, Lisbon Antiqua, Hot Sombrero, and Rots-O-Ruck (fairly certain that last one hurdles the line of racism in a pretty big way). Anyway, you’ll have the best luck finding The Magic Beat! in the magic dollar bin at your local brick and mortar, and, as with most records featured here, comes highly recommended.
The Prudent Groove 