revola records!

revola reissued kim fowley's "Outrageous" didn't they? that's a great record & i STILL don't own a copy.
so that then.
OR, (maybe) the metal urbain/metal boys/dr mix & the remix compilation (is that on rev-ola? i think so)

yeah, that's on revola, i'm just listening to the moon, that came through the door today, amazing, all of it is amazing, beach boys meets the heady '69 death valley trip. was l.a. that fucked up in the sixties? i like the minor bands more than the major bands from that time. it seemed anyone could have gotten a record deal back then.

the lisa mychols album is really good christmas music as well. power pop phil spectorists beware - this is the redux of all of that christmas majick - think cornelius on a japanese christmas trip with lisa in tow.

fucking cool.

what does that album sound like, duane, the dr. mix?

i love revola.

I wish they'd reissue some of the things that were on the old Revola label, particularly the O Level LP. It's a shame that the Fire Engines and Hurrah! material isn't available at the moment.

But I'm glad Revola exists, certainly.

yeah, me too, i'm freaking out over what they are planning to reissue....more scruffs, more millennium, mark eric, the forum.....

i think joe maybe releasing everything that is out of print from the old revola labe - thus the ivor cutler releases, eternitys children, that sort of thing.

the hurrah thing, was that the newcastle band? from the 80s?

I got a bunch of fire engines stuff on crazy diy vinyl in norwich.

it just feels that revola is a proper record label, you know? joe foster has a properity for picking the lost classics, you know. i got an email from him when i just wanted to say - thanks for doing revola again, joe and he sent one back telling me that he's thinking of reissuing an album of sun ra doing batman and robin exploitation music for a toy company in new jersey. genius!

Doomie yes Hurrah from the 80s: they released 4 brilliant singles on Kitchenware and then signed to Arista and were never (quite) the same. The Revola reissue collected most of the songs from the 4 singles and a load of demos and whatnot. It's great.

That Fire Engines CD similarly has sessions which never made it onto the group's proper records.

I know what you mean about it being a proper label, I alkways like it when it seems like an enterprise of whatever kind springs from the crazy ideas / obsessions of an individual. Even if I don't share that person's taste, exactly. It was my favourite thing about late-doors Creation too.

("It" in that last sentence being Rev-Ola, not quite obv.)

i was wondering about that, tim, becuase I had recently got a Hurrah cd in the charity shop based solely on the fact that they were reissued on revola but was very disappointed (it was the arista one). I will have to keep a look-out for that one. The reissue that is. My love affair with Revola started in 1999 when i was bored with the music being released and happened to look at the Revola website connected with Creation and was amazed by the stuff that they were releasing. Got the Millennium, Begin and Mo Tucker, Life in Exile, and realised that I found the fucking record label of total strangeness.

i think yer answer is on the money, with the reason why i think of it as a proper label because joe seems to pick and chooses what he re-releases, instead of putting things out en-masse.

so, when they were revived i was very very excited. i missed the from the vaults and was sad to see it go down. especially when they were on the verge of releasing margo gunyan.

someone on the other thread mentioned that they thought that he was releasing too much soft pop but i think that is why it's a good label, as he seems to release stuff that he he is into at the moment and stuff of historical interest. i.e. the proposed compilation of the warhol girls singles and edie sedgewick singing!

for those who are confused - it lives here - www.revola.co.uk

my favourite moment was going in and buying the star trek albums that they released.

but tim, what do you think it is about revola and way they are so successful at what tehy do and why do they do it so well?

Well I was never that huge a fan of Slaughter / Slaughter Joe at the time. I remember him sharing page space with the Jasmine Minks in a Jamming! feature in 85 or 86 and not thinking he deserved it (Particularly since he slagged off the Flying Burrito Brothers).

But like a lot of the people from that time (I guess a lot of the more interesting people from any time) he seems to have a very particular way of looking at the world, and enough of an obsession with detail for his oddness to shine through.

I'm probably only interested in about a third of the records Rev-Ola put out, but it's all done with such a sense of its own style.

i have to admit, i tend to bypass the Slaughter Joe stuff when i talk about revola records, not really a fan, cause i already have the psychocandy...

but i agree with you about the sense of style that revola has. it makes me want to listen to stuff that i'm not that interested in - i.e. the third rail album or ian whitcomb.

though for awhile i was getting obsessive over the john mcgee orchestra - easy listening versions of the time, now, come on!

but it's almost like an alternative universe of pop - and has seen me tracking down with obsessive detail, david mccallum, martin denny and yma sumac albums.

i'm interested in what way the label goes - it already has it's own built-in fan base, or will, once again, when the publicity machine at cherry red kicks in....

at the moment, though it's reflecting my taste in music, soft pop and the ilk. which i think will establish itself and then move onto the more exotica pop - they are already releasing the forum, from martin denny's producer, or insane las vegas lounge music.

Haha I've always given that McGee LP a wide berth... you're surely not telling me I've made a mistake?

I'm all for Rev-Ola taking a stroll out of rock 'n' roll and all that, but sometimes I wish they'd take a different route: there's so much stuff more exciting to me that the whole exotica-lounge thing. Of course if they did what *I* wanted them to they would lose what made them good.

i picked up it for a pound in a record shop in brighton...yeah, i think you are missing out, it's not alan's dad on there, he just took the photograph. bit of an in-joke.

but it's honestly a pretty good album of easy listening versions of the time and ed ball's solo stuff. so when i got it for a pound, i had the whole experience fo which i think that the album comments on, getting an easy listening album of a pop artists in the cut-out bin, sort of culture.

but yeah, it's pretty crazy. but hey, i really dig the gary usher album that poptones released.

what revola records do you have, tim. have you ever went to the spectorpop list? i don't bother to post there, instead, i just go there to learn...

carol kaye/joey stec/joe foster/david bash - all of those guys post there....it's increbile, a whole weird oddball world of pop music i never knew about.

Part of me's glad that Poptones didn't carry on with the In Dub bit, I always thought that was destinerd to be something of an own goal.

Not sure the McGee thing is for me: soft rock I like a lot (more and more, as it happens) but easy / lounge has yet to happen to me.

the dub thing could have worked, it got me into dub music, but it would have taken alot of time, and it's own person to have made it into something really fantastic. though - i love the mad professor album (got it on vinyl) and the packaging they did on it was ace as well. not too sure who was involved in the in dub bit.

it's funny, i always thought easy listening was like dub - first you are against it, arrggh, what is this bollocks, and then slowly you are submerged in it's world, though alot of it is crap!!!!!!!!!!!!

and takes knowledge to guide you through. some music for your day - it's pretty cool, though, especially some of the bridging effects. i got this one album back in canada where the hollywood strings do an easy listening version of shaft - it's just well, insane.

just listening to mark mothersburgh's version of hey jude from the royal tennabaums, it is genius.

what do you think of curt boettcher becoming a cottage industry?

(sweet, the nah nah nahs just came in on Hey Jude - definitely better than the original)

Reggae's somewhere near the centre of my musical world so I never really had that reaction to dub!

I'm all for the Boettcher industry, although I bought "Here's An Innocent Face" recently and it's not very good. Oh well. Only a pound, I guess.

you got 'here's an innocent face' for a pound? where did you get it? *seethes with jealousy* i got fred neil's first album for less than a quid. but the strangest revola moment was finding the ballroom's album for two quid in a fishmarket in holloway.

am listening to lisa mychols at the moment, it's a christmas album from 1992 but Tim it's very sweet. basically has to be heard to be believed. it's not even a christmas album - she's using chrismas songs to disguise songs of romantic break-up. definitely not for the broken hearted on christmas day.

It was in this skanky record shop in Manchester, it had been discarded from a radio station. It's yours if you want it.

seriously? sweet. i will email you my address.

i came across a david mccallum album in a seriously skanky hamilton record shop. it was in a pile of dusty (so dusty you feel sort of ill after going through it) c&w records. i freaked. it even has david axelrod arranging stuff. i'm always on the look-out for the revola reissue but can never find it!

some of the soft pop stuff is pretty hard to track on vinyl. i got almost all of the fifth dimension and the association albums in thrift stores and for some reason came across fifteen martin denny albums once in a thrift store.

if you want tim, when i go to nyc, my friend has my all of my records, i have a double of jim webb's solo album. it's really bad but so bad it's good. it's yers.

Hooray! (Just realised that all my records are also in storage in 1 or 2 places right now so it may take a week or 2 to dig out).

well, i have to match the trade, don't I? hahahaha.....

all of my records are in storage. dustin has got 1,500 of the records and my other friend in toronto has 2,000 - they split it equally when i went to england. bastards!

i have a little vinyl collection here at the moment - but it's cool, mad professor, fire engines, gram parsons first two albums (which i almost got into a fist fight at a Marie Curie Cancer Care - i saw them and went - MINE - and put them behidn the counter, and went back with money adn this dealer was there, picking them up and looking at the mint condition of them, i said MINE, he said MINE and then he offered the shop keep fourty quid for the both of them, but she sold them to me for four quid. And then i give the dealer the finger.

kate should listen to lisa mychols.

Crieky are people paying that sort of money for those two GP LPs? I gave mine away! Perhaps I should pay more attention.

Don't get me started on Hurrah! - bloody great live band in around 84/5. Tim's right about the Kitchenware stuff being much better than the Arista debacle. It's such a shame that great songs like Better Time and Celtic were so horribly botched/overproduced on the Arista debut. The Revola CD is good, but doesn't have ALL the Kitchenware sides (no 'Tame' for example - for which you need either the original singles or the 8-track K/ware album Boxed which you never see nowadays. I wouldn't part with mine for owt.

doom-e the dr mix album is like futuristic mechanical sounding rock from france in the late 70s, they do seeds, troggs, roxy music, bowie etc songs with distorted guitar, distorted vocals, synth & cheap drum machine, make all the songs sound sort of the same. it's really good.

(Dr C basically you need the 4 singles because Boxed doesn't have "Celtic" either, but TSOP isn't a bad starting point... do you have the live album which came out on Esurient?).

That's true Tim, tho' the TSOP vers. of Celtic isn't that much different.

I don't have the live album cos I had several mixing desk tapes of the band from 1985 which were great quality. Sadly I don't have them any more. You never see the live album anymore - I'll snap it up if I ever do. How well does it capture them? As I said above I reckon they were one of the best bands EVER live - I don't think I've ever heard anything so powerful and moving as 'Celtic' live.

Did you ever see them live, Tim? Better Time - ('There's never been a better time to be a young boy/that's what I thought now as I fell into her arms') - bloody magnificent. One of my favourites from 84/85 was 'Let it Be Her' which didn't surface until 1989's 'The Beautiful' ('There's this feeling that comes between desperation and delight/when she says that she just might') - the very thought of Taffy, Paul and Dave's voices straining and cracking on the pleading chorus - 'Pleeee-eeeeease let it be-eeee her!'- is bringing tears to my eyes - and I haven't heard that bloody thing for 15 years. I'd better stop. I can't. What a great great band! The first time I saw them was at Reading Univ on a tiny stage in a hall of residence supporting IIRC, Microdisney. I wasn't in a great mood that night - the usual gurl trouble AND I'd just had a whopping great row with a mate which ended in fisticuffs. I really couldn't be bothered to leave the bar - until I heard them hit the first chorus of (I think) 'Who'd Have Thought'. They tore my head off that night, as they did the dozen or so times I saw them afterwards.

The Arista albums still rate as the biggest disappointment ever - I KNEW that 'Tell God I'm Here' would be awful as soon as I saw the cover. And it is. Truly. Wretched. Dave Porterhouse told me that the band thought so too at a gig at Chelsea College in 1988, but they never had the chance to do anything about it. Or maybe the fight had gone by then.

Once - ONCE! The Point of Perfection! Supporting Prefab Sprout (there's no justice in the world) on their "Two Wheels Good" tour. I remember them being fantastic but didn't really know the songs outside "Who'd Have Thought" / "Celtic" / "Hip Hip".

The live LP is probably not dissimilar to the tapes you had, just on vinyl: it's of bootleg quality but I don't care, I love it. Probably my favourite ever piece of fanzine writing is about Hurrah! too, in Kevin P's post Hungry Beat "The Same Sky". I guess we've all been devotees bewildered by a band's change in direction from time to time and Kevin summed it up perfectly.

Paul Handyside and Taffy Hughes are both still active and having records released by the Bus Stop label in the States (also soon to release LPs by The Claim and the Hellfire Sermons). I haven't heard the records, but I have heard mixed reports. Don't know about Dave or Damien.

Great drummer - Damien Mahoney. You knew that he was also *Paul* Mahoney in The Passage? I thought you would.

I also saw them on the Prefab Tour - they were much better than PF. Of course.

They were better than the Sprouts, but there's no need to bring the Pinefox into this!