― hank (hank s), Monday, 13 November 2006 21:34 (seventeen years ago) link
Was going to say a similar thing but wanted to articulate *how* and not sure i can right now.
― dh (djh), Monday, 13 November 2006 22:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― Nedpoleon (NedBeauman), Monday, 13 November 2006 23:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 01:33 (seventeen years ago) link
I've been waiting for eons for Vol. 2. Jazz Satellites Vol. 1 was a life-changer. Some key person at Virgin must've got sacked, because it seems like all those amazing comps stopped issuing forth about 5 years ago.
Check out this lineup for the unreleased second volume: http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/adventures/articles/satellites.htm
― Dave Segal (Da ve Segal), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 03:22 (seventeen years ago) link
talking of wire/tony harrington compiled comps, the wire 3cd box on Mute i think is really good, but have never seen reviewed or talked about. Check the tracklist: http://www.discogs.com/release/125213
― minerva estassi (minerva estassi), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 03:53 (seventeen years ago) link
Anyway bored that downloading will actually be a pain for little (or big) records companies that will decide so that to issue comps, and the problems about it (licensing), it's no long useful and profitable (even if of unavailable music).
― minerva estassi (minerva estassi), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 04:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr. C (Dr. C), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 09:06 (seventeen years ago) link
― hank (hank s), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 14:19 (seventeen years ago) link
The Garbarek-Coltrane-23 Skidoo-Melle stretch on Jazz Satellites is one of my favorite sequences.
― Pamplaxico Polancobon (Andy_K), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 14:35 (seventeen years ago) link
― Tyler W (tylerw), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 15:17 (seventeen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 15:26 (seventeen years ago) link
― Tyler W (tylerw), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 15:48 (seventeen years ago) link
― Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Tuesday, 14 November 2006 17:40 (seventeen years ago) link
― So Ho La (So Ho La), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 01:40 (seventeen years ago) link
― opalescent arcs (Da ve Segal), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 01:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― hank (hank s), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 02:21 (seventeen years ago) link
― everything (everything), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 02:29 (seventeen years ago) link
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 02:43 (seventeen years ago) link
― calvin johnson has ruined rock for an entire generation (orion), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 02:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― electric sound of jim [and why not] (electricsound), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 02:57 (seventeen years ago) link
― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 09:28 (seventeen years ago) link
big list of comps here:http://www.saintetiennedisco.com/compile.html
― Brio, Friday, 8 May 2009 15:12 (fifteen years ago) link
that there website is a great source, thanks to whoever is doing it!...hopefully, it will be updated over time...(off the top of my head, I can think of two omissions: The Bobbie Gentry Capitol Years comp and the liner notes for the Jasmine Minks Soul Station Creation comp...I think Stanley/Wiggs also did a Dusty Springfield comp)...
― henry s, Friday, 8 May 2009 16:29 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah, it's actually far from complete. anyone got something better?
― Brio, Friday, 8 May 2009 17:42 (fifteen years ago) link
psyched 2 read
http://thequietus.com/articles/13523-bob-stanley-yeah-yeah-yeah-interview
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Sunday, 6 October 2013 17:38 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, mine arrives tomorrow.
― Mark G, Sunday, 6 October 2013 21:17 (ten years ago) link
I was just reading someone’s account of going to a birthday party as a kid and one of the parents brought over ‘Tiger Feet’ by Mud and said, ‘You’ve got to play this, nobody has a party without playing the current Number 1!’
Oh, I was actually that kid!
― mike t-diva, Sunday, 6 October 2013 22:06 (ten years ago) link
Tiger Feet was the Gangnam Style of 1974 I guess.
― everything, Sunday, 6 October 2013 23:00 (ten years ago) link
and then the Cat crept in.
― Mark G, Sunday, 6 October 2013 23:11 (ten years ago) link
Got this for my birthday!
― Pingu Unchained (dog latin), Monday, 7 October 2013 09:18 (ten years ago) link
Happy birthday!
― Ismael Klata, Monday, 7 October 2013 09:42 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, yeah. (yeah)
― Mark G, Monday, 7 October 2013 09:43 (ten years ago) link
only skimmed it so far (it seems like a book that warrants skimming really), but yeah yeah yeah, his history of pop seems interesting, though it seems to have zero interest in recent pop, and its all a bit too much of a flash through pop, never really getting deep into it. inevitable i know, but, it felt like a very post-internet way of writing about music history (should probably sit down with it a bit longer first, its just that after all the amazingly positive reviews, i think i expected something a bit better. the faber book jon savage and hanif kureishi did seems a slightly better approach to what stanley is trying to do, if more skewed towards rock, stanley is more open minded, and more equal in his appreciation of diff genres).
― StillAdvance, Sunday, 7 September 2014 07:16 (nine years ago) link
ok, so you have skimmed it, and it seems not to have much depth, right?
Advice: start at page one and read it properly and don't skip chunks, then you should find it more rewarding.
For all that books that attempt to encapsulate the history of pop either tell me little I didn't know, or end up opaque to the point of being impossible to read, this book manages to be entertaining and informative.
― Mark G, Sunday, 7 September 2014 11:55 (nine years ago) link
The guy's got a problem with Neil Young, that's for sure.
― Iago Galdston, Sunday, 7 September 2014 12:29 (nine years ago) link
i'm just getting into it -- obviously a very british perspective happening here. seems to be hitting its stride in the mid 60s.
― tylerw, Sunday, 7 September 2014 15:20 (nine years ago) link
i'm about halfway through and enjoying it. he wears his enthusiasms on his sleeve and he's most useful when describing things he really likes. he's funniest when describing things he doesn't. his chapters are skillful encapsulations and like mark g says it acquires depth as the stories accumulate.
note the u.s. edition is trimmed down by more than 100 pages but gains exclamation points in its title. i'm reading the u.k. version.
― Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 7 September 2014 16:20 (nine years ago) link
He's quite pro-Neil Young isn't he (y'know, having covered Only Love Can Break Your Heart and all that)? Patti Smith and Joe Strummer and David Crosby come in for quite a bit of stick if I remember correctly.
Best thing about the book are the little anecdotes he drops in about various artists, plus the chapters where he covers scenes I don't know much about. Any book with such scope is only going to scratch the surface but it's an excellent overview and he does a good job at joining the lines between scenes - like how disco developed for example. And there are always more obscure records in there as well as the obvious stuff.
There's very little attention given to much post-Crazy In Love but you have to draw the line somewhere, even if I don't really agree with his drawing of the end of the Modern Pop era (I'm not sure I agree much with the concept in the first place).
― Matt DC, Sunday, 7 September 2014 17:47 (nine years ago) link
Oh great, you made me go and get the book. Alright then: "Neil Young [...] had a definitive line in self-pity [...]: 'I went down to the radio interview, found myself at the microphone.' Poor lamb."
― Iago Galdston, Sunday, 7 September 2014 18:07 (nine years ago) link
The stuff I knew about felt largely like potted music history, which made me suspicious of the rest. He seems to make the same point over and over--when rock and pop parted ways, it was bad. I guess the Abba chapter was good, but again, is any of that new?
― Iago Galdston, Sunday, 7 September 2014 18:09 (nine years ago) link
Shifting gears back to the particular subject of the thread, his Croydon Municipal label he started last year has been consistently good fun. Emphasis on public domain pop and jazz from the fifties and sixties, various compilations with an emphasis on female singers. He's got a related blog site for it:
http://croydonmunicipal.blogspot.com/
But there's no official site for the label itself as far as I can tell. It's a Cherry Red sublabel and pretty easy to find through their site and other spots.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 7 September 2014 18:15 (nine years ago) link
x-post
Christgau weighs in. I think there's also talk of the book on the ilm good books about music thread.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/anti-rockisms-hall-of-fame/
Discussing Bob Stanley's book. From July 2014
― curmudgeon, Monday, 8 September 2014 15:25 (nine years ago) link
It took me hours just to get through the first chapter of this because I kept having to stop and cross-reference things on YouTube / Wikipedia. Really enjoyable though. I saw him do a talk last year (interviewed by old-ILX's own JtN) and he seemed incredibly charming and humble, and didn't seem too annoyed when the first question from the audience was about what he thought about jazz music.
― monoprix à dimanche (dog latin), Monday, 8 September 2014 15:31 (nine years ago) link
this book is awesome for making spotify playlists. the one i pulled from the pre-beatles english rock and roll chapter is great.
― adam, Monday, 8 September 2014 16:30 (nine years ago) link
If you search Spotify for Bob Stanley playlists, you'll find the crowdsourced playlists for Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
― brotherlovesdub, Monday, 8 September 2014 17:54 (nine years ago) link
Much I love Bob Stanley and his work, I found the book tough going. His style too condensed and telegraphic to comfortably read at length. There's no-one more qualified to summarize the last forty years of Phil Spector's career in a single sentence (and btw he's great at this kind of thing) or the solo careers of the Beatles in a paragraph, but it's just too exhausting to go through page after page of such condensed history.
― everything, Monday, 8 September 2014 18:13 (nine years ago) link
I read it on the bus for about a month. It works very well in 20-30 minute intervals.
― brotherlovesdub, Monday, 8 September 2014 20:33 (nine years ago) link
Yes, every chapter is like an article in Mojo or whatever. Also it's too personal in terms of what he thinks is important. He is a true music nerd's music nerd and he's a master on historical details, influences, product minutiae, anecdotes, industry movers and shakers, who-did-it-first type claims etc. But to him every single scene is centered around the music. Fashion, economics, class and so on are given short shrift. So it's clear he sees a difference between "skeletal" and "spindly" guitar sounds but for fashion it's not more like "trousers got wider". eg. he sees no significance whatsoever in Dexys' coming out in Brooks Brothers suits (he's amazed it WAS a huge deal at the time), but vast significance in their lyrics. Or he quotes Joe Strummer "like trousers like brain" without attempting to put it in context or explain it.
Not that I think he really understands the Clash anyway - another complaint I have is that his likes and dislikes (particularly his quick disposal of so many US bands) are petty and personal and detract from the overall theme of the book which I think is supposed to be a comprehensive overview of how the history of popular music is currently dissected, pigeonholed and defined. Ultimately I think it tells us a lot of details about stuff that Bob appreciates (which, don't get me wrong, is very broad) but there's not really an overall point to it.
― everything, Tuesday, 9 September 2014 16:47 (nine years ago) link
Meantime I've just now noticed that that 'A Taste Of' series he did for Sainsbury's, which I thought was vinyl only, did have at least some CD issues as well so I may have to start tracking those down.
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, December 30, 2023 6:14 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink Curious. I've never seen the CDs (and only fleetingly saw the vinyl) despite shopping in Sainsbury's regularly. I don't recall the track listings for the ones I saw being that interesting??
― djh, Saturday, 30 December 2023 22:11 (five months ago) link
(I might be being unfair/grumpy in that assessment).
― djh, Saturday, 30 December 2023 22:12 (five months ago) link
"Cafe Exil" is my favorite comp of the last number of years, such a great ride. Very excited about the sequel even if its tracks are far more familiar than CE.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Saturday, 30 December 2023 23:00 (five months ago) link
The Sainsburys releases were basically "here's a basic ass selection with a few hidden gems snuck in", which is honestly very fair considering the target audience (it ain't us). Would still have picked them up if they had them at my local ofc.
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 31 December 2023 12:04 (five months ago) link
Sounds a reasonable assessment.
― djh, Sunday, 31 December 2023 12:13 (five months ago) link
"Fell From The Sun" is decent though shocked to discover that One Dove's Fallen wasn't as good as I remember (at least in the version on here).
― djh, Tuesday, 9 January 2024 20:08 (five months ago) link
Compiling some tracks recently [the ones on the Tarwater thread] and being a bit indecisive on the track-listing, I found myself wondering "What would Bob Stanley do??"
― djh, Monday, 12 February 2024 21:51 (four months ago) link
"Fantastic Voyage" is another top tier compilation, lives up to the title!
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 13 February 2024 00:05 (four months ago) link
Here's the next one: Thom Bell - Didn't I Blow Your Mind? The Sound Of Philadelphia Soul 1969 - 1983
https://acerecords.co.uk/thom-bell-didnt-i-blow-your-mind-the-sound-of-philadelphia-soul-1969-1983
― mike t-diva, Thursday, 18 April 2024 13:53 (two months ago) link
That’s…weird. He already did a Thom Bell comp a few years back! Hell it’s linked on that page. Is this a complementary set?
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 18 April 2024 14:10 (two months ago) link
This is the sequel to “Ready Or Not”, Ace’s first acclaimed compilation of the late Thom Bell’s productions and arrangements.
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 18 April 2024 14:20 (two months ago) link
Clarity!
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 18 April 2024 19:56 (two months ago) link
Bob has been busy again. https://www.acerecords.co.uk/tomorrows-fashions-library-electronica-1972-1987
― giraffe, Thursday, 2 May 2024 09:11 (one month ago) link
I used to own hundreds upon hundreds of these albums. I sold a lot on eBay ages ago, but probably still own several hundred, and I still have CD-Rs of many of those I sold.
The one track on here I really love is John Cameron’s ‘Northern Lights’. For some reason it always evokes for me not the northern lights but gazing out on the River Thames at night, in the 1980s or early 1990s, at somewhere like Battersea. There’s an ominousness to it or a feeling of lost time, or something. That's what goes through my head anyway every time I listen to it.
A lot of the others have aspects to them that I like, but things I don’t like as well. Sometimes the drums and bass sound a bit like jazz funk, but a bit plodding, not sprightly. Then there are certain chord changes that I find annoying. You can hear the loosely prog rock background of some of these composers and the changes they use are not always to my taste.
― dubmill, Thursday, 2 May 2024 13:25 (one month ago) link