hey scott, what old label sampler are you playing right now?

*Blits* (RCA - 1981) (That should be a backward S in Blits)

Bow Wow Wow - Chihuahua

Slow Children - Spring In Fialta

Robert Ellis Orrall - White Noise

Sparks - Tips For Teens

Shock - Angel Face

Polyrock - Love Song

Bow Wow Wow - Orangutang

Landscape - European Man

Robert Ellis Orrall - Call The Uh-Oh Squad

Polyrock - Changing Hearts

Foreplay #36 A&M's Pre-Release Sampler (September 1980)

Head East - You'll Be The One

Seawind - The Two Of Us

The Stranglers - The Raven

Chelsea - No Escape

Oingo Boingo - Ain't This The Life

Head East - Baby Ruth

Seawind - Shout

The Stranglers - Who Wants The World

Chelsea - Urban Kids

Oingo Boingo - Only A Lad

*Rocks* (CBS - 1977)

Kansas - Carry On Wayward Son

R.E.O. Speedwagon - Ridin' The Storm Out

Joe Tex - Ain't Gonna Bump No More

The Isley Brothers - The Pride (Part 1 & 2)

Q - Dancin' Man

The Jacksons - Show You The Way To Go

Burton Cummings - I'm Scared

Engelbert Humperdinck - I Believe In Miracles

Tom Jones - Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow

Boston - Peace Of Mind

is that the powerpop band?

*July Prodigal Sampler (Motown - 1976)

Dunn & Rubini - Diggin' It/I'm Blue/Imaginary Girl

Kathe Green - Help Me Sing My Song/Love City/Beautiful

Fantacy Hill - Minnie Ha Ha/Whatcha Gonna Do If I Give It Tou You/Stay With Me

Michael Quatro - One By One/Stripper/Rollerbach

yes it is, momma.

*Dead On Arrival* (Virgin - 1978)

The Motors - Dancing The Night Away

X Ray Spex - Oh Bondage

XTC - Radios In Motion

Penetration - Firing Squad

Wilko Johnson's Solid Spenders - Walking On The Edge

Captain Beefheart - New Electric Ride

Steve Hillage - Hurdy Gurdy Man

Can - Full Moon On The Highway

Peter Baumann - Bicentennial Present

Ashra - 77 Slightly Delayed

U-Roy - Babylon Burning

Johnny Clarke - Let's Give Jah Jah Praise

The Mighty Diamonds - Them Never Love Poor Marcus

I-Roy - Satta

Delroy Washington - Freedom Fighters

U-Roy - Fire In A Trenchtown

Roogalator - Love And The Single Girl

Link Wray - I'm So Glad I'm So Proud

Slapp Happy - Casablanca Moon

Elkie Brooks - Women's Lib Song

Mallard - Desperados Waiting For A Train

Kevin Coyne - Good Boy

Derek and Clive - Members Only

*Pop Parade Vol.9* (Mercury - 195?)

The Gaylords - Who's Gonna Take You To The Prom

Richard Hayman & His Orchestra - Flamenco Love

Nick Noble - She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

Georgia Gibbs - Kiss Me Another

Rusty Draper - Sometimes You Gotta Lose To Win

The Diamonds - The Church Bells May Ring

Chuck Miller - Bright Red Convertible

Patti Page - Too Young To Go Steady

David Carroll & His Orchestra - Theme From "The Swan"

Sarah Vaughan - Hot And Cold Runnin' Tears

The Platters - (You've Got) The Magic Touch

The Crew Cuts - Honey Hair, Sugar Lips, Eyes Of Blue

Gamma - I'm Alive
Slow Children - Spring In Fialta
Michael Quatro - One By One/Stripper/Rollerbach
Peter Baumann - Bicentennial Present

the quatro stuff is over-the-top glamboogiediscorock. fun!

the slow children song is great! female vocals. postpunky. i don't own anything by them though. mayube someone else knows more.

the gamma song is arena/guitarrock + synths. same as the other Gamma song.

*Heavenly Bodies* (Private I - 1984)

Bonnie Pointer - The Beast In Me/Heaven

Cheryl Lynn - At Last You're Mine

Sparks - Breaking Out Of Prison

Dwight Twilley - Keep On Working

The Tubes - Out Of Control

Some label comps I've been spinning in recent months:
- 415 MUSIC (horrible anthology of Bay Area new wavers who recorded for 415, ca. 1980 - only SVT saves the set)
- EXPERIMENTS IN DESTINY (two-record set straight from the stable of Bomp Records)
- ENIGMA VARIATIONS (another foursider, this time from Enigma, the label that threatened to take alt-rock to the mainstream LONG before Sub Pop...everybody seems to have forgotten about this label now...anyway, things get surprisingly limp on sides 3 and 4, considering the names involved, but all is well on sides one and two - can't go wrong with John Trubee's "A Blind Man's Penis")

...oh, and another one:
- THE BEST VOCAL GROUPS IN ROCK & ROLL (when Dootone wasn't cranking out all those comedy records by Redd Foxx and others, they had a pretty good stable of doo-woppers!)

Haven't listened to any lately, but Starday had a pretty good series of country anthologies...since they had a rep for being one of the rawest, least-crossover-friendly C&W labels going, their LP's are a good way to sample the stable...they even put out one of the earliest rockabilly comps, WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN', in '73, shortly before they went out of business and years before rockabilly was taken seriously...

"ENIGMA VARIATIONS"

i bought this when it came out cuz it was so cheap and i played it a lot and really tried to like it. all i can say is that blind man's penis ended up on a LOT of mix-tapes and the rest i mostly forget.

that enigma comp deserves a track-listing:

Jet Black Berries, The Shadowdrive (4:45)
2 Naked Prey Flesh On The Wall (2:35)
3 Tex & The Horseheads Oh Mother (3:01)
4 Greg Sage Straight Ahead (4:12)
5 Chris D. with Divine Horsemen Time Stands Still (4:11)
6 Green On Red Sixteen Ways II (2:33)
7 Game Theory 24 (2:57)
8 Rain Parade No Easy Way Down (6:56)
9 Plasticland Disengaged From The World (2:38)
10 Pandoras, The Worm Boy (2:12)
11 Get Smart! Just For The Moment (2:22)
12 Leaving Trains, The Leaving Trains (2:34)
13 45 Grave Insurance From God (4:58)
14 Redd Kross Citadel (2:57)
15 John Trubee A Blind Man's Penis (1:44)
16 Screamin' Sirens Maniac (2:38)
17 T.S.O.L. Flowers By The Door (3:37)
18 Passionnel The Yellow Boat (3:39)
19 Untouchables, The (11) Lebanon (3:41)
20 SSQ Playback (4:58)

Lord, what a portrait of a time and place.

Mind you, no Poison no credibility.

i dont think that track listing is in the right order - "blind man's penis" wasn't as close to the end of the LP as it appears to be here.

DEFINITELY a portrait of the times - that tracklisting looks like the front pages of Spin magazine ca. 1985-88 (john trubee even wrote an article for Spin detailing how he got that song recorded)

"Mind you, no Poison no credibility."

i dont miss them, although i am surprised that mojo nixon & skid roper didnt make the cut

mojo and skid made the 2nd comp:

Mojo Nixon / Skid Roper Burn Down The Mall
2 T.S.O.L. Colors (Take Me Away)
3 Dead Milkmen, The The Thing That Only Eats Hippies
4 Agent Orange (7) Fire In The Rain
5 Plan 9 (2) Man Bites Dog
6 Wire Ahead
7 Don Dixon Praying Mantis
8 Wednesday Week Why
9 Game Theory Erica's Word
10 Peter Hammill Too Many Of My Yesterdays
11 Plan 9 (2) Ship Of Fools
12 Dead Milkmen, The Stupid Maryann
13 Mojo Nixon / Skid Roper Amsterdam Dog Shit Blues
14 T.S.O.L. Best Friends
15 Agent Orange (7) Bite The Hand That Feeds (Part II) Remix
16 Wire Drill
17 Wednesday Week That Train
18 Game Theory Shark Party
19 Don Dixon Why
20 SSQ Pleasure Dog

it's easy to make fun of enigma, but they did put out The Circle by the Wipers and one of my all-time fave albums of the 80s: Commercial Suicide by Colin Newman. And some good Wire stuff. you know, they had their moments.

Why would you make fun of Enigma?

That's an unanswerable mystery

I'm listening to The Blasting Concept, Vol. 2 on SST. Although this was supposed to be a full-on punk label, some of these bands must have secretly wished they were Van Halen, judging by the guitar tone.

Enigma released Daydream Nation in 1988.

Rev,
VHalen (esp. Eddie) was a huge influence on SST records. perhaps you're aware of this cover from another monster double concept LP from 1988:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s7OD-RHDPE

LOL that's the version from Blasting Concept Vol. 2, not the earlier version (note: MIKE WATT on the youtube comments!)

(hahaha, and he's subscribed to Cibelle's channel (just like me!) and he's apparently an early fan of the "...shreds" series!).

the van halen cover was always by far my favorite thing on that blasting concept album. but then my fave minutemen album is by far project mersh.

i thought daydream nation was on blast first. or my copy was anyway.

Distributed by Enigma/Capitol in the U.S.

Double Nickels was '84, not '88.

The Columbia comp "Different Strokes" was my introduction to Soft Machine (an excerpt of "Out-Bloody-Rageous"), so I have a soft spot for these things.

There's a couple of Columbia samplers from '79 that I'm quite fond of...both are 7" EP's but are still worth mentioning:

- The Tastebuds Teaser, which Epic put out in conjunction with Budweiser beer and the Loop (Chicago FM rock station, still around!). Molly Hatchet, REO Speedwagon, Steve Forbert and the Fabulous Poodles all coexisting on the same record! And believe it or not, on the same station, as the Loop sounded about like this EP back then! I could do without Molly Hatchet, but the others are fine to me - "Only The Strong Survive" is one of the few REO songs I can stand at this point...

- New Wave, featuring power-pop tracks from the Beat, Jules & the Polar Bears, the Sinceros and Chicago pseudo-punks the Hounds

I've kept that Enigma variations comp around for years just because of this song:

20 SSQ Playback (4:58)

such a great bit of catchy synth pop it is.

Hey, Scott, have you ever seen the Elektra '72 one that has "Taxi" billed only to "Harry"? Doesn't exactly have the same ring as "Donovan" or "Cher.' . . .

Just like with the Warners comps, you can see the Elektra samplers go from being wyld and oddly diverse (A GARDEN OF DELIGHTS, ca. '71) to singer-songwriter heavy (the promos they issued around '72-'73) to pure commercial hackwork (that '79 comp mentioned in the first post in the thread).

i forgot to mention on that warners thread: is there any unreleased stuff any good on them. in the original ads they hype stuff like van dyke parks' ice capade commercial music.

"i forgot to mention on that warners thread: is there any unreleased stuff any good on them. in the original ads they hype stuff like van dyke parks' ice capade commercial music."

off the head, Hot Platters has Ry Cooder's "On A Monday" and the Kinks (just before they left the label) with "Animals In The Zoo." But then again, the Kinks' cut is on some obscure soundtrack (i think?). i dont know what became of the cooder track, but at the time i dont think it was available anywhere but that album.

id have to go back thru the stacks to check the rest (i only have four of those Warners samplers myself)

do you have the nettwerk 4 sampler? I am trying to remember all the lyrics to that awful "Childman" feminist rap. this is about all i can get:

Childman on the mic
sayin' peace to my wife
and every woman livin' hell in life
but as a male, I can't speak for them
when only one woman out of ten
doesn't suffer the violence of men
well it ain't cool-y and it ain't harmony
when you talk about male supremacy
it makes me sick
to think that most mens lives revolve around their dick
but that's why homophobia exists
men can't deal with the threat of a twist
if men got raped or men got pregnant
the situation would be drastically different
men can't have babies, they
can't make life so they take it away

and fuck the men's movement
men's movement been aorund thousands of years
now all they want to do is wear war paint
and jack each other off in the fucking woods
also, I believe you Anita.

This thread made me smile bunches - nice comp tracklistings you're sharing there Skot.

I'm heading home after work and drinking some barley pops and listening to 'Rat Music for Rat People' comps in honor of this thread.

In honor of my friend John, who like me isn't a huge jazz fan but listens here and there, I'll mention volumes one and two of Prestige Groovy Goodies. These two albums are from the early sixties and are packaged like a typical "oldies-but-goodies" compilation of the time, only with jazz instead of doo-wop. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Shirley Scott, Mose Allison and other Prestige acts, whittled down to the three-minute mark for all the fairweather jazz fans in the house.

Hardcore jazz fans would never agree, but like my friend John sez, those "Jazz 101/Jazz For Dummies" comps like Prestige Groovy Goodies play really well! Jazz labels still do this from time to time - back in '93-'94, I used to listen to Red Hot On Impulse and Blue Note Breaks quite a bit...