MINT CONDITION DIRT, AS-IS

Try as I might to toss up a few newer things every now and then, sometimes trying to find anything that measures up to older stuff is like banging your head against a wall. It's not like there isn't enough new stuff out there, it's just that most of it is not of the "Who the hell is this?!" variety. My frustration tonight occurred primarily at The Hype Machine, a music blog aggregator, I clicked randomly through five or six pages of music blog posts and found nothing that would get me riled up. (The Hype Machine can be found here. If you find anything worthwhile, I'm all ears.)

So, here's a a few I found at one of the ol' reliables, Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban. The first one, "Guess I'm Falling In Love" by the Velvet Underground, has been posted (and slobbered on) here before. It's one of my favorites, a nearly perfect rock 'n' roll record. It does many things well; the pace of it, the stops and starts, the way the solo starts at :50, the outtake/demo+ quality of the recording, Nothing is overdone, nothing is extreme, It is just a compact song, with everything unnecessary left out (including vocals on this version). (I know the Velvets image above is the earlier incarnation, but it's a cool photo.)

It's from a old post of thirty songs that the A-Bones have covered. Two of the A-Bones, Billy Miller and Miriam Linna, run Norton Records, which means they are fully qualified to pick good songs, and these are good. Most of the songs are older than the Velvets cut, and some hover on the esoteric side of corny, but they all seem to have that certain something that makes the Hype Machine seem totally irrelevant.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Velvet Underground - Guess I'm Falling In Love mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
The Torquays - Stolen Moments mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Betty Dickson - Shanty Tramp mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Larry Williams - You Bug Me Baby mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Rudy Grayzell - Judy mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
The Sabres- Take Up the Slack Daddy-O mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Visit:
Songs the A-Bones Taught Us (part 1, 30 songs) at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Songs the A-Bones Taught Us (part 2, 19 songs) at Beware of the BlogNorton Records