One of my favorite finds this summer was this classy vanity lounge LP on the mysterious SAMHOT label which also boasts the legendary Gordon Thomas. There are some strange similarities between the two men’s vocal styles, and also a persuasion for singing odes to their favorite girls. I decided to post this one up now [...]
I’m not usually so big on big band/stage band music these days, but there is still something about a tight, well played, forward thinking arrangement that can still hook me in on any given day. This LP from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s premier jazz ensemble from 1979 is a case in point. I picked this [...]
I have been freaking out the last couple weeks trying to find this, er, “gem” in time to post for Xmas. I tore through box after box, knowing that I’d set it aside just for this occasion, but it was nowhere to be found! I gave up a few days ago. Of course, today I [...]
If you are like me, you have always had some vague notion of what Kwanzaa is. I always understood it as an 80′s creation, mainly as a non-Christian non-Capitalist multi-cultural holiday alternative to Christmas. Something defined by what it IS NOT rather than by what it IS. You get me? Well thanks to this little [...]
Every Easter weekend since 1963 has seen the National Jazz Festival held in my home city of Tauranga, New Zealand. For a number of those early festivals through to the 1980s, highlights were recorded & released on a compilation LP. This one documents the sixth festival from 1968. Granted, although I haven’t actually lived in [...]
As someone who barely eeked through High School and later dropped out of Community College to pursue a career in alcoholism and record collecting I sometimes find myself idly wondering: might it have all turned out differently had I stayed in school? But unlike hobos ’round the campfire, or pool cleaners, who might focus on [...]
If you’re anything like me you’ll buy pretty much any record from a foreign country provided it costs a dollar or less. I suppose this is cheaper than traveling for leisure, but still, it adds up – if only in stacks of embarrassingly bland pop vocal records sung in an exotic tongue. Anyhow, it was [...]
Smart sweater vest boogaloos.
Pretty great boogaloo. Yeah.