45’s and 7’s

Those little records.

Johnny Devlin – Nervous Wreck

Sometimes it seems a bit easy to overlook just how much of a nuclear blast upon music worldwide old Elvis Presley really was. What with so many images of overweight Vegas Elvis floating around it’s pretty easy to forget that young budding singers everywhere wanted to be just like him. Now by everywhere, I don’t […]

Wally James – Guitar Fraction

Today Wally James Cosgren is a singing evangelist in Florida with his own ministry. But this 45 obviously harks bark to an earlier time, possibly the early 1970s? Two original songs appear on this 45, “Lonely Guitar” is a ballad & “Guitar Fraction” is more of a uptempo offering. Both feature Wally on guitar & […]

Sunstorm – Summers Day

I have never seen this label before & I guess from the number that it’s maybe the third or fourth release on what appears to be a private or custom label out of Lincoln, Nebraska. I don’t think it’s related to the other large custom Century label at all. I don’t know if the band […]

V/A – Dove Project No. 9 (No Label, 1970)

The Dove Project No. 9 compilation is one of the most obscure artifacts of Canadian psychedelia. The main individual responsible for this excursion into the remote recesses of rock’s underground was a young and aspiring musical businessman named Doug Wong. In 1969 Doug was a leading member of the student newspaper published at his high-school. Unlike […]

The Challenge – The Crunch

This 45 from 1969 really makes me wish I knew of more records that were released with the combined purposes of boosting potato chip sales (Smiths Crisps) and kick starting new dance crazes (The Crunch). The Crunch as a dance craze never caught on and how to do The Crunch is definitely lost to the […]

Moze Henry – Joy To The World / Love It Or Leave It

Who says a guy in the middle of the woods can’t lay down a solid funk track? Listen and enjoy! “Joy To The World” [Audio clip: view full post to listen] “Love It Or Leave It” [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Nancy – Like You Do

Not completely sure what this song has to do with POW’s, but I’m really feeling it. Yet another nice track in the vein of country funk. Enjoy! Like You Do [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Virgin Release: Turn It Down/Hey Now!

OK, so, for whatever reason, lately I’ve felt guilty that I rarely contribute any content to my own website anymore. It happenes sometimes and I’m sure it’ll pass but in the meantime you’ll have to forgive my desperate, half-assed stabs at writing about records I no longer own in genres I know zero about. For […]

Spooky – Digital Readout/Shake That Thang (Thunder Thumbs)

Crunchy, lumbering outsider analog synth funk perfection. Created by the mysterious Spooky in 1984 in someplace called Warner Robins, GA. I need more of this kind of thing in my life. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Eugen Thomass – Scarabea OST

A rare 7inch EP on Hans Wewerkas tiny Austrian Inmus-Label. It’s the soundtrack to Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Tolstoi adaptation “Scarabea – Wieviel Erde braucht ein Mensch”. Syberberg is one of the most obscure and controversial german independent moviemakers. Due to his neo-conservative and nationalistic views he plays a rather isolated role among the otherwise predominantly leftwing orientated […]

Duo Ouro Negro – Pata Pata

During my recent travel to Portugal I had quite some records of this group in my hands. I usually checked them out because of their cover art but most of the times the musical content was disappointing. After I already filed them in the don’t bother with section I gave two more 45s which I […]

Jack Wood – ‘Born To Wander’

Off-the-wall (yet very catchy) mix of Hank Williams & Yma Sumac – another obscure title produced at the Fenton studio in Grand Rapids – in my private mindgarden this is a deep funk floorfiller. [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Fred E. Scott – ‘Journey Within’

Unique ‘afro-synth’ 45 out of Detroit on the Natural label – engineered by Detroit bluesman Bobo Jenkins – likely at his own studio on Joy Road. Jenkins had a long history in the Detroit music scene – stretching back to ‘Democrat Blues’ on Chess (1954). By the 70’s he was producing artists for his own […]

Troubled Mind – I’m Good For You

The Troubled Mind(s) were a late 60s band that started off in Napier, New Zealand around 1966/67 and then moved to Auckland around July 1967. The band seems to have disbanded shortly after releasing this, their third and final 45 in February 1969. Their earlier stuff covered more of a traditional 60s R&B style and […]

Philippe Menard – Portrait Musical

A part of the CAPAC Portrait Musical 7″ series, this release is a mix of excerpts from electro-acoustic works by Menard. The clip I’ve included here, “Conte Vert”, contains a burst of energy early in the track that leaves me wanting more, and brings to mind his contemporary, Bernard Bonnier, and his Cassete album. This […]

Bangkok 17 – I’m Somebody

I found this two years ago in Bangkok and bought it because of the cover and the name of the band. I was positively suprised when I first listened to it at home. While the two songs on side a of the 7″ are quite cheesy side b offers 2 great interpretations of well known […]

Berry & Coates Friendship Ensemble – Our Kwanzaa Song

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 […]

Burk Price: Distant Visions (Maya)

I first heard Burk Price’s “Synthezoid Heartbreak” over the phone from Ohio when I lived in London but it was the B-side “Distant Vision” that flipped my neurons when I received it in the mail. For me, it was a downbeat psychedelic masterpiece: the perfect down-tempo meter, heavy skins work, an ambitious arrangement, perfect change-ups […]

Flash Beverage: Train

In today’s parallel universe Lemmy fronts a Southern Rock band. I don’t know if FLASH BEVERAGE ever heard, let alone heard of, MOTORHEAD back in 1980, but I have my doubts. I prefer to think that playing Hard Rock whilst blind drunk on grain alcohol has a universal sound. The key is hitting the blitz-ing […]

Little Buck – Little Boy Blue / Everybody’s Love

New Orleans based label Seven B is definitely something of a mixed bag & can usually be categorised as 45s Eddie Bo was involved with & ones that he had no part of. Finding 45s on this label will either land you with unbearably cheesy country, slightly more tolerable piano instrumentals or some of the […]

Oliver Spinetto & Harry Francis – Zodiac 45

Here’s an interesting record from a bygone era. Not only were Auckland’s Zodiac Records one of the biggest local independent labels of the 50s & 60s, as an aspiring musician you could also use their facilities to cut your own record. This 45 was recorded on the 5th of October 1955 in immediately pre-rock & […]

The Intentions – Dig It (Shovel)

This is an interesting soul/funk 45 out of Chicago that would appear to date from about 1969/70. Not much is known about the group & I have been told by different people that they were & weren’t the same group that recorded for Blue Light as the Intensions, so that just really confuses things. It […]

The Elois – By My Side

This is a monster of a slice of mid-60s Australian garage rock. I haven’t researched that much about this 45, but I do know that it will melt your speakers! (check out when the pummelling guitar riff comes in about 3/4 of the way through) The flip is their version of “I’m A Man” that […]

Ronnie Anderson – The Generation Gap

This rules!! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t detect a shred of humor here. I think, this is dead serious. In any case, I know the readers here, myself included deal with alot of these problems on a regular basis, and will find this song (?) PSA (?) funeral march (?) prescient. Listen