July 2006

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Τhe Shangri-Las - Myrmidons Of Melodrama

Τhe Shangri-Las - Myrmidons Of Melodrama

Τhe Shangri-Las were among the greatest girl groups; if judged solely on the basis of attitude, they were the greatest of them all. They combined an innocent adolescent charm with more than a hint of darkness, singing about dead bikers, teenage runaways, and doomed love affairs as well as ebullient high-school crushes. Originally the Shangri-Las were comprised of two pairs of sisters from Queens, NY (identical twins Marge and Mary Anne Ganser and siblings Mary and Betty Weiss). They had already recorded a couple of obscure singles when they were hired by George "Shadow" Morton to demo a song he had recently written, "Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)." The haunting ballad, with its doomy "Moonlight Sonata"-like piano riffs, wailing lead vocal, and thunderous background harmonies, seguing into an a cappella chorus backed by nothing except handclaps and seagull cries, made the Top Five in late 1964. It also began their association with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's Red Bird label, which would handle the group for the bulk of their career.Unlike some girl groups, the Shangri-Las were dynamic on-stage performers, choreographing their dance steps to their lyrics and wearing skin-tight leather pants and boots that were quite daring for the time.



Their real lives, however, were not without elements of drama themselves. Their constant personnel changes baffle historians; sometimes they are pictured as a trio, and sometimes one of the members in the photos is clearly not one of the Weiss or Ganser sisters. Worse, the Red Bird label ran into serious organizational difficulties in the mid-'60s, and wound down its operations in 1966. The group moved to Mercury for a couple of dispirited singles, but had split by the end of the 1960s. Even today, the Shangri-Las' history remains somewhat murky and mysterious; the original members have rarely reunited for oldies shows or talked to the press. The situation was exacerbated by frustratingly substandard reissues of their Red Bird work, which made it impossible to collect all of their fine sides without buying numerous packages, many of which boasted shockingly shoddy sound quality. Happily, the situation was rectified in the mid-'90s with excellent, comprehensive compilations of the Red Bird material in both the U.K. and U.S.



This 33-track production finally sets the record straight, including all of the significant A-sides, B-sides, and album tracks they recorded for Red Bird between 1964 and 1966, as well as an earlier single for a different label, and four radio commercials.

Tracks :
01. Remember (Walking In The Sand) 2:15
02. It's Easier To Cry 2:30
03. Leader Of The Pack 2:52
04. What Is Love 2:23
05. Give Him A Great Big Kiss 2:08
06. Maybe 2:33
07. Out In The Streets 2:49
08. The Boy 2:42
09. Give Us Your Blessings 3:16
10. Heaven Only Knows 2:09
11. Right Now And Not Later 2:37
12. The Train From Kanses City 3:20
13. Never Again 2:22
14. I'm Blue 3:30
15. What's A Girl Supposed To Do 3:05
16. The Dum Dum Ditty 2:24
17. You Cheated, You Lied 2:24
18. I Can Never Go Home Anymore 3:16
19. Bull Dog 2:38
20. Long Live Our Love 3:08
21. Sophisticated Boom Boom 2:10
22. He Cried 3:07
23. Dressed In Black 2:51
24. Past, Present And Future 2:41
25. Paradise 3:14
26. Love You More Than Yesterday 2:39
27. Wishing Well 2:05
28. Hate To Say I Told You So 1:36
29. Give Him A Great Big Kiss 2:14
30. How Pretty Can You Get 0:11
31. Revlon Endorsement 0:14
32. Good Taste Tip 0:52
33. Dating Courtesy Tip 0:56

Your Download-Link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/4807873/shangrilas.rar

Saturday, July 22, 2006

The Crystals - Best of The Crystals

The Crystals - Best of the Crystals

Among aficionados of the girl group sound, there can't be five acts more beloved than the Crystals. Their best-known songs, which include "He's a Rebel," "Uptown," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Then He Kissed Me," and "There's No Other Like My Baby," are among the finest examples of the best that American rock & roll had to offer in the period before the British Invasion; and decades into the CD era, the group's records are still prized in their original vinyl pressings even by non-collectors, who seem to recognize that there was something special about the Crystals' work. The group was originally a quintet consisting of Barbara Alston (born 1945), Dee Dee Kennibrew (born 1945), Mary Thomas (born 1946), Patricia Wright, and Myrna Gerrard, organized by Benny Wells while they were still in high school. All of whom had started out singing in churches; Barbara Alston was Wells' niece, and although she later became known as their lead singer on many of their records, Alston was actually recruited as a backup singer by her uncle. Under Wells' guidance, they began performing in more of a pop vein, and one of the gigs that they got was cutting demos for the publisher Hill & Range, which brought them to the Brill Building in midtown Manhattan. It was there, while they were rehearsing, that they chanced to be heard by Phil Spector, who at that time was just starting up his own label, Philles Records. He was in the market for new talent and the Crystals — who, by that time, had lost Gerrard and added La La Brooks to their lineup as lead singer — were just what he was looking for, sort of. He liked their sound and their range, but he didn't initially like Brooks' voice and insisted on Alston taking the lead, somewhat reluctantly on her part. In September of 1961, the slightly reconfigured group cut their first hit, "There's No Other Like My Baby," which rose to number 20 nationally. It was a promising beginning, putting the group, Spector, and his new label on the map; although another song cut at about the same time, "Oh, Yeah, Maybe, Baby" (which featured Patricia Wright on lead), pointed the way to the group's future, with its understated yet boldly played string accompaniment. In early 1962, the Crystals recorded a Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil song called "Uptown," using an arrangement that was a tiny bit lighter on the percussion (except for castanets, of which it had many) but pushed the guitar and the strings out in front more than "Oh Yeah, Maybe, Baby" had. Barbara Alston's strong-yet-sensuous vocals enunciated lyrics that were as steeped in topical subject matter, especially about the frustrations of life in the ghetto, as they were in romance. This gave "Uptown" a subtly two-pronged appeall; it was a gorgeous pop record, but also a new kind of pop record, eminently listenable yet serious in its subtext. No, it wasn't "Blowin' in the Wind," but it seemed to evoke a social realism that heretofore eluded the pop charts. "Uptown" reached number 13 nationally. Its production marked a major step forward in the making of rock & roll singles in its production, and heralded a newer, bolder era in pop music and R&B, very much of a piece with such hits as the Drifters' "Up On the Roof," but with an undercurrent of frustration that the latter song lacked; it all pointed the way toward the more sophisticated and socially conscious kind of songs that Sam Cooke would soon be generating. It was at this point, in the wake of "Uptown," that the history of the Crystals gets a little more complicated. It wasn't until June of 1962 that they had another single ready to go, and it engendered all kinds of problems that "Uptown" had avoided. If that song had gotten a serious lyric across with an elegant and quietly passionate setting, "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" (co-authored by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, no less) was the reverse, presenting a disturbing lyric about infidelity and the physical abuse of a woman by a man, in a dark, ominous manner. Barbara Alston and company gave it everything they had, and Spector came up with a surprisingly subtle, bolero-like arrangement, but it was a lost cause. Radio stations simply wouldn't play it, and the public didn't like the song, period; according to Barbara Alston, the group didn't like it either, and to this day nobody understands exactly what was in Spector's mind when he cajoled them into cutting it. The following month, Spector was back in the studio running another Crystals session, except that this time it wasn't really the Crystals that he was recording, but Darlene Love. As the owner of the Crystals' name and, as their producer, possessing the right to record anyone he wanted (or anything he wanted) and label it as being from "the Crystals," he decided to forego any further battles over who should sing lead, and forego using the group entirely for "He's a Rebel." A celebration of street-level machismo like no other, it was an upbeat number with gorgeous hooks and, with none of the baggage of its failed predecessor, became a number one hit, as well as engraining itself in pop culture history as a quintessential girl group classic. Darlene Love was the lead singer on the next hit by "the Crystals," "He's Sure the Boy I Love," as well. It wasn't until early 1963 that the group again sang on one of their own records, "Da Doo Ron Ron," and by that time, Spector had accepted La La Brooks in lieu of Alston as lead singer. That record rose to number three in America and became their second biggest British hit, reaching the number five spot in the U.K. That placement, along with the U.K. number two position for "Then He Kissed Me" (which also got to number six in America), was very important, because at the time a lot of major British bands were about to break onto the charts at home, before coming to dominate American music a year later. "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me" became among the most popular American rock & roll songs of the period in England, covered by all manner of acts on-stage and on-record. The Crystals were in a seemingly enviable position, except for the fact that they and Spector were increasingly at odds over what he was doing with them. They'd been unhappy from the time when Spector began using their name on behalf of records made by Darlene Love, and every time they were obliged to perform those songs on-stage it grated against them, and in 1963 they were almost constantly touring and performing. By 1964, they also perceived Spector's growing inattention; he had lately discovered a girl trio called the Ronettes on whose music and lead singer, Veronica Bennett, he was lavishing ever more of his time and energy. Meanwhile, the Crystals were making good and interesting songs, such as the beautiful "Another Country, Another World," "Please Hurt Me," and "Look in My Eyes," the latter a bluesy ballad that showed a side of their sound that Spector seldom tried to explore. The group had released two LPs hooked around their major hits, Twist Uptown and He's a Rebel, in 1962 and 1963, respectively, that had some good songs on them, but Spector's attention and enthusiasm was increasingly directed elsewhere. Spector's seeming dismissive attitude toward the group may have been best illustrated by the most bizarre record with which he, the group, his label, or almost anyone else in the music business had ever been associated: "(Let's Dance) The Screw." Spector had never been one to keep business partners very long — in that regard, he was a lot like the movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn — and in 1964, he'd settled a lawsuit against Lester Sill, the man with whom he'd started the Philles label. As a parting shot at Sill — and, it is rumored, to fulfill the terms of a settlement that required him to pay a share of the proceeds from the next Crystals single — he devised an otherwise un-releasable single that Philles pressed, called "(Let's Dance) The Screw." On it, Spector talked the lyrics while the Crystals sang backup, in a five-minute musical joke that is also one of the rarest records of the 1960s (supposedly only a handful were ever produced, one of which was sent to Sill). Personal jokes by their producer were all well and good, but by 1964, following the failure of two consecutive genuine Crystals singles, the group — with Frances Collins replacing Patricia Wright — was no longer interested in working with Spector. The following year they bought out their contract and headed to the seemingly greener pastures of the Imperial label, where they found no success; by that time, the only girl groups that were still competitive in the music marketplace were associated with Motown. By 1966, the Crystals had disbanded, and for five years no one heard anything about the group except in airplay on oldies stations. Spector had even closed down Philles Records, and the resulting unavailability of their records except on the radio only raised the value of the old copies that were out there, and made his periodic reissues of the group's work that much more prized by fans. Then, in 1971, with the rock & roll revival in full swing, the groupmembers reunited and spent a few years delighting audiences on the oldies circuit. Various incarnations of the group resurfaced every so often in the late '70s and 1980s, but at the dawn of the 21st century, Dee Dee Kennibrew was still leading a version of the group and had even managed to get them recorded.


Your Download-Link:
http://rapidshare.com/Crystals.rar

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Sabicas & Joe Beck - 1966 - Rock Encounter

Sabicas & Joe Beck - 1966 - Rock Encounter

Tracks :
1 - Inca song
2 - Joe's Tune
3 - Zapateado
4 - Zambra
5 - Handclaps
6 - Flamenco Rock
7 - Bulerias
8 - Farruca

This album shows a fantastic mixture of authentic traditional Flamenco,Progressive and Psychedelic Rock by Spanish legend Sabicas and extraordinary electric Jazzrock guitar by Joe Beck with congenial backing band among others Donald Mac Donald on drums, Warren Bernhardt organ and Tony Levin on bass. This is an album for those, who are willing to look over the edges of their progressive and psychedelic horizon.Great guitar playing (lots of electric and acoustic guitars) all over.Unique and hypnotizing!

_______________________________________________________

Sabicas
Guitarist
Composer / songwriter
Name:Agustín Castellón Campos
Birth: 1912 Pamplona
Death: 1990 Nueva York


"In Sabicas, I saw a new form of playing, something new...". Paco de Lucía

He represented a breaking point for the flamenco guitar and he revealed flamenco to the whole world, via America. He was absolutely innovative, and revolutionised guitar playing with his speed and polished execution with a right hand technique that is unmistakeable and unrepeatable. His influence has been unquestionable for the new generations of guitarists, passing through the work of Paco de Lucía and Serranito.

He was born between Sanfermines (Pamplona's world-famous feast) and gypsies, in the city that Hemingway made popular with his pen, and his parents bought him his first guitar when he was four years old, when he was just strong enough to lift it. Two years later, he was already making his debut on a stage. In his beginnings, he was a fanatic follower of Ramón Montoya. Nonetheless, his work accompanying the most important cantaores of the time helped him to conceive a far more personal style of playing.

During the Civil War (1936) he went into exile to South America with Carmen Amaya and, together, they embarked on several tours. Sabicas grew fond of those lands, and settled in New York, where he played concerts as a solo artist. He became open minded, to the point where he made the first attempt at fusion with Joe Beck, Rock encounter (1966). He also struck up an important relationship with jazz masters like Charles Mingus, Ben E. King, Gill Evans, Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. He even played for President Roosevelt in the White House and was treated as just another artist by the record labels, which distributed his records all over the world.

He did not return to Spain until 1967. Twenty years later, his country of birth gave him a national tribute for the first time, in the Teatro Real in Madrid. Earlier, in 1982, Pamplona had dedicated its feast, the Sanfermines, to him. He recorded with Enrique Morente a year before he died.