Imaginary Compilation Album Plug

I'm very grateful to our mutual friend and blogfather of this parish, JC, for publishing another of my very occasional Imaginary Compilation Albums over at his place. This one concerns the music of Micah Blue Smaldone, a fairly obscure artist it's true, but one who means an awful lot to me. Check out the ICA here.

By necessity Micah's early retro country-blues recordings were raw, stripped back affairs, though his later albums are darker in tone and fuller in sound. As I mentioned in the ICA post, I saw Micah just once in concert, on a brief 2014 European tour in support of  his fourth and still most recent LP 'The Ring of the Rise'. The album boasts the backing of a full band, but that evening it was just Micah and his 12 string guitar, together completely captivating the pin-drop silent audience. This super-intense performance of 'A Derelict', segueing into the instrumental 'New Orleans Bump', was filmed during the very same European jaunt. 

Version City #72 - Robyn Hitchcock sings Carl Douglas

JC, our mutual friend and Blogfather of this little corner of t'internet, has once again done me the great honour of featuring an Imaginary Compilation Album of my curation over at his place today. This time around, the subject of my attention is the one and only Robyn Hitchcock, a man whose music I've been digging for a frankly terrifying amount of time - 40 years! As I note in the post, the ten songs selected only scratch the surface of such a long, prolific ongoing career and I have every intention of following up with a Volume 2 in the fullness of time. I'm off to catch an intimate show on his UK tour in a few weeks, so expect more Robyn related gubbins soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the ICA here plus this bonus cover version from the 1990 Anti-Poll Tax compilation 'Alvin Lives (in Leeds)'. Thanks again JC.

Robyn Hitchcock - Kung Fu Fighting

Version City #71 - Ed Kuepper sings The Who

The 208th entry into JC's never-ending Imaginary Compilation Album series featured a guest posting from Martin, head honcho at New Amusements, with a mighty fine ten track whistle-stop trip through the career of bona fide rock legends, The Who. After spotting Martin's chosen subject on my phone, but before I retired to my laptop to read the post and check out his actual musical selections, I jotted down the first ten Who songs that sprang to my own mind, just for fun, so that I could compare and contrast the results. Inevitably our choices overlapped here and there, most pleasingly when it came to the band's marvellous, but oft overlooked 1970 non-LP 45, 'The Seeker'. Israeli beat combo Men of North Country put out a top notch version of the song on their 'Magic' EP in 2014, but, unsurprisingly, my own favourite cover of 'The Seeker' comes from the great Ed Kuepper, who released it on his 1995 acoustic tour souvenir album, 'I Was A Mail Order Bridegroom'.

If you haven't done so already, go check out Martin's fab Who ICA over at T(N)VV here.

Ed Kuepper - The Seeker

The Triffids at T(N)VV

Two days short of what would've been David McComb's 56th birthday, our mutual friend JC has done me the great honour of posting my Triffids Imaginary Compilation Album over at The (New) Vinyl Villain (here). As always when attempting to choose just ten tracks from a favourite artist, the final selection proved excruciatingly difficult to whittle down. In the end I tried for a representative mixture of the band's lighter and darker moments, sequenced into what I hope is a really balanced listen. Among the many other great Triffids songs that came under consideration as I fiddled and faffed with the final running order, was epic live favourite 'Field of Glass', which eventually only failed to make the cut by the smallest of margins. So imagine, if you will, that this is the hidden bonus track on the CD version of the compilation.

The Triffids - Field of Glass