Harry Langdon in HOUSE OF ERRORS (PRC Pictures, 1942)

HOUSE OF ERRORS was the second feature film pairing silent (and sound) comedy great Harry Langdon (who also wrote the story) with British comic actor-writer-director Charley Rogers (best known for his work as a writer-director with Laurel and Hardy), playing Bert and Alf. In this one, the boys are the lowest level of employees at a newspaper and have always wanted to be reporters. They happen to overhear a potential story about an inventor who has a new model machine gun (this is a wartime film, after all!), and they pose as servants in order to get into his house. While there are some other wonderful elements in the film (one scene taking place in a flophouse features Monte Collins doing a brilliant routine about a flea circus–one wonders if Langdon, who wrote the story for the film, dragged that routine out of his old vaudeville days!), what makes it worthwhile are Langdon and Rogers. Langdon wrote in any number of scenes that rely on his brilliant physical comedy skills, honed during years of vaudeville work and in his classic silent shorts and features. The scene with the “fish hooks” coming through the window, the scene where he is walking along the molding on the wall of the flophouse, the scene at the movie’s start with the car horn–there are any number of hilarious comic set-ups. Rogers is the more aggressive of the duo, and he is the perfect foil for Langdon’s lost, confused character. This is a low-budget PRC feature, but director Bernard B. Ray was a master of getting the most out of a little because of his experience running his own studio in the 1930s and directing some classics in the western and action veins, starring the likes of Tom Tyler and Richard Talmadge and Jack Perrin. The lighting in this film is rudimentary at best and the sets ultra-cheap, but who cares? Langdon could perform in front of a brick wall, and he would be brilliant. I’m glad he had the chance to star in films like this one, the earlier DOUBLE TROUBLE with Rogers, DUMMY TROUBLE/MISBEHAVING HUSBANDS with Ralph Byrd, and his continuing series of Columbia comedy shorts during the early 1940s, in the last few years of his career and life. His timing and mannerisms and ability to play off others had not diminished. Langdon fans should NOT miss HOUSE OF ERRORS.

THE LOVE-INS (1967), starring Richard Todd and the Chocolate Watchband

If this film is known at all nowadays, it’s because of the brief appearance of The Chocolate Watchband (they also appeared in another Sam Katzman-produced psych-sploitation film from 1967, RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, which would make the perfect double-feature partner with THE LOVE-INS), who certainly look and sound great here. I remember seeing this for the first-time in the middle of the night on some local TV station back in perhaps the early 80’s. I may have been coming in late from my job at a restaurant/bar in Stillwater, OK. They had a policy where employees could get two drinks after their shift (can you imagine anyone having a policy like that today!), and I always took a double-scotch with a splash of soda and a twist of lime on the rocks. I’d pound that down at maybe 1:30 or so (we closed at 1 on weeknights) and head home on foot walking through the sleepy college-town neighborhoods where most houses were darkened except for a few insomniacs whose living rooms were lit by the flickering artificial light of TV screens and a few weeknight-partiers from whose houses you could hear a subdued thumping of whatever music they were playing. If there was much cable TV back then, I certainly did not have it, so I relied on the old circular UHF antenna on my B&W portable TV to pull in the low-power UHF stations from Oklahoma City or Tulsa. There was always a bit of drift and snow to the picture, but it was what you could get back then and I was fine with it. I’d rather have quality vintage B-movies and European genre films at 2:30 a.m. with a snowy B&W picture than today’s crap in sparkling HD.

I knew that this film existed and that the Watchband were in it, but that was about it, and I also was not expecting the film. I had no idea what was being shown that night—I just turned on the TV at the time the late late movie came on and hoped for the best.

Sam Katzman’s roots as a producer go back to the early 1930’s (the 1933 John Wayne romantic comedy HIS PRIVATE SECRETARY, once a bargain-bin public domain staple in the early days of VHS, is the earliest Katzman project I can remember seeing), and beginning in the mid-1950s he cashed in on various rock and roll trends with two Bill Haley vehicles, then in the early 60’s two Chubby Checker vehicles, then a Hootenanny film in 1963, then a few Elvis films in the King’s waning days such as Kissin’ Cousins, and then two features cashing in on hippies and protest and psychedelia etc., RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP (released by AIP) and THE LOVE-INS (released by Columbia). We at BTC love him for his great film series such as The East Side Kids, the Bela Lugosi films at Monogram, and the Jungle Jim films with Johnny Weissmuller, as well as the lean crime programmers he made at Columbia in the late 40’s and early 50’s and the oddball serials he made at Columbia from the late 40’s through the end of the serial era (such as the outrageous 1948 Sir Galahad serial with George Reeves!). Someone like Katzman saw the mid-60’s music and culture trends as just another screwy fad that could be cashed in on by getting an exploitatively titled feature film in the theaters as quickly as possible.

When I stumbled across this film in snowy B&W in the Oklahoma of the early 80’s, what I got—no doubt helped by my fuzzed-out doublescotch-seared brain after working two jobs and going to two college classes between them that day—was something that played like a feature-length DRAGNET 1967 drug episode.

The film begins with the publishers of an “underground newspaper” called TOMORROW’S TIMES at what looks to be some kind of old-line private college in some affluent green-shrubbed suburb of Los Angeles, getting suspended from their college as they refuse to stop publishing their paper. These radicals are played by James MacArthur (later of HAWAII FIVE-O fame) and Susan Oliver (who’d worked for Katzman previously in the Hank Williams bio-pic YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART, where George Hamilton played Hank! Ms. Oliver played Hank’s wife Audrey—as Audrey herself is credited with being “technical adviser” on the film (the same credit Col. Parker got on many Elvis films!), one would assume the depiction of Audrey is somewhat sanitized), who look like they just stumbled out of an Up With People rally or a deodorant commercial. Their free-thinking English Lit professor, Dr. Barnett, played by British actor Richard Todd, is up in arms about their being expelled and decides to quit his job at the college in protest. He then becomes a hero to the students at the college and that acclaim seems to go to his head. His next step is to become an Alan Watts-style psychedelic prophet, advocating LSD, open relationships, and the like, and even wearing a white robe as he makes his pronouncements. What’s most interesting about the film—other than the Watchband, of course—is that Todd, a fine British actor who’d once played Robin Hood and who’d been in such prestige films as THE VIRGIN QUEEN with Bette Davis and Otto Preminger’s version of G.B. Shaw’s SAINT JOAN (with a screenplay by Graham Greene!), takes his role totally seriously, as if he’s playing Richard III or Hamlet. He probably read up on Alan Watts and Timothy Leary and maybe attended a Watts lecture as background research for the role (a serious actor like Todd does his research), which gives the film a kind of odd feel—-it’s as if you had some classically trained stage actor shoe-horned into a DRAGNET drug episode, and not given the usual flat line-reading directions by Jack Webb, but allowed to SOAR….while everyone else is doing their TV-movie-level hippie portrayals. Susan Oliver had been in PEYTON PLACE earlier, and there is also a kind of soap opera-ish feel to these proceedings.

One scene in the film which will wake up the dozing (who were watching this in the middle of the night on UHF TV as I was) is where the psychedelic guru Dr. Barnett appears on the JOE PYNE TV show. Pyne’s show was not carried in my area when I was growing up, so I only knew him second-hand during his 1960’s reign, but he was an originator of the bullying talk-show host style later popularized by Morton Downey Jr. and most recently by Bill O’Reilly, who would opine on the issues of the day with a pseudo-populist persona. He attempts to rip Dr. Barnett a new one on-air by baiting him with questions about free-love and free drug use, which Barnett gives sincere and thoughtful answers to, in the best tradition of the liberal Unitarian ministers of the 1960’s and 1970’s who sought to “understand” youth sub-cultures.

The Chocolate Watchband are first seen/heard in the film at the 9:30 point where a tour bus is taking gawking small-town tourists through some psychedelic neighborhood (presumably based on Haight-Ashbury) and the tour guide says “and now we take you to an authentic hippie love-in”….and we cut to the Watchband lip-syncing to their classic ARE YOU GONNA BE THERE (AT THE LOVE-IN) (EDITOR’S NOTE—the ultimate PUNK ROCK song if you ask me!). Some of you will know the facts about this better than I, but it seems as though this is a slightly different mix of the song, with Dave Aguilar’s vocal clearer and more up-front (the instruments are lower in the mix), but it would seem to be the same performance. In any event, it sounds GREAT. You see a lot more of Richard Todd’s reaction shots as he walks around the love-in and of the Hollywood-extra “hippies” in the audience than you see of the Watchband, but at least they are there pounding it out and giving SOME authenticity to this strange faux love-in. At around the 30 minute mark, we hear an instrumental version of “No Way Out” being performed during a street party, and then in a club scene at about the 34 minute mark we see/hear them doing an instrumental version of “Are You Gonna Be There,” which sounds hot. It’s satisfying to hear the trippy song while couples are making out with colored strobe lights projected onto them (reminding me of the “petting party” makeout sequences in 30’s drug and social disease exploitation films, but in psychedelic color!), and the psychedelic prophet Todd is wearing his white robe and sitting on what seems like a throne. Now THAT’S entertainment! Soon after that, we are treated to Susan Oliver’s “Alice In Wonderland” LSD freakout sequence, which is a classic as those 60’s kitsch freakout sequences go.

The rest of the film, to my knowledge, has no more Watchband music (please correct me if I’m wrong….I fast-forwarded through a DVD-R of the film to refresh my memory). The second half of the film follows Dr. Barnett’s rise to New Messiah levels of fame and also how his movement falls apart and how hypocrisy permeates everything (no surprise there!), and during the final climactic scene in a stadium where Barnett/Todd is giving a speech to a massive crowd, there is an outrageous melodramatic ending that ties up things VERY quickly.

THE LOVE-INS is not as over-the-top as WILD IN THE STREETS, and I can’t really recommend that you buy a copy, but if it’s on cable TV some time (I taped it off cable a few years back), it’s worth checking out if you enjoy 60’s psych-sploitation films. RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP is more entertaining overall as a film, but at least we’ve got Richard Todd (fresh off of starring in two back-to-back Harry Alan Towers-produced Edgar Wallace adventure films in 63-64, SANDERS and COAST OF SKELETONS, both of which I highly recommend) giving this his best, as if he’s NOT in a Sam Katzman film where serious acting was not priority one….and it’s great to hear the Chocolate Watchband anywhere….let’s hope that some people in the hinterlands who saw the film when it was at their local drive-in noted the name of the band and picked up their Tower LP NO WAY OUT. Then you could say that something truly good came out of this film.

Bill Shute (originally published online in 2018)

DUANE EDDY–The Complete RCA Singles, A’s and B’s (Real Gone Music)

DUANE EDDY–The Complete RCA Singles, A’s and B’s (Real Gone Music) CD

    After scoring many twangy guitar-based instrumental hits on the Jamie label from early 1958 through late 1961, Duane Eddy signed with RCA on 2 February 1962. With the wider distribution and more thorough promotion a major label could offer, Duane hoped to take his music to another level during the run of his RCA contract, and in many ways he did. While Eddy’s entire RCA output has been reissued in a Bear Family box set, compilation CD’s of deep cuts from his RCA years have been issued in Germany and the UK, and most of his RCA albums have been reissued in two-on-one CD’s in Europe, his RCA singles have never been reissued as a set, and they’ve certainly never before been reissued in the original mono and remastered by Vic Anesini, acclaimed for his magical work with the Elvis Presley back catalogue.

     While Duane Eddy still sought and got hit singles at RCA, he evolved more into an album artist, and most of his RCA long-players were concept albums of a sort, so hearing his 45’s in crystal clear and punchy mono, back to back, gives an interesting perspective into his three productive years at RCA. He began with western-themed material (always a success for him….and quite influential too, just listen to the reverbed guitar in many Italian westerns, often pure imitation-Duane Eddy), moved on to a TV theme from “Have Gun Will Travel” (he’d had a big hit with the theme from “Peter Gunn,” so why not), and then brought back his old friend and collaborator Lee Hazlewood (with whom Eddy had created his signature sound back in Phoenix in 1957, playing the melody on the bass strings of the guitar and using an old water tank for a cavernous reverb) and moved on to singles that featured female backing vocalists (on some, The Blossoms featuring Darlene Love) singing about Duane as the “Guitar Star” or the man with the “Boss Guitar.” These songs always featured the patented twangy guitar sound way up front, closely recorded so the thickness of the tone and the metal of the strings came right out of the speaker and into the listener’s face.

     There’s a wide range of material on offer here, from acoustic tracks to a semi-classical piece to a gospel song to a Telstar-inspired thing called “Moon Shot”, and on the B-sides Duane often stretched out with extended blues-based jams which have long been treasured by his fans.

     Admirers of Duane Eddy’s unique guitar sound will love this album, as these tracks have never sounded better, and they offer a good cross-section of his time at RCA. Let’s hope Real Gone will consider more archival digs into the man’s RCA work, in the original mono, of course, and  remastered by Vic Anesini.

1 Deep In The Heart Of Texas
2 Saints And Sinners
3 The Ballad Of Paladin
4 The Wild Westerners
5 (Dance With The) Guitar Man
6 Stretchin’ Out
7 Boss Guitar
8 The Desert Rat
9 Lonely Boy, Lonely Guitar
10 Joshin’
11 Your Baby’s Gone Surfin’
12 Shuckin’ (7″ Mono Edit)
13 The Son Of Rebel Rouser
14 The Story Of Three Loves (The 18th Variation From Rhapsodie On A Theme Of Paganini)
15 Guitar Child
16 Jerky Jalopy
17 Water Skiing
18 Theme From “A Summer Place”
19 Guitar Star
20 The Iguana
21 Moon Shot
22 Roughneck

–Bill Shute (originally published in 2017 in Ugly Things magazine)

Tom Conway as Sherlock Holmes on radio, 1946-1947

While Tom Conway had an instantly recognizable signature style as an actor, both on film and on radio, he also had a chameleon-like quality that served him well. For instance, when Basil Rathbone decided to leave the New Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes radio show in 1946, at the height of the fame of the Rathbone-Bruce Holmes films and radio series, Tom Conway was brought in for the 1946-47 season, receiving second-billing to Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Rathbone was so identified with the Holmes character that many people would hear the lines of Holmes dialogue in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories in the voice of Rathbone, the way I hear the voice of Stacy Keach anytime I read a Mickey Spillane ‘Mike Hammer’ novel. Tom Conway was stepping into a potential hornets’ nest by taking over such a well-established role identified with one particular actor, but he managed to echo the famous “clipped tones” of Rathbone while not imitating BR. He sounded like Conway playing Holmes, but I’d swear that someone listening fifty paces away would think it was Rathbone.

For the record, the stars of the New Adventures were as follows:

1939-1946, BASIL RATHBONE (Holmes), NIGEL BRUCE (Watson)

1946-1947, TOM CONWAY (Holmes), NIGEL BRUCE (Watson)

1947-1949, JOHN STANLEY (Holmes), ALFRED SHIRLEY (Watson season one), GEORGE SELDON (Watson season two)

1949-1950, BEN WRIGHT (Holmes), ERIC SNOWDEN (Watson)

In the late 1980s, Simon and Schuster Audiobooks began releasing attractively packaged cassettes featuring two half-hour shows from the final year, 1945-1946, of the Rathbone-Bruce run, eventually releasing 26 volumes. Each featured new wrap-around segments from actors involved with the original show, most importantly original announcer-host Harry Bartell, though the reissues later brought in other actors of the day reminiscing about the show and radio in general, and on some occasions doing newly recorded dramatizations that were Holmes-related. The first four tapes were repackaged as a larger “gift set” which I found circa 1990, leading me to track down the earlier volumes and then acquire the new ones as they were released. The long-gone Book Stop on I-10 in The Colonnade in NW San Antonio would often stock them, though I found some of them on the secondary market at Half Price Books and other used dealers. The shows were assembled by an organization called 221-A Baker Street Productions (Holmes residing at 221-B, of course), and a few years after the complete run of the Rathbone-Bruce volumes, this group went back to the well (the series was well-accepted and must have sold adequately) with a series from the Tom Conway-Nigel Bruce season, calling it MORE NEW ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Fans of the Rathbone-Bruce 45-46 season will remember the sponsor being Petri Wines, which host Harry Bartell rhapsodized about multiple times during each show, with Dr. Watson, the “narrator” of the stories, even making cute references to wine in his banter with Bartell. In the 46-47 season, the sponsor was Kreml Hair Tonic, one of those old-school liquids that men would comb into their hair so it would set in place somewhat and have a kind of shine to it, one of the selling points of which was that supposedly it wasn’t greasy like other products. 

Conway was coming off a very successful run as The Falcon at RKO as well as starring and co-starring in a number of other films at RKO now regarded as classics. He had an elegant presence but also a self-deprecating humor and, what was more important for radio, a rich and nuanced voice, so that he stepped into the role with ease. The Universal Sherlock Holmes films with Rathbone and Bruce, all 12 of them, remained very popular and were even reissued after their original runs, and the only reason the series stopped in 1946 was Rathbone’s desire to avoid typecasting and to return to the stage. Universal would surely have continued making them otherwise, although the studio’s re-invention as Universal-International with a condescending desire to not be associated with “B-movies” might have eventually ended the series in the late 40s. Still, with the much-loved Nigel Bruce the anchor of the show as the storytelling Dr. Watson, with the popular leading man Tom Conway as Holmes, and with a new host, Joseph Bell (pitching hair tonic and shampoo instead of wine), and with the superb mystery-writing team of Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher writing the shows, the 39 episodes are a joy to listen to.

In the 1996-1997 period, Nova Audio/Brilliance Audio began a series running to 16 volumes devoted to the 46-47 Conway-Bruce episodes, once again attractively packaged and in deliberate imitation of the earlier series of Rathbone-Bruce cassettes, with similar new wrap-around material. These were definitely NOT distributed as well as the earlier Simon and Schuster series, which could be found in any decent bookstore of the day. The Nova/Brilliance series of tapes I only found on the secondary market here and there, eventually getting a chunk of the cassettes that I was missing from an Ebay seller whose father was liquidating his audio collection and who sold me the shows  that she had for $4 each (they ran about $9 each originally). I’m actually still missing one of the tapes in the series, which I’ve never seen on offer over the years. I pull these out every few years (I still actively listen to cassettes, with two working boomboxes and five working Walkman-like portable players) and work my way through the series again, marveling at how well it plays and how, even though the stories are not directly based on the original stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all the Holmesian tropes and imagery are used so well by Green and Boucher.

The cassette box pictured above depicts what the reissues of the series look like, with the color differing for each volume. You still see these at flea markets, antique malls, and on Ebay, though nowhere near as often as the better-distributed and better-selling Rathbone-Bruce series. However, it should not be too difficult or expensive to acquire some of the Conway-Bruce cassettes, should you be so inclined, in their attractive over-sized boxes with appealing artwork and show synopses. I have treasured each show of both cassette series for 25+ years now and surely revisit each series annually.

Of course, most of the shows are easily available online–though not with the wraparound content–from multiple sources, so there’s no need to search out the tapes to try a taste of the series.

As with the cassette reissues, the Conway-Bruce radio show was not as much of a hit as the Rathbone-Bruce shows (new Holmes movies were no longer appearing in the cinemas during the Rathbone period, which had undoubtedly helped to promote the earlier seasons). When Texas faced the massive power outage due to winter storms in February 2021, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Mary Anne and I wound up listening to a number of both cassette series on battery-powered devices as our entertainment in our freezing home, where the only heat we had was from boiling pots of water in the kitchen (thankfully, we have a gas stove which could be lit with a match when the power was down).  I could imagine some family in the Upper Midwest huddled around their radio during a snowbound Winter, trying to keep warm while travelling to a radio version of vintage turn of the century (19th into 20th century, that is) London by a fire in their rural living room.

…….

38 of the 39 half-hour episodes of the 1946-1947 Tom Conway/Nigel Bruce season of THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES survive, and they can be found easily online. That’s about 19 hours of listening pleasure!   

One source is the arthur-conan-doyle.com website, though I’m unable to directly link to the show page. Just find  ADAPTATIONS ON RADIO in the menu on the left and you’ll eventually find the 46-47 Conway-Bruce season. You don’t need to be stuck home without power in a blizzard to enjoy them.

There are other pieces about actor Tom Conway’s work on this blog–just go to the search box and enter ‘Tom Conway’.

LYSERGIC SAVIOURS: A PSYCHEDELIC PROPHECY (Particles, UK–CD)

LYSERGIC SAVIOURS: A PSYCHEDELIC PROPHECY

The Holy Grail of Xian Acid Fuzz, 1968-1974

Particles Records, UK (CD)

01. OUR GENERATION – Praise (1972)
02. THE NEW FOLK – Love Comes Down (1968)
03. NEW DAWN – Dark Thoughts (1970)
04. SEARCH PARTY – The News Is You (1969)
05. CONCRETE RUBBER BAND – What Shall We Do? (1974)
06. THE ACCOMPANY – Beside The Still Waters (1974)
07. NEW DAWN – I See A Day (1970)
08. WHISPERS OF TRUTH – Reality (1969)
09. AZITIS – Creation, Lord I See You Cry (1971)
10. MIND GARAGE – There Was A Time (1969)
11. KOINONIA – Wont You Join Me (1970)
12. EDEN – Shady Day (1973)
13. MIND GARAGE – Communion (Water) (1970)
14. EARTHEN VESSEL – You Can (1971)
15. OUT OF DARKNESS – On Solid Rock (1970)
16. EXKURSIONS – Its Been Sent Down (1971)
17. THE SHEEP – Where Do We Go From Here (1973)
18. SEARCH PARTY – You And I (1969)
19. AGAPE – Rejoice (1971)

Though much of this material has been made available elsewhere–through unauthorized needle-drop reissues, through authorized reissues, and through downloads made available online from specialist MP3 Blogs devoted to Christian rock/psych–and will be familiar to the devoted follower of the curious Jesus-psych genre, as a one-volume distillation of the finest of that genre, LYSERGIC SAVIOURS cannot be beat.

I remember this era well. I was in high school in the 1972-75 period, and as a broke teenager, I was always looking for cheap or free cultural events to keep me occupied. I must have attended at least 5 concerts of this kind of thing, although after a few of these, I got tired of the ‘altar calls” these concerts inevitably led to. I was reminded of the techniques of the over-sexualized person on the make….when you would be out for the evening with him or her (or it), every detail, every word, every action would be oriented around “setting up” the eventual seduction move. It was similar to the techniques of the over-zealous salesperson, with every detail of the communication aimed at forcing you to break the flow, change the course of the stream, or else be forced into “closing the sale.” The agenda of the religious proselytizer–like the agenda of the sexual predator or the hungry salesperson–is all about closing another kind of sale, and getting another notch on the belt of the missionary, another sale in the log-book.  As the 70’s moved on, these kind of concerts were more associated with churches and/or evangelical movements, and not just “happenings” organized by Jesus People (as they were known during that period), which tended to NOT have so aggressive a sales-pitch and were thus much more enjoyable. I vividly remember one group who played a free show at my high school in Jefferson County, Colorado: the Holy Ghost Repair Service (you can look them up online and learn more about them).

It was not uncommon for rock’n’roll musicians of the late 60’s to find religion–think of Phil Keaggy (Glass Harp) or the later recordings of Colorado’s MOONRAKERS (compare their Shamley LP with their earlier singles on Tower) such as “Together With Him.” Then there were those who turned to religion later, such as the Music Machine’s Sean Bonniwell. Then there are the various artists who turned to Buddhism, Hinduism, or the occult. Also, think of the Ya-Ho-Wa/Source Family group. Many of the “Jesus People” musical artists of the era had a similar vibe to the Ya Ho Wa people, but oriented around Christian philosophy and “serving the Lord” through music. That’s what we have here on this compilation. That psychedelia and Christian imagery and content can co-exist is not hard to understand if one thinks of “visionary Christians” such as William Blake….or Thomas Merton….or even the Christian-Buddhist angle represented by Jack Kerouac. The spiritual and the trippy are not that far apart, when viewed objectively by the outsider.

Long before “Christian rock” and the K-Love kind of formulaic pablum became the order of the day for “Christian Music,” there was a wide variety of music found under the Christian tent–and people who were essentially hippies but also considered themselves Christians made many records that were both self-issued and issued on subsidiaries of religious labels….or released by street-level evangelical organizations.

This album is basically a “best-of” of such albums. There  used to be MP3 blogs which offered a number of these kind of albums for the picking, provided by and commented on by knowledgeable collectors. Then some of the recordings were re-issued legitimately, and others were pirated by the usual grey-market outfits that reissue private-pressing LP’s on CD.

Rather than give a track-by-track analysis, I’ll let YOU discover the many gems yourself. Many of the bands on offer here made LP’s, so if you like the tracks by bands such as Search Party or Concrete Rubber Band, you can find their albums online or through reissues rather easily. If the description of this curious genre intrigues you, then it’s probably a fairly safe bet that you’d enjoy this compilation, as it’s a best-of-the-best of the genre.