Ace releases for Nov

New Releases for NOVEMBER 2004 from Ace Records THE DAMNED / Machine Gun Etiquette (25th Anniversary Edition) - CHISWICK - CDWIKD 250 Formed in 1976, the Damned were Britain's first punk rock band. By 1979 they had managed to disintegrate and re-assemble, way before it was fashionable. By then punk rock and its neater sibling, new wave, were regularly producing real hits in the UK and the Damned were no exception, with three hit singles drawn from the MACHINE GUN ETIQUETTE LP released that year. more THE DAMNED / Smash It Up (25th Anniversary Edition) - CHISWICK - SMASH 001 Smash It Up was originally conceived as being in four parts. However somehow or other only 1, 2 and 4 were recorded during the sessions at Sound Suite and Wessex. The only version of Part 3 is Captains demo and so with much technological jiggery pokery we have slotted it in to produce the first (official) release of Smash It Up Parts 1-4. Besides that you get the original single A&B and the video - lucky you. more THE ROOMATES / The Classic Sound Of - ACE - CDCHD 1024 I first came across the Roomates back in the late 80s when I was editor of a small doo wop magazine. Concentrating mainly on the Italian American groups of the New York area in the late 50s and early 60s it quickly became apparent that there was a group right here in the UK who, according to the readers' letters I was receiving, were singing and recording in that very style. more CHARLES BUKOWSKI / Reads His Poetry - TAKOMA - CDTAK 6514 "THE WORLD'S GREATEST LOSER, BUT HE NEVER GAVE UP", booms Charles Bukowski with a beery menace at the City Lights Bookstore-sponsored reading in San Francisco, back in 1972. Bukowski never gave up himself and this poetic soundtrack to his life at that point has it all in abundance: tales of the horsetrack, unrepentant sex fiends, dogs with style, death, his childhood in Los Angeles. more THE NEWBEATS / Run Baby Run - ACE - CDCHD 1033 Falsetto fans, rejoice! Volume two of Ace's three volume Newbeats' Hickory retrospective boasts the RUN BABY RUN album (in magnificent stereo, no less) plus a heaping helping of rare non-album cuts. Like the first volume, "Bread And Butter / Big Beat Sounds" (CDCHD 1006), this essential collection is filled to overflowing with soulful, stomping, big-sound pop. The third and final volume will compile the Newbeats' remaining Hickory 45s, all surviving unreleased material as well as the complete Hickory solo recordings of Newbeats Larry Henley and the Mathis Brothers (Dean and Marc). more BRENDA LEE /Grandma, What Great Songs You Sang! / Miss Dynamite - ACE - CDCHD 1027 Here is the first volume in Ace's forthcoming programme of Brenda Lee re-issues that will see her first ten LPs for US Decca paired across five CDs. The best selling female pop vocalist of the early to mid 1960s, Brenda Lee was an international megastar who sold over 100 million records - she was voted Best Female Vocalist by the NME for five consecutive years - all before she was 21. And while it is true to say she showed a preference for recording ballads in order to attract the greatest number of record buyers, she also possessed one of the toughest rock'n'roll voices of the period - THE greatest according to John Lennon. more WHERE THE GIRLS ARE / Volume 6 - ACE - CDCHD 1032 Ace Records have been spoiling fans of femme pop this year, what with the "Boy Trouble", "Girls With Guitars" and "Good Girls Gone Bad" compilations, not to mention CDs by the Emotions, Sharon Tandy and Sue Thompson. Heck, I hear whisper that there's even a new "Early Girls" in the offing. Just as well, as the latest volume of "Where The Girls Are" has taken over a year to prepare for release. We keep trying to outdo ourselves, you see, hence the tantalising wait. But haste makes waste, as Jackie Ross used to say. Anyway, you can't have too much of a good thing, I reckon. more RICHARD BERRY / Yama Yama! The Modern Recordings 1954-1956 - ACE - CDCHD 1029 Richard Berry was still in his teens when he hooked up with Modern Records. A hungry young multi-talented man, with a desire to learn, an envelope-pushing career vision and a willingness to experiment with any and every style of black music, he strove to perfect his craft. His extraordinary versatility was both a help and a hindrance to his career. A help in that it enabled him to apply himself to any strand of R&B from languid doo wop to feral New Orleans R&B, but a hindrance, perhaps, in that hardly any two consecutive singles by Richard sound like they are by the same person. more WELL PLAY THE BLUES FOR YOU - STAX - SCD 8613 Think of Stax Records and chances are you'll think of Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor or others among the company's major soul acts. Not unreasonably so, either, as in both its blue and yellow incarnations Stax was rightly celebrated as the epicentre of quality Southern Soul. But - as befits a predominantly black music label based in the "Home Of The Blues" - the company also gave maximum respect to the genre of music that originally put Memphis on the musical map, and thus for most of its lifespan there was a steady stream of quality blues releases interspersed among the classic soul 45s released on Stax, Volt and the company's other subsidiary labels. more BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE / Fire&Fleet&Candlelight - VANGUARD - VMD 79250 1967's Fire&Fleet&Candlight captures Native American songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie gradually emerging from the earlier 60s folk scene, but still recognisable as a child of that musical movement with her quavering voice, guitar and mouth bow. Traditional fare as Lord Randall, Reynardine and the Lyke Wake Dirge (using Benjamin Britten's music) with Joni Mitchell songs The Circle Game and Song To A Seagull, the old-timey Bascom Lamar Lunsford song Dogget's Gap and eight of Sainte-Marie's own compositions including The Seeds Of Brotherhood and the wonderfully titled 97 Men In This Here Town Would Give A Half A Grand In Silver Just To Follow Me Down. more BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE / Moonshot - VANGUARD - VMD 79312 On 1972's MOONSHOT, Buffy had surrounded herself with the cream of Nashville session musicians (many of them were part of the group that would find their own fame, recording as Area Code 615). The musicians included Charlie McCoy, Billy Sanford, David Briggs, Norbert Putnam and Kenny Buttrey, as well as the Memphis Horns. The session mixes up Gene Thomasson's Lay It Down, Arthur Crudup's My Baby Left Me and Micky Newbury's Sweet Memories and Newbury with co-writer Townes Van Zandt's Mister Can't You See Me with her own original songs like Native North American Child. The songs are generally upbeat with Buffy singing out extrovertly over the punchy brass, rock chords and sinewy bass lines. more LARRY CORYELL&THE ELEVENTH HOUSE / Improvisations - VANGUARD - VMD2 79540 Popular musical movements can sometimes be so compelling that they affect all other forms of music around them. In the 1950s, rock 'n' roll changed the landscape for most country music and gave birth to such 'new' styles as skiffle. During the progressive rock age from the late 60s to early 70s, other genres were so marked by the musical and commercial changes of the era that they developed hybrid offshoots with true hybrid names - folk-rock, classical rock and jazz-rock. more THE SONICS / Have Love Will Travel - BIG BEAT - SONIC 001 Back in the mid-1960s, the legendary Sonics took rocknroll by the scruff of the neck and thrashed it to within an inch of its life, leaving a legacy of some of the most savage, visceral recordings ever made. more __________________________________________________________________________________ DAVE GODIN - A TRIBUTE Dave Godin died peacefully in his sleep on the morning of Friday 15 October. He had been ill for some time and was fully accepting of his fate, though he put up a typically brave fight. more ............. http://www.acerecords.co.uk/extras/DaveGodin.html _________________________________________________________________________________ Produced by Ace Records Ltd