Here We Go Again!

I promised you I'd get SOMETHING up this week and so I have. Now those of you who followed me over from my old blog would recognize the Charles Chalmers and the Treasure Isle track, however, the Knickerbockers is new. I have yet to set up my scanner so the 20 or so new tracks I just recorded today won't be ready till I get some pics. I AM working on it but I thought I'd hook you up with some good music to start with. I am using that new File Sharing site BestSharing to upload my tracks. It is free to download from and no time limit like Rapidshare. Let me know how you like it!

See You Soon!

Jason X

Knickerbockers - Lies (APEX 76989)

GRAB IT HERE!

The Knickerbockers were formed in New Jersey back in 1964. They were pretty well known for imitating the popular bands of the time and THIS track takes the cake. The lead vocals on this tune sound just like John Lennon and could easily be mistaken for a Beatles track. The song probably would have been a very popular Beatles track and it was a BIG hit for the Knickerbockers in early '66. APEX is a Canadian shadow label and it had other great garage bands on it's roster as well. Not much more to tell you about these guys other than they faded away into obscurity within a year or so after this hit. The band members have currently been working on re-issue cd's with Sundazed. Enjoy!

Combo with Harold Richardson - Nice Girl Ska (Tower Isle)

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I had the chance to go through a record shop before it even opened about a year ago if I helped them sort out their albums. There were over 50,000 albums and honestly I pulled maybe 4 albums out of the whole mass for my own collection. One of them was this interesting piece. From what I could find, this album was released by the Tower Isle hotel in Jamaica as a kind of sampler for tourists to take home as a souvenir of their visit showcasing the different types of Island sounds. While the majority is Mento and Calypso, it did contain this one track which is a very early (and simple) type of ska. Apparently Harold Richardson and his combo played IN the hotel so people were able to buy the album reminding them of the acts they saw there. The album itself came in a plain sleeve with just a sticker telling you what was inside. No sleeve design at all. Enjoy!

*NOTE: I was just listening to the new Jurassic Five album Feedback and had this funny feeling I'd heard this one song before. I finally figured it out. The song is called "Brown Girl" and I've uploaded it so you can hear the similarities. I'm assuming this song is a traditional effort as it would probably be really really really really coincidental that they found this album track as well....LOL
GRAB IT HERE!

**NOTE: Upon further research and a great lead to a Mento website (thanks Joe) it does indeed look like a rendition of another song called "Brown Skin Girl". That being said, it's very likely that the Jurassics have heard this song from a wide variety of sources.

Charles Chalmers - Poppin' (Chess CS 2040)

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The first time I heard the tune I wasn't all that impressed. It's an instrumental and to be honest I must have been in one of my garage punk moods or something because upon further spins, this simple and catchy soul tune is definately worth the listen. Charles Chalmers was a tenor sax guy and from what I could see, he played as a session man with a lot of the bigwigs in the Chess stable. I'm not sure how many singles he had but this one is a mid-tempo dancer. The lead-out on this song does suffer from some noise...but give it a listen anyways......Enjoy!

UPDATE!!

Do you ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right? Well I won't bore you with the rest of the details, however the one pertinent to this blog is a doozy. I was going through my backup discs of all my recordings in order to start fixing the dead links and to my horror I could not and still cannot find the backup disk for SHINDIGGIT!!! This means that I will not be able to fix all the links like I expected. That being said I believe the best way to go forward at this point is to ask you which of these posts I should repost. I'm not going to slave over the turntable to repost tracks nobody wants. Sound Fair? So email me directly or leave a message on my blog. Either way I will try to get to it as soon as possible.
I HAVE decided that Rapidshare sucks. I have decided to try a new service called Best Sharing. This is a free service and you can download as many files from SHINDIGGIT as you want without that crappy timer. Again this is a new idea and I'd love feedback as to how it's working out. I should be up and ready for my first new post in a few days. Be sure to come back and see what I have for your listening pleasure. Until then...enjoy the songs that ARE still active. ;)

Jason X