Record Rummage (US) - 42: The Beach Boys

Yes. I still have more of these squirreled away.

THE BEACH BOYS
Christmas Album
(Capitol, no date given)
OK. Here’s our theory. Christmas sucks and we need Christmas music to save the day. But most Christmas songs just go on too dang long. Which is where the Beach Boys come in. Brian knew. This record features five original tracks by Mr Wilson, all of them under 2.14 seconds so you can leave the party early and get down to the real fun. Like what? Oh, we dunno—playing more Christmas records, perhaps? We can’t think of anything more fun than forced gaiety. Really. Especially when Christmas exposes the vulnerability and loneliness of the most vulnerable and lonely of people. Why do you think suicide rates go up over the holiday season, you bastards? Three Christmases ago, we had no one to call, no one to speak to. Did you fucking care? WE DON’T FUCKING THINK SO! Anyway, the Beach Boys. According to the sleeve, you can hear the Beach Boys accompanied by a sonorous 40-piece orchestra. We thought sonorous meant boring, but maybe it means “Christmas-y”. This is more Beach Boy-y than Christmas-y. The Beach Boys were so Beach Boy-y they could drown out even the most formidable of holidays.
Cost 92 cents. Bargain value 4, slip cover 0

Record Rummage (US) - 41: Olivia Newton-John

Think she may have been featured earlier but... hey! This is Olivia Newton-John we're talking about!

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN
Clearly Love
(MCA, 1975)
The 70s was a wild decade - the Rubik Cube (let’s reclaim the Rubik Cube for the 70s! None of this revisionist crap - we were in high school when we twiddled our blocks, and that was the 70s!), pop rocks (little candies that exploded in your mouth), lycra tops and roller-boogie (disco on rollerskates). And upside-down album sleeves! Which way is up? Which way is down? Whatever, man. If it feels good, do it. Witness the gatefold sleeve to Clearly Love - we love the denim overcoat, but can’t decide if it’s overshadowed by the haunting foreknowledge Olivia obviously had of Princess Di’s haircut. And upside down? An Indian Maiden. Olivia has always possessed a great country voice - witness her haunting yet chirpy version of the song that Blue Cheer earlier made famous (“Summertime Blues”). We like “Xanadu”, that’s the one. We met Debbie Harry’s ex-manager once, and he told us that Olivia was the singularly most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. Is that relevant? We like “Xanadu”. This is a very personal album. On the inner sleeve there are photos from her family scrapbook, in her different denim outfits, showing off her ponies and puppies. Plus, there’s a song about cooking marshmallows. And “Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying”... this album will soon replace Bobby Gentry in our affections. Hair-stylist: Arthur Johns. A bit of a find, we thinks.
Cost 92 cents. Bargain value 7, slip cover 8

Record Rummage (US) - 40: Elvis Presley

Aha! There you were thinking I'd run out of these! NO WAY! No way. Look. Here's another cheesy entry coming up now...

ELVIS PRESLEY
50,000,000 Elvis Presley Fans Can’t Be Wrong
(Victor, 1974 — El Salvador pressing)
Fault 1: the Elvises on the sleeve are purple, not gold. Fault 2: the jacket is for Volume Two and the record is for Volume Three. Fault 3: the jacket says El Salvador, the record says Mexico. And, if we’re being pedantic, then yes — 50, 000, 000 Elvis fans CAN be wrong. Witness jazzercize (disco aerobics done to the strains of jazz standards) or a “A Fifth Of Beethoven” (classic music discofied). And mullets. We count 16 Elvises on the front cover alone — and that’s a lot. Even for Elvis. It’s a bi-lingual edition, so now we understand “Hermanita” means “Little Sister” and we find it very comforting to know that “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” translates as “Estas Sola Esta Noche?” The inner sleeve has a very amusing slogan: “Hear the difference—for those who can”. Very quizzical. The back cover is scary: it looks like an Xerox copy before they made xerox copies, he’s managed to have a DA haircut on the top of his head, and something about the way his face is lit makes him look like a child porn star, like he’s eight years old. But for 23 cents, you can’t argue with the value.
Cost 23 cents. Bargain value 10, slip cover 1

Record Rummage (US) - 39: Wham!

"You make the sunshine brighter than Doris Day"... whoa. Would the kids today even get that reference?

WHAM!
Make It Big
(Columbia, 1984)
True fact: K records founder Calvin Johnson was the first seriously committed Wham! fan in the Northwest — he dressed like Wham!, stood up for Wham! in street fights and never dropped off to sleep without telling his bed-partner “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”. His contemporaries always thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t. He, and they were serious. Great fuckin’ tunes, man, great fuckin’ tunes. Impeccable proto-Miami Vice hair — formal on the cover, more casual on the inside. And what a prescient album title! They wrote on their shirts! They drove fast cars! They wore horrible fishnet gloves! They dated Princess Di! They took cocaine! In vast quantities! But who didn’t?! Features great party mix of “Wake Me Up...” segueing smoothly into “Everything She Wants” with a bass that seems to be almost singing along! Everything about Wham! reminds us of really effective plastic surgery.
Cost 46 cents. Bargain value 3, slip cover 0

Record Rummage (US) – 38: Steppenwolf

Um, I really have no authority to speak about this one. Blame my friend (again).

STEPPENWOLF
16 Greatest Hits
(Dunhill, 1973)
Battered sleeve, indecipherable front cover photograph of the band, stoned hippy high school collage back. Good condition vinyl, though. Plus, there’s an essay on the sleeve which is the swansong of the band, letting everyone know that this is just the crappy Cash Cow collection to summarize for the jocks something that might’ve happened years before. This album is a modern convenience for sports enthusiasts and fraternity brothers. Contains anthem “Born To Be Wild”, its reprise “Magic Carpet Wild” and the murky origins of all that is heavy metal. And we all know that sports enthusiasts were, once upon a time hippies — at least in their minds. Suitably scratched up from having a thousand joints rolled up on it — or from a thousand bachelor parties. It’s unfortunate then, that Steppenwolf’s 16 Greatest Hits sounds like identikit Southern boogie. “Take the world in a love embrace/I fly out into space”... we know whole underwater communities who’ve taken that as their creed.
Cost 92 cents. Bargain value 3, slip cover 2

Record Rummage (US) - 37: 10CC

We began parting ways with our colleagues in the UK music press when we realised that some of them were being quite serious as holding this up as a masterpiece...

10CC
The Original Soundtrack
(Mercury, 1975)
In the UK, men of a certain age still reach for a cigarette and look desperately round for a dance, trying to appear cool and uncaring , when they hear the opening few notes of “I’m Not In Love”. Bitter? Us? The album, however, sounds like an advertisement for something. A Steely Dan record, perhaps? It’s very conceptual. We’re scared to play “I’m Not In Love” even now. We were like 10 years old when it came out, and it seemed like the most sophisticated, adult, love song we’d ever heard. Like we knew. They had this Radio One spot in the UK called Our Tune whereby this DJ called Dave Lee Travis (“the Hairy Cornflake”) would recite unbelievably traumatic, painfully sad tales of woe and heartbreak over music which, nine times out of 10, was “I’m Not In Love”. That slot traumatised a nation. Hearing it again reminds us of when we first listened to the radio on, under the bed-covers late at night, it was the first song we noticed — this and “Killer Queen”. It is rather surprising, on reflection, that these are adults singing the song — it’s such a 10-year-old’s love tragedy fantasy.
Cost 92 cents. Bargain value: 5, slip cover 7

Record Rummage (US) – 36: Altered Images

Think I must've been in altered states to have penned this review. Goddamn it! How could I have been so mean, so easily influenced by cynical Yanks? I mean, check this.

ALTERED IMAGES
Happy Birthday
(Portrait, 1981)
According to our learned American friend there was a time around 1980 when all the male pop stars were incredibly wimpy and all the female pop stars were Cyndi Lauper. “Which,” he told us, “in fact, is Olivia Newton-John at the wrong speed. You could slip this in during Cyndi Lauper Marathon Day, and no one would notice. Is this Gwen Stefani’s grandmother? There aren’t any songs on this record. You paid 92 cents for this? It would be embarrassing to be caught paying seven cents for this. Why did you buy this record?” We’re glad you asked us that question. Because we had a crush on the singer.
Cost 92 cents. Bargain value: 1, slip cover 0