635. D Mob: A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That
636. E.G. Daily: Wild Child
637. Damned Damned Damned
638. Damned: Music for Pleasure
639. Damned: The Black Album
640. Damned: The Light at the End of the Tunnel
641. Charlie Daniels Band: Nightrider
642. Rockin' With Danny and the Juniors
643. Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby
644. The Bobby Darin Story
645. Dark Arts: A Long Way From Brigadoon
646. Sarah Dash
647. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich: Greatest Hits
Mixworthy: "New Rose," #637; "Smash It Up (Parts 1 & 2)," #640; "Rock and Roll Is
Here to Stay" and "At the Hop," #642; "Wishing Well," #643; "Beyond the Sea," #644.
I have doubts about "Wishing Well," but I'm weeding out too much of what I liked
from '86 through '88--the working-in-a-record-store years--so I'll list it. I know
I filed #647 after one listen, but they've got nice ties and haircuts, and almost
any mod-era complilation will have at least one song worth salvaging-- I'll give
it another try and may add something later.
I think the general assumption is that the title of Jay-Z's The Black Album is a
reference to Prince first and maybe the Beatles second. Disagree--I'm fairly sure
it was the Damned who were on his mind at the time...The E.G. Daily album (the Hil-
lary Duff of 1986) must come with one of the last examples of something that is
commonly found on albums from the '60s: the liner-note testimonial to the arrival
of an important new artist, and predictions of said artist's unlimited future in
the recording industry. These tended to be written by columnists from Billboard or
Cashbox in the '60s, sometimes by a well-known performer, and sometimes by unfamil-
iar and unidentified people who possibly had connections with the mechanic of the
lawyer of the artist's next-door neighbour. The beginning of the E.G. Daily Era is
documented by Jellybean Benitez: "In an age where so many actors are trying to be-
come pop stars, while the pop stars are all trying to break into the movies, E.G.
Daily has bridged the gap perfectly by defining her own category. And I've got a
feeling we're going to see and hear a lot more from her before too long." Well, he
wasn't altogether wrong--she's got about a million voiceover credits on IMDB for a
number of high-profile TV cartoons, so a generation or two of kids has been hear-
ing from her ever since. But he wasn't altogether right, either...I'm surprised to
see that Charlie Daniels survived the Randy sell-off--I know it was one of the LPs
I made available to him. The cover art marks it as a definite Logan/Woffinden Rock
Encyclopedia-inspired purchase dating back to high school, with its vivid wash of
blue and green and sky and sea lovingly reproduced on page 63. Sorry, I have no
explanation for D Mob or Dark Arts.
________________________________________________________________________________
648. Miles Davis and His Orchestra: The Complete Birth of the Cool
649. Miles Davis: Volume 1
650. Miles Davis: Volume 2
651. Miles Davis: Round About Midnight
652. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
653. Miles Davis: Sketches of Spain
654. Miles Davis' Greatest Hits
655. Miles Davis: Heard 'Round the World
656. Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
657. Rainy Davis: Ouch
658. Skeeter Davis: The End of the World
659. The Best of the Spencer Davis Group Featuring Stevie Winwood
660. The Tony Orlando & Dawn Collection
661. Dazz Band: Hot Spot
662. Dead Boys: Young, Loud and Snotty
663. Dead Boys: We Have Come for Your Children
Mixworthy: "It Never Entered My Mind," #650; "Blue in Green" and "Flamenco Sketch-
es," #652; "The End of the World," #658; "Knock Three Times," #660; "Sonic Reduc-
er," #662. I love "Milestones," too, something I downloaded a few months ago, so
I'd add that to the Miles Davis group. "Gimme Some Lovin'"? Great song, but no
chance--I can't think of anything that's been more permanently banished to beer-
commercial purgatory.
It doesn't bother me not listing anything by Ornette Coleman; that's an accurate
reflection of how little I play his music. Only three songs by Miles Davis feels
wrong, though, as, big surprise, Kind of Blue is one of my most played records
ever. I know, I know--that's as interesting as saying your two favourite rock
albums are Sgt. Pepper and Blonde on Blonde. There's a recent five-volume series
of budget reference books documenting the 100 best-selling albums of each decade
from the '50s through the '90s. The rankings are only partially based on chart
positions at the time of release; cumulative sales over the years as reflected by
gold and platinum certifications carry much more weight. The '50s volume has Kind
of Blue ranked #3, ahead of Oklahoma! and behind My Fair Lady. Weird--and, if accu-
rate (you have to wonder if the author, Charlotte Greig, isn't editorializing just
a bit), very impressive...Can you guess who I had my picture taken with from this
group? I'll make things a little easier by ruling out Miles Davis, Cheetah Chrome,
and the Dazz Band.
________________________________________________________________________________
664. Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
665. Dead or Alive: "Brand New Lover" 12-inch
666. Dead or Alive: Rip It Up
667. The Best of Bill Deal & the Rhondels
668. DeBarge: In a Special Way
669. DeBarge: Rhythm of the Night
670. Chico DeBarge
671. Chico DeBarge: Kiss Serious
672. The Deele: "Eyes of a Stranger"
673. Deee-Lite: World Clique
674. Deep Purple: Machine Head
675. Deep Purple: 24 Carat Purple
676. Jack DeJohnette: Special Edition
677. Jack DeJohnette: New Direction in Europe
678. De La Soul: "Say No Go" E.P.
679. Delfonics: Golden Classics
Mixworthy: "Brand New Lover," #665; "Highway Star," #674; "La-La Means I Love You"
and "(Didn't I) Blow Your Mind This Time," #679. "Woman From Tokyo" (#675) is close.
I wish I had a vinyl copy of 3 Feet High and Rising--"Eye Know"'s right near the top
of the list of my favourite hip-hop.
I've never understood how the Dead Kennedys always managed to get written about as
if they existed on the same qualitative plane as the early records of X or Black
Flag. They're useless--they were a shrill joke band in 1980, and, without bothering
to check, I bet Fresh Fruit sounds even worse today...The far chronological extremes
of my collection are found in this lot. Machine Head is like a trip back to the Gar-
den of Eden: it was one of the first half-dozen albums I bought when I started col-
lecting back in 1975 (or maybe '76, though the earlier date makes more sense). Also
in that group would be American Woman, Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine, and The
Worst of Jefferson Airplane. Deee-Lite's World Clique came out in 1990, and there
can't be more than a handful of LPs I own that were pressed any later: a vinyl copy
of R.E.M.'s Monster I got as a gift from Scott Woods, a copy of Sonic Youth's A Thou-
sand Leaves I paid $15 for at a half-price sale, and then I start to draw a blank.
I'm conflating two different kinds of chronology here--my own with the record indus-
try's--but both albums seem significant to me nonetheless...OK, I'm off to play Dead
or Alive's Rip It Up backwards to see if there are any hidden Satanic messages.
________________________________________________________________________________
680. The Del Fuegos
681. The Del Fuegos: Stand Up
682. Del-Lords: Frontier Days
683. The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends: Accept No Substitute
684. The Best of Delaney & Bonnie
685. Delaney & Friends
686. The Dells
687. Dells: Greatest Hits
688. Delta 5
689. Demics: Talk's Cheap
690. The Very Best of Martin Denny
691. Catching Up With Depeche Mode
692. Depeche Mode: Music for the Masses
693. Depeche Mode: 101
694. Derek and the Dominos: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
695. Jackie DeShannon: Put a Little Love in Your Heart
696. The Very Best of Jackie DeShannon
697. Jackie DeShannon: Jackie
Mixworthy: "Out for a Ride," #680; "Never Ending Song of Love," #684; "Why Do You
Have to Go," #686; "New York City," #689; "Never Let Me Down Again," #692; "What
the World Needs Now Is Love," #696. In truth I'm tired of "New York City," but as
a Canadian there's a lot of societal and governmental pressure to list it--my
citizenship would be revoked if I didn't. I have the same problem with "Layla"--
even its resuscitation by Scorsese has been squandered by watching GoodFellas too
many times--but there's nothing in our constitution that requires the same degree
of loyalty to Eric Clapton, so I feel as if I can leave that out without fear of
reprisal. The biggest surprise to me here is that the Del Fuegos' "Out for a Ride"
sounds as great as ever.
The Dells belongs to probably the most infamous budget-line series of reissues
ever: the La grande storia del ROCK series out of Italy. There was a Pussy Galore
album that meticulously parodied the generic cover art ("cover art") shared by La
grande storia albums, although I'd have to check, they may have altered the tagline
to read La grande storia del ARTY PIGFUCK THAT PEOPLE ARE INEXPLICABLY GETTING ALL
WORKED UP OVER. The albums themselves were hit or miss. Some were very obviously of
highly suspicious origins--field recordings of Gary Puckett & the Union Gap, demo
tapes unearthed from before Freddy & the Dreamers really got it together--but some,
like The Dells, were perfectly legitimate reshufflings of original material dating
back to the '50s; theirs has stuff lifted from 1959's Oh, What a Nite on Vee-Jay
(pictured inside--gatefold cover + Italian liner notes), filled out with other songs
of similar vintage. Half the La grande storia albums were single-artist, half threw
together as many as five or six artists, and the groupings could be surreal: the Ev-
erly Brothers share #12 in the series with Disco Tex & the Sex-O-Lettes, Lloyd Price
and John Travolta are both found on #29, and Sam Cooke, the Crewcuts, and Iron But-
terfly vie for space on #42. They were generally priced somewhere between a pack
of gum and book of matches. The changeover to CDs actually increased the market for
such semi-legal entrepreneurship tenfold, I guess because CDs are cheaper to mass-
produce--any Wal-Mart dump bin is filled with every kind of budget configuration
and reconfiguration imaginable, most of them with obviously no connection whatso-
ever to the original recordings they pretend to compile. The phenomenon lives on,
but the La grande storia del ROCK series had a lunacy and an aesthetic all its
own.