Various Artists: Pensioners On Ecstasy

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Creation 1990.  CRELP 082

Discogs

Creation were in the habit of putting out endless badly compiled and pointless compilations whenever their bank balance was a bit low, which with Kevin Shields’ studio bills to pay, it often was.  This one is certainly badly compiled and some of the tracks are awful, but it isn’t pointless because there are some rare gems amongst the garbage.

First up is The House Of Love with a sublime live acoustic version of Shine On recorded live, apparently during one of Guy Chadwick’s meltdowns.  It was originally on a flexi given away at gigs, and Creation, being hopelessly disorganised had lost the tape, so this was mastered from a rather damaged flexi.  It sounds surprisingly listenable given the source and it’s well worth downloading the album for this track alone.

Next is a My Bloody Valentine rarity – an instrumental taken from a 7″ single given away free with the first few copies of Isn’t Anything.  It’s unlike anything else they recorded, in that it uses a drum loop – in fact the same drum loop Madonna later used on Justify My Love, and works really well.  It’s doubly welcome here because it sounds much better than the original 7″, although it has more recently been included as an extra track on the re-issue of Isn’t Anything.  The same comment applies to the excellent Momus track (I’ve posted a rip of the terrible sounding original 7″ already – this pressing is much better).

The rest are dodgy album out-takes and rejected singles.  Mostly it’s not hard to see why they were rejected, although if there are any bands here you particularly like, they’re worth having.  The Jazz Butcher track is rather good, but this Peel session version is inferior to the officially released one which I’ll post at some point.  Of interest is the Nikki Sudden track which was recorded with Peter Buck of REM – and anyway you can never have too much Nikki Sudden.

Various Artists: Lunacy Is Legend EP

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Barracuda Blue Records 1987.  12UTA9

Discogs

As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t had much time lately to post stuff here, or to do vinyl rips.  That’s because I became a dad for the first time last week, so priorities have shifted a bit.  Things are calming down now so I’ll get back to it, but from now on the pace will be a bit slower.

I’m also having filehost trouble – all music bloggers get it at some point.  Ultramegabit are taking down files much faster than they’re supposed to, bitshare are terminally unreliable and my 4shared account is pretty much full.  So I need another free filehost who doesn’t take files down, but have no time right now to look for one.  Any suggestions gratefully received.

In the meantime, here’s a rather obscure EP which is mostly a Marc Bolan tribute.  The real draw here is Nikki Sudden whose massive body of work is consistently worthwhile.  Here he contributes a rather pleasing acoustic version of Sailors Of The Highway.  The Times later signed for Creation and are mostly an Ed Ball solo project – his version of The Slider adds a nice grungy element to the song.  I know nothing at all about the Necessitarians, nor why of the three tracks they contribute only one is a Bolan cover.

There are more detailed notes about this release than I can be bothered to write here.

Various Artists: Creation, Purple Compilation

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Creation Records 1988.  CRELP 032 CD

Discogs

Some time ago I listed Creation’s first ever CD, a compilation of early singles. It’s been one of the most popular posts, so here’s its companion release, Purple. It covers similar ground, has similar artists and is of a similar high standard. As I recall it didn’t sell nearly as well as the first one – I guess people thought one of these compilations was enough. Anyway if you liked the first one, you’ll like this one too.

Various Artists: The Bridge, A Tribute To Neil Young

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Caroline Records 1989.  CAR CD 5

Discogs

This album is from the days when tribute albums were quite a new idea, and it has a most impressive list of contributing artists; impressive enough to make it worth having for most people interested enough in music to end up reading this blog.

As is always the case, the album is less than the sum of its parts.  Sometimes it just provokes an overwhelming desire to dig out the Neil Young originals, which of course is no bad thing.  Loop for example are so faithful to the original that there doesn’t seem much point, but Bongwater take Mr Soul somewhere entirely new.  Sonic Youth, The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr and Nick Cave all contribute in ways that are entirely predictable, but they were on such great form in 1989 that predictability works here.

If you’re not familiar with Neil Young and like the songs here, you could do worse than get a compilation like Decade which has the original versions of some of these tracks.