if there's a better compiler than Bob Stanley out there, I'd sure like to know...

those 2cd Virgin compilations were so beautiful.... i'm the only fan of "monster, robot and bugmen" compiled by simon hopkins and "jazz satellites" by kevin martin )and "kosmic kuruschi monster (vol.1, sigh....))? wish kevin martin would/could compile more...

Was going to say a similar thing but wanted to articulate *how* and not sure i can right now.

I've been waiting for eons for Vol. 2. Jazz Satellites Vol. 1 was a life-changer. Some key person at Virgin must've got sacked, because it seems like all those amazing comps stopped issuing forth about 5 years ago.

Check out this lineup for the unreleased second volume: http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/adventures/articles/satellites.htm

talking of wire/tony harrington compiled comps, the wire 3cd box on Mute i think is really good, but have never seen reviewed or talked about. Check the tracklist:
http://www.discogs.com/release/125213

Anyway bored that downloading will actually be a pain for little (or big) records companies that will decide so that to issue comps, and the problems about it (licensing), it's no long useful and profitable (even if of unavailable music).

The Garbarek-Coltrane-23 Skidoo-Melle stretch on Jazz Satellites is one of my favorite sequences.

big list of comps here:
http://www.saintetiennedisco.com/compile.html

that there website is a great source, thanks to whoever is doing it!...hopefully, it will be updated over time...(off the top of my head, I can think of two omissions: The Bobbie Gentry Capitol Years comp and the liner notes for the Jasmine Minks Soul Station Creation comp...I think Stanley/Wiggs also did a Dusty Springfield comp)...

yeah, it's actually far from complete. anyone got something better?

psyched 2 read

http://thequietus.com/articles/13523-bob-stanley-yeah-yeah-yeah-interview

Yeah, mine arrives tomorrow.

I was just reading someone’s account of going to a birthday party as a kid and one of the parents brought over ‘Tiger Feet’ by Mud and said, ‘You’ve got to play this, nobody has a party without playing the current Number 1!’

Oh, I was actually that kid!

Tiger Feet was the Gangnam Style of 1974 I guess.

and then the Cat crept in.

Got this for my birthday!

Happy birthday!

Yeah, yeah. (yeah)

only skimmed it so far (it seems like a book that warrants skimming really), but yeah yeah yeah, his history of pop seems interesting, though it seems to have zero interest in recent pop, and its all a bit too much of a flash through pop, never really getting deep into it. inevitable i know, but, it felt like a very post-internet way of writing about music history (should probably sit down with it a bit longer first, its just that after all the amazingly positive reviews, i think i expected something a bit better. the faber book jon savage and hanif kureishi did seems a slightly better approach to what stanley is trying to do, if more skewed towards rock, stanley is more open minded, and more equal in his appreciation of diff genres).

ok, so you have skimmed it, and it seems not to have much depth, right?

Advice: start at page one and read it properly and don't skip chunks, then you should find it more rewarding.

For all that books that attempt to encapsulate the history of pop either tell me little I didn't know, or end up opaque to the point of being impossible to read, this book manages to be entertaining and informative.

The guy's got a problem with Neil Young, that's for sure.

i'm just getting into it -- obviously a very british perspective happening here. seems to be hitting its stride in the mid 60s.

i'm about halfway through and enjoying it. he wears his enthusiasms on his sleeve and he's most useful when describing things he really likes. he's funniest when describing things he doesn't. his chapters are skillful encapsulations and like mark g says it acquires depth as the stories accumulate.

note the u.s. edition is trimmed down by more than 100 pages but gains exclamation points in its title. i'm reading the u.k. version.

He's quite pro-Neil Young isn't he (y'know, having covered Only Love Can Break Your Heart and all that)? Patti Smith and Joe Strummer and David Crosby come in for quite a bit of stick if I remember correctly.

Best thing about the book are the little anecdotes he drops in about various artists, plus the chapters where he covers scenes I don't know much about. Any book with such scope is only going to scratch the surface but it's an excellent overview and he does a good job at joining the lines between scenes - like how disco developed for example. And there are always more obscure records in there as well as the obvious stuff.

There's very little attention given to much post-Crazy In Love but you have to draw the line somewhere, even if I don't really agree with his drawing of the end of the Modern Pop era (I'm not sure I agree much with the concept in the first place).

Oh great, you made me go and get the book. Alright then: "Neil Young [...] had a definitive line in self-pity [...]: 'I went down to the radio interview, found myself at the microphone.' Poor lamb."

The stuff I knew about felt largely like potted music history, which made me suspicious of the rest. He seems to make the same point over and over--when rock and pop parted ways, it was bad. I guess the Abba chapter was good, but again, is any of that new?

Shifting gears back to the particular subject of the thread, his Croydon Municipal label he started last year has been consistently good fun. Emphasis on public domain pop and jazz from the fifties and sixties, various compilations with an emphasis on female singers. He's got a related blog site for it:

http://croydonmunicipal.blogspot.com/

But there's no official site for the label itself as far as I can tell. It's a Cherry Red sublabel and pretty easy to find through their site and other spots.

x-post

Christgau weighs in. I think there's also talk of the book on the ilm good books about music thread.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/anti-rockisms-hall-of-fame/

Discussing Bob Stanley's book. From July 2014

It took me hours just to get through the first chapter of this because I kept having to stop and cross-reference things on YouTube / Wikipedia. Really enjoyable though. I saw him do a talk last year (interviewed by old-ILX's own JtN) and he seemed incredibly charming and humble, and didn't seem too annoyed when the first question from the audience was about what he thought about jazz music.

this book is awesome for making spotify playlists. the one i pulled from the pre-beatles english rock and roll chapter is great.

If you search Spotify for Bob Stanley playlists, you'll find the crowdsourced playlists for Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

A friend recently gifted me Tribal Rites on CD. It’s excellent, particularly the second half. As I’m currently working on a project with the veteran DJ Greg Wilson, I told him about it and he was v.excited by the track listing, particularly for the Sons Of Robin Stone track. So that’s a strong expert endorsement for you there!

Man I've been slack on catching up on the various comps in general. Had missed London A To Z for instance.

Meantime, the other day I'm shopping in Amoeba and I noticed these two comps from him that I had missed completely! (Which of course I bought immediately.)

https://acerecords.co.uk/folk-funk-beyond-the-arrangements-of-john-cameron

https://acerecords.co.uk/incident-at-a-free-festival-1

The latter one is in series with English Weather and Occasional Rain, this time being 1972.

Next up is a Cafe Exil sequel:

https://acerecords.co.uk/fantastic-voyage-1

Plus a really interesting one to me, a Lou Christie comp focusing on 1967. (I keep being very surprised at how Christie barely factors into wider 60s retrospections -- was he too much of a flash in the pan in the end?)

https://acerecords.co.uk/gypsy-bells-columbia-recordings-1967

Thanks for the head's up, Ned! I too have lost track of these comps, which is a shame because I almost invariably enjoy the hell out of them.

I own 76 In The Shade, Occasional Rain, Three Day Week, English Weather (my fave), Paris In the Spring, Tears of Technology, and State of the Union. Aside from this latest batch, are there any other crucial ones I'm missing, aside from Cafe Exil (which I can never seem to find)?

Having gotten them all I can't be truly objective but per the new John Cameron one, gotta give credit to his very interesting producer/arranger overview choices -- the Thom Bell and Norman Whitfield comps arguably work in more familiar territory but they're solid overviews (Bell's own thoughts in the liners are great), but the Robert Kirby one was really striking, a way to open up a view into a lot of 70s UK folk-and-related work I wouldn't have really assayed otherwise.

Meantime I've just now noticed that that 'A Taste Of' series he did for Sainsbury's, which I thought was vinyl only, did have at least some CD issues as well so I may have to start tracking those down.

They sure are coming in thick and fast these days. My hometown record store always has a great compilation section, and when I was just back for the holidays I picked up the Cameron and Free Festival ones, as well as Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night. Still on the hunt for London A-Z and the Latin Freestyle one. Also got the new Bobby Gillespie weepy ballad comp, also on Ace.

Meantime I've just now noticed that that 'A Taste Of' series he did for Sainsbury's, which I thought was vinyl only, did have at least some CD issues as well so I may have to start tracking those down.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, December 30, 2023 6:14 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Curious. I've never seen the CDs (and only fleetingly saw the vinyl) despite shopping in Sainsbury's regularly. I don't recall the track listings for the ones I saw being that interesting??

(I might be being unfair/grumpy in that assessment).

"Cafe Exil" is my favorite comp of the last number of years, such a great ride. Very excited about the sequel even if its tracks are far more familiar than CE.

The Sainsburys releases were basically "here's a basic ass selection with a few hidden gems snuck in", which is honestly very fair considering the target audience (it ain't us). Would still have picked them up if they had them at my local ofc.

Sounds a reasonable assessment.

"Fell From The Sun" is decent though shocked to discover that One Dove's Fallen wasn't as good as I remember (at least in the version on here).

Compiling some tracks recently [the ones on the Tarwater thread] and being a bit indecisive on the track-listing, I found myself wondering "What would Bob Stanley do??"

"Fantastic Voyage" is another top tier compilation, lives up to the title!

Here's the next one: Thom Bell - Didn't I Blow Your Mind? The Sound Of Philadelphia Soul 1969 - 1983

https://acerecords.co.uk/thom-bell-didnt-i-blow-your-mind-the-sound-of-philadelphia-soul-1969-1983

That’s…weird. He already did a Thom Bell comp a few years back! Hell it’s linked on that page. Is this a complementary set?

This is the sequel to “Ready Or Not”, Ace’s first acclaimed compilation of the late Thom Bell’s productions and arrangements.

Clarity!