Merrell Wayne Fankhauser (born December 23, 1943, Louisville, Kentucky, United States) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist, who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s with bands including the Impacts, Merrell & the Exiles, HMS Bounty, Fankhauser-Cassidy Band, and MU. In addition, 12 songs recorded by Merrell & the Exiles were later released under the group name Fapardokly, even though that group never actually existed.
The recordings were done from 1988 to 1992.
Most cover bands don't get much respect, but Minneapolis' Hypstrz were one band who turned their lack of original material into a virtue. In 1976, when punk rock was just beginning to stagger to its feet and the garage rock revival was a few years down the road, the Hypstrz were playing classic rock & roll and R&B tunes from the likes of the Chocolate Watch Band, the Small Faces, the 13th Floor Elevators, Syndicate of Sound, and Wilson Pickett and making them roar like a big block Dodge with a full tank of high test. While leaders Ernest Batson and Bill Batson occasionally wrote an original number, they seemed to work under the (not unreasonable) theory that most of the best tunes were already out there, and they played 'em without a hint of nostalgia -- the Hypstrz weren't an oldies band or Nehru- and fuzztone-obsessed garage archivists, but guys who dug great rock & roll, and were determined to keep one particular strain of it alive and kicking (with the emphasis on "kicking"). In April 1979, the Hypstrz recorded a weekend's worth of shows at the Minneapolis rock club Jay's Longhorn, and a few months later four songs from those shows appeared on a 7" EP, while another 15 tunes were released on the 1981 album Hypstrization. Now, those 19 performances have been released on CD with 15 other tracks recorded that same weekend as Live at the Longhorn, and the result is 79 minutes of high-energy rock & roll, played with heart, soul, joy, and fierce attitude; maybe the guys in the band only wrote four of the 37 songs crammed onto this disc, but anyone who digs music that's tough, passionate, and muscular will listen to this music and wish he was standing in front of the stage, beverage in hand and shaking it out. Three songs from a 2004 performance by the latest lineup of the Hypstrz fill out the package, and prove the Batson brothers can still kick out the jams a quarter-century after the rest of the set was recorded. If every "bar band" were as good as the Hypstrz, maybe there wouldn't be a need for acts any bigger; at very least, it's hard to imagine most other bands delivering as much fun as there is to be had on Live at the Longhorn.
Kubla Khan's complete output, a generally hard-rocking and intense body of work ranging from Santana-like guitar pyrotechnics to power-chord dominated anthems like "Revolution," and the occasional psychedelic or folkish digressions. Chris Gerniottis's singing and rhythm guitar work are always interesting, even where the material is predictable, and when the group is really on target, Jeff Burke's lead guitar and Mike Gregory's organ add their own layers of invention and intensity. Not every song is worthwhile, but the stuff that is more than justifies the purchase of this CD. In contrast to many garage band releases in this series from Collectables, the work by Kubla Khan is professionally recorded and requires no apologies or explanations for its quality.
The majority of you who is reading this press release will be saying...."THE TOUCH?.... NEVER HEARD OF THEM!"
Well, that is not strictly true as they were bang into the Mod Scene back in 1979 and played all the regular haunts along side all the well known bands of the time and even had an album released in 1980 BUT for reasons unknown to the band, their label at the time released it under name of THE MODS. Their album "Lost Touch" has now become a true rarity as it is such a great long lost album and was even bootlegged in the 90s on clear vinyl and more recently seen a CD bootleg copy of it appear!
Over the years, this band was a true mystery and no one could find any info on the band even though we knew they were from the Portebello Road area....
The Creation was an English rock band, formed in 1966. Their best-known songs are "Making Time", which was one of the first rock songs to feature a guitar played with a bow, and "Painter Man", which made the Top 40 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1966,[1] and reached No. 8 in the German chart in April 1967. It was later covered by Boney M in 1979, and reached the No. 10 position in the UK chart.
Recorded live at the Mean Fiddler, London, 6/7/93 on the Manor Mobile.
01 Batman/Biff Bang Pow
02 Try And Stop Me
03 Life Is Just Beginning
04 I'm A Man
05 Nightmares
06 If I Stay Too Long
07 Hey Joe
08 Makin Time
09 Tom Tom
10 If You Could See Through My Eyes
11 That's How Strong My Love Is
12 Lay The Ghost
13 How Does It Feel To Feel
14 Painter Man
An ambitious though awkward country-rock outing from a group with clear folkie roots. The liner notes detail how the core duo of singers Dan Daley and Michelle Conway played a bunch of "hoots" in the NYC folk scene, and later picked up a backing band that gave them more opportunity to branch out musically. They harmonize nicely, particularly when he takes the lead with his enthusiastic (and pleasantly dorky) vocals, hitting sort of a Gram Parsons-like vibe; when Conway sings lead, she inevitably leaps into a too-serious, Joan Baez-ian folkie warble, undercutting the country feel that Daley was building up. There's a spiritual-religious undercurrent to some of the songs, though many just seem like spaced-out, word-salad hippie-druggie stuff, which often takes on a quasi-religious tone, just because that's what sometimes happens when you realize you have hands and could fly the spaceship on your own. Musically, the rest of the band is kind of iffy -- the rhythm section is pretty stiff -- but there's some noteworthy pedal steel from Hank DeVito (later a key member of the Emmylou Harris band) and nice fiddling by Larry Packer, of the Cat Mother band. This album isn't really a classic, but it is a nice, authentic slice of early, hippiedelic country-folk. This was the first album featuring Dan Daley, who later struck gold as a songwriter, penning the Charlie Daniels Band hit, "Still In Saigon," a decade later.
Riverman Music reissues a unique '70s pop obscurity. The lead instrument is a pedal steel guitar, played with more imagination than anywhere other than the Misunderstood's studio recordings, often with some nice, fuzzy distortion. It rarely sounds "country." The songs are strong pop/rock, with Beach Boys-style harmony vocals on the softer songs, and tougher (but still melodic) singing on the rockers. Other than the opening "song" (three minutes of a guy fiddling with a radio dial), everything here is memorable, and no two songs sound alike. Highlights include the powerful "Loser," with a stunning steel guitar solo, and the long album-closer "New York City," but this is consistent enough that any given listener could feel equally strong about any two others. This is exactly the kind of band a daring major label executive would have struck gold with in the '60s, but nobody would dare to touch in the '70s. The endless streams of slide on these songs makes you almost woozy, but in that pleasant, A.M. radio, hot car/hot summer day, off-kilter '70s way. Surprisingly groovy. Includes two previously unreleased bonus tracks.
Unfairly, this album has always remained obscure, even among Voxx releases. Perhaps this is due to their style, which is freeform and creative, rather than the formulaic approach audiences seem to prefer.
With influences ranging from Cream to Led Zep to little-known British bands like July, Head blew a lot of minds in Los Angeles in the early '90s with their light show and extended trip-jams.
For their album debut, they chose a different
approach: using all the studio tricks at their command to make a finely-crafted
collage of sounds designed to flow through a listener's most spaced-out
headphone session. But this long album also includes most of their live
freakout favorites, and there are frequent moments of sublime ensemble playing.
Greg Shaw.
Recorded in 1969 and released in 1970, THINK PINK is one of
the cornerstones of British underground rock. Five decades later, in 2015, John
"Twink" Alder has teamed up with Italian psychedelic rockers the
Technicolour Dream and guest stars including John Povey (The Pretty Things) and
David Duhig (July) to create a sequel. Recorded in Rome and London and mixed by
the legendary John Wood, it's sure to delight all fans of psychedelic music.
