First off, I want to thank everyone who's stopped by and viewed these posts over the past few weeks. The numbers have been noticeably higher than usual, which either means the algorithm briefly took pity on me or there are actually more people out there interested in obscure records than I thought. Both possibilities seem unlikely, yet here we are.
If you're new to the blog, send me a message and let me know what you'd like to hear. I've done viewer requests in the past, although the last few times I opened the floor to suggestions the response was a deafening silence. Zero. Nada. Not even a wildly unrealistic request for a private pressing recorded in a Nebraska grain silo in 1964.
So come on, try to stump the chum. Let's see if I have it hiding somewhere in the collection, or at least something in the same musical neighborhood. After all, record collectors secretly enjoy being challenged almost as much as we enjoy boring innocent civilians with matrix numbers and label variations.
I've got some fun Halloween posts lined up and enough recordings in the can to cover next year, and probably part of the year after that. Naturally, yesterday I remembered another idea I've been meaning to do for ages, which means a perfectly innocent post has now been bumped into the future. My editorial process remains every bit as organized as a box of unsorted garage-sale 45s.
I'm even starting to think about Christmas posts. If the retail world can start celebrating Christmas somewhere around Labor Day, I figure I'm practically behind schedule.
Today's selection presents what feels like a perfect musical marriage: Teenage Fanclub covering songs by Alex Chilton and Beat Happening. Teenage Fanclub occasionally backed Alex Chilton live, and there's a fantastic two-song performance floating around out there that absolutely smokes. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find those tracks on any official release, which is precisely the kind of thing that keeps record collectors awake at night wondering if one more pressing variation might finally contain the answer. Of course, this marriage is also not surprising given that Bandwagonesque channels Big Star like a medium conducting a late-night séance with the ghosts of Ardent Studios. If anyone was destined to tackle Chilton's catalog, it was Teenage Fanclub.
I do own a reissue featuring Alex's version of Free Again, but this Teenage Fanclub take, released on the legendary indie label K Records, is as close to perfect as you could hope for. And if you're recording for K, it seems almost mandatory to pay tribute to the label's founders by tackling a Beat Happening song. Their version of Bad Seed does exactly that.
Which reminds me, it's probably time for more Beat Happening around here. There can never be too much Calvin Johnson in the mix, and if there is, I haven't reached that point yet.
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