Analog Adventures: Ray Charles, The Creature Comforts, The Fleshtones, and more new vinyl releases for October 2024

Welcome to Analog Adventures, where we run down the latest stacks of wax to hit our mailbox. Reissues, new releases, and more are all on the turntable as we spin these records.

Ray Charles
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volume Two
Country and Western Meets Rhythm and Blues
Crying Time
Best of Country & Western
(Tangerine Records)

To showcase Ray Charles’ “unparalleled interpretations of country classics and serves as a timely reminder of his role as a cultural pioneer who helped bridge racial divides through the universal language of music,” Tangerine Records announced four newly remastered albums from the music legend, along with a compilation pulling from all of them. Released from 1962 to 1966, these recordings see Charles interpreting songs from Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Don Gibson, and others, resulting in a surprising cross section of uptempo numbers and sad ballads.

While Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and its follow-up have remained in print on vinyl pretty regularly since their release 60 years ago, these reissues of 1965’s Country & Western Meets Rhythm & Blues and 1966’s Crying Time mark the first time these two albums have been available on vinyl since their original pressings. Honestly, they’re also the most fun of the bunch, given that the former—also known as Together Again—features four Buck Owens’ tunes and a version of “Blue of Kentucky” done in Charles’ swinhgova style.

Described as a backward bossanova, swinhgova is also applied to Owens’ “I’ve Got A Tiger by the Tail,” and these cuts fucking boogie, thanks to Charles’ piano playing a double vocal choir from both the Jack Halloran Singers and Charles’ own Raelets. Obviously, Crying Time’s big attraction is the take on “Let’s Go Get Stoned,” a perrenial favorite for multiple generations, regardless of what substances to which the listener might think it refers, but the title track—another Owens tune—also deserves its time in the sun.

The Best of Country & Western compilation is a new collection, and in addition drawing from the four albums reissued also includes “That Lucky Old Sun” from 1963’s Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul, a version of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” from 1970, along with Charles’ duet with Willie Nelson, “Seven Spanish Angels,” and the title track to Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?, both from 1984. It’s a little more down-tempo overall than the four reissues, which do a lovely job of balancing the slow sad numbers with uptempo ones, and honestly, that’s kind of what makes the reissues so much fun to revisit.

Hearing Ray Charles take sad songs like “Oh Lonesome Me” or “Bye Bye Love” and turn them into big, brassy tunes is half the appeal here, and a reminder that the singer and pianist knew how to really make his mark on the tunes he adapted. With all the hubbub surrounding Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter earlier this year, here are five LPs that demonstrate that Black artists have been working in the country realm for over half a century and thriving, regardless of what genre gatekeepers might otherwise say.

It’s also worth noting that the remastering job Tangerine did on these albums is absolutely amazing, and this is the biggest these records have ever sounded. Putting both volumes of Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music up against the original pressings desmontrates just how much care and work went into the process, meaning that even if you already own these records—and why don’t you?—you should absolutely purchase them again.

The Supremes
A Bit of Liverpool

The Temptations
Sky’s the Limit

Jackson 5
Third Album
(Elemental Music)

The sixth batch of releases from Elemental Music’s Motown album reissue campaign digs a little deeper into the full-length catalog of the legendary Detroit label, with all three releases presenting groups in transition. The Supremes’ 1964 LP, A Bit of Liverpool, works as an interesting contrast with the Ray Charles reissues we covered above, in that the girl group tackles a slew of recent British invasion singles and puts their mark on another genre. There are two Dave Clark songs, five Beatles tunes, and a couple of early Motown songs which were themselves frequently covered by British Invasion bands and the garage rock acts which took off after them.

The slower numbers, “House of the Rising Sun” in particular, are somewhat more suited to what the Supremes were doing at the time, not quite hitting the energy which they’d find a few years later on the likes of “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” However, the one-two punch of “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” toward the end of the album’s second side are amazing in terms of harmonies and arrangement. Given the less-than-stellar interpretation of the Dave Clark Five’s “Bits and Pieces” which concludes A Bit of Liverpool, one can’t wonder if the album might’ve broken the top 20 had they included “Eight Days A Week,” which the trio had performed live on the Shindig and Hullabaloo TV shows.

The Temptations’ 1971 album, Sky’s the Limit, shows the band returning to a more traditional sound after the amazing psychedelic soul triptych of Cloud Nine, Puzzle People, and Psychedelic Shack. That said, the wildness of those albums’ sound definitely finds its way into these songs, despite the fact that “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)” might as well have been released contemporaneously with “My Girl” in the previous decade. “I’m the Exception to the Rule” is an absolute gem of a song, and an underrated track in the vein of Isaac Hayes’ “Walk on By” or Barry White’s “I’ve Got so Much to Give.”

The last album to feature founding Temptation Eddie Kendricks, Sky’s the Limit is definitely ballad-heavy, but while the 12 epic minutes of “Smiling Faces Sometimes” might lack the punch of the Undisputed Truth’s version later that year, it foreshadows what the Temptations would later perfect on “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” the next year. The instrumental grooves are just as important as the vocal passages, and letting this song just smoke you for half a side is worth the price of admission.

“I’ll Be There” was the Jackson 5’s last number one hit, and the album on which it comes is a bit of a mixed bag. The Funk Brothers’ backing work is some of the best the group could turn out, making the intrumentation here hard and funky, with plenty of grit, but the Jackson’s vocals come across as treacly.

Using Michael as lead on the smash hit “I’ll Be There” and the cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is a wise choice, and works insistently well on “How Funky Is Your Chicken,” but it gets to be a bit of an air-raid sien cutting through what are otherwise solid funky and soul cuts, like “Ready or Not (Here I Come),” where you really wish one of the other brothers had stepped away from singing backing vocals to take lead.

All three LPs are pressed on 140-gram vinyl with The Jackson 5’s Third Album on red wax and the other two on virgin black, in poly-lined inner sleves. The original front and back covers have been reproduced and each LP features an insert featuring Elemental’s Motown reissue lineup, as well.

The Creature Comforts
Teaching Little Fingers to Play
(Self-released)

The 25th anniversary edition of Lawrence power-pop act the Creature Comforts’ second and final album is a remarkable reminder of what can happen to a band in a couple of years. Originally released in 1999, this album came just a year or so after their debut, The Politics of Pop, and it feels like it was years later. The change from their straight-ahead catchy songs to something equally catchy but bigger is the kind of leap which took the Beatles or the Kinks years to do, but here we have catchy rockers like “Off Duty Eyes” and “Lonely Monday” alongside the big, brass-laden “Showboat” or the quietly acoustic “Ever, Every. Everything,” which somewhat presages what frontman Chris Tolle would soon be doing with Jake Cardwell in the Belles.

The vinyl release is fun in a couple of ways. The liner sheet features quite a few photos from the time contemporaneous with the release, and it’s worth noting that with the addition of J.D. Warnock on organ, piano, guitar, and vocals, the original trio of Tolle, bassist Brian Everard, and drummer Billy Brimblecom Jr., was really fleshed out. Secondly, the track listing for the reissue is different than the original. In order to keep a decent runtime and have solid audio fidelity, the band dropped the original second track, “Gincatastrophe,” and have also shuffled the tracks around, meaning “Star Motel” comes at the end of the first side, and the unbearably sad “(Tipping the) Cash Cow” is the penultimate song, rather than smack in the middle.

The slight adjustments mean that Teaching Little Fingers to Play feels fresh and new, despite its familiarity after 25 years of regular spins. The remastering job reveals a lot of new details to old favorites, as well, with the quieter numbers showing a lot of dynamicism in the new format.

Main Street Saints
Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven … But Nobody Wants to Die
(Street Rats Records)

Another 25th anniversary reissue, another familiar favorite, and another amazing job of making something old sound new again. While this was a CD-to-LP remaster, Main Street Saints’ sole full-length gets a bit of a makeover itself in this new format. Firstly, the cover art looks far better than the original compact disc release, and the back cover has been given a bit of a facelift, as well.

The songs are punchy as ever, with the opening “Intro/Saints” fairly roaring out of the speakers, and continuing on through the album-ending cover/rework of Cocksparrer’s “England Belongs to Me,” here as “KC Belongs to Me.” Beginning the album with some re-recorded versions of early 7-inch material such as “Johnny Bomb” and “Clockwork Tim” set the tone early, “Bar Song” and “Pirate Song” provide some singalong drinking tunes, and as always, the down in the mud version of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons” proves a highlight, demonstrating just how rough-and-tumble, but also astonishingly talented, this band was. The guitar, bass, drums, and vocals all come together such that you wonder how they never managed to break through beyond their cult following.

Ironically, given the issues with the artwork on the initial GMM Records CD, what was obviously supposed to be a printed inner sleeve seems to have been printed at a larger size than the album jacket itself, meaning it gets stored in the poly bag, rather than putting the record into it and sliding it into the jacket. Whoops. The collage artwork of fliers, band photos, reviews, and more make up for any formatting issues regarding its dimensions, however, as does a heartfelt note inside from Street Rats’ Dan Moody.

John Altyn
Sleepaway Camp II & III
(1984 Publishing)

If I thought I’d been amazed when Death Waltz Recording Company released a 45rpm single of Frankie Vinci’s music for the 1983 slasher Sleepaway Camp, I was wholly unprepared when 1984 Publishing announced that they’d be releasing John Altyn’s music from the two Pamela Springsteen-starring sequels. Having “Outta Control” and “Sleepaway” from those two films, respectively, is an absolute dream come true. The addition of Sleepaway Camp II‘s “Happy Camper Song” is just the cherry on top.

Is it a lot of music? No. There are the two songs, the sing-along from the second film, and two alternate versions of “Sleepaway,” making for a grand total of five tracks, with a bonus flexi postcard featuring the radio spot for Sleepaway Camp III inside the jacket, but it is those bonus features which make 1984’s release so much fun. Depending on which of the five variants you choose, you get different vinyl colors and in the case of three of the variants, either an autographed art print or autographed “Sleepaway” sheet music by John Altyn.

That version, limited to 100 copies, is the one we got, and it comes on “Coke White” vinyl, to boot. It sounds fantastic, and getting to blast these rockers is just a dream come true. The cover artwork is a trifle silly, but the Easter eggs make it totally worth it, and the photos on the inner gatefold sleeve definitely make me feel that I might need to go back and revisit the whole trilogy soon.

James Grauerholz
Life’s Too Good to Keep
(Lotuspool)

For all his fame as assistant to the writer, as well as bibliographer and executor of William S. Burroughs’ estate, Lawrence’s James Grauerholz is an artist in his own right, and this double LP collection of his music demonstrates just one aspect of that artistry. All the songs here were written by Grauerholz, with the exception of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s “Captain Bobby Stout,” and reflect music written and recorded from 1971-1998.

It’s an interesting collection, Life’s Too Good to Keep. Songs recorded in professional studios with professional musicians sit side-by-side with home recordings made in a variety of apartments and live recordings from KJHK and the Granada. Somehow, it all works. Given that engineers such as Chubby Smith, Ed Rose, and Tom Johnson have all had their hand in one part of this or another over the years means that the sonic fidelity is remarkable cohesive, despite the disparate sources.

It helps that Grauerholz’s music is arranged in a way such that it flows like an album proper, rather than going chronologically, and the liner notes offer minor insights into the songs’ histories and genesis, along with where and how they were recorded. It’s truly fascinating to see how many places I personally have a connection with. “The Bunker Song” was recorded at 222 Bowery in New York City, and I once spent a week in the hostel right next door. Two songs were recorded at the KJHK shack, although both predate my time at the station. “Heaven’s Radio” was recorded just up the street from me, in a house which has seen better days in the 40 years since.

The vast majority of the songs, regardless of where and how they were recorded, feature Grauerholz solo with acoustic guitar, which certainly helps to maintain a musical continuum. That said, the rare instances with a band backing him demonstrate that he certainly knows how to work with other musicians, despite writing in the liners that what he craved was solitude as a child.

The Fleshtones
It’s Getting Late (…And More Songs About Werewolves)
(Yep Roc Records)

Coming out of the same early CBGB’s scene which birthed the Cramps— a band with whom they shared a practice space in those days—the Fleshtones have been producing their own twisted take on ’50s and ’60s music for nigh on 50 years, and on this, their twelfth full-length studio recording, it appears they’re not slowing down any time soon.

It’s Getting Late (…And More Songs About Werewolves) was released in time for Halloween, and even if the songs aren’t explicitly holiday-related, the fuzz and stomp of the thirteen songs across the album’s two sides are definitely suited for a monster mash party in your basement. The Fleshtones know how to make you shake your hips, and while Peter Zaremba’s voice is definitely raspier than it was on classic recordings such as Hexbreaker!, it certainly makes something like “Way of the World” have a bit more emotional heft than might otherwise exist.

Pressed on pink acid wash marbled vinyl, the record itself looks appropriately spooky and psychedelic in equal measure. It’s also mastered loud as hell. The low end which comes out of the speakers when you drop the needle on It’s Getting Late is somewhat surprising when it first makes an appearance, but why would a Fleshtones record be anything else? The liners are presented like a menu du jour, crediting those who served up this baker’s dozen of garage rockers.