Disc of the day
The Feelies - The Good Earth
Good-natured powerpop gets two-thumbs-up from MOJO messageboarder.
Features Disc of the day
Emitt Rhodes
Daisy-Fresh From Hawthorne, California (The Best of the Dunhill Years)
(Edsel, 1998)
McCartney-esque proto-power-pop from the nearly man of ’60s Los Angeles…
In 1967, The Merry-Go-Round, an L.A. four-piece led by the supreme melodic talents of singer-songwriter Emitt Rhodes, took a brief trundle into the limelight with their local radio smash, Live. The band were quickly crippled by label disinterest, but the 17-year-old Rhodes – fresh-faced and bursting with ideas – wasn’t going to let the indifference of the industry dam his creative flow. He set to work straight away, painstakingly assembling a studio in the family garage and quickly recording many of the songs featured on this 23-track Best Of… An unapologetic Beatles obsessive, Rhodes’ penchant for chiming guitars and tight-knit harmonic arrangements had been glaringly evident since the beginning, but these Anglo-beat influences mask a sound born of much sunnier climes. Like cult-popster and co-mixing partner Curt Boettcher, Rhodes – who played all the instruments on the record himself - laid the foundation for much of the ’70s’ most potent power-pop. His beautiful Emitt Rhodes debut - included here in its entirety – is an album whose sunrise ditties and pretty melodies echo throughout the likes of Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything and The Raspberries’ Starting Over, to name but two. Unfortunately, vicious contract stipulations with another aloof record company forced his career to stall after just four albums. Rhodes once recalled an incident at his father’s rehearsal space in the mid-’60s that now sounds like a gloomy portent of the troubles that were to follow: “Dennis Wilson broke my drum pedal. He never paid for it or got me a new one. He just broke it and left."
Ross Bennett
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 27/08/2008
Further Listening
Todd Rundgren – Something/Anything? (Bearsville, 1972)
The Millennium – Begin (Columbia, 1968)
The Beatles – Rubber Soul (EMI, 1965)
Previous Disc of the day
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The Feelies - The Good Earth
Good-natured powerpop gets two-thumbs-up from MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 02/07/2009
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6:00 AM GMT 01/07/2009
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Dinosaur Jr - Where You Been
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Keith Moon - Two Sides Of The Moon
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6:00 AM GMT 24/06/2009
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Chico Hamilton Quintet/Elmer Bernstein - Sweet Smell Of Success
Double noir delights from jazz and orchestral giants!
6:00 AM GMT 23/06/2009
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