Release Round-Up: Week of May 22

Chubby Checker, It’s Pony Time/Let’s Twist Again/Durocs, Durocs/Terry Knight and the Pack, Terry Knight and the Pack/Reflections/The Orlons, The Wah Watusi/South Street/Various Artists, Remember Me Baby: Cameo Parkway Vocal Groups Vol. 1 (Real Gone Music)

The latest group from Real Gone Music includes classics from the vaults of Philadelphia’s Cameo-Parkway label plus power-pop from San Francisco’s Durocs!

Isaac Hayes and Dionne Warwick, A Man and A Woman/Cissy Houston, Presenting Cissy Houston (Expanded Edition)/Dee Dee Warwick, Foolish Fool (Expanded Edition) (SoulMusic Records)

Dionne Warwick and Isaac Hayes’ long-unavailable 1977 live concert LP makes its CD debut alongside two other titles from members of the Warwick family: Dionne’s aunt Cissy Houston’s 1970 solo collection Presenting Cissy Houston, and sister Dee Dee’s 1969 Mercury LP Foolish Fool!  Watch for reviews later this week!

The Knack, Havin’ a Rave-Up!  Live in Los Angeles, 1978 (Zen/Omnivore)

The New Wave quartet is at its most powerful on this live album drawn from pre-fame performances on the Sunset Strip!  Joe’s review is at the link above!

Dean Martin, The Dean Martin Variety Show Uncut (Time Life)

Time Life releases the first-ever DVD set of complete and uncut episodes of The Dean Martin Show!  Dino’s guests include Cyd Charisse, Joey Heatherton, Barbara McNair, Zero Mostel, Leslie Uggams, Abbe Lane, Buck Owens and The Lettermen!

Paul and Linda McCartney, Ram (Hear Music)

It’s finally here!  Paul and Linda McCartney’s 1971 album has been remastered and reissued in a variety of formats with loads of bonus content!  Our review arrives tomorrow!

Neil Sedaka, The Tra-La Days Are Over/Overnight Success (BGO)

Neil Sedaka’s 1973 and 1975 albums are paired by BGO.  The combined collection features guest stars Elton John and 10cc, and includes such favorites as “Love Will Keep Us Together,” “The Hungry Years” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.”

Three Degrees, Standing Up for Love (Funky Town Grooves)

Funky Town Grooves reissues and expands The Three Degrees’ post-Philadelphia International album recorded in 1977 for CBS/Epic!

Various Artists, The Philadelphia International 40^th Box Set (Harmless/Demon)

The long-delayed 10-CD box set celebrating Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International label finally arrives in the U.K. courtesy Harmless Records!

Dead and (Real) Gone: Grateful Dead, Mick Fleetwood’s Zoo, Durocs, Germs and More Coming In May

It’s time to book passage on the Real Gone train for next month’s trip from Philadelphia to San Francisco, as the enterprising label has announced its latest, wide-ranging group of titles all slated for late May release.  Returning to print are live shows from The Grateful Dead as well as a number of albums from the Cameo Parkway library, while rare LPs from The Germs, The Durocs, Jerry Reed and Mick Fleetwood all get the deluxe treatment for the first time.

Three titles are making their CD debuts from the Real Goners.  San Francisco’s Mystery Trend (its name taken from a misheard Bob Dylan lyric) included among its members one Ron Nagle, who in 1970 recorded cult classic Bad Rice with producer and frequent Phil Spector associate Jack Nitzsche.  Elsewhere in the City by the Bay, Scott Mathews was making a name for himself, joining Elvin Bishop at the Fillmore and forming Ice with future Journey frontman Steve Perry.  In 1979, Mathews and Nagle teamed as the Durocs (apparently named after a breed of hog known for being great producers with oversized ears and genitalia, according to the press release!) for a self-titled album also supervised by Nitzsche.  For the first time, the fierce power pop of Durocs arrives on CD, and with eight unreleased bonus tracks!  In addition to the CD, Real Gone will issue this lost classic on pink vinyl as a 500-unit limited edition with its original sequence and packaging replicated.  Gene Sculatti annotates the new CD.

It was also in 1979 that Joan Jett produced the only album for The Germs.  Often cited as one of the very first hardcore punk albums, (GI) was such a powerful debut that one LA Weekly critic opined, “This album leaves exit wounds!”  Produced by Joan Jett, The Germs’ (GI) features Darby Crash (lead vocals), Pat Smear (guitars/backing vocals), Lorna Doom (bass/backing vocals) and Don Bolles (drums/backing vocals).  Originally issued on Slash Records, the album has been out-of-print on CD for years and returns in a four-panel wallet featuring the original album graphics (including lyrics) with additional photos by Jenny Lens and new liner notes by Richie Unterberger drawing on an interview with Don Bolles.  Real Gone Trivia Time No. 1: Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders (previously anthologized by Real Gone) was originally sought to produce, but Slash couldn’t afford his asking price, hence the band enlisting their friend Joan Jett.  No. 2: Shortly after recording (GI), The Germs recorded six songs for the soundtrack to the Al Pacino film Cruising.  The producer of those recordings was none other than…Jack Nitzsche!

Hit the jump to head to Nashville, Philadelphia and back to San Francisco!

Just The Tracks, Ma’am: Ace Collects “Criminal Records” On New Compilation

Long before CSI, there was Dragnet.  The granddaddy of the television procedural drama, Dragnet actually began on radio in 1949, moving to television in 1951, where it has remained a staple ever since in both repeats and revivals.  So it’s appropriate that the ominous theme to Dragnet both opens and closes Ace’s rip-roaring new compilation, Criminal Records, subtitled “Law, Disorder and the Pursuit of Vinyl Justice.”  Between Ray Anthony’s treatment of that famous theme and Stan Freberg’s delicious parody of the program, you’ll find 22 other wild vignettes of cops, robbers, private dicks and prisoners.  Along the way you’ll meet “Dick Tracy,” “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon” and “Bad Dan McGoon” and travel all the way from Folsom Prison to Birmingham Jail.  And be careful when you approach that riot in Cell Block No. 9!

Avoiding such staples as The Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law,” Criminal Records instead concentrates on lesser-known songs, or familiar songs in rare versions.  Most tracks date from the 1950s and early sixties, but make no mistake: this is raucous music, not well-scrubbed pop from handsome guys named Bobby!  Among those lesser-known interpretations of classic tunes, you’ll find a hyper-charged, distorted “Jailhouse Rock” from Dean Carter.  So aggressive is this 1967 track that you might classify it as proto-punk!  In a similar vein, it’s Jumpin’ Gene Simmons, not Johnny Cash, heard with “Folsom Prison Blues.”   Though Gene doesn’t jump quite as much as Dean Carter, his “Folsom” also ups the tempo from the familiar original.

Famous fictional characters appear throughout Criminal Records, too.  The Chants immortalized Chester Gould’s famed detective in the 1961 “Dick Tracy,” and the detective would doubtless agree with the group that “crime doesn’t never pay!”  Even more oddball is Bob Luman’s catchy “Private Eye,” a 1961 curio from the Warner Bros. label.  Luman, a Rockabilly Hall of Famer, name-checks Edd “Kookie” Byrnes of Warner Bros.’ television show 77 Sunset Strip and TV detective Peter Gunn in his wacky song written by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant (“All I Have to Do is Dream”).  Of the real-life characters heard here, one would certainly be Scatman Crothers.  The actor and voiceover artist perhaps best known for his role in Chico and the Man actually had an accomplished musical career, and offers this collection’s earliest track, asking the musical question behind 1949’s “Have You Got the Gumption?”

There’s more gumption and woe after the jump, plus the full track listing with discography and an order link!