Happy New year! My apologies for the Junq Tour entries crawling out the door. I appear to be suffering from a medical problem that is causing extreme exhaustion and making me sleep for 10 hours per day. I'm in the process of getting it diagnosed and dealt with. I'll get the entries out as efficiently as possible, but it's going to be slower than I'd like. Anyway, onto the haul...
I didn't come out of the Ste. Anne thrift store with a lot, and even more got filtered out. However, this entry just goes to prove that one really crappy album can make up the bulk of garbage from one thrift store.
Great Group Hits In Groups of 3+2: The Sounds of England's Top Groups
This one wins the best fucking album title of 2023. Great job, guys.
It's been a while since we visited our friends at Arc Records, and we've missed them. Their knock-off albums are the fucking worst things I've ever heard. And now it's time for their substandard re-creations of great songs to flush the toxins out of our eyes. Get your tissues ready...
On this album, Arc ever-so-unkindly gives us re-recordings of four bands: The Spencer Davis Group, The Hollies, The Kinks, and The Tremoloes. Two of those bands are pretty much one-hit-wonders (who's hits we will visit), but the bulk of trash here is made up of songs by The Kinks and The Hollies. The song by The Tremoloes is actually re-created quite accurately, but that's the only one. The Spencer Davis song has absolutely no backup vocals which is really weird because the rest of the songs had lots of (really bad) harmonies layered down. You can't tell me there wasn't anybody around to scream "Gimme Some Lovin!" in the background.
The Kinks gain a lot of respect from me for being able to stand on their own without recording tons of cover songs. Then we have the idiots at Arc Records who made their living doing that. Arc Records is from Canada, and this album contains a bunch of Canadians singing in their faux British accents. It's just as bad as you imagine it to be.
The Hollies are one of my most favourite bands of all time. I have nearly everything they've released (aside from the junk from the past 20 years). This album marks the first time I've ever seen someone make an incredible effort at fucking up their songs. The Hollies were known for their multi-layered harmonies. Arc Records takes those multi-layer harmonies and replaces them with a bunch of cats getting run over by a pick up truck. They're extremely out of tune with each other and it just sounds like a bad train wreck with all of the passengers on fire. It's so bad, that one of the "stop"s didn't make it into the song title "Stop, Stop, Stop". Also, the main singer of "On A Carousel" has a really bad cold.
Alas, I must now torture you with this horrible mess of covers...
Listen to Carrie-Anne
Listen to On A Carousel
Listen to Stop, Stop
Listen to Gimme Some Lovin'
Listen to Dead End Street
Listen to Sunny Afternoon
Listen to Autumn Almanac
Listen to Silence Is Golden
Sister Secrets
My God, when was the last time I dragged out the open reel machine? I used to see these tapes everywhere back in the 1990s and now when I see them, people ask antique prices for them. I bought three of these. I didn't think I was going to get anything but 70s light rock recorded off the radio until I hit tape three and found this gem that I'm going to share with you.
I believe there are four girls in this family. I have absolutely no clue who's interviewing them (maybe an uncle or something), but he gets each of the girls to give some dirt on all the others. It's a pretty fun recording. I did a bit of work on this one to make it a little easier on the ears, and it turned out well. Enjoy!
Listen to Sister Secrets
And that's all for this entry! We've got a big ton of stuff from Steinbach, so hold tight while I get it together.