North Fork Sound Top 20 - April 3rd 2011

The Wolfmen
(Marco Pirroni, Chris Constantinou)

1. The Wolfmen: Cat Green Eyes
2. Solomon Burke & De Djik (feat. Jools Holland): What A Woman
3. Ward White: Change Your Clothes
4. Primal Scream: Don't Fight It, Feel It
5. The Ovations: I'm Living Good
6. The Last Forever: In The Pines
7. Etta James: Fire
8. Earl King: Darling Honey Angel Child
9. Teddy Davis & The Discolettes: Reggae Man
10. John Campbell: Sunnyland Train
11. Prince Buster: Rough Rider
12. Angelo & Eighteen: Flight 2
13. The Maytals: Oh Yeah
14. Scientist: Blacka Shade Of Dub
15. Cyminology: As Ssafar
16. Bell XI: The Trailing Skirts Of Love
17. Jewlee: Mary Jane Blues
18. Willie DeVille: Hey! Joe
19. Johnny Kidd & The Pirates: A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues
20. Nektar: Remember The Future, Part 1

North Fork Sound Alb O' The Week

Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit: Here We Rest

North Fork Sound Legend Of The Month

Canned Heat

Last Week's Listener Favourites
Billy Bragg: Moving The Goalposts
Bo Diddley: I'm A Man
Bob Geldof: Systematic 6-Pack
Carlton Alphonso: I Have Changed

Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Mayfield: (Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below We're All Going To Go
Dan Baird: I Want You Bad
Dave Alvin: Redneck Friend
David Essex: America

The Dead Boys

The Dead Boys: Sonic Reducer
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: High Fidelity
Flowered Up: Weekender
The Fugs: Swineburne Stomp

Genya Ravan
Bitter End, NYC
from Genya's book, 'Lollipop Lounge: Memoirs of a Rock and Roll Refugee'

Genya Ravan: Flying
George Jones: High-tech Redneck
Groove Armada: I See You Baby (full frontal mix)
Horace Faith: Black Pearl
Hot Chocolate: You Sexy Thing
Ian Gomm: 24 Hour Service
Ian Whitcomb: You Turn Me On
The Inmates: The Walk

Jean Adebambo

Jean Adebambo: Paradise
John Cale: Helen Of Troy
John Kongos: He's Gonna Step On You Again
Johnny Osbourne: Water Pumping
Johnny Rivers: Barefootin'
Laura Cantrell: When The Roses Bloom Again
Lee 'Scratch' Perry: Yee Ha Ha Ha
Little Feat: Sailin' Shoes
Little Jerry Williams: Hum Baby
Little Sonny: Wade In The Water
Little Willie G: She's About A Mover
The Long Ryders: Good Times Tomorrow, Hard Times Today
Maceo & The Macks: Cross The Tracks (We Better Go Back)
The Moles: We Are The Moles (pt. 1)
Neu!: Weissensee
The Records: Held Up High

The Smithereens

The Smithereens: She's Got A Way
The Star Spangles: Gangland
Wall Of Voodoo: Mexican Radio

And don't forget...'PURE' w/howard thompson - THIS Friday (8th) noon, Eastern
Listen "live" at WPKN Bridgeport CT, 89.5khFM or here
or listen "later" there
this week - new, old, Venus, funk

First Time

The first record I ever owned was 'by' Bugs Bunny. I was 5 and had been handed down an old wind-up gramophone which played 78s. One day, its lid fell down, causing the needle to bounce and ‘stab’ the disc, shattering it. A year later, Russell Thompson (my uncle) gave me my first 45. He worked at Decca Records (UK) and the record that started it all off for me was Bill Haley and His Comets' 'Rock Around The Clock'. It had a great B-side, 'Thirteen Women' which, apparently, was the original A-side in the States until they flipped it. My dad had a huge classical lp collection, all neatly shelved (I once found a Playboy featuring Jayne Mansfield in amongst the Handels) but never played because, for years, he never had a proper gramophone that worked. Periodically, my uncle would come over and give me whatever he had kicking about. He was a showtunes guy… '76 Trombones', 'Oklahoma', so he didn’t mind giving me the noisy, kid stuff. Decca was a pretty big distributor (EMI and Pye were the other major UK record companies back then) and they had a number of different labels including Brunswick, London American, Coral, Monument and Atlantic on their books. The next 45s he gave me, roughly in order: Sandy Nelson's 'Let There Be Drums', Del Shannon's 'So Long Baby', Bobby Darin's 'Multiplication', Pat Boone's 'Johnny Will', Little Eva's 'Keep Your Hands Off My Baby', Del Shannon's 'Little Town Flirt', The Tornados' 'Globetrotter', 'Robot' and 'Ice Cream Man', The Caravelles' 'You Don’t Have To Be Baby To Cry', The Cascades' 'Rhythm Of The Rain' and Billy Fury's 'Like I've Never Been Gone' and 'In Summer'. You’ll notice in several cases, he gave me the follow up to the hit. I remember asking him for The Tornados' 'Telstar', Jet Harris & Tony Meehan's 'Diamonds', Little Eva's 'The Locomotion' and the Billy Fury & The Tornados EP, but I guess it slipped his mind. Those record company people...
Then, in mid-1963, he started coming to lunch on Sundays more frequently, and things started to get really good. I got an advance of 'Come On' by some group called The Rolling Stones a week before my 10th birthday and from then on, whenever he came over he’d give me a (25) box of all the latest Decca releases. All the early singles by The Zombies, The Small Faces, The Stones (all, except 'Little Red Rooster', for some reason), The Who, Them, Lulu, Marianne Faithfull, Dave Berry, Marc Bolan (pre-John's Children, let alone Tyrannosaurus Rex), The Marauders, The Big Three, Tom Jones, The Righteous Bros, Ned Miller, Solomon Burke, The Mojos, The Moody Blues, Los Bravos, Billie Davis, The Nashville Teens, Goldie & The Gingerbreads, The Alan Price Set, Unit 4 Plus 2, Chris Andrews, Bern Elliott and the Fenmen and Twinkle showed up, much to my delight. I didn’t have a record player, so I took these records over to John Hopson's, 'Chunky' Lang's, James Curry's or Peter Lloyd's where we'd play them endlessly along with their Ronettes, Shangri-Las, Beatles and Dave Clark 5 discs. One night, a group called Them performed 'Here Comes The Night' on Top Of The Pops. Blew me away. I knew Russell would be over in 3 days but it wasn’t soon enough so after school on Friday, I went to Tudor Records in Muswell Hill and it, along with The Yardbirds' 'For Your Love' were the first records I ever laid out cash for. The Yardbirds were on Columbia, through EMI, so there was NO chance Russell would be bringing that one along and if he brought the Them, then I'd just trade it. Soon after, he showed up with a test pressing of the first Them album. To this day, it’s my most played record. Talk about depth...and Van Morrison was only 19 when he recorded it. 'Mystic Eyes', 'Gloria', 'Little Girl', 'Go On Home Baby', 'Bright Lights Big City', 'Route 66', 'Just A Little Bit', 'You Just Can’t Win', 'I Like it Like That'…the record’s packed with great performances of great songs. They made the Stones sound like wannabes and if Van hadn’t always displayed such a miserable personality, they probably would have done a whole lot better. The first album I bought was the Stones’ 'Out Of Our Heads'. I got it at a store near Tottenham Court Road and it got a ton of play on the little mono Dansette-type record player my parents got me for Christmas that year. In 1966 Russell decided to quit Decca because he "couldn’t stand the music they were putting out!" Bah! So now it’s 1970, I’m away at school, slowly building my collection, scoffing at those buying Jethro Tull, The Incredible String Band and Black Sabbath albums and one day Peel plays 'Hamburger Midnight' by an outfit called Little Feat. He mentions Roy Estrada and Lowell George had formed the group and since I’m the only guy I know with 7 Mothers Of Invention albums by that point, I get a little excited. I have to own a copy. Unfortunately Warners decide not to release it in the UK but I learn my first 'import' could be found at a couple of stores in London. A place called Virgin Records had it, and when term finished, the first thing I did was make for an address on Oxford St. Turns out it was a bloody shoe shop and in my desperation I ask a salesperson if they'd heard of Virgin Records. They jerk a thumb to a staircase in a back corner of the store. I climbed a flight of stairs to find a room with a circular couch in the middle of it. 4 or 5 headphones were strewn across it - no 'listening booths' here - and some hippies browsing through the album rack. The smell of hash permeated the place. Most of the albums were unfamiliar to me (unreleased in the UK) and there were several plain white covers with an ink-stamp across the front. Dylan's 'Great White Wonder', 'Blueberry Hill' by Led Zeppelin, and other 'unofficial' albums by The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd nestled next to one another. Bootlegs. Cost a fortune. Damn, now I had to get a job...get some money coming in.