Thanks for the input everyone. "Curiosity" is also one of my Shoes faves, and "Three Times" falls into the third tier, meaning slightly lesser than the songs I listed above. Numerous songs of theirs belong in that category.

I can't believe I neglected mentioning what is probably the best power pop album I have ever heard. Take that with a grain of salt, as I'm not an authority on the subject like some of you.
The album is Sire Sessions: The Rockfield Recordings by The Searchers. I started a thread about The Searchers a long time ago, but nobody replied. The album is not an anthology, but an amalgam of two albums the band made in 1979 and 1980, The Searchers and Love's Melody.
It's virtually one great song after another, from "You Are the New Day", to "Murder in My Heart", to "Hearts in Her Eyes", to "Love's Gonna be Strong", to "Coming from the Heart", to "Silver", to "Switchboard Susan", to "Everything but a Heartbeat", to Radio Romance", to "This Kind of Love Affair", etc.
Granted, most of the songs are covers, but I have rarely heard a band that sounds smoother or more finely tuned. The album is a must-have for any of you interested in this kind of music.

alternate mixes
 

I also am a huge Shoes fan....recorded 2 of my solo cd's with them Herb Eimerman "Story In Your Eyes" and "From Your Window over the years.....wrote and recorded the Nerk Twins cd "Either Way" with Jeff Murphy....I have alternate versions of all the songs off of Propellar....I have always agreed with and embraced their style of arranging and recording and have extreme respect for them.

Welcome. How did this place come to your attention? A friend or search.

I take it you've noticed your name earlier in the thread. I've enjoyed the cd or two of yours that I have and I didn't know you were still putting music out.

hi
 

I was just googleing around and came across your conversation. Thanks...I'm glad you liked some of my stuff...thank you....And yeah, I had a 2002, 2004, and 2006 release the most recent which is "Just Barely Famous" http://cdbaby.com/cd/eimerman5. Material Issue came up in the conversation and I have to tell you Jim Ellison was a friend of mine and actually Christmas night 1994 or 1995...can't recall... he came to my home party along with the Shoes guys and Jim spent the night....had coffee at 5 a.m. and sat in front of the fireplace just jamming on acoustics...just a great memory of a wonderful person and songwriter.

Wow, the power of the internet, being used for good for a change. :eek:

Thanks for joining the conversation Herb, and I look forward to listening to your music. I have an order lined up at CD Universe, but I'll probably wait until the new year.

Is nobody familiar with The Searchers? This is the second time I have gotten blank stares after referencing the band.

The Searchers?

I have one cd by them but must admit I haven't heard it in a few years:

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov...07483qckxw.jpg

Tracks




Title
Composer
Time

1 Sweets for My Sweet Pomus, Shuman 2:29
2 Listen to Me Hardin, Petty 2:12
3 When You Walk in the Room DeShannon 2:22
4 Goodbye My Love Mosley, Simington ... 2:59
Composed by: Mosley, Simington, Swearingen


5 I Don't Want to Go on Without You Berns, Wexler 3:00
6 What Have They Done to the Rain? Reynolds 2:34
7 Don't Throw Your Love Away Jackson, Wisner 2:17
8 Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya Smith 2:05
9 Four Strong Winds Tyson 3:08
10 Goodnight Baby Barry, Greenwich, Venet 2:16
11 Hungry for Love Mills 2:22
12 When I Get Home Alquist, Darin 2:11
13 Needles and Pins Bono, Nitzsche 2:13
14 The Empty Place Bacharach 2:07
15 Take It or Leave It Jagger, Richards 2:48
16 Bumble Bee Baker, Fullylove 2:15
17 Someday We're Gonna Love Again McMahan 1:59
18 Farmer John Harris, Terry 1:59
19 Sugar and Spice Nightingale 2:16
20 Have You Ever Loved Somebody Ransford 2:40
21 Take Me for What I'm Worth Sloan 2:42
22 Western Union Durrill, Ezell, Rabon 2:29
23 He's Got No Love Curtis, Pender 2:37
24 Love Potion No. 9 Leiber, Stoller 2:06
25 Glad All Over Bennett, Schroeder, Tepper 1:53
26 Popcorn, Double Feature English, Weiss 2:58
27 Second Hand Dealer Allen, Pender 3:45
28 The System Pratt, Richards 2:32
29 I Pretend I'm With You Curtis 1:58
30 No One Else Could Love You Curtis 2:16
31 Sweets for My Sweet[*] Pomus, Shuman 2:29
32 Alright[*] Ross, Vanadore 2:09
33 Love Potion No. 9[*] Leiber, Stoller 2:06
34 Farmer John[*] Harris, Terry 1:59
35 Stand by Me[*] King, Leiber, Stoller 3:28
36 Money (That's What I Want)[*] Bradford, Gordy 2:46
37 Da Doo Ron Ron[*] Barry, Greenwich, Spector 2:24
38 Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya[*] Smith 2:05
39 Since You Broke My Heart[*] Everly 2:50
40 Tricky Dicky[*] Leiber, Stoller 2:07
41 Where Have All the Flowers Gone?[*] Seeger 2:58
42 Twist and Shout[*] Medley, Russell 2:45


I just a review for Rockfield and I'd definitely like to hear it.

As I said earlier, Shoes is one of my favorite bands-probably in my top 10 or top 25.

I'm now playing Shoes: As-Is, disc one. The other day I played disc two w/Bazooka and One In Versailles.

I still need to hear them a few more times each to get a better idea. I've heard all of their other output so many times I can't really compare yet but I do know they aren't grabbing as much as the stuff after the As-Is comps.

I also admit that I shamefully have not played the below albums too often in the last few years. That's the problem with owning so many damn cds. I was going to play them all once before I did this but I still haven't had time.

So off of memory (maybe I'm a bit nice on the stars :D):

Black Vinyl Shoes ****
Present Tense *****
Tongue Twister *****
Boomerang ****
Silhouette ****
Stolen Wishes ***.5
Propeller ***
Fret Buzz [live] ****

Shoes On Ice ****
Shoes Best *****
As-Is ****
Tore A Hole ***

Tribute cd-Shoe Fetish ****

lots of great artists on this project. Highly recommended as Bruce at Not Lame would say.


Off-shoot by Jeff Murphy and Herb Eimerman:

Nerk Twins ****.5





Also-why has there been no mention of the Spongetones? A great band that started out with "new" Beatles songs and went on to do all types of pop/power-pop. LOVE this band.

I was also friends with Jim, Ted and Mike and of course, very sad when Jim died. Thanks for the mention.

Every time I saw Jim it seemed he had a different girl when we'd go out before or after a show. I couldn't believe things worked out the way they did.



The last time I saw Material Issue was in LA. They played a show at the Troubadour and I happened to be in town (turns out we were all staying at the Hyatt on Sunset) so I made sure I was at the show. Saw Liz Phair in the crowd and we headed backstage at the same time. Then we went to some back alley bar in Hollywood and had a good time until 4 AM (7 AM my time).

The next day I checked them out in the studio. They were doing the Tra-La-La song by the Banana Splits w/Liz for a Saturday Morning Cartoon's Greatest Hits cd. They also did video for a docu while I was there w/the guys and Liz eating banana splits. I have a funny story about that but maybe another time... Somewhere I have a bunch of pix from that.

Mike was telling me they were about to shop some demos as they were without a contract, but Jim never let on that anything was wrong. He always had a positive front.


>>....I have alternate versions of all the songs off of Propellar....<<


Ted was telling me that he had those too and would get me a copy. Since he was touring I'm sure he forgot and I didn't want to bug him so sadly that never happened. *sniff

Great, thanks for taking the time to make your album list, Buford. I'm surprised you rated Stolen Wishes so "low", but so be it. I bought As Is from the website a couple of months ago and found it disappointing. Most of the outtakes aren't that terrific (unlike, for instance, something like Springsteen's Tracks, or Dylan's Biograph and Bootleg 1-3, all of which had any number of great songs), and the two early albums on disc 2 are by far the band's worst, in my opinion; maybe they would be better if the sound quality weren't so muffled.

I'm don't know The Spongetones, but I did notice them at the Shoes website. I'll take a listen.

Ah, so you do have something by The Searchers. That seems to be a collection of their '60s material, with which I'm not familiar.

Yeah, if you have 1000s of CDs, many of them naturally get neglected. I only have <300, and even I have some I haven't heard in a while.

Stolen Wishes-3.5 stars isn't that low rated although I considered 4 stars. Need to hear it again-I just went by how many song titles jumped out when I read them.

What is the Shoes website? Is it BlackVinyl.com?? I'm not sure if it's still around-last time I checked was at least one year ago and it was not working.

My guess is that I have around 6-8000 cds. Way too many.

I picked up three of their discs from Lala, but haven't listened to them yet (the amount of CDs I still haven't listened to is rather sad). I do know in the Spongetones' earlier days they sounded almost exactly like the Beatles.

Another power pop classic is Bram Tchaikovsky's "Strange Man, Changed Man" (1979). Tchaikovsky was a member of The Motors. The album is very scarce, but there's a helpful link here.

Yes, http://www.blackvinyl.com/3Shoes.htm is still Shoes' website.

Edit: Oh, and apparently Jeff Murphy has a new album out called "Cantilever", but I don't know anything else about it. Is it comprised of new songs or Shoes rehashes?

I probably have that album. Not sure, since I have a lot of Tchaikovsky's solo work, but it's been years since I've pulled them out. The Motors were a fantastic band.

Yeah, the Motors had great moments. "Love and Loneliness" is a marvellous powerhouse dominated by overwrought keyboard work, crunching guitars, and the raspy voice of the lead. I also think highly of the chugging "Love Round the Corner" and the ballad "Today".

Off on vacation.

Just noticed that www.allmusic.com made Black Vinyl Shoes the album of the day today. So I'm guessing it will be over in a few hours.

It just links to the review.

I was goofing around on the net the other day and noticed the Spongetones two-fer release of their first two albums was going for $75.00 used on Amazon. :( These two albums are incredible. Beat Music and Torn Apart combined and retitled as Beat & Torn with 19 tunes. Well, lo and behold I discovered a site called Not Lame Records and they sell this for $15.00 ($2.50 shipping). I ordered it in a heartbeat... I think the site said it was the band putting out a CD-R copy, but I can't tell from this. It says "Black Vinyl Records". Anyway, if you love Beatles-styled powerpop it gets no better than this. The CD also includes a tune titled "This Kiss Is Mine Tonight" that was originally only on a compilation of N. Carolina bands (Mondo-something?).

http://www.notlame.com/Spongetones/Page_1/CDSPON1.html

Not Lame is a great site. I know the owner and have gotten all kinds of stuff from them including a few Spongetones cds only available there.

Sadly I have so many cds I've never listened to that I haven't ordered from them much in years. :(

I'm turning into the kind of collector that listens to something once and moves on to the next title for one listen, etc.
I'm glad I only have one serious hobby! I just discovered the wonder of music blogs and the amount of 70's powerpop vinyl transfers is blowing my socks off. Now I'm really doing the one listen and moving on.

Are you doing that 70's powerpop vinyl transfer action?

Whatcha got?

While I wouldn't say I'm a "fan" of Shoes, I have thier Best of album. They have a pretty good song off one of the Yellow Pills volumes, called "Thing of the Past". It's a pretty good song.

Material Issue, on the other hand, I really dug.

As for "power pop", I got introduced to some of these bands (The Rubinoos, Shoes, the DBs -- all of whom I'm not that crazy about) through an internet mailing list for the band Jellyfish.

Any fans of that band? Or it's offsprings -- Jason Falkner, Roger Manning, Umajets, Imperial Drag.

I haven't ordered from the company yet, but www.cdbaby.com looks good too.

Huge Jellyfish fan (and of offshoots, too). Perhaps a good subject for another topic/thread, though.

I've used CDBaby many times with no issues, and only good things to say about them. Sometimes the only place to find particular discs.

Norm, I heard one of the Searchers albums you were talking about today and you are right... fantastic stuff (the '79 release). Also heard from this guy named Robert Johnson who is pretty damn good. A record titled Close Personal Friend from '78. Worth seeking out. (uh, not the blues singer!)

I like Jellyfish and have a few live things somewhere that a superfan sent me.

Jason Falkner-I love his stuff and saw him live once. Imperial Drag's okay, but I found them a bit boring live.



CDBaby is a good place to get music.

Want something different? Check out Jim Painton there.

Another good one is Eytan Mirsky.