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Tag Archives: British

#125: Led Zeppelin – III (200 Gram Vinyl) Download: Or, Led For The Zeppelinphobe

I had big plans for the write-up on this album. It entailed all sorts of fun facts I unearthed from an oak chest I purchased at some antique shop in Waynesville, OH. These ideas were brewing while I assumed, fool-heartedly, that I’d be able to rip this album in one try. It’s fairly unplayed and, weighing in at a tubby 200 grams, is one of the highest quality pressings I own. So, good record, quality sound, easy money, right? Boy, was I wrong.

This album is supposed to be played loud. I mean fix-your-neighbor’s-lazy-eye loud. So, to make it even louder, I upped the volume on the feed to my CPU for the first rip to levels that would leave the population within a 7 mile radius sterile for 7 generations. Once I realized these rock volumes would also affect my fragile man-sack I reconsidered posting the first take.

On the second rip the levels were toned down to sane-enough-for-capital-punishment levels. And all was good in the world. Until I realized that there was a repeating skip on the second side…after I had split the tracks and started tagging.

So I recorded a third time. And it sounds good, it sounds really good. However, it doesn’t sound perfect. There are one or two blurbs which are not really big enough to be considered true skips. I hope you don’t notice them, but if you do don’t blame me. I’m certain this record knew it was trying to be digitized and fought every effort to be tamed by this MP3 wrangler. It bucked and bucked…and I can only brush off my chaps so many times!

>>>BUT what I really want to say about this record is that it’s the perfect entrance into the world of Led Zeppelin for the disbeliever. For a long time I hated, or thought I hated, the group because of the tracks I heard on the radio. “God, this Janis Joplin song is really annoying,” I would always say. And then I heard this album.

III is the album that every rocksy, folksy indie band crawling and slinking on the scene today wants to make. But they never, ever will. Now, I’m not saying that the new stuff isn’t good. It’s just not the real thing.

Let me put it this way. I new Camaro SS is probably a fun car to drive. It’s fast, it looks OK and you can probably get any chick at a sports bar to bone you if you’re driving one. But you could never compare it to a 1969 Yenko Super Camaro. It just doesn’t have the balls out attitude toward, well, going balls out.

Balls...

OUT!

Now, forget “Stairway To Heaven” and take a listen to what Jack White wishes he could be.

>>Click here to download III at 320 kbps

Tracklist

A1 Immigrant Song 2:26
A2 Friends 3:55
A3 Celebration Day 3:29
A4 Since I’ve Been Loving You 7:25
A5 Out On The Tiles 4:04
B1 Gallows Pole 4:58
B2 Tangerine 3:12
B3 That’s The Way 5:38
B4 Bron-Y-Aur Stomp 4:20
B5 Hats Off To Roy Harper 3:41

#110: King Of Woolworths – Ming Star (2001) Vinyl Download 320 kbps

There isn’t much I know about King Of Woolworths. There isn’t even a Wikipedia entry for the group. The little I’ve found out about project has been through sites run by fans around the globe. I only know that I LOVE this album.

It was only by a chance that I ever even heard about them in the first place. During the summer of 2002 the radio station WOXY, in Oxford, OH at the time, starting playing this curious little track called “To The Devil A Donut.” It started off in slow rotation but eventually made it into heavy play for a few solid months. I’m not sure the DJs even knew much about it…they just liked it so they put it on the radio.

It’s a pretty creepy track with bits from an old horror movie entitled “To The Devil A Daughter”. On the face there are very obvious reasons why it’s got a case of the creep. It uses snippets of dialogue about baptizing a baby in the blood of her dead mother, bringing that babe up in seclusion as the devil,  and then pumping her full of morphine. You know, the usual.

But it’s not really what’s on the face that makes it creep hypnotique, verging on a dream. With every song on this album I envision myself lying on the ground, staring face up at a different situation. The beat, the strange use of strange 70′s British synth, and the vaporous ambient cloud swallows you up and spits you out on another locale at each track’s start

With “To The Devil A Daughter” I envision myself sprawled out in a cold cellar of an ancient English country manor. It’s so old, in fact, that the floor is composed of soft, damp earth instead of hard cement. The walls are large stone without caulk. The ceiling is comprised of old oak beams, covered in spider webs. The room is lit by the soft but terrifying flicker of torch light. Hooded shadows work their way in and out of the ominous glow, always threatening but never pouncing. The suspense is terrible but just as it comes to a climax the track changes and I’m transported elsewhere.

In “Theydon” I’m lying on the beach somewhere on the coast of the North Sea. I don’t know how I got there and I don’t know why I’m wet and I don’t know why I’m wearing a blue and white fleece because I don’t ever wear fleece but I don’t care. I don’t care because beautiful music floats over my drenched body and connects me with the little pebbles covering my jeans. I say hello to the passing gulls. The sun rises and I worry temporarily that it will melt my bones, but the fear quickly passes and I’m at peace. Everything’s OK.

The album takes turns tossing you psychologically from dark to light, harm to safety. It’s like a continually operating wooden rollercoaster in an abandoned park that you keep riding over and over and over. You always think it’s gonna jump the tracks and fling you into a bloody underbrush demise. But it doesn’t, it keeps on round and round in a beautiful and terrifying loop.

I think Mr. King Of Woolworths himself, Jon Brooks, puts it best: “Everything’s fine, but there is something not quite right about it.”

>>>Click here to download Ming Star

Tracklist

1 Kentish Town 5:33
2 Bakerloo (Main Titles) 6:19
3 Where Fleas Hide 1:58
4 Stalker Song 4:44
5 Colcannon 5:14
6 To The Devil A Donut 6:02
7 Kite Hill 5:30
8 The Watchmaker’s Hands 7:11
9 Theydon 6:49
10 Bakerloo (End Credits) 4:40


#103: Gomez – We Haven’t Turned Around 12″ (1999) Vinyl Download!

This is the album that made me think I wanted to visit the UK. Well, not this actual 12″, but the LP that this 12 was derived from. I bought this 12″ a few years after I bought the original in high school. Sue me…joke’s on you, I’m broke.

For a split second it seems like a good idea, vising the Cream Isle. After all, Britannia rules the waves! Wait, can they really do that? Is their science so far ahead of ours? We can’t even clean oil, albeit millions upon trillions of gallons of oil, from our waves. Yet somehow they are able to force the foaming sea to bring millions of Britons breakfast in bed each and every morning.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rules the waves!

There really aren’t any perks to visiting England. It’s not like you can hang out for a week on one of their fabulous beaches. You can’t visit their quaint little alpine lodges. You can’t witness the splendor of untainted fauna roaming virgin countrysides. You can’t do none of that because none of that exists!

And do you know why? It’s because the United Kingdom is just a bigger version of New Jersey. There are a lot of weird-looking white people living there with no other place to go. So, in protest of their shitty luck, they’ve been forming unholy missionary positions for the past millenium and producing terribly ugly babies. And those babies have been killing off any wildlife, African Swallows included, they could get within their single-barrel shotgun sights. England, Wales and Scotland aren’t the shallow end of the gene pool…they are the trash compactor.

Instead of white trash they have "chavs".

But somehow this little island of misfit boy toys never fails to produce a steady stream of musical savants. And you know what, it kind of gives me the creeps. It’s not like these guys are being fostered in a culturally rich environment. The Beatles were from Liverpool, for Christ’s sake.

With less than 900,000 “Liverpudlians” within the greater city limits, Liverpool is less populous than Cincinnati. The only thing that ever came out of Cincinnati was 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft. He was a president so terrible that Teddy Roosevelt came out of political retirement to form a new political party in an attempt to knock Taft, Roosevelt’s former Vice President, out of office.

Nice pants, asshole.

So how, oh how, is it that this land mass crawling with cheeky monkeys keeps birthing killer bands? After listening to the song “Gomez In A Bucket (A Seaside Town Made Of Ice Cream, Slowly Melting)” I think I’ve found an answer both simple and mysterious. That, of course, is the little known existence of an unbelievably potent strain of Indian hash called “Symphalamajamjam”.

Everyone thinks that Gandhi was the reason India gained independence from the British. Non-violence my ass. No, it was because all of the Maharajas running the Indian drug trade got together and said enough was enough; those British bastards had hampered their sweet cheeba trade for long enough. So, in a bid to rid their dominion of the buzzkill wankers, the head Maharaja met secretly with GeorgeVI to let him in on a little secret.

This guy loved the doobage.

Boss Maharaja sais, “Look Georgey Boy, I don’t like you and you don’t like me,” he says. “You been floppin’ your stinky pikey feet all over my sweet subcontinental turf for too long. I want you gone and gone quick but I’m gonna make it real sweet for you, see?”

Boss Maharaja leaned in real close to George VI. It looked as if he would kiss George on the brow, but he resisted.

“This here Symphalamajamjam is gonna make all your people real good at the gee-tar. One toke and they will be just as good as the Beatles, maybe better.”

“Why in the bloody hell would I want my subjects acting like insects, blub blub blub,” said a moistening Charles.

“That’s not important, my man, that’s not important,” said Boss Maharaja. “What is important is that you take this little brick of sticky wicky home along with these seeds. Every street and alley in London will be like a god damn Gilbert and Sullivan convention. You dig?”

“No, but your turban is very convincing.”

And that’s how Gomez came to produce this 12″ in 1999.

Click here to download We Haven’t Turned Around and all the fixins’.

Tracklist

A1 We Haven’t Turned Around 6:30
A2 Flight 3:30
A3 Rosemary 4:51
B1 We Haven’t Turned Around (X-Ray Version) 3:16
B2 Gomez In A Bucket (A Seaside Town Made Of Ice Cream, Slowly Melting) 10:02
B3 Emergency Surgery 2:18

#101: Nick Drake – Bryter Layter (1970) Vinyl Download

There are now over 100 albums on Rebuilt Tranny’s Rat Rod Record Exchange. Instead of celebrating I’m going to hand over a sad album to the internet community. I’ve lost so many hours uploading the Rainbow Goblins Story, countless Daft Punk records, cacophonous machinery, and too – many – remixes.

I could have spent all of that LP-twirling doing something worthwhile: watching Red Dwarf episodes on Netflix.

British Sci-Fi: The only reason to live?

 But before I digress, let’s get back to the actual subject of this post for just a second. Nick Drake, English folk rock extraordinaire, also felt like he was in a life filled with waste. Despite albums filled with tonally rich yum-yums, he continually failed to sell more than a few thousand albums for each release.

No one really knows why he couldn’t push units. Some say it was because he hated performing. Others say it’s because he avoided interviews at all costs. And then there are those who point to the fact that he was never, EVER captured on video.

But I know the real truth.

Nick hugged the electric cactus by overdosing on antidepressants 14 years before Red Dwarf even hit the air. He never got to see the pinnacle of British television. He never got to see how cats would evolve 3 million years in the future (they turn into humans with sharp canines, James Brown dance moves, and impeccable taste in Nudie-style suites.) He only had Dr. Who…and his suicide-enducing scarf.

Seriously, kill me now.

So, I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad about my lot. I do feel fortunate I had the opportunity to see that episode where Lister became impregnated by the female-alternate-universe-version of himself. That was bloody hilarious!

 Maybe if Nick had witnessed the comedic gold presented in the following clip we’d still have him with us today.

I’m just be glad I’m still kickin’, my record player is still spinnin’, and I haven’t fried my new hard drive during the hours of conducting the vinyl-to-MP3 train. All aboard. Or something.

I hope to bring another 100 albums online in the next year and then 100 more after that.

This album is a reminder that you should always be thankful for what you have and remember, there are always lots more juicy tunes just a click away.

>>Click to download Bryter Layter

Tracklist

A1 Introduction 1:33
A2 Hazey Jane II 3:41
A3 At The Chime Of A City Clock 4:42
A4 One Of These Things First 4:46
A5 Hazey Jane I 4:24
B1 Bryter Layter 3:16
B2 Fly 2:56
B3 Poor Boy 6:30
B4 Northern Sky 3:42
B5 Sunday

#81: The Damned – Phantasmagoria (1985) VINYL Download

grimly fiendish LP rar zip mediafire

*album download below*

Phantasmagoria has curiously been out of print in North America for some years now. However, I was fortunate enough to pick up this copy from an area radio station that liquidated their vinyl cellar. Suckers. I didn’t know what it was at the time but the name sounded slick enough, so, I added it to my stack. Thank my Capricorn stars for my dumb luck because this album is devilishly delicious.

Some musicados recognize Phantasmagoria as the ruling High Court in the Confederate States of Goth. Others tattoo it with a regretful London Classic Punk tramp stamp. Then there are a few who will whisper rumors of it being a dark wave bastard child.

I couldn’t give a raven’s ass what musiclique it falls into.

I just know that this album’s spent countless hours spinning at 33 1/3 rpm in close proximity to my person. The effects of such ghastly activities were disturbing. Prolonged rotation caused the disc to emit an unknown form of radiation, which greyed my locks in similar fashion to lead singer David Vanian’s.

At first I thought it looked crack dandy. Hot Topic gift cards started arriving in the mail from a secret admirer, which only sweetened the honey pot. But my cat kept hissing relentlessly and scratching my eyelids while I slept so the funky folicles had to go. Luckily, Blanks Pharmacy sells knockoff hair dye called “Just For Tuff Dudes” on the cheap.

Don’t miss out in this one, you ghouls.

Click here to download Phantasmagoria

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