Vinyl Voyage Radio

K-Tel was famous in the 70s and 80s for producing compilation albums with such memorable titles as Super Bad ,  Right On and Music Machine .  However, K-Tel was not the first to do this.  Before K-Tel, there was Master Seal. Master Seal was one of several companies in the 1950s to produce budget compilation albums, sold mostly through dime stores, such as Woolworths.  8 Top Hits was the title often sold by Master Seal and often featured young people either dancing or singing on the album cover.  Unlike K-Tel, however, Master Seal did not sell compilation albums with original artists.  They re-recorded the music with a sound-alike band.  Although there was an effort to make the tracks sound like the originals, often the results were laughable. I have an 8 Top Hits from 1957.  Where I got it, I am not sure.  It features several popular songs from the time, including the hit "Little Darlin'."   You know "Little Darlin'."  I...

The album cover has a gritty, urban look.  It resembles a graffitied wall with "Super Bad" apparently spray-painted across the cover. Yes, this is K-Tel's foray into the realm of blaxploitation. The songs are soul and funk classics---mainstream music, really.  Nothing unusual there.  However, the album is not necessarily only about the music....it is about an image.  Released in 1973 at the hight of the popularity of blaxploitation cinema, K-Tel is clearly trying to capture a certain "image" about the music.  Gone is the shouting white announcer in the commercial and in his place is a deep-voiced African-American DJ who extolls the songs as "soul-sational." This is a surprisingly good album.  And, unlike many K-Tel compilations that tend to focus more on the current hits of the day, this album has songs that span four years.  So what you have is a great sampling of music from the soul and funk genre of the early 70s.  There'...

Tom Flannery and the Shillelagh's debut album, Teen Angst and the Green Flannel is not available on vinyl. But it should be. It has a pure rock and roll sound that is a throwback to another era; something you rarely hear on the radio today.  And it is a refreshing accompaniment to a hot summer. I've known Tom now for a few years.  He was one of the composers for my two films, Facing Sudan and Crayons and Paper .  In fact, he provided the very moving song " Crayons and Paper " that accompanied images of war and death drawn by children in Sudan and Sri Lanka and is the centerpiece of both films.  Tom has always been the acoustic guy with a guitar. Not any more.  Wanting to deliver a hard rocking sound now for years, Tom assembled a band and put together a stellar album of pure rock, full of angst, pain, and love (or something like it).  It is a guitar driven reflection on life from the point of view of what has always driven rock and roll:  ...

1984 was the year I got my driver's license.  It was also the year of the Macintosh computer. Night Court premiered on NBC and a gallon of gas cost $1.10. Michael Jackson was severely burned while filming a Pepsi commercial and his album  Thriller was the best selling album for the second year in a row. It was a stellar year for movies as well:  Ghostbusters, Amadeus, Gremlins, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ---just to name a few.  Entertainment Weekly recently argued that 1984 was the greatest year for films ever, even better than 1939. It was also the year K-Tel released Sound System , which features songs from Huey Lewis and the News, Pat Benatar, the Police, the Kinks and Styx. Take a trip with us to 1984 on Adventures in Vinyl.  Sound System is the featured album for July Plus, movie clips, trivia and music from 1984 as well.    Adventures in Vinyl is the only radio show dedicated to the magic of the K-Tel record comp...

When I was a kid, I had a 45 rpm record of the song "Cane and Able"  by some band named Meadow.  I knew nothing of the band or the song.  It was given to me by the lunchroom lady of my elementary school who also happened to hold a summer Bible camp in her garage every year.  I listened to the song several times and never forgot it. Not that the song was particularly good.  But it did have an interesting hook:  "Throw away your cane and you are able." Over the years I lost track of the record, but never forgot the song.  It stuck with me for almost forty years.  I could hum the song and sing much of the lyrics.  I went searching for it and found the full album on Ebay, of course.  So I bought it and became reintroduced to a band that was such a part of my childhood without me even realizing it at the time. The album is called The Friend Ship and its cover is adorned with four hippies, locked hand in hand, floating above the groun...

This month on Adventures in Vinyl we are taking a trip back to the year 1979 with the K-Tel compilation Spotlight . Actually, it is more accurate to say 1978, as all of the songs on this album were released in 1978 (except for the two that were released a year earlier).  This album is slightly different from other K-Tel albums released at the time and marks a change in the way K-Tel created their albums.  Of course, K-Tel is known for crunching as many songs as possible on an album---usually 20 songs per compilation ("20 Original Hits, Original Stars!").  This album has only 16, which means there is not as much crunching of music. In fact, in the 80s, K-Tel will release several more albums following this format. Spotlight is a solid album that, unlike other K-Tel albums released that year, was not advertised on TV. The album contains songs from Andy Gibb, Crystal Gayle, A Taste of Honey, the Commodores, Kenny Rogers....and many more! Join us on Adventures in Viny...

My favorite K-Tel album by far is Rock 80 . This is Retro Repeat month on Adventures in Vinyl and this week we will be rebroadcasting the Rock 80 episode. The episode airs Saturday, May 19 at 11 am (ct), Sunday May 20 at 4 pm (ct) and then at 1 pm May 22, 2 am May 23 and 10 am May 24. Here is the original post describing the album: Prior to 1980, my musical tastes generally sucked.  Oh, I listened to the standard hits on the radio, but had no coherent musical wants or likes---outside, that is, of what was always played in my house:  John Denver, Neil Diamond, Olivia Newton-John and Barry Manilow.  Yes, I admit it, I could sing along to several Manilow tunes.  Remember, I didn't have any older brothers or sisters to show me the way (Think: Almost Famous ). But then, in 1980, everything changed.  I discovered good music. And I can thank K-Tel for that. For Christmas in 1980, I received a cassette from my parents.  It was K-Tel's Rock 80 .  An...