This was originally a tape series, and a very long one: sixteen C-90s, which is twenty-four hours of music, all from the period December ‘63 to May ‘69, with no repeats. The last tape, Volume 16, was completed in 2000. CD conversion started shortly thereafter and has proceeded at a spectacularly slow pace: Volume 15 was a year ago. And the fact that CDs contain 80 minutes, maybe, while I used to cram 91, even 92 minutes onto a cassette, has never really been dealt with — five tracks from the tape don’t appear here — hasn’t bothered me as much as I thought it would.

The next volume, though, won’t be a version of a tape: it will be constructed from scratch. Not that I’m worried about having enough material. I just hope it won’t take me another year to do.

Track listing for 111136-2:

1. Del Shannon: Stranger in Town
2. The Beach Boys: Don’t Worry Baby
3. Dionne Warwick: Reach Out for Me
4. The Yardbirds: Shapes of Things
5. Elvis Presley: U. S. Male
6. The Seekers: I’ll Never Find Another You
7. Stevie Wonder: A Place in the Sun
8. Gary Lewis and the Playboys: She’s Just My Style
9. The Animals: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
10. The Arbors: The Letter
11. Jackie Wilson: Whispers (Gettin’ Louder)
12. The Beatles: Love Me Do
13. Petula Clark: Don’t Give Up
14. Percy Sledge: Take Time to Know Her
15. The Easybeats: Friday on My Mind
16. Dusty Springfield: Stay Awhile
17. Edwin Starr: Agent Double-O-Soul
18. The Newbeats: Run, Baby, Run (Back into My Arms)
19. Brenda and the Tabulations: Dry Your Eyes
20. The Hollies: On a Carousel
21. Jay and the Techniques: Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie
22. The 5th Dimension: Stoned Soul Picnic
23. The Bee Gees: Words
24. Creedence Clearwater Revival: I Put a Spell on You
25. The Turtles: It Ain’t Me Babe
26. Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues
27. The Temptations: Ain’t Too Proud to Beg
28. The Lovin’ Spoonful: Darling Be Home Soon

WordPress 2.2.2 is now in place. (When we get to 6.6.6, maybe I’ll get worried.)

A lot to like in this announcement:

Every week we here at Cacophony Central will pick and choose the songs that have gotten us through the week. Sometimes there’s a rhyme and reason to them, other times, there’s not. We’ll let you decide if there’s a theme or not. Some of it is new, some old, some you’re heard of, some you probably haven’t, but seek out these tracks and we guarantee you some good times. Or at least a way to make you look as cool as us. If we could, we would post these up, but seeing as we don’t want the man looking down on us, we encourage you to go out and find some of these tunes, wherever they may be. We promise, you won’t be disappointed.

As arguments for mix tapes (and CDs) go, this is definitely one of the better ones: it covers all the major justifications, the ones you’d admit to and the ones you think to yourself. And the actual programs (the second one went up today) are pretty good, too.

Neil Diamond’s recording career, like Gaul, was divided into three parts: the Big Bang (on Bang Records, natch), the West Coast Incubation (on Decca/MCA’s less-unhip Uni label), and the OMGWTF Period (on Columbia, mostly). The man had dozens of hits, and a fair compilation wouldn’t attempt to squeeze him down to a single CD, but I never said I was being fair. And give Diamond credit: even some of the latter-day stuff has held up pretty well, and the ones that didn’t, well, they didn’t make it onto this disc. The cover photo, which is not called “Thank the Lord for the Knight Time,” derives from an old jewelry-store ad.

Track listing for 111135-2 (all tracks by Neil Diamond):

1. Solitary Man
2. Cherry, Cherry
3. I Got the Feelin’ (No No No)
4. You Got to Me
5. Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon
6. Thank the Lord for the Night Time
7. Kentucky Woman
8. Two-Bit Manchild
9. Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show
10. Sweet Caroline
11. Holly Holy
12. Cracklin’ Rosie
13. I Am … I Said
14. Done Too Soon
15. Stones
16. Song Sung Blue
17. Play Me
18. Longfellow Serenade
19. If You Know What I Mean
20. Forever in Blue Jeans
21. September Morn
22. Love on the Rocks
23. Hello Again
24. Yesterday’s Songs

WordPress 2.2.1 is now installed. Please advise if you notice anything weirder than usual.

This is the third Major Babes collection. Like its predecessors, it comprises a list of songs with girls’ names in the title. This time around, things were a little more flexible, in that it wasn’t required that the name be evoked in the lyrics, giving me an excuse to throw in an instrumental for once. The Scott English track, incidentally, was remade with a different (but not that different) title. A car show somewhere along the Pacific Rim was the background for the cover photo.

Track listing for 111134-2:

1. Rod Stewart: Maggie May
2. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart: Alice Long (You’re Still My Favorite Girlfriend)
3. Scott English: Brandy
4. Kenny Rogers and the First Edition: Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town
5. Jimi Hendrix Experience: The Wind Cries Mary
6. Ritchie Valens: Donna
7. Tommy Roe: Hooray for Hazel
8. The Dovells: Betty in Bermudas
9. Blood, Sweat & Tears: Lisa, Listen to Me
10. Jimmy Soul: Twistin’ Matilda
11. Boomer Castleman: Judy Mae
12. Curtis Lee: Beverly Jean
13. Glen Campbell: Brenda
14. Neil Diamond: Cherry, Cherry
15. The Contours: Shake Sherrie
16. The Hollies: Dear Eloise
17. Jan and Dean: Linda
18. The 4 Seasons: Dawn (Go Away)
19. Bobby Goldsboro: Honey
20. The Charts: Deserie
21. The Strangeloves: Cara-Lin
22. Larry Hall: Sandy
23. The Association: Pandora’s Golden Heebie Jeebies
24. The Crickets: Deborah
25. Chubby Checker: Lazy Elsie Molly
26. Los Indios Tabajaras: Maria Elena

Get your kicks, indeed: Steph’s put together a mix for a trip down the Mother Road, and the proposed cover art is truly wondrous. And you have to like anything which finds room for Voice of the Beehive’s “There’s A Barbarian In The Back Of My Car,” right?

Not a Bryan Ferry reference, but a description of this set of cover versions at Middledawn, including some well-known (Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss,” for instance) and some I’d not heard before (Dishwalla’s take on “Tainted Love”). Definitely worth some of your time, and you can actually listen to the tracks onsite.

Los Angeles Times sportswriter Christine Daniels has something like seventy-five tracks in this ongoing mix, and she’s posted 20 of them (so far) for public consumption. I’ll mention one here: “Black Metallic” by Catherine Wheel, which, says a friend of hers, is “the most majestic, awe-inspiring song of the 1990s,” and she’s not inclined to disagree.

This is, of course, a collection of Temptations tracks, and mostly a fairly-obvious one, though stuff like “My Baby” (and its pretty-decent B-side, “Don’t Look Back”) had to be snipped to fit on the disc, and I was quite insistent on including the always-overlooked “I Want a Love I Can See,” which dates to 1963 and features a Paul Williams (!) lead vocal. (David Ruffin had yet to come on board.) The young lady with the 360-degree perspective was working for Van Raalte.

Track listing for 111133-2 (all tracks by the Temptations:

1. I Want a Love I Can See
2. The Way You Do the Things You Do
3. Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)
4. My Girl
5. It’s Growing
6. Since I Lost My Baby
7. Get Ready
8. Ain’t Too Proud to Beg
9. Beauty Is Only Skin Deep
10. (I Know) I’m Losing You
11. All I Need
12. You’re My Everything
13. (Loneliness Made Me Realize) It’s You That I Need
14. I Wish It Would Rain
15. I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)
16. Please Return Your Love to Me
17. Cloud Nine
18. Run Away Child, Running Wild
19. Don’t Let the Joneses Get You Down
20. I Can’t Get Next to You
21. Psychedelic Shack
22. Ball of Confusion
23. Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
24. Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone