Welcome to what I hope will become a semi-regular, recurring feature here in my corner of blogville. Music has always played an important role in my life, from my earliest exposure to Motown artists on mom and dad's stereo.
I've been buying my own music—first 45s, then LPs, then CDs—for almost 40 years. I still have a couple hundred LPs in the basement that I didn't immediately replace with CDs when that format took over in the 1980s. Sometimes I come across reissues of albums that were never on CD at all when they were first released, or were but I didn't buy them because I already had the LP.
Recently I was listening to one of these reissues and started hunting around for CD versions of the other albums released by the same band, which gave me the idea for this feature, as well as which band to discuss first. (Note that I'm not attempting to do in-depth histories of bands here, but hopefully this feature will serve to provide introductions to music you may not be familiar with.)
R.E.M. is certainly the best-known and most successful band to emerge from the Athens, GA scene in the 1980s. The B-52's did pretty well too. But what about Guadalcanal Diary? It's the name of a 1943 movie about a World War II battle, and the band took its name from the movie—actually they were from Marietta, but they got lumped in with the others from the Athens scene.
Their jangle-pop certainly resembled what R.E.M. was doing at the time (which may have ended up hurting Guadalcanal Diary more than it might have helped), but with a more prominent Southern Gothic flavor, steeped in literature and history. The very first track on their first album references the Civil War; other songs mention preachers and heaven, and the album concludes with a version of the traditional spiritual "Kumbayah." But alongside their more serious material, GD display a rather offbeat sense of humor on songs like "Watusi Rodeo" and "Cattle Prod."
Guadalcanal Diary released four albums between 1984 and 1989: Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man, Jamboree, 2 x 4, and Flip-Flop. The first three have been reissued in very limited numbers (2500 copies each) by Rhino Handmade, but the first album is the only one currently still available from Rhino on CD, and the one I bought about two years ago; the other two albums can be purchased as MP3s from Rhino.
Used CD copies of the original 1980s releases are floating around; I just picked up 2 x 4 for around $6 on eBay. Given their limited quantities, used copies of the Rhino releases are scarce and expensive; the lowest price at the moment for a copy of WITSOTBM on half.com is $15; the other two discs are currently not available anywhere that I'm aware of. Jamboree seems to be the most difficult to find; I've decided to buy the digital version and keep looking for a copy on CD. (There's also a version out with the first two albums on one CD.)
From looking at the Wikipedia entry for the band I found their web site, and learned that they will be playing a couple of anniversary shows this summer in Athens and Atlanta. Right now the site isn't much more than a placeholder, but hopefully there will be more there in the future.
(with apologies to Thievery Corporation for my blatant appropriation of their album title Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi)
13 May 2011
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2 comments:
Unfortunately, you will not find a copy of Rhino's Handmade reissue of Jamboree on cd because they never released it. They only released Walking... and 2x4 as limited editions on cd. There were rumors that Rhino would be releasing Jamboree as a limited edition cd, but those rumors are unsubstantiated. I have contact them by phone and e-mailed their Oracle, "Dr. Rhino".
I am curious about the source material they used for the digital release of Jamboree. The representative on the phone suspected that it was probably from the same files that were used on the 2003 cd that featured the band's first two albums. Not a great release, sonically. He suggested I contact Dr. Rhino for a concise answer. I e-mailed him a couple of weeks ago, but have yet to get a response.
I would love to have a copy of Jamboree that had as much attention paid to it as was paid to Walking... and 2x4, but it looks as though it is not to be.
Wow, thanks for that info. I guess I'll have to settle for the mediocre-quality download.
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