Now here's our kind of pop obsessives.
Reader Jennifer Knowles alerts us to the fine folks at www.releaseroy.com, a site devoted to...
well, let them explain in their own words:
This is a website by the fans for the fans and our mission is simple:
To convince Warner Bros to release the Roy Wood albums 'Super Active Wizzo' and 'On The Road Again' on CD by raising over 2,000 signatures!
2007 marks the 30th anniversary since the master tapes of 'Super Active Wizzo' were locked away in the record company vaults. 'On The Road Again' was sentenced to the same fate in 1979. Both albums have never appeared on CD and were only released (for good behaviour) as vinyl LPs for a very limited time before being deleted.
This injustice cannot continue!
Warner Bros have said they will hear our case if over 2,000 fans petition the company pledging to liberate the albums from stores if and when they appear on CD. Please sign the petition NOW!
My guess is that if you're reading this, you're already convinced that the aforementioned Roy Wood is a very great man. But here's a rare video of his sublime "Dear Elaine" -- from the equally sublime 1973 Wood solo album Boulders -- to remind you.
So go sign the petition already. And tell 'em PowerPop sent you.
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5 comments:
I remember coming across "Wizzard's Brew" in a local record shop (how or why they got it, I'll never know) after reading Greg Shaw in Creem wax ecstatically over "Do Ya", so I picked it up. Weirdest fucking thing I'd ever heard. The only things I could make sense out of were "Jolly Cup of Tea" and "Gotta Crush (About You)"). "Boulders" was a little more accessible for me...
BTW, saw this in the "comments" for that "Dear Elaine" video:
...There's a great Roy Wood duble CD compilation available entitled Exotic Mixture (Repertoire REP 4744-WR) which contains 39 tracks covering most of his solo career. Of course Wizzard Brew has just been remastered and never sounded so good. All the Move albums are about to get re-issued in the summer.
And here's the Move lip-synching "California Man."
Jeff Lynne's 60! And Roy's 61!!!
"On The Road Again" is quite a good album. John Bonham drums on one of the best tracks. I've had it on LP since it came out. No, my copy's not for sale.
I have "Mustard" on UK vinyl and "Boulders" on US United Artists vinyl. They both sound fine (though the UA pressing is typically a bit noisy). I also have "Mustard" on an Edsel CD that is darn near unlistenable. Crappy mastering.
I'm dipping into a book on glam rock by Phillip Auslander that's got a chapter pairing Bryan Ferry and Roy Wood. The argument is forced, but it's cool to read about Roy Wood in a scholarly context. Wood's quite the nutty professor.
"Wizzard's Brew" always strikes me as some kind of alien message sent to Earth from a faraway galaxy. It sounds nothing like Wood's Spector-esque Wizzard singles, nor his more intimate solo albums. A true one-off excursion into heaviness. I love it.
There is a great Wizzard CD compendium "Singles A's and B's", which besides the highlights of "See My Baby Jive" and "Angel Fingers", also contains the mostly instrumental B sides. Some of them are right up there with "Pet Sounds" instrumentals in my book, especially "The Carlsberg Special" and "Bend over Beethoven", with its off kilter jazz chords and sax orgy.
Ah yes, why was "See My Baby Jive" not a #1 hit in the US I'll never know. To call it "Spectoresque" does not do it enough justice: it's not a stretch to call it a perfect rock single. "Do Ya" is another.
And there's no other Christmas song I'd rather hear than "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday." Again, why it never hit the bigtime in the US is a mystery to me.
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