Troublemakers

Quite a rare LP (double LP actually), not a lot of rare music on it......but a rare find nonetheless. Back in the 1970's, if you loooked on the dust sleeve of Warner Brothers/Reprise albums, they would advertise what were called "Loss Leaders", which were 2 record sets of absolute mishmashes of stuff from the lable.....I still have a couple of em, man......you could slip one on and hear (this is without looking it up) Black Sabbath, Martin Mull (really), Flo and Eddy, T Rex, Bert Jansch, Seals and Croft, the Faces......ANYONE on the lable could pop up. The price at the time: two mere US dollars....I used to get em, and I did discover some interesting stuff on them. Quite a bargain, 2 discs for 2 bucks, postage included, as long as you understood you were just receiving a handful of random tracks.

Then, sometime in the 1980's they released "Troublemakers"......raising the price to THREE bucks, they attempted to put together something of a "cutting edge" sampler.....for the price, you can't argue, most of this stuff is readilly available in better company, but there are some unusual tracks.......it opends with a live Sex Pistols cut, which I don't THINK is available anywhere else, "Anarchy in the USA"....sound quality poor, the reason for the title change is the intro: "This one's called "Anarchy in the UK......we mean in the USA".......anyway, I don't remember seeing it on any other comps, so completists (good ol' Sex Pistols "completists") will want this one.....next comes a VERY good track from the Urban Verbs "Subways"....I have searched the web for years for ANYTHING by the Urban Verbs, and have turned up not a thing. They have another decent track on the comp as well, CALLING FRIENDS OF THE BLOG, would LOVE to hear the entire album they released (I assume they had just the one). Anyway the set has some very good, but easy to find tracks by Wire, Gang of Four, Devo, Public Image Ltd, Pearl Harbour & the Explosions, the Buggles ("Video Killed the Radio Star").........also stuff from Marianne Faithful, Nico, Robin Lane & the Chartbusters......pretty much a mishmash like the earlier "loss leaders", closes with some more live (and I think elsewhere unavailable) live Pistols, excerpts from their endering of the Stooges "No Fun".......

Worth it, maybe, for the live Pistols and the Urban Verbs stuff, nothing else really unusual here, basically I'm putting it up there as bait, hoping someone has the Urban Verbs (please please please, very good, very Talking Heads-like)......anyway, these are taken from the original vinyl, this is really nothing special, just remembering the Warner "Loss Leaders" (they really WERE doing a good thing, exposing us to some new stuff for pennies), making available these rare live Pistols cuts, and also hoping SOME "friend of the blog" has some  Urban Verbs.

DISC 1-01 THE SEX PISTOLS-Anarchy in the USA (live)/02 URBAN VERBS-Subways/03
ROBIN LANE & THE CHARTBUSTERS-Until Tomorrow/04 WIRE-Map Reference 41 N 93 W/05 MARIANNE FAITHFUL-Working Class Hero/06 JOHN CALE-Temper/07 URBAN VERBS-The Only One of You/08 GANG OF FOUR-Damaged Goods/09 WIRE-I Should Have Known Better/10 MODERN LOVERS-I'm Straight/11 DEVO-Social Fools/12 PUBLIC IMAGE LTD-Public Image

DISC 2-01 THE BUGGLES-Video Killed the Radio Star/02 PEARL HARBOUR & THE EXPLOSIONS-You Got It (Release It)/03 NICO-Only Child/04 MODERN LOVERS-Government Center/05 ROBIN LANE & THE CHARTBUSTERS-Kathy Lee/06 BRIAN BRIGGS-Nervous Breakdown/07 MARIANNE FAITHFUL-Broken English/08 PEARL HARBOUR & THE EXPLOSIONS-Busy Little B-Side/09 THE BUGGLES-Clean Clean/10 GANG OF FOUR-Anthrax/11 PUBLIC IMAGE LTD-Swan Lake/12 THE SEX PISTOLS-No Fun (excerpts)

Not my greatest post, I know, just was thinking about the Urban Verbs for some reason (they've been on my "wanted" list for some time now), we'll see what we can come up tomorrow.