Category: Bill Lloyd

Gary Pig Gold’s Noughtie Twenty-One

Despite an alarming amount of critical mass to (and by) the contrary, there truly was much, much more worth hearing this decade just past than those big Big Star, Beatle, Bob Dylan and even Neil Young box sets.

No, really!

So then, strictly alphabetically speaking as always, here’s what I spent much of January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2009 listening very closely to…..

 

Apartment – Sparkle Bicycle
Waikiki Record (2008)

Tatsuya Namai’s radiant pop of the Daniel Johnston-meets-Shonen Knife variety.

 

Alex Brennan – The Last Smile Of The Pied Piper
xtoalex@hotmail.com (2004)

Hopefully Mr. Brennan will be duly hired to give the Beach Boys’ catalog that Beatles Love treatment when the time inevitably arrives.

 

Lindsey Buckingham – Under The Skin
Reprise Records (2006)

Once insane, always insane.

 

Candypants – Candypants
Sympathy For The Record Industry (2000)

Ronnie Spector fronts Elvis’ Attractions …and THEN some!

 

Casper and the Cookies – The Optimist’s Club
Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records (2006)

What Jason NeSmith and Kay Stanton did on their holidays in New York City.

 

Cheap Trick – Rockford
Big3 Records (2006)

Remarkably sounding better – and louder – than ever.

 

Dennis Diken with Bell Sound – Late Music
Cryptovision Records (2009)

The album Brian Wilson has been trying to make since at least 1986.

 

Johnny Dowd – Wire Flowers: More Songs from the Wrong Side of Memphis
Munich Records (2003)

A sonic sequel to one of the Nineties’ undeniably greatest albums …and artists.

 

Bob Dylan – Modern Times
Sony/BMG Music Entertainment (2006)

Edges out Christmas In The Heart by a mere Santa whisker.

 

Electric Prunes – Feedback
PruneTwang (2006)

Proving you can have your re-heated soufflé and eat it, too.

 

Tom Jones – Mr. Jones
V2 Music (2003)

Wherein Atomic Jones meets Wyclef Jean …by way of “Black Bettyâ€Â !

 

Bill Lloyd – Back To Even
New Boss Sounds (2004)

Fifteen more examples of most potently powerful pop, Nashville-style.

 

Lolas – Like The Sun
Jam Recordings (2007)

Tim Boykin and his ever-bright l-o-l-a Lolas honestly do make the kind of records you still think Paul McCartney does.

 

Jack Pedler – Jack Pedler
Race Records (2001)

The sound of the hardest-working drummer in Canada loading all six strings.

 

The Playmates – Sad Refrain
K.O.G.A. Records (2002)

Forever more than happy to play the Stones against their countrywomen Puffy (AmiYumi)’s Beatles.

 

Raquel’s Boys – Music For The Girl You Love
Jam Recordings (2004)

Just as if Bobby Fuller and those once Flamin’ Groovies were never ever extinguished.

 

Jason Ringenberg – A Day At The Farm with Farmer Jason
Yep Roc Records (2003)

The definitive alternative to alternative country.

 

Simply Saucer – Cyborgs Revisited
Sonic Unyon Recording Company (2003)

The nice, nice noise that simply continues to keep on giving.

 

Frank Lee Sprague – Merseybeat
Wichita Falls Records (2005)

Exactly as if Brian Epstein had never entered The Cavern.

 

Tan Sleeve – White Lie Castle
Cheft Worldwide (2000)

Wherein George Harrison and even F. Zappa receive the Bacharach and David by way of Todd Rundgren treatment.

 

Teenage Head – Teenage Head with Marky Ramone
Sonic Unyon Recording Company (2008)

Canada’s Ramones finally reunited with their very-long-lost brudder.

 

 

now,

Bring On the Twenty-Oh-Teens !!!

Santa Pig sez…..

What really gets
none other than
the King of the Surf Guitar
truly hot this time of year ?

However has
that freedom-singing Pride of NashPop
come to link
Mel Torme to frosty Alex Chilton ??

Does no less than
the Once and Forever Female Elvis
actually dream of Snowbirds
this time every year ???

and What in the world
did the Killer’s Sister say
to squeeze the Scrooge clear out of Van the Man
one December 25th (or six) ago ??!

Come,
all ye Lost Groovers,

and roast your chestnuts
alongside all of my Yuletide Pig pals

right there in
Morty’s Cabin,

Ho Ho H(oink) !!!

 

Bill Lloyd’s Slide Show

   Ever since days long gone spent hassling the Everly Brothers for their long hair and loud songs – not to mention them dern Byrds for bringing a ( gasp! ) fuzzbox onto the hallowed Grand Ole Opry stage – Nashville has enjoyed quite the abusive relationship with the rock and the roll, wouldn’t you agree?

Eventually of course, it took such brave new souls as Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam and those Everlys-for-the-Eighties Foster & Lloyd to once and for all shove the corn out of Country and the Wit back into Western.  And not surprisingly in the least to those in the know with ears wide open, the latter half of the latter, Bill Lloyd, has to this day remained busy right there in N-town writing, playing, singing and recording mighty storms up alongside anyone and everyone from Carl Perkins to Marshall Crenshaw to Buck Owens to even our favorite Brady herself.

Leave it to those Wizzards at Japan’s greatest label, though, to finally make available, All In One Place as the man himself would say, fifteen selected Bill Lloyd tracks from 1984 clear through 2004.  Said stellar new collection’s called Slide Show, and it really does contain such Required Bill Listens as “Back To Even” (“from a Dom Perignon to a brown paper sack; from a Jacqueline Susann to a Jack Kerouac” indeed!), “Turn Me On Dead Man” (for those out there still without out-takes from the second and third Badfinger LP’s), “Cool And Gone” (lyrically autobiographic of all of us who’ve spent any time at all Lost in the Grooves), “This Very Second” (someone somewhere call Richard X Heyman asap!!), and lastly but far from leastly the classic “I Went Electric” (featuring the afore-mentioned M. Crenshaw) and the should’a-been, COULD’a-been Worldwide-Multiple-Format-Crossover Top-Five H-I-T “In A Perfect World.”

And speaking of perfect worlds, Bill’s got an additional little CD-R full of just such, and I quote, “Nashville tracks I made available as downloads but are sort of meant to be a collection …as in record."  That one’s called Horizontal Hold, offering fourteen more (!!) rooty-pop gems the likes of “Blue Radio” (too bad The Blue Shadows never got hold of this one…), “A Brand New Way To Say I Love You” (which should be cut IMMEDIATELY by no less than Hoboken’s own Tammy Faye Starlite!), and one of my fave Lloyd numbers ever, “I Can’t Tell My Heart What To Do.”

No need to go to Japan or even Tennessee for this all, however;  just drop right by Bill Lloyd Music

….and yep,  Tell ‘em the Pig sentcha.