Over the weekend, I picked up (virtually) a gift for Alice...she'd decided, after years of being a voluble Beatles-hater, that she'd like the "complete" Stereo Box. As we were discussing this, I played for her some Kinks songs, and came to realize that the only Brit rock bands she had any recordings of were those made up of Yanks with local talent "behind" them: The Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Pretenders.
So that inspired me to take some initiative to give her some context (and spurred by the fact that she mildly liked to fondly recalled the Kinks songs I'd played) and augmented the Black Box with samplers and/or key albums from:
The Kinks
The Springfields (she's a solid Dusty Springfield fan, and they were the first skiffle/pop band from the UK to make it onto the US charts, in 1962, with their smashing cover of "Silver Threads and Golden Needles")
The Animals
The Zombies
The Yardbirds
The Who
The Rolling Stones
Fairport Convention
The Hollies
and a sampler, to get in a flavor, at least, of the likes of Donovan to the Mindbenders to the Troggs to the Small Faces...sadly, the best I could find that wasn't exorbitantly out of print was the Shout Factory/PBS-pledger-related The British Beat...which does slip in Tom Jones and a few other questionable (if amusing) items (and the Australian Easybeats--why not Joni Mitchell or the Crescendos of Singapore?), but at least doesn't spend any time on Freddie and the Dreamers (even if it also doesn't give us Them or the tolerable Herman's Hermits songs, one of them a Kinks cover, either).
So, have you ever attempted a Quick Introductory Course in a Box, or in this case a small stream of packages, and how did it turn out for you or your beneficiary (or were you the beneficiary, and to what extent?).
And while pondering such education, please consider a textual contribution to Tuesday's Overlooked Films (and/or Other A/V), the links I'm aware of to be posted on this blog tomorrow morning...and thanks.
And thanks to Naomi Johnson, whose thoughtful review of Patti Abbott and Steve Weddle's e-anthology of vignettes Discount Noir also too-kindly cites my own contribution as particularly praiseworthy, happily among others.
