Wednesday, November 27, 2013

REVIEW: Various Artists - I Need You Bad


The west coat, and the Bay Area in particular, has a vibrant garage rock scene.  For those of us who are fans, this is a good thing.  But the proliferation of quality bands makes collecting a challenge.  It even makes finding and evaluation the music to decide what to collect a challenge.  So what are we to do?

Have no fear!  Sonny Smith of Sonny and the Sunsets (whose 2013 album should already be in your collection; our review here) has come to the rescue, curating a 15-track collection of some of the finest garage bands from San Francisco/Oakland, Los Angeles and Portland.  Admittedly, for I Need You Bad the definition of garage band may be a bit stretched, but the choice of bands and songs is of such quality that there will be no complaints.  Rest assured that there are no tunes written by a team of hired hook-generators and pixel pushers.  This music is hand written, hand made, and hand played.  Many of the bands have been on these pages in the past, and/or will be here in the future.  But for many of you, the album will expose you to at least a few bands you might not otherwise hear or have a reasonable chance to collect.  And most of all, I Need You Bad is a testament to the worth of a vibrant indie pop scene in modern music.

If you want to surprise and delight a music fan this holiday season, Sonny Smith may have given you your chance to shine.  Try these four tracks, or stream the entire album at the link below.







You can stream the entire album here: Stream of I Need You Bad.

There are 1,000 copies of "slime green" vinyl LPs available from Polyvinyl Records.  Burger Records are selling 300 copies on cassette.  The MP3s are available from Polyvinyl's online store as well as usual digital outlets such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and Rdio.

Polyvinyl Records

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