Wax of the Week #110...Billy May: Johnny Cool (1963)

Solid crime jazz soundtrack from May, a Pittsburgh native. He’s the big band–era guy who wrote the themes for The Green Hornet and Naked City. He was also known for being a long-time Sinatra arranger.

Wax of the Week #109...Quartz: “Street Fighting Lady” 7” (1977)

The thing that strikes me about this British metal single (from their debut LP) is how much it sounds like Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell record from three years later; Tony Iommi produced this, and it makes you wonder if he didn’t pick up some ideas. This is the 1980 reissue version. Singer Mike Taylor died in 2016 at age 68, and future Sabbath keyboardist Geoff Nicholls was a member.

Wax of the Week #108...Bill Wray And His Showband Royale: For Our Friends (1970)

Louisiana pseudo-lounge that’s a little grittier and non-clowny than most, including a fiery cover of Dylan’s “Dear Landlord,” a low key version of David Wiffen’s “Driving Wheel,” and the bluesy original “Everybody Boogie.” Wray had a 1976 LP on the MCA-associated Legend label, along with two early ’80s records on Liberty. Pretty fiery, six-minute+ “Try a Little Tenderness” done in the Otis Redding/Three Dog Night style, also.

Wax of the Week #107...Bill Nash: The Original (1974)

Very sincere, Texas-based (?) lounge singer does three early ’70s standards (“American Trilogy” is always a treat to hear on these records). The back cover reprints newspaper stories touting connections with Kris Kristofferson in Nashville and Glen Campbell in Vegas.

Wax of the Week #106...Bill Marx and the Jazz Octet: Jazz Kaleidoscope (1962)

Born in 1937, the adopted son of Harpo Marx here makes a fine jazz record, with help from Paul Horn on sax and Dick Nash on trombone. I don’t know enough about jazz to tell you what specific kind it is; maybe someone can chime in. I just like it. Marx composed several film scores for director Bob Kelljan (including both Count Yorga films), plus stuff like DEATHMASTER and TERROR AT RED WOLF INN. He’s lived in the Palm Springs area since 1992, and still performed at a local restaurant with a trio in recent years.

Wax of the Week #105...Billy Mure and His Orchestra: Around the World in Percussion (1961)

Mostly pleasant but fluffy orchestral pop of the “world tour” variety, but includes some good cuts that excite the exotica nerve. Dig the abstract cover art.

Wax of the Week #104...Big Jim Sullivan: Plays Gilbert O'Sullivan (1973)

An album of instrumental Gilbert O'Sullivan covers? Besides the expected easy listening, this inexplicably contains a couple of pretty cool 1970s cop show funk cuts. Sullivan (born James Tomkins in 1941) was an in-demand session guitarist, played the first recorded fuzz guitar in Britain, and appeared on records by Dusty Springfield, Bowie, Small Faces, and hundreds of others. He died in 2012. By the way, “Little Jimmy” was fellow session guitarist Jimmy Page.

Wax of the Week #103...Big Black: Atomizer (1986)

I still like their last record best, but this one has a few standouts, including probably their best-known song, “Kerosene,” about the self-destructive behavior driven by boredom of nimrods out in the sticks.

Wax of the Week #102...Baja Marimba Band: Watch Out! (1966)

Their sixth LP, mostly pleasant but unremarkable easy listening, aside from two standouts: “Sabor a Mi” and the bossa-inflected “Telephone Song.”

Wax of the Week #101...Rodd Keith and the Raindrops: “October Smiles" 7" (196?)

A sultry, moody crooner ballad from the king of song poems.

Wax of the Week #100...Big Black: Songs About Fucking (1987)

This is one of the records that showed me that “heavy” didn’t have to be metal. There’s some filler, but the good stuff is good.

Wax of the Week #99...Big Black: Headache (1987)

The 12” EP grooves on this are nice and loud. Happy songs concerning child beating, grinding the face of someone who messed with your tools, strike breakers, and racist cops. A “heavy” guitar paired with one that sounds like a big chain smashing against a cyclone fence. Granulating roundwound bass groove. A thumping 808. And a killer Savage Pencil cover illustration.

Wax of the Week #98...Big Black: The Hammer Party (1986)

Comp of their first two EPs from ’82 and ’83. The first one (Lungs) is pretty weird; sounds very homemade (it was a one-man band at this point). There’s not much hint of the fury they’d unleash later on. The second one (Bulldozer) is more aggressive, accentuating the darkness in the lyrical content.

Wax of the Week #97...v/a: Betty Page Danger Girl (1996)

I have no idea what pinup queen Betty Page has to do with the this picture disc other than cynical marketing or a tangential connection to striptease music, but nonetheless it’s a pretty cool collection of short suspense and crime/spy jazz library tracks from the Chappell organization. These records can be difficult to come by, and are usually pretty expensive.

Wax of the Week #96...Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO: In Search of the Lost Divine Arc (2013)

They pump out records, but generally the quality ratio is decent. However, this double LP is mostly filler, with the exception of the epic, side-long head-soaking psych of the title track. These guys can take the classic spaced-out Gong sound and run it through a field of shrooms.

Wax of the Week #95...Bert Lloyd: s/t (c. 1978)

Sappy lounge crooner from parts unknown, wimpy enough to do “Evergreen” and “Weekend in New England.” I did enjoy his versions of ”Copacabana” and “MacArthur Park” (I’ll buy any private lounge record that has this song on it).

Wax of the Week #94...Les Barefoot Boys et Loma: Au Tahiti Village (1966)

Not a lot of records come out of French Polynesia; here’s one that’s mostly traditional, happy Polynesian music that’s pleasant enough, but of no lasting interest personally. But there are three cool, surf-like instrumentals that are nice to hear.

Wax of the Week #93...Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra: 6 Plus 6 (1972)

One thing I love to hear on easy listening records is plucky electric bass, like it was picked or plucked close to the bridge. It creates a tight foundation for the more airy elements to soar. In general, so many of these LPs have thick, clear, lush production sounds (especially the German ones). Picture yourself in a Kmart in the mid-’70s, munching on popcorn while Mom looks for husky bootcut dungarees for your new school year.

Wax of the Week #92...Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra: Bert Kaempfert Now! (1971)

Kaempfert, born in Hamburg in 1923, was a songwriter (“Strangers in the Night”) and bandleader whose most famous footnote is probably (while working A&R for Polydor) hiring The Beatles to back English singer Tony Sheridan in 1961. He started releasing LPs in the late ’50s, and some of his material starting a decade later falls nicely into the Now Sound genre (middle-aged, mostly white orchestra leaders covering “hip” rock and pop sounds of the day), with a plucking electric bass underpinning pleasant brass melodies. He died in 1980. The label on this one brags “Recorded in Europe.”

Wax of the Week #91...v/a: Beat of the Traps (1991)

A demented desert island disc in this home. This was the first collection of song poems, short-run records (mostly 45s), the result of the “send us your lyrics” shuck found in gossip magazine ads back in the 1960s and ’70s. The king of this strange corner of the record world was the sad genius Rodd Keith (aka Rod Rogers and many other names), a musical prodigy who met an early demise, the result of drugs and/or mental imbalance. He could bang out multiple one-take songs per day, a lot of them sounding genuinely good and catchy with an air of someone having actual fun at their work, so he’s since had several anthologies of his own. Other singers come across as d-level lounge crooners, and hearing them sing these bizarre poems sent in by suckers who paid money to have a record of their own often results in some strange accidental works of sick inspiration. Released by Byron Coley’s Carnage Press label, which was created for that cool Jim Jones Trading Cards set.