Van Dyke Stylin' in front of Tower Records, 1976.

Honeybus - Recital Promo Lp - What the??!!

I was looking on Popsike.com and found a copy of Honeybus' unreleased 1973 album Recital that sold a couple of years ago for 466 GBP. I knew this album existed as promo copies but I assumed it was some blank sleeve and white label test pressing kind of thing... Wow.

Unfortunately, there isn't a track list on the auction. The Honeybus website has a tracklist:

1. For You
2. Be Thou By My Side
3. Julie In My Heart
4. Big Ship
5. Cross Channel Ferry
6. The Lady's Not For Burning
7. She's A Lady
8. Little Lovely One
9. Lute Girl
10. Writing's On The Wall
11. Baroque 'n' Roll Star
12. Lovely Vanessa
13. I Can't Say It, But I Can Sing It

Aside from tracks 7 & 10, you can pretty much piece it together from tracks on the CDs She Flies Like A Bird - The Anthology and Old Masters, Hidden Treasures.

The Wayback Machine

I've been purging loads of old bookmarks lately and I came across many sites that don't exist anymore that I used to look at all the time. In my early days of online record research (c.1997-2001), these were sites that filled many gaps and led me to many great discoveries. Those days are now 10 years gone and with Geocities and AOL Hometown shutting down, I'm thankful for the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive.

Here are a few old favorites that were thankfully archived by the Wayback Machine:

Fuzz, Acid & Flowers/Tapestry of Delights @ Borderline Books
The granddaddy of internet research sites for me...

The Impossible Discographies
Great obscure artist & label discographies.

Niche Pop
A Japanese site with an interesting selection of obscure album reviews. I used to cut a paste the reviews into Babelfish...

Funk 45
I had wanted to make a pop45 website that mirrored the user-created content of this site. I never figured it out.

The Glam Rock Bear
One of only a handful of sites that gave obscure glam the time of day pre-Velvet Tinmine. Others included Pop45 (duh), 70's Invasion, Impossible DIscographies and... I think I'm forgetting something...

John Book's Thrift Store Adventures
Cool record digging stories.

I'm sure there are at least a half-dozen more. I'll post them as I dig them up.

Anyone else have some old sites you remember fondly?

The Malibooz - (I Won't Be) Too Young

The Malibooz - (I Won't Be) Too Young


Walter Egan and John Zambetti started The Malibooz back in 1964. They reunited in 1981 for the album "Malibooz Rule!" on Rhino. On "(I Won't Be) Too Young", they are joined by Lindsey "Bitchin" Buckingham. Dean Torrance is also on backing vocals. It's got some surf music moves in the vocals but it sounds like prime Mirage-era Lindsey to me.

Casper Giles McCloud - "Why Oh Why?" on Youtube

My first post was about Caspar Giles McCloud. Since then the "Messin' Around" single was reissued by Vinyl Countdown. Zac Webb has dug up a video clip of Caspar doing an unreleased song "Why Oh Why". I hope he can dig up a studio recording!

Swamped Radio

My friend Hoyt has a radio show on 9thfloorradio.com called Swamped. On Tuesday, March 24th I was the guest DJ. Listen to the show. Here is the playlist:

Tamalpais Exchange - Anthem
Badger - Don't Pull The Trigger
Don Agrati - Sunny Day
Ricci Martin - Stop Look Around
Allen Toussaint - Last Train
Steve Miller Band - Serenade
Bob Summers - Georgia On My Mind
Morning - Easy Keeper
Morning - Roll Em Down

Sand - Who Ya Tryin' To Fool
Ron Wood - Act Together
Terry Melcher - Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms
Brian Hyland - Drivin' Me Crazy
The Pebbles - Some Days Are Gone
The Mixtures - Found Out Where It's At
Mr. Big - Wonderful Creation
Thundermug - I Wanna Be With You

Roll-ups - Last Night
Turner & Kirwan of Wexford - The Girl Next Door
Tiger - Crazy
Sweet - Lady Starlight
Rats - Nose Job
Queen - Good Company
The Idle Race - Hurry Up John
Barclay James Harvest - Taking Some Time On

Thoughts and Words - Morning Sky
Yellowstone & Voice - Lonely Man
Allan Merrill - Tranquility
Wings - Some People Never Know
McGear - Leave It

The Malibooz - (I Won't Be) Too Young (This one got cut off)

Nimbo - Maisie Jones / Forget Her

Nimbo - Maisie Jones


Nimbo - Forget Her


Nimbo sounds exactly like Badfinger on this 1971 single. The harmonies are very Pete & Tommy and the upfront bass playing very McCartney. Nimbo released two 45's on Pye. I haven't yet found a copy of their second 45, a cover of The Bee Gees' "When The Swallows Fly" b/w "Noticeingly By". After the two singles on Pye, they switched to the Motown subsidiary Mowest and changed their name to The Rockits for another couple of 45's. Nimbo members John Wilson and Dave Powell then joined up with Bob Jackson and Tommy Evans of Badfinger to form The Dodgers. Tommy must've heard "Maisie Jones".