Over their many years in the song-poem field, Columbine
Records issued dozens upon dozens of compilation albums under the title The
Now Sounds of Today; if their catalogue is to be believed there could be as
many as 300 or more. Each of them contained anything up to 20 different tracks,
most from aspiring hit makers but occasionally featuring one or two covers of
standards from the American songbook, included no doubt to add a patina of
authenticity to the company’s nefarious money-making scheme.
Packaging these albums in dull, generic sleeves (often with
different catalogue numbers printed on the sleeve and disc) saved both time and
money, important when the overall budget for each project was close on
non-existent. It seldom mattered if the details on the sleeve were wrong, as
customers were unlikely to know any better: on this particular volume, track
five, I’ll Never Say No To You is credited to Rave-Ons but actually
performed by Bob Grummer; the following track has no artist credit at all on the
sleeve but does feature the band elsewhere referred to as the Rave-Ons.
The musicians involved would not have seen cue sheets for
the songs they were being asked to perform before entering the studio, yet even
taking note of the ridiculous rate that Columbine churned this material out
many of those musicians - consummate professionals and song-poem stalwarts like
Kay Weaver, John Muir (aka Gene Marshall) and Ralph Lowe - managed to do a
half-decent job.
Several of the song-poem companies had their own studio
band: Cinema, for example, issued hundreds of records credited to the Real Pros,
a shifting collection of studio musicians which at times was nothing more than
a one-man band (a la Rodd Keith) and at others a full-blown band fronted by
Dick Kent, and Columbine had the Rave-Ons.
I believe that there were at least two different
incarnations of the Rave-Ons. The band of that name that appears on side one of
this album, for example, is a laughably inadequate three-piece who can barely
put a tune together, led by a vocalist who simply cannot sing. On side two, the
Rave-Ons are fronted by superior song-poem session singer Ralph Lowe. That’s
Ralph on vocals on the brilliant Journey’s End, the rather pedestrian Heavenly
Baby, and A Friend, a boring lyric only lifted above the
mediocre by the fact that Ralph is singing from a woman’s point of view about
his/her ‘soul sister’.
It's beyond belief that anyone at Columbine could have
sanctioned the release of this drivel; yet more proof if you needed it of the
contempt that these outfits had for the people stupid enough to send them their
hard-earned dollars. The (side one) Rave-Ons’ singer 'performs' in a garbled,
high-pitched whine racing through the lyrics at speed, clearly wishing that he
wasn't there while the rest of the band (keyboards, bass and drums) play the
same basic tune on all of the cuts on the album, never managing to rise above
the mediocre. All in all, they sound to me like the school band of my
nightmares.
Anyway, make up your own mind, for here is the entire album.
All 19 tracks, split into the original two sides for your listening pleasure.
Apologies for the jump on Erica Campbell’s Heartaches (track eight, side
two), but this appears to be a pressing fault. Stand-out tracks are Ralph and
the Rave-Ons with Journey’s End (side two, track three) and pretty much
all of side one, but especially the exceptional opener Curse of an Evil
Woman, Happy Inside of Me (track three) and the insanely awful My
Only You (track seven).
Download Side One HERE
Download Side Two HERE
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