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Música Obscura

Digitized Vinyl, Tapes, and CDs for Your Listening Pleasure

Posts tagged with "shear"

Jules Shear - Unplug This (1991)

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01 - Following Every Finger (Shear)
02 - All Through the Night (Shear)
03 - Whispering Your Name (Shear)
04 - If She Knew What She Wants (Shear)
05 - If We Never Meet Again (Shear)
06 - Jewel in a Cobweb (Shear)
07 - Sad Sound of the Wind (Shear)
08 - Never Again or Forever (Danko/Shear)





Hard to find CD of Jules Shear playing his songs solo acoustically. If you are a Jules Shear fan, this is a must have. Includes the song that was co-written by the Band's Rick Danko. Some of the songs are from his Jules and the Polar Bears days, others from his solo albums. If you want to hear Jules Shear performing solo with his acoustic guitar, check out Unplug This.

Links:
Jules Shear: Unplug This
Everything2.com

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes all CD artwork.

http://rapidshare.com/files/52722973/jshear_unplug_this.rar

Password: music

Also see Demo-itis and The Eternal Return

Tommy Keene - Based On Happy Times (1989)

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1. Nothing Can Change You (3:19)
2. Light of Love (3:00)
3. This Could Be Fiction (3:24)
4. Based on Happy Times (3:47)
5. When Our Vows Break (3:20) (Keene/Shear)
6. The Biggest Conflict (3:42)
7. Highwire Days (3:37)
8. Our Car Club (3:22) (Brian Wilson, Mike Love)
9. If We Run Away (4:06) (Keene/Shear)
10. Hanging on to Yesterday (3:53)
11. Where Have All Your Friends Gone (2:25)
12. Pictures (3:34)
13. A Way Out (4:09)


If you've never heard Tommy Keene, you've been missing out. Tommy Keene has been around for a while, and has released over 10 albums. Recently, I read that the Gin Blossoms had asked Keene, their hero, to go out on tour with them. Keene has always been one of my favorite musicians since I first heard him on vinyl back in the 80's. One of my favorite songs of all time is "Places That Are Gone" from his The Real Underground album. I've never heard a guy with so many hooks in his songs. He is definitely a musician's musician.

Based On Happy Times was released in 1989 on Geffin. What make this disc special, is his collaboration with one of my favorite song writers, Jules Shear. Jules co-wrote two of the songs and plays (sings) on the album as well. I've never heard a bad song come out of Keene. My least favorite song on this album is Our Car Club, which is actually a Beach Boys song, so I guess it doesn't count against him. I hope you enjoy Tommy Keen as much as I do. This CD is no longer available.

A Google search turned up this review...

Tommy Keene is one of those guys who should be much better known, though he is highly regarded by critics and a small group of fans (for example, a used copy of this out-of-print cd is currently selling for $99 on amazon.com). I’d always heard good things about him, and major music fan (with a particular interest in ‘60s and ‘70s music), historian, collector of high end rock memorabilia, and all around good guy Steve Potocin was kind enough to furnish me with a copy of this album for this review (thanks again, Steve!). Right away I was surprised, as the album is more straight rock ‘n’ roll than the “power pop” I expected, though the jangly guitars commonly associated with that sub genre do appear on stellar songs such as “When Our Vows Break,” “Highwire Days,” and “If We Run Away.” Elsewhere, harder rocking songs such as “Nothing Can Change You,” “Light Of Love,” and “Our Car Club” (a rather obnoxious Beach Boys cover) recall bands such as The Replacements and Soul Asylum, while Keene’s not particularly pretty yet effective nasal vocals (which bring Tom Petty to mind) are especially affecting on mellow, moodier songs such as “Based On Happy Times” and “A Way Out.” Keene isn’t above unleashing a guitar solo if it serves the song, and most of these tracks are memorable and catchy (if not immediately so), with intelligent relationship-based lyrics that veer towards the bittersweet (example: “all you’ve got to say is hanging on to yesterday”). Perhaps Keene wouldn’t win many points for originality, and there are a few merely solid songs on side 2 (“Our Car Club,” “Where Have All Your Friends Gone,” “Pictures”), but overall this is a really good rock ‘n’ roll record that makes me want to hear more from Tommy Keene.


I also found this information on Wikipedia.

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes all CD artwork (14 page booklet), with pictures and lyrics to all songs.

Favorite songs: Based On Happy Times, When Our Vows Break and If We Run Away.

http://rapidshare.com/files/49786669/t_keene_boht.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/49789540/t_keene_boht.part2.rar

Password: music

Jules Shear - Demo-itis (1986)

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1. Deliver Love
2. Chain Within a Chain
3. If She Knew What She Wants
4. Trained For Glory
5. Different Sands
6. Eligible For Parole
7. She's In Love Again
8. I Didn't Know Your Smile
9. You Are My Heartache
10. He Tore My World Apart
11. Take The Risk
12. All Through The Night
13. I know You're Not Alive


Songs 1-6 (side one on the album) are 24-track demos recorded with a revolving cast of musicians, many of whom Jules didn't know before the sessions. He used the recordings to not only get his fresh songs on tape quickly, (usually six tracks a night), but to find new players he could use for his solo albums. Songs 7-14 (side two on the album) are more like home demos recorded on eight-track.

From djangos:
Though he's never been able to record a hit of his own, singer/songwriter Jules Shear has recorded several albums of highly accessible, hit-worthy material, and as a testament to his abilities, he's penned hits for others, including "All Through the Night" for Cyndi Lauper and "If She Knew What She Wants" for the Bangles.

Born in Pittsburgh, Shear began writing songs as a teenager. He relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-'70s, joining his first band, a typically laid-back combo called the Funky Kings. The band released one album for Arista in 1976. While "Slow Dancing" from the album (written by Jack Tempchin) would later be hit for Johnny Rivers, the three Shear songs were clearly the highlights of the album. Shear left the following year to form his own group, Jules & the Polar Bears, who released two critically acclaimed, though commercially overlooked, albums for Columbia. When a third album was rejected by the label, Shear forged on as a solo artist.

Signing on to EMI-America, he released two solo albums, 1983's Watch Dog and 1985's Eternal Return; both received critical praise but few sales. Once again, he was dropped by his label and unable to secure another deal. Shear then formed the Reckless Sleepers with the Cars' Elliot Easton. In 1988, without Easton, the Reckless Sleepers released their sole album for IRS, Big Boss Sounds; it failed to make much impact, though "If We Never Meet Again" from the album was later covered by Roger McGuinn. In contrast to the Reckless Sleepers' hard rock tendencies, Shear teamed up with the Church's Marty Willson-Piper for an all-acoustic, Dylanesque album, The Third Party, in 1989. The album ultimately led to a spot on MTV, where he hosted the first 13 episodes of Unplugged -- he left when the show switched to the single-artist format. Shear followed with two critically acclaimed, more or less pop-oriented albums -- 1992's The Great Puzzle and 1994's Healing Bones -- two of his finest albums to date. In 1998, he released Between Us, an album of duets for Highstreet Records. Shear moved to Rounder Records subsidiary Zoe Records for his April 2000 release, Allow Me, and to Valley in 2004 for Sayin' Hello to the Folks. 2006 saw the release of Dreams Don't Count on the Mad Dragon label. ~ Chris Woodstra, All Music Guide

Demo-itis was released after The Eternal Return, and never been released on CD

Digitized at 24 bit, 96 kHz

Encoded at 320K from original pristine vinyl album. Includes album cover artwork.

Download Demo-itis (part 1) and Demo-itis (part 2)

NEW SINGLE PART FILE: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U9BPOJ68

Password: music

Jules Shear - The Eternal Return (1985)

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1. If She Knew What She Wants
2. Stand Tall
3. Steady
4. Change (Change)
5. The Fever's On
6. Her S/he Comes (with Pal Shazar)
7. Memories Burn Hard
8. You're Not Around
9. Empty Out the House (Throw it all Away)
10. Every Time I Get The Feeling




Musicians:
Jules Shear, Anton Fig, Tony Levin, Jeff Silverman, Rob Fisher, Richard Stekol, Pal Shazar, Moris Pert, Richard Bredice, & Bill Drescher.

From Wikipedia:
Jules Shear is an American singer and songwriter born in Pittsburgh in 1952. Although he has had only one minor hit as a performer ("Steady", which reached number 56 on the US charts in 1985), he has recorded almost twenty albums to date. He made his first appearance on vinyl with The Funky Kings; he also led the critically-acclaimed but commercially-unsuccessful pop group, Jules and the Polar Bears, along with later groups The Reckless Sleepers and Raisins in the Sun. He also conceived (and hosted the first 13 episodes of) the MTV series Unplugged.

His songs have been more commercially successful in the hands of other artists, notably Cyndi Lauper, whose recording of "All Through the Night" reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984, and The Bangles, whose recording of "If She Knew What She Wants" reached number 29 in 1986. Singer/songwriter Iain Matthews (still using the spelling "Ian" for his first name at the time) recorded an album of Shear's material, Walking A Changing Line: The Songs of Jules Shear, with synthesizer-dominated arrangements (and containing some previously-unreleased songs by Shear), in 1988; Matthews had previously recorded songs by Shear on other albums.

Shear was the subject of a song by 'Til Tuesday, "J For Jules", after the end of his relationship with that band's singer, Aimee Mann. He also co-wrote the title track of that album, Everything's Different Now, with Matthew Sweet. Shear is married to singer/songwriter Pal Shazar.

The Eternal Return is Jules Shear's 2nd album. It has never been released on CD, which is hard to believe.

Digitized at 24 bit, 96 kHz

Encoded at 320K from original pristine vinyl album. Includes artwork and track listing.

Download The Eternal Return

Password: music