Carrot [EP] [CD-single]
Carrot [EP] [CD-single]
Track Listings
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1. Standing By
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2. Lament
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3. Shadowplay
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4. Mother Truth
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Carrot,Clockhammer,Dead Line,Heavy Metal,Rock
Average customer rating:
- Excellent
- Precious Diamond CD
- 10 Carrot Diamond
- Great CD
- Happy and Fun!!
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10 Carrot Diamond
Charlotte Diamond
Manufacturer: Hug Bug Records/Newsound
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
General
| Children's Music
| Styles
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Educational
| Children's Music
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Rounder Records
| Specialty Stores
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Similar Items:
- Charlotte Diamond's World
- We All Live Together Volume 2
- Diamonds and Dragons
- Learning Basic Skills Through Music Vol. 1
- So Big - Activity Songs For Little Ones
Product Features:
ASIN: B0000683V4
Release Date: 1985-09-15 |
Tracks:
- Four Hugs a Day
- I Wanna Be a Dog
- La Bamba
- The Garden Song
- Looking for Dracula
- Stella, Stella, Oga
- Sasquatch
- Spider's Web
- Zing, Zing, Zing
- Octopus(Slippery Fish)
- I am a Pizza
- Embrasse quatre fois
- Each of Us is a Flower
- Why Did I Have to Have a Sister?
- Love Me For Who I Am
- J'ai perdu le "do" de ma clarinette
- May There Always Be Sunshine
- 10 Crunchy Carrots
Product Description
From the Charlotte Diamond collection. A Parents' Choice Classic. A wonderful selection of songs from one of your favorites. Includes "Four Hugs a Day", "I Wanna Be A Dog", "La Bamba", "The Garden Song", "Looking For Dracula", "Stella, Stella Oga", "Sasquatch", "Spider's Web", "Zing, Zing, Zing", "Octopus", "I Am A Pizza", "Embrasse Quatre Fois", "Each Of Us Is A Flower", "Why Did I Have To Have A Sister?", "Love Me For Who I Am", "J'ai Perdu Le "Do" De Ma Clarinette", "May There Always Be Sunshine", and "10 Crunchy Carrots".
Customer Reviews:
Excellent.......2007-05-13
My son LOVES this CD, a few of the songs are played in his music class. This CD is something I don't mind listening to which is great because it's music you can play often without getting sick of.
Precious Diamond CD.......2007-01-10
10 Carrot Diamond is an excellent cd! The words are easy to understand and the music is pleasant to the ear. I teach English to French speaking children, and this cd is perfect. My favorite songs are "The garden song", "octopus", and "I am a pizza". ELL kids enjoy the songs because they're about real life situations.
10 Carrot Diamond.......2007-01-04
I purchased this for my daughter that is a new mother living in the USA. She loved Charlotte Diamond as a little girl back in the early 80s and was thrilled that I could find these for her to listen to and sing along with her little boy. Thanks AMAZON.
Great CD.......2006-01-07
My daughter and I enjoy this CD very much. We like just about every song, especially Four Hugs a Day, I Wanna Be a Dog, Octopus, I am a Pizza and 10 Crunchy Carrots.
Happy and Fun!!.......2005-10-18
Super-callifragilistic-expi-alli-dotious. Great CD with many happy songs to sing with your child.
Average customer rating:
- !
- More wonder !
- Are the Handsome Family perfect?
- Slightly different, but good.
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Last Days of Wonder
The Handsome Family
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
General
| Alternative Rock
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Indie Rock
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Similar Items:
- Singing Bones
- Through the Trees
- Twilight
- In the Air
- Milk and Scissors
ASIN: B000F8DTLO
Release Date: 2006-06-13 |
Tracks:
- Your Great Journey
- Tesla's Hotel Room
- These Golden Jewels
- After We Shot the Grizzly
- Flapping Your Broken Wings
- Beautiful William
- All the Time in Airports
- White Lights
- Bowling Alley Bar
- Hunter Green
- Our Blue Sky
- Somewhere Else to Be
Amazon.com
Beginning with an image of cosmic apocalypse and ending with a cosmic joke about going nowhere (yet always having somewhere else to be), Brett and Rennie Sparks use their first album in three years, and their most beautiful and accessible since Through the Trees, to explore the magical and disturbing intersections between the human, natural, and spiritual worlds. Recorded at home in Albuquerque, the album unfolds like a country-folk operetta (mostly composed by Rennie) set in idyllic and mysterious locales: haunted suburbia, peaceful but slightly malevolent strip malls, confession-inspiring bowling alleys, and lovesick airports. When they move to the exotic location of a shipwrecked island on "After We Shot the Grizzly," they borrow from Bob Dylan's cryptic "Isis," and make the random, mythic violence their own. Small moments of ennui, whether feeding pigeons in New York or watching kids paint graffiti, reveal unpredictable and unsettling dreams, and the delicate Americana instrumentation only sounds quaint on the surface. French horns, droning bass notes, clippity-clop drums, pedal steel (from Stephen Dorocke of Freakwater), and musical saw (from David Coulter, who has worked with Tom Waits) give even the most macabre songs--not to mention Brett Sparks' Johnny-Cash-on-Thorazine vocals--a light, playful air of discovery and wonder. --Roy Kasten
Customer Reviews:
!.......2006-11-28
The Handsome Family is very interesting group. They are a husband and wife team who sing murder ballads. I have never seen them play. But I did an interview with them a few years ago. They seemed like a very bitter crowd. If you take a little punk-punk, and throw in a fascination with Nick Cave, and a conversion to Americana, you get to the Handsome Family. When I was talking to them on the phone I felt that I was talking to myself ten years ago. I was really pissed off. I was in training to become a serial killer. I guess that I moved to New York City and joined the rat race. A bunch of good and bad things have happened, and I am all the better for it. If I were still the old me, and time did stop, I would be probably making music like this. But Handsome Family has moved on with this album. There are the same Americana obsessions. Now they have songs about Nicola Tesla. "These Golden Jewels" is like a Tom Waits song. Most of the album is like some southern novel. I was listening to this Ralph Stanley CD recently. Handsome Family is like that except with the references to God. This is a whole album without any murder ballads or even a body count. The Handsome Family has grown up.
More wonder !.......2006-07-23
I wonder how they do it,I am just glad they keep doing it.That dynamic duo have given us yet another gift,I don't know how they keep doing it, but they keep expressing the inexpressible, that world that lies just out of our reach, but which we glimpse in moments of illumination.The Handsome Family write about our world, they use our words, they use instruments,and the same musical notes that are over the radio all day, but they make it all shine, to paraphrase T.H.White, they are some of what we all are, just drops in the great sunlight sea, but some of those drops sparkle.
Are the Handsome Family perfect?.......2006-06-20
A month ago I had heard of the Handsome Family but never heard them. Now that I have please forgive the following hyperbole, it is the ardour felt for a new love.
Their new album Last Days of Wonder does just what it says on the tin. It asks in a cycle of songs varying from ones that could have been sung in Elizabeth the First's court (Hunter Green) to scary, but funny tunes that will be sung and strummed, no doubt, for years to come around the campfire (After We Shot the Grizzly) to waltzes (Telsa's Hotel Room). But taken as a whole they are asking is science about to remove all sense of wonder from our world, and are we happy about that? This is a profound question but it is asked in a round about way that approaches through the cumulative effect of learning these wonderful songs and not dry and dusty like Philosophy 101. They are asking you to clap your hands if you believe in fairies or magic or have ever felt awe; otherwise all that will be left is the whirl of machines and digital analysis.
And with the incredible song writing team of Brett and Rennie Sparks producing such tunes you are going to be clapping your hands a lot - lovely stories to make you laugh and shiver, they possess so much `back story' that you can pack your bags and spend your vacation in there.
But back to my first question - are they perfect? Well, no. They have tended their very unique garden well but sometimes listening to these exquisite melodies I wish that a superstar producer might have been at the helm, a Daniel Lanois or Rick Rubin (but oh no not Eno) to really get them to take wing fully and reach the stratosphere, but it is hard to believe that such genius songwriters haven't had the opportunity to take that path but have commendably chosen not to. Also, although it says nowhere on their job description that they are here to rock you, it would be nice for a little more punch being applied occasionally. But even here they supply a few toe tapping numbers Bob Wills the King of Texas Swing wouldn't have minded attaching his name to such as `Bowling Alley Bar' and `All the Time in Airport', which with a slight upping of the amperage could easily fit into the repertory of Altcountry Rebel Steve Earle.
So, you are lucky - this near perfect fruit is hanging right within your grasp - pluck it and let it into your life. You won't regret it, and while you are at it, if you are new to this marvel, take a leap of faith and get one or two of their back catalogue while you're at it. I would recommend the equally brilliant predecessor Singing Bones. If my search through the record shops of this market town in England's West country is indicative of the bleak distribution opportunities of minor labels major talent, Amazon is going to be the smartest way to go, and I promise after hearing this great CD you are going to want to hear more of the Handsome Family.
Slightly different, but good........2006-06-14
This album marks a change in the Handsome Family canon. Continuing with the slower-paced tradition of their last album, "Singing Bones," this album finds Brett and Rennie Sparks delving into a varitey of topics that somewhat differ from their usual tales of darker fare. Rennie's economical but effective writing shines as bright as ever in the lyrical department, while Brett's songwriting continues to mature and blossom. While the first two tracks start out slowly, one, of the ensuing tracks has an almost Tom Waits feel, while another track features distorted guitar and a moog synth. In another band's hands, these differences could seem jarring, but the Handsome Family does so with ease, making the production changes feel natural and evenly placed. This is another stellar album in a long line of fine work from this under-appreciated group.
Average customer rating:
- Beautiful Suprise
- Some place not meant to be found
- Murder Ballads
- Rennie Sparks is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of alt-country
- Support this band!
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Singing Bones
The Handsome Family
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
General
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
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Alt-Country & Americana
| Country
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| Country
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General
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Similar Items:
- Last Days of Wonder
- Through the Trees
- Twilight
- In the Air
- Milk and Scissors
ASIN: B0000CD5FC
Release Date: 2003-10-07 |
Tracks:
- Forgotten Lake
- Gail With the Golden Hair
- 24-Hour Store
- Bottomless Hole
- Far from Any Road
- If the World Should End in Fire
- Shadow Underneath
- Dry Bones
- Fallen Peaches
- Whitehaven
- Sleepy
- Song of a Hundred Toads
- If the World Should End in Ice
Album Description
2003 album for husband & wife duo featuring 13 songs about Wal-Marts, lovers who chase the fire in the streetlights, the madness of very deep holes, a lake that can be visited in dreams, and the shadows that whisper inside a modern, office building. It is the Handsome Family's 6th CD with Carrot Top Records. Lyrics included in the sleeve.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful Suprise.......2005-11-04
I came across the Handsome Family by way of an interview on National Radio(Radio New Zealand). I pulled into the motel car park dead tired after driving for 16 long hours, yet remained sitting in the car mesmerised by the strange and evocative music pouring into the car from the rain sodden night. Once in the motel room I logged onto Amazon and purchased Singing Bones.
The next morning I opened my eyes and watched the wardrobe sway around in a dreamlike fashion, much like the music I had heard the night before. Later on the news I discovered that I had experienced an earthquake. In the end it was my wife who claimed ownership of the CD, and she has played it constantly ever since and our 6yr old daughter knows the words to all the songs. What a great discovery, fresh pure music, greatly cherished by this family.
Some place not meant to be found.......2005-08-19
Somber and majestic tales of the West written as if H.P. Lovecraft, Jack London and Manly Wade Wellman shared a wagon with the Donner Party between the last hopeful days of (that) Summer and the coming awareness of Winter's ordeal.
Spooky and uplifting simultaneously, the stories float through themes which evoke spirits both otherworldly (ghosts and dream visions),as well as the natural haunts of desolate, forlorn geography visited by wandering souls.
There is a strong "sense of place" within these twilight landscapes...the Handsome Family brings them to life. After all, these realms DO exist,...sometimes. somewheres. really.
Total CD time is 38:47 min.
Murder Ballads.......2004-06-18
Husband and wife duo the Handsome Family has been making music for almost a decade that is somewhere between alt-country and traditionalist music. Brett Sparks is from Texas where he studied music. He moved to Chicago with his wife Rennie Sparks, a fiction writer originally from Long Island. Their music deals with dark themes and dark humor.
The Handsome Family's debut album, Odessa, was released in January 1995. This folk record was a home recording with a punk influence. Their second record, Milk and Scissors (1996), led to tours with Wilco, and more shows in Europe. Years later Brett was hospitalized with depression. Through the Trees (1998), the Handsome Family's third album was written and recorded in the aftermath of this time. This became their most successful record yet.
Around this time, they quit their day jobs and worked on their music full time. The result was In the Air (2000), which was another great record. The Handsome Family played several tours of America and Europe. A live record was released soon after. In the last part of this past year they released Singing Bones (2003). This record returned to early sounds and expanded their audience. It was voted as one of the best records of 2003 by Free Williamsburg.
Rennie Sparks is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of alt-country.......2004-03-15
What else can I say? Her lyrics contrast visionary, sometimes somewhat morbid settings with closely observed, incongruous detail. My favourite narrative from this record is "Song of a Hundred Toads," in which a string of disasters ---
Round a hairpin turn
The wagon tumbled o'er
And down the jagged rocks
Bill fell with all I owned.
--- leaves a man stranded in a desert, only as his final night falls to be greeted by the epiphany of the title: the song of a hundred toads. "The Bottomless Hole" strikes an H. P. Lovecraft note, but Lovecraft with a difference: it seems it's -useful- to have a bottomless pit behind your barn, even if you end up obsessed with the urge to explore it.
Moving to New Mexico seems to have added some new, somewhat more upbeat "western" seeming rhythms and chord changes to Brett's music. There are occasional touches of Spanish guitars, and on one song even a trumpet. The musical saw on "24 Hour Store" is another instrumental highlight.
Support this band!.......2004-03-14
If you like your country music with rousing, beautiful harmonies and a gothic edge, then look no further! This talented husband & wife duo record in their home in New Mexico and find the time to respond personally to their fans. Use your dollar to support their "cottage industry" ...
Average customer rating:
- A lovely album featuring several utterly gorgeous, haunting songs
- Hits ya where ya live and die
- Try 'em At Least Once
- If this is country music... I love it.
- A CD I cant live without
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Through the Trees
The Handsome Family
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
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Similar Items:
- Twilight
- In the Air
- Singing Bones
- Milk and Scissors
- Last Days of Wonder
ASIN: B0000061O4
Release Date: 1998-01-26 |
Tracks:
- My Ghost
Amazon.com
For their second album, Brett and Rennie Sparks take a more serious approach, eschewing the jokier elements of their debut and concentrating on writing country music with an urban sensibility and a post-graduate degree. It's doubtful that any previous country album included songs in praise of Cologne Cathedral or Lake Michigan, but backed by the Sparks' austere songs--often just guitar, autoharp, and drum machine--with occasional help by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the music has an almost Appalachian simplicity and newfound depth of feeling. Like coming across a brownstone in the mountains, the Handsome Family's music is simultaneously disconcerting and strangely beautiful. --Steven Mirkin
Customer Reviews:
A lovely album featuring several utterly gorgeous, haunting songs.......2006-08-17
This is rightfully celebrated as the Handsome Family's finest album. It isn't perfect--several of the songs are a couple of notches in quality below the best efforts--but there are several songs that are absolutely unforgettable. People have debated whether it is country, neo-traditional, folk, or whatever, but while the form of the music would make it some kind of alt-country effort, the lyrics send it off into its own unique genre. These songs are STRANGE. If this is country, name me another country song that in any way resembles "The Woman Down the Stairs" or any folk song that bears any resemblance to "My Sister's Tiny Hands." I have trouble putting the Handsome Family into any kind of country genre for a simple reason: in most country songs, people's lives are broken while the world is essentially OK. But the Handsome Family's songs are metaphysical; they describe a broken world, so broken that the people are by necessity lost, bereft, doomed. It is music that is Gothic in the sense that Nathaniel Hawthorne was Gothic, not Marilyn Manson. Better, their songs could be compared with the work of Ray Bradbury. Although he is mistakenly thought to be a Sci-fi writer, it is more accurate to describe him as a master of the Weird Fiction genre. The songs of the Handsome Family shares more than a few qualities with this genre.
About a third of the songs on this album are masterpieces, another third very good, and a third just sorta drab. If the weakest songs had been replaced, this would have been one of the great American albums ever. Even as it is, this is essential. "Weightless Again" is just stunning, built around a simple, lovely, forlorn melody, but essentially a meditation on why people do some of the more extreme, self-destructive things they do to themselves. "My Sister's Tiny Hands" is an almost equally beautiful gem about losing a twin sister. "Last Night I Went Out Walking" is not as strong melodically, but it contains heartbreaking and deceptively simple lyrics about a rebuked lover tempted to commit suicide by drowning. But "The Woman Downstairs" almost makes that song sound like a lark with its multiple horrific images concerning a woman who starved herself to death.
The Handsome Family is a family in fact: Brett Sparks sings most of their songs and writes the music while his wife is a fiction writer who here pens the lyrics for the songs and contributes Autoharp. Their first two albums--ODESSA and MILK AND SCISSORS--showed flashes of excellence but neither was consistently good throughout, and both featured songs that seemed stylistically out of phase with the rest of the album. But on THROUGH THE TREES they settled into a consistent style throughout, embracing a simple, understated sound. The result is one of the finest albums to come out of Chicago in the past decade. Whether it is alt-country, folk, neo-traditionalist, indie, or whatever really isn't important. What it mainly is, is good.
Hits ya where ya live and die.......2006-07-01
Such sublime and delicate lyrics - low groans, moans, twangs of lost and lonely folk in urban forests and decaying countryside. Reminds ya of how mad it is to be semi-aware. Absolutely adore this set of recordings - just wish they didn't get stuck in my noggin'
Try 'em At Least Once.......2003-11-25
At their frequent best, Handsome Family poke relentlessly into the dark, the obscure and the unknowable of private and collective life on this planet. It is one brave undertaking. You won't be buying this or any other HF CD solely for the music. Brett's baritone vocals drone; the simple loping arrangements (albeit with occasional offbeat instruments like the dobro, melodica, and autoharp) recall nothing so much as the Happy Trails-type theme songs that played during the credits on TV's early-60's Westerns. But that uncluttered ordinariness is the perfect showcase for Rennie's lyrical, often inconclusive, stories. The best of this CD includes a coffee break on a trip through the redwoods that inspires ruminations on a couple's growing estrangement and floating -- in water as learning, in air as suicide (Weightless Again). Cathedrals contrasts man's monumental achievements and his thin moment in time ("everyone of us is swept away like breadcrumbs"). On Stalled, a man stuck in snow (snow, like drinking, is a constant motif to the HF work) grows colder and colder, but never leaves his pickup. Lovers commit dual suicides because -- it seems -- their love is simply too big for life (Down in the Valley of Hollow Logs). My only reservation about the Family is that their bizarreness on occasion comes across as mannered, which -- of course -- makes it a pose, just another suit to try on. The Woman Downstairs is one of two or three songs here to suffer that weakness. That keeps Through the Trees from five star status, but hardly changes my view that there's nobody around quite like Handsome Family, and lucky we are to have them.
If this is country music... I love it........2003-08-04
What an incredible CD. Haunting. Beautiful. Evocative. Brilliant. Powerful. Disturbing. Melodic. Moody. This CD will make you an instant fan of The Handsome Family and you will have to buy all of their other titles as well. These songs will creep up on you before you know it, and take root deep in your subconcious where they will continue to haunt you like distant memories and old family photos.
A CD I cant live without.......2002-04-20
Originally turned on to the Handsome Family by their tie to Wilco's Jeff Tweedy I went ahead and bought a used copy of Milk and Scissors not expecting much. Not only was I wrong it quickly turned into my second favorite Cd of all time. As fast as I could I went ahead and ordered the rest of their catalog and what a find this was. This is now tied for my favorite CD with Pedro The Lion's Winners Never Quit. A solid CD from top to bottom with witty lyrics and beautiful harmonies. This band also really cares about its fans as evidence of a recent order I placed through their website. A Personal Thank You was sent from Rennie Sparks. I can't wait for their next CD
Average customer rating:
- The Sadness Is Deliscous
- The hits just keep on comming!
- Zippy says yippie!
- Surreal optimism?
- Surreal optimism?
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Twilight
The Handsome Family
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
General
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
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Lo-Fi
| Indie & Lo-Fi
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Similar Items:
- Through the Trees
- In the Air
- Last Days of Wonder
- Singing Bones
- Milk and Scissors
ASIN: B00005OAI0
Release Date: 2001-10-02 |
Tracks:
- The Snow White Diner
- Passenger Pigeons
- A Dark Eye
- There Is A Sound
- All The TV's In Town
- Gravity
- Cold, Cold, Cold
- No One Fell Asleep Alone
- I Know You Are There
- Birds You Cannot See
- The White Dog
- So Long
- Peace In The Valley Once Again
Amazon.com
Set in a shadowy netherworld, Twilight reasserts the Handsome Family's position as modern-day descendants of the ancient country-folk surrealists gathered on Harry Smith's celebrated Anthology of American Folk Music. Rennie Sparks's songs are filled with animals ("Birds You Cannot See" and "White Dog") and natural images that are both carefree ("Peace in the Valley Once Again") and unnerving ("Snow White Diner"). The lyrics masterfully blend compassionate insight and a real sense of drama and tragedy with an eye for detail and humorous asides. Brett's vocal croon and his background in both experimental avant-garde and Texas rockabilly insures that the duo's music continues to grow far beyond its country roots. The Handsome Family happily flout convention but their stark beauty still shines through--these are some of the strangest and most compelling songs in the warped but wonderful world of alternative country. --Gavin Martin
Customer Reviews:
The Sadness Is Deliscous.......2007-07-11
Simple,stark,sad and lonesome...that's the feel all the way through. Death, despair and darkness...made so real it hurts and gives pleasure at the same time.
The hits just keep on comming!.......2006-06-13
Brett and Rennie understand that darkness dosen't need to be all dark, nor strangeness wierd. These tunefull songs are clever, funny, and catchy, all the while hinting at the mysteries that lurk behind the ordinariness of day to day existance. Nothing like it. This is our third Handsome Family album, we love them all, glorying in the eccentricity. Besides, my wife goes all weak at the knees under the power of Brett's awesome baritone.
Zippy says yippie!.......2002-11-08
I didn't like this the first time I listened to it. Now I can't stop. Each time it gets better. There are few songs anywhere that uses a theramin to such perfection as does "Gravity". "Birds You Cannot See" , what lyrics, I have known about these birds since my childhood, I am glad someone else knows about them, now I feel better. "Cold, Cold, Cold", great winter driving through the mountains tune. My kids hate "country music" not that this is, and they usually comment on what i play, but when I put "Twilight" on they become real quiet, I mean really quiet. Maybe they think I finally went around the bend. I even hear my youngest mumbling along with this CD. Must be onto something.
Surreal optimism?.......2001-10-10
I don't know how anybody could mistake songs like The Snow White Diner or Dark Eye as remotely "optimistic". These are classic gloomy and twisted Handsome Family odes to the dark side...and they're great! This is another fine release by the Handsome's...and I'd sell my two arms and my one good eye to write songs half as good as they do. Of course, I wouldn't be able to play them then, .... Anyway...if you like the other Handsome's discs, buy this one. It's classic dark and twisted stuff, just the way we like it.
Surreal optimism?.......2001-10-09
I don't know how anybody could mistake songs like The Snow White Diner or Dark Eye as remotely "optimistic". These are classic gloomy and twisted Handsome Family odes to the dark side...and they're great! This is another fine release by the Handsome's... ..if you like the other Handsome's discs, buy this one. It's classic dark and twisted stuff, just the way we like it.
Average customer rating:
- A few details...
- Great Album,Too bad You cant buy it from Amazon :( :(
- Best Camper Van Beethoven CD's EVER!!!!
- Vampire Can Mating Oven
- I got some funny ideas of what sounds good.
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Cigarettes & Carrot Juice - The Santa Cruz Years
Camper Van Beethoven
Manufacturer: Cooking Vinyl
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
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Similar Items:
- Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
- Key Lime Pie
- O Cracker, Where Art Thou?
- Telephone Free Landslide Victory
- Gentleman's Blues
ASIN: B00006L2ZT
Release Date: 2002-11-05 |
Tracks:
- Border Ska
- The Day That Lassie Went To The Moon
- Wasted
- Yanqui Go Home
- Oh No!
- 9 Of Disks
- Payed Vacation: Greece
- Where The Hell Is Bill?
- Vladivostock
- Skinhead Stomp
- Tina
- Take The Skinheads Bowling
- Mao Reminisces About His Days In Southern China
- I Dont See You
- Balalaika Gap
- Opi Rides Again-Club Med Sucks
- Ambiguity Song
Tracks:
- Abundance
- Cowboys From Hollywood
- Sad Lovers Waltz
- Turtlehead
- I Love Her All The Time
- No Flies On Us
- Down and Out
- No Krugerrands For David
- (Dont You Go) Goletca
- 4 Year Plan
- (Were A) Bad Trip
- Circles
- Dust Pan
- Sometimes
- Chain Of Circumstance
- ZZ Top Goes To Egypt
- Cattle (Reversed)
- Form Another Stone
- No More Bullshit
Tracks:
- Good Guys & Bad Guys
- Joe Stalins Cadillac
- Five Sticks
- Lulu Land
- Une Fois
- We Saw Jerrys Daughter
- Surprise Truck
- Stairway To Heaven (sic)
- The History Of Utah
- Still Wishing To Course
- We Love You
- Hoe Yourself Down
- Peace & Love
- Folly
- Interstellar Overdrive
- Shut Us Down
Tracks:
- Heart
- Never Go Back
- Seven Languages
- Axe Murderer Song
- Sp37597
- Crossing Over
- Guardian Angels
- Im Not Like Everybody Else
- A.C. Cover
- Porpoise Mouth
- (We Workers Do No Understand) Modern Art
- We Eat Your Children
- Six More Miles To The Graveyard
- Ice Cream Everyday
- Processional
- Photograph
- Om Eye (Sweet Isthmus)
Tracks:
- All Her Favorite Fruit (Orchestral)
- Sweethearts
- Tania
- Eye of Fatima pt l
- Eye of Fatima pt ll
- My Baby Just Got Outta Jail
- Borderline
- Turquoise Jewelry
- She Divines Water
- Laguardiente
- Life Is Grand
- When I Win The Lottery
- James River
- One Of These Days
Amazon.com
Before Camper Van Beethoven, no "punk" band would've thought to blend Eastern European folk rhythms with Tex-Mex, ska, reggae, psych-rock, punk-rock, pop-rock and...well, whatever else was out there. This five-disc box set features all the early CVB albums on compact disc. Their first outing, Telephone Free Landslide Victory, sounds as unique and fresh today as it did in 1985. Mostly remembered for the sublimely ridiculous "Take the Skinheads Bowling" and their take on Black Flag's "Wasted," it set the bar high for subsequent releases. The band followed the oddball masterpiece with more cleverness and irresistible charm on II & III. Dabbling in Mekons country-punk turf for the first half, they slid into a wry psychedelia in the second. It really is two albums in one. The band's self-titled third outing found the California boys scratching their heads out loud, wondering exactly what to do next, and not arriving at a consensus. It's an adventurous jumble, with a few really outstanding tracks. Also in the box is the Vantiquities collection of various 1980s recordings, originally released in 1993 after their two-record stint with Virgin Records and a live collection, Greatest Hits Played Faster, which opens with a magisterial "All Her Favorite Fruit" and ends, appropriately, with a sad-sounding "One of These Days." --Lorry Fleming
Album Description
Closing in on 20 years after their formation, Camper Van Beethoven proudly announce the release of a box set entitled "Cigarettes & Carrot Juice: The Santa Cruz Years." "Cigarettes and Carrot Juice" contains 4 albums of classic recordings dating primarily from 1984-1987, the prime years of the bands existence in Santa Cruz, California, a sleepy coastal college town which proved to be an idyllic place for the prolific young band to woodshed their talents. Camper Van Beethoven are looked upon as one of the seminal "college rock" bands of the 1980s, predating the 1990s wave of micro-marketed alternative rock. A wildly diverse mixture of personalities and music, "Cigarettes and Carrot Juice" features the work of a unique band as they captured their voice on outings for small independents such as Independent Project Records, Rough Trade, and their own Pitch-A-Tent label.
Camper Van Beethoven are looked upon as one of the seminal "College rock" bands of the 1980's, predating the 1990's wave of micro-marketed alternative rock. A wildly diverse mixture of personalities and music, Cigarettes and Carrot Juice features the work of a unique band as they captured their voice on releases for small independents such as Independent Project Records, Rough Trade, and their own Pitch-A-Tent Records.
Album Description
Full Title - Cigarettes & Carrot Juice - The Santa Cruz Years. From one of the 80's great seminal college rock bands comes this 5 CD box set containing four albums that have been out of print since 1994 (Telephone Free Landslide Victory, II & III, Camper Van Beethoven, Camper Vantiquities) and one disc of previously unreleased live material, (Greatest Hits Played Faster), along with a 16 page full color booklet with exclusive photos and liner notes, packaged in a foil stamped digi-box. Each CD (housed in paper sleeves) features original album cover art. Cooking Vinyl. 2002.
Customer Reviews:
A few details..........2007-04-10
This set gives us the first three CVB albums as originally released. Recent reissues have new track sequences, with bonus material mixed in. This may not be a terrible idea, but I don't plan on buying them.
The Vantiquities disc is an interesting collection of outtakes etc between both sides of the "Vampire Can Mating Oven" EP (1987). The new, expanded Vantiquities adds five demos from the "Beloved/Pie" era, but the disc in this box has MUCH better sound, all the way through. What's going on, guys?
The live album is neither here nor there. I saw them a few years back (here in Santa Cruz) and they sounded a hell of a lot better than this. Then again, they've had 15 years to improve, and they don't hate each other anymore.
I love this band. This is a great way to get the first three albums in their original form, with the original artwork, at a decent price.
[Note for fanatics: "We're a Bad Trip" is the faster, more polished one. The earlier take is now a bonus track on the 04 edition of "II&III".]
Great Album,Too bad You cant buy it from Amazon :( :(.......2005-03-21
My wife tried ordering this item thru a Amazon listed seller (caiman) December the 10th it was due to ship out in 3 days (for a x-mas present nonetheless), by end of January it had not shipped. I cancelled our order with caiman and tried to order thru AMAZON itself the same day Feb 3rd i believe. Here it is March the 20th. No nothing , just an endless extending wait. Apparently AMAZON & their sellers feel they can list items they dont , wont and cant stock. Dont waste your time. I just cancelled my order and bought it on E-BAY , it will ship tommorow. Forget Amazon, or unless you like being blown off endlessly by email with no LIVE person to talk to, then by all means order this thru Amazon (or Caiman!). I prefer to spend my money else-where, this has really soured me.
Best Camper Van Beethoven CD's EVER!!!!.......2004-06-03
5 great CD's with great songs like "Crossing Over" or "Mao Reminices About his Days in Southern China". The songs on Greatest Hits Played Faster, the live CD, sound better than the recordings on Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart or Key Lime Pie. It is relatively cheap for a 5 CD set.
Vampire Can Mating Oven.......2003-09-19
In my wallet I keep a "want list" of music and movies for all of those times I find myself in a store and can't remember that album or movie I wanted. One of the first entries is "Camper Van Beethoven--First three albums". Finally, this wonderful boxed set is available. The collection includes, as stated, all of the band's work from the Santa Cruz years. The CD cases are cardboard miniature reproductions of the original album jackets and the fourth and fifth discs are rarities and a live disc. If you remember the fun of their music and haven't heard it for a while, get this set. It brought back memories of a less responsible time and the music, it seems, hasn't been remastered leaving the vocals slightly buried which was always a part of their sound I liked. They could entertain you with light ska instrumentals or rock with catchy guitar riffs. The extensive liner notes are interesting too, except the part where the writer tries to defend the band's selling out as not selling out but simply wanting to sign to a bigger label to make their music more available. No problem here with selling out if you don't change your music to do it; and that's exactly what they did. I feel their major label stuff just isn't as fun as the early stuff..... and Cracker was horrible. If you remember why you liked Camper Van Beethoven in the first place, buy this set.
I got some funny ideas of what sounds good........2003-03-14
Last year a friend of mine invited me to see Camper Van Beethoven on their recent limited reunion tour, and although I only had Key Lime Pie, their last full album of new studio material, I agreed. While still a pretty good record, their set proved "Key Lime Pie" to just scratch the surface of their musical diversity. Basic guitar pop songs would rest beside russian can can ska instrumentals, straight country ballads, hardcore punk satire and power-book enhanced Fleetwood Mac covers. Needless to say, I was intrigued by their earlier releases, and the next time I had enough cash to blow, I found myself the proud owner of this box set. Although the first disk is the best in my opinion, all three of the original albums show a creative, clever, unique, and musically talented band at work. In addition, the rarities colection camper vantiquities, despite being a compilation of 3 years worth of material, doesn't feel any more or less cohesive than the rest of their albums, a credit to their freewheeling style, and is far less mixed than one would expect from such a compilation. Finally disc five is a live album mostly drawn from what was to be their final tour in europe, which focuses on material from their two major label albums. While a bit dissapointingly slow for something called "Greatest Hits Played Faster", it still captures some fine perofmances of the band, and is a nice extra, though probably not something you'd want to buy the whole box set for if you already own the rest of the albums. All in all, if you're curious about the band or just want to hear some challenging but catchy diverse rock music, this is a great place to start.
Average customer rating:
- The Handsome Family rules the alternative scene
- The perfect companion to Through The Trees
- Good Stuff
- Dark, disturbing and funny
- I dare you to take this out of your cd player
|
In the Air
The Handsome Family
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
General
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| Styles
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Indie Rock
| Indie & Lo-Fi
| Alternative Rock
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Alt-Country & Americana
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General
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| Stores
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Alt-Country & Americana
| Country
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Contemporary Folk
| Folk
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Similar Items:
- Through the Trees
- Twilight
- Singing Bones
- Milk and Scissors
- Last Days of Wonder
ASIN: B00004RDHK
Release Date: 2000-02-15 |
Tracks:
- Don't Be Scared
- The Sad Milkman
- In the Air
- A Beautiful Thing
- So Much Wine
- Up Falling Rock Hill
- Poor, Poor Lenore
- When That Helicopter Comes
- Grandmother Waits for You
- Lie Down
- My Beautiful Bride
Amazon.com
Chicago's Handsome Family draws its inspiration from traditional murder ballads, but unlike the Carter Family, whose name they pun, Brett and Rennie Sparks do it out of a fascination with the macabre rather than a familiarity with it. In the Air, the couple's fourth album, chronicles a world full of death, snakes, dark highways, and sad milkmen. To the Sparkses (Rennie writes the lyrics; Brett sings them), this world isn't bleak or bizarre, it's beautiful--and vivid. Here a man isn't simply skinny, he's "thin as the bow of his black violin." And here, when William got killed, the murderer lingered and "watched as his blood ran through dead grass / Watched as the black ants crawled through his hands." And somehow, through Brett's sonorous baritone, Rennie's breathy melodica, and guest Andrew Bird's violin, even such violence seems ultimately peaceful. --Anders Smith-Lindall
Customer Reviews:
The Handsome Family rules the alternative scene.......2006-11-10
Brett and Rennie Sparkes are the Flannery O'Conners of alternative music in the USA.
The perfect companion to Through The Trees.......2003-08-04
Another great CD from the Handsome Family who seem to be mining a mother load of incredibly haunting and beautifully crafted songs. From what dark, dank and creaky cragg of subjective experience do these lyrics come from? My god, I have never heard anything like it, and all I know for sure is that I want more and more. Thank you very much Brett and Rennie.
Good Stuff.......2003-03-07
Excellent and unique music that shines in a rotten world of mass marketed sexy boy radio [stuff]. Goth country describes this. Imagine old style country meets Tori Amos and Tom Waits.
Dark, disturbing and funny.......2002-08-16
This is a superb country / folk album which takes the everyday and the banal and places them in dark and unsettling settings.
Despite the macabre backdrops there is a twisted and superb humour to be found in places that prevents depression setting in. My favourites are "The Sad Milkman", "So Much Wine" and "Poor, Poor Lenore"
I am not sure if Rennie's lyrics are the result of hours of intense agonising or spring easily and naturally from her mind, but which ever is the case they are wonderful. The deep resonating voice of Brett is perfect for the black images that the lyrics contain. The result of their partnership is this beautifully crafted album.
I dare you to take this out of your cd player.......2001-12-11
A few years back a friend of mine from the midwest introduced me to The Handsome Family-- I think I need to buy that man a drink.
In the Air is their best work. The dark, brooding, and yet humorous nature of their music will get under your skin. I just can't seem to take it out of my player (unless to listen to Twilight, their latest).
If you are new to The Handsome Family, I implore you to pick up this cd.
If you already have, all their albums are fantastic. Although I must warn that one of their first, Odessa, disappointed me. Very rough around the edges. Which, of course, only means that each album is getting better and better.
So pour yourself a whiskey, sit on the porch with your bb gun and listen to the magic of The Handsome Family.
Average customer rating:
- Delay-pedal flairý
- Another Pop Tragedy
|
In Debt
Disco Inferno
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
Hardcore & Punk
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
| Vinyl Records
| American Punk
| British Punk
| Emo
| Garage Punk
| Hardcore
| Post Hardcore
| Proto Punk
| Punk
| Punk Revival
| Punk-Pop
| Riot Grrl
| Ska Punk
| Straight Edge
Post-Punk
| New Wave & Post-Punk
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
Experimental Rock
| Rock
| Alternative Styles
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
General
| Rock
| Styles
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Pop Rock
| Pop
| Styles
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ASIN: B000001WX9
Release Date: 1995-03-13 |
Tracks:
- Entertainment
- Arc In Round
- Broken
- Emigre
- Interference
- Leisuretime
- Set Sail
- Hope To God
- Freethought
- Bleed Clean
- Next In Line
- Incentives
- Waking Up
- Glancing Away
- Fallen Down The Wire
- No Edge, No End
Customer Reviews:
Delay-pedal flairý.......2003-06-06
U2 may have put emphasis on the stylish technique first, but Disco Inferno crafts the sound more fluid-like and less predictable. It's a music marvel, really. It's like watching Mercury dance-liquid, reflective, and glossy, the type of reverie that left you captivated for months as a child. There's a few conditions though: buy it, listen closely, and give thanks to yourself or the humble genius that recommended it to you.
Another Pop Tragedy.......1998-05-08
If you like Joy Division, early New Order, or My Bloody Valentine, you will adore In Debt. Dark and aesthetic, with a wonderful liquid quality, you will play the CD again and again, probably listening to nothing else for weeks. Unfortunatly this amazing British group has already split up, leaving us with only a hanful of music to cling to.
Average customer rating:
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Let Your Ghost Go
Megan Reilly
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
General
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
Alt-Country & Americana
| Country
| Styles
| Music
Singer-Songwriters
| Pop
| Styles
| Music
Pop Rock
| Pop
| Styles
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General
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Country Rock
| Rock
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Similar Items:
- Arc of Tessa
- country international records
- Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
- The Blistering Sun
- Ladyland
ASIN: B000EHTOOW
Release Date: 2006-03-28 |
Tracks:
- On a Plane
- Nighttime
- Boy as a Bird
- Tropic of Cancer
- Little Girl in Bloom
- Let Your Ghost Go
- Blackhearted
- Wedding Song
- Ringing a Bell
- Husband
Average customer rating:
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Vague Gropings In The Slip Stream
Palm Fabric Orchestra
Manufacturer: Carrot Top Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
General
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
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Avant Garde & Free Jazz
| Jazz
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General
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General
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ASIN: B000001WX7
Release Date: 1995-04-16 |
Tracks:
- Time And Gravity
- Thawing Spring
- Angelika Suspended
- Window Down, Still Far From The State Line
- Wood Box And Block Of Ice
- The Garden
- Rounding The Trees By The Forest Edge
- Coda: Lover's Reprise
Amazon.com
Frank Orrall is best known for being the leader of Poi Dog Pondering, the dance-pop collective that has migrated from Hawaii to Texas to Illinois. It was in Chicago, though, that Orrall embarked on side projects, such as the club-oriented Poi NRG and the Palm Fabric Orchestra, a wordless (though not voiceless), organic, orchestral exploration. The album's title is appropriate: While the songs have an internal structure, it's not traditional pop songcraft; rather, the eight tracks here are explorations of moods and feelings. Poi mainstays Susan Voelz, Abra Moore (the wordless vocals), and Dave Max Crawford are all present and accounted for and no doubt contribute to the album's stunning beauty--it feels instantly familiar, yet each new listen feels like a discovery. Perfect for the long, lazy days of summer. --Randy Silver
Music Track:
- Chamber of One
- Classic Diamonds [Enhanced] [Import]
- Conquering South America
- Dark Beauty [Import]
- Dark Romanticism
- Death But Not Buried [Import]
- Dimension Hatross
- Dogface [Limited Edition] [Import]
- Dominus Infernus Uzhanas [Import]
- Don't Say a Word [CD-single] [Import]
Music Track
music track
Recommended Music:
Separates
Moonstruck
Nina Storey
Music: Bruce Molsky & Big Hoedown
Road Less Traveled [Import]
Popkiller [Limited Edition]
Noch'n Gedicht [Import]
Nolita
Nazareth - Homecoming: Greatest Hits Live in Glasgow [Import]
One More Time [Live]
Rio [Enhanced] [Original recording remastered]
Prez [Import]
Playaville [Explicit Lyrics]
Brahms: Hungarian Dances; Dvorák: Slavonic Dances / Herbert von Karajan
Lucumi, Macumba, Voodoo