LOONEY TOONS

LOONEY TOONS

BY DAVE MARSH

The current obsession is anthology albums — more precisely, Golden Hits packages, samplers and bargain collections. I think I know why, too.

For a long long time, everyone has known that the absolute A-number-one fuckin’ killer best of all anthologies were the Motown ones: Chartbusters, the latest series is into its fourth edition by now, I think, but before that there were the fabulous 16 Original Big Hits, which ran into a dozen or more volumes before it was deleted, or just stopped coming out.

UA had a label called Sunset, which put out a bunch of good packages, including one called Color My Soul, which has Ike & Tina, Fats Domino and the best, as far as I’m concerned, version of “Staggerlee,” by the Isley Brothers. (Listen to the fuckin’ guitar line right after “I got three young children and a very shapely wife.”)

Atlantic called theirs Super Hits, and Cream and Sonny and Cher got melded together with Wilson Pickett and Otis and Aretha. Roulette puts out some amazing stuff, and if you can find them, there are two “Alan Freed records on End (which is distributed by Roulette, now) which are just killers. Original Sound as a poly-record Oldies But Goodies series that is oft trivial but neat, anyway.

Finally, though, the most killer of all are the records you get either from the radio or television. The radio albums are often put out by a station as an anniversary or end of the year celebration, sometimes on an established label (there’s one from KYA on Chess that Greg Shaw sent me that is just a mind blower doo wop number) and sometimes on labels like the infamous Take 6.

Both of Detroit’s legendary AM rock stations have put out one gold record collection that’s little short of fantastic: WKNR did one called Oldies But Goodies (put together by Original Sound) which has stuff on it like “The Peppermint Twist,” and “I Know,” by Barbara George and even the ultimo oldie, “Those Oldies But Goodies (Remind Me Of You)” by Little Caesar and the Romans. CKLW’s is called something similar (I don’t have a copy anymore, though I used to), remarkable for “Heavy Music,” the almost perfect Bob Seger paen to rock and roll. You can find the CK set around Detroit sometimes — I saw it in a department store yesterday — but KNR’s isn’t available anymore, which is a real drag because the cover is absolutely fantastic. All the jocks are dressed up in sort of Gay Nineties drag on the front cover. There are all sorts of pictures on the back of the jocks being painted up for the picture on the front, and it’s just totally amazing.

But the best anthology by far is one advertised on TV called 72 Top Original Hits by the Original Artists. If you haven’t got a lot of oldies and see this set advertised, it’s probably worth the rumored $7,98 investment — though it will run you $9.50 with postage (about 39¢ worth) and “handling” charges.

This is the one, though. You’ve probably seen the ads: they roll this incredible list of song titles, play a four and a half second snatch of each all the while bleating about “These and 18 other Big Hits of the Sixties only $7.98 plus postage and handling charges. Call.”

I always wondered what kind of people did that: it turned out I’m one and so are two other people I live with. We now have THREE four record sets, an anthropologist’s delight, I’m sure — or a psychoanalyst’s.

Some of the cuts are faded out, and cut off, some of the beginnings are a little sloppy, some of them aren’t necessarily the hit version — did the Esquires really have a hit with that version of “Get On Up”; it seems far too fast — and some of the “18 others” are not very good (“Bermuda,” and “Spanish Lace” by the Four Seasons). On the other - hand, there is wonderful stuff here, some of which is not even listed on the cover: “I Who Have Nothing” by Terry Knight and the Pack, the incredible “Maybe” by the Chantels which is song enough to make you blush and cry and want to see the people make this music come to life in your living room, and “Gee” by the Crows.

There’s plenty of other great tunes, too, or course: “Are You Ready” by Barbara Mason, “Pushin’ Too Hard,” by the Seeds, “Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop” by Little Anthony, “Rescue Me” by the impossibly but perfectly named Fontella Bass.

But the killer of all, the killer tune to end all killer tunes — and it sounds like, I said the other morning, this is what Marc Bolan would like to do with T. Rex — the tune that makes this record worth $9.50 or even $99.50 if you gotta pay it, is the killer tune by the killer singer of all time:

LOCOMOTION by LITTLE EVA

The all time number one one-shot!

This is the real reason why I love this kind of record so much. The anthology album is so thoroughly anti-auteur.

There isn’t an artist on here that matters, even the ones who might matter if they were given a whole Greatest Hits of their own (like the Drifters or Wilson Pickett or even the Seeds).

Little Eva epitomizes this: it doesn’t matter at all what she did before or after “Locomotion” because^ that song is enough. Her name is a legend already, and I’ll never forget the day I saw her slap her thigh on American Bandstand.

Sure, the next dozen records she did were terrible, she’ll never do another one that’s any good at all, she blew it all at once. But for one brief moment she stood in the spotlight on her own, and that’s what it comes down to: Andy Warhol may mock those fifteen minutes of stardom, but hey, who’d want anymore? Some chump like Brian Wilson, I suppose, but look at what people who matter do. You don’t see Bob Dylan or Ringo or Mark Farner out there all the time, and those are the people who finally garner the maximum acclaim.

I have more respect for Mark Farner because “I’m Your Captain” or “Foot Stompin’ Music” will pop up as a stray track on one of these anthologies some day than I ever will for Brian Wilson or Ray Davies, who will keepputting out one mediocrity after another, requesting our purchase — which means more than money, they want our energy — because they feel constrained to live their lives publicly.

Little Eva is the perfect anthology artist; she’ll never matter any more or any less than her song does. She’ll never be a heroine. She’ll never be a star. She’s never gonna plague us with her neuroses or his insights or her lifestyle. Little Eva just came and told us what it was about for two or three minutes and then she did what Little Richard said we should have done in the first place:

Shut up.