Happy Holidays, WELCOME to our new subscribers, and greetings dear old friends!
We have a fun little surprise today - a slice from a cassette recording of The Uptones Live at the Rheem Theater in Moraga, California on November 8, 1986(!!) The song is Step Down, which was a personal favorite of mine, and one which we never did capture in a recording studio. Paul Jackson gets the big tip o’ the hat from all of us for pressing “record” at that gig, which now eons (ok, mere decades!) later, sees release on Berkeley Cat Records. Audio mastered for digital by Paul and Charles Stella, for a truly in-house Uptones affair.
Here it is on Bandcamp:
And here’s a link to links on several popular streaming services:
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/theuptones/step-down-live-rheem-theater-1986
Each Caturday for the next few weeks, we’ll share another song from this concert, and then by gosh we’ll release the whole set. It’s roomy, it’s boomy, there’s chatter and crowd noise and bears, oh my. Did I mention this was recorded on a cassette? That was a popular format when hobbits roamed the shire, and of course it inspired the artwork for this historical document.
What ELSE!? Oh, yeah! New single from The FAVES coming on January the FIRST, TWO THOUSAND and TWENTY FOUR Anno Domini! New Years Day, that is, and the song is called Side Effects. A new original composed by Robbie Dunbar and Larry Lynch of Earth Quake and Greg Kihn Band fame, the song rocks in their classic East Bay rocker fashion. An inspiring and fun audio-blast to start 2024, and a worthy antidote to the (all together now..) SIDE EFFECTS! from your tomfooleries on New Years Eve. Meanwhile The FAVES’ cover of Higher and Higher is STILL mashing up the Radio Indie Alliance airwaves, near and far! Go FAVES go, and we look forward to:
What a year it’s been. Thanks for being with us, lending an ear to our audio nibbles and even some video catnip! I appreciate your subscriptions here very much, paid or free, as this Substack venue allows us to reach interested cats directly and free of ads, without interference from tedious corporate algorithms. Our kitty dish runneth over.
I’m overdue for making a PodCATS episode, will do soon. Til then all the earlier episodes are up there meowing along, ready for new earballs.
Oh! There were the inevitable Spın̈al Tap jokes in our discussion around this Uptones release, and in the spirit of that I sign this, yours truly,
E. Din Hogg
No "tedious corporate algorithms" Like!