The Hot Dogs- Say What You Mean (1973) Japanese Remaster (Roots of Power Pop Series) MP3 & FLAC

JVC Victor Japan ~ 2003/1973

The Hot Dogs were a Memphis power-pop band and label-mates with Big Star at Ardent Records in the early seventies. While lacking the edgy off-center quality of the legendary work of Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, The Hot Dogs' brand of power-pop was more obviously influenced by Memphis soul. Lead guitarist and producer Terry Manning did a wonderful job of giving this album the same sumptuous sound that is found on Big Star's debut (which he also had a hand in creating). A rare Memphis power-pop gem that you don't want to miss if you like Big Star.

Tracklist/Info

Say What You Mean  (Japanese Remaster) in FLAC:  Grab, Try, Then Buy!

 MP3 (320kbps)

Additional Big Star & Related Posts

Terry Manning- Home Sweet Home (1970) MP3 & FLAC

"I got a Mazerati GT with the snakeskin upholstery. I got a charge account at Goldsmith,
but I ain't got you."

As a teenager, Terry Manning emigrated from El Paso (where he had played in several bands with Bobby Fuller of "I Fought the Law" fame) to Memphis and somehow talked Stax Records producer and master session guitarist Steve Cropper into making him an assistant engineer at the legendary label after having simply walked in off the street one day. Manning quickly became a mainstay at Stax, going from sweeping up and making tape copies to gaining a reputation as a sought after engineer and producer in a matter of only a few years. The extent of his reputation can be gleaned from the list of artists whose best albums he had a hand in shaping, including Ike & Tina Turner, Otis Redding, The Staple Singers, and The Box Tops (to only name a few). As many of Stax's recordings were cut and mixed at neighboring Ardent Studios owned and operated by John Fry, Manning became a fixture there as well, eventually leading Fry to make him the studio's first official employee by hiring him to be Ardent's chief engineer and manager. Terry Manning: "Neither studio had a problem with this arrangement [....] In the musical sense, Memphis was fairly isolated [...] Its music style was homegrown, even though technically we were trying to emulate the big boys in London, New York and Los Angeles. Musically, Stax was doing what it liked, and together with Ardent we were just one big happy family of people wanting to do music." During this time, Manning was also an active participant in the local Memphis music scene, playing in various bands and befriending many of the musicians who would later craft, with the help of Manning and Fry's willingness to give them free access to Ardent's state-of-the-art recording equipment, the Power-Pop sound that characterized early-seventies Ardent bands such as Big Star, The Hot Dogs and Cargoe.

During a 1968 recording session with The Box Tops, Manning, known as a relentless prankster in the studio, decided to play a joke on one of the songwriters, Eddie Hinton, who had been brought in to furnish the band with material (The Box Tops were not generally allowed by their handlers to record their own songs). Hinton had written a less than stellar piece of Southern boogie called "Choo Choo Train," which he insisted was a perfect fit for Alex Chilton. Less than convinced and also intent on taking a piss out one of Chilton's overly-controlling handlers, Manning, late one night after everyone had left the studio, recorded a heavily ironic, brilliantly over-the-top psych version of the song. After playing the song the next day for producer Dan Penn, Hinton and Chilton, everyone enjoyed it as the joke it was intended to be; however, Stax producer Al Bell, seeing more than just a joke, asked Manning to record an entire album's worth of songs. The result was to be Terry Manning's lone album, Home Sweet Home- on one level, a tongue-in-cheek send up of any number of sixties-era rock cliches, but on another level, a brilliant pastiche of Psychedelia, rockabilly and Stax-style R&B that at times anticipates many of the hallmarks that came to define Memphis-style Power-Pop during the early seventies. For example, on the Johnny Cash cover, "Guess Things Happen That Way," Manning combines exaggerated Elvis-style vocals with a proto-Big Star Power-Pop arrangement that features one of Chris Bell's first moments on tape. Another standout, "Trashy Dog," also featuring Bell, is perhaps the silliest moment on Home Sweet Home; nevertheless, it also manages to be a fine piece of disposable Memphis Soul pop that bears more than a passing resemblance to Big Star's "Mod Lang." Home Sweet Home is an odd listening experience because despite the considerable doses of irony-laced irreverence that punctuate every song, it also reveals itself to be an important chapter in the evolution of the Ardent Power-Pop sound, as Manning, while working on his solo record, was also helping Chris Bell record tracks for Rock City, the band that would soon evolve into Big Star with the arrival of Alex Chilton.

Rock City- S/T (2003) MP3 & FLAC

"I feel like I'm dying, never gonna live again. You better stop your lying and think about what's in the end."

By the time Chris Bell teamed up with Alex Chilton in 1971 to form the nucleus of what eventually became Big Star, Bell had been active on the local Memphis music scene since the mid-sixties. At the tender age of sixteen, obsessed with the sounds of the British Invasion, he played lead guitar for a band called The Jynx, which is how he first crossed paths with Chilton, who regularly attended The Jynx's shows (and even briefly sang for them) before joining The Box Tops along with Jynx bassist Bill Cunningham. Toward the end of the sixties, Bell had gravitated into the orbit of Ardent Studios and its founder John Fry, eventually becoming a part-time engineer at Ardent (he was also attending college at the time). In 1969, Bell, by this point writing his own material, developed a fateful friendship with one of Ardent's full-time engineers, Terry Manning, who, strangely enough, recorded a solo album around the same time, Home Sweet Home, for legendary Memphis R&B label Stax Records, which regularly bought studio time at Ardent. Bell and Manning formed a loose-knit band with a revolving cast of characters (including several future members of Big Star) that was known, at various points, as Rock City and Icewater. As Manning recalls, "During all of this, I, of course had the 'day job' at Ardent Studios: engineering for the rental clients. But when there was free time, John Fry was most gracious in allowing, and helping, everyone to try something new on their own." In essence, what this meant was that Bell and Manning were able to record and mix their own songs using a state-of-the-art recording studio without the support or limitations of a recording contract. The plan was to record an album under the moniker Rock City, which at this point was comprised of Bell, Manning, Tom Eubanks- who contributed the bulk of the songs- and future Big Star drummer Jody Stephens. Despite never having been released until a few years after it was rediscovered in a storage room in 2001, Rock City is an important recording because it provides a detailed glimpse into the formative days of a band that would eventually metamorphose into Big Star; however, more than that, taken on its own terms, the album contains some very good, if occasionally derivative, guitar-pop that every so often hints at something exceptional. An example of the former is the opener, Eubanks' "Think It's Time to Say Goodbye," a solid piece of Power-Pop that, despite limping in places due to Manning's limited vocal abilities, manages to do a respectable imitation of Badfinger. The album's flashes of originality occur when Bell takes center stage, as on "Try Again," a song that would be rerecorded to even greater affect for Big Star's debut, #1 Record. While Bell's vocals are a little shaky in places, they are unmistakably Chris Bell, and the song itself belies its guitar-pop foundation, offering up a dark, soul-searing sense of isolation that is miles ahead of anything else on the album in terms of distinctiveness. While Rock City pales in comparison to the greatness that was just around the corner after Bell jettisoned the modestly talented Eubanks and subsequently brought Alex Chilton into the fold, it nevertheless offers a fascinating glimpse of Bell taking his first significant strides toward the muse that would eventually destroy him.