Real Gone’s End of Year Round-Up 2020

By the end of 2019, few people would have suggested we’d live through a year any more devastating than 2016. That year, famous musicians seemed to be dying on a weekly basis. 2020 had even more of a drastic effect on the music industry with a global pandemic putting a halt on gigs and forcing various small, grass roots venues to close their doors forever.

On the plus side – and you always have to look for a positive, even in the most dire of circumstances – a dramatic change in circumstances has forced musicians to change their way of working. For those with home studios, it’s meant we’ve seen an increase in output. We’ve even been given unexpected albums – right at the end of the year, there were surprise releases from Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift and various other interesting albums were put together remotely. …And as we take stock on a terrible year, it seems that the gift of recorded music has been one of our only constants: 2020 may have been an absolute bastard in so many ways, but we’ve all found new music to love.

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THE WAVE CHARGERS – Christmas With The Wave Chargers EP

When French surf rockers The Wave Chargers released their first full length LP at the end of 2019, it exceeded expectations Their earlier EPs promised good things, but the self-titled disc delivered on all fronts, often sounding like one of the most authentic 60s surf tributes ever. Despite being recorded in Paris and released during the winter, the twelve tunes were a perfect homage to the genre’s legends. The guitar tones from Francis Viel and Louise Sordolliet showed so much of an empathy for the retro style that the bulk of their work could’ve easily passed for long lost Dick Dale recordings. With those high octane vibes joined by a couple of fantastic honking sax breaks, it was a record that served up a gloriously retro half hour; an LP almost to thrill lovers of The Lively Ones, and possibly even the legendary Ventures. In short, they managed to run rings around The Aqua Velvets and other US based revivalists.

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IGGY AND THE STOOGES – You Think You’re Bad Man? The Road Tapes ’73-’74

For a band that only existed for a short time and released just three studio albums during their original life span, the impact The Stooges had on the world of music was massive. Inspirational to a world of garage rock and punk bands that formed in their wake, their importance couldn’t be understated. Following their demise in 1974 and frontman Iggy Pop’s success with ‘The Idiot’ in 1977, the market was subsequently flooded with bootleg quality recordings of Stooges live shows, many of which somehow reached “official release status” on CD by the 90s. Most of those discs – with the exception of the widely circulated ‘Metallic K.O.’ 2CD set – subsequently became hard to find and began to change hands for ungodly sums of money on the second hand market.

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THE AUTUMN KILLERS – Acoustic And Autumnised EP

The Autumn Killers may have been new a new name on the rock scene for 2020, but the band’s core members were already veterans of the UK rock scene. Vocalist Rob Reece had previously been a member of Swivelhead, 91BC and his eponymously named Reece, and guitarist Duncan Richardson had twenty years experience as a session musician. You’d think, given the amount of hard yards the duo had already put in, that their debut EP ‘Dance Floor Mayhem’ would have sounded like the work of a professional band. Unfortunately, its songs – in addition to being hampered by a demo quality production and a drum machine that sounded like a plastic tub being hit with a stick – were plodding, uninspired and hopelessly clichéd. ‘Chains’ – a song about “a relationship that felt like being in chains” – chugged along as if a bunch of beginners were experiencing their first studio booking and hammering out an old Black Keys tune in a lumpen manner; ‘I Don’t Mind’ attempted something of a groove, but ultimately sounded like an average pub band paying tribute to the 90s and, worse still, the title track failed to garner any real excitement, sounding like a plodding version of The Cult with no real passion. At its best, the EP could be called unpolished; at its worst, you might even find it falling somewhere between boring and terrible.

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Grab a FREE 33 track sampler from Melted Records

Long before Malibu Lou Mansdorf launched Rum Bar Records, he was involved with Melted Records, a New York label that delivered various power pop and pop punk releases between 1995-2001.  The label was home to The Cretins, Darlington, 30 Amp Fuse – a great punk band whose last album was produced by Descendents men Stephen Egerton and Bill Stevenson – an a handful of lesser-known names.

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