Schlock-O-Phonic
COVER GIRL MODELS: A Final Shoot For The Three Girl Sex Soap
Jan 24th
Combining sex and soap opera material served New World Pictures well during their early years. Starting with The Student Nurses, they stumbled onto a formula — build an ensemble around three young women willing to shed their clothes, give each a soap opera style plot thread of their own and spice it up every reel More >
PHILADELPHIA INTERNATIONAL — THE RE-EDITS: Re-Edited Or Re-Mixed, Love Is Still The Message
Jan 23rd
2012 is shaping up to be a big year for Philly Soul fans. The legendary Philadelphia International Records label is celebrating its 40-year anniversary and has teamed up with Harmless Records to release a variety of reissues that pay tribute to the satin-soul heritage it created during its glory years in the 1970’s and early More >
TRILLION — CLEAR APPROACH: High Art For The AOR Crowd
Dec 12th
AOR officially stands for Album-Oriented Rock but there’s a segment of its fanbase that instead spells it out as “Adult-Oriented Rock.” Basically, this concept refers to a sound where rock instrumentation is used but the design is both more ambitious and more disciplined, aiming for a more “adult” version of rock. There are hard rock More >
COME AND GET IT — THE BEST OF APPLE RECORDS: The Best Mistake The Beatles Ever Made
Dec 5th
Apple Records was essentially doomed from its inception. Founded by the Beatles with the dream of being a humane answer to the major labels, it never really took flight for a number of reasons. For starters, it was an arm of a major label instead of its independent operation. Also, the Beatles were less than More >
AMERICANA — ROCK YOUR SOUL: Satisfying The Soft-Rock Sweet Tooth
Nov 28th
AOR is a genre that is explored often at Schlockmania but it’s usually done in the more arena-rocking context of this style (i.e. stuff along the lines of Styx, Journey, Foreigner, etc.). However, there is another side to AOR that downplays the bombast in favor of smooth melodicism defined by light undertones of jazz and More >
MIXOLOGY — THE DEFINITIVE SALSOUL MIXES: When The Umpteenth Trip To The Vault Is Actually Worth It
Nov 21st
If you had to pick a “most anthologized” record label for disco material, Salsoul Records would probably take the cake. They have consistently been one of the most influential disco labels since the original rise/fall/rebirth of the genre and their material consistently remains in demand amongst aficionados. However, it’s rare that one of the countless More >
QUEEN — A NIGHT AT THE OPERA: A Rhapsody That Will Never Fade Away
Nov 1st
With Sheer Heart Attack, Queen proved they had the songwriting chops and sense of focus necessary to package their flashy take on hard rock into a bonafide commercial proposition. The next step was to consolidate their newfound popularity: such a task sounds simple in theory but it was tricky in practice for a group with More >
GREG LAKE — S/T: Trading The Prog 1970’s For The AOR 1980’s
Sep 6th
The early 1980’s were a difficult time for progressive rock. Its musical purveyors were trying to find their footing in a commercial arena dominated by Top 40 music and dodging brickbats from the critics who detested the 1970’s-style bombast it represented. Though there was a core of fans still clamoring for the progressive style of More >
QUEEN — SHEER HEART ATTACK: The Killer Queen Slays For The First Time
Aug 23rd
Album number three for Queen represented the dividing line between being cult favorites and being international superstars. Their first two albums, Queen and Queen II, are impressive and have aged well but they display the band’s talents in an insular kind of way: putting Tolkienesque lyrics over an eccentric blend of harmony pop and heavy More >
QUEEN — QUEEN II: First Steps On The Road To Platinum Bombast
Aug 16th
While Queen was a strong debut album, it sounds positively genteel compared to what they would later do in terms of sonic grandeur. Queen II was the next logical step, an album that found the group really sinking their collective teeth into the possibilities of a recording studio circa 1974. The end result found the More >
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