WFMU's Beware of the Blog

The Good Vibrations Reach Nashville (MP3)

Floyd Cramer  -  Good Vibrations  

In addition to making quite a few records under his own name, Floyd Cramer played piano on thousands of Nashville recording sessions.  He can regularly be heard on records by Elvis Presley (Heartbreak Hotel, for instance), the Everly Brothers, Don Gibson, Eddy Arnold, Brenda Lee, Chet Atkins, Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline to name just a few.

Most of the records he released under his own name are pleasant enough, I suppose, but I find them a bit too refined and full of pop flourishes to track them down and purchase them.  Exceptions can be made however and here's one of them.  In 1967, he released a 45 rpm recording of Stood Up (#53 on the country charts) and decided to put the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations on the b-side, a seemingly suprprising choice. Or maybe it wasn't so surprising, as he also recorded the LP Floyd Cramer Plays The Monkees in the same year.

John Peel's Record Collection is Listenable Online Today

For many fans of FMU, John Peel needs no introduction.  As a champion of adventurous taste on BBC Radio 1 for decades, Peel's one of our patron saints.  Thanks to the liberal funding policies for the arts across the pond (as opposed to here in America...Mayday...Mayday...), John Peel's entire record collection is being digitized and released online.  Many are available for free streaming and detailed info is available for the rest.

Click here to see the Peel Archives online.  Hate to draw attention away from FMU, but crap, this will easily take up your entire day and totally mess up your work productivity (if you aren't chronically jobless...Mayday...Mayday).  Today all the records starting with "A" are streamable, and it looks like a letter will be released for listening every week.

Also!!  Bonus points.  In the left of the Peel archives homepage, under the speaker...what's that??  A wfmu bumper sticker!  Screencap's to the left...