100 Records Volume Two: I Miss the Jams

VINYL FORMAT. Sometimes the community rallies around an individual and the results are undeniable. There is a long and winding back story to the Sonny Smith's (Sonny & the Sunsets) 100 Records project, but all that you really need to know is that Sonny Smith, one of the brightest lights in SF's neu-Garage scene, has recorded an album that is one for the ages. Sonny wrote 200 songs that make up 100 conceptual 7-inch singles for a multimedia art show that traveled around the US this past year. Although Smith penned all the music he attributed his masterful tongue-in-cheek brand of laid-back garage-pop tunes to mystical musicians like Zig Speck, Earth Girl Helen Brown and The Loud Fast Fools, derived from Smith's imaginative prose. Along with producer Marc Dantona, Sonny assembled a "Wrecking Crew" of players; the SF scene got together to record songs in basements and apartments around the city, and a whole other team of visual artists contributed artwork for each record cover. Here you have ten songs from Sonny Smith's 100 Records. Recorded on vintage gear, with local heroes such as Tim Cohen (The Fresh & Onlys), Kelley Stoltz, Ty Segall, and members of The Sandwitches and Citay all contributing, this new music sounds as though it could be from a bygone age, one at once more innocent and more dangerous. While the artwork and the concept are both wonderfully original and compelling, it's the tunes that stand out here. Earth Girl Helen Brown's "I Want to Do It" (featuring Heidi Alexander from The Sandwitches) is a sexual plea worthy of Ronnie Spector by way of the Velvet Underground. Cabezas Cordates' "Teenage Thugs" revs its Dick Dale motor like Steve McQueen in Bullet running over James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Loud Fast Fools' "Time to Split" will have any square shakin' and shimmeyin' like a greaser at the high school dance. It's a rock 'n' roll affair that's decidedly old school. Sonny's songs have a rawness that is hard to come by these days, and his beautiful, fun, and often heart wrenching melodies send the whole record into classic territory.