Customer Reviews

Heyday (1979-83)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the greatest bands you've never heard of... this 4-piece from the Kansas plains crafted some of the catchiest, oddest, most compelling garage pop of the early 80s. This 2-disc compendium collects all of their powerful studio work (disc 1), including all the songs from their shaggy masterpiece, THE EMBARRASSMENT LP (in 1992 I paid 25 cents for the vinyl in a remainder bin in Salt Lake City... but absolutely one of the best purchases I ever made). Tracks like "Age 5," "Celebrity Art Party," and "Woods of Love" will worm their way into your ears and stay there. Disc 2 collects various live tracks and studio sessions, including a wicked cover of "The Immigrant Song" and one of the Embarrassment's best songs, "She's One of the Other Kind." Most of these songs were recorded by the band in low-budget studios; the production values are correspondingly lo-fi. But there is an irresistable energy and catchiness to their efforts. If you'll permit the cliche, they were genuinely proto-alternative & in that sense were ahead of their time. The music is rough around the edges but the center is always creamy & smooth. Do they sound like they're from Kansas? More like they invented their own Kansas. Visit them there.

The Embos somehow refracted music through what seems like every worthwhile value to have affected pop in the last 5 decades: Beefheart, Al Green, Johnny Thunders, Esquovil and the whole rest of the shootin' match. No less,they swapped it around and twisted it all and sundered it and made it come out to an even greater whole than the sum of it's parts. Bill Gofrier's guitar is a thing of sputtering, stutter-stepping, mad genius. This music will inhabit you like a wonderful allergic reaction.

What can I say? This is one of the albums I could never part with. One of the great yet little known bands in America. Saw these guys way to few times. A band I was in opened for them a couple times and their liveshows were totally cool. Beat Pop at it's finest! Buy this for yourself, buy some more for your friends!! Brightest colors of the week!!

I had the great fortune of seeing these guys at the Bottleneck in Lawrence Ks. The Embarassment got together to do re-union shows on New Years Eve and that was THE place to be. Despite it's claim to be the comprehensive compilation of their studio work there were some great songs issued on a cassette that they sold that did not make this CD, including Podman and my favorite song of theirs, Sexy Girl Singer. But despite this inexcusable absences, this is a great momento of a truly great band from a period where Alternative still had real meaning. Energetic, catchy, poppy, fun, funny, clever, they were a great band that should have reached much greater heights of fame. The closest analogy I can think of would be an 80's alternative rock version of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Very original, ahead of their time and the kind of music that sticks in your head and won't go away. Great pop music with a manic edge to it. Just looking at the song titles makes me hear these songs. Buy this CD

I heard a review of this CD on NPR (?) around the time it was released and ordered it, based on a few seconds of samples. I have had no regrets. I wish I'd heard of these guys when they were current! There are no good comparisons, but contemporaries like Devo and Pere Ubu come close. This music is of equal or better quality. The adrenaline rush of some of these songs is awesome, but the music AND lyrics are alternately intelligent and hysterically funny. The Embarrassment falls into a category in my collection: Superlative albums by bands that had too brief a career. I wish they'd survived a little longer...

This cd flat out rocks..........I wish this band could be cloned so every college town could have a great band like this playing killer pop songs on Friday nights..........till the year 2112. Ok Im exagerating alittle. There songs are timeless!

What can I say? This is one of the albums I could never part with. One of the great yet little known bands in America. Saw these guys way to few times. A band I was in opened for them a couple times and their liveshows were totally cool. Beat Pop at it's finest! Buy this for yourself, buy some more for your friends!! Brightest colors of the week!!

Like alot of bands from the era the Embarrassment recorded alot of muic, some worthwhile, some not so great. I found a used copy of this a couple of years ago. I saved and burned a separate copy of "Death Travels West" (tracks 9-16 on the first CD of this set). I havent played this CD since.

This isn't really about the CD (which I eventually found on elsewhere), but Amazon lists the shipping time as one to two weeks, when they don't even have it in stock. I got an email saying it was back-ordered and asking if I wanted to wait longer; i eventually canceled the transaction about 1 month after ordering. I implore Amazon to list actually shipping times so no one else's time is wasted.

The CD however is amazing