Customer Reviews

Town And Country

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I remember the first time I heard this album. I was a rocker and my new girlfriend (now wife of 10 years) was one of those too-cool alternative chicks. I was amazed! We have worn out the cassette after 15 years, and it is a godsend to have it on CD. "By The Way", "Remember", "Not Where you're at" "Rave Up/Shut Up" and "My Gremlin" are rollicking, foot-tapping good times. "Positively Lost Me" is a classic of love gone bad. "Class Tramp" provides us a great moral in Jimmer's usual wry way. A real highlight of the album is the great cover of The Byrds "You ain't going nowhere". This album is really the beginning of The Rave Ups transformation from a good-time punkabilly band to a more introspective-well polished act. If you like this, try to find "Class Tramp", the original EP released on the Fun Stuff label, as well as "Book of your Regrets" and "Chance" their two Epic releases. And keep your eyes peeled; Jimmer Podrasky and Terry Wilson are writing together again, and we should soon see some new Rave Ups material for the first time in over 10 years!

it's not often i speak out but when i saw this album on cd, i thought i could say something to help someone want to buy this great album. in it's most simple state it was musicaly a great album. in a more complex state it is a wonderful insite into a time that made more sence. no drive bys, or road rage. i would listen to this and wonder where my roads would take me. so sad more people weren't exposed to the raves ups music. listen to "radio" and think how special it is and was to be young and live through music.

Cursed with a national debut in Molly Ringwald's "Pretty in Pink", this band's career as the could-be Rockabilly Kings of Hollywood lead ballooned to obscurity (with Ringwald). The Rave-Ups were only worth this one album which somehow was resurrected by someone with a penchant for showing off the rights to their lost treasures. No band could match the up-tempo changes of "Postively Lost Me", one of those peaking-at-number-94 adult hits you swear you've heard before the first time it goes from your ears to your tapping toes. If Americana and the country & Westerberg bands like Whiskeytown ever launch its genre into stardom, we owe some of it to this album. Before the well-known albums of Uncle Tupelo, Robbie Fulks and Joe Henry, these California cowboys managed to line-up a studio musician to lay down one of the greatest steel-guitar solos on "Radio." Otherwise, the grove is PURE rave-up: "In My Gremlin", "By the Way" and the poignant "Better World" are what rockabilly could have been. One taste of this lost delicacy will tell you how beautiful 1985 could have been for the rockabilly pioneers. One lost fan hereby professes his gratitude to the label which revived this gem on CD. I no longer have to perserve my cassette version into formal-de-hyde with the rest of scarry members of my cassette musuem of 1980's releases still waiting to be memoralized on Compact Disc.

I can't tell you how happy I am that this is available on cd. An outstanding example of true 80s indy music. The Rave Ups were the band that shoulda coulda didn't quite make it. Great lyrics combined w/intelligent pure pop makes this a true hidden gem. If you like this, you should check out early Trip Shakespeare like Are you Shakespearienced...either way, this is a great find...

For those of us weened on Paul Kelly, Velvet Elvis, and early REM, this album is no doubt in our Top Ten of all-time records. I remember seeing their name scratched with ball point pen into Molly Ringwold's three-ring binder in "Sixteen Candles," and the very next day I found the album at a local record shop. Pure and simple, rich and strange. One of the only 80's records that actually matters.

I have waited a long time for this album and I can say it is well-worth it. It is perfect and brings back all those memories of The Rave-Ups live and in concert. I had the cassette of Town & Country a long time ago. It was lost somewhere in my travels and now to listen to those songs again takes ten years off my life. This album deserves to be listened to over and over again.

While I own a copy of this record on vinyl, it is too important to me to keep in only that medium. This album is a great country-rocker in the mold of early Rank and File, Lone Justice and the True Believers. This entire album is really good but the song "Better World" is an all-time favorite - sweetly poignant with a slow kick in the teeth.

I really loved the movie Pretty in Pink and have always been fascinated with the music in the film. It was a shame that Positively Lost Me and Rave-Up (Shut-up) did not make it on the soundtrack. When The Rave-Ups re-released this album, I was so excited. Of course, I am a huge fan of the two songs featured in the movie but I am really digging the whole thing. I am a new-wave/brit-pop person, so it is taking some getting used to but I like it. I would call this more new-wave-rockabilly.

I would imagine that the insert could have been a lot better but it's not that big of a deal. I am just happy they released it again. For awhile there the cassettes and vinyl were selling in the hundreds.

I like to have the physical CD and I like to listen to it they way the artist intended, so I am happy.

Rave-ups is not a very famous band here in Europe. Thank God I've just got this record. A splendid and new brand vinyl !
How it sounds! Really love "Positively..." and "Shut up" above the other all, these ones from the movie PRETTY IN PINK when they are playing at Cats while Molly Ringwald "loses" John Cryer! whoa ! such that great times !!! I was nineteen at that time.I like a lot "Remember""Gremlin" and "By the Way". The record is out of print now. I have THREE vinyl copies. I love them as much as the Sgt. Peppers...
Tweenty three years later, this record is a authentic and great classic now!
Greetings from Spain
Miguel

Like a lot of people- I got into this band because of my affinity for 1980s Molly Ringwald flicks. Anyways.. I feel like I've been looking everywhere.. Does anyone know how to get a copy?