Platter Party!

 Mantronix "Simple Simon (You Gotta Regard)" b/w "Simple Simon (You Dubba Regard)"1988, Capitol. The year after Mantronix jumped from their original label Sleeping Bag Records to get a bite of the pie at Capitol, the album "In Full Effect" was released. Despite the hype being offered by MC Tee here, the writing was kind of on the wall for Mantronix and this specific era/style of hip hop production at this time. Before Mantronix's next (and last) release in 1990, MC Tee would split to join the Air Force, and would be replaced by LL Cool J's cousin Bryce Luvah. Soon after that, mainstream hip hop would move into the direction of gangsta rap with the help of MTV and record execs, making superstars out of people like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg, while groups/performers like De La Soul, Digable Planets and KRS-One had to operate in the margins as "alternative hip-hop".  I mention KRS-One specifically because there's a link here. Mantr

  The Merriettes - "It's The Batman" b/w "Look Out For The Batman" 1966, Batman Records. "Holy Hit-Parade!"  That's right, Boy Wonder! 1966: the year the Bat broke pop culture. And with a huge new wave cresting, comes a million surfers trying to coast on its smooth, liquid glory! Batmania was sweeping the planet after the Greenway Productions television series hit the air in January 1966, and the record industry was eager to capitalize on it.  Cashing in on the Caped Crusader via his primary audience, Peter Pan records, the label known for releasing children's music and read-along story records, put out an LP titled "Children's Treasury Of Musical Batman Stories". The record featured ten songs, two each devoted to Batman, Robin, The Batmobile, The Joker and The Penguin. Concurrently, the record was broken up and released as a series of five novelty singles, each with the two songs devoted to their particular subject and housed in

  Jimmy Keller and his Brush Bernr's - "Brush Pile Burn" b/w "Matador" 1964? Here's some bluegrass-y folk with a serious hick -up! This record presents more questions than answers. For example:   Who is Jimmy Keller? Who are his Brush Bernr's? Why did they redact the "u" from Burner's? WHY DID THEY MAKE IT A POSSESSIVE INSTEAD OF A PLURAL? And what of Trail Records, allegedly based out of Meadow Vista, CA, that seems to have only released this one single?  Some things mortals are not meant to know. Whatever the case may be regarding all of the anonymity and enigmatic grammar-foolery, what we have here in a fun little black wax biscuit baked with a hefty helping of yokel yodel on the A-side, and a latin-influenced instrumental on the B-side. Brush Pile Burn  is supposedly a rare hillbilly stomper, which suggests that it was likely a locally pressed and distributed single, regardless of the "Branch Office" noted in New York, NY.

  Bobby Gregg And His Friends - "The Jam Part 1" b/w "The Jam Part 2" 1962, Cotton Records. I heard they had to call this one The Jam, because Jelly don't shake this much! No, I made that up. This is one of only a handful of singles that Bobby put out under the moniker Bobby Gregg And His Friends between 1962 and 1965, all in the popular Sandy Nelson/Ventures/whatever early-to-mid 60s instrumental rock and roll template. He didn't drop off the planet after that, though, as Gregg went on to drum for Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel and Peter, Paul and Mary on some of their most popular recordings.   The Jam starts out with standard blues beat twang and drum shuffle, then adds some starting-to-bubble-on-the-burner organ and a saxophone that checks out a whole other register at about the 1:50 mark. This romper stomper has a sax solo that will take out three blocks worth of window glass, if played at the proper volume! Side B is essentially more of the same, but

 Nash The Slash "Dead Man's Curve" b/w "Reactor No. 2" 1981, Dinidisc. Nash The Slash - who, what, where, why and huh? you ask! I knew nothing about Nash The Slash when I found this single in a pile of records titled "New Wave", but was successfully stopped in my crate digging tracks by the enigmatic Invisible Man-bedecked 45 sleeve. Being pressed by Dinidisc in the UK, I presumed it was some The Damned-esque British new wave group synthesizering their way through a cover of Jan & Dean's "Dead Man's Curve," which it isn't at all. Apparently Nash The Slash is/was a Torontonian performance artist who had been doing his thing quite successfully–all the while dressed like a dapper Claude Rains-cum-Jack Griffin–for two decades before retiring in 2012 and eventually passing in 2014. Aside from releasing a slew of albums, including the instrumental concept album Decomposing which could be played at any speed (45, 33 1/3 or 78 rpm)

Thomas "Little Jr." Cannaday & His Midnite Flyers "Sloppy Twist" b/w "Hello" 1962, Jack Pot records. Thomas Cannaday was born in Mississippi in 1934, then made his way to Michigan by way of Chicago in the 1950s, becoming a staple of the Detroit blues scene. He rubbed elbows and worked with a number of prominent blues musicians like John Lee Hooker, and per the ever-reliable internet, even has ties to The Temptations, since a young David Ruffin supposedly cut his teeth singing with Cannaday. Little Junior, for whatever reason,  recorded music under a number of variations on his name such as Little Junior Cannady, Little Junior Canna, Thomas Cannaday and T. Cannaday; whether this was by his own design or some odd happenstance, I have no idea. Biographical details aside, what we're really here for is this smoking slab of superlative shake fuel! Side A confronts us with irrepressible shimmy inspiration in the form of Sloppy Twist . How this cut wasn