Dec 14

Rhino Records

RHINO RECORDS
 
 
Rhino Entertainment Company  is an American specialty record label and production company.  It is owned by Warner Music Group.  Rhino was originally a novelty song and reissue company during the 1970’s and 1980’s, releasing compilation albums of pop, rock & roll, and rhythm & blues successes from the 1950’s through the 1980’s.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Minnesota is not often mentioned in the garage rock world either, but Minneapolis produced one of the finest examples from the genre, the Trashmen, whose legendary 1963 hit “Surfin’ Bird” transmogrified two hit songs by a doo-wop group called the Rivingtons, “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” and “The Bird’s the Word” and showed America just what surf rock music was capable of producing.  They continued to produce several minor hit singles – I bought “Bird Dance Beat” myself when it came out – and made enough music that a box set was released of Trashmen recordings (by Rhino Records if memory serves – actually it was Sundazed Records).  All this by a band that hailed from a state that is as far from an ocean as it is possible to be and still be in the United States.
 
(September 2010)
 
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Another dream that went by the wayside was to collect all of the records issued by Rhino Records (like the Bob Dylan bootleg albums:  just too many). 
 
(April 2012)
 
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The bandleader and songwriter for Code Blue, Dean Chamberlain is best known as one of the founders of the 1980’s new wave band the Motels, which was formed all the way back in 1971.  
 
After struggling for a couple of years, Capitol Records offered the Motels a recording contract in 1977; instead, the band broke up, citing creative differences.  From Dean Chamberlain’s standpoint, he thought that there was too much emphasis on lead singer Martha Davis.  One song, “Counting” survived from this very early period in the Motels; the song was first included on a 1978 Rhino Records compilation album, Saturday Night Pogo. 
 
As far as I know, the Code Blue music has not yet made it to CD, though their first album, Code Blue was reissued by Rhino Records as a limited-edition LP with bonus tracks and new remixes in 2003. 
 
(September 2012)
 
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There were some personnel shake-ups before the Pandoras released their second album for Rhino Records in 1986, Stop Pretending.  The Pandoras then signed with Elektra Records through Paula Pierce’s boyfriend at the time, who was an A&R rep for the label; but the planned album was never officially released.  Sadly, Paula Pierce died of a brain aneurysm in 1991 when she was just 31. 

 

(December 2013)

 

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On May 29, 2011, at a Rhino Records pop-up store in San Diego, the Crawdaddys showed up unexpectedly with a reunion concert that included former members Ron Silva, Peter Miesner, and Keith Fisher.  After noting the surprise at the Crawdaddys being there at all, the L.A. Weekly report on the concert continued:  “Another surprise was how hot and vital the band sounded, even after being dormant for so many years.  You could certainly hear where latter-day ’60s revivalists like the Hives got their ideas, as singer-guitarist Ron Silva snarled his way through a set of Crawdaddys originals and vintage covers of primal rock classics like ‘Oh Baby Doll’, ‘Slow Down’ and ‘Let the Good Times Roll’.  The group were at their best on Rolling Stones-style blues rockers like ‘Bald Headed Woman’, but they also deftly pulled off poppier tunes like the Knickerbockers’ Beatles sound-alike ‘Lies’ and a yearning, affecting version of the Velvet Underground’s bittersweet ‘There She Goes [Again]’.”  

 

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The Beat Farmers were signed by Rhino Records – mostly known as a reissue label – which released their debut album, Tales of the New West in January 1985; they were then signed by Curb Records.  The album includes a cover of “There She Goes Again”, which had been previously recorded by the Crawdaddys.  Their 1987 album Pursuit of Happiness included “Make it Last” that initially had a lot of play on country music stations; though that didn’t, er, last once DJ’s decided that the rest of the album was too rock and roll. 

 

(January 2015/2)

 

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Oddly though, “Beat Street” does not appear on the Beat Street soundtrack albums – issued in two volumes – although “Beat Street Breakdown” by Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five does (along with several other songs having “beat street” in the title).  “Beat Street” is included in the Rhino Records retrospective from 1994, Message from Beat Street: The Best of Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel & the Furious Five.
 
(September 2016)
 
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The Wikipedia article on the album starts out this way: “Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 is a groundbreaking compilation album of American psychedelic and garage rock singles released in the mid-to-late 1960s. It was assembled by Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records, and Lenny Kaye, later lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group. The original double album was released on LP by Elektra in 1972 with liner notes by Kaye that contained one of the first uses of the term ‘punk rock’. It was reissued with a new cover design by Sire Records in 1976 and expanded into a four-CD box set by Rhino Records in 1998.”  
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As a measure of the popularity of the Stooges album Fun House, as reported in Wikipedia: “In 1999, Rhino Records released a limited edition box set, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions, featuring every take of every song from every day of the recording sessions, plus the single versions of ‘Down on the Street’ and ‘1970’. On August 16, 2005, the album was reissued by Elektra [Records] and Rhino as a two-CD set featuring a newly remastered version of the album on disc one and a variety of outtakes (essentially highlights from The Complete Fun House Sessions box set) on disc two.”  
(December 2016)
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The redo of the 1977 Siamese Records 45, “I Got a Right” b/w “Gimme Some Skin” – and the only one of the Iguana Chronicles albums and EP’s that I don’t have at all, as best I can tell – is like a miniature version of the box set on Rhino Records, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions that I have mentioned before.  Like the songs on the 1977 EP I’m Sick of You, “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin” are early demo recordings by the Stooges dating from June 1972 that were rejected by MainMan Management for the Raw Power album.
 
(December 2017)
 
Last edited: April 7, 2021