Word: phils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...About the same time as the American release of "Greatest Hits," Spector (who controlled all the rights to his catalog) set up a distribution arrangement with Polydor for a label called Phil Spector International, whose first and only release was a five-LP series called "The Phil Spector Wall of Sound." Featured were greatest hits collections from The Ronettes, The Crystals, Bobb B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and Phil himself. (I wasn't interested in the last one since all the tunes on it were drawn from the other three LPs or the Warner Brothers collection...
...What did interest me, however, was LP number 5: "The Phil Spector Wall of Sound Vol. 5: Rare Masters." To an obsessive, of course, the words "rare master" are Pavlovian triggers like "never released", "obscure B-side" and "the Beatles butcher-cover." That it turned out to be a great record was irrelevant - I had no choice. I was Ahab, the white whale was off the starboard. Somehow I got the money (probably around six or seven dollars) and "Rare Masters" was in my hands...
...Finally there are two masterpieces, songs as good as "Be My Baby" or "River Deep Mountain High." The first is a Veronica number called "Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love." Phil opens with a seismic riff - a sax line of tectonic dimension, especially on crankin? speakers - but the song's just starting, and the second time through he adds the backup vocals: "Bop bop bop, bop bop ba-dah-dah dah-dah..." I'm sitting on that couch in the dark, my next-door neighbor is pounding on the wall...
...this kind of setting, is what finally convinces me that - like Brian Wilson - "I just wasn't made for these times". I mean, I'm in tears, I'm a grown man and moved to tears by this teeny-bop concoction, this early '60s equivalent of Britney Spears. (Phil called them "little symphonies for the kids.") But it's not Britney Spears - it's better. It gets to me. It defeats the cynic within, dismantles the censoring mechanism, and bypasses the cool-meter. I achieve the actual, never-articulated goal of the obsessionist: the ecstatic experience...
...with a hipster buyer who controlled the records section, which in those days were all LPs and 45s. I walk over to the Oldies section, or the Girl Groups section, or maybe just S in the alphabetical listing. I flip through the LPs and suddenly I'm holding "The Phil Spector Wall of Sound Vol. 6 - Rare Masters...