Welcome to The Tuna Melt Music Sharity Blog!

It is here that I post old records that I've ripped
to Mp3 format (and grouped in .ZIP files) via File Sharing Sites,
album cover scans and, sometimes,
somewhat coherent ramblings related to said shares.

Most of the items shared are rips of Out-of-Print
(or, at least, very difficult to acquire)
Vinyl Records from my own collection,
or Compilations ("Seasonal" or "Genre-Specific") made up of Mp3 files
either digitally collected or ripped from Compact Disk.

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Scroll downward to find available links.
I hope you find something you like.

If you don't,
you can always come back later, as the variety
of what is made available should be pretty wide-ranging.


Friday, April 06, 2007

Last Roundup: Twister!


They Were alt.country when alt.country Wasn't Cool


Everything in Popular Culture, of course, happens in waves. Things that are hugely popular one minute are tossed to the dust bin the next and left there for several years only to become hugely popular once again when discovered by a new audience. While Country Music remains popular with it's own core audience it slips in and out of acceptance with the Rock 'n' Roll crowd about once each decade.

In the 50s it was Rock 'n' Roll's Country Cousin - Rockabilly.

The 60s saw the youth of America embrace Folk Music, most of which was just Old Time Country Music.

Rock fans of the 70s were reintroduced to Country by the likes of Country Joe McDonald, Gram Parsons and Albert Lee. The stuff they played was called Country Rock, but it was just plain Country when it came right down to it.

In the 80s we had a handful of leftover hippies who moved over to the Country stations, but the real Country-Rock Connection of the Post Punk era was known as Cowpunk and was played by bands like Jason and the Nashville Scorchers, Dash Riprock, Rank & File and The Knitters.

The 90s gave us alt.country, with Uncle Tupelo paving the way for BR5-49, The Lonesome Brothers, The Gourds, The Bottle Rockets and a pile of others.

This record came out somewhere between Cowpunk and alt.country. In 1987 there weren't even Country bands who played music that sounded this much like, well, Country Music. And although there were bands who were tossed into the Cowpunk category who played softer sounds than the Punk designation would suggest, there were very few that played a sound as simple and retro as this one. NOBODY on Country Radio was playing anything that sounded anything like this by 1987, and neither have they since.

Last Roundup is made up of Angel Dean singing lead vocals, Amy McMahon Rigby playing guitar and harmonizing, her brother Michael McMahon playing Guitar, Lap Steel and Fiddle, and Garth Powell. The songs were written by the McMahon siblings and you may recognize Amy as she of "Diary of a Mod Housewife" fame a decade later. Angel Dean had a great alt.country band called Angel Dean & The Zephyrs who had a couple of songs on the Rig Rock Deluxe series by Deisel Only Records. She released a record with Sue Garner, who had preceeded her as vocalist for Last Roundup, in 2004.

Last Roundup: Twister!

  1. Cast Iron Girl
  2. Playin' the Fool
  3. To Paint the Town Red (You Need a Bucketful of Green)
  4. Mama's Last Stand
  5. Don't Wake Me Up
  6. River of Red
  7. At the Well
  8. (A Matter of) Satisfaction
  9. Walk in a Straight Line
  10. Just a Little is Enough
  11. Mary Beth Edwards

9 comments:

insipid said...

The Last Roundup are AMAZING!

Unknown said...

Thanks SO MUCH for posting this. I've been looking for a digital version FOREVER. I even corresponded with Amy Rigby about finding it on CD but she said it was only available as an LP/CASSETTE, both of which I already have.

Thanks again!

Disco:Very said...

Man, I want to hear this album so bad that I'm going to stab myself in the head if you don't repost the files. You will be so bummed when everyone blames my suicide on you.

planeta.elvis said...

Please, any possibilitty to have a link that works ??? I have no idea of this band and I'd like to have a listen, thankx

Traitor Vic said...

Eek! Sorry the link died, Guys!

It's been a while since I posted it and I've got an entirely new set-up nowadays so I'll probably rip it again (at a higher bit-rate and much better quality than before) before I post it again.

I'll get it done soon, though! Thanks for the inspiration!

Mo' Money said...

An word on that rip of Last Roundup: Twister?

Francis said...

I know this comment thread is from ages ago, but let me just add another voice to those hoping for a fresh reupload. Would love to hear this!

Unknown said...

Puh-LEEZE!!! I need to hear “Mary Beth Edwards” and “Cast Iron Skillet of a Girl.”

Anonymous said...

I have a 24 bit 48 kHz FLAC rip of last roundup. Rip was done on nice equipment from my LP. Sounds fantastic. I don't think I can post it because of copyrights