Spike Jones - Fonk (23 tracks) +Album Reviews

Long lost Spike Jones tracks surface!

Ted Hering | Redding, CA USA | 01/25/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Harlequin has been releasing hard-to-find Spike Jones items since the 1980s, beginning with the Standard Transcriptions. But this new release, Fonk, is absolutely the best of the litter! Even if you are a rabid Jones collector, you will find a goldmine of long out-of-print discs, previously unheard radio excerpts, interviews, and even several alternate performances from Spike's golden days with RCA Victor. The sound is quite good on all tracks. There is not a "lemon" among them!"

New To Spike? Don't Buy this until you complete "Slickers 10

C. Dingle | Arizona | 07/28/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"If you are new to Spike and the Slickers, buy one of the "Best of Collections" first! The reason is simple: those CDs contain the polished, finely tuned performances that made us fans. This CD contains material that an old time Spike fan like me appreciates as "the other stuff Spike did"."

And now for some REAL info?

PHILIPPE VANDENBOSSCHE | Belgium | 05/15/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Incredible performances: just listen to the live performance of "Dance of the hours", or Tommy Dorsey trying to fit in Spike's rendering of his own sig tune "I'm getting sentimental over you" (also live)... a bunch of other gems too. BUT: again, like with the other Harlequin records, you have to know already a lot about Spike & Slickers, because their liner notes keep referring to "insiders only facts". I like the style of the notes, but the contents are lost on me... Since I actually would have liked to rate this CD SIX stars, leaving of one for the liner notes still gives me five stars. Hahaha!"

A Spike that promises but delivers only now and then!

Robert Badgley | London,Ontario,Canada | 11/22/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This 2002 Spike Jones indie release of some rather rare tracks in the Jones arsenal is one that promises alot but doesn't really deliver overall.

Harlequin is an indie company in England who makes their living obtaining copies of sometimes rare/hard to find records now in the hands of private collections and releasing them onto records/CDs....a great way to get around copyright laws in many countries.Harlequin,Proper,Flapper,ASV,et al have done very well over the years trying to fill the niche collectors market in material that the biggies won't or aren't interested in releasing.This release while produced in England was made in the Czech Republic....make of that what you will,if anything.

This is great for collectors and compleatists looking for those rare items to add to their favourites collections.But like everything else in this world caveat emptor,buyer beware.Not all indie releases are made equal as some companies take more pains to get their work done as well as they can while others are just out there to exploit a gullable public.

While this release doesn't fall into the latter category by any means it is certainly from a audio point of view rather disappointing.It's a mixed bag with some tracks sounding quite well while others sounding pretty poor.

There are two main factors involved here: 1) the person on the sound board,i.e. the expertise/committment at equalizing and remixing the sound the best he/she possibly can and 2)the source material involved,i.e.how worn/damaged are the pressings they have to work with.

And this is the crux on which buying these releases rest on.You takes your chances and settle for what you gets.

Another bone of contention I have with the release are the liner notes.For the most part they are all over the place.They are written by a member of the Spike Jones International Fan Club who(should have known BETTER) wrote them like he was releasing them to a bunch of buddies instead of a more generalized public.It's filled with alot of inane patter,in-jokes and references.While I "got" many of them this kind of liner note is NOT for general fan consumption and shows a disturbing lack of professionalism and subsequent lack of respect for the buyer.

To top this the liner notes do blurbs on just 13 of the 23 tracks on the disc!! The best thing about the booklet really are the pictures included,not much else.

In conclusion unless you are a Spike Jones compleatist who REALLY wants these performances,about five released studio recordings and the rest split between alternate takes and live recordings,then I suggest you give this a pass.The sound varies considerably on these tracks and are no where near what you would hear on official releases and should have been better than they are.And let's not get into the liner notes again....as annoying as a Popcorn Sack!!"

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