UPDATE 11/07/2011: I was recently informed by Tony Francis (the keyboardist and lead singer of Squeezer)'s nephew that sadly, Tony passed away about 20 or so years ago. The whereabouts of the other two band members - Larry Alcorn and Michael Dale - are still unknown (I know that Ernie Archibeque also passed in late 2003). If anyone has info, please contact me by personal message or comment on this video.
Eleventh track off the album \"Joy Jell Fantasies\" (US pressing, Now Records/Original Sound NLP-7001)
Want a fresh, bubbling mix of a variety of rock 'n' roll influences on vinyl? Leave it to Squeezer, an four-piece combination of then-young and supreme talents from the breath-taking blue skies of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their only album, Joy Jell Fantasies, was released in early 1974 on Art Laboe and Brian Ross's then-new Now label (a secondary imprint of Original Sound intended for releasing new albums instead of compilations consisted of previously-released material) and is indeed a spectacular album that never loses even a teeny-weeny bit of its freshness every time you listen to it.
I first happened upon Squeezer via somebody's video of a mispressed copy of Kiss's self-titled debut album which had side 2 of Joy Jell Fantasies instead of the proper side 2 of the Kiss album. I didn't know who the artist was when I first saw the video, so I decided to do some deeper research. This research lead me to the discovery of Squeezer, and a spectacular discovery too. Due to its obscurity (it has never been reissued on CD at all!), Joy Jell Fantasies has considerably been hard to find on vinyl, but over the past little while, I have seen several sealed copies showing up for sale on various sites including eBay, Discogs and the like, which probably means that some lucky soul found an old distribution warehouse in Hollywood filled with unsold copies of the album. This was one of them.
Unfortunately, the majority of these sealed copies can only be found in the West Coast of the USA, and we know shipping times from Western states to be really slow. Also, the prices for the album on eBay are not the best (usually in the range of $15-$30). But, as luck would have it, I found a copy on Discogs in Pennsylvania, and the price was right (only $5)!
People, you better sit back, put on your headphones, cause I've posted the whole album for your enjoyment! None of the tracks on side one are anywhere else on YouTube, so this is an exclusive premiere... I hope you'll like this album as much as I do! Don't forget to stay tuned to my blog (http://ryansvinylemporium.blogspot.com/) for a review of Joy Jell Fantasies!
Lyrics:
Words are something that continue to make it hard to speak
And don't you know the foundation is becoming mighty weak?
Empires fall to gain the world
And I don't know why it is
That everything I've said till now
Has fallen apart somehow
All the words in any book
Can't explain the reasons
Why it took
Me so long to see
Over and over, I've thought about it
I tried to understand how it got so out of hand
Now if these words do seem a bit trite and out of place
Know that deep within this tome I cultivate my race
Empires fall to gain the world
And I don't know why it is
That everything I've said till now
Has fallen apart somehow
All the words in any book
Can't explain the reasons
Why it took
Me so long to see
