Music Machine Ultimate Turn On

Take your pick-- black or white or mono or stereo. Much like this quite essential 2 CD collection that came out on Big Beat last year. Their LP is featured in both flavors (mono vs stereo) on disc one of this set.

I have their 45s and an 80s or early 90s reissue of their LP Turn On, so I waited a while to track this one down.

I will say that Talk Talk, one of my top ten songs of all time does smack of fuzz and distortion in a glorious bath of noise on this digital version. A clean 45 would have the edge, but I digress as usual.

The guitar break is quite killer on their reading of The Beatles Tax Man. Nice crunch from the guitar behind the vocals. This mix does sound nice.

The Machine turns back into the noise with Masculine Intuition, that features tasty Vox organ and a tough bass pulse punctuated by distortion in the trebley register on the guitar. One of my fave codas with the bass drum isolated and pounding to the end.

They pull it back for The People in Me. Still a strong organ driven workout, just not as tough as Masculine.

Not a fan of their take on Hey Joe, methinks The Stillroven kill that song. Except that backgound fuzz wash towards the end of the track just nails it in my book.

The Eagle Never Hunts The Fly is a neccessary exploration into the deep and darkness. Great off time weirdness, screeching guitars, and general mayhem ensues. The vocal sounds especially tough over all of the Vox guitars and related distortion equipment. Check!

Disc two contains a ton of other stuff- demos, rehearsals, etc. I might dig into that a bit in the future.

I have never been a big fan of the selection of cover material for this LP, probably one of the reasons, that when I need a MM fix, I go digging in the crates. But the one two punch of Talk Talk and Trouble, on side one of Turn On, are hard to beat with any record, period. This is essential listening for anyone who even thinks they might like "garage" music.