Interesting A&M find...

[Mr Bill]

I recently came across this CD sampler from 1996...

It looks a LOT like SP19001 from thirty years prior...

Of course, it was modeled after the very first sampler. This one features mid-90's acts Scarce, 16 Horsepower, Soundgarden, Blues Traveller, Dishwalla, Face To Face, Drill, Sheryl Crow, Patty Griffin, Blinker The Star. Suzanne Vega, Tonic, Ashley MacIsaac, The Bluetones, Josh Clayton-Felt, Enormous and Jackopierce.


--Mr Bill
--

 

[Rudy]

That IS cool...even if I've hardly heard of any of the acts on the disc! At least a little heritage from the old days isn't lost.

 

[Harry]

Yeah - as much as we bashed PolyGram back in those days, they at least had a little more respect for the A&M heritage than these Universal guys seem to.

Harry
...who was just reminded by this that the first ever Suzanne Vega compilation album is now out, online...

 

[jimac51]

That is a cool package,Bill,even if one might rarely play the contents therein. An interesting idea would do a "where are they now?" on some of these acts,especially since almost all of them are gone from A&M and its been only a scant seven years since that sampler came out. Patty Griffin,for example,landed on her feet and is doing fine on Dave Matthews' ATO label. Blues Traveller puts a new album out next month through Sanctuary,home of Styx and many other "over the hill" acts who feel they still have something to say. Ashley MacIsaac is back in the Universal stable,via Decca,with a new album out just a few weeks ago and a book due this fall(an interesting tale of a Nova Scotia gay fiddle player immersed in Celtic culture and addicted to crack cocaine-now there's an VH-1 movie in the making.) The Vega "hits" album is also a benchmark because this probably is the end of her A&M output(is the Millenium Collection far away?). Always a prestige artist(great reviews,small sales),"Luka" was a one-hit fluke and "Tom's Diner" was a result of the record company going to bed with the remix thieves rather than stomping on them. Notice that the Universal idiots only put the one DMX mix(of many) on it when putting the original would not have killed anyone and would have been included for true Vega fans if the remix had never happened. She is a gutsy artist and hope she finds a wider audience. Also,I notice that the Vega album has been out since April-Universal just threw it out there to sink. Mac