I think it just depends....Most domestic LPs are still about 8 to 11 dollars , which , of course , is NOTHING in English Pounds. 45s CAN RUN YOU ANYWHERE FROM 4 TO 8 dollars , which is LESS than nothing in English Pounds. A lot of independent labels and stores did try hard to keep the prices down , but , now , it's a crapshoot. Also , regionally , a lot of new releases may be more expensive , still.
Yeah , I also have the original Blood on The Cats comp - Everything from Screaming Lord Sutch to America's own Shockabilly (Who had no discernible Rockabilly influence , but , then again , neither does most latter - day "Psychobilly" .). I have The Wigs EP , too. I knew it existed , because it was listed in a Media Burn (?) ad , and I'm a Yank , fer chrissake.
Mark George Harrison said:
Forgot the Escalators JB, another Meteors offshoot although I remember reading that Nigel Lewis was on a lot of high dosage meds for a back complaint and when he was more compus mentus disowned their entire output!The blood on the cats, all four of them, were a weird combination of rockabilly, psychobilly, garage and goth! With a bit of punk on there for good measure with the Belfasts finest the Outcasts wrongly credited as the Outcats! Worth buying for the Wigs 'thirteen lines' took me until about ten years ago to find a copy of the Wigs ep, was told it didnt exist by a respected collector!
Albums today are probably cheaper than they were then, its singles that are bloody dear! is that the case in the States? An average 45 here is about £4.50 but an album is usually between £10 and £13.50 or there abouts. sorry to get off track but as an 'old timer' its my perogative!;)
John Battles said:Mark George , Well , The British stuff did'nt come cheap , here , either. There was this whole new "Scene" that did'nt get much coverage in the states. I did play a lot of it on my old radio show in Dallas in '86. I may have been one of the first DJs to play that stuff in The U.S.
I played The Meteors , Guana Batz , etc. , too , alonside The Stingrays, who were mistaken for a Psychobilly band , because of the quiffs and the standup bass. Bal said "Garage , Trash , Psychobilly , it's all the same thing. It's American music , and Americans don't understand it". I COULD'NT find a lot of that stuff , yet , I loved the "Rockabilly Psychosis and The Garage Disease" and "Revenge of The Killer Pussies " albums . The Psychobilly thing seemed fresh at the time. I found The Washington Dead Cats' EARLY CASSETTE . They're still going , still terribly silly. But , this tape combined Psychedelia , Psychobilly , and a bit of Pere Ubu ,and , it worked .I still like it , and still have the psychedelic pattern shirt it came with ! Some of those other bands , Prisoners, Vibes , Escalators , X-Men....Took a few years to find them , but , their records were much cheaper , by then.
Mark George Harrison said:As a 16 year old rockabilly/psychobilly in 1980 on £28 a week after giving my mum £10 a week board, there wasn't much money left for records, especially as beer was 50p a pint! I wasn't aware of a garage revival as such until much later, bands like the Stingrays and the X-men all had quiffs and crossed in to the rocking scene without ever using the 'g' word. The Vibes, later the Purple Things, also were be-quiffed! Im not sure when garage came to be used to differentiate between the scenes, it's a question Ive had with several people of similar ages who were there as well.
You young whippersnappers don't know how lucky you are with the internet, everything now is accesible. Press coverage was sparse to say the least and apart from a few 'bigger' bands American garage was pretty hard to get hold of and bloody expensive if you could find it, a collecion took years to build up and not a couple of hours downloading from the web.
Anyway, for me, the best garage bands available to me at the time were the Vibes/Purple things, Stingrays, Tall Boys, Prisoners, Turkey Bones and the wild dogs(check out goldfish and helicopter man). Always found the Milkshakes a bit too 'beat' for me but like later Childish bands. The garage goodies vol 1 album was probably the best British comp at the time as well. Hope this answers the question?
