VA - 19 [4CD Box Set] (2016)

This four-CD set compiles highlights, lowlights, and odd lights from the Numero Group’s sprawling collection of songs spanning four decades and covering the broadest range of popular music, none of which caught the popular attention. From group soul to garage rock, from psych to folk to new age to power pop to yacht rock to indie, noise, slowcore, and art-punk....from songs in celebration of eternal life and aching love to Nicaraguan jazz and odes to death, fate, Eurotrash, and teenagerhood. Find something of everything here, year by year by year by year.

This sampler follows a rough chronological format, though certain tracks are grouped together to provide clearer access to their genre and individual history; you will, for instance, find a mini—collection of copyrights from San Antonio’s Epstein Enterprises on Disc #1, which we’re calling 60. Real estate mogul Abe Epstein doubled as the proprietor of an army of Texas labels, represented herein low-riding soul by the Royal Jesters and the

Commands, brassy surf instrumentation by Classie Ballou, and wasted Los Angeles beach pop by Dan Henderson.

Cosmic country-folk and nihilist punk rock mark 70, our splintered restatement-in— recordings of the Me Decade. This disc is a place where “Cookies” is a question posed by funk, and where “Whiskey” puts the fear of death into a simple Chevrolet man. But the deepest seam may be one forged in stone, a vein of very hard rock, pierced by guitar scream and bodily bass on tracks by Junction, Arrogance, Goliath, and Little Boy Blues.

Then there’s the utter fracture of the MTV decade, taste-tested herein on 80. This disc globe-hops with the times, putting Aussie pop-punk into context with Alaskan blue-eyed soul in the forms of The Scientists and Archie James Cavanaugh. But don’t let any of that distract you from the android advances that ooze out of Steve Elliot’s synthesizer or—to jet once again off to exotic climes—the whistling of indigenous Philippine musicians credited to MNLF. We’re even bringing White Zombie back into our walking-dead century.

Elsewhere, as on the disc entitled 90, you’ll delve deeply into indie rock items from acts as varied as Codeine, Bedhead, Unwound, Blonde Redhead, and Beat Happening. And Numero’s as~yet-undiscovered properties are here for you as well: Across these discs, hear music still just an inspiration shy of appearing in completed Numero product with Teenage Widow, Nun—Plus, and Amethyst.

Your homework: Find out exactly why Earsley Young is a winner and don’t quit until you know what made Bedhead’s landlord so darn unpredictable.