100 Records Volume 2: I Miss The Jams

100 Records is Sonny Smith’s (Sonny and The Sunsets) mad world of imagined rock created with the help of musical friends: Ty Segall, Tim Cohen (Fresh & Onlys), Heidi Alexander (The Sandwitches) and more of San Francisco’s best and brightest.

Turn Up Records and Sonny Smith are proud to present a five disc limited edition 7″ boxed set.  The box titled “100 Records Volume 2: I Miss The Jams” will be in stores November 16th (or can be purchased here.)

Here’s Earth Girl Helen Brown singing “I Wanna Do It”

Sonny Smith’s 100 Records Volume 2: I Miss The Jams – I Wanna Do It by Earth Girl Helen Brown on Turn Up Records

Sometimes the community rallies around an individual and the results are undeniable. There is a long and winding back story to the Sonny Smith’s 100 records project, but all that you really need to know is that Sonny Smith, one of the brightest lights in SF’s neu-Garage scene, has recorded an album that is one for the ages. Sonny wrote songs that make up 100 conceptual 7” singles for a multi- media art show that traveled around the US this past year. Although Smith penned all the music he attributed his masterful tongue-in-cheek brand of laid-back garage- pop tunes to mystical musicians like Zig Speck, Earth Girl Helen Brown and The Loud Fast Fools derived from Smith’s imaginative prose.

Along with producer Marc Dantona, Sonny assembled a “Wrecking Crew” of players the SF scene got together to record songs in basements and apartments around the city and a whole other team of visual artists contributed artwork for each record cover. Here you have 10 songs from the Sonny Smith’s 100 Records. Recorded with local heroes such as Tim Cohen from the Fresh & Onlys, Kelley Stoltz, Ty Segall, and members of The Sandwitches all contributing.

While the artwork and the concept are both wonderfully original and compelling, it’s the tunes that stand out here. Earth Girl Helen Brown’s “I Want To Do It” (featuring Heidi Alexander from The Sandwitches) sounds a bit like the B-52′s singing on some sort of Alex Chilton ‘Like Flies on Sherbert’ outtake. Zig Speck & the Specktones features Ty Segall sounding looser and surfier than usual, like he’s playing with Sonny & the Sunsets.  The Loud Fast Fools sound like Modern Lovers but with Tim Cohen of the Fresh and Only’s and Sonny Smith trading lyrics.  Sonny’s songs have a rawness that is hard to come by these days, and his beautiful, fun, and often heart wrenching melodies send the whole record into classic territory.

Distribution: Revolver USA