Tommy James

A very cosmic/psychedelic album cover has seven black-and-white Tommy James heads coasting over what looks like an acid trip, rainbow behind him, colors dripping upwards. It's the opposite of the black-and-white psychedelic look of the Cellophane Symphony album and the first of James' three final albums for Roulette. If we are to take the discs as three chapters, this one is Tommy James and Bob King proving that Tommy James was the Shondells. "Ball and Chain" is poppy and intense, the Velvet Underground gone bubblegum. Clearly, drugs had some influence on Tommy James' work, and where his ex-bandmates took a stab at the third Velvet Underground album with their Hog Heaven track "Come Away," "Ball and Chain" from the first Tommy James solo album sounds like it is an outtake from the Velvet Underground's Loaded CD…

Tommy James & The Shondells - The Complete Roulette Albums (2019) {Warner Music Group - X5 Music Group rec 1966-1970}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download -> 1.50 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 610 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 1966-70, 2019 Warner Music Group / X5 Music Group
Pop / Pop Rock / AM Pop / Brill Building Pop / Rock & Roll / Psychedelic Pop / Sunshine Pop

Tommy James (born Thomas Gregory Jackson, 29 April 1947, Dayton, Ohio) is an American pop-rock musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer, best known as leader of the 1960s rock band Tommy James and the Shondells. Tommy currently resides in Monroe, Wisconsin. In 1958, when Tommy was eleven, his family moved to Niles, Michigan. In 1959, when he was twelve, James formed his first band called Tom and the Tornadoes. In 1963, the band changed their name to The Shondells. By 1964, a local DJ at WNIL radio station in Niles formed his own record label, Snap Records. The Shondells were one of the local bands the DJ recorded at WNIL studios. One of the songs was the Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich ditty "Hanky Panky," which was recorded as The Raindrops. The song was a hit locally, but the label had no resources for national promotion and it was soon forgotten.

Another great example of what Rhino does so well, Anthology brings together no less than 27 of Tommy James and the Shondells' nuggets on one disc. Along with good liner notes from Parke Puterbaugh, who interviewed James extensively (James himself contributes a slew of fun and informative anecdotes about many of the songs) and the usual skilled remastering job, it makes for one heck of a collection. James himself sums up his own appeal best of all: "We were really having fun, and you can hear it in the grooves." "Hanky Panky" understandably kicks things off, but the collection really doesn't take off until the just-plain-irresistible "I Think We're Alone Now," notably (and some would argue memorably) covered by Tiffany in the late '80s…

Roulette's Hanky Panky/It's Only Love combines Tommy James & the Shondells' first two albums on one CD. Although the singles remains the best songs on these records, each has some album tracks and covers that are worth investigating by serious James fans, and if you want to hear them, this is the best way to acquire the albums. Tommy James & the Shondells – the very mention of their name, even to someone who doesn't really know their music, evokes images of dances and the kind of fun that rock & roll represented before it redefined itself on more serious terms. And between 1966 and 1969, the group enjoyed 14 Top 40 hits, most of which remain among the most eminently listenable (if not always respected) examples of pop/rock.

This 30-song, double-CD set is the 21st century successor to Rhino's 1990-vintage single-disc Tommy James & the Shondells Anthology. The same 27 songs by the group are here in state-of-the-art remastering (not that the older disc was bad, by any means), a few switched in order, and they're augmented by a trio of Tommy James solo sides, "Draggin' the Line," "Nothing to Hide," and "Tighter, Tighter," and new notes by Bill Holdship. From "Hanky Panky" (which hit nationally in 1966) to 1970s "Come to Me," it's all great fun, though with few surprises for longtime fans. For the uninitiated who only know this outfit for a few songs, however, there may be a minor revelation or two in the range of material that this group seemed to toss off so cavalierly into the AM radio ether – from crunchy rock & roll and sugary pop/rock to shimmering psychedelia and sunshine pop, they did it all well, and in about as listener-friendly a fashion as anyone this side of the Beatles. Indeed, this set is another reminder that, like their AM radio rivals Paul Revere & the Raiders, Tommy James and company were underestimated even by a lot of their fans, and certainly by most critics.

They may not have gone down in the annals of rock history quite like the Beatles did, but in the late sixties, Tommy James and the Shondelles sold more singles. The pop songs that James wrote and performed still hold up in contemporary culture (a fact that is proven by Billy Idol's remake of "Mony, Mony" and Tiffany's cover of "I Think We're Alone Now"). This video showcases a live performance in 1997 of these and other classic tunes at the famous Bitter End venue in New York's Greenwich Village. An exciting video retrospective of Tommy James's greatest hits performed live at New York's Bitter End!