Search - Various Artists :: Round the Gum Tree: Bubblegum Pop

Like a piece of chewed bubblegum with about half the flavor

Record Producer | Burbank, CA | 10/15/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a very ambitious collection of mostly very hard-to-find UK bubblegum offerings from the sixties. With 30 tracks (and a bonus track), there is much to sample from, and a lot of it is good, lightweight pop, which is just what you should expect from your bubblegum music.



The main problem is that there are a bunch of British covers of songs that were hits on this side of the pond, and almost without exception, they are inferior to the versions we in the States know and love. A good example is Steve Hammond's take on Tommy James' classic "I Think We're Alone Now," which makes me think Steve might be singing to himself about being alone, without a girl to tumble to the ground with. And Young Blood's "Bang Shang A Lang" just doesn't sound like they MEAN it when they sing "lang," although their "bang" and "shangs" are acceptable.



The best music is in the form of original British bubblegum songs, and while seldom up to the level of the American classics in the genre, they are fluffy and pleasant, and occasionally border on the psychedelic, as there was always a bit of a crossover between a lot of bubblegum and psychedelic music.



I give this CD four stars from the musical standpoint, as you get 31 tracks of well-produced music you otherwise would have a lot of trouble finding, but I'm docking this release a full star because of the ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS presentation of the liner notes. Yes, they are visually exciting and colorful, but even with a magnifying glass I had serious trouble trying to read the notes that appeared to be a 5.5 point type. Once you get under 7.0 point, you're pushing the limits of readability, and that's when you only have to deal with dark black type on a white background. When your "artistic" background has deep blues, reds, greens, and shadings coming in and going out all over the place, it is HEADACHE-INDUCING!



Reading notes about music you know nothing about is one of the joys of music collecting, but I didn't even get up to reading about track #1 because after fighting through the introduction and the information about tracks #1 and #2, I was already dizzy (and not in a good "Tommy Roe" way). I ended up putting the notes back in the jewel case and just listening to the music, and I can't recall the last time I did something like that.



We would have been better off if, instead of going with four-color notes, the company stuck with the cheaper black-and-white, which would have no doubt allowed them to give us 16 pages of notes rather than the 12 pages they went with. Then they would have been able to use a larger typeface and treat David Wells' liner notes with more respect. Or is his name Dennis Wild? I don't know -- I get a headache just THINKING about it!"

The More you Listen to it....

K. Khalifah | Detroit, MI United States | 02/14/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I really love this comp. It's missing some of favorite bubblegum songs, and it has some questionable re-makes (re-takes??, but the more you listen to it the more you love it! I would recommend this to anyone who loves pop music. I listen to it about once a week. Favorites: Piccolo Man, Angeline, Bang Shag A Lang, and Let's Dance (cover), among many others,"