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My Mean Magpie RecordingsVarious Artists - Ten; Ten [MMM010] (October 17, 2002)

Featuring exclusive recordings by Royal City, Oval-Teen, Jim Guthrie, and loads of others...

The year is 1998 and Lil RedWagon (run by Chris Abbott) is a new label just starting out, and a zine called Tape-Gun (written by Five Seventeen from My Mean Magpie Records) is approaching its third issue. Both are working on separate compilations. Lil Red Wagon focused its sights on the music of Japan and Tape-Gun was compiling artists for a cassette to accompany the next issue. They knew one another and, at the time, it seemed to make sense to pool their resources and funds and release a full blown CD. And the music began to pour in...

As is the story with many of these compilations, funds, time and delays keep putting off the release. Bands break up, lose contact and everything gets lost, only to be released elsewhere or never. However, though the delays happened, the funds disappeared, and bands disappeared Ten; Ten was released on CDR and now is archived here.

Also, check out these other fine My Mean Magpie Releases.


This audio is part of the collection: My Mean Magpie

Artist/Composer: My Mean Magpie Recordings
Date: 2002-10-17 00:00:00
Keywords: JPop

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

Notes

Status of artists:
The Yarns - missing, presumed dead.
The Long Boat - missing.
Aikagi - residing in Japan.
Kisswhistle - disbanded.
Lunchbox - unknown.
The Salteens - currently signed to Endearing Records.
Strawberry Land - unknown, presumed living in Japan.
Mean Red Spiders - quiet in Toronto, Canada.
Georgia - disbanded.
Jim Guthrie - Three Gut Records artist also in Royal City.
Red Go-Kart - living in Japan.
Oval-Teen - disbanded, now seen in Lake Holiday, with Jonas Crenshaw and Paper Airplane Pilots.
Jumprope - unknown.
Royal City - signed to Rough Trade Records.
De Kooning - unknown.
Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers - happily married in Brooklyn with records on Teenbeat and Darla.
Telegraph Melts - Absolutely Koser artist disbanded.
Kymbliss - deceased September 1999.

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Reviewer: Boggins - - May 16, 2007
Subject: Get it
There are bound to be a few duff tracks in any various-artists compilations, and there are one or two here, but mostly this is a really nice eclectic collection of tracks, with a few real gems. MMM is turning into my favourite label, and not just because of the pricing policy!

Hell, I'd have given this 5 stars if ANYONE working on this material knew ANYTHING about ID3 tagging! You lose one star because you made me edit the tags myself - "Unknown artist, Unknown track, Unknown genre" does not make for a good playlist!

Reviewer: Soulissimo - - March 31, 2005
Subject: indie nuggets
Lunchbox - love is all around. The sound of sunshine. Great. Thou. Shall. Listen.

Reviewer: Chris Mac - - November 4, 2004
Subject: From Indiepages.com
Long ago, My Mean Magpie & Lil' Red Wagon, two small labels from Ontario, had conspired to co-release a compilation celebrating their respective tenth release. Well, it's five years later, and the compilation has finally surfaced to find My Mean Magpie nearing thirty releases and Lil' Red Wagon long gone. Many of the bands have also broken up since contributing their tracks. This comp is a hodge-podge of all sorts of indiepop (Salteens, Kisswhistle, Oval-Teen, Jumprope), Japanese pop (De Kooning, Aikagi, Strawberry Land), and general oddness (Kymbliss & a ten minute opus from Telegraph Melts). There are a fair amount of winners on here, including Kisswhistle (who also perform the hidden track at the end), Georgia, Lunchbox (covering the Mary Tyler Moore theme song), Recycled Pop!, and the afore-mentioned Aikagi & Oval-Teen. Despite the fact that these tracks are all quite old, I don't think that many of them found release elsewhere (not counting the different versions from the Salteens, Telegraph Melts & Oval-Teen). This is a nice five year old time capsule that doesn't sound very dated at all (well, except that the Japanese pop fad faded a couple years ago)... MTQ=13/21

Reviewer: Five Seventeen - - October 31, 2004
Subject: From Exclaim Magazine
read full review on their site

Ten; Ten is 71 minutes and 21 tracks of quirky yet fun and catchy rock pop tunes by artists from Canada, the U.S. and Japan compiled by Lil' Red Wagon and the champions of obscure music gems, My Mean Magpie. Most of the musicians on this comp would be known by only the most informed of music savants. The better-known names on this comp are Oval Teen, Mean Red Spiders and Royal City. The Music on Ten; Ten tends to embrace a lo-fi aesthetic, adding charm and character to all the songs, which have a youthful and passionately rendered quality to them. Some really cool tunes on this comp (not that there are any un-cool tunes) are Georgia's "George Orwell," Lunchbox's "Love Is All Around," Kim Bliss's "I Fall" and "Forget That Girl" by Jumprope. Georgia does a great musical tribute to George Orwell, in particular 1984, utilising various slogans from the text to construct their lyrics. A rather timely tune, come to think of it. Lunchbox's tune, incidentally, has nothing to do with a Troggs tune by a similar name, but more with the theme song to the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Kim Bliss's "I Fall" is the best-produced song on this album, which is just as well, since she has a gorgeous voice and some serious piano playing abilities to boot. And Jumprope offers some good advice in "Forget that Girl." The obvious love for the contributors' craft resonates on every tune here, and I can honestly say that one would be hard pressed to find so much consistently good music emerging from another comp, or label, for that matter. Hopefully, the artists on Ten; Ten will not remain obscure for much longer.
-- By I. Khider
December 10, 2002