* Listen to the world radio premiere of Cherry Parkes’ previously-unheard ’60s classic, “The Man of the Moment,” tonight at both 8 and 9 pm ET!
Thanks to the Charlatan Record Cartel. *
Cherry Parkes | “The Man of the Moment”
(Charlatan Record Cartel, 2017)
“These were in my basement. Maybe you can do something with them.”
They were words one might expect to hear at a yard sale from a been-in-the-neighborhood-for-decades resident who had finally cleaned out his basement, littered with bric-a-brac and mementos from a life lived generously. “These were in my basement. Maybe you can do something with them.” “How much for this chest of drawers?” “Five dollars. A bargain, if you ask me.” A deal made in the blink of an eye, a treasure successfully transferred to a new home.
Except in this case, “these” were a set of master tapes found abandoned in a basement in Tacoma, Washington that were sent to the progressive Charlatan Record Cartel. All eyes and ears, for that matter, have been transfixed on Jayson Jarmon’s outfit since this past March, when Charlatan began releasing heretofore unheard recordings made by Pacific Northwest practitioners of the pop music art.
Whereas previous Charlatan releases have come from contemporary artists such as the Sunday Brothers, this latest release is a blast from an unknown past. The treasures received were “badly deteriorated four-track master tapes marked simply as ‘Cherry Parkes, October 1966’ and were accompanied by several photos, a handkerchief marked ‘AP,’ and a gig poster describing a Friday night show at Federal Way’s long defunct Spanish Castle club,” according to the label. And what of the significance of the personalized handkerchief? A mystery likely to remain unsolved, sadly.
After baking the 50-year-old tapes in what we can only assume is the Charlatan lab rats’ version of the famous childhood kitchen appliance known as the Easy-Bake Oven, and mixing and mastering to improve sonic clarity, Charlatan staff auditioned the four Parkes tracks. What they heard was nothing less than magical. What happened next literally and figuratively knocked the socks off their feet, clear across the floor, until they ran smack into Charlatan’s cherry wood-paneled walls.
Amanda “Cherry” Parkes’ introduction to the world is the first song released from Charlatan’s momentous find. “The Man of the Moment” is reminiscent of the best of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s output, but also calls to mind various James Bond movie theme songs and classic sides waxed by female vocalists of the 1960s, such as Vicki Carr and Eydie Gorme. One listen to the melody-infused track, about a woman who chooses a spouse who is, perhaps, less than savory and maybe not the right catch (“And do you think she’ll ever wonder how it came to this?/And will she willingly exchange a wedding vow/With such a piece of work as this?”) is all it takes to understand how much gold has been dropped into Charlatan’s considerable lap.
Pure Pop Radio is proud to be presenting the world radio premiere of Amanda “Cherry” Parkes’ “The Man of the Moment” tonight at 8 and 9 pm ET. The track will be available for purchase this Friday, June 30, on Charlatan’s Bandcamp page (check back for the link). It’s not often that a track of such import is imported into our playlist; we urge you to drop everything this evening and hear for yourself this magical musical missive.
Cherry Parkes’ “The Man of the Moment” is but one of hundreds of new and new-to-you songs that have recently been added to the Pure Pop Radio playlist. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a slew of reviews of just-released classic recordings from such artists of the moment as Richard X. Heyman, Bill DeMain, The Naturals, Carpenter Caswell, and The Junipers’ Robyn Gibson.
Certainly somewhat close to the excitement that would be garnered by the discovery of a previously-unknown outtake from the Beatles’ Abbey Road album, and most definitely setting off fireworks and shockwaves in the neighborhood of those that pulsated through the melodic pop community upon the release of 1999’s Where Has the Music Gone? The Lost Recordings of Clem Comstock, which gathered a treasure trove of mind-blowing early-to-mid-’60s sides together in one rather influential package, Tacoma, Washington’s Charlatan Record Cartel’s explosive satchel of tracks from across the pop spectrum, set to release throughout this year, is this year’s most exciting and potentially influential pop music bounty that you will encounter this year.
Known worldwide as the label that released albums by the much-loved Liar’s Club and Vanilla, Charlatan, operated under the watchful ears of musician Jayson Jarmon, has discovered so many wonderful pop nuggets by so many wonderful pop bands that it’s almost criminal, but not quite, that they have waited so long to release them to the world. But we here at Pure Pop Radio can forgive the delay, if indeed there has been a delay, because the company, nestled in the Pacific Northwest, also known as Cascadia, is ramping up to set the world of melodic pop on fire, or at least pop the top off of a barrelful of expectations.
First up from the Sunday Brothers, and releasing on Charlatan’s Bandcamp headquarters page, is a somber, ruminative ballad about that night in “Bankside,” complete with a delicate, ’60s British Invasion-esque guitar solo and enough atmosphere to cause light rain to fall from the skies. The song, performed by the Sunday Brothers and, interestingly enough, written by Jayson Jarmon and Gavin Guss, was heard by the Brothers Sunday while they were in London, planning for the burial of their parents, who met their demise in a 2006 plane “incident.” How Jayson and Gavin’s song made its way across the pond is as yet unknown, but thank heavens it did, and thank heavens Ethan, Topher, Theo, and Tiegen Sunday heard it and decided to commit it to wax. (You can find out everything you need to know about the Sunday Brothers, and probably more, by clicking 
The Sunday Brothers, obviously influenced by, according to their record label, “Crosby, Stills and Nash, America, ELP, and other soft rock groups of the mid-seventies,” kick off Charlatan’s 2017 Pacific Northwest bounty of musical treasures that will undoubtedly, and most assuredly and indubitably, set the universe of melodic pop denizens ablaze. The tender “Bankside” is available (
Another surefire hit on Charlatan’s schedule of releases of top tunes from the wealth of Pacific Northwest bands that you need to know about, or else: Knuckle Dragon’s uniquely positioned ode to beer and women, “King of Tacoma,” which features what the record company says are “tasty riffs,” and you know what that means. This truth-to-power rock, or “rawk” band, hails from Tacoma, as opposed to hailing for cabs. Appropos of nothing, the band rehearses in the Sunday Brothers’ basement, aka they live in the Sunday Brothers’ basement when they’re not working in a local bottle factory, which is a whole other, riff-laden story (
Now playing in rotation on Pure Pop Radio: The Sunday Brothers’ “Bankside” and “Save Me”
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