Various Artists - Nashville Sputnik - The Deep South / Outer Space Productions of Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan 1956-2004 (2008)

Nashville Sputnik: The Deep South/Outer Space Productions of Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan 1956-2004 is another installment of Omni Records' ongoing quest to sell Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan as some true Southern-fried weirdos. The first two Jack & Misty comps -- Life and Death (And Almost Everything Else) and Weird Scenes Inside the Birdhouse -- packaged the pair as the bizarro version of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, but this various-artists comp takes a different tack, which the back cover makes plain: "Imagine if the flying saucer that dropped legendary producer Joe Meek in London had instead taken a left turn and landed in Nashville U.S.A. The result might have sounded something like this." A key unspoken tenet in that argument is that Meek did a lot of sickeningly cute whitebread singles in addition to his startlingly visionary productions. Guess which path Jack & Misty follow, however unintentionally? Try as they might -- and they do try mightily, crafting a Meek homage in the "Telstar"-aping "New World" and "Gemini" -- the pair's productions wind up drifting toward the cutesy again and again, whether it's in the anemic Buddy Holly rip "The King of Hearts" or tripping through a decidedly irritating graveyard novelty in "Skellykins" (which is followed by an equally aggravating sound-alike in "Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker"). As there is so much here -- the compilation is an overly generous 30 tracks, none previously on CD -- there are bound to be some tracks that click and those, as always with Jack & Misty, are the ones that don't try so hard to be odd, such as the lush, mellow late-'60s reflection "Changin' Times," which is good AM radio fodder. But for much of Nashville Sputnik the pair offer up affected strangeness, following in the footsteps of mavericks but not marking their own territory apart from that tendency toward cloying cuteness. That said, the duo does have a cult and for that cult, Nashville Sputnik does unearth a number of rarities from nearly 50 years of recording, and offers terrific annotation by Greg Adams and track commentary by Blanchard. Given the long period of time it covers and the relative variety within the grooves, this may even be a better way to hear Jack & Misty than the two previous Omni disc, but make no mistake -- this is an acquired taste, one that even fervent fans of weird records may not like, as it's hard not to feel like their whole act is a bit of a put-on.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Jacqueline Hyde & the Moonfolk - Strange New World (2:26)
1.02 - Maryanne Mail - The Lonely Sentry (2:54)
1.03 - Brad Wolfe - We Walked This Road Before (3:05)
1.04 - Joel Mathis - Time Machine (2:24)
1.05 - Rusty Diamond - Skellykins (2:05)
1.06 - Hank Malcolm - Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker (2:12)
1.07 - The Jack Blanchard Group - Gemini (1:48)
1.08 - Jack Blanchard - Lonely Bell (2:21)
1.09 - Hank Malcolm - Mary Turn Around (2:36)
1.10 - Brad Wolfe - Changin' Times (3:43)
1.11 - The Country Nut - I'm Hung Up on You (2:29)
1.12 - The Dawn Breakers - Boy With the Be-Bop Glasses (2:39)
1.13 - Jack Blanchard - Hit Me One More Time (2:46)
1.14 - Maryanne Mail - Let's Have A Hayride (1:25)
1.15 - Jack Blanchard - Cadillac (2:35)
1.16 - Joel Mathis - Little Orphan Annie (2:24)
1.17 - Jack Blanchard - Midnight Greyhound (2:21)
1.18 - Donel Austin - Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (2:56)
1.19 - The Jack Blanchard Group - New World (2:08)
1.20 - Jacqueline Hyde & the Moonfolk - Runaway (1:38)
1.21 - Jackie Blanchard - The King of Hearts (2:00)
1.22 - Jack Blanchard - Journey's End (2:44)
1.23 - Brad Wolfe - Monkey See, Monkey Do (2:50)
1.24 - Jack Blanchard - The Love Habit (2:39)
1.25 - Donel Austin - I'm Feelin' a Change in My Life (3:22)
1.26 - Tom Carlile - The Look of Nothing (3:09)
1.28 - Tom Carlile - Don't It Look Like Georgia (3:31)
1.29 - Jack Blanchard - Dance of the Living Dead Chickens (2:06)
1.30 - Jack Blanchard - A Weird Little Christmas (3:16)