Thanks for the tip on Sunshine and This Is Love at Amazon! Further inspection shows that they are both “on-demand” selections, which means CD-Rs. I’m always skeptical of those for sound quality/ longevity issues, but since I had a recent Amazon Birthday Gift Certificate for almost the the exact amount of these two discs, I realized that this was some sort of cosmic fate thing and decided to order them. I’ll post more about sound quality when I get them, which will be a while (free shipping, slow boat…)

Also, been meaning to review this, but I was very surprised to find there is a plethora (over a dozen tracks) of never-released-to-disc Archies tunes on the Archie’s Funhouse DVD – all presented as animated videos so you can play them with the “jukebox” function (which annoyingly doesn’t play continuously for some reason). There’s nothing really earth-shattering here (although “Love Vibrations” is kind of a lost classic), and there’s some occasionally annoying post-editing musical overdubs for the cartoon show, but it’s still a lot of fun to hear some “new” Archies music – or more correctly, some Archies music I haven’t heard since I originally watched these shows in the late 60s!

The cartoons themselves are kinda cringe-worthy after all these years, but fun if you’re feeling nostalgic. Plus, there’s a great interview feature on “voice of the Archies” Ron Dante (who’s also the prime mover in keeping the music alive!). So, this is one of those DVDs with great Bonus Features and worth tracking down just for those!

[...] Archies upbeat style. Plus, the CD is on the Fuel 2000 label — the same folks who did the Absolutely the Best of The Archies CD in 2001. So you can buy with confidence that this isn’t another in the long line of Archies [...]

[...] sample pages available at the Archie blog. For more on the Archies music, check out this post on How to Buy the Archies on CD. I’ve posted a sample song, too. [...]

Yes! They are back! Spread the word.

Then this morning, I discovered the two albums you mention as being unavailable on CD available as downloadable mp3s at emusic.com – http://www.emusic.com/artist/The-Archies-MP3-Download/10568341.html
- and I am happy to report that I have just placed “Comes The Sun” on my ipod so that I can listen to it on the way to work this morning. No album art available at emusic but a quick google search solved that problem. I’ll be back to sample more soon.

Thanks for this post in the first place, this has been a fun trip down memory lane. But more than that: To this Power Pop afficionado’s ears, some of these tunes really have legs. If you aske me, “Comes The Sun” would not be out of place on the Velvet Underground’s “Loaded!”

[...] At the Archie booth at the NY Con today was appearing Ron Dante, the voice of the Archies on record! [...]

On the Brady cartoon, the band shot was exactly the same shot down to the character movements, but with Greg standing in for Archie, etc. And, even more weird, little Cindy standing in for the dog (The Archie’s 6th member) but playing a guitar so small it looked like a ukulele.

Does anyone besides me remember the Bicentennial-themed “US of Archie?”

I still remember talking with him once and him furst telling me about the Archies and my going “They’re comic book characters, how’d the release an album?” Because my thinking was “Gosh did the Justice League release one too?:)”

I need to dig out my “every song The Archies did” burnt CD and put it on my Ipod for a while.

Personally, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the cartoons. That YouTube clip I linked to, the voices were atrocious. But the music is still listenable.