Best San Diego record?

(Ray Brandes puts out a call for swinging singles.)

Later this month, Mike Stax’s Ugly Things Records will release a celebrated local recording, the Nashville Ramblers’ “The Trains.” If one were to rank the best recordings ever to be made by San Diegans, this one would no doubt place in the Top 10.

On any list it would face some tough competition, though, from Rosie and the Originals’ 1961 classic, “Angel Baby,” to my personal favorite, the Crawdaddys’ “5 X 4” EP, released in 1980.

What is your favorite San Diego recording and what is your personal connection to it? (Feel free to consider artists from San Diego who moved or recorded elsewhere.)

— Ray Brandes

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Nashville Ramblers release party

(Ray Brandes alerts us to the long-overdue release of “The Trains,” with attendant parties in San Diego and LA.)

It is true that good things come to those who wait. The Nashville Ramblers’ song “The Trains,” which Steven Van Zandt once called “one of the most unspeakably gorgeous instances of romantic yearning disguised as a pop song,” will finally, after 25 years, get its own release.

Mike Stax’s Ugly Things Records will release “The Trains” at a special record release party on Friday, Jan. 21, at the Til-Two Club at 4746 El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego.

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The Che Underground