Is That The Name Of The Song Or The Band?

I thought that kind of sounds like Ghost, but what album is “Archetypes Collide” on?

Oh: Archetypes Collide is the name of the band. “Ghost” is the name of the song.

It’s not just a mental exercise (also); it’s also an actual source of confusion for me sometimes.

Speaking of Archetypes Colliding, I might have to pick up their autographed CD since it’s only ten bucks.

Maybe when I get a job.

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“I Didn’t Pick These At Random,” I Told The Guy At The Music Store….

“I have eclectic music tastes. And a gift card to use.”

On Wednesday, as part of our comebackation, we ran some errands. Basically, the youngest needed new shoes, and the Entertainmart is just down the road a couple of shopping centers. My beautiful wife got me a gift card for our anniversary much like she got me one at Vintage Stock for Valentine’s Day. As I’m accumulating quite a backlog of movies to watch based on the Valentine’s Day gift card and recent estate sale purchases, I was not eager to buy more films.

So I got some CDs.

I’d kind of hoped to get some jazz CDs, but the sections in their small music offerings were not clearly labeled, and I think the jazz was mixed in with the pop. And although this is not a proper Musical Balance post, it does kind of track with the metal and songbirds bit.

I got:

  • Drops of Jupiter by Train.
  • All My Tomorrows by Grover Washington, Jr. I have a lot of his records on vinyl; this is my first CD.
  • “The End of Heartache” by Killswitch Engage. The joke’s on me; this is a single from the Resident Evil: Apocalypse soundtrack, but it was priced like a full album.
  • The Lightness of Being, a 3 disc set of ambient lounge and chill out tracks. Only two of the CDs ripped. I hope the first did not install malware.
  • Two old Pink Floyd albums, Obscured by Clouds and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn from their early Syd Barrett bluesy acid sound days before their big success working out Roger Waters’ daddy issues.
  • Four Chords and Seven Years Ago by Huey Lewis and the News. A later album which I hadn’t gotten around to getting.
  • Three by Diana Krall: All For You, Love Scenes, and The Girl in the Other Room. I think I have a crush on Mrs. Costello.

The ten CDs/sets ran $49.62, leaving me with 38 cents on the gift card which I might never use.

It was only after I finger-walked through the CDs that I saw the cheap records in bins below a new record display. It’s just as well, though; I haven’t listened to all the records I got at the book sale in April yet.

So I have already listened to the Pink Floyd albums and part of the Krall collection, but I’m still mostly streaming WSIE at the desk. So maybe I shouldn’t run out and buy stacks of CDs any more. Although Tokyo Groove Jyoshi has a new album coming out next week….

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Good Junk Hunting, Saturday, May 17, 2025

For a second weekend in a row, my youngest and I visited several sales. Unlike last week, though, we made an excursion of it, visiting an estate sale in Marshfield, Missouri, some forty minutes down I-44 (run by Circle of Life Estate Sales, who does a number of sales in the area) and a outside the bounds of north and east Springfield. We bought nothing in Marshfield, but it gave the young man the chance to buy a couple of boxes of Pokémon boxes at the Walmart since he has picked over all the Walmarts and Dollar Generals in southwest Springfield and southwest towns like Republic, Marionville, and Aurora.

We did find a couple of things at the other sales:

On the “junk” side (which I’m starting to include to explain why my garage is so cluttered):

  • A scroll saw with no blades but with the manual for $13.50. I got it home and plugged it in, and it bobs when turned on according to the speed set on the dial, so this might be a really good deal. Unless I cannot actually get blades for it, the blade attachment assembly is damaged, or 16″ is too small to be really useful. I don’t actually know yet how to really use a scroll saw, so I will learn someday. Maybe.
  • A portable car starter/compressor for $6.00. Since my boy(s) are traveling further afield these days, it would be useful to have one in each trunk. It did not come with a power cable; hopefully it will take a common form factor, or I might spend the rest of the amount to buy one new securing a power cable on the Internet. Or I’ll throw it in a donation box myself for another yard sale.
  • A Blu-Ray player for $5. Because sometime too soon, in five or ten years, these will be hard to come by cheaply. You might scoff, but just wait.
  • A 1950s Unique “Dependable” Typewriter which looks to be a little typewriter which does not have keys but a dial to set what character you want to appear. Looks to be going for $10 on the Internet which is what I paid for it. I think I’ll clean it up and put it on a shelf to display it, but more likely it will go into a closet or a cabinet until my estate sale. Although I envision a wall with shelving to display old oddities like this, c’mon, man: All walls of Nogglestead and beyond will be dedicated to books.

An estate sale outside of north Springfield yielded a couple of LPs: Two by the Alan Parsons Project, The Turn of a Friendly Card and Eve and some two-disc compilation called Love Italian Style which includes Frank Sinatra, so not Italy Italian but Italian American.

At the last sale, I expect a writer lived there as large book collection spread over counters and tables (nice bookshelves presumably sold already) included books not only including various Writers Digest books on writing mysteries but also recent books on computers and cybersecurity, pre-med and med, architecture, and more. I got a couple:

  • Art and Architecture: Venice, a thick almost 600 page book not only of pictures but also diagrams, so a serious architecture book.
  • That’s What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women edited by Rayna Green. Why? I don’t know.
  • Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. I saw it mentioned on a blog last week or so. I, of course, read a couple years back, and although I was not impressed with the theme, the writing wasn’t bad.
  • National Lampoon Jokes Jokes Jokes: Verbal Abuse Edition by Steve Ochs. Presumably, I will get some one-liners for when Finnish proverbs just won’t do.
  • Forensics: True Crime Scene Investigations, a college textbook that cost more than the dollar I paid for it.
  • Handmade Houses: A Guide to Woodbutchers Art by Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro. Which is a picture book and not diagrams.
  • The Language of Post-Modern Architecture by Charles Jencks. So I can better understand Lileks and Ed Driscoll’s infrequent architecture posts trashing pomo.
  • What My Cat Taught Me About Life by Niki Anderson. Will it be an anniversary gift since that’s coming up in mere days? Probably not!

I barely made it through the media section when someone backed a pickup truck to the back door and took all the rest away.

But I did get:

  • Lonesome Dove on VHS.
  • Meet the Spartans, a spoof movie.
  • The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. We saw this in the theater back in the day, where I realize parts of the 21st century are “back in the day.”
  • The Expendables 3. I watched the first one in 2023 and just bought the second in April. Might as well complete the set.
  • National Lampoon’s Pledge This. I have been a sucker for National Lampoon-badged movies. So much a sucker for National Lampoon at all (see also the book above) that I invested in it when it was a publicly traded company. And lost all my money on it.
  • The Omega Man, the Charlton Hestin version of Robert Mathieson’s I Am Legend later remade into the Will Smith movie which I “recently” watched but not so recently that I wrote a report on it.

When we were checking out at that sale, the guy said if there was any book I was on the fence about buying, he would sell them to me for a quarter each. So I presume that the guys with the pickup truck bought the remaining videos at a discount to sell somewhere else. And I thought, man, if I ever open The New Curiosity Shop, I’m going to have to work out a deal with these estate sale guys.

So I spent about $60 total, which is not bad once you factor in the junk (and the fact that the records were $5 each, which is a lot for me to spend, but c’mon, Alan Parsons Project in decent covers).

I did not buy Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, but I did show side 2 to my youngest to see if he noticed anything strange about it, but he did not. Quiz time, gentle reader: What would be different about side two of that LP?

The only thing the young man bought were some basketball cards he bought for fifty cents each. He looked one up on his phone and found it had some value, so he bought the lot. As we were walking out, he said that the first one he priced was some nobody Erving guy worth $1.75….

Julius Erving?” I asked. “Dr. J.? A nobody?”

Well, he is young. And he will never hear the end of this.

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Good Album Hunting, Saturday, May 3, 2025: Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale

Yesterday morning, I drove my beautiful wife to the airport so she could jet away to speak at a conference. And the airport is practically at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds (where the scale of Springfield means everything is “practically at” or nearby to everything else compared to actual large cities), and the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library was having their semi-annual book sale and it was bag day. Since it was on the way home (“on the way” meaning “not actually on the airport property”), my youngest son and I stopped.

I found some records.

More than four, actually:

  • Dylan Thomas Reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Five Poems. I was just thinking about the Edna St. Vincent Millay record I have here somewhere, and now I have Dylan Thomas as well. I also have Rod McKuen, no doubt, but probably not Robert Frost. Which would be a good score. It’s the only LP I got from the Better Books section, so I paid a buck for it. Discogs says it is worth two. As it has “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” on it, I think it’s priceless.
  • Mancini Country which I probably already have, but it was four bits.
  • Baroque and Contemporary Concertos for Trumpet and Orchestra. Because I can always bring home more trumpet music.
  • Light-Airy and Swinging by George Shearing. A later record, as he looks older on the cover.
  • Italian Baroque Trumpet Concerti. I might already have it. As a matter of fact, my other copy might even be on the desk in the parlor where I’ve stacked recently played records. But at fifty cents, I’d be a fool not to.
  • Trumpet Concertos by Johann Wilhelm Hertel, Leopold Mozart, Johann Nepomuk Hummel. A Nonesuch record I surely do not already have.
  • I’m Yours by Dean Martin. I probably already have it, but I had to be sure.
  • The Dancing Sound by Les Elgart and His Orchestra.
  • Our Golden Favorites by The McGuire Sisters.
  • I’m a Dreamer by Gale Robbins. Pretty Woman on Cover (PWoC). Discogs classes it as Jazz/Pop listed at $4.
  • Let’s Dance with the Three Suns. Might already have it, but….
  • In a Sentimental Mood by Los Indios Trabajaras. I have one or more record by this artist. Maybe one or more copies of this platter.
  • Elgart Au Go-Go by Les & Larry Elgart. A lot of the Elgarts today. Less when I finished my pass.
  • Französische Blockflötenmusik, a collection of French recorder music.
  • Romeo and Juliet by Jackie Gleason and his orchestra.
  • The Baroque Trumpet. I have another collection by this name. Perhaps the same collection with a different cover. Perhaps not.
  • Verities and Balderdash by Harry Chapin Carpenter. I don’t generally buy 70s folkies, but I was with my son in one of the dwindling number of instances we’ll do this together (it might be the last–it might always be the last), so I was feeling all “The Cat’s in the Cradle”. Which is the lead cut on this record.
  • Baroque Flute Sonatas which is not as welcome, quite, as trumpet, but my beautiful wife also plays the flute and won a regional high school jazz award on it.
  • Polka Dots and Moonbeams by the Johnny Hamlin Quintet. Why? Because I was rolling.
  • Harry James and Tommy Dorsey’s Greatest Hits, a compilation album. “What does Harry James play?” I asked my son. “Here’s a hint: You don’t play it.” Which is true: After his freshman year, he stopped playing his horn after, what, five years?
  • Making Our Dreams Come True by Cyndi Grecco. PWoC. I’ve discovered (now) that it’s the theme from Laverne and Shirley.
  • Love in the Afternoon by the Three Suns. I don’t think I have it, but I might soon run out of new Three Suns records you can find easily in the wild.
  • That’s All by Vikki Carr. Spoiler alert: It was not, in fact, all.
  • Love is Blue by Claudine Longet, whom I’ve not really cottoned to. Maybe I should give her another chance.
  • Scottish Splendor: The Pipes and Drums and Regimental Band of the Black Watch.
  • Artie Shaw in the Blue Room in the Café Rouge.
  • Today’s Romantic Hits / For Lovers Only Volume 2 by Jackie Gleason. Probably already have it. But, apparently, I must HAVE THEM ALL.
  • Four Centuries of Music for the Harp. My youngest asked me if I had given up on learning the guitar and wanted to learn the harp. I responded that failing at six or four strings and moving onto more strings and having to wear a gown did not seem like a logical progression.
  • My Kind of Girl by Matt Monro. PWoC. Three times.
  • Big Band Hootenanny by Les and Larry Elgart.
  • I Suoi Success by Perry Como.
  • The Fabulous Victoria de Los Angeles. PWoC. But opera.
  • Warm and Tender by the Three Suns. Didn’t have it, I don’t think. I do now.
  • Latin Luboff by the Norman Luboff Choir. PWoC.
  • The Band with That Sound by Les Elgart.
  • The Best of Cugat by Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra. PWoC. And, it would seem, on the vocals.

That’s like 37 records or two-record sets, and it cost $18.50. You can’t beat that with a stick.

As we–well, I was flipping through the records, a college-aged young lady was joined by a friend, and she, the young lady flipping through the records, told her friend she was looking for jazz records.

Jumping Illinois Jones, she passed the Elgarts, the Cugat, the Shearing, the Jackie Gleason…. Was she hoping to find Miles Davis records for fifty cents? Dealers coming in on the preview night would have snapped that up. Half price day is about taking fliers on bands you’re not familiar with. Or about setting your taste to match what you can buy for a dollar or less (as I do).

I greeted my wife on her arrival in the conference city with the innocent question, “You know how we set the stereo on a set of record shelves? What if we did that with the sofa, too? Wouldn’t that be cool?”

It’s a wonder I’m still married. Which I presumably am, but this time might have gone too far.

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Listen Along With Brian J.

New (to me) music: The band The Defect. Atmospheric metal. Lyrics are not that deep/evocative, but they fit a mood. Plus, it looks like they play in Madison, Wisconsin, a bunch, so they might be countrymen.

The band’s Web sites are down, which is unfortunate. If I could snag a signed CD, I would.

The CD is available through Amazon, though, so I might end up with an unsigned copy.

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Good Album Hunting, Saturday, March 15, 2025: Relics Antique Mall

Ah, gentle reader. Yesterday, I cleaned the main level of the house and then hit the gym with my beautiful wife for some cardio training since I will probably do one or two more triathlons at the end of the summer and don’t want to suck or don’t want any of my family to beat me in them. After a snooze, I was not sure what to do with the afternoon, so I thought I’d spend an hour or so at Relics, ostensibly looking for presents for birthdays, the wedding anniversary, and/or Christmas. Nothing in that regard leaped out to me, but I did find a couple of records to bring home.

I got:

  • Heads by Bob James. It features David Sanborn, Eric Gale, and Grover T. Washington on it, and it was at the low end of what records go for these days at antique malls ($3.95). Still, my musical tastes are going to fly under the radar–the youngsters who put records in the big antique malls–they won’t recognize Bob James. Or maybe people just won’t buy it, so they’re properly pricing it.
  • Jeffery Osborne’s debut album. I got a later album, Emotional, last fall (I was pleased to see this was not a duplicate). It was priced $1.00, but it was in a bin that said fifty cents. Either way, it was worth it.
  • Sincerely Yours by Sweet Sensation, a female trio a la Expose from the late 1980s. This is a 12″ single with four different mixes of the same song, so I won’t really spin it that often. But, Brian J., you didn’t buy it to listen to it, you might accuse. At which point I might look away and admit I paid $2.00 for this record because of the pretty women on the cover. Which not enough people did in the 1980s, or the group would be remembered.
  • Down Two Then Left by Boz Scaggs who gets some rotation on WSIE (I just said that in 2022 when I got my first Boz Scaggs record, Silk).

I paid for it with the cash in my wallet, so it really wasn’t like spending money at all. And I got change to use in the offering plate for a doughnut and cup of coffee since I’m not tossing twenties in there these days because I’m even now the kind of fellow who will go for some retail therapy now and then, even if it’s only eleven dollars’ worth.

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Good Media Hunting, February 15, 2025: Vintage Stock

My beautiful wife got me a Vintage Stock gift card for $40 worth of media, and she told me Vintage Stock was having some sort of sale, so we rushed right up to Vintage Stock late Saturday morning after I finished my martial arts class. Which is always how it seems to work out. Vintage Stock has its used records in crates beneath its display of new records (which range from $25 to $50 each, so, yeah, no, I’m not looking at them, and the new records tend to be things I’m looking for anyway). So: Leg workout plus squatting whilst flipping through records = a real test to see how much I really want to maximize the buy 2, get 1 free sale. Ah, I did.

Well, I flipped through most of them anyway. It’s odd: Some things must have been priced at different times, so you get Moody Blues records for $4 or for $9, only one of which tempts me. Then I got through to the back of the last crate, and used records were over $10, so I skipped that section. I also went into the organized DVD section (buy 1 get 1 free), so I picked up a number of things. What’s funny is I often think, after seeing mention of a movie on a blog or remembering it, “I ought to pick that up.” But get me to a used video store with a gift card in my hand, and I can’t remember a thing. I did think of a film, Major League, which was filmed at Milwaukee County Stadium (PBUI), after I saw a copy of Bull Durham facing out, but no Major League movies were available.

Nevertheless, I persisted in spending the gift card and $10 beyond.

But I managed to buy four records (well, five, as one of the Moody Blues pickups is a live double album) and get two free:

  • Another Taste by Taste of Honey. I’m not sure when I picked up the first album by this group (I see its name listed in this Good Album Hunting Post, but has it been eight years already?), but I told my wife that I’m probably their biggest fan. Later, I said they’ve probably been recording for fifty years continuously, which is not quite the case. They released four albums between 1978 and 1984 (according to Wikipedia), and according to their Web site, they have some show dates in 2025. Although the “they” now is a little different from the “they” in 1979.
  • Joy by Apollo 100, a band that took classics and electronicacised them. Which was a big thing around 1972. I guess it’s similar to making Muzak or lofi now, so it’s never really left us.
  • The Virtuoso Trumpet which is trumpet classics. I think I have something with a similar name, so I hope it’s a series and not the same thing with two different covers. Although I’ve been known to pick up the same record a time or two with variant covers.
  • Yakity Revisited by Boots Randolph. I wasn’t sure if I had it, but it turns out I do: I bought it the same time I bought A Taste of Honey, but I didn’t mention it in the blog post. But reviewing the photo while researching this post, I see it’s there. What a coincidence!
  • Octave by the Moody Blues
  • Caught Live +5 by The Moody Blues. A one-and-a-half live album with a fourth side which is new material. We have a number of Moody Blues albums, but I don’t spin them often. I think they’re best listened to, not just played in the background.

I also picked up a few films:

  • Against All Odds. I heard the Phil Collins song on the radio the other day, and I mentioned to my youngest that I had never seen the film. So I guess I was kind of looking for this one by name.
  • A boxed set of Bruce Lee films, real Bruce Lee films unlike some things I have recently watched. Includes The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Game of Death, and Game of Death II.
  • Commando with Arnold Schwarzenneggar. It was on Showtime back in the day, but I haven’t seen it in a long time.
  • Deadpool. Because my youngest has not been struggling with swearing in inappropriate contexts enough recently as it is.
  • The Man with Two Brains with Steve Martin. The old Steve Martin. Which is really about the same as the current(ish) Steve Martin who mines old IPs for comedy.
  • There Will Be Blood with Daniel Day Lewis. I guess I’ve seen this mentioned a time or two on a blog, so there it is.
  • This Is The End, the relatively recent ensemble comedy about the end of the world. I remember thinking it looked interesting when it came out. Now I can watch it over and over again for just a few bucks.

Well, given how fast I’m watching films these days, that should hold me for eight or twelve months.

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Jack Baruth Puts My Mind At Ease

At Avoidable Contact, Jack Baruth makes it clear:

Let’s get the bad news out of the way: the alleged killer of the UHC lizard appears to have no relation to soulful flugelhorn player Chuck Mangione, whose lovely album Feels So Good is on regular vinyl rotation here at the farm.

I first picked up Feels So Good in 2021 for $2 at an antique mall after not finding it in the record store for which I’d received a gift certificate for Christmas in 2020.

I have since picked up a copy with a better cover and have also picked up several other of his albums and one from his brother.

But Mangione is not an uncommon name.

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Good Media Hunting, Saturday, November 30, 2024: A Thrift Store in Berryville, Arkansas

Late this morning, we ventured down to Berryville, Arkansas, to meet my oldest son’s girlfriend’s family. So of course I wanted to stop by the It’s a Mystery BookStore again (we visited it three and a half years ago). But it was closed for the week as the proprietrix was visiting family. So we had an hour to kill before lunch, so we had a cup of coffee and an appetizer at the Ozark Cafe (which might be the only place in Berryville that takes credit cards).

As the weather was nice, we took a little stroll around the square. We stopped in a gift shop on Springfield Street (strangely enough, it was on the highway that kinda sorta went in Springfield’s direction, so it might have been named for the place it went like Appleton, Fond du Lac, Beloit, and other roads in Wisconsin are named). It was odd: they started calling this “Small Business Saturday,” but very few of the small businesses in Berryville were open.

We also stopped in at a thrift shop across the street from It’s a Mystery, and it had books and other media. I bought a couple of records, and my beautiful wife bought a couple of books.

I got four videocassettes:

  • The Patriot starring Mel Gibson so I can fully revisit the fin de siècle Mel Gibson movies.
  • Paris Holiday, a Bob Hope comedy. Weird that I’m seeing so many of them in the wild this year (I bought a couple others in June.
  • Grumpier Old Men, which I can watch since I saw the first one almost a year ago exactly. And this one has Sophia Loren.
  • Sink the Bismarck which does not have an exclamation point, unlike the book.

I also got three records:

  • Sea of Dreams by Nelson Riddle. I might have bought it for the cover alone, but it is Nelson Riddle.
  • The Last Dance… for Lovers Only by Jackie Gleason. The last time I was in Berryville, I bought some Jackie Gleason on CD. It might become a personal tradition.
  • Hurðaskellir & Stúfur Staðnir Að Verki by Magnús Ólafsson + Þorgeir Ástvaldsson + Laddi + Bryndís Schram. My first Christmas album in Icelandic. And probably the only, although who knows? I have recently acquired (or actually, I just unboxed) a couple of German language Christmas albums from my mother-in-law. So who can say if I’ll ever come up with another collection of hymns or something.

The thrift store did not take credit cards, but that was okay as the total was like seven dollars, and as it was Berryville, I brought some cash.

Which turned out to be a good thing, as the Italian restaurant where we met the potential future in-laws did not take credit cards, either.

I am absolutely not kidding about carrying cash in Berryville. One of five places we’ve visited have taken credit cards. Maybe two of six, as it did not come up at the gift shop.

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A Shared Album

I always thought it would be one of Lileks’ posts about the bottom records of a distant era or thrift store vinyl where I would find one of the Nogglestead record library. But, no, it’s Jack Baruth who posted an image of Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson’s 1980 in a post from the beginning of September. I’m catching up on my Avoidable Contact Forever reading even now as I don’t delete them like I do other Substack emails when they pile up (and it’s the only one for which I have a paid subscription).

I bought the record in 2019. And have probably only listened to it once or twice since. Once, certainly, when I first bought it, as is my wont–listening to it before putting the plastic sleeve on it and putting it on the record shelf. Which explains the stack of records on the parlor desk: I still haven’t listened to all the records I bought last month. In my defense, I spend more time in my office these days than I used to.

At any rate, Baruth says:

Some of you know that I consider the earlier Scott-Heron and Jackson effort “Winter In America” to be one of the finest albums ever made. (Not to be confused with the individual track called “Winter In America”, which appeared elsewhere in the Scott-Heron catalog.) “1980” isn’t quite as focused and powerful, but it’s loaded front to back with brilliant soul music made by two of the best to ever do it. You can’t hear it on Spotify or on most streaming services. TheYouTube video at the head of this section will take you to all the tracks. I recommend them without hesitation…

…but I wanted a physical copy of the album. Which is also hard to find in decent shape. It had a short print run and never got reissued. After a few false starts I just paid what it took to get an early demo copy, as seen above. When it arrived I tossed it on the turntable and treated myself to twenty minutes with the sublime first side.

I’ll have to give it another listen upon his recommendation.

Also, I need to remember Baruth is a Pat Matheny fan and not a Pat Travers fan so I don’t keep picking up the wrong Pat.

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Good Album Hunting, Saturday, September 14, 2024: Friends of the Springfield-Greene Library Book Sale

As I mentioned, we went to the book sale over the weekend, and they had a larger-than-normal selection of LPs even though it was Saturday and half price day, which meant that most were fifty cents each. As I completed some record shelving Labor Day weekend, I felt comfortable… gorging.

I got:

  • This Is The Way I Feel by Marie Osmond. Because I got a couple of Osmond records in May, I guess, and because PWoC. 1977. Discogs value: $1
  • The Fabulous Billy Daniels. Discogs: $1
  • A Blossom Fell by Nat King Cole. A compilation record from 1973. Discogs: $1
  • Frenesi: Artie Shaw’s Greatest Hits. 1974. Discogs: $1.75
  • Black Magic by Artie Shaw. 1973. Discogs: $1
  • I Know That I Know by Stephanie Boosahda. 1981. Discogs: $2.99
  • Pure Music by Chase. Guy on the cover is blowing a trumpet–no way I could ever get in trouble buying this record. 1974. Discogs: $1.79
  • Love, Life, and Feelings by Shirley Bassey. 1976. Discogs: $1
  • What Now My Love by the Living Brass. 1966. Discogs: $.64
  • Pete Fountain. 1966. $.73
  • Duo-Glide by Sanford & Townsend. I think someone was just talking/blogging about them. 1974. $.74
  • Hometown, My Town by Tony Bennett. For some reason, I’ve been on a Tony Bennett kick (which means I’ve listened to an LP and a couple of CDs over the last year). 1959. $1
  • You’ll Never Walk Alone by Roy Hamilton. 1955. $.55
  • From Sergio with Love by Sergio Franchi. The sale was lousy with Mario Lanza, but this is the only Sergio Franchi record in evidence. I might already own it though. 1966. $.50
  • Symphony for Tony by the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Apparently, playing hits of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. Not on Discogs, no date I could find.
  • Everybody Knows by Steve Lawrence. Just because he was Mr. Eydie. $.26
  • …Porque Te Quiero by Carlos Mata. 1985. $3.33
  • Search by Mission. 1987. $1
  • Earl Grant (self-titled). 1970. $1
  • Hell of an Act to Follow by Willie Bobo. 1978. $2.75
  • You Go To My Head by Billy Daniels. 1957. $5.99
  • Spanish Eyes by Earl Grant. 1969. $1.33
  • State of the Heart by Philip Bailey. A dance single, and guaranteed to be better than Zimmerman, Bailey. 1986. $.33
  • Be My Lover by O’Bryan. 1984. $1
  • Paradise by Leroy Hilton. Not listed on Discogs.
  • Roy Hamilton’s Greatest Hits. 1962. $1.
  • Emotional by Jeffrey Osborne. 1986. $.37
  • The Fred Wacker Band Swings Cool. PWoC. 1980? $4
  • The Harp Key / Crann Nan Teud Alison Kinnaird plays the Scottish Harp. 1978. $2
  • A Woman Needs Love by Ray Parker, Jr., and Raydio. I already own it, but I don’t know which cover is better. 1981. $.50
  • Romeo and Juliet: A Theme for Lovers by Jackie Gleason. 1969. $1
  • Report from Hoople: PDQ Bach on the Air. A comedy album, apparently, and not Bach at all. 1974. $.66
  • Spirituals by Tennessee Ernie Ford. As the Swedish Gospel Singers and even the Teen Tones have been lost in the stacks, we’ve been listening to a lot of Tennessee Ernie Ford on Sunday mornings at Nogglestead. But I’m not sure if I have this one. 1957. $.01
  • Stand By Me by Earl Grant. 1966. $1.89
  • Mancini ’67 by Henry Mancini. 1967. $1.29
  • One Enchanted Evening by the Three Suns. Not sure if I have this one already; I have a lot of the Three Suns. 1964. $1.67
  • Julie Is Her Name by Julie London. PWoC, of course, but I have a number of Julie London records. They’re all PWoC, of course, but not bad. 1955. $2
  • 30 Hits of the Thundering ’30s by Frankie Carle. Pretty sure I already have it. 1963. $1
  • The Uncollected Carmen Cavallaro and His Orchestra. 1946. $.88
  • Mambo Happy! by Perez Prado. 1957. $2
  • For the First Time Brenda and Pete. Brenda Lee and Pete Fountain. 1957. $1.25
  • Greatest Hits by Ray Parker, Jr. Strangely enough, I might also have this one, but this cover is very nice. 1982. $1.10
  • All Star Jazz Concert. 1956. $5.95
  • Sax-Sational Boots Randolph. 1967. .89
  • Jackie Gleason Plays for the Pretty People. 1967. .99
  • Steve Lawrence Sings…. Some album with Steve Lawrence on side one and Charlie Francis on side two. Apparently, this Spinorama disc is worth more than other versions at $5.
  • Keepin’ Love New Howard Johnson. 1982. 7.99
  • Hugo Winterhalter Goes South of the Border. Man, I am a sucker for the 1960s Mexican brass sound popularized by Herb Alpert. 1961. 1.25
  • This Is Henry Mancini. I probably already have this one, but, you know, fifty cents to make sure. 1970 .50
  • Jackie Gleason Plays The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. 1967. .50
  • A Que Florezca Mi Pueblo Mercedes Sosa. 1975. 2.20
  • Sound Spectacular Ray Anthony. 1959. 1.65
  • Shearing Today! George Shearing. 1968. 1.96
  • The Fabulous Arrangements of Tommy Dorsey in Hi-Fi. 1958. 1.00
  • Songs of Wonderful Girls Richard Hayman. PWoC. 1962. 1.00
  • Pete Fountain’s Jazz Reunion. I sure buy a lot of Pete Fountain for the amount of Pete Fountain I actually listen to. 1981. 1.38
  • Today’s Romantic Hits for Lovers Only Jackie Gleason. I listen to a lot of Jackie Gleason, though. 1963. $1
  • Music Until Midnight Percy Faith and Mitch Miller. 1954. 3.25
  • A Salute to the Great Singing Groups: The Clark Sisters. 1961. .53
  • Dream Along with Me Perry Como. I might have this already, but, c’mon, Perry Como. Can you ever have enough? 1957, but this is a later reissue. .23
  • Themes in Brass The Brass Hat. 1969. 14.99
  • The Simon Sisters Sing For Children Lucy and Carly Simon. 1973. 1.31
  • Don’t Mess with Tess Teresa Brewer. 1962. 2.91
  • Nana Mouskouri Sings Over & Over. 1969. 2.99
  • Song for Liberty Nana Mouskouri. 1982. .73
  • Roses & Sunshine Nana Mouskouri. 1979. .10

Ah, gentle reader, that is 66 new titles–67 records total as one is a two-record set. I spent less than $40 for the lot. I’ve checked the price listings on Discog to see if I made out with any real scores, but probably not. But I have a couple of Jackie Gleason records I didn’t already have, and a new George Shearing, and I’m most excited about them. I’m looking forward to some of the soul/R&B/pop records I picked up as well.

Hopefully, this trip will not completely overload the new shelving. We still have two boxes of records to unpack from when my mother-in-law downsized, and having a little space on the shelves would make it to organize the music library. Someday. Probably not soon. Or ever.

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In 1979, We All Wanted To Be Bowzer

So the other evening as I was making my toilet before bed, I sang to myself, “Doh doh it doh doh. Good night, sweetheart, well, it’s time to go….” And I will leave it to you to wonder if I flexed my bicep as I did so.

Because that’s the closing number from the television program Sha Na Na:

I saw that a time or two on a Saturday afternoon back in the day. I was not the target audience–it was probably geared towards my grandparents’ generation or maybe the early boomers who remembered doo-wop from their younger years–but as a kid, I am sure I watched anything.

So I went looking on YouTube for a complete episode, and I watched it.

The first one I found had the added benefit of having Barbi Benton as the guest star:

She was a Playboy model who also released some records, and so she did a number on the show. She had the country rock sound so common of the era (says the man who also owns Lynda Carter records).

Additionally, someone probably used a new VCR to tape this off of television, so you get all the period commercials as well. Man, I was young once, but that was long ago.

It looks like YouTube has other episodes, but I don’t know that I’ll watch many of them, and I’m certainly not going to seek out a box set (which does not seem to be available, although they have a bunch of records out). Because one or two episodes would be a nostalgia trip, and more than that might indicate a problem (says a guy who watched a bunch of The Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show on videocassette).

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How Does Discogs Know So Much About Me Now?

When I went to Discogs recently, its front page thought I might want to learn more about Brazilian Death Metal.

Which is odd; most of the things I search for on Discogs are records I’ve bought which tend to be easy listening and jazz, not the kinds of CDs I buy new.

Like Brazilian death metal.

It’s been a while since I bought a Semblant CD (2022); it looks like they might be on hold/hiatus/broken up. But Mizuho Lin is recording with Confessori now, so I guess I’ll have to check that out.

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It Makes Me Long For Bro Country

The new hotness in country music? Simp Country.

I first heard this song when I was driving further into the country for my brother’s wedding. It annoyed me then, and it annoys me now.

The last couple of Sunday afternoons when I mowed the lawn, the classic country station played St. Louis Cardinals play-by-play, so I looked for another station that came in clearly on the stubby antenna of my WorkTunes headphones and discovered a contemporary station. Which sounded an awful lot like the station we listened to on the drive, with the same songs in about the same order.

You know what else they played in addition to the song above? Two songs about a farmer not selling his land to subdivision developers who refer to the land as “dirt.”

Justin Moore’s “This Is My Dirt”:

Cody Johnson’s “Dirt Cheap”:

Seems awfully redundant to have two songs with basically the same narrative structure, theme, and phraseology on the radio in heavy rotation at the same time.

And as to the last, it actually sounds like it was written by a city boy imagining life in the country. The man has been on the farm for forty years, and he has one daughter (lives in the city, and it sounds as though she’s single and/or has no kids as the song does not mention grandchildren) and he talks about his best friend, a single dog with whom he hunted (ducks, presumably, as it mentions a shotgun and a jon boat) for 13 years of the 40. Country families tend to have more than one child, and in forty years, he would have had several generations of “best friend.” Heck’s pecs, I have only been at Nogglestead for almost 15 years now, and we’re on our third generation of cats (no dogs (yet)).

Not only did the local station play the same songs in almost the same order as back east, but the local station played the same songs in almost the same order at about the same time on consecutive Sundays. Which meant I heard all three of these songs again. And: Apparently, the local station’s rotation begins to repeat itself after about three hours. With some variety, but as mowing Nogglestead takes a little over three and a half hours, I heard these three songs twice each Sunday.

I guess I should just be thankful that the rotation of the current hit of the moment does not match the pop station in Milwaukee in the early 1990s playing “I Wanna Be Rich” every hour on the hour.

Still: I am working on my semi-regularly scheduled rant on the current state of radio today, but given how nobody is clamoring to read it, I’ll continue procrastinating it. At least until a couple of semi-regularly scheduled rants separate that post from this one.

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The Kids Today Are Wrong, As Usual

Gentle reader, it is time to talk about the best Toto song. I mean, the time had to come around once after 1985, right? You live in the quantum universe where that time has come.

Now, you might think I favor “Rosanna” because it came on a cassette I got out of a box of Chex cereal in the days where prizes came in the box or you might already be a winner when you unscrewed a cap on a soda bottle or opened a pack of gum. Now, of course, you get a code where, after you sign up on the Internet and give the consumer package goods conglomorate all of your personal information or, heaven forbid, download the app and give the conglomorate and its “partners” the right to track your every move before discovering, nah, bro, you didn’t win. But in the 1980s, cereal boxes gave you compilation cassettes of “old” songs which were in fact only a couple of years old, but they came out when you were in elementary school and not after you grew up and went to middle school, so they were uncool.

Anyway, Toto’s best song is not “Roseanna”:

Strangely enough, I went looking for that cassette in the bins under the bed where we store out old cassettes, and I did not find the un-cased tape in a quick search. Given how I don’t tend to get rid of anything, I presume it’s there or misplaced, but I don’t doubt I still have it. I found cassette singles from the era, though. You know, every couple of years, I get out the 45 records and listen to them. But one never pulls out cassette singles and listens to them. Whether it’s because the tactile experience is different, because records are hip (or hep) now, or because you either have to pause the listening to rewind or have to listen to all B-sides, I am not sure, although it might be the last.

Of course, Toto is most known for “Africa” because Weezer covered it with “Weird Al” a couple of years ago. But, to be honest, that is five or six years ago, so the Weezer has slipped out of the zeitgeist and off of the radio’s abbreviated playlists. Toto’s version appears from time to time between the Aerosmith, Tom Petty, and Journey.

I will listen to arguments that Leo Marachiolli’s heavy metal cover is Frog Leap Studios’ best song. In between sentences here, I’m going to see what Leo’s been doing lately. He’s still doing metal covers, but it looks like his output has declined a bit. But he’s in a different place in his life than he was six or seven years ago. Aren’t we all.

But back to Toto. The best Toto song, at least among their radio hits, is definitely “Hold the Line”:

Although the song comes from their debut album in 1978, it got a lot of radio play on the classic rock stations in the middle 1990s, so I heard it a bunch, and it was in my dating years, and I’d just started seeing this really hot chick who, I’m not joking, was either the #2 or #3 hit on the Google Image search for “legs.” So it hit me in a spot back in the day when the radio stations were probably playing old songs over and over again but probably with larger playlists and when the songs were still new enough to me that I was not tired of them. I heard it on the newest preset in my car, a radio station with no DJs and few commercials whose mix of 80s, 90s, and whatever is slightly different from the other similar stations in Springfield, for a little while, anyway. Over time, I will discover it overlaps with the other stations more than I prefer (and probably a convergence is forthcoming) and that its library is not that big, either. I am this far away from another curmudgeonly radio post.

Last night, I spun Foreigner’s Records, their greatest hits collection that I inherited last weekend. I had actually bought this album on cassette in college, so I was familiar with the songs already. You’ll hear the occasional Foreigner song on the radio today, but not my favorites, “Dirty White Boy” and “Long, Long Way From Home”.

Both Toto and Foreigner were old bands when I came to listen to pop radio in the late 1980s, so they were kind of background noise at the time. But, you know what? They’re all right. I’m not likely to rush to order their music on Amazon–they’re not metal or jazz songbirds, after all–but I’ll watch for their records. Although, to be honest, they’re in that peak of priciness–pop bands from the 1970s and 1980s–so I’ll not likely find any inexpensively.

But they’re interesting to reminisce to and about.

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Recommended For Me

When doing my Discogs research for my Good Book Hunting post this weekend, when I lit upon the entry for Stereo and All That Jazz, it presented me with a carousel at the bottom with recommendations:


Pretty good recommendations. Of them, I already have:

  • Fun and Games by Chuck Mangione
  • Breezin’ by George Benson
  • What’s New by Linda Ronstadt
  • What Now My Love by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
  • John Denver’s Greatest Hits (to be clear: My wife and her mother both liked 60s/70s folk. This was not MY doing).
  • Chicago IX

Six of ten easily.

Given the musical tastes in the family and the fact that we inherited a couple of boxes not in our regular library yet, it’s entirely possible we own a couple more of the Chicago albums listed and maybe the Paul Simon.

So Discogs has me pegged indeed based on this random jazz album pickup.

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The Guy Who Played Guitar in Those Video Games

You know, I was looking at upcoming events at the Gillioz Theatre in downtown Springfield a while back, and I spotted tonight’s Joe Satriani/Steve Vai concert, and I thought about it. Mostly because Glenn was a fan of electric guitar virtuosos. I’m not a big enough fan to pony up $65 minimum for my beautiful wife and me or for the whole family. So I won’t be going.

But here is how a local news station categorized the players:

Clearly going for a younger audience. Although by now, fans of Halo are no longer young.

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