Category: Music

Ah, gentle reader. This weekend offers many temptations for Brian J. to spend more money than he should. Springfield is hosting a festival celebrating 100 years of Route 66 downtown. Walnut Street has its annual Artsfest, which we’ve gone to on occasion. It’s Free Comic Book day. ABC Books had a book signing. And it was half price day at the Friends of the Library book sale. Which is where I went.

We got there at a little after 10am, and volunteers were helping people to park, which made it seem like it should have been busier than it was–however, I guess there were other events going on at the fairgrounds, so although the lots were full, the book sale itself was not crowded at all.

I really only browsed the dollar (half off: Fifty cents) records and got 25.

I got:

• Jarreau by Al Jarreau. I have a copy already, but I think it skips.
• The Love Hours, a Jackie Gleason record. I already have it, I’m pretty sure, but this cover is in very nice condition.
• The Hollywood Musicals by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mathis.
• Desiderata by Les Crane. A collection of poetry, perhaps. With a poster intact.
• Standards in Silhouette by Stan Kenton.
• Here Where There Is Love by Dionne Warwick.
• Solid by Ashford & Simpson. Did I already have it? Apparently not; I got Is It Still Good To Ya? in 2021 and Send It in 2023. So I am pleased to discover I did not.
• The King of Swing Volume 1 by Benny Goodman.
• Friends in Love by Dionne Warwick.
• Eddie Haywood at the Piano.
• Capitol Jazz Classics Volume 2: Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: Artistry in Jazz.
• Dionne! by Dionne Warwick.
• The In Crowd by the Ramsey Lewis Trio. I just picked up Reunion in March.
• Let the Music Play by Shannon [Brenda Greene].
• The Three Suns Play Midnight Time. A bunch of fox trots, it seems. Presumably with squeeze box somewhere in them.
• Bobby Hackett Plays the Great Music of Henry Mancini. I thought it was a team-up like The Hollywood Musicals (above), but I see now the smaller text says Hackett is playing the music and Mancini was just cashing the check.
• Warm and Tender by the Three Suns. Looking at their Discogs entry, I see that accordion is one of their primary instruments. I am not crazy to mention it.
• Dancing on a Cloud by the Three Suns.
• The Best of Jackie Gleason.
• Four Centuries of Music for the Harp, a Nonesuch Records title. I will buy all the fifty cent Nonesuch records I find.
• Born to Love by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack.
• Melba by Melba Moore.
• Brotherly Love by Daniel Williams.
• For the Young at Heart by Perry Como.
• All I Want For Christmas by Jackie Gleason. A two record set. And because I play all platters before shelving them, we’ll be listening to some Christmas music here presently.

Cost of records: $12.50. Total spend: $75, roughly, if you add in the lunch at Five Guys, a tradition that the boys favor–they both came along and were pleasantly surprised that I only browsed the cheap records and did not look through videos, audio books, or actual books–and I didn’t even go into the Better Books section. I have enough to read, ainna? Enough to listen to as well, so only the one stop and only a little more than a sawbuck.

Hopefully, I have room for them in the shelving.

So my beautiful wife is at a conference in Wichita, Kansas, to close out the week, and every time she mentioned it, I would lay down the line dun dun dundun dun dun dun:

For a long time, I thought the song was called “Wichita”.

You know, about that era, I had print subscriptions to Spin, Maxim, FHM, GQ, and even Playboy for a year or two . I was staring down the barrel of turning thirty, and I was probably still steeped in both kinds of music (country and western) at the time. So I desperately sought information on what kids those days (which is to say, people who were just a couple years younger than I was) were listening to and, I guess, wearing, although I really never have been a fashion plate. But I remember the White Stripes were on the cover of Spin. As were the Black Keys, I’m sure, and I didn’t pay enough attention to be able to tell them apart.

At any rate, now that their music is “oldies,” not that music is allowed to be oldies these days, I’ll give them some consideration. Because whenever I let YouTube run on and present me new music, I am beginning to wonder if it’s a real band or if it’s AI. And by plumbing the past with actual bands I heard of back then, maybe I’ll find something else new to me.

But I’m not going to like Pearl Jam or Green Day. That’s out of the question.

This morning, Pixy slugged a story thusly:

Trapped in a closet self-driving taxi with Vanna White a screaming homicidal leftist lunatic outside. (Seattle Times)

Ah, gentle reader, was he alluding to the original song by “Weird Al” Yankovic?

Or the recent(ish) remake by Electric Six?

Given that he has “senior” or “staff” somewhere in his title and he’s in Australia, probably “Weird Al.”

But it has reminded me that I am way behind on my Electric Six collection.

On Saturday, Brian J. was a good, good boy and completed all of his weekend chores, which included dusting and vacuuming the common areas of the house and doing a quick, expensive wipe of the hall and foyer. After a martial arts class, too.

So I thought I would head up to Relics and buy a couple records using the gift certificates I received for my birthday (like I did the previous weekend). However: Relics had an event of some sort, and parking was at a premium, so I did not go in.

But: I had an errand (coincidentally!) that took me to the area yesterday, so I stopped in for twenty or thirty minutes, just pawing through the same booth, and picked up 9 records.

I got:

• Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. The song from The Exorcist. Looking at it now, I think I might already have it. Which so often happens. But generally not at these prices.
• The Baddest Hubbard by Freddie Hubbard.
• Surprises by Herbie Mann featuring Cissy Houston.
• Μαζί Με Τον Σταμάτη by Σταμάτης Κόκοτας. Because I cannot tell the difference, at a glance, between Hebrew and Greek. I thought I’d troll my oldest who is steeped in podcast politics and would be scandalized by a Jewish album. But this is Greek folk music by Stamatis Kakotas.
• Low Ride by Earl Klugh.
• The Changing of the Gard by Stargard. I told the young lady ringing me out that buying this made me the biggest Stargard fan in Springfield.
• The Beginning and the End by Clifford Brown. Hard not to type Jr. behind it, but this is the DJ’s father. Apparently, the booth was not rife with them–this is the only record they had.
• Reunion by the Ramsey Lewis Trio.
• Land of the Midnight Sun by Al Di Meola.

A couple of trumpeters, a couple of jazz guitarist, a flutist. Left behind: A couple of Moody Blues records. A couple of David Sanborn records, as I mentioned. No further Billy Joel records in evidence.

The total was $73 and change, which is the perfect amount in one sense: As it was just under the total of the certificates I had, I paid two gift certificates plus some cash. But I don’t expect to go next weekend. Let’s let the stock turn over for a month or two. Or I can find another booth and give myself permission to spend more than three dollars a record.

So I received four $25 gift certificates to Relics Antique Mall for my birthday. If you recall, gentle reader, these are certificates, not gift cards, and Relics does not give change from them. So you have to spend the whole amount (or more), which is why I had four certificates and not one for $100. Also, remember, gentle reader, these have fairly quick expiration dates–six months from issue.

So I made my way to the antique mall, hoping to find a katana in the bladed weapons cabinet since I bought a tachi/wakizashi pair last year and had purchased a rapier that I mentioned caressing in 2023 with some other gift cardery or certificatage. But, as periodically happens, the bladed weapon cabinet was gone. No axes, no sword canes, and certainly no katana.

I’d also thought that I would look through some of the higher-priced record album booths since I have the notion of rebuilding my Billy Joel record set. I’d gotten a pretty good set of the late 1970s and early 1980s works around 1990 from Recordhead in Milwaukee, where records were cheap because everyone was getting rid of them to go to CDs. But I sold them at garage sales in the middle of that decade when I needed dollars more than LPs, and after I’d sold the stereo that had a turntable.

But: No Billy Joel records. Seriously, where have they gone? I have not seen many in the wild–I picked up Songs in the Attic and 52nd Street at some point (Songs in the Attic in 2008, The Bridge in in 2023). But I haven’t seen a lot of them in the wild. Which is odd: He sold a pile of records. So where have they all gone? Do Billy Joel fans have them? Did Columbia Records cheap out on the materials?

Ah, well. At any rate, I was going to just quit and save the certificates for the end of July (right before they expire, where I would be a little less choosy and more driven to spend them) when something caught my eye.

Can you guess what it was?

Yes, Fandango, by Herb Alpert. Which I have on CD, but now I have it on vinyl. I might have mentioned that Herb Alpert is the only 4-media artist at Nogglestead. We have records, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s–albums bought electronically (the CDs have been ripped to the electronic library as well).

So once I committed to, what, $6? I had to spend the remaining $20, so I got two Bob James records (“H”, which also features Grover Washington, Jr., and Rameau) and a David Sanborn record (Close-Up). The booth had a lot of David Sanborn, but records I already have.

So I still have $75 to spend, most likely this summer. And once I have to spend it, maybe I’ll pick up some of the inexpensive Clifford Brown records I saw. I do listen to his son’s radio program on KCSM sometimes.

I mentioned that I was starting to watch the Bruce Lee boxed set that I bought in 2024. And WSIE, the jazz station out of Edwardsville, is putting me in the mood.

They currently have Kamasi Washington’s “Fists of Fury” in heavy rotation.

Additionally, I heard The Olympians’ “California” and thought it sounded a log like the music in The Big Boss (aforelinked):

I actually ordered the latter’s In Search of a Revival (from Bandcamp, since I’m almost sorta still on an Amazon Tweehad).

The Washington, not so much.

So my beautiful wife is on her way to a conference, and she has a layover in Charlotte. So, on the way to drop her at SGF this morning, I told her that they hated it if you called it C-Harlot–actually, no, nobody knows what that means.

Today, I came across a post from last week on Stuff Nobody Cares About indicating that “Charlotte the Harlot” was the most underrated song on Iron Maiden’s first record.

Ah, gentle reader. My wife, an Iron Maiden fan from way back, might have thought I was making an Iron Maiden allusion with the quip. And I am not going to dissuade her if it makes her fall more in love with me.

To be honest, I mostly listen to Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and No Prayer for the Dying when I’m in an Iron Maiden mood, so I’m less familiar with the earlier work.

KCSM played “Triangle” by Herbie Hancock this morning, and I sat up and took notice. Especially at about the 7:23 mark.

That jangle sounds just like my weather alert radio which I have set to go off only in the event of a tornado warning.

Won’t I be surprised if there’s a nuclear assault and I don’t get the alert.

But I had to turn down the speakers to make sure it was the song on the Internet radio and not an actual tornado in the clear blue sky. Or a failure of the weather radio.

KCSM has Kat Edmondson’s “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” in heavy rotation this year.

To me, she sounds a lot like Stacey Kent.

Which does not mean she sounds like Stacey Kent.

But heaven knows I equate vocalists who are very different for some reason.

Will you find these Christmas albums on a musical balance post soon? Probably not; I’m topped up on Christmas music for the nonce.

No Rap Songs in the Top 40 for First Time in 35 Years: Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s ‘Luther’ Exits Billboard Hot 100

An AI artist has hit the Billboard charts. Who is Xania Monet?

To be honest, the amount of rap that I have bought in my accumulation over the decades is minimal. Singles (The Beastie Boys’ “So Whatcha Want”, Young MC’s “Bust a Move” come to mind), accidental (Foxy Brown’s “I’ll Be”, also a single, but I thought it might be R&B), or songs with bits of rap in them. And the amount of AI music that I’ll buy is none if I can help it.

Which is a terrible thing to say given that my beautiful wife has used AI to generate tech-themed symphonic metal songs as… novelty, I guess?

And I’ve bought The Defect’s album after hearing them earlier this year, but they’re almost into that uncanny valley of sounding too much like AI for me to really get into them.

Facebook showed me this post for some reason:

I am not sure where this purported CD case comes from, but the actual soundtrack on CD only contains the first 11 tracks listed.

The “Bonus Tracks” are in the movie, but are not included on the soundtrack nor in the closing credits, which explains why VodkaPundit and I had a hard time learning about Leonard Cohen in 1993.

Maybe if I’d have clicked More…. I would have seen text to this effect.

Note that this soundtrack is on my top-five list of soundtracks of all time.