Category: Music

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.

“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….

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.

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.

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.

Senior officials who wish to remain anonymous have told MfBJN that the Police’s song “Spirits in a Material World” is a spirited (ahut) defense of Manicheanism:

We will continue to interrupt regular programming as needed with further updates.

Apparently, the Police song “Roxanne” is about a prostitute!

Keep your radio tuned to Musings from Brian J. Noggle for more updates from 1979!

Sting’s ‘sinister and ugly’ meaning behind The Police song, Every Breath You Take: The Police’s hit single Every Breath You Take is widely thought of as a love song, but its lyrics are actually pretty sinister and creepy, according to singer, Sting

Millenials, or AI writing news stories in 2025, discover 80s pop.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.