Category: Music

Well, my friends, I have bought my first LPs in what seems like a long time. I guess my last purchases were in July when I bought a handful of records while spending gift cards at Relics Antique Mall, but, come on, it doesn’t feel like I’ve bought LPs unless I’ve been to this book sale and have bought fifty.

Which I did, sort of.

I got:

• Brazilian Bird Charlie Bird
• Countdown Time In Outer Space The Dave Brubeck Quartet
• One Hell of a Woman Vikki Carr
• For All We Know Vikki Carr
• The Lord’s Prayer Perry Como
• Easy to Love Frankie Carle
• Praise the Almighty The Lutheran Hour Choir with the St. Louis Symphony
• Brasil 88 Sergio Mendes
• Norwegian Songs Kirsten Flagstad and Gerald Moore
• Puts A Little Sax In Your Life Boots Randolph
• On Stage Eydie Gormé (I already have this album, but for fifty cents, I’ll buy a back up)
• Moonglow Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
• Eydie In Love Eydie Gormé (I also have this one, but the one I already have skips a bit)
• Albany Park Lani Hall (I have a couple of her CDs, but I’m glad to get her on LP outside of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66)
• Radioland Nicolette Larson
• Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 Val Cliburn (I read something recently about how good of a pianist he is, so I thought I’d get one of his albums)
• Hit Parade International Tom Jones; this is an Italian greatest hits album with a book cover.
• TWB The Tim Wiseberg Band
• Das Lied der Berge; I am not sure if it’s the title or what as it’s completely in German
• A Very Good Year The Columbia Treasures Orchestra and Chorus. PWC.
• It’s Impossible Perry Como
• Wild Heart of the Young Karla Bonoff (PWC)
• My Favorite Brahms Van Cliburne (as it stands, I got two of his LPs)
• The Best of The Three Suns
• Together Again Tierra
• Song of Norway The Original Cast Album
• Bouquet of Love The Percy Faith Strings; there’s a lot of Perry Faith in the wild. I might as well see if I like it.
• Tiger Rag Jo Ann Castle and Her Wild Piano!
• Fool on the Hill Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66. I know I have this album cover, but I bought it a long time ago to discover it had a different SM&B66 album in it. I might have already bought another copy with the right platter. But I know I’ve got it now.
• Great Verdi Arias Anna Moffe
• Sandy Posey Sandy Posey
• Temptation Roger Williams; one finds a lot of Roger Williams available. For fifty cents, I’ll take a flier on an album with a Pretty Women on the Cover (PWC).
• April in Portugal Frankie Carle
• Perry Como Sings Merry Christmas Music Perry Como
• Alone Too Long Charly McClain
• I’m Jessi Colter Jessi Colter
• The Best of Perry Como Perry Como
• Joyous Music for Christmas Time Various
• J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Wanda Wandowska

Not purchased: A copy of Phoebe Snow’s debut album, which I bought in July at Relics for $7.99 and $1.99 as I bought two copies (remember, I had been looking for this album for a year and half at Relics after spotting an unpriced copy of it, so when I saw them this year, I bought both). I could have had it for fifty cents were I but patient! But you never know what you will find today or tomorrow while hunting, so it’s best to buy it when you see it if it’s not too expensive. Note that I did not buy a third copy; this isn’t Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights of which I have three or four copies. I’ve stopped buying all of them that I see as the early Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass albums–The Lonely Bull, Going Places, South of the Border, What Now My Love, and Whipped Cream and Other Delights are still fairly common at book sales. And they will be, undoubtedly, until I need to replace one.

So for $24, I got a bunch of Perry Como along with a lot of late 70s and early 80s pop, jazz, and country.

Did I get any books, you ask? I’ll answer tomorrow.

Unfortunately, two things:

1. Given that I do not spend as much time in my parlor or kitchen these days, it will take me a long time to listen to all these records;
2. I don’t actually have room for these in the record shelves that I made last year, so I’ll have to make another set of them sometime soon.

First world problems, I know. But if I don’t hoard, how will my children sell enough things for a quarter each at my estate sale to amount to anything?

Sign language interpreters at metal concerts.

Actually, I am in pretty good shape for a couple of reasons. One, I have not been to the gym lately, so I have not been listening to metal at max volume in earbuds much this year. Second, I don’t tend to go to actual metal concerts because in my youth, metal heads tended to give me the business, so I avoid them in large groups.

But still.

(Link via Neatorama.)

In 2018, I stopped at the Classic Rock Coffee location in Springfield for, well, coffee, and I took pictures of the album covers on the wall beside the booths where I sat. I then quizzed myself on which of the classic rock albums I owned (here and here). I scored 2 out of 16 (roughly 12.5%).

Whilst cleaning off the desk in the parlor, where I spin records and stack them as I play them, I found a paper inner sleeve from some LP that looks to be RCA Victor from roughly 1960. The kind that depicts other albums on the label you might be interested in. The sleeve itself contains sixteen records.

I’ll treat it as a quiz and bold the records I know I own:

• Cool Water by the Sons of the Pioneers. Actually, I have two copies of this album somewhere in the mixed-up record library. As I mentioned in 2012, my father used to play this album on Christmas for some reason. I got the second copy last year to double my chances of finding it on Christmas this year.
• Last Date by Floyd Cramer.
• Glenn Miller’s Original Recordings by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. I might have this one, actually; although it looks like a single record, I have a box set with a very similar cover. I think. Hard to say; the albums are packed in so tightly that it’s hard for me to find anything.
• Inspirational Songs by George Beverly Shea.
• Teen Scene by Chet Atkins.
• Souvenirs by Hank Snow.
• The Student Prince by Mario Lanza. I have a couple by Lanza, but not this one, and I probably won’t get it as I’ve not really gotten into operatic show tunes.
• My Favorite Chopin by Van Cliburn. I don’t think I have any of this pianist, but he’s not on my “nah” list. So maybe this September, if they actually do have the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale that they’re advertising, I will find some.
• Calypso by Harry Belafonte. Nah. Which often is only short for “Naht yet.”
• South Pacific. Nah. I am also not into non-operatic show tunes.
• Oliver!. Ditto.
• Honey in the Horn by Al Hirt. I have a lot of Al Hirt because my beautiful wife plays the trumpet, but I am not into Al Hirt qua Al Hirt because I’m not into the Dixieland sound. I don’t think I have this one.
• The Pink Panther by Henry Mancini. I have a lot of Mancini, too, but I don’t think I have this one. But if I see it, I will probably pick it up. Coincidentally, WSIE played “The Pink Panther Theme” by Mancini whilst I was scanning this record sleeve.
• Cattle Call by Eddy Arnold. You see a lot of Eddy Arnold about. I shall probably pick something by him up sometime.
• Songs I Love by Perry Como. I don’t think I have this one yet, but I like Perry Como, so if I see it, I will buy it.
• Miriam Makeba by Miriam Makeba. I bought this one last May.

So that, too, is 2 of 16 with a slight chance of more than that.

To be honest, part of me thinks it’s cooler that I have 13% of these RCA Victor titles from 1960 than the classic rock albums that a lot of people own (which is why they became “classic” albums).

Whenever I see these “also available” sleeves, I like to look to see what I might already have. I tend to do better on A&M Records, that is Herb Alpert’s label, than others because I have a lot of Herb Alpert, Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66, Burt Bacharach, and even Claudine Longet.

Could the designer who put together this sleeve in 1950-something have ever guessed it would be an Internet listicle quiz seventy years later? I think not!

As I mentioned the other day, I pre-ordered the debut album by Damascus and got it on the first day it came out.

Damascus is the project of a guy I went to high school with who goes by Butch. I’m not sure if that’s his given name–it’s in the yearbook, so perhaps. He was one of the few long-haired kids who didn’t give me grief for being smart and bookish. Bullying, I think they call all of it now, although back in my day, bullying involved the threat of actual physical violence and not just making you feel bad because you didn’t smoke pot and didn’t like Iron Maiden (I’ve grown into the metal, as you know, gentle reader).

At any rate, I would be remiss in not sharing Butch’s current work with everyone who reads this blog, and by that I mean everyone searching for a viable book report on The Sire of Maletroit’s Door.

The whole album is cool, and it’s pretty long–17 songs including originals and covers of “Fade Into You” and “Nights In White Satin”. You can find the Web site with links to places you can buy it here. I initially tried on the iTunes store, but it crashed my PC iTunes, so I ended up buying it on Amazon discounting it with credits for slow delivery.

Today, I received four CDs that I ordered at the beginning of May, but I don’t think I’ll be putting them in my computer to rip them.

Imperial Age is a symphonic metal band.

I ordered these CDs from the band’s Web site, signed, and then I got to thinking. Because Imperial Age is a Russian band, these are Russian CDs, so I’m not sure I want to put them into my computer. Or near it for that matter.

In May, I didn’t actually count these albums probably because I did not get them yet, but my balance was way out of alignment with 12 metal albums to 1 jazz songbird album.

So what have I gotten since?

• The aforephotographed Imperial Age albums.
• Alive and Spectrum by jazz pianist Hiromi. Not a song bird, per se, and more traditional jazz piano than Keiko Matsui.
• For All We Know by Gloria Reuben.
• A Woman Like Me by Lindsay Webster, whose “One Step Forward” I included in my May post.
• Revolution by Damascus, the band of a guy I know from high school. I’ll probably do a whole post of it by and by.
• “Yes, I Have Ghosts” by David Gilmour (as I mentioned.

So I haven’t gone crazy on the buying in the last two months, and it’s kind of even. Well, four jazz songbird to five metal band CDs.

I did preorder the new 10 Years album, and I see that Unleash The Archers and Amaranthe have new CDs dropping this fall. So it looks as though my balance might be out of whack the rest of the year as well. If only I could get to the gym.

David Gilmour has a new song, “Yes, I Have Ghosts”:

He’s sounding a little more like Leonard Cohen these days, but not the older Leonard Cohen.

Of course, I hear parallels that aren’t there, so he probably does not.

He has long been my favorite member of Pink Floyd, and I was listening to his solo album About Face today, when I remembered he had this song out. So I got it for the cost of a couple of planned shipping delays from Amazon.

20 Great Heavy Metal Quotes.

My favorite of the bunch?

“A French magazine printed my obituary. How did I die? I dunno, it was in French.”
– Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister

Although this matches my feelings on nu metal for the most part:

“Adding rap to rock music is a bit like taking the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen to a plastic surgeon, then asking him to give her a penis.”
– Manowar’s Karl Logan.

To be honest, I only recognize some of the names because I read Louder than Hell. I AM A POSER.

Apparently, a cloud of dust from Africa is making its way through the atmosphere to North America, and the Internet is commenting on it as though it were another 2020 unique catastrophe (spoiler alert: it’s not).

Saharan Dust: Here’s what to expect when it makes it to the Ozarks

What you should expect is me to post the Cutting Crew song “Sahara” from their album The Scattering:

I bought The Scattering on a discounted tape rack in 1990 and became a great fan of the Cutting Crew (most known for “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” and “I’ve Been In Love Before” from their previous album Broadcast). I even bought Compus Mentus five years ago. Although I guess I’m not so much of a fan that I knew the lead vocalist re-formed the band in 2015 and has released a couple of albums since then.

Apparently, this is not “The Devil Went Down To Vienna”:

Who could have guessed?

First, Donald Byrd with “Low Life”:

Now Crobot with the rock version:

ROCK MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER. Even when it’s not something the same. Even if it’s only the name of the song.

Wirecutter posted a set of Tanya Tucker songs, including “Texas”:

My mother had this song on a cassette. Not a Tanya Tucker cassette; instead it was a Reader’s Digest collection of country hits, where two cassettes were packaged into an oversized binder that perhaps some people displayed on their shelves. This collection had a bunch of hits from the 1950s to the 1970s or perhaps the early 1980s–I remember it from 1984, but the Tanya Tucker song is from 1978.

My brother and I, when we shared the guest bedroom of my aunt’s house in St. Charles (before we moved into the basement), we would listen to those cassettes on a simple tape recorder. Not a radio/cassette combination–this was one of the type associated with recording things in an office, and it had an earphone. Not headphones: A single earbud before earbuds were the thing, which was just as well as it was not a stereo tape player–it only had a single speaker. We would lie on the floor in that bedroom, marveling in the cool of the air conditioning (whole house air conditioning, not the window kind we’d been used to).

As you know, this was not long after we might have moved to Texas, and the song mentions Milwaukee (“The beer stays cold in old Milwaukee”), further evidence we cited when we urchins tried to convince our uncle of the superiority of Milwaukee over St. Louis. Which I continue to assert to this day although I moved in the opposite direction when I had the chance.

When I hear the song (not so much watch the video above), I can almost catch the remembered experiential flavor of those afternoons that summer, listening to “Tall Oak Tree” by Dorsey Burnette, “Haunted House” by Jumpin’ Gene Simmons, “Bottle of Wine” by the Fireballs, and “Texas” by Tanya Tucker.

By the time my mother passed away, the binders were long gone, and the cassettes were in little plastic boxes instead. I think I might have let my brother have the cassettes along with most of my sainted mother’s bric-a-brac after she passed away. But I’ll go looking for them now as my weekend project.