Category: Music

It has taken a little over a month, gentle reader, for me to finish listening to the records I bought at the Spring book sale. And “finish” is a relative term–the current turntable cannot accommodate 78 rpm records, so I have not listened to the Benny Goodman set, and I have not listened to the three LP “learn Mandarin from records” set (which might go into the drawer with the other learn-a-foreign-language sets that I have gathered over the years before I actually learn a language via LP–see also the audiocassette teach-yourself-Japanese course that’s been in my office closets for 25 years).

I finished with the New Cristy Minstrels because they’re more of my beautiful wife’s thing, although she has said they’re more of her mother’s thing, and that she (my wife) really did only hear the Christmas record as her mother did not listen to records that much in her memory.

I also held off, strangely enough, on the Eydie Gorme record (Here’s Eydie Gorme) as the first time I tried to listen to it, the turntable was acting squirrelly, leading me to fear its imminent failure. However, the next day, it had no problems, but by then the Eydie Gorme record was lower in the stack.

And as I completed (mostly) listening to them, I realized that this stack of records has more animal sounds than perhaps my whole library previously had (an untrue assertion, as we have a record version of Disney World’s Enchanted Tiki Room and some of Kipling’s Just So Stories, but bear with me here–I’m blogging).

The Eydie Gorme record has “I’ve Gotta Crow” which apparently (according to Wikipedia) was her first single with Steve Lawrence circa 1954, but the LP I got is from a decade later. In it, Eydie Gorme, well, makes what presumably are Brooklyn crow noises as crows don’t sound like this in the Ozarks:

Then, relatively shortly thereafter, I heard the song “The Cat” from the The New Christy Minstrels Tell Tall Tales! (Legends and Nonsense) which features band members meowing:

At Nogglestead, that song is more closely associate with Ralph the Dog from The Muppet Show:

I’m hard pressed to think of another record where the band makes animal noises. I’m sure we have one or more in the library, but these leaped out at me because I heard them in such close proximity.

Oh, and of those New Cristy Minstrels records: New Kick! is apparently signed by one of the players:

Pete Henderson inscribed this to John and pointed out which songs he played or was featured. Not bad for a dollar.

This is a bit of a Recycler post, but it’s pretty fresh, gentle reader.

I posted this yesterday on social media:

All I got for Valentine’s Day was the blues.

But that’s what I asked for.

Which is true: When my beautiful wife asked what I wanted for Valentine’s Day, I mentioned that I’d added a number of Keb’ Mo’ CDs to my Amazon Wishlist.

WSIE plays “Soon As I Get Paid” a lot:

However, “Tell Everybody I Know” is more Valentine-themed:

I haven’t been buying many CDs these days–the last would have been a couple of Christmas CDs, although I did recently get a digital album with Amazon credits, and the musical balance is a little off kilter from my normal jazz songbirds and metal. Of the four most recent acquisitions, three are blues and one is funk. Maybe I am mellowing.

Ah, gentle reader, you know how I operate: I go “Christmas shopping” at a local antique mall and end up with a stack of records.

Well, this year was going to be different. It’s not so much that I’ve straightened up as I’ve run out of space to store records as well as new books–so I skipped the autumn Friends of the Springfield-Greene County library book sale. We have one or two boxes of sixties folk records that we herited when my mother-in-law downsized that are under the desk in the parlor. I have a box of records in the store room yet, my sainted mother’s pop hits of the 60s and 70s. And I moved the two boxes of books I received from my mother in law into my closet so it’s out of sight until I can clear space on the to-read shelves. Friends, reading paperbacks is not making that space. I shall have to read bigger books in 2023.

So I was minding my own business, dragging a bored teenager, when I found a box of $1 records at a booth. A booth which was having a 20% of sale. These records were eighty cents each. It seemed a moral imperative that I take them.

I got:

• Songs of Leonard Cohen by Leonard Cohen. (Discogs marketplace price: $5.11)
• Silk Degrees by Boz Skaggs. I confused him with Ricky Skaggs for a long time; however, WSIE plays Boz Scaggs since he’s not a country singer, so I got this, my first of his. (Discogs: .18)
• Command Performances by The Ray Charles Singers ($1.00)
• Golden Rainbow: The Original Broadway Cast Recording. I’m not going soft on you, gentle reader: This is a Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme record. ($ .50)
• The Year of the Cat by Al Stewart. Fun fact: When I heard this on the radio, I thought it was the Pet Shop Boys. So it’s the second in four bullet points so far where I’ve confused the artist with someone else ($ .43)
• Doris Day Sings Her Great Movie Hits by Doris Day. For a guy who listens to death metal, I sure have a lot of Doris Day records. ($1.00)
• Doris Day’s Greatest Hits by Doris Day. And I have even more now. ($1.00)
• Friendship by Ray Charles. A lot of Ray Charles in the two bins I looked through. ($ .95)
• Get Closer by Linda Ronstadt. ($ .50)
• Hometown Girl by Mary Chapin Carpenter. You know, gentle reader, I have seen her in concert (with Shawn Colvin) within the last decade. When I showed this album to my beautiful wife, she said, “Thank you.” So I am not in trouble for this set of records. ($ .99)
• Can’t Buy a Thrill by Steely Dan. My beautiful wife already has several Steely Dan albums, but not this one. ($2.51)
• Great Jazz Pianists of Our Time. Includes Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, and Art Tatum. ($9.48)
• Hey There! Here’s Fran Warren! by Fran Warren / arranged by Marty Paich. No idea who this is, but Pretty Woman on Cover. ($1.22)
• The Genius Sings the Blues by Ray Charles. ($7.51)

So the dollar pricing tracks pretty closely with the Internet prices for the records–the jazz pianists and one Ray Charles album were the big scores. As we went to other booths, I pointed out to the youngster why I felt compelled to look through these bins. Here are $20 records, here the prices start at $5 for bands you’ve never heard of, and so forth. I have to wonder if the records at antique malls are priced for the casual collector who doesn’t go to discogs and who isn’t serious but is a casual or fashionable collector. That is, someone following the fad of liking vinyl. The kind of person who buys new records for $25 when the CD is $15. Ah, what does it matter–I am not a collector, I am an accumulator, and I favor accumulating records from an era where the records were the only format available and hence have lots of copies, and they’re from an era not really enjoyed by the casual collector, who wants vinyl renditions of things they hear on the 80s, 90s, and now radio stations.

I won’t listen to this batch until after the holidays–we’re on all Christmas records here, and the two Nogglestead radios are tuned to the Christmas music station, but in a little over a week, we will be back to regular programming, and I will listen to these records whilst I read my many adopted hometown newspapers.

Although who knows whether I will buy other records in the interim. After all, the trip to Ozarks treasures did not yield all the gifts I need to yet buy.

As you might be aware, gentle reader, a myriadic plethora of radio stations play the modern equivalent of the “Jack” format, billing themselves as the best of the 80s, 90s, and today, but their playlists are really only an inch deep and reflect whatever catalogs of song rights are cheap at the moment–and they tend to play the same songs from the 1980s year after year, and have for a long time.

Suffice to say that none of those songs that I’ve heard, if not constantly since the 1980s, at least in the last decade or so since the 80s hits have taken over the airwaves again. I mean, Bon Jovi’s catalog from the Slippery When Wet era gets heavy rotation on both the Jack and the Classic Rock stations, so they’re not pinned in my memory to the time. Or Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me” from the Breakfast Club soundtrack. That runs regularly on the radio.

But the 1980s programs like the American Top 40 replays or Nina Blackwood’s syndicated program play songs that were on the radio all the time in the 1980s but have not been on the radio all the time since, so those songs pin me like a butterfly on a display board to the moments when I was young and wishing that the DJ would stop talking so I could record the whole song from the radio even though they were talking in and talking out to keep me from recording on the radio.

I recognized one such song on the radio during one of the aforementioned radio programs, but not enough to identify it. Apparently, it was Simple Minds’ “Alive and Kicking”:

It pulled me back to the 1980s when I heard it even though I could not name it. My beautiful wife could, as she had (or maybe has) the record.

Yeah, “Jesse’s Girl” doesn’t do that. “Jesse’s Girl”, who is on Medicare now, has been a staple through the decades. Which makes it common. And not evocative of the time of which it is the product.

Billy Joel, Stevie Nicks to perform at Arrowhead Stadium

Things I would have thought it impossible to say twenty years ago: It’s been over twenty years since I saw Billy Joel in concert. Which is true: It was his 2000 Years tour. Back when I was a technical writer and worked at DRA. He played at the arena in St. Louis, Savvis Center I think it was called then.

But 20 years have passed, and I’m not sure how keen I am to drive three hours to sit in a stadium to watch him. Which is more a testament to my aging and getting to be nearly a senior citizen in that time.

Of course, all bets are off if Herb Alpert comes within a three hour drive of me. But that would be at a more intimate venue. I think I’m just out of the age of stadium concerts. Not that I’ve ever been to a concert in a big stadium anyway. Perhaps I never was of that age.

Chuck Mangione’s “The Land of Make Believe” in the original Klingon tuba:

The livestream for WSIE has gone awry, so I’m listening to KCSM which has a more pure jazz playlist, which means I get to hear things like this for the nonce.

I briefly mentioned a thought game four years ago to think up bands who have songs that are another band’s name.

Back then, I had such suggestions as Fozzy’s “All That Remains” and Alice Cooper’s “Poison”.

To these I should like to add Bad Company’s “Shooting Star”:

In the early 1990s, listening to AOR on QFM in Milwaukee, one would also hear the band Shooting Star, generally “Last Chance”:

I bought greatest hits collections on cassette by both bands, Shooting Star on the weight of the song above and Bad Company’s based on “Feel Like Making Love” which I’d first bought as a cassette single.

Bad Company might win this game, as the band also has a song “Bad Company”:

I am not sure you can get more recursive than that.

Ya know, when I hear Bona Fide’s “Coupe de Ville” come on WSIE, I think, “Ah, that’s ‘Minneapolis, 1987’.”

Here’s Bona Fide:

Here’s Brian Bromberg doing “Minneapolis, 1987”:

I guess Bona Fide is sampling Brian Bromberg.

Which is weird, because Brian Bromberg has a song called “Coupe de Ville” on Thicker than Water, the same album as “Minneapolis, 1987”:

Is Bona Fide mashing up the two Bromberg songs/riffing off of “Coupe de Ville” with the sample from “Minneapolis, 1987”? I don’t know.

But in researching this post and listening to the two songs, I’m pleased to learn I’m not crazy or that musically challenged. It’s not like when I confuse two singers who sound nothing alike.

On May 28, I posted The Jazzy Pajamas of Nogglestead and mentioned KHTR, which was Top 40 radio in St. Louis until it switched over to oldies one night. I mean, we went to bed listening to the radio on Sunday, and on Monday morning we awakened to oldies. I thought it was a gag or something on the morning show. Oh, but no. I am pretty sure that the oldies station is gone–I see on an Internet search that it’s now like all the other radio stations that play 70s, 80s, 90s, and now–omitting, apparently, 20 years of crap, although today’s music is tomorrow’s crap.

But Facebook showed me a photo from a group or page it thinks I might be interested in, and it’s the KHTR top hits report, presumably printed in the Post-Dispatch, although the Globe-Democrat was still wheezing along in 1984:

I can actually still recollect most of those songs. The ones I do not remember are:

• “Love Somebody” by Rick Springfield
• “Tonight” by Kool and the Gang
• “Breakdance” by Irene Cara
• “A Fine Fine Day” by Tony Carey
• “Illegal Alien” by Genesis
• “Show Me” by the Pretenders

Of course, if I heard them, I might remember them. It helps that the local 70s, 80s, 90s, and now stations are replaying the hit countdown programs from the 1980s. No fooling; although I did not hear Casey Kasem within the last week (the Springfield station shifted American Top 40 to Sunday evenings instead of Sundays returning from church time), we did hear both Shadoe Stevens and Rick Dees replayed at different times on our trip to and from Wisconsin.

The list includes, what, four songs from the Footloose soundtrack (yes).

Also, Tracey Ullman would later be known as the comedy sketch show where the Simpsons first appeared. And then forgotten.

Holy cats, Generation X is really the last gasp for radio, ainna?

At any rate,

In April, I bought a Pat Travers Band album:

Crash and Burn by the Pat Travers Band because someone, I think it was Jack Baruth, posted about him once upon a time recently, although a quick search of his blog does not come up with a post about the band.

Today, while trolling through my archives (sorry, gentle reader: I do not write for you, but I write for me sometime in the future trolling my archives), while trolling through my archives, I discovered a different Pat entirely:

I guess the world wants me to look for Pete Metheny records at book sales.

Clearly, I need a Know The Difference post on these guys.

As I have mentioned, gentle reader, I support friends’ and acquaintances’ artistic endeavours. I mean, I will buy books, I will buy CDs, and I will even go to see friends in musical theatre productions. I prefer CDs and book because I do not like musicals, and musicals tend to cost several hundred dollars instead of $10 or $20.

I mentioned I bought Connor Fiehler’s CD Generation Flee in 2020 because I used to work with his parents. When his mother posted on Facebook that he had a new band, I gave it a listen.

She linked to this performance:

Wow, okay, a soul/funk band with a horn section. That’s better than Generation Flee, and the one lead singer can really wail.

The band, The Pitch Pockets, has a single, “Out My Mind”, available on Amazon.

I have bought it, of course, and hope they’ll release more. They’ve got some other things on YouTube worth watching as well.