Jimi Hendrix - Stone Free

Someone told me I don't like Classic Rock the other day.  I think that's not exactly true.  I think I don't like modern Classic Rock radio.  I think I don't like it because when I listen to music, I don't just listen to a ten or twelve year time span.  I also think that some music is of a time, and it belongs to that time, and it should stay in that time.  Think about it - what fifteen year old kid these days needs to know that Styx or Bad Co. even existed?  Hey, you can give me a hard time about Grand Funk or BTO, but I'm not asking anyone to play their songs three times a day anymore.  Plus, a lot of what I think of as a classic is often just something overlooked, or forgotten.  I was the generation that coined the term "classic," and we weren't referring to Styx or Boston.  We were genuinely happy to hear an old Yardbirds song, or something by Jimi Hendrix.  These musicians made music we felt shouldn't ever be forgotten.

So that's how I end up thinking about this oddball Jimi album that came out in 1980.  It's a UK budget series and I'll bet it still cost me top dollar since it's an import.  Now, I'm not the biggest Jimi fan.  All my Jimi records are some kind collection, and none of them are his original albums.  Some day, I might fix that, but it's been okay for me for a long time, so things may never change.  I was a senior in high school when I got this.  I think it was at a really cool old place that used to be in Parma.  They carried a lot of imports back then and I'm pretty sure this is where I'd have bought it.  I know I bought it for two reasons:  Stone Free is my favorite Jimi song by a long shot, and I just absolutely love the cover.  What got me thinking about it was that back in April for Record Store Day they made a big deal about releasing a 45 with Stone Free on it, and the big selling point is that it's in mono.  BFD.  I've had the mono version of Stone Free since 1980, because that's what they chose to put on here.  It sounds great, so I can see unearthing it, but I'm good with this album.

I'm mostly good with this album because for some reason it sounds really great!  I love the way this record sounds.  Considering the source material probably isn't original masters or anything like that, this record just has a really black background and a nice, balanced attack that lends itself well to letting the neighbors in on your fun.  They'll appreciate you, because this record is also a bunch of well chosen songs that someone actually thought about how they would work together.  I've always thought that the flow of the songs on an album can make a good album a great one when they work together and sound like they all belong with each other, and Stone Free just really works for me.  I mean, it's got Castles Made of Sand, Crosstown Traffic, Ezy Rider and two Bob Dylan songs - All Along the Watchtower (you know it's the best version, even if you're a big Bob fan) and The Drifter's Escape (which I don't know where that came from, but it's cool).  But every song is a keeper, including a blistering version of Johnny B. Goode that's live from somewhere.  I'm sure you can look it up on the internets.  I'll tell ya, the guy that put this together must have actually talked to me at some point, and he took notes and made my record!

There used to be a stereo store in my town and I think I had just taken my Dual turntable in to get a new cartridge that was better than the 12 dollar Audio Technica that was there when I bought it.  I think that's when I figured out that this record sounded better than a lot of my other ones, and I think this album is one of the records I took to Audio Craft in 1982 when I bought my first really decent stereo.  Unlike today, there was no internet where people with no stereo at all made fun of your "entry level" stereo even though they had never heard it.  But I liked the guy that ran the little stereo store in town.  He didn't last long, and he even sold records, but he showed me how to mount a cartridge and was the first person that proved to me that a better one was worthwhile.  This record really benefited from that better cartridge.  It sounds like a brand new record even almost 35 years later.  I think it's really good.  You should get it if you come across it.

*A little edit - some of the songs are a little less awesome in sound quality, but most of this record always gets me to to go, "man, this sounds great!"

Steppenwolf - Live

I just bought this the other day while I was in Windsor, Canada.  I don't usually write about something I just got, but I just never owned it because pretty much everyone in my junior high school never owned their own copy of this.  We shared the same copy that the school library had, and believe me, Steppenwolf Live was absolutely the heaviest album our school had.  It well may have been the only Rock album.  So every study hall we'd go down and get it out and put on these godawful headphones and sit around and listen to it.

I remember the old record player.  It was a Califone.  I think it was a Rheem/Califone.  My hot water tank is a Rheem, so it only makes sense that they used to make record players and sell them to schools.  I'm pretty sure the players lasted for at least forty years, but any record payed on them was pretty much beat to death before you even flipped it over.  Ours had a little pod that came out and four kids could plug in headphones and listen to the same record at the same time.  I think they went so far as to cut the wires going to the speaker to make sure no one disturbed other people in the library.  So that's where we'd go, into the library and pop on set of phones and break out some Steppenwolf!

We had a smokestack out behind the school where we'd sneak out and smoke in between classes.  But before school I used to meet people at the Fairgrounds or at the Masonic Temple behind the school.  It was right around this time that all of us started smoking the evil weed, and it was always fun to get high and then go to school.  So we'd smoke a J and go hang in the library and listen to Steppenwolf.  I remember thinking that John Kay was probably a brilliant man because I thought Monster was real poetry.  I don't think that anymore, but I do think Kay was better than a lot of the bands of his era, and he doesn't get much credit for anything other than inspiring people to ride motorcycles.  Maybe some of his lyrics sound kind of cliche these days, but we really did think about the draft.  We thought about it a lot.  So a song like Draft Resister really kind of opened our eyes a little bit.  I think I once told someone, "Why should I go fight for my country in Vietnam or something?  My family is peaceful, I should stay here and fight to make the people that want to send us to wars go fight them themselves.  I don't want them here anyway."

Man, I remember that didn't go over very well with some parents.  But all of us knew that the kid down the street or an older brother was in Vietnam, and all of us had seen the devastation to a family when that kid didn't come home.  I used to go door to door with petitions and hang out in K Mart's parking lot getting signatures for a lot of things, like ending the draft, lowering the voting age and lowering the drinking age (my sentimental favorite).  I think that stuff worked, because I was one of the first graduating classes that just had to get a Selective Service number (which terrified me enough).  So yeah, these days maybe Steppenwolf sounds a little corny with their protest songs, but they were better at it than a lot of other bands were.

Now, getting back to junior high, weed and the library - I remember more than one occasion when we'd be kicking back, enjoying the buzz and digging Steppenwolf for the billionth time, and one of us just blurting, "Sookie, sookie, sookie, sookie, sookie sookie soo!"  Man, all of a sudden all the kids in the library would start laughing and the librarian, I think her name was Mrs. Morton, would come over and rip the needle of the record with a screeching "rrrrriiiiipppppp!" sound, and whisper/shout at us to "Be quiet or you'll all sit in separate corners with no music!"  Man, that would make you feel stupid, lemme tell ya!

So I bought this the other day at Dr. Disc in Windsor.  I was flipping through the recent arrivals bins, and there was a pretty worn looking copy (not as bad as the one I used for a picture - that looks more like the library's copy!), but it says Made in Canada and it looks like a pretty early Dunhill Canadian pressing.  Inside the back pocket of the cover another, older record store wrote 4.49 on it.  I remember a lot of used record stores used to do that.  They'd open the sleeve and tell you how much the record was.  So I was thinking, "Man, this is the second store (at least) that this record has wound up at, probably isn't worth a second look," but the records themselves are in audiophile sleeves and they look very rarely played.  The cover just wasn't stored in a bag, so it's got some ringwear.  Now, I buy records to play, not to admire from a distance, so things like primo records in so-so covers don't bother me.  When I got home I found my new Nagaoka MP110 cartridge waiting for me, so I mounted that sucker, and popped in my new record.

I'll say this - if you want a cartridge for 100 bucks, you'll probably like this one a lot.  I'll also say this - Steppenwolf Live is a great record.  Yeah, it's definitely of an era, but the crunchy guitar on Magic Carpet Ride and the ten minute long version of Monster are just really cool.  A couple songs are actually studio recordings, but so what?  They still sound great.  The band was tight and just ramshackle enough to make things worthwhile.  I'm glad Dr. Disc had it.

By the way, Dr. Disc is a really cool store for Canada.  They don't have as much cool Detroit sounds as I'd hope, but they always seem to have four or five albums I want, and their prices are way better than most Canadian record stores I've been to.  The guy that's always in there when I've been there is super friendly, and if the store isn't busy he'll talk your ear off!  But I like that.  I like record store people that don't try to make you feel insignificant (you know, like High Fidelity) and I like guys that don't mind saying, "I never heard the band you're talking about."  Since when is it a crime to not know something?  There's like 100 billion records on the planet, and no one has heard them all.  So if you go to Windsor, stop in and buy some records or cd's.

The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

1983 was a long, long time ago.  I had been at the Press (not the old newspaper, that's just what we called where I worked) for a year and my oldest son was a year old and I had been married for less than that.  I think we lived in an apartment building, but we may have still been in my wife's mom's basement.  I think it was the basement.  I had a '70 Torino I bought from a friend for 75 bucks over two paychecks (150 dollar car, so you know it was nice!).  It had a 351 Cleveland and a posi rear end.  It flat out hauled ass, but it was pretty beat up.  We used to take her mom wherever she needed to go, and I paid her about 2/3'ds of my pay for rent and took her wherever she wanted to go because she couldn't drive.  I remember an uncle staying there and I was going to a concert with a woman I had known since Jr. High, and my wife was going dancing with her friends and we were going to meet up at the bar down the street after the show.  The uncle said we'd never make it.  It's 2013 and I'm still married to the same girl, so I don't feel bad about telling him he should mind his own business and only talk shit about things he knew (I may have told her mom that, but I wanted to tell him, and at that point in my life I was pretty chippy when I was pissed, so I think I told him).

You know what The Plimsouls had to do with that?  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  I didn't have this album then.  I wasn't buying many records for the first part of the 80's because I didn't have any money and Reagan and his cronies were real tough on the minimum wage crowd, lemme tell ya.  I think I got this in the mid 90's on cd.  I've got a really clean vinyl version of it, too.  It even has the original paper sleeve, which has the lyrics and some cool neon greenness to it.  The one thing I don't like about this album is that the drums sound like 1985, and unfortunately this was released in 1981.  None of that matters, though.  The songs are all top notch and you can tell through the shiny production that these guys were just killer.  Which leads me to a question - If this kind of production can't be overlooked, then why do I have to listen through the added layers of hiss and clipping to get to the "killer catchy pop sensibilities" of a band like Times New Viking, but the truly great songwriting and execution is much easier to hear and enjoy here?  Why is that, some of you critics out there?  Why is made up lo fi better than too much studio sheen?  I think it's because if you compared the two bands live, The Plimsouls would make today's lo fi popsters sound like amateurs.  I may not be enamored of the way this sounds, but there's no denying that Shaky City, How Long Will It Take and A Million Miles Away are really great songs.  Songs as good as anyone was doing in 1981, and songs that still sound great today.

Like I said, I've got a really clean copy of this.  I think I bought it used six or seven years ago, then found another one to replace that one more recently.  I think it's one of those records someone got as gift or something and never played.  Either that, or it's like some people with reel to reel decks used to do - they'd buy an lp, record it and then sell it back to the record store or at a garage sale someday.  Thanks, person that did that or didn't like good music.  Whatever the reason for me getting a minty fresh copy of one of my favorite records of all time, I really appreciated your lack  of effort where this record was concerned!

The Dexateens - Hardwire Healing

I've had a friend over doing some work on my house here and there the last few weeks.  He's a wonderful guy and a real craftsman, so whatever he charges I never care because the end results are just something else.  He's really a cabinet maker, but the need for cabinet makers in this day and age seems smaller than it used to be.  Years ago, he was married to a girl with a great job, and he worked for the airlines and made seriously good money, and he had a beautiful McIntosh stereo.  That was the first really amazing stereo I had ever heard.  He's since upgraded the one I heard, but he says it's getting older nowadays and he can no longer afford to upgrade it (besides, upgrading $10,000 components requires more than $10,000).  So he's glad he got what he did when he did, but he was saying he wasn't sure he'd do it over again.

Our conversations eventually (make that quickly) turn to music.  This time he mentioned that he doesn't know anyone to turn him on to new music, and the radio is awful and he hates the internet.  I told him the internet is a valuable tool, but you certainly don't need it. You can still do things the old fashioned way, and you'll find all kinds of great stuff.  Now, my friend has an amazing cd collection of well over 5000 disks (years ago he sold his Empire table and all but about 50 MOFI records - he truly regrets this), and he's a little older than me so he's pretty heavy on the classic rock, but also listens to classical, jazz, blues and really twangy country (he really liked my description of new country as "Journey with cowboy hats").  So he's more than willing to see what's out there, but he's just not sure how, and he says that a mutual friend of ours and me are the only people that still need music in their life to get by and be happy.  Since he's not on the internet much, he's really flummoxed that people think shitty mp3's and ipod's are a substitute for a decent stereo, plenty of amplification and cd or vinyl sources.  I had to tell him that he's not alone, but there's not nearly enough kids these days staring at pictures of the modern day equivalents of Pioneer SX 780's and Dual turntables, while they spin records by new bands that have integrity and know how to write their own songs.

So while he was putting in my new front screen door (which is beautiful), I played him The Dexateens' Hardwire Healing cd (I don't have this on vinyl, I should fix that).  Right off the bat, the big, three guitar attack hits him square in the back of the head on Naked Ground and he's asking, "What year did this come out?"  I told him 2006 or 2007, something like that.  He said, "I like that it sounds like it could have come out any time since 1970.  It sounds like it's just always been there, but it sounds real good."  That's what I get from these guys.  I'll even credit them with getting me to revisit Lynyrd Skynyrd (I hated them when I was a kid and for a long time after), because The Dexateens don't sound like some racist assholes with a confederate flag.  When The South rises again, The South is gonna have to deal with a generation of people that think that flag stands for a bunch of jackasses that they're embarrassed with.  I was surprised to find that I think Ronnie Van Zant probably thought more like me than I thought, and I've since been enjoying them.  Fixed my uptight ass!

Now the other things he liked were the crazed and disjointed three guitar intro to Fyffe, and I told him he needed to listen to this one a few times because the lyrics are really cool.  It's about a paranoid sort of guy that actually makes some valid points about wanting answers to his questions.  He liked the thumping of Maker's Mound, which just grabs you reminds you we're all gonna die, and we don't know where we're going, but you can hope it's somewhere you want to be.  What I found funny is the instant empathy he had (as did I the first time I heard it) of living "outside the loop in Ohio, in O-hi-o..." when Outside the Loop played.

I have realized that just because I love a band (make no mistake, I LOVE The Dexateens) doesn't mean the rest of you will.  This has been clearly borne out through getting to see bands like The Dexateens or The Dirtbombs and finding out that only 75 other people in Cleveland cared (and my group made for four or five of those).  I'm not the arbiter of all things great in Rock N' Roll, I'm just a guy.  But it does make me sad that so few people are interested in how great three guitars and some pounding drums can make you feel.  It feels great, and I'm not gonna get bummed out that so many people would rather not feel great.  I'll just keep turning my little part of the world on to bands like this, and be happy that those people are feeling a little more great, like me.

Montrose - Montrose

I am by no means a fan of Sammy Hagar.  Nor am I big fan of Arena Style rock.  At least, I don't think I'm a big Arena Rock fan.  I might be though, just because of when I grew up.  I mean, Big was in, and I like Big, Loud music.  So maybe I like Arena Rock more than I want to.  I don't think that matters, though.  So what?  At least a band like Montrose was aspiring to something.  They wanted to Rock the Nations, and on this album, when Sammy Hagar was just Sam, and Ronnie Montrose was an up and coming guitar god, these guys came up with a Big, Loud, Fun album.

Just think about Bad Motor Scooter.  Almost any song with a guitar that sounds like a motor of some sort is okay in my book, and Bad Motor Scooter has that in spades!  I mean, think about it - how cool can a scooter be?  Cool ones are Vespa's and they come in colors like pink and teal.  But the girl Sam (not Sammy) is singing about lives on a farm and her brothers probably put a Harley engine on it, and now her scooter sounds like a cool guitar running through twenty Marshall stacks.  That's a baaad motor scooter, for sure!  But why is she going to hang out with Sam (not Sammy)?  She's got this awesome motor scooter and he's afraid to come over to her house because he's afraid of her dad.  No wonder he changed his name.

I always kind of wanted to fly in a spaceship.  Mostly because you can probably really, really haul ass with warp drive.  There are certain songs that I've always felt would just be good to play while hauling ass around Alpha Centauri, and Space Station #5 is definitely one of those songs.  I mean the coolest things about this album are definitely Ronnie's guitars, but the whole thing actually works pretty well.    Actually every song on here that works really well is built on a big assed riff that just won't quit, and I'm pretty sure that's the recipe to follow to write awesome rock songs.  Montrose succeeds on every level on this album.

I'd like to say I knew all about this back in 1973, but I didn't.  The girls I looked to for musical guidance half the time probably liked Rock Candy because you could dance to it (I bet it was popular in strip clubs for awhile), but none of them really seemed all that interested in a record like this.  So I suppose this is a guy's album, more or less.  I know the first time I heard it I had already heard some Punk, and this is far removed from that, but this is just really fun music.  I can remember hearing Rock Candy on the radio, but I never knew who it was.  I bet I didn't buy this until the mid to late 80's, and I still probably don't play it as much as I would have if I had heard this before I had a car.

The funny thing is that the first side is really great, all the way through.  The second side is good, but it also has Rock Candy on it, which is smart because it's the best song on the album and gets you to listen to some of the songs that aren't quite good enough to fit on side one.  Songs like Good Rockin' Tonight and One Thing on My Mind are good, but they'd never have made it onto side one.  Still, if you play side two first and then flip it over, it's a record that just gets better and better, so that's the way to do it.

My record is nice and flat and has a little surface noise, but it's not bad.  It doesn't have a bar code, but it has a plastic inner sleeve.  So I either bought it used or got a new sleeve for it, I'd guess.  I bet you can get one of these real cheap and it would be a nice addition to your collection.

Cheap Trick - In Color

The first time I bought Cheap Trick - In Color, was in 1977 for my brother for xmas.  I wasn't all that familiar with them, but they played them a bit on college radio back then.  I thought they'd be a fun band for a 13 year old to get into.  He seemed to like them for awhile but then eventually he got into The Clash and I'm pretty sure that when push comes to shove they're the only band he listens to, even to this day.  I don't know why he decided he only needed to listen to one band, but maybe that's all the attention span he's got?

This record always kind of sat on the back burner for me.  I liked it.  I didn't love it, but I liked it.  I think I was working at a car wash, and if I went into my brother's room and stole his album (which was something I was allowed to do - he was forbidden to touch my records) before work, I'd have Cheap Trick stuck in my head all day while I dried cars at the end of the wash.  I really liked being up at that end of the wash, because I was allowed to smoke when there wasn't a car, and I had enough time if a car just entered the wash to run next door and get and ice cold Orange Crush.  Man, I loved that stuff when I worked there. Not a big fan of orange pop these days or even ever since, but back then I could smoke a half a joint in the car wash, have a nice menthol smoke and run next door and get an Orange Crush and I thought life was pretty fuckin' great!

This album was kind of funny in that when you played it for someone back then, they didn't seem to interested in it.  But come 1979 and all these songs became standard airplay and big hits with the release of Cheap Trick - Live at Budokan.  I thought it was pretty cool that they got some recognition, but I always liked the way this album sounded more.  They were simple, straight up Rock songs and they had the kind of production that would make those songs just stick in your head.  I always liked Hello There, and I remember reading somewhere that they used to use that song to help the sound guy dial in the sound.  That's why each member comes in clearly on their own in the song.  It's short and simple, but that seemed like a great idea to me, and I like songs that are put together like that for some reason.  I think my favorite song is still Come On, Come On but Southern Girls gives it a run for the money.

I remember hearing I Want You to Want Me from the live album a few years later and arguing with a friend in his car that there was no way I had heard it, because it was "new."  I told him it was on a live album, so odds were pretty good they had some other albums out, you just hadn't heard of them yet.  I remember he was pretty solid in his argument, and then I told him, "But you never heard of Peter Frampton before Frampton Comes Alive, so why wouldn't it be the same for Cheap Trick?"  Lemme tell ya, sometimes you just can't argue with someone when they're high.  I think I even pulled out my ultimate bit of Rock Snobbery and called the album, In Color and in Black and White, because that way I could show my massive superiority of all things Rock N Roll, but he had never seen the album so it was pretty lost on him.  Lemme tell ya, sometimes you just can't argue with someone when you're high.

So I think I found this on the reissued CD in 1998, with some bonus tracks.  I called my brother to come over because I was sure he hadn't heard it in decades, and he didn't even know what album we were listening to!  What?  So I was left in a bit of a funk, lemme tell ya.  The cd is fine and you get a few bonus tracks that won't change your life any.  I found a copy of the record at a record store in Corning, NY for like two bucks (I think that's where I got this, you can get it anywhere, I'm sure).  The record is nice and flat and I think sounds pretty good.  The cover is nice and pretty and it's funny to look at how Cheap Trick was trying to market themselves.  I think it's a fun record, but for some reason a little Cheap Trick goes a long way for me.

Mason Proffit - Wanted

I should probably pick some newer music, but I just haven't felt like it, I guess.  I'm not saying I've been on a Mason Proffit binge or anything, but I have been listening to some old stuff that's made me think of things to say on here.  Maybe that's just because I'm more familiar with it?  I don't know, and I don't really care.  I just noticed I have this album the other day, and I remember buying it not all that long ago.  I bought it because it wasn't like thirty dollars, and I remembered that at a lot of shows long, long ago this was a pretty sought after record in the Cleveland area.  I remember the first time I heard about it, too.  Not the first time I heard it, the first time I heard about it.  There's a big difference.

I've mentioned before that when I was younger (like a teenager) I wanted to be serious about music.  I didn't want to just listen and bop my head and yell, "Crank it!  This is jammin'!"  I wanted to know why it was "jammin'" and I wanted to talk to other people and see if they agreed why I thought it was "jammin'" or not. That conversation really generally degenerates into something like "You just don't know what's good" pretty quickly (my favorite retort was always, "Maybe not, but I know what's bad!").  Every now and then I could find some oddball music nerd like myself that would gladly spend an entire party ignoring all their friends so they could pontificate about what was good and right about music, and what was wrong and inherently evil about the music industry with someone that hadn't heard every one of their theories until they wanted to strangle said music nerd.  Hey, I always knew how he felt, my friends were pretty sick of me, too!

Now Mason Proffit's Wanted isn't a particularly rare and sought after album, but in the late 70's, very early 80's it was out of print and so when you heard someone going on about how Two Hangmen was one of the most powerful statements of the human condition ever, and it was also one of the first songs that blended the not lame parts of Country with all the goodness Rock music had to offer.  The fact that it was kind of obscure and that when you did find a copy it was kind of beat and/or expensive kind of assured certain fanboys of being able to hold the album a little bit above your head.  Anyone that stayed up all night around this part of the world would eventually hear Two Hangmen, and you'd generally have to admit, it was a mostly cool song.  Not quite what some record nerds would have had you believe, but it's pretty good.

The funny thing to me is that while it's fun to talk about some supposed masterpiece that someone else hasn't heard, when that someone finally hears it, they often wish they could get right back into that conversation and say, "Hey!  That record is only about a half hour long, and there's a lot of slow, hippie peace bullshit to wade through!"  Now, don't get me wrong.  I like hippie peace bullshit as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't doubt that even though these guys were on a tiny label called Happy Tiger, I bet they had some other influences adding strings and fucking up their drum sound.  Drum sound is important to me, and the problem here is that it sounds like someone stuffed a pillow in the kick drum.  I hate that.  It just makes it thud.  A lot like the thud of hitting a pillow instead of a drum.  But the strings that get added just remind me of how Damnation of Adam Blessing often had the "hard" part of their Hard Rock sound softened by some label guy that thought the kids didn't like the really hard stuff, and that if a little violin worked for Mozart, it would work for Rock bands, too.  It doesn't.  It just gets in the way.

So getting back to not hearing what other Rock Nerd is talking about, these days you can just pull it up on your phone and try calling the guy out with your shitty 1/8" speakers.  Which isn't fair, but I'm sure it's done. In the case of Mason Proffit, I had to wait a long, long time to find the record inexpensively enough for me to be interested since I had heard Two Hangmen and wasn't sure if I remembered thinking it was totally amazing at 4:00 AM back when I was 22.  As it turns out, I'm probably much more patient with this record these days that I ever would have been back then, but I'd love to get back into that conversation and ask the guy what he thought of Sweet Lady Love, which has a pretty nice, slippery guitar and I think a little smaller pillow in the kick drum.  I think it's much better than Two Hangmen, and it's easily my favorite song on the album.

You know, it's funny the bits of conversations I can remember from decades ago.  These days I think I still take music more seriously than most people, especially because I mostly listen to music made for fun.  I mean, seriously, when's the last time you analyzed a roller coaster ride or a backyard picnic?  You probably don't. They're just fun.  Some are more fun than others and that's all you think about.  But me, I have to sit and remember some conversation I had at a backyard picnic thirty years ago and wish I could sit down with this record nerd I was talking to and see if he still thinks Wanted is a great lost classic, or just rightfully kind of lost.  Hey!  Dude that was talking to me!  Read my blog, maan!