Blacktop - I Got a Baaad Feeling About This

As we approach post number 50, which I had damned well better pick a decent record for, I’m  trying to think of what that record should be, and that means for sure, Mick Collins has to be in consideration.  I think Mick is one of the absolute best things about American music.  He’s got a guitar sound that is almost indescribable, and the guy can sing with as much soul and feeling as anyone, anywhere, anytime.  I’m not sure what he would consider his musical direction to be, because he’s all over the map stylistically, but his bands always have a style that they stay true to, but at the same time they don’t mind pushing envelopes.  Mick seems real good about letting the band sound like themselves, and I’d think that probably means he’s a pretty generous musician and it’s probably fun to play in his bands.

So today I’m gonna talk about Blacktop.  This is Mick’s band after The Gories, and no, I wasn’t anywhere near cool enough to know who they were while they were functioning as a unit.  I barely knew who The Gories were, and for me, the book is still out on them.  But Blacktop was awesome.  I mean, these guys were noisy and dark, with big, thumping drums and distorted, raw guitars.  Reading the liner notes of the cd version of I Got a Baaad Feelin’ About This also explains why Mick’s voice is as shredded as the guitars.  I’m pretty sure a lot of people won't  like Blacktop, but who cares?  I think it’s fantastic.  One of the albums I’m more than happy to have the original vinyl of as well as the cd with tons of bonus tracks.

The best thing about the record is that it’s one of those rare albums that are just cohesive and perfect in and of themselves.  You don’t need the cd if you have the vinyl, but it’s nice to have.  The best thing about the cd is they put the whole album in order and then they add everything else after, so you can listen to it the way it came out originally, just quit listening after track 14.  You’ll be good after that anyway, trust me.  Like I said, it’s kinda dark and it’s a record that demands your attention.  Not like it’s hard to listen to, but it’s hard to not listen to it.  You’ll pay attention.  You may get up and dance, but you’ll be involved because this is involving music.

Which kind of means that if you came here because you wanted to find what I have to say about Rod Stewart or Artful Dodger you may not like this at all.  Which is fine.  This is my record collection, and when push comes to shove, as much as I like things like BTO or David Bowie, I bet I listen to things like this more often.  It’s a shame drugs fucked this up (not Mick Collins, he’s not fucked up at all – in fact, I talked to him at a show and he’s a super nice guy), because I think Blacktop could have been something.  I’m not thinking commercial success, but something other than a band I have a record and cd of and wouldn’t ever get rid of either because I think they’re so unbelievably great.  So to me, this is one of the posts I think should get 1000 hits, but it won’t.  It will get 25 in two years, but that’s just the way it is.  Maybe if you haven’t heard them and you made your way to my little blog, you’ll check them out and you’ll like it as much as I do.

Now, my cd is the usual cd – silver and flat with terrific liner notes by Mick.  My record is cooler.  I found it at a record show, and the guy selling it didn’t know what it was, and he seemed pretty knowledgeable about more underground bands.  It was cheap, and it’s almost perfect in every way.  It was fun talking to the guy I bought it from.  I told him it was one of my all-time favorites, and it was Mick Collins.  He knew The Gories and The Dirtbombs but had no idea about Blacktop, and after I told him about it he said he wished he had listened to it.  I told him I was glad he didn’t, because I didn’t think he’d have sold it to me if he had!

Bachman - Turner Overdrive II

I’m never gonna apologize for my love of the first few Bachman – Turner Overdrive albums.  Never.  BTO was one of the first bands I ever loved, and Bachman – Turner Overdrive II may be one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money.  It may even be the very first.  I know I got it when it was still in the charts, so I was eleven.  I thought I was very sophisticated for having an album with songs like Welcome Home on it, which I thought the slow parts of were what Jazz would be like.  And I just knew that one day, I’d have a basement bar like my friend’s dad that had a real stereo had, and I’d sit around drinking brown liquor in a rocks glass and impressing my grown up friends by grown up me proudly proclaiming that, “I was into jazz at a young age.  Remember Welcome Home by BTO?  That’s what got me into jazz.”  Grown up me would then bask in the awesomeness that a statement like that was sure to bring.

So it turns out that’s still what I think jazz should be, and if it isn’t that, then it’s boring.  If that makes me boring, so be it.  I’m done trying to like music that’s boring to me.  I like Rock N’ Roll, I make no apologies and you can listen to all the noodly guitar playing and drums solo’s with brushes you want.  I want some amplification.  I don’t seem to care how dumb it is, and BTO is loud and dumb and I love it!  Besides, C. F. Turner has always seemed to me to be like the manliest man of all when it comes to singing.  Cheetah Chrome talked about the difference some guys singing have, and he just said that some guys have more balls in their singing, and all the guys lacking in that department can look at C. F. Turner and know that they’ll never measure up.  Is there anything more purely male than Let It Ride?  I don’t think so.  It starts off with those almost jangly guitars and some acceptable harmony singing, then the monster riff kicks in and C. F. lets it go,  While you been out runnin’ I been waitin’ half the night

Dude’s pissed.  You can tell.  He’s doing things worthwhile, and the old lady isn’t.

But this album just stuck in my ear all the time because all the riffs are huge, and the lyrics weren’t way over my head when I was a kid.  Hey, I wanted to ride my sting ray bike around and be able to sing the words with my friends and not feel stupid because I thought he was singing something totally different than he really was.  Thanks, C. F.  That big voice of yours cut through everything into my eleven year old brain, and it stuck good.  I knew back then that the whole thing with girls was gonna be a bitch, but I wouldn’t be alone.

Then there’s like the monster hit that Randy Bachman sings, Takin’ Care of Business, which was everywhere on the radio back in ’73.  Hell, it’s still on the radio all the time!  I always thought it was strange that the biggest BTO hits were Randy’s songs, because they were never the really heavy ones.  I think even my parents could stand the poppy Randy songs, but they were damned glad when I had this album I had a lowly GE plastic mono record player with a nickel on the tonearm to grind the needle into my records better.  You couldn't hear it more than two or three feet away, so it would be a few years before my parents found out what a woofer was.

So obviously, the copy I have now isn’t my original, but it’s not bad.  The original wouldn’t play, I’m sure.  But mine is pretty flat, quiet during the songs but a little noisy in between, and it’s got the old red label, just like mine did when I was a kid.  Now, should you run out and get this if you don’t have it?  Probably not.  But I wouldn’t get rid of it in a million years!

Cub Koda and The Points

Have you ever looked for a record for 30 years?  I have.  Sure, you can order anything you want on the internet.  But you always could just pick up the phone and call a few dealers in Goldmine and get anything you wanted.  Especially if you’re me and you’re really not looking for some gonzo rarity that’s gonna set you back a few hundred bucks.  Well anyway, one of those records I’ve been looking for since high school showed up at some pathetic excuse for a record store in Medina, Ohio the other day.  These dipshits actually have their records displayed to browse the way people store them in their homes.  I mean, you can’t flip through them, you have to try and read the spines like books because they put them on shelves, and they’re packed so tight, there’s no flipping whatsoever.  Assholes.

Anyway, I was waiting on a part and a customer for work, so I had a few minutes to kill and this was right around the corner.  I looked for like ten minutes and then was just going to leave when I noticed a very small section marked “Specialty Records.”  That used to be the euphemism for bootlegs, but these guys considered albums with all their inserts and booklets specialties, as well as colored vinyl.  So there were only about thirty records to sift through and I was already on the floor, so I figured I’d look.  One of the last records I saw was Cub Koda and The Points.

I about pissed my pants!  I heard his version of Cadillac Walk back in 1980 (I was still in school) and I never could find that record.  I don’t keep a real list, but I have a few things in my brain that I just always look for, and this was right there on my list.  I wanted a pink one, if possible (I think it’s the original, there seem to be lots of red ones on the internets), but I’d have bought the first decent one I came across.  Which was this pink one, with a cut corner just like the picture I found.

Anyway, you might think that I would be utterly disappointed that the record I wanted for 30 + years wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it would be, but you’d be wrong.  The amount of ass Cub kicks on this album looks like a Chuck Norris movie body count.  If you like your Rock N’ Roll straight with no chaser, this is the shit.  Cub doesn’t make any mistakes here.  There’s one ballad, Crazy People and it’s completely okay and holds its own against some killer Rock N’ Roll.  Welcome to My Job kills it.  The cover of Moon Martin’s Cadillac Walk stomps the original (which is killer).

Everything here is fantastic.  I know this is the kind of record I’ve built up in my head over these thirty years so it couldn’t possibly measure up, but this is absolutely the Rock N’ Roll record I knew Cub could make.  I mean, Brownsville Station brought the Rock in spades, but Cub’s enthusiasm and his mainline into the soul of Rock itself is what made them good.  If you find this, you should buy it.

The record itself is pink, midweight and flat as a republican’s head.  Sound quality is perfectly acceptable, but you won’t lose your shit over it.  It’s a Rock N’ Roll record, and that’s what it sounds like.  Mine has some weirdness to it.  There’s a small staple in the upper left hand corner.  There’s the cut corner on the right, and there’s some writing on the back that says WABX

next to Pound It Out and Jail Bait.  Did this copy come from WABX in Detroit?  I don’t know.  It has a Record Revolution sticker on it ($1.99 – are you kidding?  None of you bought this for that?  You’re crazy), and a weird gouge that looks like they were gonna cut the bottom right corner instead of the top.  I don’t care about the cover condition.  It obviously has a history, but I may be the only one that ever tossed it onto a turntable.  Which is cool by me.

Lydia Loveless - Indestructible Machine

I  try to write about albums I’m pretty familiar with, so I tend to put older stuff on here, but that’s not all I listen to.  I like a lot of new bands and I don’t understand what it is that makes people go from really caring about music and new music in particular, to either not caring and just switching to the country top 40 station and never buying any music again, or saying something dumb like, “There’s been no good music since 1982 (or 91, or 2002 or whatever).”  So Lydia Loveless’s Indestructible Machine is one of those newer records I didn’t think I’d talk about here for at least a year or two, if I liked it that much.

Well, I liked it way more than that much.  In fact, I think it’s one of my favorite albums I’ve ever heard.  I play it almost constantly weeks after having bought it, and I’ve bought new music since I got this, and I’ve barely listened to those albums.  Not because they’re disappointing (on the contrary, they seem terrific!), but because Indestructible Machine is just as good as it gets.  Like Punk?  It’s here.  Like real country?  It’s here.  Like rock n’ roll?  Lydia might have taken all the rock n’ roll and not left any for anyone else.  She just throws it all together with a cocky attitude and a killer band.What she’s got is an album that’s as addicting as crack.

Right off the bat the record kicks off at a breakneck pace with Bad Way to Go.  it’s a ripping song with plenty of electric guitar, stand up bass, banjo and lyrics of unrequited love.  But Lydia doesn’t pine, she calls the guy out on it and flat out calls him a pussy.  That’s what I like about her.  She’s funny, she’s blunt and she’s sure of herself.  I think the next song, Can’t Change Me sums up a lot of Lydia’s outlook on things in a song.  She’s happy who she is and she’s not changing for anyone, even Jesus.

She’s also got two slower songs on here, and I think those are where all the reviewers have decided she’s Loretta Lynn or Neko Case.  She can flat out sing, and Crazy is a terrific little love song that seems completely heartfelt and genuine.  I can fall for perceived sincerity in songs (it’s probably what works best on me, but I realize she’s a professional and sincerity is her job).  The other slower song, How Many Women really doesn’t do it for me.  It’s a fine performance all the way around, it just doesn’t interest me like some of the other songs.  I’ll say this, though – it’s a straight up real Country song of the sort you just don’t hear anymore.

I’m not usually a fan of the novelty song, but Steve Earle is one of the funniest songs I’ve heard in ages.  Steve should ask her to go on tour with him just so he can hear it every night.  I think my favorite song on the album is More Like Them.  I think it’s her strongest song lyrically, and I can really relate to a lot of it.  Which I suppose says a lot about me that maybe I should be working on, but towards the end of the song when she sings, If you think that I’m so fucking emotionally dense, it’s cuz I am, I know where she’s coming from.  One of the other lines I like in this song is really just because of her delivery.  When she sings, I know you want your money back, well I’m sorry but I still don’t have it she kind of quits singing the last part and just says, “I don’t have it.”  It’s kind of funny since it’s not my money.

The record is nice and flat and sounds really good.  Bloodshot is nice enough to include a download card, so I can listen to it in my car without having to record it myself.  My only complaint is that I’d have liked a lyric sheet.  This is one of the few times I’d actually like one, and that’s a pretty minor complaint in my book.  All said, if you’ve never heard this, you really should because it’s one of the most consistent and terrific records I’ve heard in years.

Nils Lofgren - Nils Lofgren

Here I am digging way back again.  I guess it’s to be expected.  I’ve been listening to records for a lot of years, so a lot of my records are old.  I still like them, though.  Every now and then I go through my records and I get rid of things I either can’t believe I ever bought in the first place, or that I just don’t seem to like anymore.  There’s also the handful of things that I bought because I thought they had a cool cover and they turned out to be crappy (though that’s been a great way to get records for me for the most part).  This is one I like a lot, but I’m sure it was ten years old by the time I got my hands on a copy.

I guess Nils Lofgren was really well known in the 70’s by rock critics and people like Neil Young.  Me, I didn’t know who he was.  I kind of knew who he was, because they used to play Goin’ Back on the radio now and then.  Now I’m  not usually one to remember pretty songs with nice piano melodies, but this one is a Goffin/King song, so it’s catchy as hell and if you hear it once, you’ll never forget it.  So I can remember this one being on the list of records I should buy that I keep in my head (those of you that actually write those lists down are probably more successful at finding what you’re looking for, but I do okay).  I think this is the kind of record that record stores would generally special order after 1977 or so.  I never remember seeing it on the shelves.  So the first one I saw was on cd.

There used to be a pretty cool store call Maximum Compact that had a pretty unbeatable rock music section.  I can remember kind of the early days of the cd, which was a time I bought cd’s and records, because not everything came out on cd.  I think it was around 1990, and Rykodisk reissued this one, and I was pretty happy to find it.  Rykodisk is a great label, and their cd’s sound terrific.  I bet this was one of the first 100 cd’s I bought.  I remember when they came out, they were like 20 bucks – twice the price of a record, if not more.  So it took awhile to build up a reasonably large collection of cd’s.

So I really didn’t know much about Nils except I heard that one song, and I knew he was supposed to be a killer guitar player.  Well, I liked the songs, and you can tell that when he feels like it, Nils can wail with the best of them, but on this album he lets the songs do the talking, and that’s probably why I like it so much.  It’s mainly mid tempo rockers, and that’s the stuff that just keeps me coming back for more so long as it doesn’t all sound the same.  I really like stuff like Back It Up, which is about a girl that needs to give Nils a little more respect, which is kind of the theme of the album, I suppose.  I’m not sure Nils was feeling confident around the ladies when he wrote this one.  Or I suppose it’s more likely he knew his audience of record collector geek types and wrote songs to try to bolster Geek Nation’s sagging confidence.  I mean, titles like Back It Up and If I  Say It, It’s So might be misogynistic in the hands of someone else, but Nils has such a laid back delivery that it sounds like a tough guy façade.  Especially when he gets to I Don’t Want to Know, which is like the ultimate doormat song.  The façade is easy to see through.

I really like this album, though.  Sure, it’s not all monster riffs and guitar pyrotechnics, but for me, Keith Don’t Go is the rock n roll love letter that every fanboy would have liked to have come up with back in the mid 70’s when Keith Richards was getting really lost in the drugs, and his music was kind of being affected by it.  I’ll defend a lot of  70’s Stones, but hey, after Exile on Main St. they did follow things up with Goat’s Head Soup and It’s Only Rock N’ Roll.  So I can see where Nils is coming from!

Side two kicks off with Nils crying in his beer a little with Can’t Buy a Break, which has a funny line about his cash not pulling him through.  There’s a great song about not selling out called Rock N Roll Crook that was one of those songs I used to hear late at night on college radio and never figured out where it came from.  I think my favorite song on side two, beside the closing Going Back is The Sun Hasn’t Set On This Boy Yet.  Just the first line resonated with me back in about 1990, when I decided to start going back to school so I could get my shit together and get a job I actually enjoyed rather than tolerated.  But I was totally on board as soon as I heard I dropped out of high school, it bored me to death.  Hey, I did, too.  I went back pretty quickly and finished, and I didn’t fight for humanity or sink in the sand, or play guitar, but I got it (I still get it, and I still don’t think the sun has set for me yet).

I guess this is one of those albums that just really resonates with me.  I think it’s funny that back when it came out no one liked it.  It didn’t chart for shit, but if you look at critical lists these days, it gets called one of the best albums of 1975.  That’s kind of cool, but I bet Nils would have liked it if people had noticed how good it was then.  Because now it’s just the record geeks that know how good it really is.  So it’s kind of a shame that no one paid attention back then.

I found a vinyl copy of this last year in Canada at Dr. Disk in Windsor.  It’s in terrific shape (hey, no one listened to it – even the people that bought it!), and it’s a pretty quiet pressing.  I’ve still got my Rykodisk cd, too.  There’s no bonus tracks or anything, but I bet I never get rid of it even though I have it on vinyl.  If you can scare up either one of those versions, I think you’ll be happy with the sound.  I think you’ll be happier with the music.  It’s just a damned good record.  With lot’s of melody to it.  Whatever happened to melody?  Remember when that was important in music?

David Werner - Whizz Kid

Man, is a decent copy of this hard to find!  At least around Cleveland and Pittsburgh, which may be the only places you're really ever gonna find more than one copy.  It's only available on vinyl, but I bought it on cd once.  I was pissed when I opened the package!  The store I bought it at (which still exists and has since given me a few good deals so they're in my good graces again) the guy that owned it used a pristine copy of this to make the cd, and a slightly less pristine copy of David Werner's self titled album.  I just got too excited and didn't notice it didn't have a record label.  Hell, I was in a store, why would they be ripping OOP lp's and making cd's?  No one else does that, so I figured I was safe.  It's a clean copy and it wasn't all that expensive as I recall.

But I still kept buying copies of this album, trying to find better vinyl than I had. A girl I worked with gave me hers, which was toast but I played it for years.  Then I found a pretty decent one for a buck, and traded my beater copy in.  It was okay, but there's some quiet songs here, so it's kind of nice to have it be a quiet surface.  I found another slight upgrade, and I think I switched covers, but then I found a really nice promo copy at Jerry's in Pittsburgh.  It was really cheap, and Jerry knows he can get decent money for a clean promo copy of this, but the promo stamp is really hard to see, because it's just indented into the back cover. The stamp doesn't use ink, so I don't think they noticed.  It's a Dynaflex record, so you never really know what you're gonna get.  But this one is really, really nice, and I think it's about time I was able to cross that one off my list of things I really wanted to have!

So you're probably wondering, "What the hell is he talking about, anyway?"

Well, David Werner was a guy that WMMS and the college stations around here actually played a bit in 1974.  In particular they played the song, The Ballad of Trixie Silver, and 12 year old me was just in love with that song (to steal a line from Paul W.)  It starts off with this pretty piano and slightly country rock guitar, and it's about some girl that sells boutique trash, and she says "Hey, you look a lot like a cowboy," and I still think Trixie Silver is is like a cross between Goldie Hawn in The Dutchess and the Dirtwater Fox (which came out in 76, I checked), and one of my friend Chris' older sister's friends.  In other words, Trixie Silver is really cool.  Amazingly, I still think she's the same and I still think she's cool.  People thought this was David Bowie, so it was hard to find it when I was that young, and I never really had a copy until I was in my 20's and had a job where a handful of us just talked about music all day anyway.  One of the women I worked next to heard me mention that song, and she just said, "God I used to love that album!  I think I still have it and you can have it if you want."  So that was my first copy.  And Trixie Silver was still a great song.

The rest of the album is a little hit or miss, but that's because it's a little more mellow than a lot of albums I really love.  I get in moods to listen to this and just play it all the time for a week or two.  It kicks off with a song called One More Wild Guitar, and it's not all that wild, but it's cool.  I think Werner could have made it bigger if he had come out a year or two earlier, but then maybe he was just a little more artistic than most bands from Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Detroit.  Werner can write songs with wonderful melodies, something Rock and Roll can use to strong advantage, but it doesn't really need it to be great.  This isn't really a record to dance to.  It's a record to listen to, and I think the world can use some more of those.  This is really great stuff, and if you've never heard it, I recommend it highly.  Give it a few listens and really give it a chance and it will pay off.  The production is top notch, and while I won't quite go out on the Audiophile Alert limb, it's a nice recording (when you can find a nice one) and I bet it won't cost you very much money.

Grand Funk - We're an American Band

I think this is the first time I ever saw a record on colored vinyl.  I was 11 and it was summer time and you know they played We’re an American Band at the Longbrooke pool where I could pretty much always be found, even though I didn’t live there, on an almost constant basis.  I think I had a Berea News paper route so I finally had some money and had started buying albums.  My friend Stub (that’s what we called him) had just bought it and we listened to it on his dad’s old AR mono rig.  That thing was hi as fi could go, if you asked me.  Anyway, Stub had just got it and was telling me it was a gold record.  I probably called him a liar!  Everyone knew records were black!

It was such a cool thing, though!  That record came in a shiny gold laminate kind of cover and it came with four stickers that looked sort of like the label, a finger pointing right at you in a very 70’s bit of design style.  I had to have one.  Even if I only liked one song on the album I had to have it.  So I collected a few houses and went to either Daisy Music or The Shoppe (maybe even Grant’s?) and bought myself a copy.  I couldn’t wait to get home and check it out.

When I go there, I went in my room and opened it up, sliding out the cool stickers and immediately sticking one on the first of four stupid places to waste my stickers on (I don’t know what it was, probably my brother).  Then I slid the record out, and…and…THE DAMNED THING WAS BLACK VINYL!  Man, was I pissed!  I remember talking to some record store owner shortly thereafter (probably the Daisy Music guy, he taught me a lot about how to behave in a record store and such) and that’s when I found out what limited editions were.  It took me decades to come across one that looked like Stub’s, but I finally found one, with all four stickers.  I think it ended up being free because I bought a stack of used records all at once and  I got a break on the price at Jerry’s in Pittsburgh.  This one plays nicely, but it has some crackles in between songs I could do without but it’s better than it would have been if I had gotten a gold one in 73, that’s for sure!

So as far as the music goes, I still think it’s a pretty terrific album.  I think Don Brewer and Mark Farner both have great voices for big, lunkheaded 70’s Rawk, and they wrote some catchy stuff that a kid could always get behind.  Mom and dad hated it, and this album has Craig Frost adding some half decent keyboards so even my inner Yes fan was treated to some cool solo’s on songs like Black Licorice.  Which back then I thought was probably kind of a socially unacceptable thing, but I wasn’t sure why.

I think Creepin’ kind of helped shape a lot of my views about music at that time.  I didn’t mind long songs, in fact I think I kind of liked them better than short radio hits.  It was really cool to hear WMMS or WNCR play Creepin’ or the even better side two opener The Railroad late at night when I was supposed to be asleep.  Those songs sounded like what I thought older kids would listen to.  At least the ones that I thought would be cool.  I may have been wrong.  I don’t know.  I know it seemed like no one read Creem anymore when I got older, and Rolling Stone hated these guys, so I was probably wrong.  I know that when Punk was blowing my mind I still liked Grand Funk, and the people I met that liked Punk hated Grand Funk.  So I don’t know where they really stand on the Rock N’ Roll scrapheap, but I think they were pretty swell.

I always thought Walk Like a Man should have been the second single from this album.  It may have been for all I know, but I always thought Don Brewer just sang his ass off on that one.  He sounds like a MAN.  No prissy little rocker, he sounded like a dude that your old man would call mister.  At least he did to me.

So my vinyl could be a little less noisy, but it’s not irritating and I’m really glad to have a gold one, finally.  I’m also just going to leave the stickers be this time.  Now that I think about it, those things used to be everywhere.  They were on school lockers, inside bathroom stalls, on stop signs and metal doors – they were ubiquitous.  I bet if I think about it, I’ll notice one, or at least its remnants, somewhere around here before too long.  I actually got to see these guys eventually, and they were great.

Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story

Ya know, Rod Stewart had a real, real good run going in the beginning of the 70’s.  I know he became the butt of some crude jokes when he “went Disco” and he never really recovered from that stuff with the cool kids.  Maybe it was because he was just this close to being mentioned in the same breaths as The Stones, Beatles and Dylan, and he just started kind of losing direction shortly after, and then instead of just losing direction the dude jumped off a cliff into a mountain of money.

I’m trying to think of when I first got this album.  I think it was the late 80’s, on cd.  I had friends that had this, and I had some other Rod Stewart albums, but it’s not like they didn’t play damn near the whole thing on Cleveland’s radio stations.  I think I found my vinyl copy of this in the 90’s at a flea market or a used record store that’s long gone.  I remember just grabbing it because it was cheap, and then one day putting it on the old B&O and wondering what the hell happened between the vinyl version and the cd.  The vinyl I have is a red label Mercury on Energy Crisis weight vinyl, but man, does it sound great!

I’m a sucker for a great, dry drum sound.  I like it when drums sound just like they do if you’re in someone’s basement and they’re banging away right in front of you.  Mickey Waller is a shambling mess that sounds like he’s gonna lose the beat at any second, but he never quite does and he gives Rod and the band a terrific, wobbly foundation that reminds me of a getting a good drunk on and being a little unsteady, but happy and more in control that people suspect.  A tricky balancing act indeed, but everything just works perfectly here.

What I find interesting is that the best songs here are written or co written by Stewart, but most of the songs are Stewart’s interpretations of songs other people wrote.  It seems kind of strange, especially coming from an era where it was really expected of people to write their own songs.  Maybe Rod didn’t have much in his tank, but three of his songs here are three of his all time best.  Sure, if you’re my age you can live without hearing Maggie May again, but the way it jumps off the record makes it sound as fresh as it did coming out of mom’s AM radio in her ’65 Valiant (sure, it sounded like crap but I was 8 and it was good enough for me!).  Then there’s the “wow, that’s (high school) deep” of Mandolin Wind and the “man, that sounds like a (college aged) great trip” of the title track.  That’s three songs that have held up for over forty years and they still, even after all these years, sound like they were recorded just yesterday.  That’s craftsmanship, and maybe Rod couldn’t do it prolifically, but when he was good he made it count.  Rod’s true claim to fame may be that he can be a brilliant interpreter, but at least here the three very best songs were his.

As far as the record goes, I wish the cover weren’t perforated.  Mine is still attached, but barely.  It’s still in good enough shape and I’m not looking for another one, but still…The record itself is almost as flexible as a Dynaflex disc, but it sounds terrific.  The blend of the acoustic guitars and drums with electric bass and guitars has such an open quality that it’s like you can reach out and touch the space between the instruments.  The whole thing sounds like the band is in the room with you, with a beautiful stereo separation that presents a soundstage producers don’t seem interested in presenting anymore.  Maybe it’s because everyone listens to music with earbuds or near field in front of their computers, but when I hear something like this I have to think that we aren’t exactly hearing recorded music as well as it can be done these days, and I’m not bitching about compression and loudness.

Usually when I decide to give something an Audiophile Alert I check online afterwards to see if I’m alone in this opinion.  It turns out that there are a lot of people that prefer the red label Mercury pressings to Mobile Fidelity vinyl and gold cd’s.  So you should be able to find the best sounding copies of this album easily for less than ten bucks!

Sweet - Desolation Boulevard

I was still in elementary school when this record came out and took the airwaves by storm.  Man, we thought Ballroom Blitz was beyond cool.  I remember hearing the album in my friend's sister's room while that song was still super new, and I immediately thought Fox on the Run was the best song on the album.  Hey, I was 12.  When I finally got my own copy of this LP (which is long gone, eaten by cheap record players and youth's grubby hands), my favorite song turned into Sweet F.A. and it still is today, for several reasons.

First of all, it's easily the best song on the album, even if lyrically it's by turns repulsive or downright stupid.  It's also the first song my mom completely freaked out about.  We used to have a little Webcor stereo that my dad ordered from a catalog (I loved my dad but good sound didn't mean anything to him so he ordered a stereo because it looked like it would do what he wanted it to, not because it sounded great).  The Webcor sat out in the family room and even with it's minuscule speakers I could turn it up way louder than my plastic GE record player.  I think mom tolerated side one.  She probably correctly figured I'd just think A.C.D.C. was the usual rock lyrics where they couldn't keep things like tense and subject straight so the words would rhyme and that I didn't have any idea what the subject was really about.  But when I flipped the record over and played Sweet F.A. and If she don't spread I'm gonna bust her head came blasting out of the Webcor, that was it for Sweet!  I think the only way I kept it was I told her it was someone else's record so she couldn't throw it away, and then I listened to it in my room after that.  I think this was the first record I had that had this power.  So even today I remember that day every time I hear that song.

I still think the first side is better than the second side (even though mine is on a CD now).  probably because the guys that wrote most of Suzi Quatro's best songs, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapmann were behind the songs on side one of Desolation Boulevard.  I never cared much for Sweet after this album.  Not because I'm some big Glam Rocker, but because the band's in house songwriting sounds too much like watered down Queen, or maybe 10cc with a distortion pedal.  I think everything good they had came out on side two of this album, and it slowly loses its luster.  It's not like it slowly turns to crap, but Chinn and Chapmann had a great formula and I like their big, dumb riffs.

I don't have a lot of albums left from when I was 12.  Probably because my tastes have changed drastically (hopefully), but there's a handful of them.  I think the ones I still like aren't considered necessary or particularly cool these days, but I don't care.  I like this stuff.  I know it's kinda dumb and it's definitely made for a teenage audience that doesn't even exist anymore, but it makes me happy.  How can it not?  It's like a Snickers bar, all sweet and crunchy.  And do you know how big a Snickers was in 1974?  Way bigger than now, that's for sure!

The Bloody Hollies - If Footmen Tire You

OK, so I just bought this on vinyl yesterday.  It's really pretty, too.  Super shiny cover (watch out on the dance floor at a Bloody Hollies show - if you fall they'll pummel you!), and a super flat red record with custom labels.  Now you may ask, "I thought he didn't want to talk new stuff?" and you'd be right.  But I had an old blog and I've had this on CD since 2005 and it was my album of the year when I did that sort of thing.  I found it at a place in Cleveland called The Loop.  The Loop is a coffee shop that sells records and CD's.  I'm guessing they do most of their business in coffee, but I found a few things I wanted.  I've been meaning to go there for ages and I finally did yesterday.  I wasn't blown away by the place, but the records are fairly graded. There's some post it notes on a lot of the records describing what they are, and they're well worth reading.  One thing I didn't get - there's stickers on a lot of new records that say, "Don't break Seal or you Bought It!" on them.  Do their regulars think they can just open up records and pop them on the listening station to see if they like the music first?  Really?  Why would people think that they could open a new record? They sell new and used stuff and I found this in the used section.  I grabbed it right away, because it looks like it may never have been played and it's about the best Punk album to come out in the past decade.

Is that a lot of praise?  I hope so.  The Bloody Hollies are the three hardest hitting riff drivers around.  Their music is like getting punched in the gut, and getting up and taking it again because it was so much fun the first time.  Singer/guitar player Wesley Doyle may have the kind of voice that takes some getting used to, but this is one of those albums I've put on without telling anyone what it was just to see their reaction, and while it's divisive, if you fall on the side that likes loud, fast and hard, you'll probably love this album.

No songs on the album are over 3:30, so The Bloody Hollies don't fuck around building things up.  They get right to it, find the riff, and beat it into submission.  They sing about girls and being pissed off.  The lyrics won't be mistaken for Bob Dylan, but they won't be mistaken for Gene Simmons, either.  They fit the songs and Wesley's voice will make up for anything lacking lyrically.  He means what he's saying.  The main thing here is to Rock and to Rock Hard.

All the songs are top notch.  Their first album, Fire at Will is good, but this album is great.  Maybe it's just having Jim Diamond at the controls , but these guys just fattened everything up and made it just perfect.  Gasoline is the kind of song that will get you a ticket when you're driving on a sunny day.  The drums and bass are just relentless and the guitar stabs in and out of the beat and just slashes everything in sight.  I'd have to wonder if they can even play another song after they play that one.  The song that closes out side one, right after Gasoline, is Right Between the Eyes, and that's exactly where it hits ya!

Side two is more of the same hard hitting sonic assaults, like Raised By Wolves and Mind Control.  There are no slow songs or ballads, just slashing guitars, pounding drums and bass and shredded vocal cords.  I'm not exactly sure what more you could ask out of an album.  I'm sure this isn't for everyone, but I think it's pretty much as good as it gets.

Middle Brother

I don't usually write about something I've only had a few weeks.  Sure, I did it with Wild Flag, but man, that's just such a great album!  I suppose every now and then I get a bug up my ass to show that I don't just sit around and listen to ancient records.  The other thing besides me not having this for very long is that John McCauley is in Deer Tick, and I already wrote about one of their albums on here and I made a pledge to myself to try my damnedest not to put a second article (I mean, they aren't exactly reviews, are they?) about a band until I hit 50 articles.  Then all bets are off.  I can just go on about whatever I want.  I kind of do that anyway, but there's actually a little (very little) thought behind this!

Middle Brother is the aforementioned McCauley of Deer Tick, with Matt Vasquez of Delta Spirit and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes.  Now I've never really checked out Delta Spirit or Dawes, but based on how much I seem to really love this album, I'm going to have to correct that oversight.  Especially when it comes to Delta Spirit.  Matt Vasquez really knocked me out with his songs on here.  I still think I like McCauley's songs best, but I'm a big fan of Deer Tick so I'm nice and comfortable with John's approach.  McCauley's songs are the most ramshackle and sloppy, and that's what I like.  And before you get pissy and try to argue with me, I think it takes great craftsmanship to write and play Rock N' Roll that sounds like it's the first time a band ever played a song, but it never falls apart.  I think that's a lot more work than a lot of people give it credit for.

Vasquez has written what's got to be my all time favorite song in the world right about now.  I could listen to Blue Eyes all day.  The kind of country kind of Stonesy sound is built on an earwig of a riff, and where I'm usually completely happy just to have one or two good lines in a song, Vasquez just seems to have a wonderful way of looking at things.  A line from the opening verse is what grabbed me right away,

A soft kiss is a hard goodbye
Been knocked out since yesterday

I think that's just great and it really made me pay attention.  My favorite part of the song is a complete jumble that I really had to read to get straight because it's convoluted, but it really works, at least for me.


Told myself that you're the one
And I told myself I could get you back
When I came back you still weren't mine
Then I left again and you still weren't mine
I'm back again so just be mine
I am so tired of runnin'


That really doesn't look like it would work, but it does for me.

Then they toss Portland in, and I'm just on board with these guys all the way.  I always want to think that an odd Replacements song like that is kind of a wink to fans of that horribly overlooked group (sort of like a band playing a Big Star song years ago), but the more I think about it, the more I think it's nice to hear any Replacements songs covered.  Middle Brother does a great job with Portland, and it's a nice way to close the first side.

So I'm really glad I picked this up finally last week.  I've been meaning to grab it for ages, but this has been one of those records that's at the store when there's a couple of "Oh man, I've been looking for this!" records and before I knew it almost a whole year went by since it was released!  And now I'm gushing about it here after just a week.  So is it possible that I'll get bored with it?  Nah, I don't think so.  I have a feeling that Taylor Goldsmith's songs will all be the kind that grow on me, and McCauley's songs are his usual top notch stuff.  So I'm pretty comfortable saying that if I had bought this last year, and I bothered to do a Top Ten List, this would have been in my top five.  If you haven't checked this out yet, you really should, especially if you're one of those "there hasn't been any good music since blah, blah, blah" people.

Paul Collins' Beat - The Kids Are the Same

I have nothing but contempt for the term Power Pop.  It's just stupid.  It's not very descriptive, and it sounds like some kind of second rate music that really doesn't need anyone to check into it more than a song or two.  Like it's all the same, so why bother?  But Paul Collins seems to embrace the term, and if he can be okay with it, then I guess I should, too.

I haven't had this all that long (in the grand scheme of things).  I like The Plimsouls, and I think Peter Case is pretty close to a National Treasure.  I've had the first album by The Beat for awhile, probably even before Alive Naturalsound Records rereleased the first EP by The Nerves.  When push comes to shove, I like that first album by The Beat more than this one, but On the Highway is on here, and for me, this was a long lost song that I only heard in my memory for a long, long, time.  Give the old memory some kudos,. it really remembered the song pretty well.  I guess it was a big MTV hit, but I didn't have cable until well into the 21st century.  I couldn't afford it, I guess. Either that or I felt better about blowing my money on music!

On the Highway is one of those moody songs that really works for me.  If I'm driving at night and I'm the only one awake (pretty common travel for my family), I can just zone out and cruise to this song.  It's the same with Televison's Marquee Moon.  I know On the Highway is kind of meant to be a car song, but it's just hypnotic to me.  I'm pretty sure it's one of my absolute favorite songs, and it's possible that it skews the whole album on the greatness scale for me.

But it's not a bad thing.  There's a ton of catchy, fun songs on here.  The title track is a nice blast of Rock N' Roll and not worrying about what's going on in the world, because the kids are the same everywhere, just leave them alone.  Sure, it's kind of a dumb idea, but it does kind of make me think that if the kids are the same everywhere, then what the fuck happens to them when they grow up?

I'm not gonna get all heavy like that, though.  This isn't my politics blog, it's just what I think about my records, primarily on one day, while I'm listening to it.  Besides, I don't know enough about politics to write about it.  I barely know enough about music.  But I know what I like.  And I like Paul Collins.  His voice is a little weak.  Maybe not so much weak as it is kind of limited.  But Paul knows his limitations and he has the attitude to make you pump your fist in the air and dance like there's no tomorrow with him and his killer band.

It's recorded for that big arena sound, but these songs would work in your backyard.  I don't know what was so damned important in 1981 that this couldn't be a big hit, other than maybe Paul didn't have enough hair and didn't wear a stupid wig (thanks by the way, Paul).  The back cover picture of the band is one of the best pictures of a Rock N' Roll band ever and there's nothing but catchy riffs and choruses.

There's nothing but Rock N' Roll goodness all over this record, and I'm glad I finally found it.

Steely Dan - The Royal Scam

1976. The Bicentennial.  The 4^th of July Parade.  Kool’s.  Ten Speed bikes and smoke bombs.  YMCA water polo champions.  Jr. High Track.  I had a girlfriend with a nice stereo, I had a Panasonic Dynamite 8 and I had a big stack of 8 Track tapes.  One of my all time favorites was Steely Dan’s The Royal Scam.  I didn't know many people that seemed to like Steely Dan as much as I did, but that didn't stop me from taking that 8 Track almost everywhere for that whole summer.  It still seems weird to me that a 14 year old kid would like that album so much, but I wore that tape out (it turned into one of my patented stash boxes – looked like a tape, opened up to reveal a pretty big storage area that you could keep anywhere!).  After I wore it out, I had to buy it on vinyl.

That record is long gone.  I wore it out, too.  I think the copy I have now I bought in the mid 80’s – it has a gold stamp on it proclaiming its Platinum status.  So it’s obviously not an original pressing, but it’s still good.  I think when push comes to shove, the Citizen Steely Dan boxed set is the better sounding version, but this record smoked the original Steely Dan cd’s.  It’s an MCA, not ABC, but I think it’s a great sounding record.  It’s clean and flat and it sounds great, like a Steely Dan album should.

I can understand why I like it now.  It’s perfectly played, and it’s a great way to kick back and relax.  The lyrics are generally smart and cover mostly adult subjects and the guitars are plentiful and exquisite.  Why I liked it so much when I was a kid, I don’t know.  Maybe it was the Technicolor motor home line in Kid Charlemagne, or maybe it was Larry Carlton’s amazing guitar solo in the same song.  I don’t know but it seems to have stuck.  I think this is one of those rare albums where I just love every song.

I remember long ago WBWC (Baldwin Wallace College’s radio station) used to use the beginning of Green Earrings as their music for the news.  It’s funny, I suppose that song really does start out like the theme from Action News, but every time the news would come on, I’d get excited thinking they were playing an old Steely Dan song!  Then some kid would use his best professional broadcaster’s voice and proclaim over Green Earrings that WBWC was “bringing you the news from The World, and Your Town.”  It was kind of a rotten trick, and I think it pretty much fooled me every time.

I used to think The Caves of Altamira was really profound, probably even more so after I went in the school library and found out that those are the famous caves in Spain where the early cave drawings were found.  I love the closing lines:

Nothing here but history,

Can you see what has been done?

Memory rush over me,

Now I step into the sun

I’d like to see those caves.

I never could roller skate, either.  I’d like to have been better at it because I love Roller Derby and I seem to like listening to people talking or singing about roller skating.  All I could really do is go counter clockwise, and I just seem to go faster and faster until I think I’ll wipe out, and then I just run into a pole or the wall so I won’t crash (I can’t really stop, either).  But I must have had some kind of thing for girls on roller skates because I always loved Everything You Did, too.  There’s not really much to most of the songs on here, and I think that leaves a lot of room for the listener’s imagination to use the music and lyrical sketches to come up with your own meanings.  I think a lot of the songs on The Royal Scam are like that, and I like it because no one can tell me I don’t understand what the songs are about.

Which kind of brings me to the last song; the title track.  There’s not much room for your own interpretation here, but it’s still a great groove and a cool story about immigrating to America and finding out the streets aren’t exactly paved with gold.  I really like Donald Fagen’s cynicism so I’ve always liked this one.  Larry Carlton gets another chance to stretch out and play his guitar, too.  I used to play this on my headphones when I came home late, and it was a great way to conk out for the night.  I guess I can listen to this one just about anytime, anywhere.  It's definitely one of my favorites.

Flat Duo Jets - Go Go Harlem Baby

It's nice to see this is back out on vinyl.  There's a couple of reasons for this.  1 - It's a really kick ass album.  2 - I didn't have it.  so now that whole situation has been rectified, thanks to Melanie at Music Saves, who let me pick this out for my birthday present.  Which gives me another opportunity to tell you, that if you don't have a record store that you go to regularly, that gets all your special orders and where even when you want something they probably wouldn't carry you order it from them, then you're completely screwing up.  Sure, I go to other record stores, but I spend 75% of my record money here at Music Saves.  Because when you do that, you get taken care of.  You get taken care of even if you're a new or sometimes customer too, but if you have a regular record store that knows you, you will find out about bands you didn't know you liked and you'll once in awhile even get something like a birthday present.  If you're in Cleveland and you like the Rock that leans Indie, like me, Music Saves is your best bet.  But there's other places like My Mind's Eye in Lakewood and Square Records in Akron that will treat you as much more than an order number or auction winner.  So get your ass to your local record store and hang out a little and start buying your records there.  Even if they cost an extra buck or two, there's no shipping costs and best of all, there's no waiting.

Now what about Flat Duo Jets?  They're Dex Romwebber on guitar and vocals and Crow on drums.  Jim Dickinson produced and played some piano, but it's mostly just two guys.  Cuz that's really all it takes to make a hellacious rock n' roll racket.  It's not hard to describe Flat Duo jets' sound.  It's very stripped down, sort of rockabilly howling.  Jim Dickinson's production is pretty sparse and this album sounds like it was recorded in a small room.  It's stereo, but it's very narrow and almost mono.  But there's so little instrumentation that I suppose you couldn't expect more.

What always got me about these guys is that there's just no way they could have ever expected to get rich and famous doing this.  I'm totally cool with that, because it's obvious that these guys are making music for the sake of making great music.  I don't want to get into discussions of sincerity and integrity.  I think these guys have plenty of that, but I think the reason this record exists is because they like these songs.  Flat Duo Jets Anthem kicks things off in a frantic style, the type of which would make the White Stripes famous.  You can hear the influences of Flat Duo Jets on every White Stripes album, and if you like those albums, you really should check these guys out.  It's just fun from start to finish.

The covers are something else.  I'd never expect to hear Apple Blossom Time or Frog Went A Courtin' on a rock n' roll record, but here they are.  And they're great!  Romwebber has a great voice for rock n' roll, and he pulls these covers off in unexpected ways that really work.  My favorite cover on the record is easily You Belong to Me.  I think I always like this song, from everyone that's ever done it.  From Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps to Deer Tick.  But I love the sparseness of this version and Romwebber's voice best of all, I think.

When that song finishes, we get kicked into high gear for Frog Went A Courtin' and that pretty much seals the deal for me.  It's just on my list of great albums from here on out.  This is rock n' roll at it's most elemental, and it's irresistible if you ask me.  I love that these guys have so many covers mixed in with their great originals, and I usually don't need too many covers.  But it's not like you get to hear these songs all the time, and it's even less frequent that you hear them this raw.  It's really great stuff and I hope you can get a copy before it goes out of print again.

The record itself is on Jack White's Third Man Records label.  First of all, I think it's great that jack is pressing records.  It's obviously a labor of love, and I like Jack because he takes on labors of love and seems to be able to make money and be successful with them.  Third Man records are usually heavy vinyl, and have great covers, on nice stock.  They don't sell their records cheap, but they also don't give you junk. The inner sleeve has an anti static plastic lining the paper on this and the record itself is thick and heavy.  However, I've found every Third Man record I've owned tends to be noisy, especially between tracks.  Don't get me wrong - they sound excellent when the music is playing (Flat Duo Jets will never be mistaken for an audiophile recording, but for what it is, it sounds really good).  I don't know why it seems like that's the way they are, but I haven't found one yet that's just quiet vinyl.  There's no clicking and popping, it's just kind of noisy.  But again, the record is heavy, the cover is gorgeous and I wouldn't trade my copy for anything.

Robin Lane and The Chartbusters

Robin Lane’s first claim to fame was singing backup vocals on Neil Young’s Round and Round from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.  Now, I certainly didn’t know that when I got this album.  All I knew was that I liked It Will Only Hurt a Little While from her first album.  I heard it one night, late (really late) and I just loved it to death.  I stayed up even really later to hear the college kid that was the DJ say who she was so I could go buy her album.  That dude kept me up a long time, because he played a googob of songs before he got around to talking about what he played.  It was worth it, though.  I’ve got all of Robin Lane and the Chartbusters albums (except some three song ep that came out before this).

I know this guy that was a little older than me, and he hung around some of the girls I knew, and we always talked music when I saw him.  I think we spent a lot of time trying to one up the other guy with a band or record that the other hadn’t heard, but we both liked a lot of the same kinds of guitars and catchy riffs and hooks.  I remember running into him at a party and we were pretty faced, but as usual we started talking music.  It was late – definitely at least 2:00 AM – and he mentions Robin Lane and the Chartbusters.

“Know ‘em?”

“Sure,” says I.  “I’ve got their album.  I think it’s pretty kick ass.”

“Bullshit.  You may have heard one of their songs but there’s no way you actually have that record,” says he (they never really got any airplay outside of Boston).

“No. I really do.  It’s great!  Lot’s of catchy songs and jangly guitars.  She’s got a nice voice, sorta like Linda Ronstadt but no country leanings.”

“Then let’s hear it.”

“It’s 2:00 AM.  It’s at my house.  My parents are asleep and they ain’t gonna go for our drunk asses listening to tunes in the middle of the night.”

“You don’t have it.”

“OK.  Let’s go.  We can’t crank it too much – but we can check it out.”

So we head over to my house.  Did I have it?  Hell yeah, I had it.  I still do.  Was he surprised?  Totally.  Did he want to stay and listen to my records all night?  Definitely.  Not because I have such great records (or even that I had so many when I was 18), but like I said, we really like a lot of the same stuff.  So we sat there and smoked and listened to that first Chartbusters album all the way through, and he said he was gonna go buy it.

I don’t know if he ever did, and I suppose I don’t care.  I don’t even know if he remembers that night.  I’m not sure why I remember it so clearly.  But it happened, and I thought it was pretty cool, because he was over 21 and had been able to see a lot of the bands I liked in the over 18 clubs just a few years prior to me, so I thought that made him cool.

I still think this is a great record.  If you read reviews of it you’ll see the “you just have to see them live, the record strips away all their energy” reviews all over the place.  I disagree, though I never did see them live.  It’s a nice, dry recording.  It doesn’t have a lot of cheesy effects that really date it to 1980 and it still sounds good today.  I think those reviews are goofy because Robin had studio experience, and her producer (Joe Wissert) had experience on all sorts of different things and her band was as good as the East Coast could deliver.  So I think this record sounds just like they wanted it to, and I think it sounds pretty good.

Except for some odd lyrics here and there where Robin seems to just brush off an abusive relationship, this is a tight record and it’s a lot of fun.  I think Don’t Cry has probably become my favorite over the decades (damn, this thing is over 30 years old!).  It’s pretty cute and jangly and poppy, but I really like it a lot.  When Things Go Wrong is a little simplistic lyrically but it’s a real gem of the sort I think Linda Ronstadt was going for on Mad Love.  Robin pulls this stuff off with an ease that I don’t think Linda ever quite matched.  It Will Only Hurt a Little While has a loose guitar sound that’s really effective and while side one is better than side two, side two is still good enough to flip over to every time.

Mine’s got a stain on the cover that looks like coffee, but it’s got to be Coke.  I still don’t drink much coffee, but I like pop.  I think I remember who spilled their Coke at my house on this cover, too.  He’s got green teeth and I was pretty pissed off about it!  The record is in great shape, though.  It really sounds pretty good, but then maybe the clicks on mine just seem like they belong after thirty years.  I remember this was hard to get around here.  I may actually have ordered it.  I know some of you Download Babies can’t imagine waiting more that the few minutes it takes for you to discover and click on the link any piece of music ever recorded that strikes your fancy, but I actually picked and chose most of my records by making compromises between which record I’d take home, and which one I'd leave in the store.  Sometimes, the record I left in the store has still never wound up in my collection, but I’m glad I got this one.