Yes - Relayer

I got this album in Jr. High.  I went to a school called Roehm Jr. High (pronounced ray-mm) and we were The Bucks.  Our mascot was a big deer head with big antlers.  Our colors were dark blue and yellow, and in the morning if we needed paper or notebooks we could go to the school bookstore (a closet where some kid would stand for half an hour in the morning), and buy what we needed, pretty cheap.  The paper notepads had a dark blue cover with yellow printing and the deer head was in the middle.  Above it said "ROEHM" and below it said "BUCKS."  Well, the blue was the exact same color as a Bic pen and the text was all block letters, so we would all use an eraser and erase parts of the "B" in Bucks and fill them in with blue ink from a Bic pan, and it would then pretty perfectly say, "ROEHM SUCKS."

I still think it's funny.

The school went on to let the kids vote for what they wanted the mascot to be long after I was gone, and the kids were all big fans of Jurassic Park so they became the Roehm Raptors.  That right there is why you don't let kids make any decisions.  Not that this has anything to do with anything, but now you know.

So I probably got this in 1975, when I was 13.  This was nothing like Fragile, or Yessongs.  This was pretty abrasive, hard and metallic sounding.  Even the pretty parts weren't pretty.  I kind of liked that about the songs on this record, and as I'm listening to it now, I kind of still do.  I remember a friend of mine got high and put a cigarette on my original album cover and put like a two inch burn on it.  I remember just saying, "What in the FUCK are you doing?"  There was an ash tray right next to the cover.  It's okay, I found a really nice one to replace it (I'm sure it's nicer than my Jr. High copy).  Isn't that just the stupidest thing, though?

In the beginning of eighth grade I met a girl that I really wanted to go out with.  We had kind of talked on the phone over the summer (I don't know how that happened - maybe I really met her in seventh grade), and she wanted to know about this band, Yes that I always talked about.  I mean, I really loved Yes when I was a kid.  I'd talk about them all day if you let me.  Hell, I had Yessongs! That was a freaking three record set.  I think it cost like ten bucks, and that was serious money back then.  So this girl says, "You should let me borrow a Yes album so I can like them, too."

That's when I found out that guys that like Prog Rock pretty much live alone, because women really hate it.  I think when she handed me back Relayer like two days later I knew she was not gonna talk to me any more.  I think she said something like, "My dad asked what was wrong with someone that would think that was MUSIC."  I was crushed.  Relayer was my newest record and I thought it was so damned great.  I think I asked he why her dad wanted to listen to it and she said the stereo was in the living room, so everyone heard it.  Man, that would have sucked.  Everyone in our house heard what I was listening to, but that's because no one could ever get me to turn it down.  At least I had a stereo in my room.

So obviously Relayer isn't for everyone.  In fact, I don't even know where most Yes fans land on it.  I think it's good.  Better than Tales From Topographic Oceans but not as good as Going for the One.  Like I said, even the pretty parts aren't really all that pretty, because it's got kind of a metallic production to it that makes all its edges pointy and hard.  The Gates of Delirium is one of those full side songs, with like four "movements," but it's really no Close the the Edge.  The lyrics are typically dumb, like their lyrics should be.  When I was fourteen or fifteen I thought the lyrics were some weird, brilliant poetry, but they really aren't.  They just are what they are.

The second side starts off with a song called Sound Chaser.  It starts off like something that I would call Jazz (people that like Jazz would laugh at me for that), then gets into some wacky time signatures that don't make much sense, but dammit, I just like hearing Steve Howe and Chris Squire play really fast, even if it doesn't exactly sound like they're playing the same song.  All in all, a pretty cool, weird record that was better to me than at least one old girlfriend.

High School Faves

Did ya see that Facebook meme where you're supposed to put ten records you loved in high school up?  Here's mine:

I’m not going to put this in any order.  It’s just kind of ten records that I remember really playing the hell out of when I was a teenager.  Some will be from Jr. High, some from high school.  Some were borrowed and eventually returned, some just discarded along the way.

The Tubes – What Do You Want From LIVE!  That stereo up above is the receiver I had and a turntable quite similar to the one I had for Jr. High (in high school I bought a used Dual).  I used to slide that volume slider all the way to the right, and it sounded pretty okay.  It was loud, but not awful.  I did this when I got up for school in the morning, and I remember my mom complaining once, and my retort was that everyone was up anyway, so who was it really bothering?  My door was shut, it was just some background noise, like a fan or something.

I loved The Tubes.  I used to blast “Mondo Bondage” before school.  I remember in Jr. High being at the pizza shop and standing on the Pong game (it was a table top version) while we blasted “White Punks On Dope” on the jukebox and being told to “Sit the fuck back down or you’re outta here!”  I had a “deep” conversation with a girlfriend about how “Don’t Touch Me There” wasn’t so much about sex as it was about breaking someone’s heart.  We went to see The Tubes in a big group, and everyone bought the same shirts, except me.  I don’t like looking like everyone else.  I thought The Tubes were really on to something with the prudery of the Nation butting up against the sleaze of TV and being all aghast at the titillation found there.  Those prudes were the ones watching that shit, it wasn’t lost on teenage me.

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention – Over-Nite Sensation.  I bought this used where I bought my Dual turntable.  I still have it, and it’s pristine (somehow) and an original pressing.  I liked Zappa a lot when I was 17 or 18, but he hasn’t managed to stay with me through the years.  I’ll keep his stuff, but I rarely listen to it.  I remember I had to take an English class my second senior year (I cut school a LOT), and I had to re-take a speech class.  I loved speech class, so it was no big deal.  I was the only senior in a class of 10^th graders, and let’s face it, I was high all the time.  I had to do a speech by Reading From Manuscript, and I chose “I’m the Slime” from this album.  (A bit of a side note, a girl couldn’t believe that we could do a song and chose to do one of the more popular things of the day, and looked pretty embarrassed when she had to say, “Oh baby” and “Yeah baby” constantly.  I practiced this so I wouldn’t do it in a sing-song voice and had it down cold so that it would be awesome, she didn’t get how much went into being a wasteoid that could get away with it).  I called Frank Zappa one of “Today’s most interesting and thoughtful “contemporary artists” and my teacher sat in the back laughing.  When I finished he asked me to stay after class a minute, and he told me he was a HUGE Zappa fan, and he loved how I did it and that he really appreciated the fact that I was putting forth an effort in his class.  Huh.  Who’d a thunk it?

We also used to drop acid and listen to this.  It was sure to make us erupt into fits of hilarity.  The idea of growing crops of dental floss in Montana was just the god dammed funniest thing!  This record led to us listening to a lot of FZ’s output back then, and we were a small little cult of friends out here in Midwestern Suburbia that loved FZ.

Manfed Mann’s Earth Band – Solar Fire.  OK, so this one even predates Teenage Me, but I can assure you, this got more play than any record in my collection by many, many plays.  I wore out several of these.  I still like it quite a bit, and I think it very well may be the record with my favorite drum sound.  The Stones have a lot of records with this dry, natural drum sound and maybe that’s a big reason I was initially attracted to them.   I loved Mann’s outrageous keyboards, but the guitar solos on songs like "Saturn, Lord of the Ring/Mercury, The Winged Messenger" are what really hooked me.  Everyone that ever came to my house heard this record at least once.

Yes – Fragile.  OK, I promise this won’t turn into a treatise on the wonders of Progressive Rock.  I think this will be it.  God, I loved this record, especially Jr. High me.  I’ve heard “Roundabout” probably 100,000 times and the part after the “mountains come out of the sky and they stand there,” still gets me leaning for the volume knob.  I love Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman’s interactions and the drum sound I love is there, with the added weirdness of Chris Squire’s bass.  Hell, half the time it seemed to me like Squire was playing a completely different song than the rest of the band just to see if he could make it work.  It always did, and I remember one of the pictures on my wall was Chris Squire with a cape, leaning back and blasting the foundation from under an audience somewhere with a cool name like Stratford-On-Thames, or Pasadena.

Every girl I ever met hated Yes.  You definitely can’t dance to it.  The lyrics don’t make any sense, but Teenage Me would have pretty much bloviated about how brilliant the lyrics were, that they were pure poetry and you just didn’t understand poetry.  Little would you have known (so I thought, anyway), I knew fuck all about poetry, except how to write a shitty haiku.  So when I said the lyrics to “South Side of the Sky” were brilliant, you better believe that I thought they were, and I thought I’d understand why they were so brilliant some time in the future.  I was wrong, but I still like Yes.

Neil Young – Decade.  Ever come across those people that tell you to write a list of your favorites but then say that “Greatest Hits, Live albums and using the same band more than once is cheating?”  What the fuck does that even mean?  It’s my list.  I can guarantee you that Neil Young’s Decade was a constant for me pretty much until I graduated high school.  Some of this stuff is probably a reason I like a lot of whatever passes for Americana these days, and some of these songs have guitar solos that I hear in my favorite bands today, like The Dexateens’ “Diamond in the Concrete,” which otherwise doesn’t sound like a Neil song at all.

I remember a conversation with a girl I used to hang out with all the time that I haven’t seen since school, and we were talking about “Expecting to Fly,” which I figured was too weird and mellow for anyone to like, but she said it was her favorite song on Decade.  Why do I remember this conversation?  It was pretty inconsequential, and it’s not like it’s the greatest Neil song ever, but I remember it really well.  I remember going to a guy’s house that was a budding drummer, and he’d play along to records and he told me to pick a song.  I picked “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and he turned it off partway through because he couldn’t bang on things like he wanted.  It was really part of my plan to not have to listen to him, but we spent a good hour listening to him fuck up on drums on other songs later.

Then there’s “Ohio.”  That still chokes me up to this day.  I had a teacher with a Kent State 1970 ring.  Said teacher was also gay, but kept himself well closeted (good thinking in the 70’s).  I loved this guy.  We used to play Chess and checkers and stuff in his In School Probation room (I was in there a lot).  We talked about what it was like in 1970 at Kent, and he said it was scary, and yes, he knew some of the students that were killed.  He said he didn’t think anyone should ever forget.  I couldn’t believe news interviews where the people said the students “got what they deserved.”  How the fuck is it I live in the same world as those people?  That teacher convinced me I should go see the little memorial and where it happened, and I’ve done that, and that song helps me remember that rich people are in charge and our kids are no more than cannon fodder to them.  I kind of moved away from Neil for years, but I’ve been back, at least with his old stuff for awhile now.

Artful Dodger – Babes On Broadway.  Clevelanders my age know who Artful Dodger was.  The rest of you don’t.  This is NOT their best album, in fact it’s probably their worst.  It’s still pretty good, though.  It was their third album, and an obvious shot at getting some airplay outside of Cleveland.  I remember a friend of mine had a decent old car and I can remember meeting girls and making out in there with this album playing.  It was pretty great.  Girls in the 70’s were great.  They turned into great women, but they’ll always be those girls to me.

Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True.  I really don’t give a shit that the backing band is Huey Lewis’ guys.  I didn’t know back then that Elvis had a different band, and I just thought “Watching the Detectives” was the coolest song that had ever happened.  Listen to the drums!  Elvis obviously liked Buddy Holly, and that was always a big plus in my book (preteen me loved 50’s Rock N’ Roll).  I got this for my birthday from two girls I still know and love to this day.  They got me this and the next record, and they gave them to me in school.  I opened them in the cafeteria, and I think I actually stayed in school most of that day so I could carry those records around with me.  I didn’t have a notebook or books or anything, just those two records.  I remember a Ted Nugent fan making fun of them, and I just shook my head and walked away.  This was just such a cool record to have in high school (so I thought, anyway).  “Alison,” “The Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes,” these songs were changing everything for me.

The Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks.  The second birthday record.  The first record that turned my head upside down.  The first record I had to defend because so many people HATED it, without ever having heard it.  I was listening to college radio ( I always had because I loved trying to find weird radio stations and back then I was close enough to a college campus that I could hear their 2 watt station, plus another one or two in Cleveland with more power).  The pistols were definitely a marketed product, but they also had this weird integrity that they would only do what they wanted.

I don’t understand why so many Classic Rockers hated these guys.  The guitars were great.  The lyrics were political.  Was it the weird way they looked?  Maybe all that, but Black Sabbath looked weird and they were popular.  None of this mattered to me.  I dragged this record with me everywhere for a month and tried to get people to play it.  One friend out of all of them had the same thing happen that happened to me.  It changed everything for him, too.  We really started connecting musically, then he moved.  Kinda bummed me out.  I hope he’s still listening to music like we did then.  I hope The Sex Pistols stuck with him like they did with me.

J. Geils Band – Live! Blow Your Face Out.  I hated these guys.  Really, it was a deep-seated hatred.  I have since found out it was their fans I couldn’t fucking stand.  A bunch of jocks that liked to drink and fight.  They’d fight over girls, they’d fight over basketball games and they’d fight over music.  They never had their own pot and they’d bring things like four beers to parties and start drinking ours (well, they’d try).  All the while they’d be blasting the “Woofa Goofa” and playing the same side of Blow Your Face Out over and over again.  I remember being at one guy’s house where his brother would let us play records and he had some good stuff, and hearing side one of Blow Your Face Out six times in a row.  I know, “I musta, I said I b’leeb I musta, I musta got LOOOOOOOST!” is awesome.  Once in awhile, I guess.  Over and over?  Not so much.

These days I have that record and I play it now and then.  It’s pretty great.  They made a bunch of great records that are easy to enjoy without some douche-nozzle that smells like BO and Jovan Musk spitting in your face while they attempt to be Peter Wolf while the real Peter Wolf is blasting out of the stereo.  “Detroit Breakdown” and “Chimes” are really pretty terrific.

The Doors – Strange Days.  I can’t skip The Doors when talking about Teenage Me.  He decided one day that Yes was still totally great, but his new favorite band was going to be The Doors.  Shortly thereafter, the rest of American Teenagerdom jumped on this bandwagon and The Doors started selling more records than they had even when Jim Morrison was alive.  I was glad we were all digging a band that wouldn’t ever do anything else (I was wrong, of course, but I was young).  Now I could tell people how poetic the lyrics were, because Jim Morrison had interviews where he actually said he was a poet.  So this was the real deal.  I thought Robbie Krieger was cool and I liked how they said they didn’t need a bass player because Ray Manzarek could do all that on him Moog.  I know it’s bullshit because you can plainly hear the bass guitar on a lot of their songs, but Teenage Me loved it!

I mean, they had a little of the Progressive spirit of Yes with their keyboards, but their longest songs were only ten minutes or so.  Plus, most of their songs were only two minutes or so.  I really thought Jim was onto something for a year or two, but then I quit doing so many drugs so much of the time and I kind of decided Jim was a bit of a dick.  These days, I still have most of those albums and I like some of the songs quite a bit. I’d rather hear what Ray did with X any day, but these guys were a big deal to me for a few years. 

Todd Rundgren - Something/Anything?

Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? was pretty much ubiquitous throughout the 70's.  Almost everyone had it, or if you didn't have your own copy, you knew five people that did.  The biggest hit was Hello It's Me, which was probably Todd's biggest hit in his storied career.  I always thought it was interesting that the album had this one massive, mellow hit on it and then when people would buy it, it had three sides of just Todd doing whatever it was he wanted to do, and one side of a very loose studio session (which is where Hello It's Me came from).  Whatever it was, people loved it, though.

I remember a couple of older girls from when I was a sophomore, and they were friends of one of my best friends' older brother.  The one girl lived in an old house owned by a woman who was a councilman in our city, and absolutely one of the coolest old hippie ladies that ever walked the planet. The old house was huge, and the upstairs was a place where girls without families lived.  I don't know if it was a foster thing or what it was, because not all the girls went to my school (even though it was within walking distance).  The girl I knew was Chinese, and I think she had a family, but they were in China.  She had lived in the US for most of her life, I think with an uncle or aunt and I think they died and she wound up here.  She had what these days would be considered a horribly racist nickname, and she was really a cool chick.  She had her own car, got killer grades and worked and I think she paid her own way through college.

Her best friend was my friend's brother's biggest crush.  It really pissed him off the first time we all went to the big house to party and I knew her and got a big hug.  We had a lot to talk about because our fathers were both in the school district athletic department.  We had seen each other at functions for years, and we were close to the same age and most of the other kids that always had to go were much younger.  So we hung out, sneaked smokes and talked about music while pot lucks and awards ceremonies raged in the background.  So we had a lot of catching up to do, and she was impressed that I was good at getting alcohol together, even on weeknights.

My first order of business at any one's house was pretty much to attack their record crate and try not to be too much of a snob about what was in it.  There was a lot of slightly mellower 70's rock, and a lot of Todd.  I always loved Something/Anything? because it was such a sprawling project and it seemed to have either really mediocre songs, or really great ones.  The great ones are unbelievably great, like Couldn't I Just Tell You, I Saw the Light and Black Maria.  I really love Black Maria, and I can remember grabbing the album out of the box, and saying, "Hey, can we play side 3?"  We were all pretty buzzed, and the girls out voted me and stuck on side 4.

So I figured it was because they wanted to hear Hello It's Me, and I'm okay with that. There's some other stuff that's a little raunchy and funny on there, and I'm thinking it will be funny to see what they do when those songs come on.  Because teenage me had no fucking clue that other people actually listened to their albums, just like I did.

So the girls change the lyrics to you Left Me Sore to something I was pretty sure you needed to be a fifteen year old boy to find funny, and were dancing on the bed, spilling beer and ashtrays and singing at the top of their lungs to Slut.  I learned a lot about teenage girls that night.  I learned that I didn't know anything about teenage girls, and that I wanted to know teenage girls like these two.  I also learned that older brothers are dumb and I'm glad I don't have any.

So while I'm listening to my copy I pulled out the insert with the lyrics and personnel on it and I notice that there's a little star drawn next to the titles of some of the songs, like *It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference and *It Takes Two to Tango (This is for the Girls).  So I bought this one used because that's not something I ever did.  It's funny to see which songs the original owner liked, but better yet on *Black Maria and *I Went to the Mirror written above the * is HEAVY.

These days you may be thinking, "Todd is heavy?"  Not just heavy, but HEAVY.  Back when this was a popular record, heavy meant more than just Black Sabbath or Grindcore or whatever kind of core is heaviest these days.  Sometimes it just meant that it made you think, which is what I think the person that owned this meant I Went to the Mirror was HEAVY.  I don't necessarily agree with them, but I like the commentary from the past.  The records are in good shape, so I think I'd have liked whoever owned this record.

Of course, I'd have liked them more if they danced and sang on the bed in 1977, but for now I'll just thank them for the memories.

David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

Well David Bowie died the other day and everyone and their brother has posted about him ad infinitum.  I suppose that's to be expected and to be truthful I'm pretty happy to see that so many people had good things to say about him, and that everyone seemed to see that the guy was a genius, even if they didn't like parts of his career (like me).  To me, Bowie will always be the guy from the 70's that constantly was changing and pushing the envelope of Rock Music and essentially challenging us to keep up with him for as long as we could.  He was cool with it if you didn't want to keep up anymore.  Someone would take your place.

Now I find it odd that despite not really caring for his later music (and by later I mean pretty much my entire adult life), his newer music hasn't detracted from his legacy to me.  Hell, with some bands if I hear a bad album or two in a row I'm done and don't even listen to their older stuff that I liked before.  I don't know why that is, and I'm sure it's an issue with me and not them.  It's something I never faulted Bowie for, though.  He didn't need to prove anything to me, because he is a titan just for the 70's music I grew up on.

Bowie really was a titan, too.  He was like our cool yardstick.  If you weren't into Bowie, we weren't into you.  I said somewhere the other day that when I was growing up it seemed to me that you were either into Bowie and new, cool things or you were into Ted Nugent and beating people up.  That probably over simplifies things but that's certainly how I feel looking back at it, and I think I felt that way back then.

I'm not kidding when I say he was like a litmus test for us, and the album that you needed to know was Ziggy Stardust.  You needed to know a lot more than the fact that Moonage Daydream was on it, too.  You needed to know the whole album.  You needed to know it like the back of your hand, too.  It was okay to flub some lyrics here and there because who really knows what Bowie was on about half the time anyway, but you needed to know that record.  We could be friends without it, but we were tight if you knew it.

One of my favorite memories of high school is driving around in my friend's old Ford and I can't remember where we met these girls, but they didn't go to our school and they agreed to go hang out with us and drive around and do whatever stupid crap it was that we were going to get into that night. I was in the back with one girl and the other girl was up front with my friend.  I think my normal job was manning paraphernalia and handling the tunes as copilot but since this girl was up front she got to pick the music and I told her, "You can just play the radio or pick any tape outta here," and I handed her the tape box that held something like 36 cassettes.  I was the one that kept my friend's tapes organized and I remember her saying that she didn't know many people that kept everything alphabetical and then by release date (right about then i wished she was in the back with me!).  I told her it just made copiloting easier for me and that my friend just messed them up and left them lying around outside the box and I had to clean it up every time I got in the car.

Anyway, who cares, ya know?

So this girl says, "Wow! You have a lot of Bowie tapes!  Can I play Ziggy Stardust?"

"Uhhhh....yes.  Yes you can!"

So we put it in and the four of us drove around and smoked a bit of Happy and the four of us sang every single word to every single song to the best of our ability.  We may have messed up some lyrics but all that singing and smoking fogged up the windows (it was winter) and we were fucking cool as hell.  We sang Five Years.  A little to ourselves at first, but then when we all could tell that we all knew it, we built up some confidence and let it out a little.  I rolled another.  We sang Soul Love. These girls knew all the words to Soul Love?  Then Moonage Daydream and Starman.  We just aimlessly drove around, singing "It ain't EASY," and it was just weird and cool.

The auto-reverse kicked in and we sang Lady Stardust.  We sang Star and Hang on to Yourself  and it was good.  We practically cheered when we sang Ziggy Stardust and the girls sang the "Hey, man!" parts of Suffragette City and we sang, "Oh! Leave it alone!" and it went like that throughout the song. We sang, "The smell of that chick just puts my smile out of place" together and then went back to our "parts."  It was really something.

We finished with Rock N' Roll Suicide and it was the second coolest time I ever heard that song. We sang it kind of quietly because it was the end of the record (actually tape in this case).  When it was over the girl in front just turned off the stereo and we just talked for awhile until someone absent mindedly turned on the radio.  I don't remember where we went after that, I know we didn't actually make out with these two, which I'm sure was the goal when we started out, but we just hung out and had a really good time.

I never saw those girls again and I don't remember their names.  I wonder if they remember that night.  I wonder if my friend does?  Probably not, and that's okay.  Most people don't remember stuff like that, I guess.  I remember because I thought it was really worth remembering, and I still think so. When I heard Bowie had died it was the first thing I thought of.  I thought, "Thanks, Dave.  That memory is a really good one.  Looking back, I can't think of any single album that meant more to me when I was seventeen than Ziggy Stardust and I still love this record like it's a part of me.

My copy of this was a gift from my wife, who wasn't one of those girls from that night.  She probably doesn't remember giving me this particular record, but she did, and I'll never part with it because I think it's one of my favorite gifts ever.  Partly because I like that she bought something that she knew means a lot to me, but also because she likes Bowie, too.  We don't like that many of the same things musically but we like Bowie.  If I would have a Top Ten list of records I know that Exile on Main St. and Ziggy Stardust would be on it for sure, but I don't know about the rest.

Roxy Music - Stranded

I still listen to college radio.  I've always liked it, since I was a kid and stayed up late, well past my bedtime listening to my pillow speaker and looking for stations that played Rock songs I had never heard.  That's where I found out about things like Punk Rock and it's even where I first heard bands like Roxy Music.  I'd lay money on it that WCSB is the first place I ever heard Mother of Pearl from Stranded.  WMMS eventually played it, but it was one of those late night songs.  I mean, they played Love is the Drug during the day and that was about it.

The college stations would play popular albums but they'd always play some oddball song that I had never heard.  That's how I found out I really liked a band like Roxy Music.  I know I never heard the brilliant A Song for Europe on a commercial station, but I've loved this song since high school because some kids used to play it on their shows.

Then it seemed like a lot of the music I liked kind of disappeared from college radio.  Hey, I'm not a kid anymore and I'd expect that to happen. Things go away, and they really kind of should.  If Styx, Supertramp and Foreigner had moved out of the way then there would have been room for plenty of bands that deserved their shot.  Not on the college stations, but regular commercial radio.  Things should fade away and become a niche, I think.

College stations are a great place for niche music because the DJ just plays what they want to play anyway, which is really pretty cool. So I was saying that all these bands that I grew up with that were on the fringes of major label life back then had kind of faded away and I was getting around to saying the only place I ever hear these songs now is at my house or maybe my car.  I was pretty resigned to this and I really don't mind because I think it's the natural way of things.

Lately though, I've started hearing these songs crop up now and then on college radio.  There's even shows dedicated to older, guitar driven Rock and I'm pretty surprised how many of the songs I always loved are being discovered by another generation of people, and by people I mean people that aren't my kids or relatives.  I was listening the other day on some trips around town for work and I heard Brownsville Station.  I heard Johnny Winter.  I heard Artful Dodger and Blue Oyster Cult from their first album.  Now to me this stuff isn't all that obscure because I've been listening to it my whole life, but to someone in their twenties this isn't exactly the stuff packing the bins at the used record store.

It's not just one show these days.  There's a few people doing it.  Hell, I even heard Gentle Giant (hey kids, they suck - you can really stop that now!).  I was pretty damned floored when I heard Phil Manzanera's wicked guitar opening to Mother of Pearl the other day, though.  It was almost like hearing it for the first time.  It was just so unexpected and, shall we say, Out of the Blue.  I really liked hearing it and it just got me to decide I should go home and listen to Stranded because it's been too long.

I really love Manzanera's playing throughout this album.  On Amazona he sounds like he just learned something new and he just seems to play with a joy most players don't (or maybe just can't) get across.  I've always felt Street Life and Song for Europe were two of Roxy's absolutely best songs and the aforementioned Mother of Pearl is one of my favorites.  This is the first record without Brian Eno and I suppose it isn't quite as adventurous as the first two albums but it just seems a little more solid than the first two.  Like most Roxy albums, I like it a lot.

Getting back to the radio thing, I think it's cool that there's a few shows playing things that college radio actually used to play long ago.  Hell, I've heard The Yardbirds and Rose Tattoo in the same hour.  That's pretty cool.  There's hope for the future yet, but I hope these people are still listening to new stuff, too.

Quadrajets - Alabama Hip Shake

OK, so ya remember Punk Rock, right?  Not today's Green Day and their offshoots, but the original stuff from the 70's?  I love it.  I pretty much always have.  Then it turned into Hardcore, where everyone was trying to out Sex Pistol everyone else.  It kinda lost me there, especially when it morphed into stuff like Straight Edge(sorry, I never had a problem with people being wasted).  Well, you may think I'm kind of getting started saying that The Quadrajets are some kind of  Hardcore offshoot, and they aren't.  They're certainly capable of being that if they wanted, but they seem to understand that there's something to be said about getting back to the old aesthetic of "Fuck you, we play what we want and it just doesn't matter if that's in front of ten people or a 1000."

Man, I love that attitude.  I mean, The Quadrajets are Southern.  They use three guitars and they use them for making a wall of guitar noise.  They do it so well that one of my favorite bands in the whole world, The Dexateens, essentially make their own Quadrajets album once.  These guys are loose, they're loud and they must have been one of the most brutal live bands ever.  They sing about girls and cars.  Considering this came out in 1996,you kinda gotta wonder what they were thinking because like now, this is not the kind of stuff the radio is interested in.

Mostly people don't get interested in stuff like this because it's loud, fast and hard and they don't take themselves too seriously.  The kid inside me LOVES that.  I mean, a song like The Rosedale Sons of Kong is just the kind of thing that makes me want to drive 100 miles an hour and throw beer bottles at mailboxes as I drive by (not that I would, because that's irresponsible and hopefully no one's done it since 1979).  Other songs on here make you want to light fires and piss on cop cars.  Songs like Dixie Speedway and Blaster are exactly what you'd think they'd be.  They have three goddamned guitars and they don't have two of them doing the same thing all the time, trust me.  They use them ALL.

Side two keeps the energy level (and the volume level) all the way up.  Stone Cold Kickin' It (At Giza) is pretty much the Dexateens blueprint for playing fast and loud, and this original blueprint is definitely just as good.  Then the Quadrajets take Neil Young's Computer Age and turn it into something worthwhile (sorry Neil, I think Trans sucks).  Then I think my two favorite songs show up, 40 Wt. Dope and Bad Motherfuckin' Bitch.  There's just so much to love about these songs.  The riffs are HUGE.  The drums are loud and who can't sing along to "my bad motherfuckin' bitch?"

I can.  You can, too.  I'm telling ya, if you've got a coma going on, and someone plays this stuff for you, there will be a drunken party that ends in a fight on your hospital floor and when they check the security cameras it will be your comatose ass up drinking Pabst Tall Boys and lighting your mattress on fire, then sneaking back to your bed, and probably going back into your coma from being so plowed at your coma party.

I have to highly recommend these guys.  maybe I make them sound a little one dimensional, but they really just stay true to their really loud vision.  You just can't fault a band for that.  You can only admire them.

And turn them up!

James Gang - Live in Concert

I suppose I'm a dyed in the wool homer.  I like Cleveland and I like Ohio.  I think musically we really kill it, and some of the evidence of that is Cleveland's own James Gang. I know people that have actually never heard any of this stuff, which is where Joe Walsh proved that he was a certifiable Rock Guitar God.  Not with any disclaimers tossed in, either.  No one that's ever seen and heard Joe tear it up says he's a great guitar player, he's like toss your favorite in here but not quite as good.  You just don't say that about the guy.  When you see Joe play you can't imagine how utterly effortless his playing appears, like he was just born with a guitar.  He can pull out an acoustic guitar and play as pretty as anyone, and then just plug in and peel your face right off.

Live the James Gang stuff is mostly the peel your face off variety of Joe's playing.  That's my favorite stuff anyway, and Dale Peters and Jim Fox keep the bottom end hard and heavy so Joe can do his thing.  The beginning of side one always seemed kind of like one big song to me, but it's actually three.  These were what caught all of our attention when we were teenagers, hanging out in this one guy's room who had a sister that was a decidedly harder rocker than most people I knew.  These days the stuff she liked the best can be dismissed as Blooze Rawk or just lunkheaded stupidity.  I really don't care where the cool kids have decided this stuff falls when they plot out what is and isn't worthy.  I like plenty of critical favorites, but if you've never ripped a bong to Tend My Garden or Walk Away, then maybe you just haven't figured out what this Rock N' Roll stuff is all about.

Because Joe Walsh has always been fun, and he's always been smarter than he lets on.  He's written some stuff that's just kind of throwaway novelty things, but he's the guy that wrote Walk Away, and while it gives him plenty of room to play a big, fat riff it's also nothing he should be lyrically ashamed of, either.  I think it's kind of funny that of the biggest songs James Gang had, Walk Away is far and away the most popular that made it on to this record.  They left Funk 49 off.  They left The Bomber off.  you can kind of think, "What the hell!" but trust me, the closer on this record is killer.

The closer is the Yardbirds classic, Lost Woman.  You gotta have some confidence in your guitar playing when you decide to not only cover a song Jeff Beck unleashed on the world when he was a true rock god, but then to just annihilate your guitar for fifteen minutes on Jeff's song, well that takes real chutzpah.  Joe kills it, too.  Dale peters gets to do a bass thing for a bit and while it's not Chris Squire, it's certainly not the kind of thing that whatever the guy with the real long name at AllMusic  seems to feel Joe had grown out of.

I mean, this is a great 1970's live album, and yes, it has a goddamned drum solo on it.  But at least it's pretty furious and doesn't last too long.  The acapella part is kind of weird but it doesn't last long, either and at least it's kind of funny.  I never got to see the James Gang, and I really wish I had been old enough to see them.  I'm fine with who I am and how old I am and I don't really regret not seeing them, because I did see Joe solo when he was running for president, and he played a long time and killed it.

I don't know how long I've had this.  It's in really good shape and it sounds terrific.  All in all, definitely one I'll never be getting rid of.

Dire Straits - Dire Straits

Ya know, the late 70's were an interesting time to be a teenager.  Mostly because it wasn't horribly hard to hear new music.  You had to work at it to hear anything underground or local, but you could turn on one of the Rock radio stations and sandwiched in between the Zeppelin and Stones were plenty of new bands like Dire Straits or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  It didn't mean that all those new bands were good, or even worthwhile but at least when you turned on the radio you didn't hear the same shit your dad grew up with 24/7.  It's like people demanded to hear new things alongside of their old favorites and then one day those people all said, "Fuck it," and radio decided to just play what used to work and quit trying to expand their audience, or even try to stay interesting ot the kids that made Rock radio important in the first place.

That's a damned shame, too.  There's obviously a shitload of people interested in Rock music.  They're so interested in it that modern Country has appropriated the whole damned thing, power chords and all.  They're so interested in it that professional sports blasts those old songs out ad nauseam.  The interest is there, but the major labels have bought all the radio stations and they only play their own tried and true surefire moneymakers.  Heaven forbid some PD at a station in Akron, OH play a song that isn't thoroughly tested and proven to make .006 cents per listener per minute for three fucking minutes.  Someone might turn off the radio and miss the next nine minutes of tampon ads.

In 1978 Dire Straits were one of those bands that were untested, and they were kind of quirky and slow and mostly moody, but for some reason someone around somewhere decided to keep pushing them a little at a time and by mid 1979 Sultans of Swing was our new "classic" rock staple.  That song was everywhere.  Every station played it, to the point where I always figured I'd just be sick of these guys until the day I died.  Something happened, though.  I just never really get tired of these guys.  I have to be in the mood for them, but give me a nice summer night and a cold beer and a little peace and quiet and I can listen to some Dire Straits.

I think a lot of it is that while I don't think they have any truly great, monumental songs, they also don't have any truly shitty songs.  At least not on the couple of albums I have, like this first one.  It never sounded particularly fresh and new when it came out, but the music on this album has a remarkable quality of never sounding old and stale, either.  I guess this album is kind of like a good pair of jeans.  They fit pretty good but you've got better ones, and they just never seem to wear out.  that's how Dire Straits seem to me.

That's okay, too.  Everything doesn't have to be the absolute greatest thing that ever happened.  When did people quit appreciating talent and craftsmanship and demanding nothing but a handful of songs that most everyone agrees are the definitive statements of their era, not to mention deciding that one era was more or less deserving of any other?  I mean, I love home made ice cream, but I can appreciate and enjoy Dairy Queen, too.  There's so much stuff in the world that's so much better than average and people ignore these things because they aren't the "best."  Man, that's really stupid.

That's where Dire Straits is for me.  At least this album and another one.  They're better than most things.  The playing is terrific, and Mark Knopfler is certainly deserving of all the credit he gets for his playing (and probably more).  Sultans of Swing was a big hit, deservedly so, but Wild West End, Down to the Waterline and Six Blade Knife are maybe not Top Ten material, but there's a lot of meat on those bones and these are the kinds of songs that make for a solid, strong album.  The kind of thing that deserved the accolades it got at the time, and the kind of thing that was more than worthwhile for some PD to take a chance on.  I know those days are gone, but while everything people took chances on back then didn't work, when they did they paid off and paid off for years.  it's too bad people aren't like that anymore.

So I like this record.  I don't love it, but I like it a lot.  Mine is a Columbia House version, and it sounds terrific.  Super flat, super clean, super quiet and just as good as a record gets.  I think it was a quarter and I can't imagine that I've spent many quarters on many other things that are this good.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - The Good Earth

I remember this one was one of those records that I loved, but never seemed to own until I was an adult.  I think the first time I bought it was on CD, and that was at least twenty some years removed from days of sitting in my best friend's older sister's room and listening to The Good Earth on her floor, pretty much surrounded by pink.  I can't remember if this was a thing that was okay or not.  I seem to think it was okay because her friends seemed to like us, and she was actually pretty nice to us (usually - she was an older sister and she could apply amazing amounts of bitch when she felt it necessary).  I can remember very distinctly when we were out doing something stupid and it was night, probably pretty late because his parents were cool with us going on "Midnight Bike Rides."  These rides often meant rolling houses and creating general mischief like Double Scares and Flaming Fudge Bags.  We came back one night and the girls had just got dropped off and they seemed pretty hammered.  One of her friends, whom I thought was just beautiful, and not only way out of my league, but like three years older than me (which made a big difference then), sees me and says, "There he is!  The cute one!."  I probably had the dumbest look on my face because I thought that was so cool, but then she walked up to me while I was still just straddling my bicycle, grabbed my head and pretty much shoved her tongue down my throat!  Luckily, I actually had kissed a girl already and I knew what to do for the most part.  I kissed her back, and I tried to make it last as long as I could.  She tasted like sweet liquor and I thought this was the greatest thing to ever happen to me.  When she was done she kind of slapped my face and told my friend's sister, "Yeah, he's cute, but he's gonna be trouble."  Then they went off to that pink bedroom and played music and laughed until the sun came up.  Much as I'd have liked it, we didn't even ask to come in and hang out.  I think we went to the school playground and smoked cigarettes and talked about how unbelievably lucky I was until the sun started coming up.

I suppose that has pretty much nothing to do with Manfred Mann's Earth Band's The Good Earth, but I always think about that when I play this record.  At least for a minute or two.  I still remember her name and I'll keep that to myself, but I like that when I pull this record out that's usually about the first thing I think of.  The record itself is completely different.  It's a nerdy affair, if you ask me.  We were really into Yes and Manfred Mann, but none of our friends listened to this overblown stuff that we eventually found out was called Progressive Rock.  My favorite Earth Band album was (and still is) Solar Fire but there are some great things about The Good Earth.  It doesn't quite hold up like Solar Fire for me because it has a couple of tracks that are kind of weenie anthems.  Not many, but just enough that where I thought the softer, prettier parts of Solar Fire would set up some screaming guitar solo, synth blast or bashing drums would kind of just keep being soft and pretty instead of leading the way to the big payoff.

The record kicks off with a rooster crowing and then they kick into the title track, which is a Gary Wright song.  That should give you a good idea that this album tends to sound very 70's.  It's a long song, over eight minutes, with great interplay between Manfred Mann's keyboards and Mick Rogers' guitar.   Some of the nature effects are unnecessary, but there's plenty of big moments and Chris Slade's drumming is top notch and I love the way he's recorded.  His drums sound real, like they're right there in the room with you.  I suppose people would say they're dry, but that's what real drums really sound like.

Launching Place is total Prog Rock, but it's really good.  There's about forty keyboards going on here, but Mann's got good taste and knows that you can actually go too far, so he walks the fine line between engaging and interesting on one side to overblown and stupid on the other.  He reins it in and goes back to just one before too long and it makes the song better instead of making it just more.  Side one ends with a song I've heard a million times, and pretty much instantly forget.  It's called I'll Be Gone.  It's not bad, but it's just not memorable at all.  It mostly plods along.  It's about having money someday and then going away.  Never really says where or why, but I never felt it was anything I needed to worry about.

Side two definitely gets a little of the Solar Fire mojo back.  Both albums were recorded at the same place so they have a similar sound, but the way side one peters out always kind of left me looking through my record box for something else.  The side kicks off and ends with Earth Hymn and Earth Hymn Part 2.  These are the kinds of things I always liked about these guys.  Big riffs, great guitar and keyboard interplay and really cool drums   I should probably mention Colin Pattenden on bass because people say a good bass player doesn't so much need to be heard, and he's never the focus of the music, but there's always plenty of bottom end on Earth Band albums, so the dude deserves some credit for being where he's supposed to be.

Sky High is the centerpiece of the whole record.  It's a medium length instrumental with a cool wobbly guitar, weird time changes, Pattenden channeling Chris Squire and it's just the kind of song that seems like the band is having a good time playing with and for each other.  It's definitely Prog Rock of the highest order and isn't for everyone, but I love it.  Kind of reminds me of South Side of the Sky for some reason, and I think that's a good thing.

Then the record bogs down.  Solar Fire never bogs down, but Be Not Too Hard is more memorable than I'll Be Gone, but this is damning with very faint praise.  This is weenie rock of the highest order, just like Todd Rundgren's Just One Victory.  The only way it could be worse is if it were a Styx song.

It closes out with Earth Hymn Part 2 so we get redemption.  This is kind of riffing on the original idea, with cool, swirling keyboards and a lot of focus on Manfred Mann's playing.  There's no prog rock dudes in capes that can pull this stuff off any better and I always liked the fact that Manfred could keep the bombast down a little, but wasn't afraid to go ahead and show why the band bears his name once in awhile.  If they just had two different songs, one for each side, they'd have had another Solar Fire, maybe even something more than Solar Fire.

Mine's in okay shape.  I've got the CD so if I think I need to hear a more quiet version, I can listen to that.  I think the CD is missing the rooster at the beginning, but I haven't played it in awhile.  The cover has sticker spots from other people or stores, but the record is actually pretty decent.  I'd buy a really nice one if I ever found one, but I never see any.  Maybe everyone only wanted it for the chance to own 1 square foot of the good earth with the coupon included with the record.  If you sent it in, they put your name on a registry of some land somewhere in England.  It was probably a swamp, but it was supposedly real.  I wonder if it's still there or if someone sold it and put condo's on it?

The Move - Split Ends

Boy, I've been really busy and haven't had any time for these kind of things.  I've had time to buy records and listen to music, but just no time to get in the mood to write anything down.  Plus, sometimes when I'm in the mood to write something, I decide to listen to a bunch of things I've already written about.  So I'd have to either rewrite something, or add to it.  Both are easy enough to do, but I like the fact that these are all just what I was thinking about while I was listening to an album and I don't want them to get dumped and overwritten.

I wasn't a big fan of The Move when I was younger, and I'm probably still not a real big fan.  I think it's Jeff Lynne.  When I was a teenager I found him to be interesting as hell with ELO, but the older I got the less I like his wall of sound production.  Then I keep getting older and reading about music and people I think generally like decent music seem to say, "Yeah, I like The Move.  Lynne was a good complement to Roy Wood."  Now, I hear that Roy Wood is a bonafide weirdo, so I'm intrigued.  I go out and buy some albums by The Move.  I really only have two and they're both some kinds of compilations and ya know what?  I don't think there's any overlap of songs one them.  So that's kind of a nod to their strangeness, I suppose.

I like this one.  It's not as big and busy as an ELO album, and I was already familiar with Do Ya.  I think I mentioned liking it on Utopia's Another Live, and in the liner notes on that album Todd Rundgren mentions that the song is by The Move, not ELO.  I don't dislike the version by ELO, but it just doesn't have any charm.  It's just a big slap in the ears.  The Move does the song with plenty of production values, but it just has a sense of fun that's missing from the later ELO version.  I think Utopia actually lives up to the spirit of the original better.

I think that's important.  I understand that sincerity and integrity are two words that almost have no place in Rock music writing, but every song isn't trying to sit at the top of the charts and every song isn't trying to be high art.  Some songs just need to get out and fall in between high art and chart success.  Some songs just get a better break from another band's point of view or promotional machine.  Kind of like Hanging on the Telephone by The Nerves.  It's not high art, and it's just a little too raw to sit at the top of the charts.  Blondie came along and didn't pretty it up much, but just enough, and they had the promotional machine to make it successful.  I don't think any integrity or sincerity is lost in either version, because I don't think either group was trying to make a statement for the ages.

That's what I think about The Move.  They could have probably competed with the Pink Floyd's and King Crimson's of the word if they wanted to, but I think they weren't interested in pushing whatever envelopes those bands were busy pushing at.  A song like Down on the Bay has a weird kind of choogle like CCR, and some swell Chuck Berry riffs to carry it all along and get things going.  It's the kind of thing that if they had played it straight, it might have made the charts.  As it is, it doesn't really sound anything like either CCR or Chuck Berry, but they're in there. The Move seems more interested in seeing if they can make it more interesting and screw the charts.

California Man is probably better known to most of us as a Cheap Trick song.  Those guys strip the song to its elements.  The elements Cheap Trick strips out would be the artistic choices, and all they're left with is the hit potential.  The charm of the song is gone.  I think Outkast managed to pretty much steal big chunks of The Move's version of California Man for their song Hey Ya, which means Roy Wood was like forty years ahead of his time, and if he didn't get a check from Outkast, he should consider asking for one, because there's no way they didn't steal parts of it.  I have no idea if this is a known thing or if I'm just not familiar enough with Outkast (guess what - I'm not going to try to get familiar with them, either!), but that's what it sounds like to me.

I think the songs on this album kind of seem like either Jeff Lynne songs or Roy Wood songs.  Lynne's are easy to spot, we're all familiar with what he does and you either like him or you don't.  He may be a little reined in here and that may be what kept The Move from being huge.  Then again maybe Roy Wood was a little reined in, and that's why the Pink Floyd/King Crimson adulation never came.  As my friend's mom used to say (sort of in this case), "Shit or get off the pot!"  The Move does kind of seem stuck like a cat that can't decide whether to go out or stay in,

I kind of wish I had known these guys when I was 14, because I think I'd have liked them back when I only had ten or fifteen albums and the ones I had I knew pretty much like my own skin.  There's a lot to listen to here.  Not all of it is good, but none of it is bad.  It's almost all at least a little weird.  Not like weird Prog Rock time signatures, but you can hear the influence of the fifties, the influence of a modern studio and maybe the influence of drugs.  Lynne never made me think he was wasted very often, he seems like a pretty driven guy to me, and I don't think he has the time to be wasted.  Wood seems more like he would find altered mind states more useful, but I really think a guy like that would have had a hard time working with Lynne, and from things I've read it seems like Wood thought Lynne's ELO idea was a great one, even if he wasn't a part of it, and that Lynne should certainly pursue it.  If I'm understanding that right, then I'd think the guy was a pretty damned good friend and wasted people don't usually make the best friends when it comes to making decisions that may affect them adversely.

So here's a band I kind of wish I had caught on to sooner.  They may have been the kind of band that changed the way I think about music if I had spent a lifetime with them.  As it is, I didn't do that.  I like them.  I don't love them.  I think The Move is the kind of band that starts to set a person's record collection apart from other people.  Most of us have our favorites, and a lot of those overlap with other people we meet.  A lot of people today just steal music or stream absolutely anything they want any time they want, and I'm not saying those people aren't discerning listeners (maybe I am a little), but when you start getting to the records people have that they don't often play, but have no plans of ever getting rid of, that's where you find the real common ground.  You don't even have to like these kinds of records in someone else' record collection, because they let you know that this person listens to music.  They don't play music because they want to paint the bathroom, they play music to keep themselves happy and sane.  So these are the kinds of records where we may not share that common ground, but our little islands are close enough together that we can see that there's someone on our side.  Someone that gets it, even if what they get isn't the same thing as us.

Rainbow - Rising

I still listen to college radio sometimes and it's funny that something that I once considered to essentially be it when it came to musical knowledge and coolness isn't quite what I used to think it was.  It's probably always been that way, but just over the last week I heard two DJ's get something wrong that I thought was such common knowledge that I actually remember the things they said.  That's saying something, too.  I often can't remember the name of the song they were playing when I thought, "I gotta get that album!"  They probably didn't make any bigger mistakes than kids have been making for their entire lives, but for some reason it just stuck in my mind this week.

The first was a show where the guy plays primarily 70's guitar boogie and blues rawk and that kind of over bloated guitar wankery that a lot of people can't stand these days.  I still like a lot of it, but I'm weird like that.  This guy just played a song by Chicken Shack, and I couldn't remember who the band was, but I knew the song.  So he starts talking about finding this Chicken Shack album somewhere and he says he likes it so far, but that he didn't know anyone in the band and didn't think any of them went on to any fame.  I'm thinking, "Dude...Stan Webb.  Stan Webb is Chicken Shack and that's where Christine McVie came from."  This is all old shit nowadays, though.  I'm okay with the guy not knowing about Christine, but Stan Webb was one of those B-list guitar players from the 70's that everyone had a friend that thought that he was the shit and had all of the guy's albums.  Like Frank Marino or Robin Trower.

The other one was just today when the woman that was a DJ was talking about the songs she had played and saying what albums they came from (a couple were Greatest Hits albums, so I thought she could have pulled up the Google there), and she said she had played a song by Blondie, and referred to Blondie as "she."  I'm so old I remember ads where they said Blondie is a Group.  I mean, most people don't know that Debbie Harry's name isn't Blondie I suppose, but there was a time when a college DJ wouldn't have been wrong on that one.

I don't want to act like kids these days are stupid, because I don't think they are.  I do think that they have had so much available to them for nothing for so long now, that they never had the record box with just a dozen records and a whole Saturday night to just sit and listen to those same twelve records over and over and read the covers and learn about all there was to learn there.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing or a good thing, but I think it is a thing.  One of the odd things here is that these two DJ's are both doing what are considered oldies shows now, so I'm cutting them some slack there just for being interested in the music that had scenes even though they weren't quite underground and they weren't quite the dominant A listers, either.  That's the stuff that really falls through the cracks, ya know?  Stuff that was kind of popular.

Which is what got me to pull out Rainbow Rising.  Hey, we all knew who Ritchie Blackmore was because he was in Deep Purple.  We knew Cozy Powell played with Jeff Beck.  Ronnie James Dio was less known, but man, the dude can really sing this kind of stuff.  I pretty much think this is the best Rainbow album, and I always have.  Side two has the longer tunes, Stargazer and A Light in the Black and those are kind of like a modern take on Blackmore's old band, Deep Purple.  I've always felt that when the drums and bass get a real chance to lay down a fast, hard beat that Blackmore is pretty hard to beat as a guitar player. he can riff with the best of them and his solo's all kind of sound the same, but it's just a really great solo, ya know?  The first side has shorter songs, of which the best one is probably Starstruck, and I think that's mostly because of what Dio puts into it.

I saw Rainbow once and Blackmore broke a string during the first or second song and stormed off to pout for the rest of the show while his guitar tech stood in the shadows and played all Blackmore's parts and I gotta tell ya, I didn't miss him at all.  Dio carried off the whole thing anyway.  He didn't even seem to need Ritchie (and a few years later he pretty much owned the world of heavy metal) and I really liked the show.

My record is in nice shape.  I don't remember where it's from, and I've had it for decades but I don't think it's a 1976 pressing.  It's in a plastic inner sleeve and there's a barcode sticker on the back corner, which could just mean I bought it used from a place that did that, but I kind of doubt it.  It's nice and flat and plays nice.  It's not the kind of thing I listen to all the time, because it's a little overblown for me, but when I do listen to it, I really enjoy it.  Rainbow certainly lost a lot when Dio left, even though I think they sold a lot of records later on.

Mink DeVille - Cabretta

I remember when this record came out.  Pretty much no one bothered with it.  At least no one I knew bothered with it.  I thought Willy DeVille was a pretty cool looking guy and I heard Cadillac Walk once or twice on WMMS, so I figured these guys were just around the corner from getting big.  Apparently that corner is a lot harder to get around than I ever seem to think, because I was talking to someone the other day about great dollar records, and I mentioned that I got the first Mink DeVille album for a dollar at a Record X back when they were trying to make their records just go away.  I wonder if Record X would put three or four dollars on a Mink DeVille album these days, or if it would still just be a dollar?  I have a feeling they wouldn't even take it in trade because i don't think anyone really remembers them.

Which is kind of a shame, because I thought these guys were really cool.  They had what I kind of considered a sophisticated garage sound.  Which meant that they could kill it with a song like Cadillac Walk, but they could also bring it all down a couple of notches and make a pretty song like Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl really work.  These guys were on Capitol, so you'd think they might have had some publicity behind them, but like I said, I was talking to a guy about dollar records and he said he'd never heard of Mink DeVille and didn't know if it would be worth it to take a chance on them.

In this day and age how can you  not be willing to spend ONE DOLLAR on a record someone tells you is good?  I'd even consider pretty much any record, even if it was recommended by a friend that listens to Kiss, Nickelback and Def Leppard.  I mean, if the record is clean, and it's ONE DOLLAR then where's the risk?  I was telling him about how I thought Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl was kind of like The Stones' Beast of Burden in that it was slower and kind of pretty, but not at all smarmy or gross.  Then there's songs like the rocking Gunslinger, and a great cover of Moon Martin's Cadillac Walk.  Ya know, for a dollar if you can find a record with two songs that good on it, you really need to go out and buy the damned thing!

I'm not sure what ever made it so these guys didn't get noticed by anyone.  Looking on the internet, it looks like Spanish Stroll actually cracked the Top 20 over in England.  I like that song, but I don't remember ever hearing it anywhere.  It sort of reminds me of what Lou Reed was up to in the latter part of the 70's, with a touch of the Barrio thrown in for good measure.  I really wish I had been one of the kids that bought this back in 1977.  I think if I had I'd have forced my friends to sit and listen to it all the time.  As it is, I pretty much listen to it myself quite a bit these days, because it really has a kind of timeless quality to it.  I can hear the touchstones from the 50's and 60's and the record was produced by Jack Nitzsche (yeah, that Jack Nitzsche) so the sound is very natural and not the kind of thing that gets dated easily.  What a really great album.  It's hard to believe I've had it for like twenty years and even though I've had it for so long I still feel like I really missed the boat on Mink DeVille.

My copy is nice and flat, the cover shows some ringwear and there's a click on it here and there, but like the big sticker says, it was ONE DOLLAR.  It's definitely one of the best dollars I ever spent.

Johnny Winter - Second Winter

Ya know, I know I've mentioned a lot how it's kind of funny that a lot of my friends had older sisters and that's where I found out about a lot of music when I was a kid.  Johnny Winter is not on that list of "Music I Learned About From Girls."  Johnny is on the list of "Music I Learned About Hanging Around With Guys That Are Older Than Me."  By the time I was in high school, I had expanded my circle of friends to where I was all of a sudden hanging around with a couple of guys that were definitely the babies of the family.  In age, not attitude.  I had really good friends, and I actually still see a lot of them quite regularly (I know, that's kind of weird).

Johnny Winter was the kind of guy that you'd hear hanging around in a garage, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while taking turns trying to burn an exhaust system off an old car.  Cars in Ohio see rough winters and a lot of salt, and in a few years, those muffler clamps turn into rusty blobs and wrenches are worthless.  So we'd get under the car and bust knuckles and swear in turns and get that stuff off of there.  It was kind of fun, but I don't miss working on cars.  I kind of miss listening to things like Johnny Winter over some Frankenstereo with an old pair of Panasonic Thrusters or Zenith Allegro speakers screwed into the rafters of a detached garage with five other guys.  Those guys weren't listening to Elvis Costello or The Cars.  Those guys wanted to hear some wailing on guitars, and Johnny Winter was one of the kings of that.

You'd hear all kinds of stuff in a garage.  Too much Led Zeppelin, for sure.  That's where I heard stuff like Les Dudek and Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush for the first time.  Hanging in a garage with guys was kind of fun back then.  We got to work on some really cool cars, too.  I had a friend with a 56 Chevy 2 door, a 62 Mercury Monterey S-55, a 67 Cougar with a 390 - that list goes on and on.  You could get those cars so cheap back then.  I'm not much of a car guy, but I just don't get what they're doing when they aren't working.  I'm a wonderful assistant, though!

I loved hearing Johnny Winter on a nice summer evening with a cold beer and a cool car up on jack stands, or with the hood up and guys figuring out how to get an old water pump off, or get valves to quit ticking.  It was a lot of fun, and hearing something like Johnny Winter giving a serious set of balls to Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.  I know, I heard it in the garage more than once; Dylan's version has plenty of balls of its own, but like I said then, "Not like Johnny's does.  That's some serious badass shit, right there."  I still say that.  Johnny's voice just matches his muscular guitar tone so well, that he can make a song his own.  Dylan shouldn't feel bad, because Johnny takes Johnny B. Goode and makes that his, too.  I love the originals of both of those songs, but Johnny just puts them into his Texas Tornado of Sound and they come out so, so great.

I think those visits in garages are what makes me still so enamored of what so many upper middle aged mid western men think is what "Rock" should be all about.  I can listen to a lot of those kinds of guitar slinger records and I just get it.  I love the wailing.  I dig the big drums and thumpin' bass.  I know it's out of style and it was pretty much out of style the day it came out, but I just get it, man.  I think it's cool and I never cared when old girlfriends didn't want to hear a guy like Johnny play six hundred notes when three might have done.  There's something to be said for excess, but you have to do it right, or you just become a stupid wanker.  I'm not exactly sure where that line is, but Johnny Winter knows  exactly where it is, and he goes right up to that line and steps back just in time, every time.  I think he's the guy Stevie Ray Vaughan really, truly aspired to be, but I think Stevie crossed that line now and then.  He couldn't pull back consistently enough.

So my copy of Second Winter isn't one of the original 1969 copies.  If I had to guess, I think I'd guess late 70's.  It's in nice shape, a couple clicks here and there, but I think this one was played and loved, the same way I'd have played and loved it if I had owned it for its entire life.  It's a gatefold cover with a cool inside picture and side four is blank.  I always liked that they did that, because they didn't try to squeeze out one song and then squish everything onto a single lp.  It's nice because it sounds really good and you don't need to crank it way up to make it sound that way.  I think Second Winter is really, truly one of the great guitar albums of the 70's.  Yes, I'm aware it came out in 69 but believe me, this was a staple in almost every group of guys that hung out throughout the 70's, and no one considered it an old 60's album.

The Tubes - Remote Control

Ya know, I never know what blogs I write that people will actually read.  I think that if I do something by The Stones or Neil Young, people will find it and maybe read it.  Then I do something like The Slickee Boys or Jacobites, and I get a ton of hits from all over the world.  I really don't get it.  Then again, even when I have a blog entry more read than another one it still means almost no one on the planet has read it.  So I think I'll just keep doing it the way I have been and if I have time, and I'm thinking about a record all day, I'll write about that one.

With The Tubes - Remote Control album I wasn't so much thinking about this album all day, but how odd I always thought it was that I knew people that liked The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, but couldn't stand The Tubes.  I really kind of don't get that.  I always thought that if I had the chance to see both of those bands in like a co-headlining thing I'd have paid pretty much anything they asked.  I saw The Tubes and I never saw Alex, and I'll tell you some time how much I liked seeing them.  For now, I'm gonna stick with what I was thinking all day.

The Tubes should have been bigger.  I don't know why they weren't.  My friends and I loved them.  I went to a school where they were really popular.  I mean, everyone knew who they were.  Even this album, Remote Control, was a constant at parties all over town.  I liked that after some stupid fucking Ted Nugent album was over I could put on something like this and everyone liked it.  So where was the rest of the country?  Why weren't these guys huge?

By the time they got to Remote Control, they had Todd Rundgren producing, and I think he went a long way to making sure that Remote Control sounded like a modern, major label release.  They always sounded pretty good, but Todd is good at making a big sound huge.  If there was anything The Tubes needed it was the hugeness of their live show to translate onto vinyl.  I think they succeeded here.  It gets some Todd signature backing vocals here and there, but the record still sounds like The Tubes.

In 1979 when this came out, I was pretty sure that TV was evil, and that bands like The Tubes that were pointing out just how really horrible TV really is would maybe be able to help change things for the better.  Here's one of those bands that I thought was going to change the way things were, but all it did is eventually show my idealistic young self that as much as it seemed like it was changing my life, Rock N' Roll was never going to change the world and make it better.  It was just going to be another way for rich people to print money.  Man, that sucked when I really finally understood that.

I have a friend who had an old Nova he bought from the old lady across the street.  It was a blue 4 door, early 70's.  It was rotted from the bottom of the door panels about a quarter of the way up the doors and fenders.  It looked like someone dipped it in acid or something.  We couldn't put any speakers in the doors because they'd get wet, but we got a decent sounding stereo in there in spite of the challenges.  The damned thing only had like 25.000 miles on it, but man, was it rusty!

We used to drive around and listen to Remote Control all the time.  I think we listened to side one most of the time, because everyone really liked the title track, and Prime Time, which is kind of a derivative of Don't Touch Me There, their first brush with chart success.  The one two punch of opener Remote Control going into TV Is King was a pretty strong way to kick off an album, and it was hard to argue when someone wanted to hear that side of the album again.

Side two has strong tracks, too.  Where my friends liked the opening songs on side one, and the hit single, I still to this day think my two favorite songs are Only the Strong Survive and Telecide.  I especially love Telecide.  It's one of my all time favorite Tubes songs.  It starts off really fast and it's got a wailing guitar solo.  I guess there's just not that much more that I need to make me happy!

I bought this a couple years ago. I think I got it at a record show.  It's in really nice shape, with a nice, clean cover and the record is nice and flat.  It was probably only two or three dollars and I can't think of  a better thing to spend the price of a coke and a bag of chips on.

The Record Store Clerk - Friend or Foe?

I think lately people have been posting things about record store clerks on some of the vinyl collector groups I read, so this subject has been rattling about in my head for a few days.  It's funny to read how so many people seem to actually like the fact that they can just sit in their house and order a record so easily these days.  Not really just a record, but any record.  I get that.  it's nothing new, really.  Goldmine and Record Collector have provided that service for as long as I've been collecting records, but I think a whole lot of it seems that people are intimidated by the store clerk.  Like this person behind the counter knows everything and thinks you buy shitty music and might sneer at you.  I mostly just don't get this.  Maybe I've always kind of bought records at stores that carried the kinds of things I liked anyways, but I've never had anyone in a record store be anything other than at the least courteous, if not downright friendly.

Yeah, I've seen High Fidelity and the people in that movie really only wished they actually worked in a record store.  I mean, if a guy comes in looking for any record that store stocks and is met with any shit whatsoever, what record store owner isn't going to can the guy and give the customer a discount on that record?  Yeah, I thought Jack Black's character was pretty funny mostly, too.  Where could he really exist except as a story?

Here in Cleveland we had one huge chain record store called Peaches.  I bought a crate for records there, but I could always get the records they had that I wanted cheaper at stores I liked more.  yeah, they had a ton of records in there, but when one section is Classical, one section is Country, one section is Jazz and Blues and one section is Rock, then you've just got a shitload of records I'll never even flip through.  I've always had better luck at a smaller, independent store that catered more specifically to a Rock crowd, and maybe carried a few of the "cool with the Rockers" artists like Johnny Cash or Miles Davis.  It's no big deal for me to skip and artists section and move on.  I mean, I'm going to ignore Led Zeppelin, too.  Skipping a handful of records is one thing, but I don't get all excited because a store has 20,000 records, because I'm probably only interested in a portion of them anyway.

So if I'm dealing with a person in a big chain store, I figure the odds they even know what I'm getting are slim.  There's a chain of smaller stores around here that are franchises and they're called The Exchange.  Each one is actually kind of different.  The Lakewood store is supposed to be the "cool" one, where the Rock Snobs like myself can find odd things.  I think it's a hit or miss kind of place, but I got Big Star's Nothing Can Hurt Me on orange vinyl there on Record Store Day.  It was late in the day, and when i took it up, the clerk was visibly annoyed that I got it and he didn't even know they got any copies.  I know this, because he said so.  He wasn't rude, though.  He was just kind of upset because he said he was a Real Big Fan, and the manager didn't mind if they found something they liked and bought it themselves.  He just thought they didn't get a copy.  In fact, he asked if there was another one, and my son told him that someone had moved this one out of the Record Store Day rack and mixed it in with something else, and he just happened to find it for me.  the guy was real cool about it, though.  I told him I hoped it would get a wider release so he could get one and he seemed pretty good about it.  He asked about a Dr. John album I bought and I told him it was my first Dr. John album, and that I hoped I'd like it.  I liked the kid a lot.

I've been to other cities to buy records, and I've never met this scary clerk in those, either.  I went to Goner in Memphis, and I had a hard time finding much that I was interested in.  I thought that was odd, because people I think I have a lot in common with said it would be a good store for me.  I found a Pagans album and a Dead Boys album.  The guy there said, "Hey, ya know both of those bands were from Cleveland?"  I said, "So am I.  I'm here on vacation and these are actually long gone up there."  We talked about stuff to do in Memphis and I told him I was a big Reigning Sound fan.  We talked about them and while I didn't find a lot there, I'll be back.

I've been to Jerry's in Pittsburgh.  Jerry is really nice, and we talked about how great Dr. Feelgood was.  We talked about David Werner and Norm Nardini.  He gave me a good chunk of money off the records I bought.  I've bought records from his employees and they were super nice, too.  I loved talking to the guy at Angry Mom in Ithaca.  My wife came down when I was checking out and I told her I needed more money because I got such great records there.  She said something like, "Are you really gonna play the ones you have here?"  Mr. Angry Mom said, "He'll play those.  He picked the really great kinds of records you never get tired of."

What a great guy!

I mean, the first record store clerk I really dealt with was at the long defunct Daisy Music.  I was about 11 and I stopped there and just looked at records all the time, and when I would actually buy one, I'd just ask, "What's the best Yes album?"  I asked that because when you're that young, you think everything can be quantified like that.  He would tell me that the earliest albums were very different from the newer ones, and some people liked the new stuff and hated the old stuff and vice versa.  I told him I loved Roundabout, and he helped me get started on my first favorite band in the world.  I knew the girl that ran the record section at The Shoppe, and she was invaluable in helping me figure out some of the New Wave bands of the early and mid 80's.  I never saw her be anything more than helpful, even when handling a return.  Even from the guy that was returning a record that he claimed made constant noises that shouldn't be there, and when she played it, I confirmed that I couldn't hear it, either.  She told me he returned half of what he bought, and she always made him get the same record, and if it was out of stock she ordered it for him, no matter how much he complained that he wanted something else.  She just put his perfectly good records in the used bin and they'd sell real fast because he just bought new, popular stuff.

These days around Cleveland every owner I've seen is terrific.  Melanie at Music Saves is  my favorite, but she stocks the kind of music I like and makes my special orders easy.  She seems genuinely happy when I say, "Hey that last album I bought here is fantastic and I love it!"  The people there have turned me on to new bands, and I enjoy driving across town, past other record stores so that I can shop there.  I can stop in and say, "Hi."  I can talk about another store I went to.  I can ask about shows around town that people there went to see.  I always walk out with a smile on my face.

I've had to order some things from the internet, but let's face it, Amazon doesn't know me at all.  Their suggestions are often stupid as hell, and if I can order a record locally, I do.  Even if it costs more.  I'm sure the people that work for Amazon are nice enough, but I like talking to real people and I've found that if you go into a record store and say, "Hi!" almost every single person behind that counter is great.  If they're really actually a jerk, then leave.  Don't even poke around.

I think if I actually did run into this mythical Record Store Snob, I'd put my purchases on the counter, excited like I always am, and if they said something condescending or rude, I'd be twice as rude back to them.  I try to be polite, but I don't have any problem being a giant asshole.   What's wrong with just saying, "What the fuck do you know about what I like?"

Look, you're collecting records.  The big selling points are things like, "The tangible product makes me feel more connected to the artist.  Records make me feel more connected to the community."  So get connected to the community.  Meet the 99% of people in record stores that are really great.  Talk to people like you.  People that love records.  Your computer and your credit card may not judge you, but they also provide the same excitement as making your car payment.  You deserve better than that when it comes to your hobby.  Ask the people that live hours away from any record stores.  They don't miss driving to the store.  They miss flipping through the records, which were laid out by a person that made decisions about where to the bins, what order the display bins go, what's on sale and what records go on the walls.  The person that does that is there for the love of it, not because they're making tons of money.  Go meet a real person in a real record store!