Roxy Music - Manifesto

I realize that it seems to be the consensus that this is not a good Roxy Music album.  I totally disagree with that.  I think this is a terrific Roxy album, and I always have.  Maybe because they hadn't really released a new album since I started liking them.  maybe because my first Roxy album was Viva! and it had been three years since they released a new record, which back in the 70's made you wonder if maybe they hadn't just broken up.  So when this came out, I was excited and I bought it before I ever heard a single song.

I know that it's popular today to call that "blind buying," but man, that's just a stupid way to look at buying records if you ask me.  I knew who they were, and I had liked every record they had made so far, and I was sure that this one wouldn't be any different.  I mean no different in my appeal, but I knew it would push their sound to another direction (fortunately for me, it wasn't Avalon, which is a real snoozer).  I remember putting this on my turntable and loving how the sides were split up as East Side and West Side, instead of Side One and Side Two.  I mean, how artistic of them!

The sparse, slow opening to Manifesto that just slowly adds instruments to the slow, funky jam hooked me immediately.  This was the kind of stuff my friends that complained I listened to too much "harder, faster" could mellow out to, and I wouldn't fall asleep.  It's interesting to me that the opening song of the side, and the closing song, Stronger Through the Years, both have a slow, jammy instrumental feel to them.  Brian Ferry certainly has plenty to sing in both of them, but I just loved the fact that it seemed like the side opened and closed with extended instrumental parts.  They're actually shorter parts than I remember, but then a record is only twenty minutes a side or so!

I think Angel Eyes was a single in the US, and I think that they used a different version on the cd releases.  I like the record much better.  I think Trash is a suitably punkish bit of weirdness and I can remember playing this side while I got dressed in the morning before school.  At least i was getting dressed to get ready to go somewhere.  I think in 1979 we had something like 186 school days and I missed over 150.  I didn't like going there.  I had better things to do.  this caused me to eventually have to go back after my friends all left, but I had a job anyway and that was a big chunk of my school that last year.  Plus, I met my wife then, so things worked out really well for me (my undying gratitude goes out to Ron Schuff and Tom Madzy for seeing past my teenaged assholiness and finding a way for me to get a diploma).  What a great side, though!  I think back then for awhile I even wanted to live on the East Side of Cleveland because I thought it would be cooler than the West Side (wrong!).

The West Side of the album is a little more danceable, and I can remember that I used to have a portable radio/cassette player and I taped this record and played it on that little boombox in the first car my wife and I owned.  There wasn't a radio in it, and I bought it from a friend for 75 bucks out of two paychecks.  It was a real piece of shit 1970 Torino, but it had a 351 Cleveland and a Posi rear end and would just light 'em up if I wanted it to.  We'd put the radio in the back seat and blast Ain't That So (which was kind of like the songs on the East Side), and I know my wife really liked Dance Away, which was a real, blatant attempt at American Top 40, but I don't think it really made it that far up the charts.  In fact, outside of me playing my cassette or the record at home, I hardly remember hearing this album at all.  I played it a lot though, and I'll bet that my friends think it was a bigger hit that it was because I played it so much!

We used to play softball every weekend.  We'd have total coed games, and no one ever kept score.  We'd get a keg or just cases and cases of beer and go out and play for hours.  A lot of the people actually were on "serious" softball teams and played in leagues, but Sunday's were for fun.  I remember people liked my little boombox, a Panasonic mono thing with like an eight inch woofer and a one in tweeter on it.  You could heat that thing all over the field, and the batteries lasted forever in it.  It just worked better than those big, bulky things that were icons of break dancers of the late 70's, early 80's.  That big woofer just whomped out the sound!  I think I probably played this pretty constantly from 1979 right through about 1982.  It was just the kind of record I could listen to all the time, and listening to it now reminds me that I should probably play it a little more often.

I've had mine since 1979, so it's made a few moves, but I think it always got played at least on my old Dual so it seems to be in pretty great shape.  Maybe partly because of that old cassette?  I don't know, it's in real good shape though.  Nice and flat and plays nice and quiet.

Dr. Feelgood - Down by the Jetty

So a recent post on one of Crabby's blogs got me thinking I should say something about Dr. Feelgood's first album.  I suppose I have albums that there's no way I could really live without, and i think I'd put Down by the Jetty up there with any of my absolute favorites.  This came out in 1975, so I was thirteen.  My friend Dave's sister is the one that owned this, I think.  I can't see where Dave or I could have possibly heard of Dr. Feelgood back then.  I'm sure she had this, played it and we just lost it over this.  I can remember that Dave and his sister lived in a house where the upstairs was sort of an attic, but they were all finished in that neighborhood, and Dave's sister had the part over the garage and kitchen, and Dave had the part over the bedrooms and living room.  I think we had to go through the house to get in to Dave's room, but his sister could use those steps, or she could access her room through the garage steps, too.  So I think she chose that section of the attic because while it was smaller, it was easy to get in and out unnoticed any hour of the day.

I can remember sitting up in Dave's room smoking Kool's and listening to Dr. Feelgood and Eddie and the Hot Rods and thinking we were just about the coolest kids on the face of the earth.  It felt like we were the only ones that knew how great Wilko Johnson was, and I can remember some weird teenage game where we talked shit and acted like this guy that had no idea who The Big Figure was had to be some kind of loser square (in case you're a loser square, The Big Figure is Dr. Feelgood's drummer).  Man, that's mostly embarrassing to think about how we could act, but I think talking shit you don't really know about is part of growing up.  Well, it is if you're an asshole like me, anyway.

So Down by the Jetty kicks off with this brutal guitar track called She Does It Right, and it really took me a few years to understand that Wilko Johnson could make it sound like he was playing rhythm and lead guitar at the same time.  I wish I could have seen a video of them back then.  I've seen some on YouTube that show Wilko and John Sparks, the bass player, flanking singer Lee Brilleaux on either side, pacing back and forth to the rhythm of the song in a menacing fashion, while Brilleaux sings and plays harp in a suit that looks like he's on a three day bender that's resulted in more than one bad decision,maybe some fights, and at least one night sleeping outside.  On the cover they look like they could be in Cleveland up by the lake in late fall. It looks cold and windy and it doesn't look like they come from a pretty place, even though they have the water right there.  Maybe that's part of their appeal to me; they look like they come from a place where I fit in.

You might think this kind of revved up blues really wouldn't be the kind of thing a thirteen year old would like, but man, I still can't get enough of Wilko's guitar sound on songs like Roxette or Keep It Out of Sight.  It's just really aggressive, and I was never a really aggressive person or anything, but this was the kind of music I could see my mom liking, if it wasn't so aggressive.  So I think Dr. Feelgood was one of the first bands that I had wanted to play for her so that I could see her not really like it, but maybe not quite know why (I was a real smartass and shocking mom was always okay by me back then).  The thing is, I never owned a copy of this.

I don't think I ever owned it until the mid 90's, maybe even early 2000's.  I found it on cd and if that's how you find this, then buy it.  It's an excellent sounding cd and it's every bit as great as it ever was.  It's in mono but that just seems to add to the menace.  I know right when I got it that I was really excited and hoped I'd think it was half as good as I remembered when I thought back to Dave's old room.  I think Cheque Book might have even made it onto this cassette tape we made once.  it was called Rick and Dave's Raving Faves.  We used his sister's cassette deck because she had a real stereo.  Probably something like Pioneer or Akai back then, and we probably should have found an 8 track recorder because we didn't know anyone with a cassette deck until we were sixteen and I installed a Pioneer Super Tuner underdash FM/cassette player in my friend's first car.  I don't know how that fell to me.  I don't know much about cars, but I bought stereo magazines and wanted a nice stereo real bad, so I guess I probably said, "How hard could it be?"  I know it took all day, but it actually looked pretty good!

Dave and I talked about that tape last year when I saw him.  He said it's possible that he still has it in a box in his attic or maybe even at his sister's.  I'd love to see what songs we had on there!  I know we thought that if we could play that over the air that we'd be the biggest radio station in the world.  But ya know what?  I still think Dr. Feelgood and Eddie and the Hot Rods are truly great bands.  I think they're why I was so ready for Punk when that hit and a teenager in Cleveland, Ohio might be able to hear them.  I think Dr. Feelgood did a whole lot to shape how I listen to music and how I try to find music.  I thought that the kids that were just happy with Elton John or their brother's Beatles records were just working on finding their way to their own music, and I didn't realize for a long, long time that most people aren't going to put any effort into finding anything other than the most popular music.  Hey, I know that if you're actually reading this blog, then that's not you (in fact, you're really on the outskirts of things if you're reading this - you've possibly just given up!), you obviously dig around hard to find something new.  I applaud you for that, and I hope you buy records because you like the cover or someone told you they thought you'd  like it for whatever reason, be it because they think you listen to weird music or they listen to weird music and think you should join them.

I'm really getting off track here.  Down by the Jetty was reissued on vinyl last year, so I got one of those.  It's a very basic package, just like the original.  No download card, no lyric sheet.  The record could be a little quieter but it's still fine.  In fact, if you want the best sound on this, you probably should look for the cd.  The thing is, you don't need the best sound here.  Wilko's guitar cuts through.  Brilleaux's decadence rises to the top and The Big Figure and John Sparks hold this all down like seasoned pro's.  Down by the Jetty is truly one of my favorite albums.

Wussy - Left for Dead

I generally seem to have a New Favorite Band all the time.  The Stones are just my favorite band, but I have other people come in and out and as Mick Jagger put it, "steal my heart away," at least for a few months at a time.  There's a bunch of them and some of them are still active today, and others are now defunct.  These bands give me every bit as much pleasure and enjoyment as Bowie, Steely Dan or The Yardbirds, it's just that hardly anyone ever bothers to check them out.  I could go on a rant about radio consolidation (someone disagreed with me on the state of music/radio and said it was shitty music, not smaller playlists and only playing the same old hits that killed that goose), but I'm not gonna get on about that.  I'm just going to talk about my current New Favorite Band, Wussy.

First off, ya know what's cool? Wussy is from Ohio. There are a stunning amount of great musicians and bands in this state, I'll tell ya.  We may have some lousy sports teams, but you never lose with good music, and we have that in spades.  Wussy is from the other end of the state, down in Cincinnati and while I'm not thrilled with a lot of the southern part of my state for the most part, they hold up their end of the musical deal really well.  I'll talk about some other bands I love from around there eventually, but for today, let's talk about how I started listening to Wussy.

Over at Rock Town Hall there's plenty of people that don't just lament that guys like Roger Daltrey or David Gilmour are old enough to be retired if they hadn't already not lived a life of leisure.  The average Townsperson (what someone who participates there becomes) is well versed in the Classic Rock canon, the Punk/New Wave movement and most manage to continue to give a shit about what they can hear today from people they've never heard before.  We don't always see that in internet forums these days, and that's why I like that blog.  Anyway, one of the Townspeople that goes by Oats has mentioned Wussy a few times, and people have linked to Robert Christgau wearing a Wussy T shirt.  Christgau has pretty uniformly loved all of Wussy's albums but even with a Townsperson and "The Dean of Rock (or whatever Christgau calls himself)" telling me that I need to check out Wussy, I pretty much figured I have a long enough wish list of things and besides, I can be funny about how I get around to listening to the recommendations of others.

I don't know why, but sometimes people will tell me to check something out, and I just won't.  I go about finding music the ways I usually do, or I ignore one person and listen to another.  I think maybe sometimes I may check something out that wasn't a specific recommendation, and if I'm not head over heels in love with it, I kind of hedge my bets.  I'm not saying that's what happened here.  I think Oats has generally pretty compatible tastes with me in a lot of areas, so I'd take his suggestions pretty readily.  We disagree on some stuff, but I think it's more he doesn't like some of the noisier racket I like instead of me not liking things he likes.  So why didn't I check out Wussy?

Maybe because I hate their name.  Maybe I thought Chuck Cleaver didn't look Rock N' Roll enough?  I don't know.  Like I said, sometimes I'm just funny about how I decide what new things I'm going to listen to.I can be like a toddler, I guess.  what I mean is if you've ever known a two year old, then you've heard, "No!  I do it myself!"  I suppose I should work on that.

I first saw Left for Dead at Music Saves after a Record Store Day.  They had a few of them left over.  The album cover is a robin's egg blue, and the artwork just looks kind of girly to me.  Now, girly is fine with me, because there's a woman in the band and why shouldn't they recognize that?  I like a lot of women musicians, but there are some that just don't resonate with me, like Kate Bush or Sarah McLachlan.  There's people that I think have otherwise good taste in music that can get all caught up in that stuff, and with the cover of this album looking the way it does, I was leery.  Sure, you can ask "Why don't you just YouTube them?"  I don't because I just don't want to, that's why.  So after a month or two past Record Store Day I'm noticing that the copies of Left for Dead have dwindled to exactly one.  So if I want it on vinyl, I'm thinking it's time to get it or forget it.  So I bought it.

When I got home and put it on, by the end of Killer Trees, I'm kicking myself for not having done this at least a year or two ago.  These guys are right up my alley, the kind of thing i can listen to all day.  When they're slow, like on the Chuck Cleaver opener Trail of Sadness, it takes me some time to appreciate it.  I'm totally okay with that, because usually if I love a song right off the bat, I end up getting tired of it.  When I need to spend time with something before it really clicks with me is when that song really gets under my skin.  Most of Chuck's slow songs are like that to me, so he must really be doing something right.  Trail of Sadness really lives up to its title, too.  It's a really sad song and reminds me of a friend from a long time ago.

The whole thing isn't just a downer, though.  I mean, Wussy can get pretty melancholy and really doesn't trade in happiness and bubblegum for the most part, but they aren't a bunch of depressing hacks, either.  It takes until the second side, on Sun Giant Says Hey for a "stupid happy song" (as Jawbreaker might have put it).  This song has everything that Wussy does well in it, though.  Distorted guitars, Chuck Cleaver's wobbly voice and Lisa Walker's voice an unlikely seeming, but perfect sounding counterpoint.  I'll tell ya, if you want to get me to like something, have two singers each singing something different at the same time.  It confuses me, but I just think it's a great trick that always works on me.

This isn't just the Chuck Cleaver show.  Lisa Walker actually probably sings more of the songs than Chuck on this record, and man, did she bring her "A" game.  Rigor Mortis is great, and Lisa's phrasing is really cool.  Jonah is a pretty great song about a couple "getting to know each other, in the back seat of your van" and I'm not sure if it's autobiographical or not, but it's the kind of memory that anyone should be able to share.  My favorite two songs are Killer Trees and Melody Ranch.  Both are a little more uptempo, with plenty of distorted guitars and weird lyrics by Lisa.  I think when I got this album I played it every day for a month.

So, my record is in great shape as I bought it new.  It's on baby blue vinyl and the record goes really nicely with the cover.  Not everyone thinks of things like that, ya know?  So often you get something like an orange album cover with a dark blue and yellow splatter vinyl, like they just said, "whatever color, just make it a color other than black."  I like when people think about the whole thing.  Mine would be even nicer if I hadn't dropped the cover when I was cleaning it in the kitchen and crumpled a corner.  Oh well, it's still a really great record!

Brinsley Schwarz - Brinsley Schwarz

Well, I've been working on something else entirely, but I decided to put it on hold cuz I'm not feeling it right now, and listen to this Brinsley Schwarz album instead.  I've got a feeling I'm really not gonna talk about this album as much as I probably should, but I had a little disagreement with someone in a Vinyl Record Collector's Group here on the internets, and between that and some shit Bob Lefsetz has been spewing lately, I just feel like I could use a little record that hardly anyone remembers and some relaxation.  This is a cool little collection of the first two US Brinsley Schwarz albums, the self titled record and their second, Despite It All.

Now, it's nice that these are more mellow and laid back than you might expect since they're labeled a Pub Rock band.  I just don't put these guys in the same sphere as I put Eddie and the Hot Rods or Dr. Feelgood.  They worry more about harmony and stuff, and I think that's what I need right about now.  I need that because I'm pretty bummed about responses in that Vinyl Community.  I'm right, and I know the other group of people haven't got a leg to stand on, but I didn't get a lot of support, and usually people that still buy records kind of agree on a lot of things like what stealing from artists is.

See, this kid (I looked, he's a kid to me and a young adult to himself) got called a parasite by someone for listening to the new Pink Floyd album on YouTube because he spent all his record money on other records and he wanted to hear it.  I didn't even notice that thread, but the dude puts up a post asking if he's a "parasite" for doing this.  He's getting a whole bunch of, "Hey, if you're gonna buy it anyway, what's the difference," and "Hey, it's cool - I do it all the time" responses.  So I looked on YouTube and lo and behold, Pink Floyd and their label aren't the ones that put the full album up a few days before the release date.  So I told the guy I didn't know if he was a "parasite" per se, but that he certainly seemed to feel entitled to free entertainment just because it was there.  I said that he stole it and man, did his panties get in a clump!  I won't get in to how it is that YouTube can put up stolen music at will and not have to worry about any repercussions, and I won't say I don't use YouTube for music, but I know damned well that if the label or band didn't put it up, then if someone had the money or inclination they could get it removed.  I can tell this young man isn't a taxpayer, because when i asked him what other things he used before he paid for them he said, "A house, and anything you can rent."  I told him there was a significant outlay of cash for both of those activities prior to use, but I don't think he gets it.

So I says, "Hey, if you went to a restaurant to try the food, would you expect it to be free and you'd start paying for it when you came back, and then, to sweeten the pot you'd bring all your friends?"  I didn't even get to say, "Because your friends would all probably want free food and it would never stop," because some other tool says, "It doesn't cost anything to make music.  Food you have to pay a chef and waitresses and buy the raw food."

Is that really where this generation of young people is coming from? I'm sorry, but what a bunch of entitled ASSHOLES.  "I spent all my entertainment money, and I DEMAND you entertain me for free until I can buy it."  I didn't go into the "How many times have you listened to albums, decided they weren't for you and never paid a fucking dime?" thing.  I mean, he is stealing.  He's asking for people to justify it because he knows he's a thief but he wants validation.  Well, ya ain't getting that from me.  Too many of the bands I love end up breaking up because they sell 1000 vinyl records, 1500 cd's and 400 downloads and then see that 40,000 people used bittorrent and stole their music. So they quit. The thing is, they don't need Bruce Springsteen money.  They could do this as a job for their whole lives if they could bring in 60K and benefits for themselves and their kids.  I know people can do it on less, but hey, if you're gone 100 nights a year, it's nice to know your wife and kids are in a safe neighborhood.  Those 40,000 downloads could have been all it took.

Why do people feel this entitlement?  I'm as far left as an American gets, but one of the douchenozzles that came to the kid's defense had something like 1.5 terabytes of stolen music.  I'm sorry, but Fuck You dude.  You're a thief.  Get a streaming account and pay your way.

Got a little riled there.  The first record ended and that's more mellow than Despite It All, and when push comes to shove, the second album is really a little more my style.  Country Girl is one of Nick Lowe's better songs,  That's really saying something, too.  Nick has written some of my absolute favorite things in the world, and lemme tel ya, where the first album is kind of a nice mellow diversion for me, Country Girl gets me to Take Notice, because something good is happening!  The next song is kind of like Nick does Van Morrison, but he just sounds like he's a happier person than Van to me, so I kind of like it.  After that is Funk Angel, which I thought would be dumb because of the title, but again, it's a great Nick Lowe song. I like the interplay between the guitar and the sax.  Why don't people use a sax anymore?  It's one of the backbone instruments of Rock and everyone acts like it's a harpsichord or something.  They're cool in the right hands.  They always were and they always will be.

Then there's Bob Lefsetz.  Is he a thing that people in the industry actually read or is he just some dullard with a modem?  I see people talk about things he said in his blog all the time.  The thing is, he talks about the exact same thing every day!  If you're not keeping up, you're dying. Streaming is the future. Radio is dead.  Duh.  He says that pretty much every day, he just uses a different artist to make his point.  What's the point he's making?  I don't know.  It's certainly not something we don't already know.  I think he thinks Taylor Swift and Big Machine were short sighted to pull Taylor's music from Spotify, but I think Big Machine and Taylor have already proved that so far as making money in this Blah New World, they're experts.  Spotify may or may not be a good idea, but Taylor has proven she knows what she's doing.  She'll get a better deal from Spotify and she'll be back, or wherever she ends up going will take Spotify's precarious position at the top of the streaming service hill.

Which I just don't get.  Streaming music is so boring.  It's okay for background noise, but I can't be bothered with it in my house.  I really just can't.  I realize I'm kind of on the fringe because I usually listen to records, but I'm not the only one.  There's a market for physical media.  It may be more of a niche, but once they figure out how to keep people from stealing music (and they will), the people that never buy any music will just go back to not listening to music anyway.  Of the people that are going to pay for it, the people that have huge collections may stay with physical because they've just already got so much, but most people aren't sitting on 1000 lp's and 2500 cd's.  Friends I have that actually listen to a lot of music usually have a few hundred cd's.  The guys at work that swap music files tend to buy stuff (I know what their "swapping" really is) in a mixture of physical and files.  Some of them have asked if I want things and I just seldom take them up on the offers.  One guy gave me a Jon Lord cd, and I don't mind it, but it's like Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings.  Good, professional, kind of dull.  Now there's a place for that, but I've already got that kind of thing.  The thing is, this guy also talked about St.Vincent.  Now that you might think I want to get for free, but actually I may be interested in her one day and I would rather buy it and come at it more organically.

So now my record is over.  And I'm in a really good mood, and that's what a good album does for you.  It makes things more palatable.  Even people that will either ignore the obvious or think we've completely missed the obvious.  Is Brinsley Schwarz my favorite album ever?  Nope.  Not even close.  Nick Lowe has done much better things since, but it's good.  It's solid and it's the kind of thing it would be nice to see more people hear.  But it was hard to hear in 1970, and now it's buried under the internet.  Which is a shame.  My copy is a cutout, but it's a pretty clean copy, and it sounds really good.  Better yet, it makes me happy, which by any measurement means it's a good record.

Andy Pratt - Andy Pratt

I was at work today talking with a guy that I work with who's getting pretty close to 70.  I don't know why he's still working, but I think he really enjoys what he does and he's good at it, so why not keep at it?  Part of me thinks he should step aside and let someone else who deserves it have his spot, but I don't spend much time thinking about it.  We actually have a lot to talk about because he still listens to a lot of Rock N' Roll, and I know pretty much all the bands he likes and he's still interested in new bands, to some extent. So it was a pretty pleasant morning at work.

One of the things we talked about was how scattered new music is today.  He calls it all "Indie," because to him that's pretty much everything that isn't some old Classic Rocker putting out a "pretty good for a dude in his 70's" kind of album.  I was trying to gauge what slightly more obscure things we might have in common and I mentioned Andy Pratt.   I was kind of surprised that he said he'd never heard of him.  He's the kind of guy that has plenty of solo Jon Lord things and oddball things like that, so I thought that he might have heard of Pratt, since he had an AOR kind of hit from this first self-titled album called Avenging Annie.  He especially likes those keyboard and piano heavy things, so I figured there was no way he hadn't heard this record, but I might as well have asked him to name the song by The Clash that we heard at lunch after a crappy Foreigner tune he recognized (and rightfully called shit).

I think Avenging Annie is one of the first times that I found out that not everyone liked what I did.  Or at least didn't fall in love with the songs I did.  I think the last time I was surprised that I had it all wrong on the popularity of something was when I took a friend to see The Dirtbombs.  I bought tickets ahead of time because they were playing a really small place.  I thought it would sell out instantly, but there were less than 100 people there.  So my friend not knowing about Andy Pratt just reminded me that when I talk about music I really need to pay attention to my audience, but like I said, I didn't think Pratt was that far underground.  I probably bought this when I was fifteen or so, so I think I was probably okay to think that he might have heard something by a guy that almost charted a song.

Which led to a brief conversation about this record and then we talked about listening to records with other people.  He agreed with me that people just seem to pretty much listen to music all by themselves these days.  I think there's merits to that, in that a lot of younger people don't seem to give a shit what anyone else likes, because if they want to listen to Iron Maiden and Katy Perry in the same playlist, it doesn't bother anyone else, and it's more like reading a book.  No one cares if you're reading Steinbeck or Nora Roberts.  Because you're not bothering anyone anyway.  But you also don't really get to meet people and get to share your knowledge with theirs.  Sure, that can lead to some group thinking snobbery, but so what?  That's the best kind of snobbery and group think.  It's certainly better than starting a new war for some bullshit thinly veiled reason that's hiding the fact that the people starting the wars are getting rich while poor people's kids get killed.

Which is way off track.  We were talking about how we'd get together with people specifically to sit and listen to some music.  Maybe four people and everyone would bring a record.  He used to have a thing you could plug four sets of headphones into, so if he was working nights his friends could hang in the apartment and not disturb the neighbors.  If you've never done that, you have no idea what you missed out on.  That was really pretty cool.  We did it mostly in the school library, but I did that in a friend's house too.  People didn't just stick one ear bud in their ear and share the other one with a friend.  I mean, what the hell is that?  Why bother?  That's like I watch the first half of a show and you watch the second half and we say we watched it together.  It's a lot of fun to hang with friends and just play a couple of records.

Andy Pratt wasn't the kind of thing I played with most of my friends because they had no idea who he was, but they would recognize Avenging Annie because if we were driving around I'd usually say, "Hey, cool song. Crank it."  The rest of the record is a kind of oddball, sort of folky, sort of depressing kind of thing.  But it's not like the guy's Gilbert O'Sullivan or anything like that.  I think he may be a little too clever sometimes, and his falsetto can be a little dated these days, but at least Pratt is different.  Who Am I Talking To is pretty catchy and not as depressing as Inside Me Wants Out, which is lyrically as messed up as you would expect.  It's kind of a heart on the sleeve affair, and it's definitely a product of the 70's.  It's the kind of record no one would make today, because there's no reason for ProTools or massive drums.  I think maybe I think it's kind of like more highbrow Elton John.  Or like maybe is Elton had used Frank Zappa as a producer.

Sittin' Down in the Twilight is what I'm thinking of there.  Sounds like a big trombone blasting away and some funky piano and super high vocals.  It's pretty cool.  It's completely dated at this point and I don't know if someone new to the game could really appreciate it.  Especially since that song is followed by a dirge about hunting a deer.  Or getting married.  It's about something.  Probably how everything ties together.  Lot's of acoustic guitar fingerpicking and deep, slow, "Oooh, ooooh, ooooh" backing vocals.  Yawn.  A really bad way to end a pretty good record.

Mine's in great shape.  I hardly ever play it.  Probably because the last song is such a drag.  It sucks all the energy you were feeling right out of you!  The record itself is nice and flat.  I think I probably had my first Dual when I got this and it didn't get ruined by my junky BSR.  Which, lets face it, if I had changed the stylus more often, the BSR would have just been a noisy turntable.  Some things you just have to learn.

Artful Dodger - Artful Dodger

I have mentioned the occupation of Music Critic here before, and I think you may get the idea that I have kind of a love/hate thing going there.  I suppose that would be accurate.  I really like some of them, and I really wanted to be one for a bit, but it must suck to wake up and have to listen to ten new records every day, so no wonder half the time they like stuff that sucks.  They can't all be Lester Bangs, and even Lester liked some really shitty records.  There's got to be some kind of filters for me though, and I still prefer to read about music and then buy it than to just listen to it and then buy it.  I do both (and I also buy records just because I like the cover), but reading a review is still my favorite way.

The first record I ever bought that way was Artful Dodger's first album.  There's a freebie rag in Cleveland called The Scene, and while there have been others, The Scene has been around since I was in elementary school.  It's not anywhere near as cool as I thought it used to be, but it does a pretty good job of keeping up with the arts and local politics from a slightly left (uhh...Rock N' Roll maybe) kind of perspective.  So I still grab them, but I don't think it's the be all and end all of coolness I thought it was when I was 13.  What I'm slowly getting at is that there was a guy named Mark Kmetzko and he wrote a review of the first Artful Dodger album.  I think Mark eventually became the senior editor or something like that at Scene, and that's cool but he was still just a guy writing record reviews so far as I know when he wrote his little 250 word review of just another band's first album.  This came out in the fall of 1975 (I had to look) and that should put me pretty firmly into something like seventh grade.  I read Kmetzko's review and I hadn't heard a single second of their music, but I went out and bought their first album immediately.

Now, I bought it immediately because I had the money right then and there and he said this was a really fantastic record.  I didn't know him from Adam, but it was important to me to use some kind of filter, like a reviewer to help guide me to buying better records than my friends did.  So I bought this.  Little did I know that it would become pretty much Cleveland's favorite album ever.  I'm not kidding.  People from here that are my age think this is about the greatest thing that EVER happened.  I'm included in that group and I have no reservations about being a big Artful Dodger fan.  Mark Kmetzko was right on the money here, and I think for years if he didn't show great enthusiasm for something, then I probably just ignored it.  Because Mark really got it right for me  on this one, and I knew then that I could count on other people to steer me right.  That opinion changed shortly thereafter, but I learned quickly what kinds of music Mark and I agreed on, and his reviews pretty much turned into gold in my pocket.  It didn't matter if he liked something or not.  He was consistent and I could use his opinion as a tool, and I wish that today I still had a guy like that I could turn to.

Now, in 1975 I was a swimmer first, and a kid that wanted to just sit and listen to records second.  Swimming was definitely number one back then whether I  liked it or not.  The one thing about swimming is that practice consists of going back and forth all night long, and man can you get songs stuck in your head perfectly when you do that.  I'd hate waterproof music devices.  It's just better to do it yourself.  I don't know how many records I owned in 1975, but it wasn't that many, so  believe me when I tell you that every song on this record was gold to me (they still are).  Even songs like Waiting Place (which kind of fades in after Think Think).  If you ask me I'll tell you that there isn't even a wrong note on this record.  I mean, it's about as perfect as it gets.  I remember one time my dad was driving us to swimming practice and It's Over came on the radio.  One of the coolest things about that song is the sound that Steve Cooper got on his bass.  He had a sound that still seems kind of acoustic to me, but it's got an electric feel that makes it seem like he's always got it really under control. Billy Paliselli sounded a little like Rod Stewart, but I didn't care.  I thought it was hard to tell a solo Rod Stewart song from a Faces song back then, but I didn't have any trouble telling Artful Dodger apart from anyone.  I'm wandering here - getting back to dad - he kept pissing me off because I wanted to hear It's Over on the radio in the car on the way to practice and really feel it so that I could take it with me in my head to the pool, and dad kept saying, "Did he say it's over, she's breaking my ORT?"

It didn't matter how much I tried to reason with him that it was "heart and certainly not ORT, because that's just stupid."  Dad just kept it up and it messed up the whole thing for me.  I probably still managed to play that song in my head up and down the pool, but I still remember just how frustrated I was with the old man for blabbing during my song.  It's weird how I remember something like a car ride to the YMCA for swimming practice.  I'm sure we did it hundreds of times.  Looking back, Paliselli really does sing "ORT" and not "heart," but that's Rock N' Roll, ya know?

For years the only way to get this was on vinyl.  If you had heard it back in Cleveland in 75 you'd have thought these guys were about as big as anyone, but as soon as you left the WMMS and M105 reaches, you didn't hear Artful Dodger at all.  Which is a shame, because songs like Wayside, It's Over and Think, Think are just the kinds of songs that could have made the charts and still maintained their cool to be played on the cooler Rock stations.    The love of Clevelanders managed to get this pressed on CD by Sony for a short time.  I just happened to walk into a store I never shopped at and just noticed the first album on CD.  When I bought it, the guy said he ordered ten of them and mine was the last one and he had sold them all in two days and already couldn't get anymore.  Mine's got some weird defect that looks strange but doesn't affect the play at all.  So I've got the CD and the record.  The record has a textured cover that's flat and not glossy, and you can tell Sony didn't have the original art and copied a vinyl cover and shrunk it down.  Between the texture and the crappy copy you can't read anything on the cover.  But just the fact that it exists at all makes a lot of people really happy.

My record is in great shape and I probably bought a new one after high school.  I think there's a click or two on side two, but it's a record and shit like that happens.  If you ever come across one of these, it's kind of considered and under the radar Power Pop classic these days.  I don't know why they call it Power Pop (I hate that term) because we just called it Rock N' Roll back then, but whatever you want to call it, this first Artful Dodger album is a terrific record.

Grand Funk - Caught in the Act

Sorry I haven't  been around in awhile, but I've been busy and then when I haven't for some reason this has felt a little like work.  Which is weird, but its had me thinking about some things like music and work and work and music together.  Which you might think I'd be like, "music and work are awesome!" I don't exactly think that, though.  I mean, I like that I'm generally able to listen to music at work, but I don't have music as my job.

There was a time when I thought music would be my job.  I figured I'd be a DJ on the radio, or a music critic.  I really thought those might have been the greatest jobs that ever existed, but I slowly started thinking that there was no way I'd ever want to do either.  I think there were a couple of things around the time I was about 16 that changed my mind.  First was Steely Dan's song, FM (No Static at All).  The line where Donald Fagen sings, Nothing but booze and Elvis and somebody else's favorite songs really went a long way in making me think that a DJ can't possibly love music the way I do.  I don't want to listen to someone else's favorite songs.  Sorry, but you guys really have shitty taste in music.  I suppose I don't really mean that, but can you imagine how utterly detached you must be to sit around and play the same shitty songs over and over all day, every day?  And pretend that you actually like that song by Styx?  Fuck that.  I would hate to make it so that the music I love became actual work.  I told a guy on a message board that was a DJ that he couldn't possibly like music anymore, since he had to play crap like Nickelback and whatever other rock is supposed to pass for "hard" these days (don't the guitars all sound shitty?  Like Grunge tone with the attitude taken out).  He was pissed, but I stand by it.  No way you can be a DJ on a commercial station these days and still love music.  I can't imagine even kind of liking the job, since they want you to essentially shut up and get to commercials.

I remember the local college station used to occasionally use regular citizens (mostly alumni, but not necessarily) to do some shows in the summer.  I was friendly with a few of them, and had conversations about maybe doing a summer show.  I was mostly interested because I wanted to do a Rolling Stones 24 hour marathon show, which would have been pure badassery, believe me!  The thing is, I found out that my other shows would have to follow their playlist.  Now the playlist was pretty good at the time, and there was certainly a lot of leeway, but this wasn't like some college stations where it's pure free form.  They said you actually had to take and play requests once in awhile, and I thought that was just bullshit.  I thought of calling my show The No Request Show as a way to get around it, and then I'd take the calls on the air and it would be like, "Hey man, can you play The Cure?"  and I'd say, "Sure!  Here ya go, all cued up and ready just for you!"  Then I'd play some geezer music like Bob Seger or The Gates of Delirium by Yes.  I wanted people to ask for Led Zeppelin so I could really piss them off and play something like Carole King instead.  I never really followed up on that, though.  I went on the air on a couple of marathons and brought some cool bootlegs to make the show a little better, but I just didn't want to be told what to play, or even have a plan.

Music critic was a bigger letdown.  I didn't know that I was one of the only people that paid attention to who actually wrote the reviews.  I mean, someone that pans a band I really like can be useful to me if I know that they just don't like certain things I like.  So I always thought everyone paid attention to those things.  Maybe people just indulged me for years and let me prattle on about music just to be nice.  But I eventually figured out that getting free records meant you actually had to listen to some of that crap and say what you thought of it.  I would have had so many reviews that just said, "Yuck" that they'd have quit sending me records and I'd have lost my awesome gig at Rolling Stone in two months.  So I don't want this thing to ever feel like work.  Which means I may listen to things by the same bands sometimes.

Besides, I like a lot of stuff like Grand Funk.  I'm so uncool I even think Craig Frost really added a lot to their sound, so if you were listening to my radio show back then, you'd have very likely heard the live version of Inside Looking Out or Black Licorice from the live Caught in the Act album right alongside Radio Clash and I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea.  Because that's what I like.  I don't care that most Grand Funk fans think Elvis Costello blows.  I think it goes the other way, too.  So my radio show would have pretty much only worked for an audience of one, ya know?

Man, I'll tell ya though, I think this Grand Funk album is just fantastic.  Yeah, it's big 70's bloat rock, but it's so good!  Mark Farner and Don Brewer have great voices for this kind of music, and like BTO when they need a shot of Shit Hell, they can just let Don sing a song like We're an American Band and it's time to party!  It's like when CF Turner sings Let It Ride.  Two hours of that would be too much, but Grand Funk plays to their strengths and maybe it's the Midwesterner in me, but I love it.  I especially love side 3 where they play three songs in a row off the We're An American Band album and they just bring the house down.  They really do help you party it down.

I remember a friend back in my late 20's that said he was going to get a Grand Funk album and he wasn't sure which to get and I told him to get this one.  He came in to work the next Monday and just raved about it.  I had been listening to it since I was a kid, and he was just like, "who did you know that turned you on to this stuff when you were a teenager?"  I just said that I thought this was what teenagers listened to, and this was just good enough to stick.  He really liked Shinin' On and Gimme Shelter.  I told him Gimme Shelter was a good Stones cover, but that he really needed to hear Johnny Winter And do Jumpin' Jack Flash.  I don' t know if he ever did.  He got Jesus and married some girl that was deeply religious.  He was pretty lonely and I heard he had a garage sale and sold all his records and cd's because she only likes religious music, and at that pretty much only in church.  Bummer.

Anyway, obviously I didn't spend too much time talking about my record, here.  Suffice to say that it's pretty kick ass, but there are two things I'd have changed.  Drum solo - I'd have edited the hell out of it.  They just aren't that cool, ya know?  And what is up with side one going into side two?  Why does Closer to Home fade out, then you flip the record over and it fades up for a few seconds and then goes in to Heartbreaker.  Which by they way, isn't Heartbreaker just too fucking cool?  I saw these guys once, and believe me, that one brought the house down.  It's just everything big 70's Rawk should be. Anyway, the intro is twenty fucking minutes long, so they could have cut some of that and done a better job with the songs.  I think that as far as the 1970's double live album goes though, this is definitely one of the best.  It's what concerts really used to be like, and they were fun.

I think I've got an early pressing.  It just says Grand Funk on the cover instead of Grand Funk Railroad.  The records are cool and have neato custom labels and they're pretty quiet and play nicely.  I don't know if any versions of this would actually be collectible because if the generations that have followed us find out about music by reading the music critics that I never could have been (partly because my reviews are awful, which is why I write about other stuff more) all seem to have hated Grand Funk.  Let it be known here and now though, that these guys were HUGE and deserved  being huge.