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! 

The Reigning Sound - Time Bomb High School

I saw a post on a message board the other day where someone was asking if any really great music had been released in this brave new century.  I'm not sure what exactly they mean by really great, but to me that's music that I'll listen to the rest of my life and I'll feel lucky to have been on the planet when a person could go find that music.  Granted, that's going to be pretty much everything for future generations, but it's getting so hard to find something new to listen to for most people.  Mostly because most people don't want to read about music, talk about music, daydream about music and think about getting home so they can listen to music on their stereo, with a little volume behind it so that it sounds real good and hits them in the gut when it's supposed to.  For the people like me that think about listening to music all day, trying to decide what new records to buy isn't a chore, it's fun.  Buying new music and going home to listen to it is the most fun in the world sometimes.

You don't get that with a download.  I think what you generally get with a download is buyer's remorse.  Like maybe you picked the wrong file to download.  That kind of sucks.  Especially because there really is great new music to find and listen to, but it just isn't out there where we all hear it and even those of us that don't daydream about music all day can ask our music geek friend "who sings that really cool new song?"  That's a shame.

It's a shame because right now I'm listening to what I consider to a great record.  Really though, how many great records are there?  Exile on Main St. and then there's everything else.  In the everything else category there's a lot of things that are more than worth your time, but that's a lot of records to sift through!  I'm really glad I managed to find The Reigning Sound's Time Bomb High School, though.  I'd have loved this album in 1975.  I'd love this album in 2025.  It doesn't matter when something comes out to me when the songs are as good as the songs on here are.  I always hate when I read that The Reigning Sound is some "Garage Rock" band, like they're trying to compete with high school bands of the 60's.  They couldn't be more different.  The Reigning Sound has kind of morphed into Greg Cartwright and whoever he wants to work with, but the band on Time Bomb High School is top notch.  High school kids can't pull off pretty songs like Dressy or I Don't Believe without coming across as schmaltz.  Few bands have the dexterity and skill to keep slow songs interesting enough to make side one of an album pretty much the "Slow Side."  It's usually a good idea to make side one the "Fast Side" if you're so inclined to split the sides up like that.  Then to close the side with a Rolling Stones song like I'd Much Rather Be With the Boys is probably generally considered crazy.  It's an unheralded song from an overlooked and frowned upon album, but The Reigning Sound makes it as good as I think it's ever going to get.

Flip the record over and things speed up a little.  Stormy Weather is a great side opener, with big guitars and great backing vocals. Maybe the songs on this side are pretty much a bunch of three chord rockers, but since when did that become something that shouldn't be celebrated?  My dad used to hate this kind of stuff (or so he said) but the song Time Bomb High School is exactly why they made Rock N' Roll in the first place!  This is the shit, goddammit!  This is why you bought your fucking record player!  Then to get hit in the face with Reptile Style right after?  Holy shit.  If they made a 45 of Time Bomb High School b/w Reptile Style they'd pretty much have made the greatest single ever.

It doesn't let up, it blasts through all the way until the end.  I think it's really something that these guys made a record like this.  this could have easily been my Friday night go to album every weekend in high school.  If I couldn't find a ride or anyone to hang with and it was one of those stuck at home on a Friday nights, side one would have been the greatest thing in the world to listen to while I drowned my sorrows.  If I was waiting for my ride so I could go out and party my ass off, side two would have revved me up like I had a lawnmower pull cord sticking out of my back.  This is just the kind of record that is plugged right in to wherever Chuck Berry and The Stones were plugged into when they made their best music.  It's a shame that everyone doesn't listen to this, because it's a great album.  Not just really good, but I'm writing this almost thirteen years after the release and I'm still as excited to hear it as I was the first time I heard it so long ago.  I'm not kidding.  I absolutely love this record.  Every single song.

I bought this one new, so mine's pretty perfect.  It could be a little quieter in spots, but I really don't have any complaints.  I love the way it sounds, and the songs are just so good I'd probably listen to them over a tin can and string system and still get enough of the Rock N' Roll out of it to make it a favorite of mine.

The Cretones - Thin Red Line

I talked about Linda Ronstadt's Mad Love album awhile back (it was pretty brief, use the label column on the right if you want to read it) and I mentioned that on that album Linda did three songs by a pretty unknown band called The Cretones.  Well, I was at My Mind's Eye the other day and I found a promo copy of it for two bucks!  How often do you find an album with three songs that Linda Ronstadt saw fit to include on an album for two bucks?  Not very often is the correct answer.

So The Cretones - Thin Red Line came out in 1980.  So did Linda's Mad Love.  You would think this might be a real boon to The Cretones' career, but I think what happened was that these became Linda Ronstadt songs in the ears of the public, and I think the record labels were suitably impressed enough to let the band record another album, but they were a little late for the flash-in-the-pan that was late 70's Power Pop.  Then again I think everyone besides The Knack managed to miss that boat.  Cretones' guitarist Mark Goldenburg played on Linda's Mad Love and then went on to play with Jackson Browne, and had some hits for other people.  Unfortunately, The Cretones kind of remain a footnote in Rock history.

I suppose being a footnote is what most of my favorite bands end up doing.  I don't get it, to be truthful.  I don't go out of my way to find weird music that no one has heard, but then again I certainly don't go out of my way to buy music I can hear anywhere, anytime.  Sure, I have some super big selling records and have written about some of them here.  I'm always surprised when something that I think is fantastic, the kind of thing I couldn't live without and no one reads that blog entry.  There's not a ton of stuff about The Cretones online (and lord knows someone coming here for solid information is gonna leave sorely disappointed!), so I'll actually be easy to find with a search engine.  No one will see it, though.  Because unfortunately, I seem to listen to things no one else gives a shit about.  Toss in the fact that I'm a lousy writer and it's a double whammy of shitty writing and obscure music.  In 1500 years someone will look back and say, "Hey this guy and the music he liked was brilliant!" but for now, well I think it's more likely that in 1500 years this stuff will all have just been forgotten and overlooked for 1500 years, perched on the precipice of remaining forgotten for another 1500 years.  I mean, I'm barely a footnote of the blogging world, and I'm doing my best be be less relevant every day!

I'm going to sit and listen to my Cretones album again anyway.  When I listen to them, I think about the things I really loved in 1979 and 1980, like The Doors, Bowie, Sex Pistols and The Tubes.  The Cretones really don't fit in that group.  I still loved Yes and The Cretones don't fit in with them, either.  I think they fit in with my love of things like Artful Dodger, though.  The keyboards sound pretty dated these days, but I guess back then they sounded really new.  The guitar sound is generally good, like on Everybody's Mad at Katherine, but there's still some kind of weenie-ish keyboards in there.  I'm good with it, though.  It's there, and it's not going away and I like the song anyway.  It's mid January and there's plenty of grey skies and snow here and while I listen to this the first thing I think is that I'd like to go drive around on a sunny day with the windows down.  That's pretty cool.

Linda Ronstadt must have really like the end of side one and beginning of side two, though.  That's the run on the album of Justine, Mad Love and Cost of Love.  Those are the three songs she put on Mad Love, and I see what she liked about them.  She really didn't change much, and The Cretones don't sound like amateurs or like they did this on a shoestring budget.  Linda used a crack band (as usual) and while they aren't the whole difference, Linda liked these songs, and it shows.  She's ten times the singer Mark Goldenburg is (pretty astute of me, eh?) and here on The Cretones Thin Red Line these songs just lack a little of the punch Linda was able to get out of them.  Then again, Linda uses Rosemary Butler for backing vocals, and that takes real confidence.  The Cretones versions of these songs are really good, though.  They're the best three songs on the album, but the thing is, the rest of the album is good.  So I'm conflicted as to whether Linda ends up ultimately helping or hurting The Cretones.  Could these songs have pushed through without Linda?  It's hard to say.

I think a song like Thin Red Line would have done pretty well on a college station that was playing new music but not concerned with pushing the envelope.  We have one of those around here, and I like them now and then.  Everything doesn't have to be so out there different and shock me, or sound like nothing I've ever heard before.  I've got room in my record collection for craftsmen, and that's what The Cretones were.  Maybe they weren't Rock Stars, but they were good at writing catchy songs that made Saturday afternoon a little better.

Now, the thing that most sets The Cretones apart is the song Hey Mrs. Peel.  My dad got me to start watching The Avengers, and I am a huge fan of Diana Rigg in general and Mrs. Emma Peel in particular.  So anyone else here in the good old USA that liked that show is automatically Okay By Me.  Once again, we're looking at a good song.  A great subject, but how do you write about Mrs. Peel without either creeping or being a geeky fanboy?  You have to do it like The Cretones did.  With a little panache.

Thin Red Line is a good album.  It's not some undiscovered unique take on Rock N' Roll that is going to change your life.  If you find it in a used bin for two bucks, you should get it, though.  Because it's good and you should have room for good records.  Mine is a promo copy; the cover is a little bent in spots but the record looks and sounds like it was hardly played, if at all.  I won't look for a better copy, but I also won't be getting rid of this one anytime soon, either.

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.