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.

The English Beat - Special Beat Service

Man, there was a time when the Ska/Two tone thing was all the rage somewhere, but it wasn't really Cleveland.  I remember when I first got this, I think I was living in the basement at my wife's mother's house. I think we lived there just under a year, and I bought my stereo when I got my first income tax check from my first Big Boy Job.  I mean, it turned into a Big Boy Job, but at the time buying a stereo was probably a stupid thing to do, but the time I spend sitting in front of my stereo has been what's kept me sane for something like forty years now.  I bought a pretty nice system.  A pair of Phase Tech HT 32's, which were nice three way cabinets with a twelve inch woofer and a soft dome tweeter.  Back then, if you had a soft dome tweeter, Phase Tech made it, no matter the manufacturer.  I had a Denon DRA 300 receiver, which was rated at 33 WPC, but it had a ton of dynamic headroom and would push over 100 WPC in short bursts.  I got a Bang and Olufsen Beogram RX turntable to go with it.  That took the place of my old Dual.  I was kind of late switching to mainly purchasing CD's for a long time, because that system sounded like a million bucks!

I remember I had The English Beat's Special Beat Service, and I felt like I never had time to actually crank up my killer stereo with no one in the house.  Sunday night was the exception.  I got the whole place to myself (with my son, who was just a baby), because it was bingo night.  Man, I loved bingo night!  I'd crank the stereo to some ear bleeding volumes (that kid didn't seem to mind loud music, or someone used to come and get him now and then.  I can't remember).  The thing was, the people that would come over almost to a person absolutely hated stuff like this.  They wanted a pretty steady diet of Led Zeppelin (not at my house, I never did like them), The Who, and Black Sabbath.  I'm mostly ambivalent about those bands, but I still had a pretty decent record box and I was getting pretty heavily into The Stones then so I could usually keep people entertained.

I liked when my brother came over back then, because he'd listen to The English Beat with me.  He liked The Clash more than air or water (I think they're still the only music he listens to), but at least he got it that stuff like Special Beat Service was just about the greatest thing in the world to put the speakers out the windows and sit on the porch and blast the neighborhood with.  We'd roll one up, grab some beers and make a warm Sunday night super mellow, listening to Ranking Roger Toasting and Dave Wakeling Confessing.  We'd sit out on the swing and half the time not even talk to each other, just listen to music.  We don't do that anymore, and I won't go into that other than to say it's really a shame, because I loved listening to records with my brother.

Anyway, I really like this record.  I found it a year or so again for a dollar and I couldn't pass it up.  Anything with Sugar and Stress, I Confess and Save it For Later is worth at least a dollar in my book.  Throw in Rotating Head and the killer saxophone on End of the Party and I'm all in.  I always thought these guys were just really cool, and I never quite got why the guys that hung out with my wife's siblings thought they were somehow too effeminate for them to listen to.  Hey, I like my Blues Rawk as much as anyone, but if you're gonna enjoy the summer weather and have a little fun, you can't get much better than Ackee 1 2 3 or Pato and Roger A Go Talk.  I'm not much of a fan of the reggae, but I like a lot of the Ska/Two Tone stuff. Kind of like the same way I guess I like bands that sound like Led Zeppelin or The Beatles.  For some reason the followers sometimes are what I'm most interested in.  I don't know why, but that's the way it is.

Like I said, I got this record for a buck.  It's got the original inner sleeve with the lyrics and if you ask me, I'd guess it was only played once or twice.  It sounds great, it's flat and the cover has creases all over the place. But who cares?  It's got a big sticker on it that says $1.00 and I can't get it off, so I just sit back with a nice cold drink and listen to this one.

Death of Samantha - If Memory Serves Us Well

I love bands from Ohio.  I mean, I live here and I like to be a part of my local community, and I kind of consider the whole state my community.  I think a lot of us here are like that.  We're definitely Homers.  I mean, our sports talk stations ignore national stuff, even big stuff like the World Series or NBA Finals for the most part, so that we can analyze whatever the most crushing needs of The Browns are in the upcoming draft, or why The Indians should just break down and buy that one big bat.  If the World Series is The Yankees and Dodgers, we'll mention it, but always quickly change it to whatever is going on locally.

I love that about Cleveland.

I like sports, but music is definitely my passion.  I love Rock N' Roll.  I love guitars.  I'd have been bored out of my skull if I had been born into a world where there were no distorted guitars.  But I got lucky, and I'm here now, and I live in a city where there's always been some flat out great bands.  Yeah, you've never heard of them, but the bands in Ohio are as good as any bands from anywhere, if you ask me.

So I've had the recent Death of Samantha retrospective album for a little while now, and I've only got one of their ep's so this has been a welcome addition.  These guys were all over in the second half of the 80's around here.  They were really popular on the live circuit, but WMMS was in a tailspin around then and too busy with their heads up Michael Jackson's ass to bother blowing away N.E. Ohio with Death of Samantha.  WCSB played them, and that was good enough for me.  Hell, back then I was really mostly into The Stones, so I didn't care if 'MMS played anything other than The Stones, because I could listen to the new music I liked on college radio.  Those were pretty great days, even though I was really broke with a young family.

So Death of Samantha probably left a bigger footprint than most of you are aware of.  Doug Gillard is pretty well known for playing in Cobra Verde and Guided By Voices, along with John Petkovic (who writes for The Plain Dealer these days).  One of the things I never liked hearing about a lot of Cleveland bands is how they're some kind of avant garde Art Rock.  This happens a lot.  Their live shows were spectacles, but there's a lot of bands in Cleveland and you need to set yourself apart somehow.  Having a great show to go with your great songs doesn't make you Art Rock.  I just don't like that label.  It makes me think all the people in the audience are beatniks or some other beret wearing hipster doofus type of crowd.  Cleveland crowds respond to passion and we drink beer and liquor.  Turn it up and bring some fun and we're on board.  We don't have to call it anything but Rock N' Roll, okay?

I don't know if anyone reading this (I have a worldwide range, but it's only like six people, I think) will know any of the songs I'm going to mention, but it gives you something to check out on Youtube then, doesn't it?  So what's this record all about?  It's Death of Samantha getting together in 2011 to rehearse for some reunion shows.  This record is a recording of the rehearsal sessions, so these are new performances of old songs.  But they're live, so it gives a nice immediacy to everything.  There's plenty of crunchy guitars, David James on bass and Steve-O on drums are a really solid backbone and Gillard's guitars are fantastic.  Petkovic's lead vocal range is as limited as ever, but he knows what he can get away with, and he stays far, far away from where he doesn't belong.  What more could one ask from a Rock N' Roll band?

The songs here are all top notch.  I shoulda went to this show, cuz they were on the money, man!  We kick off with Coca-Cola and Licorice, complete with some clarinet strangling, and plenty of weird guitar playing.  It's a great song, and only one of many on this two record set.  I don't want to just start listing great songs, because you can just look up the track listing on AllMusic or something.  Savior City, Geisha Girl, Amphetamine - in a just and decent world these would be songs everyone knows.  They're certainly good enough.  It's a real bummer that we live in a world where Rosenberg Summer and Yellow Fever aren't talked about at least as much as what The Pixies have done.  don't think I'm all down on The Pixies or something, because I like them a lot.  If Memory Serves Us Well is just certainly as good as any albums they ever made.

The biggest omission the world is making is not think that Blood Creek is anything short of one of the coolest, best Rock songs ever recorded.  It's one of those songs I can listen to all day.  It's probably a good thing that I haven't got this in a digital form because I'd probably only listen to Blood Creek for a week.  It's just such a great riff, and it closes out four sides of great Rock N' Roll.  If you haven't heard these guys, it's not your fault, but you should really check them out.  If Memory Serves Us Well is a great place to start.

Since I bought mine new, it's obviously in good shape.  The pressing is nice and flat, there's a spot of distortion here and there, but I'm listening with headphones while I write this, and it's mostly dead quiet.  I can't recommend it enough.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory

I haven't decided what record to write about for this post.  But I'm working on it.  The thing I've been thinking about lately is exactly why do some people seem to think that it's important to have an extremely diversified collection of music.  I've heard some people say their tastes are eclectic, just because they have some Iron Maiden albums next to their Can albums and their Herb Alpert albums.  I'm not saying it's impossible to like very different types of music, but I just find it a little more unlikely than the internets would have us believe.  It's part of the whole critical listening process that us people in the collecting community are often so proud of mentioning.

Now, the idea behind critical listening is something I understand.  I realize that essentially it means that I'm making a decision that one piece of art (music's the only art I'm comfortable being critical about) is more worthwhile than another piece of art.  Obviously, other people will agree, while others disagree.  That's pretty much half the fun of interacting with other people that like the kind of art you're interested in.  I've got a nephew (nephew-in-law?) that doesn't collect music in any form.  We were someplace where we were listening to the radio in the background and a Stones song came on and I said, "Cool!  I love this song."

He said, "Yeah, this is pretty good."

I asked, "What kind of music do you like?"

He replies, "Oh, I like all music."

Now to me, this is the worst.  How can you genuinely like all music?  We talked about that a little, but I could tell that it's really just not important to him what music is playing.  We saw a band that played 90's hits, and he danced with his wife to all those songs, and they seemed to like the nostalgic aspect of those songs. Maybe those kinds of songs would be his "favorites," I'm not sure.  I'm not sure because I think he puts equal value to every song he hears.  Now, you can admire that if you want to, but I'm actually very glad I listen to music differently than he does.  I don't think The People on the Bus is as worthwhile to listen to as say, Magic Bus by The Who.  I understand that I'm not a four year old, and I understand that when I was four I thought The People on the Bus was a terrific song.  So is it a worthwhile song?  Yes, for children.  It's like a crayon.  A crayon is great to get a child interested in art, but as that child gets older, hopefully he sees that paint conveys more emotion than a crayon does.

I heard something by Florida Georgia Line the other day.  I did it on purpose, and I have to say, that was a mistake.  It was a mistake because I don't think all music is good.  I think some music is bad.  Listening to Florida Georgia Line was like huffing gasoline, or eating paste, or maybe listening to Rush Limbaugh.  I could feel myself getting dumber just listening to this.  Every second, I felt dumber.  I felt like I was wasting my time.  I'm a musical snob, for sure, but I can see the joys in a stupid song.  I love songs like Wooly Bully and Louie, Louie.  Some songs are just fun.  But some songs are mind numbingly stupid and sound like they've got paid product placements in them.  I mean, there was a time when a corporation wouldn't want anything to do with a song, but now it sounds like Ford, Chevy and Dodge are competing with Budweiser and Miller to get mentioned in some stupid song about looking at a teenage girl's tits.  Ugh.

Which got me to thinking about something that's almost universally loved (at least by people in my general age range), and I came up with Creedence Clearwater Revival.  In particular, Cosmo's Factory.  These guys had like a two year smash of a career.  They completely ruled the singles charts, and their albums were really solid.  The kinds of albums a real Rock Snob could get behind.  It kicks off with Ramble Tamble, which I suppose is kind of just a jam more than a real song, but it's a great way to start an album.  CCR sounds like an American band, and their brand of roots music isn't an act or a facade, these guys know why the guitars need to wail right here, and the drums need to pound right there.  CCR works in Cleveland as well as it works in Baton Rouge. They're the kind of band that just sounds like what we all want Rock N' Roll to sound like, no matter what part of the country we're from.

The thing with CCR is that they were a truly great singles band, and I know a lot of Rock Snobs scoff at that kind of success, but their albums, at least during the time when they were ruling the world, are even better than the singles.  I mean, Cosmo's Factory has five Top 5 singles.  Think about that.  Five Top 5 singles, and this isn't a Greatest Hits package.  Sure, that means you've heard Lookin' Out My Back Door and Up Around the Bend enough that they're burned into your psyche, but How great a world is it when Run through the Jungle is the kind of song that hits number 4?  The argument can certainly be made that it's a better one than we have now.  The thing is, the charts can have bands with good music on their albums, but for some reason we've decided we don't want that anymore.  I dunno.  If all albums were as solid as Cosmo's Factory, maybe I'd just like everything, too.  But all albums aren't even close.

My copy is a late 70's pressing.  I'm sure older pressings have more "bloom" or some other bullshit than mine does, but you can crank it up and hear a little of the passing of the years through my record, but I love the way it sounds, and I love the cool inner sleeve with their catalog on one side and their faces on the other.  It's a nice copy of a great record, by a great band.  There's not a bad second on it.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

So have you ever watched videos of people looking at their records?  You may think, "Rick, that sounds really fucking stupid."  You wouldn't be wrong, but what's the difference between someone making a video and showing you some new records they just got, or talking about some records they like and writing about their records in a blog?  Really, not that much when you come to think of it.  I started this project mainly just to make sure I keep writing things, using paragraphs, spelling words and generally not turning into one of those IT guys that can only spell or communicate in acronyms. So before you go giving these people a hard time, remember, they're just having some fun with their stuff and lets also remember that those of us that collect records have had some serious issues in the past:

Guys that collect records are notorious for not having girlfriends or wives.  Many of those that did have ended up choosing records over that life.  C'mon, you've met them so don't look at me like that.

Guys that collect records often have all the social skills of a ten year old with a new toy he doesn't want anyone else to touch.  They also often don't understand why people might not give a shit who Robert Ludwig is.  Or what a matrix number is.  Or any number of the little bits of minutiae that give record geeks a hard on.

Guys that collect records often have serious issues with body odor.  Every record show I've ever been to, some cat smells like he doesn't wipe his ass or bathe, and I'll be damned if that dude isn't always following me or just ahead of me.

So we shouldn't be throwing any stones near our incredibly fragile glass house, ya know?

Anyway, I was down a YouTube rabbit hole watching people show off their newest records and I had a pretty entertaining time of it, actually.  Especially with the kids.  The kids are teenagers or young adults, and it's really pretty cool to see just how excited they get about something like finding a Rolling Stones Let It Bleed album with the poster (and to be truthful I don't have one of those, so I'm a little jealous!).  You just go to YouTube and search on Vinyl Community and there's tons of stuff to sit and watch.  The common thread is that everyone is really into records, and the size of the collection doesn't matter.  You can have thirty or 30,000.  All you have to do is hold up your record and go back to kindergarten and do the whole Show and Tell thing.  I'm often very surprised at how much the kids know about Classic Rock and first pressings, label variations. One girl held up a Columbia Two Eye label and called it exactly that.  I didn't know anything about that kind of stuff until I was in my twenties.  I kind of wish the kids would listen to more new stuff, but maybe that will change as they make more money?  New records are expensive, but then again some of the old stuff they dig up isn't exactly cheap.  But I'm not gonna complain about kids listening to records.  Or showing them off on YouTube.  I think it's pretty cool, and they meet other people that like their records.  So good for them.

All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with the first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album.  I know I said Damn the Torpedoes was his masterpiece, and I stand by that, but man, I'll tell ya, when this came out in 1976 and I first heard it wherever it was I first heard it, I was really excited about these guys.  I mean this is kind of a scattershot album, but I have loved Breakdown since the day I first heard it, and I still love it. I remember my friend's dad that had a real, honest to goodness, badass stereo in his basement had a little Datsun B210.  That's the little car my friend always tried to get, because he had a killer Pioneer under dash stereo cassette and a bunch of Jensen Coaxials wherever he could fit them in.  Man, Breakdown would just shake the paint off that little car when my friend cranked it up!  That used to be a lot of fun!

I think this record got more play than it might have otherwise just because Breakdown and American Girl were just instant favorites for everyone.  I don't think the rest of the record really holds up to the standard set by those two songs, but Strangered in the Night, and Fooled Again (I Don't Like It) were just good enough to garner some airplay and keep the sides on turntables.  I don't think anyone thought Tom Petty would still be selling out anyplace he wants to this far into the game, but it really doesn't seem like that kind of success couldn't have happened to a nicer, harder working guy that knows how hard it is to make it in Rock N' Roll and also appreciates the history of the genre.  I mean, for me the guy gets into a sameness after Damn the Torpedoes that I'm just not interested in, but he was a new Classic Rocker at the time when it was starting to look like there might not be any of those anymore.  So that's pretty cool.

Well, that was a rambling, mostly incoherent little essay, but that's okay.  I tend to look at these like the kind of things I'd say if you were here listening to records with me and you couldn't figure out how to get a word in edgewise.  Not so much different than the YouTube people, is it?  Except I probably take up less of your time!   But back to my record - I've got an MCA Super Saver pressing, but it's really in great shape, and the vinyl is actually pretty heavy, flat and quiet.  If you're looking for this album, you should be able to get one of these for five bucks or less.  I had an earlier pressing long ago, but it had some issues that I think were related to the pressing plant not quite using enough vinyl to stamp the record.  The first song on both sides was really bad!  This one has been a nice replacement, though.  I hope I come across one of the YouTube kids listening to it and enjoying it.