On The Subject Of:
As you can tell I haven't really been posting a lot this month, only two all of the month. A sign of spring actually, been getting out of the house and trying to do a bit of exercise before the ticks come out. This week, Old Purple, the once trusty Corsica is on life support once again. Went to work and when I got there, ended up seeing smoke coming out of the hood and it was spitting out anti freeze. Thought it was a radiator hose split right? Oh no, it was a crack coming from the radiator itself. Fucking nice so my brother got the sliver Corsica back home and took Old Purple out to the shop to which we can either put a replacement in it or just trade the old thing in. It was supposed to last through the winter and it did while Miss Sliver got its brakeline fixed and the GF who came down to see me was treated to the antics of Old Purple and leaking tires in a 10 below morning in Iowa City. Old Purple was recused 12 years ago from the ex who was 3 payments and my credit rating just about becoming worthless and we have gone from town to town searching for bargains and more music. I'm hoping to get more up to date car this spring and trying to muster courage to head to the car dealership and dealing with them shysters. Wish me luck on that.
You may have never heard of Bill Pitcock IV but he played guitar on Dwight Twilley's I'm On Fire back in 1974 which is one of the best power pop songs ever to come out (I'm sure the next top ten will have a DT song in it, look for it and guess which one). I'm On Fire was one song I played over and over back in the days of 45 collecting (look for another blog about that too). Pitcock IV died this week from cancer at age 61. Twilley's latest album does have Pitcock playing on it or so Dwight says. Long time ago, DCC reissued DT's Sincerely his 1976 album for ABC/Shelter which although I'm On Fire came out around summer of 75 here, the album didn't hit stores till a year later and by then Twilley was pretty back into the unknown world. If you want to hear good 70's power pop, find the DCC version for it was more bonus cuts than the Right Stuff/EMI reissue replacement in the mid 90s. I never forgave them for leaving Did You See What Happened off that one. That was the B side to I'm On Fire, and it's the closest thing to power pop rockabilly ever attempted.
For the most part, nothing new worth getting and basically Best Buy has some bad road construction so I didn't go there. I had a 15 percent off coupon for Half Priced Books so I went and picked up the Time Life Stanley Brothers Definitive Collection and the best moments were when they joined King/Starday for the hits of Man Of Constant Sorrow, How Mountain Girls Can Love and O Death to which Ralph got a hit out of for O Brother Where Art Thou, the album to reintroduced the world to bluegrass once again. As far as I know this is the only complete career overview of the Stanley Brothers although Columbia issued a cd of their own and Mercury added choice cuts to their short lived Best of Bluegrass series. The third CD combines rare live performances and life after King Records. Bill Monroe may have been in a league of his own but next to him and Flatt & Scruggs, The Stanley Brothers defined bluegrass music to art form. Time Life almost has done a perfect job in terms of getting their best songs.
For other albums Tom Rush-The Circle Game (Elektra 1969) shows Rush covering Joni Mitchell and James Taylor before they became well known and it's a folk cover album thus a bit overrated in my book. Even Jackson Browne and Charlie Rich Rush covers but perhaps the standout remains his own No Regrets that is the last song of the album. This record must have meant something since Elektra has kept it in print all these years even after when Rush would leave for Columbia soon after ward. Interesting fact: Linda Eastman was the photographer of the album cover and that might be her snuggling up to Tom in the cover shot. Speculation. For more fun and giggles in the two dollar bin comes The Free Story (Island 1973) to which that point UK Island issued this as the complete best of to which it is not. On the plus side it adds hard to find selections from an aborted Paul Rodgers album (Lady), a selection from the Kossoff, Kirke, Rabbit and Testu project that Island did release as and album and the original 45 version of All Right Now. On the negative side, it adds way too many songs from the crappy Free At Last album (I could never get through side two without falling asleep at some point), skimps on Ton Of Sobs and gives us the halfassed live version of The Hunter and the jamathon Mr. Big. And only selects Come Together In The Morning from Heartbreaker (where's Wishing Well or the title track at?-Answer Heartbreaker was omitted due to time restrictions on the CD which clocks at 76:33 minutes). So in the end the A & M Best Of Free wins out for best overall Free overview, although I wouldn't say it's definite either. Even on Fire and Water, Free's sloppiness and meandering blues tend to try my patience. So maybe they were destined for failure but that doesn't discredit the fact that Paul Rodgers has always been one of my all time favorite singers. So it goes.
For albums this week, I took my chances on Wishbone Ash Locked In (Atlantic 1976) which is their least interesting album and maybe it is the new guy Laurie Westfield but this record never gets off the ground with pointless songs going nowhere, or Martin Turner's She Was My Best Friend even worse (Turner can't sing period). Rest In Peace is probably the best thing off a pointless album to which a reviewer blamed Tom Dowd for this but he had nothing to work with. At least Ron & Howie Albert had more to go on with better songs for New England which came out in the same year. Nevertheless that was the 2 and final album for Atlantic and Wishbone Ash returned to MCA for another five years with minimal success.
My Sportin Life by John Kay (Dunhill/ABC 1973) was Kay's second solo offering and I thought it was much better than Forgotten Songs & Unsung Heroes though most what I heard came from the MCA cut and paste Lone Steppenwolf CD which cherry picks tracks off Kay's 2 albums. More country rock than Steppenwolf, Kay managed to get Easy Evil (written by Alan (Undercover Angel) O'Day) on the top thirty and that turned out to be the highlight of that album. From what I remembered I wasn't too impressed with Lone Steppenwolf but perhaps if I find another copy of that I'll check it out but I think the cuts on Sportin Life sound better on that album rather than a comp.
Getting bored with the new stuff, out of my collection I pulled the Capitol Monster Summer Hits Series of surf and drag music. Back then in the early 60s EMI had cornered the market with hits by Beach Boys and Jan & Dean with a few lesser known bands and in 1991, put out Wild Surf and Drag City, with the famous monster driver pics that was the rage of the early 70s. In fact Drag City, in the cover shot they have the famous Moon Muffler logo (my fave). Can't understand why somebody would give us a even lesser edit on 409 (comes in at 1:49 rather than 2:05) and five cuts from The Super Stocks is about four too many (although me thinks they were in competition with The Four Speeds who recorded for Challenge in 63). And Bert Convy is two tracks too many (the Lieber/Stoller Cheers cuts). The six Beach Boys cuts dominate (which includes Mike Love's greatest contribution to that band, the two note horn intro to Shut Down Part 2) and The Gants Road Runner is just about punk as they go. I still think The Duals were way ahead of their time by being the only black guys doing surf and drag music with Stick Shift. It's rough and unusual and my idea of drag music fun. Wild Surf is probably the better of the two comps just by The Trashmen's Surfin Bird and The Rivingtons Papa Oom Mow Mow and the Brian Wilson produced Honeys. And Brian's daddy Murry topping him for the only time: The Sunrays I Live For The Sun. The Pipeline and Wipe Out numbers are not original. This time out the Beach Boys only get four surf songs on there but Jan & Dean wins out with Surf City and Ride The Wild Surf. Given as a whole both comps suffer was too much filler and lackluster pop numbers trying to be surf and drag and probably too much for the autotuner crowd but for old hippies like myself, they do remind me of a kind and gentler times when I was younger..................
So I decided to go to Waterloo on a late notice and of course it turned out to be a road trip. Found a couple old country records at St Vincent De Paul and surprised it was not too busy there on a Saturday. CD's Plus up there has closed up shop so if there's any decent music stores up in Waterloo it's beyond my knowledge. Pawnshops had nothing although Money And More did have a nice DW drumset for 800 dollars. Stopped at the Isle, the new casino up there to use the bathroom and then head to Independence to the Del Rio Mexican Place to where I was treated to bad Mariachi live music and had to wait 45 minutes for supper to arrive but the salsa was awesome so I loaded up on chips and salsa before returning home and spending 45 dollars to fill the car up. Dark days lie ahead.
The country records found was Carl Jackson Old Friends (Capitol 1978) to which this bluegrass banjo superpicker sets his sights on making it into the Nashville country charts only to fall flat and no sales. In some ways it reminds me of Vince Gill when he first became a solo artist, or Keith Urban although Jackson beat Gill by about 7 years. Jackson is at home when he covers Bill Monroe or does a banjo instrumental like Lil Jimmy but the album never really goes anywhere till side 2 and the conclusion of Sweet Dixie (Reprise) to which the ballad fades into a mean banjo playing and fading into the distance. The other album Golden Country Instrumentals (Starday 1968) is that, a budget album of 10 songs that barely goes over 24 minutes but features a wild Joe Maphis Fiddin On The Guitar which is just about fusion as country gets, a jazzy Penguin Strut from the talking steel guitar wiz the late Pete Drake and the Stanley Brothers Bonnie & Clyde Getaway. I have to mention Glen Campbell's Phoenix After Hours; certainly Campbell was riding the charts of Gentle On My Mind, a album that paved the way for John Hartford to live the good life and give the world Aero-Plain, but Campbell was a damn good guitar player and Phoenix After Hours proves that. I think Starday at that time was distributed by RCA judging by the packaging, but for a budget label and the record 40 plus years old it played like new. I like it fine myself but I doubt that y'all ever find another copy. It's not the fact it's rare, but people today don't care for Country Instrumentals like they did back in the past.
Next week is National Record Store Day and I'm sure I'll be at one close to home. We'll see where the road leads on that one.
Final Grades of things reviews (as far as my memory goes)
Wishbone Ash-Locked In (Atlantic 1976) C
Dwight Twilley-Sincerely (DCC/Shelter 1988) B+ (the Right Stuff reissue) B-
The Free Story (Island 1973) B-
The Stanley Brothers-The Definitive Collection (Time Life 2008) A-
John Kay-My Sportin' Life (Dunhill 1973) B+
Tommy Overstreet-Better Me (ABC 1978) B
Monster Hits: Drag City/Wild Surf (Capitol 1991) B+
Carl Jackson-Old Friend (Capitol 1978) C+
Various-Golden Country Instrumentals (Starday 1968) B+
Free-Free At Last (Pickwick/A & M 1972) C
Free-Heartbreaker (Island 1973) A-
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