Monday, May 22, 2017

Week In Review: Final Edition?

Houby Days came and went and the crappy weather pretty much took away the outdoors stage so the only bands that did play were on the band stage next to Aces And Eights.  The weather has sucked, five days of rain, five days of cloudy weather and five days of March weather in May.   And it continues to rain.  Maybe we won't have a summer.


BMG continues the glorious task of reissuing Emerson Lake And Palmer albums, this time out if you haven't already gotten them, you can get Works Vol 1 and 2 and their all time classic Love Beach.

I guess the love affair with Record World has died.  Blogspot reported after a long streak of 100 plus views we haven't gotten out of 38 to 40 range of total views.  Over the weekend, I had 41 views and yesterday 29 folks from around the world came to read anything.  The Blogspot all time most read blogs is a joke, I still have only 9 of 10 blogs posted.  I'm still over 7,000 views of the month but I can bet you next month we won't clear 1000.  Somehow the Bruce Stanley memorial has fallen out of the top 9.   Last weekend, his mom joined him in the great beyond.  She finally succumbed from demteria.  I think she was 95.


Passings; Roger Moore, the best known and longest lasting of the James Bond players, passed away Monday, he was 89 and lived a long good life.Till cancer claimed him...Wendell Goodman, Wanda Jackson's husband of 50 plus years and her manager as well died suddenly on Sunday Night after a show.  He was 81...Jimmy Lafaye, beloved singer songwriter on the Austin Music scene passed away from cancer on Sunday, he was 61.

The days of 100 plus views are done, I haven't gotten out of 50 views  according to the Blogspot tracker, which doesn't work very well.  I suspect those are the actual views.

On that note: Record World will be on hiatus for a while. I'll be busy working on music projects and seeing where the road leads.  From time to time if something of note comes up it will be posted. But I  have finally gotten bored with the music news and views, after 15 years of  blogging, we all know this come to be.

Goodbye doesn't mean forever.

(the love affair had ended is about Record World the blog, it has been a labor of love, that's all)

Records from my youth:  Dave Clark Five-Glad All Over (Epic 1964)

It's hard to believe when you listen to them nowadays is hard to believe they were next to the Beatles in records sold and while they could generate some hard rocking hits, their albums were spotty and sometimes cringeworthy such as the fucking awful Doo Dah and really bad Beatles rip offs (She's All Mine and No Time To Lose which Dave Clark apes Twist And Shout).  Certainly  Dave Clark knew he was nowhere near the caliber of Lennon/McCartney and his shrewd businesslike mannerisms made it clear he was in it for the money more than the music, which the rest of the band suffered greatly.  Nevertheless, the one element that made The DC5 worthy was he had Mike Smith as vocalist, Smith may have been the most grittiest of all British singers and he could have done well doing blues and soul covers, in fact Do You Love Me is more punk garage than Contours Motown and that might be one of the original punk rock numbers much to Dave Clark's chagrin.  The instrumentals are filler, Chaquita is Tequila and Time is Lenny Davidson going for a passable jazz but you won't remember it.  And they managed to turn Stay into a fucking trainwreck with the oofs and Ahs, which hardly a effort to make it more just another filler song.  However, this album is saved by four numbers of note, Do You Love Me, Bits And Pieces and Glad All Over, with the call and response that while inferior to The Beatles is actually one of their best all time two songs, and the 1:53 throwaway I Know You which I still love to hear (although Clark found it not worth to include on that 50 Greatest Hits limited edition 2 Fer that Hollywood Records issued for a couple years and is hard to find).  So does four good to great songs make this album worth hearing over the 7 shitty to so so to subpar numbers that are on this album?  There will be defenders of the DC 5 and their recording output but in reality these 7 shitty to subpar songs don't stand up.  And there are debates on if Dave Clark played drums on this (legend has it Bobby Graham who was the British Hal Blaine of drums who played on a lot of better known songs, You Really Got Me by The Kinks etc) but I'm guessing it's Clark's sloppy drumming on the ending of Bits And Pieces.   I actually found a copy of this LP in fairly good condition (usually Dave Clark albums, the grooves have worn off from so much playing, even on the crappy Doo Dah) and upon hearing it, the mono mastering was terrible, distorted and drenched in compression and echo.  But it does capture the excitement of the DC 5 in it's glory, the hits do jump at you.  But in the end, the DC5 was very limited by their manager/leader who really hasn't bothered to reissue his music outside of the better known hits and perhaps he had the right idea. I don't deny the DC 5 had good musicians, their leader was simply a tyrant.  And The Beatles were the better and most lasting of the two bands.
Grade B-

6 comments:

TAD said...

Hey, I'm trying to have a normal life, but sometimes I get sucked back in to the Internet....
I wonder if you were having the same problem I did re: page views and stats. For a year I had SOMEONE looking at my 30 most-recent posts every four hours, like clockwork. Day or night. They'd sometimes take Friday and Saturday nights off, then they were back at it. They never missed a day.
Last week, they gave up. After a year. Don't know what they were trying to do or WTF they wanted -- trying to take over Blogger by bombing my blog? I dunno. Now I'm getting 10 looks a day rather than 300.
For awhile I thought it was someone with a grudge, some American. Somebody I know? Who knows? Just glad they stopped. Maybe now I can see how many people really look at this stuff....
All the best, and keep going with your music. It's a way better use of your time than getting sucked into Facebook like I have been....

R S Crabb said...

Hi Tad:

Something happened and we're not over 100 views now. Perhaps these are the actual count.

Meanwhile life goes on. I somehow managed to cast a spell on a woman that helps me sing my songs at jams. Funny how things become, not looking for anybody and BOOM, somebody finds a way through the maze and into my life. Amazing woman she is.
I'm still sucked into Facebook as well so I'm not away from the net. But I don't know, Record World remains a work in progress and at this time I'm obliged to take a break from it all.

Bargain hunts go on, but I also want to contribute to somebody's life too. If I can get her to slow dance with me on a slow song then my life is complete.

If you need to get a hold of me Tad, you know where to find me ;)

TAD said...

You go, big guy. Sounds like you've got it bad. Congratulations. Everything else can wait. Best of luck.

R S Crabb said...

Things we do for love ;)

2000 Man said...

A break is useful, that's for sure. It's getting back into it that's hard. It's been a really busy work year for me. If I'm not doing that, it's just been nuts with family stuff (mostly good at least).

I used Statcounter for awhile. It was always WAY different than blogger numbers. I think blogger finally put the filters in that filtered out the 'bots that were coming by. Atleast blogging isn't a job for me, I'd never pay the bills, but I'd be skinny!

R S Crabb said...

I suspect that the new numbers are the actual numbers of people reading them rather than the spam bots that inflated these to unreal numbers.

I've been blogging for over 15 years non stop and while it has been fun, I tend to think I should be doing other things and i have been. And I needed a break anyway.

But I continue to find 45s of note and next weekend is the Madison "Bike" Ride so that might be worth blogging if and when I get around to it.

As you can tell I'm still around, I have to delete the 10-12 spam comments from blogger about porn hub or getting your teeth clean or going smoke less. Once in a while I'll get a actual real comment. At least somebody out there is actually reading these blogs.
;)