Observations: 1/22/22

In the continuing ways of life and death, death has claimed a few more people in the last time we got together.  Burke Shelley, lead vocalist of Budgie, a band that influenced many bands (Rush, Metallica) passed away after a long illness.  Ronnie Spector, who came back to give Eddie Money his biggest hit in 1986 with Take Me Home Tonight, Louie Anderson lost his battle with cancer at age 68. And the famous Meatloaf who became a victim of COVID, dead at 74.  Out of all the ones who passed away, Shelley is the one that hit me the hardest.  For me, Meatloaf's appearance on Ted Nugent's Free For All was the go to album for me, his Writing On The Wall, was a FM deep cut classic. 

Of course, Bat Out Of Hell is his classic, co written with Jim Steinman and produced by Todd Rundgren, who managed to give up any more of his royalties just to purchase some land and live out his life in sunny Hawaii.    To be honest, I wasn't a fan of that album, it was bombastic and all over the top but people loved that album.  I remember Jennie Palmer played it during home economics class in high school and it never appeal to me, or the 1993 comeback album.  If I wanted to listen to him, it would have been his 1985 RCA album Bad Attitude.  Bat Out Of Hell 1 and 2 are his legacy.

Record Store Day 15 years onward and vinyl has made the comeback of comebacks, tho last year CD sales actually increased, which makes one wonder if the CD era might be on the way.  Certainly no shortage of CDs at the local thrift stores, but 15 seasons ago, somebody decided that by having a RSD, would bring back buyers and they did make a comeback.  I have not been binge buying records like I once did.  Once in a great while, I'll find something of note, rarely rock records but folk and country.  Jim Reeves' A touch of velvet, was one record that I picked out of a bunch of donated country records when I went to the Salvation Army as well as the 10 45's that were recently documented   A Touch Of Velvet was one of the records that was in my folk's collection for years, it's slick and polished Nashville sound style conflicted with the honky tonk music of George Jones or Webb Pierce, and there's no shortage of Jim Reeves records.  The combined production of Chet Atkins and Anita Kerr tends to put this closer to pop than country, Welcome To My World and Have You Ever Been Lonely were the hits.  Perhaps it's the nostalgic side of me that would ever listen to Touch Of Velvet but in an era to which nobody can remember what is played on the radio, my logic remains going back to the era that I grew up listening to. Even if it was Jim Reeves.  The other record is The Travelers 3 Live (Elektra), Hawaii's answer to the Kingston Trio.  This is an actual promo copy, complete with a postcard from Elektra, telling the listeners to send for a free catalog of new music.  The old Elektra was one of the best independent labels ever.  The new Elektra is a corporate sham.   And if you read this far, Taylor Swift is your RSD Ambassador for 2022.

Charlie Huhn has decided after 22 years with Foghat it was time for him to retire, so he announced his retirement from the band, via email.  Which set off a confrontation of sorts from fans and the band.  Huhn's replacement is Scott Holt (Buddy Guy) who has subbed in the past.  Huhn replaced Derek St. Holmes in Ted Nugent's band and appeared on the albums Weekend Warriors, State Of Shock, Scream Dream and Intensities In Ten Cities.  And later moved on to Humble Pie and his own band.  Happy retirement Charlie.

Passings:  Sam Lay, Drummer for Howlin' Wolf, Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the electric version of Bob Dylan died from a long illness.  He was 86

Hargus "Pig" Robbins-Legendary keyboard player for the Nashville elite and played right to the very end, (the new Connie Smith album that came out last Nov.), He also played on Bob Dylan's classic albums of the mid 60s as well.  Robbins was also a rockabilly star with a minor hit Save It in the late 50s. He died from natural causes.  He was 84. 

Things Found;

Summer Of Soul (or when the revolution could not be televised) (CD) A-

An Evening With John Denver (CD)

The Blue Men Group-The Complex (CD)

Take 5-Dave Brubeck Live 82-83 (CD) B

Impressions-Best Of Rick Wakeman (CD)

Fresh Start-America Needs (LP) B+

45;s

My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You-Guy Mitchell (Columbia 4-41725) #45 1960

Three Hearts In A Tangle-Roy Drusky (Decca 31193) #2 Country 1961 #35 Pop 1961

I'd Rather Loan You Out-Roy Drusky (Decca 31297) #10 Country 1961

(welcome) New Lovers-Pat Boone (Dot 16048) #18 1960

B side: Words #94

Go Away From My Window-Gale Storm (Dot 15666) 1957

Walk Me To The Door-Ray Price (Columbia 4-42658)  #7 Country 1962

I Was Such A Fool -Connie Francis (MGM K-13096) #24 1962

B side He Thinks I Still Care #57

A collection of discarded 45's nobody bothered to pick up.  The Pat Boone song shows Mr. White Shoes going for a Brook Benton sound and it's one of his better songs.  This record was part of the big box of 45's that was noted last month.  While Gale Storm might have one or two of the big box records, I can attest that Go Away From My Window wasn't one of them.  B side Winter Warm is written by Burt Bachurach and Hal David, one of the earliest songs they ever did.  Roy Drusky is mostly forgotten on the radio and oldies circuit but Three Hearts In A Tangle did chart quite high at number 35 on the pop charts, Loan You Out is boppin honky tonk.  Walk Me To The Door is Ray Price honky tonk gold, written by Conway Twitty.   Guy Mitchell, had a habit of covering Price's material for the pop side, but each release Mitchell was slowly adding more country elements to his music. My Shoes would be his final top 40 pop release.   As for Connie Francis, her country attempt at He Thinks I Still Care is decent, and more preferable to the overblown trademark Francis' ballad wailing at I Was Such A Fool. 

Questlove's Summer Of Soul (or when the revolution could not be televised), is black music coming into fruitarian, even Sonny Shorrock's avant garde noise guitar on Herbie Mann's Hold On I'm Coming makes it clear this is serious music. Nina Simone's harrowing Backlash Blues and Are You Ready (which was written by a member of the Last Poets) is Nina has her most radical.  Sly and the Family Stone could rock it with a potent Everyday People or Sing A Simple Song.  The only tracks I did not care much was Precious Lord, Take My Hand (way too much emotional wailing by Mahalia Jackson, tho you can feel the gospel in her) or David Ruffin's My Girl (which rendered him to the nostalgic file, despite his overblown 15 second falsetto scream).  Elsewhere, The 5th Dimension's Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In, proves to the black community that they did have soul, Edwin Hawkins Singers and Staple Singers had gospel deep in their soul and Watermelon Man is Mongo Santamaria's Latin jam classic.  As much as Simone's Are You Ready ends the 80 minute CD in fine fashion, Ray Barretto's Together (Get together, before it's GD too late) steals the show.  

"I had a good life" Jimmy Johnson 1/31/2022 RIP

 

Goodwill Finds and Updates

CDs

Kevin Simnacher-Window Of Opportunity 

Best Of Bellamy Brothers B+

Frank Sinatra-September Of My Years B

Frank Sinatra-In The Wee Small Hours

Toto-Mindfields C-

Toto-Fahrenheit  C

Dixie Dregs-California Screamin' B

Wildcat Spratt-Love, Rock, Energy In Motion. C

Given the grim situation of my family, I took time to Goodwill to clear my head and found a few things. September Of My Years and Wee Small Hours are Frank's best studio album it seems, I'd love to find Watertown, the 1969 Jake Holmes written and Bob Gaudio produced recording.  Both Franks and the Bellamy Brothers albums were under a dollar.  Goodwill SW had the Toto albums, plus the Dregs and the late in town rocker Kevin Sinmacher's album (they had two).  I don't think they were from his collection, but it was odd to see two of his albums.  The two Toto albums are a sharp decline, Fahrenheit couldn't decide if it wanted to be a George Michael knockoff or a muzak light rock band.  Mind Fields is 79 minutes of half wit prog rock.  That got donated right back to Goodwill.  Their worst album.

Somebody in Kevin Simnacher's family must have donated these CDs at the local Goodwill, namely the Toto and Dixie Dregs ones.  Kevin was a very innovate guitar player and he did hook up with Craig Wildcat Spratt on a couple of Harvey Headbanger CDs, with Love Rock Etc, Spratt forgos hair metal for an alternative rock sound courtesy of Brook Hoover (Meekats, Surf Zombies).  Spratt is legend for his drumming skills with Hostage and many other bands, but Love Rock Etc is a odd concept album, with 14 songs of the same chords and tempo actually.  Approval, leads off the album and it's excellent, and then after that the album falls apart.  Like his drummer, Kraig's songs, when they go over 4 minutes can be bombastic and pompous.  It is fun to write love songs, even better to write dark songs, but the meltdown of I'm Your Lover Man/I  Need Your Love is borderline Psycho.   A curious but emotional bombastic listen.

You knew that I was NOT going  away that easy right?  Like last year, I will look at what I find for music, document it and wonder why the hell I bought it in the first place.  Because it's fun.  But nowadays, I can't type and this keyboard is the ultimate pits.  But if there's something going on in the world that needs to be looked at, well here tis.  

We found out that Tom T Hall actually committed suicide last August.  The pain of life got too hard for T to deal with and the only way relive pain was a gun.  It has happen before when Bob Welch was not going go through the pain of being an invalid any more and done himself in (Wendy, his wife passed in 2016). 2022 already has been a shit show.  And we're only five days into this.

The December 15 shitstorm, provided a record 61 tornadoes in the state. Twice as many as the 30 tornadoes on August 30, 2014. 21 were EF2 tornadoes and 23 EF1.  In this age of climate change we never had a tornado outbreak in December.

Another snowstorm and last night another tight pressure gradient came to deliver 50 MPH NW winds a goddamn snow drift of four feet in front of the driveway.  I beginning to wonder if Tom T Hall had the right idea.  

Oh, they called off the 64th GrammysTM. Omicron issues. 

Con artists Aaron McCraight and Doug Hargrave has been charged with band fraud, stemming from the 2018 NewBo Evolve Disaster, to which these two took the bank fundings and defrauded the bank.  Both of them could be in jail for 30 years, to which they may be turned into GOP people and accused the media of fake news.  

Upon the reissues of 2021 was the Almost Famous music soundtrack, which bloats up to a 5 CD set (or 2 CD highlight set and of course the standalone original soundtrack.   But if you're looking at capturing a moment in time (1972), why they couldn't get Deep Purple song from the mark 2 lineup, but they did snatch the 1974 rocking Burn.  Perhaps adding Free's Wishing Well to the 2 set highlights would been much better.  Can't quibble with the most of the tracks, tho the Led Zeppelin numbers on CD 3 are better suited on Zep's albums.  Kudos for Jethro Tull's Teacher and Brondlyn Pig's Dear Jill, which would have been a surprise cut on the regular album had Cameron Crowe went for a less commercial songs that became deep cuts on FM radio.  Or Little Feat's Easy To Slip, one of their best songs in the early years.  Next to Dazed And Confused, Almost Famous damn near captures the 70s in the way that Superstars Of The 70s, Warner's attempt to capture the rock and roll spirit of that time.  I tend to favor Heavy Metal or Superstars Of The 70s Volume 2 in terms of music of that era and at that time, they didn't have to deal with greedy lawyers or bands to make decent compilations  Dazed N Confused pretty much champion the music of 1975 or 76 a bit more than the early 70s vibe of Famous.  Then again, we all made our own mix tapes of that rock and roll of five decades ago.   Certainly we have our share of decent soundtracks to movies of the songs of long ago and far away.  The Motown sound of The Big Chill, The late 60s AM radio vibe to Once Upon A Time In America, to which I still have yet to find, or the easy to get for a dollar Forrest Gump Soundtrack.  Once Upon A Time In America does owe something to the Cruisin' Years with the DJ talking and commercials of that time.   If you remember your music history, Led Zeppelin has had a song or two on soundtracks (Remember the Cotillion Homer Soundtrack?, never saw the movie but the soundtrack was killer, that included How Many More Times from Zep.   Getting back to original thought, Almost Famous Supersized I didn't see the need to invest in upgrade since the single CD did its job.   This reminds me of the original Superstars Of The 70s, album cuts, great singles but without the movie dialogue.   At one time, I wanted a copy of SOT70s album, but never could find a copy that wasn't chewed up be it record or album cover.   Still Almost Famous is a nice collection but I still believe that Superstars Of The 70s did it better. 

The Nirvana baby dude had his child porn suit against Nirvana and Universal music thrown out.  He could file again by Jan 13, but the guy just let it drop.

 Archives from the 90s-Swinging Steaks-Southside Of The Sky (Capricorn 1993)

The 90s may have been the last decade that I gave a shit about.  The labels were signing and releasing a whole lot of albums and CDs at that time.  Most bands were one record deals and gone the next.   Your local Wherehouse Music store or Zia's Records had plenty of CDs thrown in the bargain bins.  The pawnshops were actually on to selling CDs and were cheaper too.  Of course, most CDs looked like they came from the local trailer court, cracked jewel cases, and scratched up CDs were par for the course.   Also, promo copies of bands that never were more than local favorites.  How The Swinging Steaks managed to have their cd in a out of the way Kingman pawnshop is beyond me.  I do believe it was there for a while before grabbing it on the go.

The Steaks were signed to the revamped Capricorn label, via Warner Music.  The late Phil Walden also signed up Col Bruce Hampton and his various bands, The Dixie Dregs and wave of the future, Omaha's very own 311 in order to fit in the times.  Southside of the sky borrowed a few tunes off their Suicide At The Wishing Well album, got the eccentric Gary Katz to produce part of the album and they should have been as big as The Jayhawks, to their share their sound n vision, or a more polished Black Crowes, or The Band, who I think Southside Of The Sky is better than Music From Big Pink.  There were some minor radio airplay with Beg Borrow Or Steal, Circlin' and Right Through You could have passed as a Rolling Stones song.  The title track is a nod to the Georgia Satellites, tho you can make an argument for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.  Southside should have been at least made some sort of impact on the alternative rock, or even country radio.  But in a era of the stale smoke of grunge still hanging in the air, Southside became nothing but a curio for the adventurous who were sick of Seattle and that scene.  Jamie Walker and Tim Giovanniello being the main songwriters, I tend to think had more in common with Gary Louris and Mark Olson of the Jayhawks then perhaps The Robinsons, but still the music of the Steaks and Jayhawks and Satellites I enjoyed more than Nirvana, Alice In Chains and Soundgarden.  Again, Southside Off The Sky should have done better but Warner Music pulled distribution and The Steaks would return back to the independent record route again, making fine music that radio seldom played.  The success of 311, managed to get Capricorn going again, Polygram picked up where Warner gave up on that label and Walden enjoyed some success before Polygram got bought out and sold to Universal.   Even in the dustbin of the pawnshop on Route 66 land, Southside Of The Sky deserves to be listened to.   In the perfect world  we'd be thinking more of the contributions of the Swinging Steaks and others such as From Good Homes, The Pistolleros (Chimeras from Tempe), Big Back Forty and Blue Mountain, bands that were not grunge but more tuneful Americana rock.  Three decades later Southside Of The Sky remains a essential listen.

45's

I Forgot More Than You Know-Sonny James (Capitol 4307) #80 1960

The Watermelon Song-Tennessee Ernie Ford (Capitol F-3649) #87 1957

My Last Date With You-Skeeter Davis (RCA 47-7825) #26 1960

Walk On By-Leroy Van Dyke (Mercury 71834) #5 1961

If A Woman Answers-Leroy Van Dyke (Mercury 71926) #35 1962

Man Needs A Woman-Wink Martindale (Dot 16282)  1962

Take Good Care Of Her-Adam Wade (Coed-CD-546) #7 1961

Does He Mean That Much To You-Eddy Arnold (RCA 47-8102)  1962

Cool It Baby-Eddie Fontaine (Decca 9-30042) 1956

Replacement copy

Mission Bell-Donnie Brooks