Showing posts with label albums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label albums. Show all posts

Friday, April 10, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em): Calcutta!


This influential LP came later in life -- as in, I-was-over-50 later in life. But influential is influential, a revelation is a revelation no matter how delayed, so here goes No. 9 on the list -- "Calcutta!" by Lawrence Welk.

As a Baby Boomer of a certain age, I absolutely was force-fed a diet of The Lawrence Welk Show every weekend. Saturday night on the network . . . Saturday or Sunday afternoon in syndication, you could count on Lawrence, Myron, Joe, Norma, Arthur, Bobby, Cissy, Gail and Dale to cheese up the living room TV set so much, all you really needed was a box of Ritz crackers for your evening to be complete.

Mama and Daddy loved The Lawrence Welk Show. And Mama and Daddy controlled the television when it counted -- the precise times for 1) Lawrence Welk on Saturday afternoons, 2) The Gospel Jubilee on Sunday mornings, and 3) whenever The Porter Wagoner Show was on -- maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately for my force-fed self, The Lawrence Welk Show was . . . was . . . was. . . .


A half century later, I am at a loss for words.

I, however, can show you:



NOW YOU KNOW why folks got one toke over the line.

In short, Lawrence Welk represented, for all of my youth, a big, lame joke. When it wasn't being the Abomination of Geritol Nation.

Well into married life, my wife -- subjected, in her youth, to the same Welk abuse as myself -- and I would watch reruns of the show on public TV for the sheer irony and hathos of it all. Sometimes, we still do.

Then at an estate sale one Sunday, one of the LP treasures of a passing generation presented itself to me. "Aw, what the hell," I told myself as I grabbed "Calcutta" for ironic listening enjoyment.

I cleaned the vintage 1961 vinyl, plopped it on the record player, and immediately a huge problem jumped right off the grooves and into my smug, superior little shit of a face.

The @#&%!$*!# album was good.

The Welk orchestra almost . . . Dare I say it? . . . No, I CAN'T! . . . Go on, say it, you little frickin' WIMP! . . . DON'T YELL AT ME!!!! . . . the Welk orchestra almost . . . uh . . . swung. It was really tight. And the "Calcutta" Welk was so much more fun than that Geritol- and Serutan-fueled weekly video constitutional might suggest.

YOU DON'T EXPECT, at least not in one's 50s, for it to be so earthshaking to discover one's parents -- well, at least kinda sorta -- were right. But on a matter involving such a deeply held principle? About something that strikes at the core of Boomer generational solidarity?

Consider my earth shaken, if not also stirred.


God help me, the title cut was fun. (I was already familiar with the "Calcutta" single, just not with the idea that it was "fun.") "Perfidia" was even better. Exquisite, even.

God help me, I had to give Lawrence Welk his due. I had been influenced.

And I wasn't even one "modern spiritual" over the line.


Tuesday, April 07, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em):
The Man Who Built America


In 1979, Irish rock -- to American ears, at least -- amounted to Van Morrison, Thin Lizzy,  Rory Gallagher and . . . Horslips.

Outside the Emerald Isle in '79, U2 was still "U Who?"

And to be fair, in the United States, Horslips wasn't all that well known, either. But I knew who Horslips was, thanks to (I'm sure) WLSU on cable FM in Baton Rouge. College radio: It's important.

If you ask me, I'm not entirely sure you could have had the global phenomenon that was/is U2 without Irish predecessors like Thin Lizzy and Horslips, bands that were masters of the thematic LP masterpiece (in Thin Lizzy's case, think "Jailbreak") and in Horslips' case, think this album -- "The Man Who Built America," the story of Irish immigration to the United States and No. 7 in this series of 10 albums that were influential for yours truly.


HORSLIPS was one of those bands that could make you think, make you dance, make you play air guitar and make you cry bitter tears . . . all in the space of two sides of a long-play record. And the great thing is that Horslips is still around.

For me, this and "Aliens" are go-to albums, still.

U2 might have been leading the surge of Irish bands that flooded onto American radio dials starting in the early '80s, but don't forget the precursors who set the charges and blew the dam. One of those was Horslips.

I'm exceedingly glad about that.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Back when country music was

I was of a mind to listen to some country music this evening. So I went back to 1972, and a classic Loretta Lynn album.

On vinyl.

I liked it when I was young, and thin, and had more hair, which wasn't gray, and it sounded exactly like country music when you put on a country LP.
Thus concludes this late-night rant by a nostalgic old man who's just sick of it all.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

I'm your rumba man


This is a 1956 iPod playing a 1950s iTunes download -- Xavier Cugat's favorite rumbas, to be specific.

And I'm still doing the rumba, baby. I can't seem to quit. If Chris Brown catches us doing the rumba, Chris Brown would just pitch a fit. (With firearms.)

But I can't help myself; it's much bigger than me. If I were you, I'd hang onto a rumba man like me.

NOW, you might ask, what sort of geekery gets a rumba man like me excited? Old LP records, yes. But more than that . . . old LP records in great shape that have price tags on them from a St. Louis record store that went out of business about the time your rumba man was getting in business.

So to speak.

Don't get me started about how to figure out how old a pressing is, or where did the filler songs come from when a record company reissues a 1948 10-inch LP as a mid-'50s 12-inch LP and adds four songs to it . . . because more space.

Just don't. You ain't geek enough.


Well, that's about all for now. File this under Things That Probably Will End Up on This Week's Show.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

I'll build a (vinyl) stairway to paradise


This afternoon's listening was . . . transcendent.

Sarah Vaughan. George Gershwin's very large segment of the American Songbook. Where could you go wrong?

Answer: You can't.

Boy, oh boy, are you in for a treat this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. My dilemma is deciding what to play off this 1957 masterpiece of an LP.

I have a couple of thoughts, but I almost feel like I'd be cheating you by not just playing the whole thing. The problem is that I have lots of other great music, too.

I'd feel like I was cheating you by not getting around to all that, too.


In brief, my dilemma is your gain. That's the Big Show for you.

Be there. Aloha.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Tonight's vinylpalooza


I'm cheap enough that paying $15 for this 1959 stereo release gave me serious pause at the LP bins of an Old Market antique emporium.

On one hand, I'd rather find a gem for a song at an estate sale or something.

On the other hand, the records from this vendor are usually in marvelous playing condition.

On the third hand, a stereo rock 'n' roll record from 1959 -- the mono version of Bobby Freeman's Do You Wanna Dance album came out the previous year -- and from an indie label, no less. That's likely on the rare side, making the $15 price not a rip-off.

I'll say!

BEFORE LISTENING to this early-rock classic this evening, I did a little Internet price checking for the stereo version of Do You Wanna Dance . . . Jubilee 1086 for all you record geeks out there. And the low price I found it being sold for was something like $29.95. The high price (on eBay, of course) was . . . was . . . gulp! . . . $110. I understand a mint first pressing goes for $200.

Mine seems to be a second pressing. Sigh. I coulda been rich.

Now note that amid all this "What's it wurf???" nerd-o-mania, not a word was written about the actual music, which was great despite following the rock-album convention of the day for a hot act. That would be:

SIDE A
  • Cover something.
  • Cover something.
  • Cover something.
  • Original that'll never be released as a single.
  • Cover something.
  • Hit record we named the LP for.
 SIDE B
  • Cover something.
  • Cover something.
  • Original that you'll hear nowhere else. Ever.
  • Cover something.
  • Original that sounds exactly like the big hit on Side 1.
  • Cover something inspiring. Or something.
That is all. Good night, and good listening.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

This week's listening. So far.


Well, this is what I've been listening to so far this week.

I found a couple of cool 45 EP sets at an estate sale Sunday, along with a feast of LPs. I know, you're wondering what, exactly, is a "45 EP set." I don't blame you, really. The concept didn't stick for all that long.

A 45 EP set was an album, only on a couple -- or sometimes three -- 45s that typically had two songs to a side. They came in a little gatefold jacket that was a miniature version of a 12-inch LP jacket, and lasted as a format for about as long as there was a competition between LPs and 45s as a medium for record albums.

In that battle, the 45 r.p.m. record lost. The record industry more or less standardized release formats, with 45s being the common format for singles and 12-inch LPs being the common format for full albums. The 45 EP set largely disappeared by the end of the 1960s in the United States.

Basically, the sound quality wasn't as good as an LP record -- you're cramming a lot on music on a 7-inch record not really meant to hold that much. And, if you ask me, 45s by and large don't sound quite as good as LPs anyway. So there's that.

Then you have the "more records to mess with" factor, even if they're smaller records.

On the other hand, they are kind of cool. They're a curiosity, to be sure.

ANYWAY, the EPs we have here for my listening pleasure -- and soon yours, too, no doubt --  are the 45 version of Jackie Gleason's Music for Lovers Only, one of his 1950s albums with trumpeter Bobby Hackett fronting an orchestra "conducted" by The Great One. God help me, I love the stuff.

Jackie Gleason put the bachelor pad in "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music."

The other EP set is The Anthony Choir, a group that trumpeter Ray Anthony put together to perform with his orchestra, because somebody had to give Mitch Miller, Ray Conniff and Fred Waring a run for their money.

And, yes, your humble correspondent was born (1961) too late.




FINALLY on the agenda tonight was a little Bent Fabric.

Bent Fabric, the Danish pianist and composer born 90 years ago as Bent Fabricius-Bjerre. You know, the "Alley Cat" guy who, by Grammy logic, won for Best Rock & Roll Recording of 1962.

And, yes, Bent Fabric is still with us.

And -- once again -- God help me, I love this stuff. That is all. Nighty-night.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Cool jazz on a hot summer's night

Was anybody better than Billy Eckstine?

Several were as good but none better, I don't think. And this 1959 stereo version of Eckstine's 1958 Billy's Best album makes for fine listening on a hot, steamy Midwestern eve.
 
Hell, it would be just as wonderful on a frigid winter's night on the Plains, too. 

So this was tonight's musical selection here in the Revolution 21 studio here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska, deep into the dog days of summer, with state-fair season still a month away and college football a little further out than that.

UNLIKE many vinyl aficionados, I have nothing in particular against compact discs or good-quality digital audio files. But, damn, there's really nothing like putting an old LP on the turntable, basking in that particular smell of aged cardboard and paper. Nothing like holding the record sleeve in your hands and dreaming of your lost youth . . . or the days when jazz ruled the western world and you were yet a glimmer in your mama and daddy's eyes.

Maybe you can't hold this '50s classic of American popular music in your own two hands, but you can always listen to 3 Chords & the Truth and dream sweet dreams about a culture at its zenith that's just showing off.

Because it could.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Last evening's vintage listening


Here's a glimpse at my vintage listening for last night -- Billy Vaughn and his orchestra goes Hawaiian back in 1959.

Well, contrary to Dot Record's sloganeering, this LP represents not "the greatest sound on records!" but rather, "Really great, but still no RCA Victor release from the same era."

I know this because I'm a nerd. 

A vintage record nerd, with geek tendencies.

ACTUALLY, this LP was amazingly clean and unworn, despite its vintage. It sounded new, even after all these decades.

The vinyl itself was a little warped but still played flawlessly. And the album still was in the Sears and Roebuck plastic wrap.

I can almost see, a half century and six years past, the music going 'round and 'round on something like this . . . right out of Sears' 1959 Christmas catalog. Musical satisfaction guaranteed.

Aloha.


Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Que sera, sera


You never know what's going to end up on the ol' phonograph in the 3 Chords & the Truth studio.

Last night, it was this 1955 LP by Doris Day. Tomorrow night, it could be Waylon Jennings. Who knows? Certainly not yours truly.

What I do know is that, sooner or later, it'll all end up on the Big Show. Keeps life -- and listening -- interesting, it does.

You'd be shocked, shocked to learn how much of the music on the program comes from where I find a lot of the good stuff. That would be estate sales and Goodwill, where lots of albums and singles that never found their way to CDs or downloads sit waiting to be rediscovered and loved anew.

AND WHILE I enjoy these vintage sounds in the comfort of the studio, I find I'm also getting a lesson in how tempus keeps fugiting at an alarming rate. For example, Miss Day's Day Dreams album came out in 1955, a mere six years before I came on the scene.

As an ambivalent member of the Baby Boom generation, that doesn't seem much like ancient history. But then I do the math and see that 1955 was 59 years ago. In my mind, 1955 is the day before yesterday, even though I wasn't born yet.

But in 1955, Doris Day was 31 years young. Now she's 90.

So listen up, kiddies, and listen good. It could happen to you -- and it probably will. I know, year by year, it's happening to me.

Sigh.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Omaha Picker


You know who have the best jobs in the world? The American Pickers guys.
Put me in a thrift store or at an estate sale, and I turn into the Omaha version of Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz. I see relics of a time long gone, and I start to see who the original owners were and maybe what they did.


What some folks see as junk, I -- like Mike and Frank -- see history you can touch. History you can make your own.

CALL ME continually amazed at the stuff folks throw out that I find in the record stacks at our neighborhood Goodwill.

Retail, this Glen Gray album would be worth a few bucks, maybe a little more. At the Goodwill, 99 cents. And look, it's autographed! That should add a few bucks to the value.

Welcome back to 1956.

I love this stuff. So does 3 Chords & the Truth.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Vintage vinyl o' the day


You don't have to ask me twice whether I want to buy -- $2.50 . . . cheap! -- some flaming red vinyl.

I almost don't care what's on it, though in this case, I lucked out. It's classic David Rose, from a 1962 promotional album put out by Montgomery Ward in honor of the venerable department store's 90th anniversary.



This was one of nine put out that year by Ward's, which called the special releases the Nine Top Artist Series. Obviously, with artists like Rose and his orchestra, Lawrence Welk, Artie Shaw, The Ink Spots and The Three Suns, these LPs did not represent the Nine Top Artist Series for Teenyboppers.
Click on album covers to enlarge

But speaking as someone who was a toddlerbopper in 1962, I still think it's all pretty jake . . . er, cool . . . er, groovy . . . er, exemplary.

WHAT I ALSO think is pretty exemplary are my memories of great old department stores like Monkey Ward's, as everyone called the late, great company back then. It was one entity of what I guess you could have called the Holy Trinity of Retailers -- Sears and Roebuck, J.C. Penney and Montgomery Ward, founded (if you do the early-'60s math) in 1872.

Ward's succumbed to modernity in 2000 but was sort of resurrected in 2004 as an online retailer by a company -- itself since acquired by yet another company -- that bought the name and intellectual property of the gone-bust giant. Meantime, Sears and Penney's are hanging on by their fingernails, mere shells of what they once were commercially and as cultural icons.

THE MUSIC with which Montgomery Ward celebrated its success once upon a time remains, though. Music, unlike institutions, never dies.

Though time marches on and memories eventually fade, the music plays on. The music plays on.

And it plays on 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there this weekend. Aloha.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

This afternoon's listening


It's not a bad way to spend 40-something minutes of a cool November day, listening to the Stones as the sun sinks behind the Nebraska plains well before suppertime.

This is the time of year when you're really starting to miss the daylight we had just the other day, it seems like. And you're wanting it back.

But as Mick Jagger says, "You can't always get what you want."

True, true. . . .

"But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."


Like a late fall fix of 1969's "Let It Bleed," one of a stretch of albums the Rolling Stones made back when the Rolling Stones made albums that mattered. Mick from London -- another Mick from London, Mick Brown who writes for The Telegraph -- says that hasn't been the case for a very, very long time. And he adds that the bad boys grampaws of rock 'n' roll should just hang it up after a half century.
On Sunday night, while the Rolling Stones were performing for 20,000 people at the O2 in London – the first of five concerts they will be playing in London and New York to mark their 50th anniversary – one of their early heroes was also making an appearance a few miles across town, in the somewhat shabbier surroundings of the Kentish Town Forum.

Bobby Womack is the veteran soul singer who wrote, and with his group The Valentinos recorded, the original version of It’s All Over Now, which gave the Stones their first number one hit in Britain in 1964. Womack once recalled his chagrin at his mentor Sam Cooke giving the Stones his song, and depriving him of having the hit himself. “I was still screaming and hollering right up until I got my first royalty cheque. Man, the amount of money rolling in shut me right up.”

Womack, 68, who styles himself as “the Soul Survivor”, has survived drug problems, near-penury and cancer. He was performing songs from a new album, The Bravest Man In The Universe (modesty was never his strong suit), produced by another, younger admirer, Damon Albarn.

The Rolling Stones, who started out as a rhythm and blues covers band, borrowing heavily from black artists such as Womack (a debt which, to their credit, they have always warmly acknowledged), are now among the wealthiest entertainers in the world, a thriving corporation, steered by a CEO – Mick Jagger – who has demonstrated a mixture of shrewdness and business acumen that makes him the peer of any more strait-laced captain of industry.

The Stones are reportedly being paid more than £15 million for their five shows. Ticket prices for the London performances range from £95 to £375, with a “VIP hospitality” ticket priced at £950, and no concessions for the pensioners who are the group’s most devoted audience, many of whom will doubtless have travelled to the O2 on their Freedom Passes. 
We can put aside Jagger’s blithe explanations that when it comes to ticket prices the group are merely hapless victims of market forces, or Ronnie Wood’s shrugging dismissal that “we’ve got to make something”. The Stones long ago set the benchmark for shameless cynicism when it comes to exploiting “the brand”. Among the luxury items on offer when the box-set of Exile On Main Street was released two years ago was a limited-edition box of three lithographs, “signed individually by Mick, Keith or Charlie”, priced at £1,999.99. Note, that’s “or”, not “and”. 
By one account, the biggest crush of the night at the O2 was not at the front of the stage but at the merchandising stand, where eager customers were spending £200 on a poster of a gorilla’s face – the artwork on the cover of the the band’s newly released greatest hits, Grrr!. Of course, one should not begrudge a handful of pensioners a few bob in their declining years, but as Johnny Rotten once said, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
(snip)

It is an odd paradox that while the Stones have not made an album worth listening to since Tattoo You in 1981, they are bigger business now than they ever were – the prime example of Sixties and Seventies rock music as heritage industry. The Stones performing their greatest hits, Brian Wilson performing Pet Sounds, Van Morrison performing Astral Weeks – these are rock music’s equivalent of the blockbuster Jackson Pollock or David Hockney retrospective.

Some manage this trick better than others. It is a tired and familiar trope to point out the irony of old rockers, who can barely make it to the stage unaided, singing the anthems of their rebellious youth: The Who, for example, singing My Generation at the Olympics closing ceremony (or to be more precise, half the Who, the rhythm half having sadly fulfilled the song’s prophecy). Paul McCartney has become a national institution, wheeled out at state occasions to sing the creaking Hey Jude – the post-war generation’s We’ll Meet Again – with ever-diminishing effect. Surely it’s time to give it a rest?
YEAH, I can agree with that. The Stones lost me with "Some Girls," on which they tried to be disco-relevant in 1978. The lowlight was the title track -- Google the lyrics and cringe.

Anyway, Brown was just setting the stage for his coup de grace . . . which I also can go along with.
Watching the splendid documentary Crossfire Hurricane, shown on the BBC over two consecutive weekends, reminded you of just how glamorous, how dangerous, how romantic the Stones were in their prime; a different species altogether from the cadavers who emerged, as if from creaking coffins, on to the O2 stage. Jagger is, as they say, marvellous for his age but nobody would describe him as “a soul survivor” – unless one counts surviving the inconvenience of tax exile, two expensive divorces and, by his own account, “dozens” of paternity suits.

It was always said of Jagger that his ambitions were to mingle with the aristocracy. He achieved that and more; in a sense, the Stones became the aristocracy themselves, in the process exhibiting some of the more disagreeable characteristics of their caste, with all the air of entitlement and the barely concealed disdain for the paying punter.

Another song comes to mind. “Let’s drink to the hard-working people/Let’s drink to the lowly of birth/Raise your glass to the good and the evil/Let’s drink to the salt of the earth.”

The song is Salt of the Earth by … the Rolling Stones. It was not a song they found time to play at the O2. They did, however, perform It’s All Over Now. Surely now, it’s really time it was.
AT LEAST we still have the albums from when the Stones still mattered.

Albums from a time before the talented cads became whatever it is they are today, which I suspect bears an unfortunate resemblance to the dirty old men of Bide-a-Wee Manor, regaling nurses half their age with stories of how they used to be somebody as they try to cop a feel.

Friday, October 26, 2012

A Capitol idea!

 

My vinyl geekery knows no bounds. This is why I've been having a Capitol time the last couple of days.

(Insert groan here.) 

What we have here aren't just fine mid-century jazz LPs by the George Shearing Quintet and Dakota Staton. Oh, no!

No, what we also have here in the Revolution 21 studio are the first two iterations of Capitol's iconic "rainbow" label.

The Shearing LP, for example, is the second "rainbow" label the record company used, starting sometime in 1959. That makes it easy to tell that this album, though first released in 1956, actually was pressed and purchased no earlier than, say, late '59.


Because Capitol changed its label design again in 1962, putting the logo at the top, we know this record is an older pressing than that. (I told you my geekery knows no bounds.)

The third version of the "rainbow"? That's the one we know from, say, the original pressings of "Meet the Beatles," etc., and so on.


AND WE also know (getting back to the vintage album at hand) where it was purchased -- Younkers department store at one of the nation's first shopping malls, The Center at 42nd and Center streets in Omaha.

At left, on the other hand, is the very first of Capitol's "rainbow" labels, which featured the vertical "LONG PLAYING HIGH-FIDELITY" on it. The company introduced the new LP label in 1958, and the modification on the Shearing album first appeared the next year.

Being that this LP -- "Dynamic!" by Staton -- was a promotional copy, I'll betcha it's from '58.

Gee, I wasn't even born then. That's old.

I wonder how record geeks got along without me. Fortunately for them, I showed up in 1961.

Anyway, how much you wanna bet this stuff shows up on the next edition of the Big Show, otherwise known as 3 Chords & the Truth.


BE THERE. 

Or be square. 

Aloha!

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Vive la France!


I had a religious experience Tuesday. It involved neither religion nor sex.

Let me explain.

My favorite used-record shop in Omaha is closing, and I’ve made a couple of trips so far to buy everything I could. With all vinyl half off and CDs for a buck, I’m taking the opportunity to buy some vintage jazz by artists I’ve heard of well enough but haven’t really explored yet.

Sunday's haul of old LPs included a French pressing of jazz singer, pop legend and movie-music composer Michel Legrand’s “Chante et s’accompagne,” released in 1965. The American version’s title is “Sings,” but that's one you're not gonna find on iTunes.


ANYWAY, I put the Legrand album on the turntable last evening, and when the needle dropped. . . .

Transcendence. That might be the word for it. The result of it was a middle-age man being blown out of his chair and onto his butt by a rapturous gale of Gallic jazz magnificence.

Lord have mercy on me, I dearly wish I could have such a transcendent experience at Mass every week. But no. In a church that really has no excuse, given 2,000 years of culture, hymnody and all, worship of the transcendent God usually involves descending into the Haugen-Hass fever swamp of dreary dinner-theater ditties and calling it liturgy.

This is why we must take our religious experiences wherever we can find them -- in this case, France, via the used-record bins of a dying music shop. Vive la France! Vive l'Antiquarium!

Et vive M. Michel Legrand, chanteur transcendant.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Experience it. Feel it. Enjoy it.


I bought an old record album Monday evening.

"The Sound of Jazz," on Columbia Records, was the companion LP to one of the greatest moments in TV history. That came Dec. 8, 1957, when the program of the same name aired as part of CBS' short-lived The Seven Lively Arts anthology.

A few days before, all the jazz greats featured on the television program gathered in a Columbia Records studio to commit music set for the TV program to magical grooves in round slabs of vinyl. The LP hit stores the next year -- '58 -- and now one of them sits next to me in the Revolution 21 studio.

I am a happy man. I own the TV show on DVD. I own the 54-year-old record now, too.

As I revisit The Sound of Jazz -- the TV show . . . the LP will be savored later today -- I am struck by a remark from the show's host, New York Herald Tribune media critic John Crosby. Hell, nearly literally.

"There's not gonna be a lot of talk on this program today," Crosby said at the program's start. "I'm not gonna interpret jazz, analyze it, bring you its history. The important thing about jazz is to experience it -- feel it. Enjoy it. "

That's it. That's 3 Chords & the Truth, the podcast arm of this august (cough) media empire (snort). I'm not going to go all public radio on you and analyze jazz -- or any other music -- to death. It's not an endless list of everyone playing on a session . . . for every bloody song.

Music is not work. Music is joy.

"The important thing about jazz is to experience it -- feel it. Enjoy it." Ditto for rock. And punk. And country. And blues.

That's rather like life, don't you think?

Thursday, July 01, 2010

For the record. . . .


Once upon a time, when young folk bought these things called "LPs" for $3.98 at a retail establishment called a "record store," you actually got stuff.


You got a 12-inch vinyl disc with grooves on the surface -- the "record," which was played on a "phonograph." It came in a large cardboard sleeve with artwork on the front and back covers. This artwork was large enough to see, as was the track listing on the rear.

If during one of your treks to the "record store" -- in, say, 1972 -- you happened to purchase Melanie's "Stoneground Words" album ("album" is what we often called "LPs," or "records"), you also got lyrics (again, large enough to actually read) on the "inner sleeve," which held the "vinyl" within the "sleeve."

And for your $3.98, you also got a fold-up display of many photos of Melanie, suitable for hanging on the wall of your room because, frankly, Melanie was a babe.


Can you get all that with iTunes, bunkie?

I didn't think so.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Vinylly!


Vinyl -- as in vinyl long-playing records -- is still back.

This means I've maintainined my retro cool since we last checked in on the trend toward once again putting needle to record groove. Like I always say, stick with what you really, really like long enough . . . and it'll be cool again, and so will you.

HERE'S the latest take, from the Omaha World-Herald, on the audio tech that's as old as Edison:
Some people are trying to restock their old collections. Some like the experience of putting a record on a turntable. Others just like the sound.

But no matter the reason, people are buying a lot more vinyl, whether new or used, whether new releases or classics.

Vinyl's popularity has been growing for a few years, but it appears to be spiking.

Nielsen SoundScan, the company that tracks music purchases, reported that sales of new vinyl albums grew to 1.88 million in 2008, an increase of 89 percent over 2007. The number was the highest since SoundScan started tracking sales data in 1991.

Folks like Spencer Munson of Lincoln are leading the charge. Munson, known in the clubs as DJ Spence, has nearly 4,000 vinyl titles.

"I had a dad who was really into records, so that's where I started. He had all the classics: (Led) Zeppelin, the Beatles," he said. "I filled in the gaps with his collection, and as I was building this collection, I started realizing there were other things that I was falling in love with."

After collecting rock records, he started going after funk, disco and soul. A large part of his collection is also made up of 12-inch hip-hop singles that he samples while DJing.

The vinyl craze is welcome news to local outlets.

Two of every three new vinyl purchases were made in independent record stores, SoundScan reported. In Omaha and Lincoln, Homer's stores have seen huge increases in combined new and used vinyl sales in the last three years, including an 85 percent increase in 2008, said general manager Mike Fratt.

Bands and serious music collectors started the trend, but now it's reaching the masses. Until recently, consumers didn't see a lot of new vinyl in stores, so they assumed it wasn't available.

In the first days of CDs, record labels stopped manufacturing vinyl so people would embrace the new technology. Meanwhile, some indie bands continued to release material on vinyl and some distributors manufactured classic titles on vinyl so that DJs would be able to spin them. And that caught on, Fratt said.

"As people started going into thrift shops and used record stores and started buying '60s and '70s titles on vinyl, they got a chance to experience those records in their actual form. The excitement for the music started to grow from there and . . . it all kind of snowballed into one big avalanche," he said.

Bands such as Radiohead are pushing the trend. The release of Radiohead's "In Rainbows" was highly publicized last year, and the album was available in a special vinyl edition. It was the top-selling vinyl record in 2008.

More recently, indie band Animal Collective released "Merriweather Post Pavillion" on vinyl in January, a full two weeks ahead of its release on CD. Record stores sold out almost immediately.

"It was an eye-opener to how much people now are thinking of vinyl first or exclusively," said Neil Azevedo, manager of Drastic Plastic in the Old Market.
GROOVY! He says, surrendering major cool points. Sigh.