Obscurorant 2.0

Tomorrow the first four Replacements albums - Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, Stink, Hootenanny, and Let It Be - will be reissued, in remastered form with bonus tracks, by Rhino Records. My initial reaction was ‘meh, I don’t really need to buy these albums again,’ but this article may have changed my mind. The article notes that the band’s final four albums will be reissued in the same manner in September. I think I can see my way to at least getting the reissues of the ‘Big Three, e.g., Let It Be, Tim, and Pleased To Meet Me.

I’ve written previously of the limited selection of LPs in my house growing up, and the fact that any LPs my sister and/or I liked were absolutely played to death. My sister favored Annie and Free To Be You And Me, while I tended towards the Clancy Brothers and my anthology of cowboy songs.

I can’t remember when my parents gave me the cowboy song anthology; I can recall listening to it during the Blizzard of ‘78 so it may way well have been a Christmas gift in 1977. The anthology was a two-record set, issued by the National Geographic Society (which published separately a book about cowboys). Some of the tracks, such as Streets of Laredo and Jesse James, are American standards or near enough, while others - The Zebra Dun, Little Joe The Wrangler - are less well-known. I listened to both records constantly and learned all songs by heart.

The LPs are long-gone, vanished into the same void that claimed my sister’s Dark Tower game, but some of the songs remain favorites to this day. In particular I recommend Red River Valley, as sung by Carol Noonan, the first song on my muxtape.

You may have already seen this, but Muxtape is a pretty interesting way to share music. You upload mp3s to a digital mix tape that other folks can listen to by streaming the audio. Here’s mine. And here’s someone else’s.

I was delighted to learn that Carrie Brownstein, a member of the sadly defunct Sleater-Kinnney, one of my favorite bands, is also a huge fan of the Replacements:

…The Replacements are one my favorite bands. Not just at this moment, or when I first discovered them in high school, but a band I return to over and over again, year after year. They are one of the only bands whose albums I know back to front, front to back.”

This makes me happy. I don’t know why exactly, and couldn’t lay a finger on any specific reason. It just does.

This could turn out to be very handy: an application that allows you to download music from a friend’s iTunes library. Still in beta for Windows though.

Hi. It’s me again, still with Solid Gold on the brain. Lucky for me, YouTube is there to function as a sort of way back machine. Here’s some samples of the goodness…

Ozzy on Solid Gold. Who knew? I have no recollection of this event.

Ronnie, Bobbie, Ricky and Mike… if I love the girl who cares who you like?

An entire episode condensed into six minutes. Again, note the interpretive dance.

I had completely forgotten about this particular number - not a bad pop song though overshadowed by Scandal’s other stuff.

I include this clip for three reasons:
1. The mandatory 80s uniform and haircuts the band members all sport. We shall not see their like again.
2. The band is soooo synth-pop the guitars are an afterthought. My sixteen year-old, heavy metal self would have officially dubbed this ‘candy ass.’ Today I find it charming in a time capsule sort of way.
3. The giant disembodied heads that lurk about the band as part of the stage set. WTF?

Here we have Molly Hatchet on Solid Gold, which I include as an example of how weirdly inclusive this show was when it come to booking musical guests. I assume this was just a function of there being limited opportunities in that pre-digital age for artists to shill their musical wares.

Speaking of musical diversity, Frank Sinatra also put in appearance on Solid Gold. I have to admit, that kind of blows my mind.

The late great Falco does Vienna Calling…

… and to wrap things up - Ant Music.

Sometimes I have a hard time believing that a show like Solid Gold actually existed. We live in a time when pop music is ubiquitous. You can order CDs on the intertubes, down load new tunes on the intertubes and discover worlds and worlds of new bands and artists on the intertubes.

So it seems vaguely preposterous, like a barely-remembered fever dream, that there was a time in my life when I willingly tuned into a network TV show - hosted by a goddam puppet of all things - to watch to body-stocking clad dancers perform interpretive dance to illustrate the ‘weekly countdown’. Really now, doesn’t that sound like a skit Will Ferrell would perform?

I need to ruminate on this some more.

The song I have stuck in my head today is Fresh by Kool and the Gang. And I have to say I would totally jump at the chance to see Monsieur Kool and friends in concert. I have fond memories of not only Fresh, but songs like Joanna, Cherish and of course Get Down On It.

Those memories of being forced, along with the rest of the students, to stand behind my desk and dance to Celebration in our 5th grade music class? Not so fond.

Laura Brannigan toured the world as a back-up singer for Leonard Cohen.

The video for her song Self Control was directed by William Friedkin, of The Exorcist fame. I seem to recall some controversy around this video.

These fun facts brought to you by my inner 14-year old.

It’s probably best not to ask how and why I came across this awesome mashup. Simply set the wayback machine for 1990 or so and enjoy.

After a little more than two years, my iPod has given up the ghost.  I’m trying to decide whether I should  just buy a new one, or get install a new hard drive to try and resurrect the old one.

Heather notes that today is the 25th anniversary of the compact disc, the technology that obsoleted my once impressive cassette collection.

I did not purchase my first CD until 1990. It was my sophomore year in college, and though I didn’t own a CD player, one of my roommates did.

The CD in question? Living Legends, a Fleshtones compilation issued by IRS Records. If memory serves, one of my roommates also purchased an IRS compilation that day. The name of the disc escapes me, but one of the tracks was Checking Out The Check Out Girl a song that to this very day is guaranteed to play in my head every time I’m going through a check out line.  I’ll have to see if it is on iTunes, as it is a song worth inflicting on the rest of you.

When I was growing up, my parents were not what you would call avid fans of popular music. Their collection of LPs probably assumed its final form somewhere around 1968 and remained largely static after that. To the best of my recollection it contained not a note recorded after the initial coming of the Beatles to the States as their tastes ran more towards the Kingston Trio than Jimmy Hendrix.

What this meant is that when my sister and I went hunting through the collection for a record to play, the pickings were slim, and anything that caught our interest was played ad infinitum. Fortunately, there was In Person At Carnegie Hall by the Clancy Brother and Tommy Makem, a record I suspect was standard issue for Irish-Americans in the 1960s. I do not exaggerate when I say I know that album backwards and forewords, word for word, note for note. Along with Meet the Beatles, In Person At Carnegie Hall was the sound track to my childhood. I still have a great, great fondness for the brothers Clancy and Mr. Makem; Carnegie Hall resides proudly on my iPod, where it continues to serve as a musical pick-me-up and antidote to any dark clouds.

Tommy Makem died yesterday, at the age 74. Requeiscat in pace Mr. Makem, and many thanks for the music.

ADDENDUM: Sheila also grew up listening to Tommy Makem.

A nice Boston Globe column

From this excellent (but lengthy - you are warned) piece on Frank Sinatra:

No one could sing of loneliness better than Frank Sinatra— unrequited love, love gone wrong, love lost. Observers without number, noting the contrast between Sinatra’s life—always tempestuous and sometimes violent—and his tender, evocative, and sensitive singing, have wondered with the novelist Barbara Grizzuti Harrison “whether his life springs from one set of impulses and needs and his work from another, whether… Francis Albert Sinatra—a man bruised and bruising—is so divided as to be crazy.” In truth, not madness but loneliness is the key to understanding Sinatra, both the man, who dreaded solitude yet so often felt alone in the entourages with which he surrounded himself and the audiences before whom he performed, and the musician.”

(Link from Sheila)

Last night I lay in bed and wondered how it exactly it was that I had come to own three CDs by Death Cab For Cutie. (more…)