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Joan Baez — 659

ALBUM: blessed are … (1971)

MVC Rating: 3.0/$$

Joan Baez, a double-album. That’s just one breath for Joan. OK, that may be an exaggeration, but she can hold a note through an entire album side, I’m pretty sure.

With one of the most distinctive singing voices of all time, Joan is an iconic figure from the 1960s-70s anti-Viet Nam and civil rights scenes. She wrote some songs in her career but more often, it seems, performed other people’s songs. On this double-disc she covers the Beatles’ ‘Let it Be,’  the Band’s ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,’ and Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night.’

Her sister, Mimi Farina, who lived north of San Francisco in Marin County, died of cancer in 2001. She, though overshadowed by Joan, was an excellent singer in her own right. As a Marin resident myself at the time, I read the local press and learned a lot about Joan and Mimi, including great charity work through Bread and Roses. At that time I was at the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times. Paul Liberatore is an excellent columnist for the Marin Independent Journal (which later became our sister paper), He, was Mimi’s significant other.

That’s my shaky six degrees of separation from Joan Baez.

But to be honest after listening again to this I am mostly struck by her voice and the earnestness behind it, which is not quite the compliment it sounds. Maybe what I’m saying is I don’t need Joan Baez singing ‘Let it Be.’ The Beatles did a nice job with that.

That said, her life is certainly one of positive energy and activism.

And that voice.

Anyone besides me like to see her and Melanie in a singing showdown?

Counting my 678  vinyl records down before I die of  brain disease.

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Barefoot Jerry — 660

ALBUM: ‘You Can’t Get Off with Your Shoes On’ (1975)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

Gosh, I don’t know where these guys came from. I mean I have no memory of where, when or how I came to own this album. Probably true of many more before this quest to review my 678  records ends.

This music is odd Southern rock, with great musicianship, lots of musical solos. Several instrumentals. Kind of a cross between Captain Beyond and Charlie Daniels.

Wait, in fact there’s a Charlie Daniels mention on the BJ album, and Daniels apparently name-checked Barefoot Jerry in his popular ‘The South’s Going to Do it Again:’

Elvin Bishop sittin’ on a bale of hay
He ain’t good lookin’, but he sure can play
And there’s ZZ Top and you can’t forget
That old brother Willie’s gettin’ soakin’ wet
And all the good people down in Tennessee
Are diggin’ barefoot Jerry and C.D.B

Don’t know if in 1975, Daniels, the guy who stuffed his hair up under his hat to walk into the Dew Drop Inn, had already gone all Ted Nugent on us.

But like the younger  uneasy rider, Barefoot Jerry seem to be about 65 to 35 on the Grateful Dead-Allman Brothers scale of hippie guitar bands.

By the way, which one is Pink?

Er, I mean Jerry?

(Oh Jerry, now I get it)

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.

To learn more about what this is about go to my About Me page, or just go to the homepage and scroll/explore.

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Bangles– 661

ALBUM: All Over the Place (1984)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

This was where it all started for this retro jangle rock band with its folk-psychedelic electric guitar playing and sweet harmonies. This was before Prince gave them ‘Manic Monday’ and before their big radio hit ‘Walk like an Egyptian.’

This is just good, easy to listen to and fun. “Hero Takes a Fall’ and ‘Going Down to Liverpool’ were two minor hits off this album.

My favorite is ‘Dover Beach’ a fitting piece from a group that identified with a small new wave sound dubbed Paisley underground.

I was in Birmingham, in my mid-20s,  and remember this record as one Catherine and I enjoyed together. She didn’t dig the Hendrix cranked up so much.

Counting down my 678 vinyl  records before I die of brain disease.

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The Band — 662

ALBUM: The Best of the Band (1976)

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$

I remember three things about the purchase of this record:

  1. I bought it at a used record store in Atlanta.
  2. I bought it the day I went to a Who concert at the Omni, which was July 9, 1980. 
  3. I played it so much at the home of a friend of a friend’s house before the concert someone asked, ’Don’t we have any other records?”

These were people I didn’t know well. They were Atlanta friends of several of my Auburn University college buddies. We AU guys had driven up to see the Who and were at a house in, I believe, Dunwoody.

“But it’s the Band, man,” one replied in defense of keeping record going.

Hey, mister, can you tell me, where a man might find a bed?
He just grinned and shook my hand, “No” was all he said.

The other guy, resigned, left the room.

Now the Who are/were legends, even then on the ‘Who Are You?’ tour. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ based on attitude, chops and sound, is easily one of the top 10 rock songs of all time, IMHO.

The Band, I suppose, you could call semi-legendary. The Canadian-American band was roots rock, or Americana, before those terms were being tossed out. Most significantly they played and recorded extensively with Bob Dylan and were featured in what many consider the best rock movie of all time, ‘The Last Waltz,’ directed by Martin Scorsese.

These kids — Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm – were all right.

For me it was the perfect warm-up to a Who concert.

Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny, and (and, and) you put the load (you put the load) right on me.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.

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Bad Company — 663

ALBUM: Straight Shooter (1975)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

This is Bad Company’s second album. The best one may be the first but I didn’t need to buy that one. My brother had it and we wore it out in his  basement bedroom on Cedar Creek Circle  (or Court). I would have had a lot more than my 678 records if I didn’t have a younger brother who was pretty cool, and not a bad drummer to boot. (Wasn’t all that excited about the KISS albums, though, bro.) But David did have debut Dire Straits album with Sultans of Swing and Knopfler’s quietly revolutionary finger picking style.

So I taped (cassette) the first Bad Company and bought the second LP called ‘Straight Shooter.’  Pretty strong hard melodic rock. Perfect music  for a high school soundtrack in a Night Moves-y  sort of way.

I’d have been about 15 or 16 here. I haven’t listened to this in years, but still know the words to ‘Shooting Star,’ ‘Good Lovin’ Gone Bad,’ and ‘Feel Like Making Love.’ The last song sounds romantic and starts slow, but then segues into a power slam crunchy guitar riff that explodes off a drum beating. Picture four heads in a car, a la Wayne’s World, snapping forward in rhythmic unison. Good stuff.

Paul Rodgers used to get pegged as having one of the best vocals in rock. And it’s true.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.

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The B-52’s — 664

ALBUM: Wild Planet (1980)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

So it’s fitting that I finished off the A’s in my quest to review alphabetically my 678 records with the soundtrack to the documentary ‘Athens, Ga. – Inside/Out.’ Because I open up the B’s with ‘Wild Planet’ by the B-52’s, Athens, Ga., legends.

I was never a huge fan. My initial take was, what is this?

Village Voice critic Robert Christgau in reviewing this very album called them “the world’s greatest new-wave kiddie-novelty disco-punk band’ – a bit of a left-handed compliment, though he gave the album a B-plus.

The group’s first ‘hit’ on their first album– ‘Rock Lobster– with its undulating yodel chirps and big twang single string guitar (at least that’s how it sounded) would lend to that feeling this is of the novelty ilk destined for Dr. Demento.

I mean they are chortling over a crustacean for goodness sakes.

But the years and several second listens have softened me on the B-52’s.

They were more than a novelty act.  Stripping down the instruments, unloading any trace of the blues, the B-52’s simply made people happy. Many people for a long time.

They were the opposite of the venomous Sex Pistols (not saying venom doesn’t have a place.) They wanted to party out of bounds at the Love Shack. The only bad things in B52ville  were when you took to living in your own private Idaho or you lose Quiche Lorraine, that doggie dyed green.

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate, in moderation, their chirpy cheery camp and thift-store chic. This is not a record I’d put on to stretch out on the couch and read the paper, but ‘Party Out of Bounds’ off this record or ‘Love Shack’ coming a decade later, are good  anchors for any party mixtape (remember those?).

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.