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A playlist lost for 31 years is found (blog version)

I found a 31-year-old mixtape playlist made by me in the 1980s recently.

This was a list of songs on one side of the 90-minute cassette. The list below represents the other side.

I don’t have the tape but this list, tucked into the inner folds of my wallet, is eye opening because it chronicles musically a particular time in my life. I will comment briefly on the songs below but first. some background.

I was about 27 or 28 and had left the Birmingham News after five years. I went to work at the Orlando Sentinel. I was living in Leesburg, FL, for my first reporting job at the Sentinel. And that’s where I think I assembled a tape to send to my colleagues back in the Birmingham News newsroom. We had a running game to see who could find the best songs no one had heard of.

I wrote a list of the playlist to keep for myself and I’m not sure why except perhaps anticipating sometime in the future we would open this time capsule and talk about the tape, see how our tastes have changed or rediscover lost music from my past. Prescient, I think I can say in retrospect.

It’ an eclectic bunch of songs heavy on rock, alternative, New Wave, and what we call now Classic rock. I think I made the tape the old fashioned way with vinyl, turntable and cassette deck — although some of these cuts I believe came off CD’s which were starting to get a toehold in the market, and I was an early adopter. I took pride in mixtapes. I still know these songs but some I haven’t played in dozens of years. And some I’m not sure I have or where I got them.

How did it stay in my wallet all this time? I have changed wallets since then but not much. I have a rotating set of wallets and I think I went back to an older one right around the year 2000. The older one had stuff in it that I must have just let ride in wallet — business cards, receipts I think I should keep but don’t really need to.

Here’s my song-by-song thoughts:

Eleventh Dream Day “Rose of Jericho.” Underrated band alternative hard rock with female vocalist. Good band. I actually like. with its rock harmonies, the song “It’s All a Game’‘ better than Jericho.

Dreams so Real “Rough Night in Jericho” another good alt-rock song from the Athens, Ga., scene.

I see I scratched out Green on Red “Zombie for your Love.” Too bad, that’s a good one but I think i had this on CD not vinyl.

Mekons “Club Mekon” I just reviewed this one for My Vinyl Countdown. i have speculated that this was the last vinyl record I bought during this eral

Soul Asylum “Cartoon.” This band received some success on MTV with a song called “Runaway Train” about runaway teens.

Pylon “Stop It” Athens Ga., band tried to catch a ride on the attention brought to the college town by REM and the B-52’s. This one is a real screamer, cathartic for Vanessa Briscoe.

Alex Bradford “Lord Lord Lord” Some good old fashioned gospel.

Darden Smith “2000 Years” And some new fashioned gospel.

Here’s the list for the other side of the cassette:

Flaming Groovies “Shake Some Action.” A garage 1970s band that played music 1960s music. Home base was San Francisco. Camper Van Beethoven covered this great song.

Posies “Golden Slumbers” A band from the Northwest that played tuneful alternative songs with hints of a Beatles/Byrds influence.

Big Star “Ballad of El Goodo” Band that famously didn’t make the big time featuring Alex Chilton who belted out “The Letter” as lead vocalist of the Box Tops when he was only 16.

Blackgirls “Happy” I’m going to have to go back to listen to this one because I have no memory of it.

Love “Alone Again or …” Classic 1960s band and song coming from the classic album “Forever Changes.” Covered by Suzanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet in one of their covers records.

Quicksilver Messenger Service “Fresh Air” Another California Bay Area rock, a little psychedelic with kick butt guitar playing on this one.

Camper Van Beethoven “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” Cover song of a Status Quo psychedelic-era song. Well done.

Toad the Wet Sprocket “Come Back Down.” Another one I remember nothing about. What’s a wet sprocket?

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Would you bend over for a dime? (blog version)

I walked over a dime the other day..

Saw it, shiny and silver, and strode with my dog on a leash, right over the dime on a sidewalk. I barely thought about it until I started thinking about it.

I used to pick up pennies. I think now I would bend down to pick up a quarter. This is terrible, I began thinking. It’s money for goodness sake. I can certainly see passing over a penny, maybe even a nickel but a DIME. I’m now walking past one-tenth of a dollar. I could buy …. um, ….what can I buy with a dime? Used to be a dime to call someone from a telephone booth.

What’s a telephone booth? You ask.

Aye yi yi.

Is it inflation or aging? Or both. I sometimes let my shoes go untied rather than bending over with my aching back and tired knees and ankles.

But I say a part of it is the erosion of American values. My grandparents were Depression-era folks who knew how to save money and make things last. My now deceased father-in-law was a child of the Depression in way small town Epes (In Alabama near LIvingston).Bill Willis would take one tissue, tear it half and put it in his pocket for later use — all before blowing his nose in the one-half tissue that was left. That can save a lot of tissue over time. Toilet paper too, I suppose, but I’d rather not go there.

So what is your coin cut-off. Pictured at the top of the story are a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a Liberty dollar coin and just for fun, a $2 bill and some sort of Asian coin like thing that I was given for good luck in California. Don’t know what it is exactly but I would definitely stop and pick it up.

Which one, If you saw them lying on a sidewalk, would you stop, bend over and pick up?

I guess I learned that my threshold is not a dime.

From here on, I vow to stop and pick up dimes. I’ll assess nickels on a case-by-case basis.

Sorry pennies but for me a penny saved hurts my back more then the meager return on my investment.

But I’ll keep my eyes on the PPI. (Penny Pinching Index).

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Lee Michaels — 311

ALBUM: 5th (1971)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

Lee Michaels had a big hit: Do you know what I mean?

“It’s been 14 days since I don’t know when, I just saw her with my best friend. Do you know what I mean?”

This is strange on several levels.

It’s better than I remember it. I knew I bought it as a teenager for the hit song ‘Do You Know what I Mean.’ It came out in 1971 and I remember turning up the car radio when I was about 12 and living in Indiana. No, I wasn’t driving. (It was in my corning cars heyday.)

As years rolled by I didn’t play this album in its entirety very much. Michaels has a half-decent soulful voice. There’s a drum and a little electric organ (Hammond?). The instrumentation is almost minimalist with the organ shouldering most of the music. And Michaels can play that organ.

Interesting because it doesn’t really feature or sound like most rock bands at the time. There’s a gospel choir on several tracks as Michaels may be showing us where his roots lie. Merry Clayton, the soul belter who made the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ send tingles down your spine (in a scary way) makes an appearance on ‘Keep the Circle Turning.’

Listen to his one Top 10 hit:

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Vinyl Negotiations: Records I didn’t sell

If you came here from my vinyl negotiations story at AL.com you are in the right spot.

If you have read that article you know that I sold three records at a recent record show in Gardendale:  Nick Drake’s ‘Five Leaves Left;’ ‘Buckingham Nicks’; and Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘OLE with yellow/gold vinyl.

I feel like I could have stayed and sold more but I felt drained. Here’s what I didn’t sell:

Led Zeppelin ‘Houses of the Holy’ (original pressing, Broadway address, Robert Ludwig initials in dead wax). I was asking $200 and was pretty firm about that price. Several expressed interest but no offers on that.

Jimmy Buffett ‘High Cumberland Jubilee’ (an early, early Buffett album). I was asking $20 but would’ve taken $15.

Keith Whitley ‘A Hard Act to Follow.’ Near mint EP with press release and 8X10 photo. Asking $50 but would have taken $30.

Scorpions ‘Virgin Killer’ and ‘Best of Scorpions’ (I was asking $15 each but would have taken $10 each.)

Dion ‘Runaround Sue’. Cover was frayed but Laurie label record pristine. I was asking $30. Probably would have taken $20.

Tips for vinyl negotiations.

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Mozart — 312

ALBUM: Mozart Greatest HIts (1984)

MVC Rating: 5.0/$$

Well, I’m not going to be the one to give Mozart anything less than a 5. And the sound is good, digitally remastered from newly remixed original master tapes.

So I was on the front row in ’83 and he came out impeccably dressed, running around the stage with a wig and make-up. Wait a minute that’s David Bowie.

But. I never saw Bowie live here. Must have been Roger Daltry of the Who. His long curly blond hair seemed like a wig anyway.

And of course I never saw Mozart alive. It was 1762 when this prodigy was 6-years-old and leaving people talking about the Next Big Thing. The liner notes say this kid from Austria could play any instrument, violin, piano, harpsichord and vocals. Vocals? Never knew that.

He could hear a song he didn’t know and could play it back note-for-note. At 17, he had already written 150 works of ‘incredible variety,’ the liner notes say. After that came 500 compositions, many considered masterpieces.

. But i think I may have to change the wording of my Motown post where I called Michael Jackson’s early work as the best music ever by an 11-year-old performer.

This album was actually played by me many times. And it’s not just easy listening music with its orchestral presentations of grandeur and pomp.

Picking this record up was part of my record buying strategy of getting a sample platter before ordering the entree. After this I joined a Classical music record club and actually have a nice collection of about 30 classical CD’s, wherever they may be.

Y’all have probably heard this one:

EINE KLEINE NACHTMUSIK

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Old ears, wax and ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ (Blog version)

This is an opinion column.

I’m here today to talk to you about hearing loss.

What?

I SAID I’M HERE TODAY TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT HEARING LOSS.

What? We’re NEARING SLOSS? We’re FEARING FLOSS?

No, no, no. HEARING LOSS..

Hearing loss happens to all of us getting older. It makes you feel left out because you  can’t hear what they are saying behind your back anymore.

 I went to Costco to get some hearing aids but they took one look at my ears (two looks actually) and said I need to go see an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat doctor). So I did. I’m  supposed to put drops in my ears for a few days and go back next week to get rid of what was called an ‘occlusion.’

I understand that to be packed-in ear wax.

So gross. I’m writing about my own ear wax.

Hey Oliver don’t you write about music?

My answer: Hmmmm. Hearing loss and rock music. Wonder how that might be related?

Yes it is documented that loud music – just like loud construction noise, can be harmful to hearing.

My ears rang for days after the Who concert in the 1980s in Atlanta.

The music at concerts may not be as loud as it was in my day with the Who, Black Sabbath, AC/DC and KISS making ears bleed from coast to coast. Punk rock. Loud.

Healthline.com reports that long exposures to sounds over 85 decibels (dB) can cause hearing loss. Concerts tend to be about 115 dB or more, Healthline says.

Old man tip: Wear earplugs to concerts.

It’s like using sunscreen at the beach, a must do.

Don’t wait until you’re 50 to do it. Put them in now so you won’t have to put hearing aids in later. (Price check:  Hearing aids are expensive like $3,000 to $12,000 for a pair.)

Young ears brutalized by decibels turn into deaf ears as you age.  Besides the ‘occlusion’ I also have nerve damage. Do I need hearing aids? Stay tuned I’ll find out next week.

Now back to my vinyl records – or known by another name: Wax.

Mike Oliver who has Lewy body dementia often writes about living with that disease and other health and aging issues.. See his blog here.

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Mountain — 316

ALBUM: The Best of Mountain

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$

It might sound weird to describe this straight ahead hard rock band as influential. They rarely colored out of the lines. Guitarist and lead singer Leslie West took his direction early following Eric Clapton’s gritty blues rock as displayed by Clapton’s work with the Yardbirds and Cream..

But they did become influential in that they are one of a several bands mentioned as precursors to heavy metal. The Long Island, NY, group also had a big fan in fellow Long Island native Howard Stern. And they played Woodstock.

Leslie West’s guitar playing was admired and mimicked by later hard rocking heavy metalists. The crunching chords and cowbell (yes more is less) opening to Mississippi Queen was and is a staple of classic rock radio.

Key members of Mountain included West, Corky Lainge and Felix Pappalardi. I’ve had this record a long time and not sure where I picked it up but I think it was from my Athens, Ga., high school and college years. I hadn’t played it in a while prior to this review and it’s solid, rock solid.

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Moody Blues — 318

ALBUM: Days of Future Passed

MVC Rating: 4.0 /$$$

This is a trailblazer in mixing orchestral music with rock music.

Here it is the Moody Blues and the London Festival Orchestra conducted by Peter Knight, All molded into a dramatic and pretty song cycle. It was deep music for the 1967 contemplative hippie. To my ears now it sounds like music from the Bambi soundtrack featuring spoken word poet Rod McKeun. Next comes lyrics like: ‘cold hearted orb that rules the night.’

The two album-cut hits are Nights in White Satin and Tuesday Afternoon. I had a hippie foster sister for a while as my parents were helping somebody out of a jam.

Kathy loved the Moodies. The album ‘Question’ is their best in my opinion. Besides the title epic it also had a simple sad refrain called ‘Melancholy Man.’

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Sergio Mendes, Walter Wanderley — 320, 319

ALBUM: Rain Forest (1966): Gentle Rain (1977)

MVC Rating: Forest 4.0/$$$; Rain 4.0/$$

And now for something completely different.

Samba! Brazilian! bossa nova? Organ music? Slightly psychedelic on the Sergio Mendez platter Gentle Rain.

Sergio was the unusual example of a Brazilian artist whose work was nearly exclusively done in the U.S. And is not all that well known in Brazil, according to Wikipedia. On my anecdotal accounts, there’s a lot of his work sadly sitting in bargain bins. He spent a career introducing Brazilian music to the U.S. and beyond: He’d take a Bacharach song like ‘Do you know the way to San Jose?’ and completely samba-ize it [patent pending, not to be confused with Simonize].

So Walter Wanderly, sometimes billed as Brazil’s No. 1 organist, was on the Gentle Rain album with Sergio and multiple musicians. Of these two I have, Wanderley’s Rain Forest is the one I would purchase. At times it sounds like the organ music played when hockey games cleared the ice between periods. Or mall music, sprightly yet warm. But then you start listening, really listening, it’s like a hypnotic.

Don’t need that second beer. Just flip the switch to Wanderley. It’s electric organ like a banjo always playing bright and happy music, only more soothing. The effect is rolling waves of controlled improv tightly harnessed by song structures.

I’m not kidding, I Iike this a lot. Happy Mall Music or old time skating rink music in 2/4 time it’s its own jazzy thing. There are lots of folks who collect Brazilian music and I can see why. But I can’t get lost down that rabbit hole though. Need to stay focused.

You may have wondered why Wanderley is here in the middle of the M’s alphabetically. It’s because he’s being ushered in along with Sergio Mendes.

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Daily Journal, Aug. 6, 2019, ‘Daddy are we there yet’ edition (Updated)

On July 11, 2018, I was writing I would be done with My Vinyl Countdown in 30 months. That was 13 months ago and if I hold steady, 17 more months feels about right but as I show you later, that’s a brisk brisk pace.

321/17= about 19. So to finish this in 17 months I need to write 19 reviews a month. I may have overestimated myself at the time I wrote the earlier piece with that 17 month prediction.

To further explain: The big numbers you see in the artists’ headlines on my blog indicate the place that record is in the count down of my 678 albums..

At that last accounting I was on 458 records. That means MVC had just reviewed David Gates, a solo album by the lead singer for the group Bread, which gets a lot of hits on this blog. But that was 13 months . Now we are sitting at 321 with John Mellencamp. That’s 320 to go.

Math, ugh. 458 – 320 = 138 records reviewed in 13 months. PACE: 138/13= about 10.5 per month. That may be a little ambitious to think I’ll do 10 or more a month.

678 -321 = 357 is the number of musical posts done overall. 321/10.5 = 30.5 is how many months I have let if i continue at 10.5 per month.

My essays and stories number over a 100 aside of the music reviews. You have my permission not to read it all.

And, there is also the reality that the record collection has grown with some gifts and additional pick-ups. But as I have said earlier the 678 is the number I’m using for nowl. When we get to Zevon and Zappa I’ll look around and see records I bought after this blog started, gifts of vinyyl for me and for the cause. I estimate I’ll have 150 album left over. 678+150= 828. That leftover bunch will likely be added as an addendum? Or maybe just a list of what’s let over on this blog site.

Remember we should not fear the end. The end of the countdown, that is. This is not a O’Henry novel.