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.
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.’
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.
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.
Those of you following this blog know I am a big Kinks fan, since my teen years.
They were a genre-defying band that were described in many ways: quirky, satirical, whimsical, a garage band , uber British, and so on. They got kicked out of the U.S. during the British invasion for bad behavior so they missed out on big fame for a while. Ray and Dave fought a lot and I mean physical brawls, tearing hotel rooms apart. Although Dave’s pioneering heavy metal guitar in early to mid-1960s with You Really Got Me and All Day and All Night brought attention, there came a lull. They went through a period where they were experimenting with concept album, mini-musicals if you will.
Most people, during that 1970s period turned away. The albums such as A Soap Opera, a splendid little story piece, or the Preservation albums, wound up in bargain bins or, worse, garbage. Many thought they were a lightweight band. They should have known better from the 1960s heavy metal riffs, although even back then lead Kink Ray Davies wrote catchy little love songs (see Tired of Waiting, Stop Your Sobbing, etc.)
One of their biggest songs ‘Lola’ was about a transvestite.
So when my buddy Michael Ludden, former boss, novelist and all around music lover turned me on to a video blues number by the Kinks, it was not only a further validation of arguments I’ve had with folks who think the Kinks never earned their rootsy stripes like the Beatles, Stones and the Who. It was somewhat of a revelation seeing the early Kinks performing a damn good Slim Harpo blues rendition, ‘Got Love if You Want It,’ worthy of the best of the Yardbirds or the Animals, at least. From deep cuts, I knew they did this kind of stuff now and then but to see the performance is eye-opening:
He’s a guy from Indiana. Small town Indiana. I lived in Indiana in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades in the early to mid-1970s. That age, 12-15, is arguably one of the pivotal periods in one’s life.
In Indiana, everyone was Jack and Diane.
We were in West Lafayette. My family lived in an area where I was not zoned for the West Lafayette schools, the ‘city’ schools with professors’ kids in the shadow of Purdue University where my father worked.
I took a bus to a more rural school, farmers’ kids, families in trailer parks, where 13-year-olds smoked cigarettes in the laundromat at the Service Center, inside, playing pinball.
If you knew how to trick the machine into giving you countless extra games you play on a quarter for hours. Or some of us were just that good to hold a machine without tricks.
“Hey ‘rook’ go get me a pack of smokes,” Owens snapped at me as I walked by. Rook meant I was a 7th grader at Klondike Junior High School. Owens was a bully in 8th grade. He and his crew terrorized us through that rookie year.
Owens handed me a dollar and told me to hurry.
“But will they sell me cigarettes?” I asked.
Owens, dirty blond hair touching his shoulders dressed in an Army jacket, laughed and said ‘Rook go get ’em.’ I made the purchase successfully, brought them back with a quarter in change. Owens said ‘You’re all right. Maybe I won’t beat your ass so much.”
I could go on and on with stories from Indiana. And it’s weird because there wasn’t much to do there. Corn fields. In the hot summers some of us would get paid piece work de-tasseling corn. In the fall, especially on Halloween, we’d go into the cornfields and pick up the hard corn kernels and put them in bags. We’d lie in wait in the darkness until headlights approached from a distance. Scooping a handful of hard kernels, you had to time it just perfectly letting loose at the front grill of the car as it passed by. It sounded like your engine just fell apart, clankety clankety, as the kernels bounced around in the radiator fan or other moving belts and such. Harmless we told ourselves but then there was the chase.
It’s an Indiana past-time: Corning cars. At least where I was hanging. One of my buddies said he’d been shot at doing this before. Great, another added touch of cornfed bravado.
But the thrill of corning was not in the actual corning but the chase after the driver pulled over. That’s because most folks were from around there and instantly knew they’d been corned.Sometimes the cars would drive right into the cornfield. We were sprinting through the rows, laughing. Crazy Indiana kids.
I’d love to ask Mellencamp of Seymour, Indiana, if he ever corned a car.
Mellencamp has put together quite a career. I have two of more than a dozen albums he has released. Possibly two of his best and most impactul:
Uh huh! and Scarecrow. I saw him in Birmingham, I believe in 1982, and thought he was fantastic. One of my all time favorite concerts actually. The drums! Kenny Aronoff.
I haven’t listened to these records in years and I thought they may sound dated, but they hold up. Mellencamp is a good if not great songwriter. Straightforward, his words mean what they say. Even when he uses symbolism, it is in-you-face: Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow.
The crops we grew last summer weren’t enough to pay the loans Couldn’t buy the seed to plant this spring and the farmers bank foreclosed Called my old friend Schepman up to auction off the land He said john it’s just my job and I hope you understand Hey calling it your job ol hoss sure don/t make it right
But if you want me to, I’ll say a prayer for your soul tonight
‘ol hoss.’ Yep that line sounds like exactly how someone from Indiana would say it.
He astutely captures the cycle of rural Indiana laugh in ‘Small Town:
Well I was born in a small town And I can breathe in a small town Gonna die in this small town And that’s probably where they’ll bury me
And Jack and DIane’s anthemic, drum-slapping chorus:
Let it rock. Let it roll. Let the Bible belt come and save your soul. Hold on to 16 as long as you can. Changes coming real soon make us women and men.
Don’t know if this would be surprising but the big town Lafayette — the twin town of West Lafayette was home town of Axl Rose, lead singer for Guns N Roses. I knew many Axl Roses as well. sIt’s only two hours from Seymour to West Lafayette/Lafayette, straight through Indianapolis.
Let’s call this my Daily Journal, (put date here).
I’m stuck right now. And p;art of the intent of this blog is to describe what is happening. I took an extra pill for my hands which don’t want to type.
Sometimes right after lunch I get more ‘Lewy.’ And I have several tasks ahead of me. Typing slow. I bounce around ideas in my head.. Lewy bounces them back. I can’t stay long on a train of thought. I think of a song. I feel calmer. I still do’t know how these columns are going to turn out. I have these great ideas but they slip. One thing I just remembered: What to do with CDs . I hope I saved the link. There was a beautiful bird bath.
Back to a story on what we are doing with the money we raised over the weekend. How much? What research is it paying for? Target alpha-synuclein proteins. How? Who won Mike Madness. Ask about nonprofit status. I’m feeling better. I got this. Though I just remember I need to read back over some of my posts because I was noticing typos but wasn’t in the edit mode. Now I’ve forgotten which post they are in. I think I have 400 posts or more llive.. I learned of a third person who told me they are reading the posts from top to bottom or bottom to top.
Uh huh.
This is my journal as it sits right now. 2:18 p.m. today July 25, 2019.
Everything is OK right now.
Back in at 3:11 p.m. Had news today from two acquaintances. Different situations: the on who received the diagnosis of Lewy body had been long seeking explanations for a variety of symptoms. He was in much pain physically and psychologically. He welcomed the diagnosis. Another person I’ve talked to is starting to exhibit some classic symptoms. He’s praying he doesn’t have Lewy body dementia, but he’s preparing himself for the worst.
Slow down hoss. Things are moving slower now. After that frenzied state of MikeMadness.
We raised thousands of dollars over the weekend for Lewy body dementia. It will pay for research for a cure of Lewy body, the second leading form of dementia after Alzheimer’s..
Yes, I still have it. The basketball tournament, the socializing, the games and rallying isn’t going to suddenly block the bombardment of destructive proteins trespassing in my brain. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t help on a several levels. This is living. Even when you know you are dying. There’s a ‘thing’ about it, maybe it’s human empathy I’m trying to express this ‘thing’ with this blog.
I got a nice comment on my blog the other day from someone who said he started reading this blog for the music reviews, but then became interested in learning more about the disease and says he has been hooked by my story as a person living with the disease.
This is exactly how I wanted it to work. His comments can be read in full in the comments section of this blog but he said:
Thank you for putting so much information out into the world in such a positive way, and spreading the word about LBD as you do. It’s not an easy subject to tackle, or to even talk about, and you seem to do both superbly. I’ll admit that I got hooked on your reviews of your lp collection, as you seem to have some similar tastes as me, but then I found that along with the musical explorations, I was getting more and more interested in your story and your cause. Now I just can’t stop reading. I hope this finds you well. I’m looking forward to more of your insights, and I enjoy going down the rabbit hole with each new post. I listen along to the artists as I read.
So what’s this about again? This is about families coming together. I had 20-plus relatives over to support the cause with money and with love. (My nephew Zach Cohen won the 3-point contest.)
We’ll have all winners listed in my next story when I firm up donation totals and ready the photos.
Still awaiting some donations to be processed. Hurry up if you’ve put it off. MikeMadness.org
Stay tuned to this website and AL.com for specific amounts raised and where they will go and lots and lots of pictures. from UAB which graciously donated the Rec Center facilities and Trim Tab Brewing where we got dunked, sang Karaoke and sipped beverages and ate delicious authentic tacos from a food truck . Great atmosphere, kids loved both the Karaoke and dunk tank as you might imagine.
Thanks Trim Tab for donating 10 percent of sales on Saturday to the cause.
My song for Saturday, or today for that matter is by The The. No, that’s not a typo: there are two ‘The’s. (And nothing else)..
It might be hard to find a used copy of this modern album which came out in 2016. So my 4 dollar sign price rating means it will likely be up to $20 for a copy. Could be more.
Mees is a Portland eccentric (not judging here, just accurately describing). He sets himself immediately as a contrarian as he sings on the first song of the album:
They say life is short but I say it’s long
That’s kind of like saying: They say the sky is clear but I say its gray
He sings in a sing song-y voice that sometimes sounds like a sardonic Cat Stevens and other times like Mr. Rogers.
He sings about the media and the ‘echo chamber’ effect and prays to Jesus to not allow him to become: an asshole.
The videos are pretty interesting and funny. I received this as a birthday gift from my Portland-based sister who picked it out by describing my musical tastes to the record store clerk.
Haven’t had a long time with it, but I think the clerk may have done well..
