SEHNSUCHT

 

A kiss in a dream.

The touching of lips spreads warmth through me like a shot of tequila. A few words and the familiarity or her at last in my arms again implies that we are a couple.

Of course it is unreal.

It’s torn me up again as she tore my heart the first time we parted.

It was one long afternoon and evening over half a decade ago. A day of celebration, of music and merriment, of food and drink and new friends and Her.

She is almost the total opposite of my ‘type,’ yet I am still deeply attracted. Perhaps she is not beautiful in the classic sense but she has passion, joie de vivre. As Terry Moore once described one of his characters, “There was something dangerous about her. Like everything was a dare and she wasn’t backing down.” What hasn’t killed her has made her stronger.

Was I flirting? Yes. Was she flirting back? Most likely, yes. I have never been very good at reading those clues. And I had such a low opinion of myself I would could not believe that she could be interested in me. But I can recall almost exactly what she said to me and how she said it to me. I modestly appreciated her compliment and mirrored it back to her. And there was an uneasy silence for a moment.

Of course, flirting was bending my own rules. She definitely had a boyfriend and I do not touch a woman with a boyfriend or a married woman. But you can say anything you want, it’s not until the bodies are pressed close or against one another and / or lips meet other lips that you truly have to test your adherence to your principles.

When I finally had to leave our bodies pressed close in a teeny tiny efficiency kitchen. She felt very comfortable in my arms. If this had been a movie it would have been the place where the camera circles the two of us and we kiss, man and woman have met their destiny, The End. But it was not a movie and after a few seconds we parted. I said goodbye to the others and made my exit.

What I heard and saw I have never confirmed nor asked anyone to confirm or deny. I will forever hold it in my head the way I experienced it whether it was true or not. For the next two days I could not think straight. I hungered for something I had no right to and felt sick and lost because I did not have it.

It sticks with me so clearly.

The Germans call that aching longing “sehnsucht.”

And a kiss in a dream over half a decade later rewoke that fever.

And for days now I have wondered what cruel joke my subconscious is playing on me. Forcing me to replay these memories, the old ones and the fresh one,  over and over.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t have her or any way to her.

But still it ached in me so.

And the Germans call it sehnsucht.

 

Do you see me?

Maybe you see me and you look right past me the way we look past the panhandlers in the medians.

I am a ghost, a floater in your vision. You’re aware something or someone is there but you have no connection to it.

Sometimes this is just the way I want it. Alone with just my own thoughts, doing what I need to get done without distraction or chit-chat.

Sometimes I am viewing you enviously. Your talking and laughter striking the dark chord of loneliness on my soul.

As I sit at my table or booth with just a book.

As I ride in the car, the music my most faithful and consistent companion.

In the grocery with the single person cart.

It is said that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. And there is.

But sometimes there isn’t.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

We lay down to go to sleep each night not knowing when we will actually cross from being awake and conscious to sleep. It simply happens.

One moment you’re contemplating the darkness, the warmth of the blanket or the cool of the fan, reviewing your day, remembering a song or a friend you have not thought about in years…

And then you’re awake.

The clock reads 3:26 and you have to pee or you’re too hot or there was a noise that your subconscious routine couldn’t pass off as “just the normal noises in here” and you’re bolt upright going “WHAT WAS THAT?!?”

And that’s a thing – while you’re asleep some part of you has a level of consciousness. The mind is processing noises and things going on. “That’s just the air conditioning. The cat’s jumped on the bed. That’s a car going down the street.”

We lay down to sleep each night fairly certain or naively trusting that we will wake up the next morning.

Sometimes we don’t. Or someday we won’t.

This is what we fear.

We always fear the unknown.

Because we don’t know what will become of our consciences, our “soul” when it is done with this body.

 Eating the Elephant 

It all started before I can remember.

The story was I was 2 or 3 years old, sick as a dog, Grandma Galupi sitting for the poor sick child. But as sick as he was, he could not be pulled away from the record player spinning Mom’s 45 of Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Everyone has something that draws their interest. For some people it’s art or literature. Some people find peace and sense of place in carpentry or welding or working on cars or mathematics [definitely not mathematics for me]. I have always had an ear for music, I guess. It seems to run in my mother’s side of the family. Her grandfather on her mother’s side [i.e. My great grandfather] played the fiddle and her father [my grandfather] played the guitar. Grandma Sheets would sing with Grandpap as well, likely old country songs or standards. There are stories of the family going up to my great grandparents’ house and they would play on Saturday nights. I don’t know if they called it jamming or a hoe down or just “this is what we do for entertainment.” So perhaps there is music in my blood.

I do remember the very early 70s, 1971, 1972. Paul McCartney’s Uncle Albert-Admiral Halsey, Deep Purple’s Smoke On the Water coming over the AM radio. The aforementioned Grandma Galupi usually had a radio on in the morning before her “stories” [soaps] came on. Grandma Sheets would sometimes have one on in the kitchen, though I don’t think she grooved along with Steely Dan’s Do It Again. But who knows.  I remember Mom ironing to the Temptations when we lived in Hampton Court in Indiana, PA. AM radio was my main exposure to the tunes of the day until we moved to Texas in 1977. AM Top 40 was playing a lot of different things so you’d hear like the O’Jays, followed by the Spinners, Elton John, Al Green, Grand Funk, Paul McCartney & Wings, Barry White, Jim Croce and the Carpenters. Even though this was then ending of the golden age of AM radio, I still recall a lot of those songs with fondness.

Of course it helped that my parents were Rockers, too. In their records and 8 tracks, I was still exposed to a wide variety of rock and soul. Everything from Aretha’s Greatest Hits [Aretha Franklin, the1971 compilation] to Neil Young’s Harvest. In the singles box I found early Motown like the Four Tops’ Reach Out I’ll Be There and Jr. Walker’s Come See About Me [the B-side Sweet Soul is a stone groove!] up through Joe Cocker’s cover of The Letter [the STUDIO version is still a favorite, the live version is kinda meh].

My first two albums arrived in 1974. One was a radio promo copy of the first Bad Company [aka Bad Co.] album as a radio station was broadcasting from the McDonald’s dad managed in downtown Charleston, WV. The second was a gift from our summer babysitter, a copy of the Doobie Brothers’ What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. Was an album with such a druggy title a strange thing to give to a 7 year old? I didn’t get it then but Black Water was on that record and that was a hot tune that summer. 

The first record I bought with my hard earned quarters and dimes [forgoing the pleasures of a Batman or Action Comics and bubble gum] was Disco Duck by Rick Dees and His cast Of Idiots. Had I known I was forever going to be listing this as the first record I ever bought with my own money I might have chosen something cooler but it is what it is. I know for a fact that It was NOT the record I was looking for. I wanted Rubberband Man by the mighty Spinners, which was the second record I ever bought. Then Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck Of the Edmund Fitzgerald. That’s still a spooky record today.

I don’t recall the first album I bought with my own money. I know that it was 1978 and my friend Mark had turned me on to Kiss, a favor I repaid by taking his Kiss Alive II onto the bus to give back to him and watching in horror as the first album slid out of the jacket and bashed to the ground cracking off Detroit Rock City-King Of the Nighttime World on side 1 and Calling Dr. Love and Christine Sixteen on side 2. All of which leads me to believe that the first Kiss album may have been the first but it could have been Kiss’ Dressed to Kill.

In the meantime of course I am enjoying the clean sounds of FM radio now in the state of Texas. Texas being nice and flat, the FM signal will carry pretty well. [Knowing now what I did not know then, the AM signal worked better in the hills and mountains.] Still top 40 for the most part but oh what a top 40! Cheap Trick’s I Want You To Want Me, Blondie’s One Way Or Another, Nick Gilder’s Hot Child In the City, the Cars…annnnnnnd disco. Well, look it was what was on the radio. I was not then nor am I now a dancer in any way, shape or form. And I find the four on the floor so even white people can do it boring. And of course there was Bee Gees burnout. But in the rear view I can see some good stuff out of that era. Parliament. I have come to really appreciate the Bee Gees harmonies. Barry White did some great thing. He would layer things in, build things up adding something every few trips around. Listen to the long album version of It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me. At 7 minutes it can get a little repetitive but you can’t deny the groove!

In 1980, there was a house built next to ours in Arlington and a fairly young couple moved in. From Oshkosh [by gosh!], WI. I don’t recall their name but he was a traveling salesman, nice guy would come over and play HORSE once in a while. I don’t recall how we got into it but he loaned me his Beatles albums: the 1962 – 1966 on red vinyl, the 1967 – 1970 on blue vinyl and The Beatles [aka “The White Album”] on white vinyl. So I was really getting into the Beatles when John Lennon’s Double Fantasy was released [and make no mistake, as much as I like Paul McCartney’s songs I am most definitely a John guy] and then…. Sigh.

Somewhere in there the first, single LP of The Doors’ Greatest Hits arrived. So I was always looking for new things to find even if I had to go backwards to find them. For a period from about 1982 to 1984 I was in a flashback time warp. It kicked off with the 2 Who cassettes made for me by David Herring [the year of their first Last Tour] followed the next summer with 2 Led Zeppelin and the next with 2 of the Doors. I also discovered more records in my parents collection I had not realized were pure gold – Santana’s Abraxas, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced and a double LP anthology of the Jefferson Airplane called Flight Log. Oh how I loved Jefferson Airplane! And the American Graffiti soundtrack. I was listening to the local oldies station [on AM] which then was playing rock and roll era 1960s top 40 stuff. Heavy on the British Invasion era [1964] up to about 1970 or so. I guess then that would have been Golden Age Of AM Radio stuff. But I would also switch to the FM and dig on the current stuff as well. One can only take Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter so many times, right?

I was able to maintain this balance until about 1996 when I started finding new music was not for me. Could I appreciate Green Day? I guess, but I didn’t really care for it. Nirvana never moved me. I did like the first Pearl Jam and Stone temple Pilots, Alice In Chains’ Dirt and Soundgarden. I think that was about it. When Soundgarden broke up, my interest in new music waned. I didn’t get the point of Creed, Korn or Limp Bisquick or whatever it was.

So I have always had a connection with music.

Collecting began when I started earning my own money. Oh sure’ I’d go buy records with birthday money and such but driving delivering pizzas put hard cash money in my pocket so the closest Sound Warehouse was always on my radar. And of course being in the car so much I’d hear a lot if things. To give a timeline, one of the records bought with that money was Peter Gabriel’s brilliant So. That came out in May of ’86. In November of ’86 I was hired on at the dream job working at the Sound Warehouse.

Sound Warehouse was a record store chain started in Oklahoma City that grew mostly around Texas and Oklahoma, eventually have 121 stores in 13 states. They were to Texas what Tower records was to California. [Here is a short history on the rise and fall Sound Warehouse et al on You Tube.] I was very acquainted with the customer side of the experience, now my music knowledge was going to be useful. I am pretty sure that it was my knowledge of the 60’s/70s music that got me the job – I vaguely remember commenting that I was going to have to come back to the store where I was interviewed for a Jefferson Airplane album I did not have.

So I’m on the inside now. Which leads to promo records and an employee discount.  Plus with a diverse crew manning the turntable / CD player, I was constantly being exposed to new things  - that I had never considered looking at before. Of course everyone had favorites. One manager was heavily into Peter Gabriel, Genesis and Prince. The girls like to play Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration. The guys tended to favor guitar things like R.E.M. and the Replacements to name two of the bands I had never really heard before. Rare was a payday week that I wasn’t bringing something new into the house. But it was glorious being one of the cool kids!

If you’re into music, you go where music is and you talk to other people about your likes and dislikes and you take notes. That was the beauty of the record store. Sometimes you’d be able to say “You like [semi obscure band]? If you like this, you should check out [similar semi obscure band].” And they would and they’d come back later and go “Hey man, I dug [semi obscure band # 2], what else do you have like that?” Eventually this lead me to the conclusion that there is an audience for everything. It might not always be a big audience but if it’s out there the right people will find it. It’s not a long jump from R.E.M to my beloved Long Ryders but R.E.M. got huge and the Long Ryders faded away. Such is the fickle hand of fate. 

I was only at Sound Warehouse for two years but in those two years I made friendships that have lasted. And through those friends and the common bond of music, I have met other similarly minded folks and we’ve fed each other’s thirst for something we haven’t heard before. [For the record, I would put in another year and a half in record retail at Forever Young. 20 hours a week. I had planned to pay off my truck early but I think I’d spend most of that money on CDs and beer.]

One other thing about this time was that my “Uncle” [not really related, family friend] Mike allowed me into his epic collection. Uncle Mike’s closet [yes, they had a closet built with heavy duty shelving to hold record because they weigh A TON] was my first “holy SH**” record collection. I mean I probably had a couple hundred record by now but THIS was what I aspired to. There may have been 1500 albums in there. And now he was starting to buy CDs to replace those albums. And I know he never quit. He would buy things when he was out travelling as part of his job and have to ‘sneak’ them into the collection when he thought the Mrs. wasn’t looking. [Of course she know. She’d been looking at the same collection for two month when he was on the road so she kinda knew what had been there and when something new appeared.] When I was at Mike’s funeral, I got my last look at the CD part of the Leone Collection – the albums were in their second home in Pennsylvania needing to be boxed and shipped yet again. The CDs filled a whole wall of an entertainment center. I would guess, based on my CD collection that he probably had almost a thousand. Side story: so we picked out some music to play as we were playing cards downstairs later and Mike’s daughter’s fiancée asked if he could take one home to listen to it: AC/DC’s If You Want Blood You’ve Got It live album. I told him that Michael would have been overjoyed that he wanted to take something to listen to.

Michael was a Frank Zappa nut. I said “what is this Frank Zappa thing?” Michael sent me home that night with four albums that changed me: Zappa In New York, Rory Gallagher’s Blueprint and Tattoo and Johnny Winter And… Live.  As an aspiring guitarist, Rory and Johnny made me want to put the instrument down. But as a listener,  they perked my ears right up. “What was that? Wow that is amazing!” Zappa In New York doesn’t have a lot of Frank’s guitar work on it – the Shut Up And Play Your Guitar set make up for that – but it’s a good introduction into Frank’s many styles. I would find many more amazing things in Frank’s catalog and in Michael’s magic closet.

After my short record store stint [two years but boy were they fun] I began checking out more used record stores. I found suggested titles and followed the trails of who made who into further discoveries. The James Gang Rides Again? This has Joe Walsh, I like Joe Walsh, I’ll check this out. Debbee says this Ian Hunter guy is pretty cool. I liked that one Little Feat album, let me check this one out. So and so says this album was a big influence on them.

All of which brings me to meeting Tracey Berry.

It seems that we were destined to cross paths. When Sound Warehouse opened their Hurst location, two of the managers were taken from my old store in north Arlington, Scott “Pops” [forgot last name] and  Randy “The Point” Johnson. Tracey was hired at that location. But I actually met him through my high school friend Oliver’s roommate, Scott Gilbert. Scott had worked with Tracey in a comic book store and one day this short, stocky red bearded, skullcap wearing biker looking dude shows up. I wasn’t sure about him until one day two boxes of CDs show up. [All ready Tracey was piling up the music!] I looked through the titles, noted some. One day I heard a song on the radio by Steely Dan I was not familiar with and I had seen several of their CDs in the boxes so I asked “what’s the song, “You go to Las Vegas, Lost Wages, go to Las Vegas’?” And of course he reels off Show Biz Kids on the Countdown To Ecstasy album. “Do you mind if I take that home and tape it?” He did not and may have even suggested taking Katy Lied  as well.

I found out despite his look, Tracey was generally a pretty easy going guy. He was quick to laugh and had a big booming laugh that once you heard it a couple of times did not forget. I would not say that we were great friends but in hanging around Oliver and his group and eventually becoming Oliver’s roommate we became friends. And there was always the music in common.

Quite a few times we’d be sitting around and he would pop something in and I’d go “What is that?” If you’ve ever heard the great The Who Sell Out, you know that intro [recorded right off some pirate radio station] and then is buzzes into Armenia City In the Sky. I almost fell off the floor when I heard that! “What is this? The Who? Are you kidding me?!?”  The first time I heard Pink Floyd’s More it scared the crap out of me. [I maaaayyyy have not been totally sober at the time…and I still don’t care for Atom Heart Mother.] In the Berry collection, I found myself able to dig deeper into the blues people that the Rolling Stones cited as influences. I know Tracey liked Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker especially but also had Lightnin’ Hopkins and Howlin’ Wolf. Of course we disagreed about things too. I don’t think he was a big Aerosmith fan and he did not like Queen. I never got into jazz nor as deep into the funk as he did [although I could appreciate some of it] and my hatred of Yes was as strong as his for Queen. But we respected each other enough not to be too judgmental.

While my time as an actual record store person was very short, Tracey managed to do it for 25 years or maybe a smidge longer. I don’t recall when he went from Sound Warehouse to Forever Young. I want to say maybe 1992? The greater thing about Forever young was that they dealt in used media – records, tapes and CDs. Which meant that you could throw on almost anything at any time. I am sure that Tracey spent many, many hours talking to people about music, getting and giving suggestions and generally being a kid in the candy store.

Yes, it could be boring and work like at times and sometimes the music playing just becomes a background buzz. But to see some people’s faces light up when you find them that song or album that has eluded them for so long. Dave would keep some new release re-issues at the front counter and these black ladies would come in and see an Al Green or Johnny “Guitar” Watson or Bootsy Collins album that they had not thought about in years and just gush. Hell, I did the same thing sometimes. “Whoa, they finally reissued that? Man, we used to jam out to that.” That was one of the things that made all the re-alphabetizing the used cassette wall all worth it.  

Looking deep into the Berry CD project, I can see by the age of some of the CDs that Tracey had a wide variety going back a long time. Early [as in late 80’s] reissues of Blue Note and Stax records titles. Things I might not have appreciated then. [I went back into Motown and Stax while I was at Forever Young after years of denying soul music.] When Tracey moved in with Oliver, I organized the collective collection. Even after only a decade [+ / -] in the record business it was a long afternoon alphabetizing and racking them up. But the variety of titles and artists was amazing. As a music fan, I was awed and extremely jealous. At the time, there was some sense of self worth ties to both the size and “coolness” of my record collection, even though no one was driving all the way out to BFE Burleson just to ooh and aah at my discs and LPs. And Tracey’s collection made mine look like a lot less impressive.

At a point in the late 1990s I had a lot of changes going on, not the least of which was working an out of kilter evening shift [3:330 to midnight, Tuesday through Saturday]. I lost touch with a lot of people that had been a regular circle, although I would stop into the store and shop and say hi to Tracey. Eventually he popped up on Facebook after a few changes of his own. He went back to school and got his degree and began teaching at the University of Texas Dallas campus. But we were not really ‘in touch.’

Then my friend ended his life.

I will not cover any of that. My mourning statements have been made and though I am still sad that he is gone I have slowly come to make peace with that. What I am here to talk about is his CD collection. Another friend acquired Tracey’s music and a lot of his posters from the family. I didn’t know Mike Bond really but we met up and he allowed me to look at some things and in the course of discussion I inquired as to his plans for the collection. At that time, they were still up in the air, so I asked an indulgence.

Many years ago, my brother in law and his office had put their music collections on a hard drive, which they then accessed for some groovy tunes while they were working. I used a copy of that as the basis for putting my own collection on hard drives [I have a main and a backup now]. I thought that it would be good to put Tracey’s CDs on a hard drive for any of his friends to access and retain all or part of Tracey’s collection.

“Funny you should say that, I actually have a hard drive of Tracey’s in one of these boxes,” Mike replied.

I bought a brand new 1 Gigahertz hard drive and copied the music that Tracey had on that drive to use as a basis for this project. Knowing how much space my own collection took up and keeping in mind Mike’s estimate of 2500 – 3000 CDs, I decided to rip the collection at 256 Kbps [which would be approximately 115 megabytes per CD versus  145 MB for 320 Kbps.]

I took three or four unorganized boxes of Tracey’s CDs and set off for what I thought was going to be a large and time consuming project but the upside was that I could also keep any CDs I wanted and could copy anything else to my own hard drives. And having some idea what should be in Tracey’s collection, I was a giddy as a kid set loose in the candy shop. Or a music lover set loose in the record store.

Little did I know.

This is how I came to be “Eating the Elephant.”   

When I say “eating the elephant.” I refer to the daunting size of the project. As in “How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

Mike suggested that there could be somewhere around 2500 to 3000 CDs. Think about going through the boxes, organizing them somehow and then physically taking the CD out, letting it rip and then onto the next one. How long will it take? How long before your will to complete such a project gives out?

The condition of the CDs [and the jewel cases or digipacks] ranged from a few unopened to very good to normal wear and tear to sigh inducing to “oh my god what the hell.” Some were beyond saving. Neither Tracey nor Oliver were particular about neatness. The usual method of filing a CD once it was removed from the player was to add it to a stack on top of the desk / entertainment center / receiver etc. Apparently when they were packed, these stacks of CDs were dumped into boxes then the remaining CDs in jewel cases thrown into more boxes. [From what I was told albums were done much the same way.]

Mike had already completed herculean task number one and matched CDs up with corresponding jewel cases [if one was around] or into a jewel case of some sort. I was also handed a stack of booklets that hadn’t matched up to anything, most of which never did match to a CD.

But the thought of going through my friend’s collection and copying the things I wanted was beyond resisting. I had a good idea of some of the things I would find and some of those were cross woven into my own life as well. The kid was going to be set loose in the candy store. Sort of.

The second benefit was to allow Mike or any of Tracey’s other friends to be able to access Tracey’s collection and have a piece of records that they had shared.

There’s was no deadline and not knowing how many CDs there would be I just set out as best I could handle. I took the first collection of boxes, broke them down into three sections of the alphabet, organized each box alphabetically and then took the first box into my computer room. From there I pulled out a handful of CDs, cleaned the CDs and jewel boxes as best I could and started ripping. While one ripped I’d clean up the next couple. All down the line.

At first, I tried to be methodical. As I put in things I was not familiar with, I’d hit a few seconds to get a feel, make a note of things I wanted to copy to explore more fully. After the first box, that went out the window. What I found was that each box would hold between 120 to 140 CDs. If I was going to use that method this was going to take a long, long time. I thought it would be better to take notes and digital copies of things to explore further and keep the project moving. Catalog it [on an excel spreadsheet], rip it and go on to the next one.

In just around a year, I have catalogs and ripped 1720 titles. I say titles because of course there are double [and triple and even a couple of quadruple] CD sets so I don’t really know how many CDs that is. The hard drive is showing 296 gigs of used space. Since I may be on the actual last box with about 60 titles left to rip, that’s probably not going to change much. I am down to the elephant’s tail.

I found some interesting things of course. I say that this is “Tracey still recommending things from beyond the grave.” I pulled physical copies [with permission] of some things. Things that give me a smile remembering their connection with Tracey: Mississippi Fred MacDowell, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Sky Cries Mary. And I have taken digital copies of all kinds of “Tracey Music”: ambient things, jazz things, rock things and more soul [mostly various artists comps] than I could have ever imagined.         

But it has raised a huge question for me. “Do I still need physical media?”

 

I admit I am an old school person here. I have [and use] my home phone line - mostly so I don’t HAVE to have my cell phone attached to me at all waking moments of the day. I still get the Sunday paper - mostly because the NY Times crossword is not on the electronic subscription and I hate doing crosswords on line. And in a world before Wiki-this and instant that, I spent countless hours poring over physical media - record jackets and liner notes and Rolling Stone - trying to glean as much about the music and the people who made the music as I could hold in my head.

 

But in the new millennium, I don’t consume my music via the physical media anymore.

 

I bought a new turntable last year but after the initial rush of having that new player wore off rarely do I pick up an LP and put it on. I remembered my old house’s floor doesn’t have good bracing and my walking across the floor [or a cat skittering from room to room] sends “booms” through the needle or causes skips when playing records. The only “CD players” in the house are actually DVD players – one in the living room that’s not even plugged in and one in the bedroom. But I still buy CDs. They get ripped to the hard drive on arrival and then are dutifully filed, rarely to ever leave their place on the shelf ever again

 

Yet there they all patiently remain - 600 or so LPs, almost 700 CDs - taking up one whole wall of me computer and music room.

 

Tracey’s passing and this project have me in the mind to clear a lot of this out.

 

Since Tracey’s physical collection was locked away in storage, I have to assume that Tracey was no longer consuming very much music via the physical media at the end. I don’t know if Tracey had a hard drive of his favorites or if he had gone full tilt digital, i.e.  purchasing via iTunes or Amazon or some streaming like Spotify. Since he would post things from You Tube to his Facebook, I assume he didn’t completely cut himself off from music just the physical record or CD.

 

If you’re only looking to listen, there’s a lot of stuff out there on the world wide web. There is a probably lot of more obscure stuff not out there but a lot of it is and there’s more added every single second. And you can get a lot of it for free.

If you’re a person who wants a hard copy – and there are many and thank goodness for them, they keep ebay, Discogs and the record stores in business! – you can still get those. And the ol’ interweb even allows you to look for records any time of the day or night – the online store is always open!

 

But the thrill of having a “cool” record collection is long gone. Not that anyone has seen my record collection in a long while. In truth it probably has been for a long time.

 

I have pruned the collection over the years – I always have at times. It’s usually about making space so I can bring more in . It’s not about the money because the money wasn’t there. Still isn’t for CDs but despite the rising popularity and price of vinyl, I don’t think I have anything ‘valuable,’ just common titles. Which means I will NOT be funding my retirement with my music collection. It’s more about allowing someone else the opportunity to check something out. For example, when I switched to CDs, I sold my Beatles collections many years back hoping someone who was just getting into music would pick them up and use them as a starting point the same way I did. A couple years back, I picked out some vinyl for my friend Tommy’s son Max [and a couple titles for Tommy] since he was getting into music and vinyl. I handed off a couple dozen titles. Some classics like my 80s vintage Cars albums, the Police and some things to try like the first B-52s and Blondie’s Eat To the Beat.  And young Max learned the first lesson as he picked up the tote I had put the records in: Vinyl is HEAVY!!!!

 

Or someone is flipping through the stacks and makes that find that will make their day. Anyone who has ever gotten into anything like music or books knows that feeling. You’re getting into a band or a writer and there’s a title you’re curious about but is seems to be a little hard to come by. The you spot it – and you grab it! And your heart jumps for joy and a smile hits your face and you sigh and you’re like “At last I have caught you.” Man do I know that feeling!

  

Which brings me back to my original question: Do I still need the physical media?

 

For sure in the days before the internet and instant answers to anything I spent countless hours poring over books, magazines and liner notes trying to learn all I could about the people making the magical thing called music. Now I have 30 years of Rolling Stone magazine on three DVDs. The magazines went to the recycle bin a long time ago and it feels like it’s time to let go of the record collection.

 

It takes up a lot of space and when my spirit leaves this body, it leaves a lot for someone else to deal with. And I’m to the point where I don’t want to leave that burden on anyone.

 

Which is not to say that I’m going to liquidate everything, but I could certainly cut the physical collection in half. And a few of the things I do keep will be mysteries to the persons who do have to deal with what I have left. Because they won’t know that this was one of the albums Tracey or Michael turned me onto that I just fell in love with. Or if it was one of those things I found on my own and now it’s tied to the memories of a time and / or a person that means a lot to me.

And I’ll still have the music. Just like I have a lot of it in my head, I will still have my hard drive and my back up hard drive because stuff happens. And now I have melded a part of Tracey’s collection into mine, so I have more titles to explore for [hopefully] a lot of years to come.

And that was the whole point.

It was a labor of love and to selfishly to dig through my old friend’s music collection and harvest some cool stuff. I have almost completed that mission.

 

I also thought it would be nice to have Tracey’s catalog in a format where it was accessible. Not just for myself but for any of Tracey’s friends to share. For the cost of a hard drive, any of them can own this vast musical catalog. They can delete what they don’t like, then add their own collection to this miasma and hit random play!

My friend Tracey had a lifelong connection to music. Music became one of those things that connected a whole group of people to Tracey and through our connection to Tracey many other connections were made. We may see less and less of each other but for each of us, I am SURE there are songs that press a button in out head and make us smile and think of our friend.

 

Several years ago I was spending the day at the Winstar off the famous Exit 0 in Thackerville, OK. I had played the afternoon poker tournament and I must have done good because I wound up with just a couple of hours to kill before the evening tournament. That being the case, I decided to go father up I-35 to the three exit truck stop “metropolis” of Ardmore. [I am trademarking the term “truck stop metropolis” as of right now 8:49 12/17/22]

In Ardmore, I had a Hardee’s hamburger – not much different than any other from what I could tell and wandered down the drag. I spotted a book & record store, maybe an FYE and pulled in. In the books I found a book on poker to entertain myself and sharpen my strategies. I remember in the CDs I found the remaster of Billy Joel’s The Stanger but my find that day was The Essential Guy Clark.  I knew Guy Clark mostly as a songwriter who I was introduced to by Jerry Jeff Walker’s covers of Desperadoes Waiting For A Train. L.A Freeway, That Old Time Feeling and Like A Coat From the Cold. Truth be told, I prefer Jerry Jeff’s versions but in Guy’s best of, I found a good storytelling songwriter. I’m not sure why these writers seem to be very nasal but they seem to be except Kristofferson. Here’s one of Guy’s great songs that he sings himself, She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.

Last night I found myself rollin’ down the road [I-35 again, how ironic] and listening to John Prine. I know some of you are gasping and on the verge of fainting wondering how I made it 55 years without being exposed [that I know of] to John Prine. Well… I guess Prine was just another name in the stacks that other people liked a lot but I just never got around to. Last night I finally put in that second copy of disc 2 of Great Days: The John Prine Anthology from Tracey’s stacks. It’s okay. I get it. Reminds me a lot of Guy Clark and Billy Joe Shaver [who I was exposed to on a chilly day sharing some home-made chili with Ed Voyles out in the Azle boonies].

It put me in the mind to wonder if the song is being lost in music.

 

Random Record Rewind: 

Madman Across the Water – Elton John [1971]

Traveling, I found myself with no book, no newspaper, puzzle books or anything. My own fault for sure but it happened. To amuse myself, I found myself singing some things – part of Jefferson Airplane’s cover of Donovan’s Fat Angel from Bless Its Pointed Little Head live album with the lines Fly Jefferson Airplane / gets you there on… time… The Waitress In the Sky handing out hot towels led me into Elton John’s Holiday Inn and then the song that follows,  Rotten Peaches. Unfortunately, my grey matter has lost all but the first verse and chorus and a few lines that did not line up from Rotten Peaches, so I decided I would have to retrack the album once I was settled back in at Casa de Chaz. And so I am.

Elton’s Madman Across the Water is one of those albums that’s pretty much [although as noted, lost parts of Rotten Peaches] burned into my brain. It’s been in my life for as long as I can remember because my parents had the 8 track. Listening even fifty years later I can hear the hum of the highway and smell the heater as we cross West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania on chilly evenings with this playing.

Madman is not happy go lucky Crocodile Rock Elton. Madman is a moody album and is actually one of the lesser performing albums of Elton’s career. Yes, the airy Tiny Dancer kicks the album but aside from some of the lines in Rotten Peaches, it doesn’t come anywhere near the sun again. There are many twisted characters to follow. Levon, the tight fisted wounded war veteran with a son who wants to fly away from his father on a balloon bound for Venus. The aging Razor Face looking for a place to lay down and perhaps a bottle of the rough stuff to ease his aches. Of course, The Madman himself who can see the broken boat on the reef and who knows the joke very well. The Iroquois warrior seeking the Yellow Moon and the place the red sun sinks into the hills of gold and the healing waters run but hears on the horse soldiers coming [Indian Sunset]. The rock and roll man who’s twiddled his thumbs in a dozen odd bands explaining the joys of the Holiday Inn to his driver. The gentleman serving his time picking rotten peaches for the U.S. state prison system. The young man trying to assert himself and to be himself instead of what “They” want him to be [All the Nasties]. I have no idea how to explain Goodbye.

Part of the change in the sound comes from producer Gus Dudgeon only allowing Elton’s touring “band” drummer Nigel Olsen and bassist Dee Murray to play on one song – All the Nasties. Session man Herbie Flowers [also heard on Lou Reed’s Transformer] and David Glover handle the bass on the other tracks.  Dudgeon brought in guitarist Davey Johnstone [soon to join the “band”] for 4 tracks – his mandolin integral to Holiday Inn. Chris Spedding emphasized the riff to the title track. [It IS sort of on the 1970 Tumbleweed Connection version with Bowie’s right arm Mick Ronson on guitar but it’s not as in your face. That version also doesn’t have Paul Buckmaster’s orchestral arrangements that are so well done on this album.] Caleb Quaye, a friend from Long John Baldry’s Bluesology played on three tracks and would return to Elton later in the decade for a couple of albums and tours. B.J. Cole’s steel guitar plays an important part on Tiny Dancer. Session man Herbie Flowers [also heard on Lou Reed’s Transformer], Brian Odgers and David Glover handle the bass on the other tracks. For drums, Dudgeon recruited Roger Pope [who like Quaye would return to Elton later in the decade], Barry Morgan and Terry Cox.  

As a footnote, Olsson and Murray with Johnstone would back for Elton on all of those great albums through 1976’s Captain Fantastic And the Brown Dirt Cowboy, be fired, return in the 80s and continue with Elton through the present except Murray who passed in 1992.

I can’t objectively review a record that runs so deeply in my blood as this one. Elton John made some damn fine albums in the 1970s but time after time I return to this one and I find it to be absolutely perfect. 

 

Thoughts on NCIS While Re-Re-Re-working Walkman Years # 22 Because I Missed Two Songs That Figure Prominently the Remixed Walkman Years # 27

I finally put my finger on the sad state of NCIS circa 2022. Sure one could consider NCIS an ensemble drama with a main group of stable characters ala Law And Order. For almost 20 years, Mark Harmon’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs held down the lead chair, Michael Weatherly’s Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo holding down second banana for 13 years, Pauly Perrette’s oddball Abby Sciuto for 15 years and the gorgeous Cote de Pablo playing Israeli turned citizen Ziva David for 8 years [plus the return / ratings grab last season]. David McCallum’s Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard has been slowly being withdrawn for the last four or five years – considering McCallum is in his late 80s, likely a decision by himself and the writers. And in the last two years both Emily Wickersham and Mark Harmon have bowed out. 

Which leaves the last character standing from the original ensemble: former Probie now Senior Field agent Timothy McGee.

The problem here is that McGee was the sixth [or seventh or eighth, depending on w how one ranks Rocky Carroll’s Leon Vance / Lauren Holly’s Jenny Sheppard and Muse Watson’s recurring Mike Franks] most interesting character out of the ensemble for years. Even the fleshing out of his character over the years has not improved the interestingness of Tim McGee. As a matter of fact, the recent years have forced McGee into a more wooden role – when is the last time his wife and kids or book writing were mentioned?

I get it – actors have other opportunities [Weatherly], feel that the shows writing is going downhill [de Pablo] or just tire of the role [Harmon, Perrette].  But the exodus that began with De Pablo in season 11 started weakening the ensemble. Emily Wickersham’s Ellie Bishop was about as far from De Pablo’s Ziva David as one could get – blonde, brainy and computer nerdy, basically a female McGee. But the cast already has a McGee. Wilmer Valderrama’s Nick Torres grew on me but the comic relief that Weatherly’s DiNozzo provided was gone and never replaced.  Brian Dietzen’s Jimmy Palmer is a pale ghost of Ducky Mallard and often grates more than anything. And poor Diona Reasonover. Not that she could [and to her credit did not try to] fill the shoes of Perrette / Sciuto but the once bustling forensics lab and Forensic Specialist Kassie Hines seem to be a mere afterthought most of the time despite efforts to elevate / flesh out her character. I don’t find new additions [last year, season 19] Gary Cole’s Aiden Parker or Katrina Law’s Jessica Knight very interesting either.

Sure, CBS may want to keep the flagship of the franchise going. Somehow it has remained a top 5 show after peaking as The Number One show in 2012-13 [tenth season]. This seems to fly in the face of cast members leaving or being written out and sliding script quality and poor character development [in my opinion]. It’s also seemed to have survived a change to Monday night and into the 8:00 [central time] slot.

Should NCIS continue though? I don’t make decisions like that but I don’t make a point of watching it anymore and have not for several years. Tonight, I watched out of morbid curiosity of the season opener [which turned out to be a crossover with NCIS Hawai’i] and lack of anything else on. [Spoiler: they saved the day!] But the show feels tired and uninspired, going through the motions. I guess averaging 10 to 11 million pairs of eyeballs once a week in an era where anyone can watch any of tens of thousands of shows and millions of movies at any given time is a coup. But my eyeballs are less likely to be on NCIS.

 

Random Record Rewind: 

Aqualung – Jethro Tull [1971]

   So twice this week I have found myself singing [parts of - the whole thing would take about 43 minutes] Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick. Thick As A Brick is one of those albums engrained on my soul because my parents had the 8 track albums. Tuesday evening I came in and played side 1 / Part 1 and thought myself sated.

   Tonight’s singing adventure tells me that I am not necessarily finished with Thick As A Brick. But tonight, singing Thick As A Brick led me down another road. You see even though I went on a bit of an exploring expedition a few years back I am still no more than a casual fan. Of course, I know the FM radio staples: Aqualung, Cross Eyed Mary, Locomotive Breath, Bungle In the Jungle, etc. I found I rather liked Too Old For Rock And Roll, Too Young To Die [1976] and Songs From the Wood [1977], kinda liked Minstrel In the Gallery but did not so much like the other extended piece album A Passion Play [it seems unfocused to me a pale imitation of Brick]. I have liked Stand Up since [surprise] Tracey Berry first played it in my presence. Benefit is okay but not one I reach for a lot. Having said all of that I find myself admitting I have never gotten into their best seller Aqualung. But it’s been a long time since I sat down with the album and listened to it.

   The opener and title track is one of those I really never have to hear again and almost instant punch out when I happen to be listening to the radio. You know the usual suspects: Free Bird, Stairway To Heaven, Dream On, Walk This Way, Dude Looks Like A Lady [yes, I love some Aerosmith but those three…], More Than A Feeling, You Shook Me All Night Long… It is an interesting character study as is the very good Cross-Eyed Mary that follows. Mother Goose is a nice piece of Jethro Tull. No one else would be doing something like this at the time. If someone asked me “what the hell is this Jethro Tull?” this might be the song I played for them.

   Side 2’s two kick off tracks My God and Hymn 43 seem to be critical of religion [I will not speak of Mr. Ian Anderson’s motivations] which led some people to think that Aqualung is a concept album about religion. But both are very good songs. Locomotive Breath has long been a favorite. It mentions a Gideon’s bible so maybe that plays into the religion thing. Oh, there’s some God question and response in Wind Up too. That shows how much I have paid attention to that song.

   So what’s my new take on Aqualung? Well seven of the eight main songs and the three short interlude songs [between a 1:15 and 1:53 long] are pretty good. Aqualung has the same problem as Benefit; it seems one song too long. [Benefit: Sossily, You’re A Woman; Aqualung: Wind Up.] But overall I found that Aqualung is better than I recall and  I think I will need to return to it again in the near future.

Random Record Rewind -

Hold Out – Jackson Browne [1980]

   A year or two ago I went on a Jackson Browne jag and bought most of Jackson’s 70s and 80s catalog. I was surprised in reviewing my purchases to find I was missing Jackson’s only # 1 album.

   Hold Out seems to be an unlikely album to be a number one even if it was just for one week. I mean that’s the year you have Pink Floyd’s The Wall [15 weeks], Bob Seger’s Against the Wind [6 weeks], Billy Joel’s Glass Houses [6 weeks], Queen’s The Game [5 weeks], Springsteen’s The River [4 weeks] and at the end John Lennon’s Double Fantasy. On the other hand, the Stones’ Emotional Rescue was also numero uno for 7 weeks along with greatest hits by Kenny Rogers, the Bee Gees and Donna Summer.

      What I found in exploring Browne’s catalog are a lot of songs with an amazing depth for someone so young. Add to that, he’s backed by all the best players. It seems like there are a lot of Jackson Browne’s songs that I know but really looking at the catalog there aren’t a whole lot that get radio play. But boy are the ones that do really good: Doctor, My Eyes, Rock Me On the Water, The Pretender, Here Come Those Tears Again, Running On Empty and The Load Out / Stay. And a couple to mentioned here in a minute.

   In the big picture, we find Hold Out sandwiched between two certifiably great Browne albums – Running On Empty [1977] and Lawyers In Love [1983]. To compare Hold Out to those is … well, comparing Emotional Rescue to Some Girls and Tattoo You. I mean it’s what you have at the time so yay but you aren’t 100% sold on it.

   The only two songs that get radio play, Boulevard and That Girl Could Sing are truly the best things on the record. Three of the remaining five songs are mid-tempo or slower. Disco Apocalypse is pretty generic rescued only by some great keyboard work by Little Feat’s Bill Payne. David Lindley is great on guitar on Hold Out but can’t rescue this song from syrupy lyrics. The finale Hold On Hold Out crosses into Springsteen territory lyrically and structurally and lengthwise at just a shade over eight minutes. But it doesn’t feel like it says much. It doesn’t make a statement.

   And that’s the problem with Hold Out in general. Nothing on the album makes a statement. There is no call to arms nor even a call to just stand down and Take It Easy.

   It feels like a placeholder album. Okay but not vital by any means.

 Soundgarden and Chris Cornell – A Testimony

It was late 1991 or early 1992 – memories fade and I used to drink a bit – when I had The Encounter.

 All I remember was it was cold. We [names deleted to protect those guilty by association like Gary Harris] had gone to the record store to fetch some new tunes. The radio was digging on some new sound out of Seattle [Seattle??!!??] tentatively being labeled “Alternative” [I ask again – if it’s selling millions of records, what is it “Alternative” to, the “Mainstream”?] or “Grunge.” A couple bands I’d heard I was less enthused about like Nirvana [still not a fan] and the girls had picked up the soon to be overplayed Pearl Jam’s Ten. But I was looking for something specific. I’d recently had my ears perked up by another band. There was this powerful chugging riff, almost like a bulldozer pushing dirt around or pushing the trash in and then smashing down the pile in in the landfill. Or a steam shovel taking bites out of the earth and then dropping the tonnage into giant dump trucks to be hauled off somewhere. Basically heavy as fuck. [In fact Heavy as Fuck would have been a good title for this record.] The vocals on this were kinda grungy but then they suddenly soared to a throat shredding level. It was wince inducing – this guy is going to have a short career singing like THAT – but exhilarating at the same time. The other thing that grabbed me was the lyrics: “I can’t get any lower but still I feel I’m sinking… I’m looking California but feeling Minnesota… “  Yeah man, preach on.

 This isn’t Anthony Kiedis and his sigh inducing [according to my companions] washboard abs hopping around swirling that hair. This isn’t that homeless Evenflow dude sleeping on a pillow made of concrete. This was something darker – some beast from deep in Puget Sound, coal dark and bigger than a dozen whales. The kind of beast that knocked heavily laden cargo ships out of shipping lanes and played chicken with oncoming oil tankers.

 The song was Outshined, the band was Soundgarden and the vocalist was Chris Cornell.

What’s funny is that the first Soundgarden song I’d heard hadn’t moved the needle too much – Rusty Cage. I mean it was good but it didn’t grab you by the balls and all. But Outshined? That coal dark beast pulled me right on down and didn’t let go. So there I was searching for the source of this wonderful tune and I was introduced to Badmotorfinger. BMF was an entry to something that would be – continues to be – subtle as running into a brick wall and yet still has some thoughtfulness behind it.

 We went back to the casa and put out new purchases in – luck of the multidisc player brought Soundgarden out first. Beyond Outshined there was the even sludgier Slaves & Bulldozers. [Jesus God that guy’s voice!]  Jesus Christ Pose. The pseudo-psychedelic Searching With My Good Eye Closed. Room A Thousand Years Wide. Holy Water. Damn. DAMN!

Pearl Jam played out next – yes, it’s a good record, still a good record! – but I was hooked into the Soundgarden thing. BMF was one of those albums that got in the tape deck in the truck and didn’t come out. I did go back and check out 1989’s Louder Than Love but… I don’t know, it didn’t do much for me. When Temple Of the Dog received a push from A&M in the summer of ’92 [It had been released in April ’91, six months before Pearl Jam and BMF and had sold squat], I got that, along with the Singles soundtrack. Seasons from Singles was a different side – acoustic and spare and just was wonderful. [Cornell appeared in the movie as well as a bystander when Cliff destroys Janet’s car.] Because of the relation to Temple and Soundgarden, I had also got the soon favorited Mother Love Bone compilation.

In ’94 Spoonman from the soon to be released Superunknown hit the air. And boy was I disappointed. It’s still not one of my favorites. But I bought Superunknown anyway. Fears allayed. Superunknown was not always as heavy as BMF. Somehow the band found a way to be heavyish but not sludgey. One could hear the layers instead of being buried under one solid wall of sound if that makes sense. The new textures must have worked because the record sold 2.5 million copies that year and ultimately some 6 million [so far]. That and the unlikely hit of Black Hole Sun.

’96 and another disappointing [ish] lead track, this time Pretty Noose – it grew on me but still not a great first single. Down On the Upside is as different album from Superunknown as that album had been to Badmotorfinger. It’s certainly more experimental with varying textures. Six of the songs clock in near or shorter than 3:30. There are parts I certainly like more than others but it’s a pretty enjoyable record for me.

Soundgarden survived another year then ground themselves to a halt. I was shocked that they were just quitting but what could one do? They would come back with the not unpleasant King Animal in 2012. In between those records I lost Chris Cornell – well after his first solo record Euphoria Morning. I didn’t get Audioslave – I mean I’m pretty sure I bought it and listened to it but it didn’t appeal to me. Thayil, Cameron, Shepherd and Cornell made a trio of incredible albums. But aside from that, I am a words guy. So there’s a lot of appeal in the lyrics Cornell was throwing down along with his amazing voice.

I don’t know why last Saturday I suddenly had the urge to dig back into Soundgarden. I did for a couple days, now it bites at me again late this Saturday eve / Sunday morn. I threw together a 78.25 minute Soundgarden car CD in about an hour leaving out surprisingly little of my favorites. One of the last sings is the last cut on Superunknown, a “little ditty” [as Ed Voyles used to say] called Like Suicide.  One can guess it’s not a HAPPY song. Not many in the catalog are but this is actually the tale of Cornell having to end the misery of a bird that had flown into his window. If one pays attention to such things [and I just said I do]. Great line: Bit down on the bullet now / Had a taste so sour / Had to think of something sweet / Love’s like suicide…

Given Cornell’s ending it’s more poignant, but the capper is the last stanza: She lived like a murder / How she’d fly so sweetly / She lived like a murder but she died / Just like suicide.

Five years and it still smarts. But thanks for the music, Chris.

Soundgarden - Zero Chance - YouTube

 

Random Record Rewind:

Pendulum – Creedence Clearwater Revival [1970]

After five albums and 11 top 10 singles in two years [!!!] the boys in Creedence were getting a little torn and frayed. Inter-band bickering [mostly about John Fogerty dominating the songwriting and vocals and generally being a control freak – a claim which Jonh would substantiate in a 1997 interview but would add the caveat that he was the one with the vision and drive to make it all work] would lead older brother Tom Fogerty leaving the band after the release of Pendulum. But Pendulum does not really sound like a band on the verge of a breakup.

It has a couple of longer rockers. The opening cut Pagan Baby “choogles” along a chucky Fogerty riff then gets in to some typical CCR jamming. Stu Cook plays some really tasty bass on this one. The side 2 opener Born To Move chases a nice little descending riff and John adds some horn overdubs and a lot of organ including a kind of Traffic-y organ solo. Chameleon [more horns], Molina [yep more horns] and the single Hey Tonight rock pretty well. Have You Even Seen the Rain is a mix of Long As I Can See the Light and Who’ll Stop the Rain from Cosmo’s Factory.  It’s Just A Thought and [Wish I Could] Hideaway are both strangely [for Creedence] organ driven songs. Not bad just a little different.

It’s not the happiest Creedence album. It’s a little subdued and dark in places. And the closing cut Rude Awakening # 2 is just plain odd – Creedence should NOT do sound experiments ala the Beatles Revolution 9. Actually this is more musical the Revolution 9 but still… All in all I’d say it’s the most mature of the CCR albums. Not their most complete – still Cosmo’s Factory – but the least jangly of their records and one I think more people should check out.

 Classic Rock?

  I was surfing the guide the other night as one is wont to do and I came across a listing on AXS for a ‘documentary’ called What Is Classic Rock? The current showing was about 20 minutes from ending and I wasn’t up for spending two hours on it at the time, so thank goodness for the DVR. Since my usual Friday night view [Blue Bloods] was preempted, I had time to take a gander at it. Of course, this gives me an excuse to pontificate at length about rock music and some related subjects. So here it goes.

   The short answer to “What is Classic Rock?” is “Well, I know it when I hear it.” This is subject to individual tastes and is absolutely true. But life is rarely as black and white as that.

   The monochrome answer is “It’s what I have been programmed to deem Classic Rock by my local station boasting the format ‘Classic Rock’.” And this is where the waters get really, really muddy. [Not to be confused with Muddy Waters who is definitely classic but not rock.]

   There are a few artists who most everyone would list as the backbone of Classic Rock – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, the Steve Miller Band and ZZ Top. But there are rules about even those artists in the tightly controlled format known as Classic Rock Radio [CRR]. For example, there is a dividing line for the Beatles. One rarely hears anything before the groundbreaking late 1965 album Rubber Soul on CRR. I Want To Hold Your Hand? She Loves You? A Hard Day’s Night? No, these are usually kept to Golden Oldies Radio. Why? In my personal opine, it has a lot to do with one of those lines that divides the Golden Oldies era from the Classic Rock Era – the switch from the single to the album as the primary means of music consumption.

   You can thank the Beatles for this as well. Although the Beatles would have many more hit singles, the aforementioned Rubber Soul was a line in the sand where they said “every track on the album should be as good as any track put out as a single.” Not to say that prior albums weren’t great. The original British release of A Hard Day’s Night [the one you now get on CD and vinyl] was an outstanding record and [again the original British release of] Help! was getting there even though I think there a couple of clunkers on there. Part of that line comes from the practice in Britain of putting singles out completely separate from albums. Which is why there are a handful of songs from the Beatles and Stones catalogs you can only get on compilation albums. For the Beatles, that includes songs like Day Tripper, We Can Work It Wout, Paperback Writer, Rain, Lady Madonna, Hey Jude, Get Back and Don’t Let Me Down. The Stones catalog has never been synched up the way the Beatles catalog was when the decision was made to put them out on CD as the original British releases from 1963 to 1966. With 1967’s Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles records were issued the same in the U.K and the U.S. [Except 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour which was the issued as the American album with the B side collecting the single tracks Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, Hello Goodbye, All You Need Is Love and Baby You’re A Rich Man.] The Stones albums would be synched worldwide with 67’s Their Satanic Majesties Request.  But a few of their non-LP tracks include It’s All Over Now, 19^th Nervous Breakdown, Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Honky Tonk Women. In Britain [I Can’t Get No] Satisfaction, Get Off Of My Cloud, The Last Time, Ruby Tuesday and Paint It Black are all non-LP singles!

   The other shift that for me marks the arrival of the Classic Rock Era [CRE] is the beginnings of the rise of FM radio. AM radio in the 60s was dominated by the Top 40 format. Play the hits! But with the uncontrolled format rising on FM radio, underground artists would begin to get exposure. Sure, there are bands that cross over to both – the Beatles, the Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival. While their record company release a cut down version of Whole Lotta Love but Led Zeppelin didn’t release singles so you would not hear them on top 40 / AM radio. The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Cream. The Grateful Dead. Janis Joplin.

   Because it is subjective, I personally place the Classic Rock Era in the general consensus range of 1967 to 1977. This coincides with the cleaning of the slate by the Punk and arrival of New Wave. [New Wave being a brilliant marketing term by Sire Records Seymour Stein in response to those radio station who said “we don’t play punk records.”]

   For me the watermark record is the arrival of the Cars’ first record. The Cars are another band that is a staple of CRR but personally I don’t consider them a ‘Classic Rock band.’ They touch on the Classic Rock Era though and fall under a heading I call The Golden Age of FM, which in my experience was approximately 1977 to about 1990. A lot of artists from TGAoFM wind up on CRR. Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Motley Crue.

   Although its origin is an Album Oriented Rock station in Cleveland in 1980, CRR is generally recognized as coming into its own in 1986. CRR is a very tightly controlled and heavily researched radio format. Originally aimed at the 25-34 year old white male, the demographic has shifted over the years and is now aimed at the 44-54 year old white male. This explains the updating of playlists now include totally non CRE acts such as Nirvana and other mainstays of the Grunge Era [1991 – 1996]. This is comparable to the changes in Golden Oldies Radio which slowly shifting from a 60s Top 40 to more of the 70s to currently being heavily 1980s. You can tell the difference because GOR played Madonna. And a lot of Michael Jackson.

   This is the confusion that is the whole basis of the starting question: “What is Classic Rock?”

   Per Wikipedia: Classic-rock radio programmers largely play "tried and proven" hit songs from the past based on their "high listener recognition and identification", says media academic Roy Shuker, who also identifies white male rock acts from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper-era through the end of the 1970s as the focus of their playlists.^[30] As Catherine Strong observes, classic rock songs are generally performed by white male acts from either the United States or the United Kingdom, "have a four-four time, very rarely exceed the time limit of four minutes, were composed by the musicians themselves, are sung in English, played by a 'classical' rock formation (drums, bass, guitar, keyboard instruments) and were released on a major label after 1964."^[

   Shifting demographics aside, my personal problem with the CRR format is that tight formatting. Because of that need for “high listener identification,” there’s a focus on 250 – 300 songs. In terms of your usual record buying public, averaging 10 songs per album, that’s about 30 CDs or albums worth of songs. To put that into more perspective, I am on my 44^th car mix CD of the 8 track era [appx 1967 – 1980] alone!

   With such tight focus the average radio listener is going to miss a lot of great music. For example, the 15 studio albums Rod Stewart participated from 1967 to 1979 are represented by the Faces’ Stay With Me and maybe 5 or 6 other songs. Jefferson Airplane [7 albums] would be deemed to have only ever done two three-minute songs: White Rabbit and Somebody To Love. Mountain [4 albums] is reduced to one two-and-a-half-minute song: Mississippi Queen. Don’t even get me going on never heard artists like Rory Gallagher, Johnny Winter and Jeff Beck / the Jeff Beck Group.

   My answer then is this:  The Classic Rock Era is an era of music made from 1967 to 1976 made by mostly American, Canadian and British artists encompassing the gerne of Rock / Rock and Roll and subjective sub-genres such as Progressive Rock, Singer-Songwriter, Country Rock, etc.

   The Classic Rock Radio format is one that plays some Classic Rock but is not limited to the range of the Classic Rock Era. Therefore, Classic Rock Radio plays some Classic Rock music but not everything on Classic Rock Radio is from the Classic Rock Era.

   Clear as mud, right?