Random Record Revisit

Sheer Heart Attack [1974] – Queen

 

   Producer Roy Thomas Baker passed almost two weeks ago on April 12th [although it was not announced until ten days alter on the 22rd. Of course, I know who RTB is [was] – famously producing four of the first seven Queen albums and the first three Cars albums as well as Foreigner’s Head Games and Journey’s Infinity and Evolution. He famously assisted Queen achieve the multiple layers of vocals on Bohemian Rhapsody [and its bookend, Brian May’s The Prophet Song]. In a quick Facebook thank you, I eschewed the obvious RTB produced song and posted In the Lap Of the Gods… Revisited. That’s the way my mind works. So as a tribute to Roy Thomas Baker, I went back and listened to Sheer Heart Attack a couple of times.

   Sheer Heart Attack is currently my favorite Queen album because I burned myself out on A Night At the Opera a long time ago. Jazz and The Game stand tall and Queen II is pretty good but Sheer Heart Attack I can still put on and play fully and a couple of times in a sitting. It very easily slides from style to style with tongue planted firmly in cheek. In taking the Queen catalog as a whole, it seems that they had to make Sheer Heart Attack as a prelude to A Night At the Opera.

   The album kicks off with Brian May’s powerhouse Brighton Rock. The middle section beginning at 2:40 allows May to fire off some flaming lead work before moving into the section with May playing against himself using an Echoplex [3:20 – 4:20] before the band jumps back in for the final verse and he ride out. It’s followed b Queen’s big hit [# 2 U.K., # 12 U.S.], Killer Queen. What can I say about Killer Queen? If someone asked about Queen, this is the song I would hand them and say “Here’s a starting point. This is a great example of all that they do.” It’s followed by the A-side medley of Roger Taylor’s paean of rock and youth Tenement Funster into Freddie Mercury’s sinister con man threatening to end one with a Flick Of the Wrist if one fails to cough up what is owed…this somehow melts into the pretty melody of Lily Of the Valley. The side ends with May’s other great rocker of the album, Now I’m Here.  Is this an homage to one of those ladies of the road that bands sometimes encounter? I’ll leave that to the imagination of those who deem to look up the lyrics. Of course “go, go, go little queenie” quotes the lyric master Charles Edward Anderson Berry.

   Side two plays almost as one long medley [there are a couple of seconds between the end of Stone Cold Crazy and the beginning of Dear Friends, one supposes to allow the listener to catch their breath after the blitz of SCC]. It leads of with In the Lap Of the Gods with a heavily treated and slowed vocal by Freddie with Roger’s impossibly high wails flying in and out of the background. It is followed by the blistering proto metal of Stone Cold Crazy. At only 2:16, it’s played at a pace as if the band had five minutes left of the day’s session before being charged overtime! As noted, its intensity demands a moment to catch your breath before flowing into Brian May’s lullaby of Dear Friends executed by Freddie and a piano with a few soft background vocals. This rides into John Deacon’s first song to appear on an album, Misfire. One can hear elements of what will come in his next composition, You’re My Best Friend. That is followed by the purely camp, vaudeville style Bring Back That Leroy Brown featuring a short appearance of Brian May’s fathers ukelele banjo. That is followed by the acoustic lead plod of May’s She Makes Me [Stormtrooper In Stilettos]. It is May’s lone vocal track on the albums and has  Taylor’s drums drowning in reverb and guitars droning. In the last minute various sirens and bomb bursts fade in and out of a heavy panting. In a strange way it’s hypnotically beautiful. A second later Freddie is back high in his range kicking off In the Lap Of the Gods… Revisited with a soft “its so eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasy…”   Really it has no connection to In the Lap Of the Gods unless one takes the literal meaning that one is leaving one’s fate in the hands of the gods – whether they smile and grant favor and success or disprove and cause failure. One can read many things into the lyrics of course, that’s what’s fun about reading lyrics. Anyway, the song simmers through a verse, Roger and John restrained, tied to Freddie’s piano in the verses until Freddie’s vocals in the verses until Brian brings a little thunder in the chorus, another slowly bubbling tight verse, then Brian unleashes the hammer of the gods…. It rides out over four more repeats of the chorus, each one building with more layers of background vocals before an “explosion” ends the album.

   The sheer diversity of the album marks the shift from Queen as a sort of prog-rock band into …well, Queen! Meaning they can shift styles at the drop of a hat, heavy and light, serious but fun, serious but not that serious. Layered vocals will remain a part of the sound even after Roy Thomas Baker moved on. Sheer Heat Attack stands as a band gaining the confidence to do  what they want to do, not following trends nor certainly the wishes of the record company.

   Little did I realize when Lederman introduced me to Queen via A Night At the Opera and Jazz [two of the RTB produced albums] I would be introduced to such a range of music. Of course I like some more than others and I’ve gone through my phases with them but they remain a mainstay in my collection.

 

Random Record Revisited:

Back To the Bars [1978] – Todd Rundgren

   Todd’s last album of the decade is this double LP live set. Recorded at more intimate venues [New York’s Bottom Line, Los Angeles’ Roxy Theater and Cleveland’s Agora – yes, the original “Hello Cleveland!”], this is a pretty good retrospective.

   That said, this is really as much a Utopia as it is a Todd Rundgren record as the band plays on sides 1 and 4, even though ‘technically’ only one song [Love In Action] on the album is a Utopia song.  In my mind, if Todd had focused on Utopia, they could have challenged the Cars for the New Wave Crown. However, Todd being Todd just ping-ponged from Oops! Wrong Planet and Adventures In Utopia to the Beatle-esque Deface the Music to the political Swing To the Right before landing back in pop world with the brilliant power pop of Utopia [an album I was introduced to by Tracey Berry] and POV. Throw in a couple of Todd solo albums and the forgettable Utopia album Oblivion and it’s pretty clear that even the uber prolific Todd was become a little stretched.

   Oops! Wrong Band. I was talking about Back To the Bars.

   The record glides along swimmingly through the first six songs. The great mid tempo pop of Real Man and Love Of the Common Man slow down into The Verb ‘To Love’ then rise into the guitar heavy power pop of Love In Action. The action slows again as we go into the solo Todd on piano reading of A Dream Goes On Forever. Good Lord this song with this arrangement could have been a show stopper for Daryl Hall. Two Philly soul brothers! If you have not seen Todd and Daryl togethers, definitely check out their episodes of Live from Daryl’s House! [Here is The Last Ride originally featured on Todd’s Todd album.] Then it’s back to Todd’s offbeat pop for Sometimes I Don’t Know What I Feel. The record hiccups with the faux country The Range War but picks up with the heavy power of Black And White and then what seems is going to be a subdued take of The Last Ride which picks with a couple of great sax solo from Bobby Sedita and then into some fiery guitar from Todd over the last 2 minutes. Oddly it goes into Todd on acoustic guitar on Cliché. It works but it’s an odd transition. The side / CD 1 ends the Todd ballad Don’t You Ever Learn with it’s almost Zappa-esque dissonant riff.

   Side 3 opens with Todd on the piano for an odd cover of Never Never Land from Peter Pan. Todd covered the song on his psychedelic A Wizard, A True Star album and three of the four songs on this side are from that album. The outlier is track 2, a hard, hot take of Black Maria from Something / Anything? It’s followed by the waltz time of Zen Archer. The majority of the side is the soul medley from Wizard: the Impressions I’m So Proud > the Miracles Ooh Baby Baby > the Intruders La La Means I Love You > Todd’s own Hello It’s Me. Utopia is back as side 4 kicks off with one of my favorites from Something, the oft anthologized It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference. I love how in the booklet Todd says “Most people think it means ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference to me if you love me or not.’ I always thought it meant ‘If you really did, then why did you act like such a schmuck?’” It’s hard to believe that the single of Difference didn’t gain any traction for this album. The next 2 tracks come from Todd’s Zen / prog-rock album Initiation, Eastern Intrigue and the title track. Given the breadth of Todd’s work, a little prog doesn’t seem too out of place. Eastern Initiation is unlikely to be found in my list of favorite Todd tracks. Initiation though is a pretty high energy cut and it might now find it’s way onto one of those road CDs of mine. The high energy continues with a run through Couldn’t I Just Tell You. The album ends with an all star take of Hello It’s Me featuring Hall & Oates and Stevie Nicks on vocals and the mighty mite Rick Derringer on guitar.

   If this was meant to be a definitive career spanning retrospective perhaps Back To the Bars omits some of Todd’s bigger numbers, notably We Gotta Get You A Woman and the then current Can We Still Be Friends, with I Saw the Light appearing at the end of a medley. But live albums tend to be a snapshot of the artist at the moment. Would I personally have traded off a couple of the tracks for Can We Still Be Friends and maybe Just One Victory or Heavy Metal Kids? Probably but that’s just my preference and I don’t know the process they used to piece this together and what was available. Still if someone asked for a good starting point for an introduction to Todd Rundgren, I would certainly offer up Back To the Bars.

 

Fun fact: two of Todd’s LPs from the 70s, 1973s A Wizard, A True Star [55:56] and 1975s Initiation [68:11] pushed the limits of how much information could be put onto a double sided LP. Had they been double albums as most albums of those lengths would have been, Todd would have put out 4 double albums in a row.

 Moving Day 

   We are in the middle of moving my mother.

   The house she / we have lived in for 43 years will soon be someone else’s home.

   “My Room” will be someone else’s room. There will be new masters in the master bedroom. Someone else will be making dinners in the kitchen and eating them in the dining “room.” Someone else will be living in the living room.

   Rooms and closets have been emptied in the years and filled back up but this is different.

   This was going to happen at “some day..” I’m not sure I ever thought it would be while Mom was still with us but opportunity knocked and viola! The big furniture is moved. The internet and TV service is set up. Clothes and dishes close to put away. But there’s a lot of stuff in the back of cupboards, drawers, closets and the garage.

   I’m not sure it’s really sunk in.  We’re talking about the house of my formative years – a smidge of middle school and all of my high school years. So many memories. A lot of family and extended family, especially Leones, Hornes and Zottolas [and one “Partymobile”] fun. Some very personal stuff.

   What it has stirred up is a deeper sense of loss – the thought that someday someone else is going to live in my grandparents’ house. Literally, the house my grandfather built.

   It’s been a rock, a constant touch place of my whole life -almost or all [depending when I post this] 58 years. My mother’s 78 years. I can’t imagine someone else’s family making dinner in that kitchen. I can’t imagine a different kitchen table in there or a different family gathered around it. And the changes that would need to be made… at least one of the bathrooms gets redone which is might necessitate blowing out a wall. The carpet gets pulled. Maybe the linoleum in the kitchen replaced.

   This seems a tragedy to me [except that carpet] because it HAS been a rock. Nothing seems to have been changed there for decades. Okay, the TVs and the telephones have been updated and the pictures rearranged but other than that it seems the same for as long as I can remember and as far back as the family photos go. But it’s such a haven that my heaven would be this place. The smell of dew on the clover in the morning, my grandfather whistling passing through the basement, the aroma of a roast in grandma’s magical oven, a cool evening with lightning bugs lighting up the field.

   Of course, I would like to see it stay in the family forever but I feel that it will not be. We, the ‘grandchildren’ are pushing through our 50s and a few into their 60s. All have their own lives and homes and their own parents long time homes where other memories are entwined and I just don’t think any of us would take it over. Their children i.e. the great grandchildren might not have anymore than a fleeting connection to the place. I don’t know, though - having always been so far away I really don’t have a clue about a lot of my extended family.  Not my own cousins, certainly not their kids. There has always been a sadness in my heart about that. Family but almost strangers.

   But we are a fun bunch when we get together! There is a bond, a real genuine love that flows amongst us not unlike The Force. It surrounds us and penetrates us and binds us together in a way I don’t see in other families.

   People say that there’s a difference between a house and a home. Bricks and wood and windows are the house, it’s the people that make it a home. My grandparent’s house has always been home. I hope it remains a home to all of us as long as I am on his plane. Having said that, I hope when we are gone, someone else makes it a home for as many decades as out family has and memories just as beloved as mine become a part of their family. And I hope that another family does the same with Mom’s house.

   I don’t want to be a political blogger. I don't want to be a social commentator and certainly NOT any kind of influencer.

    I don’t. I also don’t want to be a contributor of the divisiveness on social media.

    I want to echo the philosophy of George Carlin and not give a fuck about the outcome. I want to sit idly by and just observe without caring about what’s going to happen and to look at it and say “You got what you deserved and you deserved what you get.” I’m just not there yet.

   I still care [as of today, we’ll see in a few more weeks] and I want to speak my peace. But I want to speak my peace without people adding their two cents about why I am wrong and without people arguing about why I am right and without the discourse that happens on social media platforms.

   So I will do it here. I KNOW nobody’s reading me here. I just want to unload my head.

 

   So despite what the public may be inferring from the words out of the President’s mouth and mouthpieces, tariffs are not paid by the exporter / exporting country. Tariffs are paid by the importer upon receipt.

   Tariffs are a tax. That money goes into the general fund.

   The idea of the tariff on the imported good is to make it more expensive, so expensive that the importer seeks out a local / domestic supplier of the same good.

   Do I personally understand why it is cheaper to import rolled steel from China than to get American steel? I do not. Is it inefficiency in the American maker’s outdated plants? Exorbitant labor costs due to a shortage of labor? Shipping costs? Some combination of all of these things and more?

   It’s apparent in the last few weeks that the President is looking at the Untied States as a business that’s losing money. How do you fix that? Well, you lower your outgoing [labor costs, office supplies, foreign aid, domestic programs] and try to add income [but without raising income taxes which hurt the economy you’re trying to save and piss off your billionaire donor friends]. And without touching third rail hot button issues like Social Security. The word he uses continuously is “deal.” He wants to make a better deal for the American people. How adding a quarter to the price of Mexican avocados or $ 10.00 to the price of Canadian whiskey is a better deal for the American people is a head scratcher. Oh, I’m sure it just temporary… yet prices never seem to quite go down after the public mumbles under their breath and shows that they are willing to cough up more dough for a product.

   [Or the producer pulls the old sleight of hand putting out less product in a similar sized can or box. Did you know that peanut butter companies use the same ‘jar’ but they increased the size of the punt on the bottom of it to decrease volume? Got to read those labels!]

   Unfortunately, the President can not have the United States go into Chapter Eleven bankruptcy reorganization., a process he is very familiar with having used it six times himself.

   Cutting spending is a good idea. Adding income into the treasury is a good idea. The way The President is doing it is not a good idea. Of course, The President doesn’t trust anyone anymore, least of all the Republicans in Congress. He doesn’t want anyone telling him “that’s not the way it’s done in Washington” anymore. After reading Bob Wooward’s Fear: Trump In the White House, I knew the second he was declared the winner that this was going to be  a much different term than Trump 45. This time, he was [is] going to have people who would swear allegiance to Donald J. Trump uber alles [above all]. Not the Constitution [as seen on day one when he signed the unconstitutional suspension of article 1 of the 14^th amendment] and certainly not the Republican Party.

   So he is not going to use Congress to do anything if he doesn’t have to. He is arbitrarily making the Executive Branch and by fiat, himself the most powerful force in the country.

   I certainly hope that the Judiciary finds the balls to stand up for what is right – that is separation of powers and the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States that Mr. Trump swore to preserve protect and defend on January 20^th. The oath does not include the phasing “unless I don’t want to” or “unless it interferes with my personal ambitions.” Although Mr. Trump also did not place his hand on The Holy Bible when he took the oath this time, so maybe that is his version of “I crossed my fingers.”

   So far, this has gone about like I expected. I knew it was going to be a shitstorm and so far it has. I know I am just going to have to hunker down and survive four more years of blowhard, far right bible thumping asshats like I have been suffering here in Texas since George W. left the state to become the President.

   I know the days of co-operation and moderation have probably gone the way of Hailey’s Comet – not to be seen again in my lifetime. I hope to see a slight swing of the pendulum back towards Common Sense again but it’s likely just wishful thinking.

   I guess I am just at the age where I look around and echo the voices of generation before me and bemoan “These are the end times.”

 

Random Record Revisited

In Color [1977] – Cheap Trick

   Today I was looking for a Cheap Tick song that was my earworm of the day. It’s never a bad day when Cheap Trick is an earworm. Cheap Trick might be THE ultimate Power Pop band and there’s a ton of songs that stick in the grey matter – I Can’t Take It, Stop This Game, Dream Police, Surrender, I Want You To Want Me, She’s Tight – and that’s without breaking a sweat! I mean really, literally a ton of great songs. And the Tricksters have been putting out solid rock for over 55 years. Honestly, not every album is a gem and some are downright “Meh!” – I’m looking at you 1986’s The Doctor. But most every one has at least a couple of songs that put smile on yer face.

   The song I though was much earlier in the catalog tuned out to be Anytime, the lead track from the 1997 self titled offering

live version on You Tube: https://youtu.be/r0MFcAeqG0A?si=vsziFTq4b9jo0VKV

   Anyway, after blasting through that a couple of times and a couple live outtakes, I scrolled down past Heaven Tonight to what I think is [was?] my least favorite of the original trio, In Color [sometimes also And In Black And White].

   Why was In Color not one of my favorite Cheap Trick records? I had this memory of this being Cheap Trick tamed. It seemed too something –  too clean or too polished. It always seemed like poor production. It’s definitely heavy in the mid range. But I think here the problem all along has been what’s between my ears. After listening to the power of those songs on the Budokan record for all these years, the studio versions DO seem tame!

   The best example is comparing the studio version of the song that would propel them to the stratosphere in 2 years: I Want You To Want Me. If you’ve listened to a classic rock station anytime, the Budokan version is burned into your brain. And well it should be. It’s just 3 minutes and 45 seconds of some of the most perfect power pop in the history of rock with backing vocals by 10,000 or so Japanese teens.

   The studio version is almost country-ish. It just kinda bumpkins along led by a piano and a simple plodding bass. Rick Nielsen’s fills are as country as country can be, really channeling his inner Albert Lee or James Burton. There’s some really sweet, Beatle-esque harmonies. Then a hokey honky-tonk piano solo. It’s really almost boring. There’s no POWER to the POP!

   Ain;t that a shame?

   But I can see now that is just one example of what I previously thought about the record as a whole. Had I been paying closer attention, I would have seen [or remembered] that the songs are absolute killers, as evidenced by the inclusion of 6 of the songs on the original At Budokan album. [There are 9 In Color tracks on The Complete Concert’s 19 song set.]

   For example, the next track on the album, You’re All Talk shows off the band’s strengths. The guitars are back! Tom Petersson is layin’ down some inventive fuzz driven bass, Bun E. drives it with a heavy right foot and Robin Zander is… well, Robin Zander is one of a kind. It’s there on Big Eyes and Downed and Oh Caroline and Come On, Come On and So Good To See You. As a matter of fact, I Want You To Want Me is the only track on here that doesn’t fit the standard Cheap Trick mold!

   My apologies Cheap Trick. I have been slagging off an album that didn’t deserve a slagging for many years.

 

Random Record Revisit:

Majesty Shredding – Superchunk [2010]

   Didja ever have a favorite band that you just loved and loved and loved and then one day they put out a new album and you’re just “over them?” Superchunk became that band for me.

   I was turned on to the Chunk by Mr. Dunnigan in 1994. We spun side 1 of Foolish a lot at Chaz Dunnigan and hen I spun it a lot more at home. The next four records became staples in my little red truck [1990 – 2000] and little black truck [2000 – 2010]. I put on a lot of miles back in those years so there was a lot of Chunking going on. Despite the fact that the band went on deep hiatus from 2002 to 2010. That was fine – 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up was as perfect a record as the band ever made. So it was a surprise when the Leaves In the Gutter EP appeared in 2008, a single in 2009 and finally an album in 2010.

   My initial excitement at the idea of Majesty Shredding turned to indisposition. While the kick off song Digging For Something fed my Chunk jones with a feel of Shutting Up, the second cut My Gap Feels Weird was just not for me. Musically it harkens back to the early 90s but I just don’t dig a lyric of “my gap feels weird.” Rosemarie is pretty stock mid-tempo Superchunk. Crossed Wires [the first single] is pure Superchunk power pop, which is to say pretty power pop until you get to the middle eight / bridge where they tend to go somewhere that a “normal” [i.e. popular, radio ready] song would not go. Slow Drip would fall under that same umbrella. Fractures In Plaster is a good slower track – nice little lead guitar lick 00:06 – 00:17. The kind of thing that keeps Superchunk off mainstream radio. I think it’s Jim Wilbur on that one. [Mac and Jim are just listed as guitars, no “lead.”] Learned to Surf was originally on the Leaves In the Gutter but this version [or remake] is heavily compressed and lacks the jangly charm of the “single” version. Winter Games is more mid-tempo Chunky goodness. Rope Light is more back to the roots Chunk. Hot Tubes feels like an out take from the late albums Hello Hawk [1999] or Here’s To Shutting Up – not that that’s bad!

   If you ever ask yourself [or ask me] “why revisit records haven’t heard in a while and obviously aren’t missing?” Everything At Once is your answer. I had completely forgotten this song. It starts off with some ambient noise, then breaks into some Chunkian chording under some simple “whoo hoo hoo hoos”s for a couple of choruses and the goes into a typical Mac McCaughan vocals – usually buried in the noise so that you feel them and get sounds more than real words – but then the chorus comes up: So here’s a song about nothing / And everything at once / All the minutes and the months / Nothing and everything at once.” Then there’s a little instrumental break, then some more whoo hoos, an extended chorus, a little middle eight action, another swing through the whoo hoos on through the four minute mark and then a fairly fast fade out. I mean there’s nothing more I can say. It’s power pop for the “alternative” crowd and it’s just a slice of musical heaven.

   The “bonus tack” February Punk is another 2:46 of early Chunk roots. I forget if this was a download track with the single or maybe from buying from Merge directly. The player just went to the next album in the queue, 1991’s No Pocky For Kitty and February Punk just fits right in there.

   I can think of many reasons why this didn’t become a hardcore favorite but number one is going to be that it came out in 2010. By 2010, I had a CD player in the car and I do not play these factory CDs in my vehicles – well not very often. By that time, I was focused on making my car mix CDs [8 Track Years, Walkman Years and FM Flashback] and rarely listened to whole albums anymore. Honestly, I still don’t listen to whole albums anymore, in the car or otherwise. I don’t recall ever loading Majesty Shredding into my work MP3 player either. It just kind of fell off of my radar pretty quickly.

   Secondly, I just lost interest in the band. I think that happens to lots of bands after a decade or so. With exceptions of source – R.E.M. seemed like a band that didn’t repeat a lot of things so their records always seemed fresh. But most bands kind of found their formula and kept doing what they did.

   Majesty Shredding is not a bad album but it just feels like I’ve heard it all before. So if I’m in the mood for some Superchunk, I’m obviously going to go back the ones I already know and love.

   Field Of Dreams is on – maybe it was already on the schedule being that it is the end the “summer” but likely it’s a tribute to James Earl Jones. Of course Jones’ soliloquy on baseball stands as one of the truest statements on America’s yen for nostalgia and simpler times even as we tear down our grandfather’s life’s work to build Mc Mansions and freeways.

   If I was in those bleachers in Field Of Dreams, my seats would be the bleachers on the first base side at Watt Powell Park. It’s Charleston West [by God] Virginia circa 1976. The AAA [International League] Charleston Charlies are hosting their major league sponsor, my beloved   Pittsburgh Pirates.

   We got to see some future major league talent roll through Charleston. The 76 team had pitchers Ken Macha and Doug Bair, shortstop Craig Reynolds, catcher Steve Nicosa and outfielders Miguel Dilone and Tony Armas. Pitchers John Candelaria and Kent Tekulve and outfielder Omar Moreno had been with the Charlies in ’75 and were now with the big club. Going from a big astroturf collusion like Three Rivers Stadium to the rinky dink confines of Watt Powell with the B&O just beyond the outfield and the mountain as a backdrop must have been quite a change. But it’s only one game and it’s only half an hour by plane or maybe six on the bus back to Three Rivers.

   The Bucs were chasing down the wrong end of the state Phillies for the NL East title – they would ultimately end up 9 games back of the Steve Carlton, Larry Bowa, Greg Luzinski and Mike Schmidt led Phils who lost the pennant to [ugh!] Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine. The Reds would sweep the Phillies in the NLCS and the Yankees in the Series to complete the only perfect post season in the League Championship era.

   But back to the game. Me and Dad are on the wooden bleachers, maybe second row. And I’m seeing my heroes – Willie Stargell, Dave Parker, Frank Tavares, Al Oliver playing in our little burg! Of course I have my glove and we almost caught a foul ball off 2^nd baseman Rennie Stennett bat – it hit the guy just to our right and he managed to hang on to it. And I wandered down to the bullpen and got Larry Demery to sign his baseball card.

   I don’t remember much else, which is why I’d like to go back. Any box score I had would have been erased and erased as I needed scorecards for dice baseball [NOT Strat-O-Matic, just a simple two dice game me and my cousin Hal would play]. Always the Reds versus the Pirates. Always. I knew those two line ups cold.

   I didn’t know it then but the Pirates would end their affiliation with the Charlies that winter. Shortly after the opening of the 1977 season, we moved to Arlington, TX anyway. American League baseball? Well, it’s the only game in town. And those late 70s / early 80s Rangers teams were colorful and entertaining to say the least. Bump Wills, Toby Harrah, Jim Sundberg. A couple familiar names - centerfielder Al “Scoops” Oliver and pitcher Dock Ellis came to town for a spell. Evenings on metal bleachers that had been baking all day in the Texas sun? Yes, please! On the other hand we got to see other great players of the era – George Brett and the Royals, Reggie Jackson with both the Yankees and the Angels.

   But one night – to be 9 years old again. The smell of the hot dogs and popcorn, the feel of the well-worn wooden bleachers with no backs, me and my dad just enjoying a game. Yeah, I could do that

 

   “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

    “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

   “This field, this game -- it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

   “People will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”

 

   Amen.