Dating yourself :-)

 I can't rember all the cool music I listened to sailing down the coast, but George Harrison's "Any Road" was one that really stuck with me.  

The needle in the groove, the backwards messages, the amazing album covers. And the music was tied to something bigger than music. MTV took the music out of popular music and those little things, whatever they're called, that plug into your ear has made listening to it an isolating rather than a communal experience.

So I say Long Live Vinyl.

I play one of my old LPs on the living room turntable about once a week. Just to show how square I am, the album currently sitting on the turntable is one of the last of the LPs, Simon and Garfunkle, The Concert in Central Park (1981).

Nice post, Larry. Thanks.  

On a recent extra rough day after visiting a family member ill in the hospital, my friend and I crawled our weary selves into a fast food restaurant, in dire need of coffee and grub.

This song was on the sound system. Somehow very appropriate to a "when it rains, it pours" day.

John Prine, Bruised Orange.

Sometimes I can't tell if my albums are aging or if I need a new needle. Some of them are in such bad shape it sounds like someone is frying bacon in the background.  When I hear that I know I'm hearing some history in there.

DIY music is pretty heavily entrenched in the MP3 method. It's cheap, easy and accessible the three ingredients for a DIY project.

The upside to digital music is it's use in live show promotion. It used to be, if you were in a punk band, someone had to pull teeth to track down your bands tape, then find a show flyer tacked to a wall, then make it toy our show. While that is romantic and all, it meant small, albeit dedicated crowds.

Now, with myspaces and live journals and what not, punk and other independent bands have a much easier time getting their music out directly to the people who want to hear it. Subsequently, punk shows are easier to find and better attended. Meat Loaf might not be selling as many records, but you can find a good show on pretty much any given weekend.

Here are some good bands you might not ordinarily hear:

The Coyotes (Oly to Seattle transplants) http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=9328415

& 

The Hail Seizures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjZYreNld-E&feature=related 

Without digital media we could never have sat down and shared this music.

As much as I love my computer, I really love my records though. Long live the mail order freak 7" fan club!

My roommate in college gave me a crash course in indy music, as well as a lot of old stuff I hadn't heard. When I came to college, I was listening to Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Ella Fitzgerald, Jackson Browne, classic rock, old American folk music, and what one of my less-than-tactful dorm neighbors referred to as "gay pirate music" (Irish folk). My roommate had a turntable and a fake ID, and we would sit around with big glasses of Karkov vodka ("The spirit of Minnesota!") or Christian Brothers brandy and listen to The Velvet Underground, the Talking Heads, the Raincoats, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Half Japanese, Pavement, The Replacements, Galaxie 500 and Luna, and some really cool French pop.

We also started a tradition called Monday Night Irish Poets Drinking Club ("minipdic") where I would dj irish folk and we'd recite Yeats, Heaney, Tom McCarthy and (very rarely, that scumbag wannabe of a poet) John Montague, and pay homage to our Poetry Prof, John Bernstein (RIP, best teacher ever). There were about half a dozen of us who memorized the songs, and consequently we threw the best St. Patty's Day party. It definitely went both ways.

My roommate had helped start a record label out of her parents apartment in high school in NYC, called Radio Argot (I still have a tshirt), and they put out four albums, if I remember correctly: The I Live the Life of a Movie Star Secret Hideout's Cherries Constantine and Atom Blast, Urban Folk Legends by this German band called the Bartlebees, and one by a Japanese band (I think). 

I had always liked music, but I never really knew what it was for.

A few years later, my first apartment: I now had my own turntable and very little furniture (I had a chair named Penelope and a table made from a door). In between working two jobs, I would lie on my back on the hardwood floor listening to records and smoking cigarettes, or stay up until 3 a.m. making mixtapes and drinking coffee and reading Gottlob Frege. 

I am who I am today because of what happened in Turck 209, the magical dormroom of music initiation and unspeakable excesses.

"Surfing" / the Ventures (from the early 1960s). In monoaural! And it is damn good stuff! My copy is in pretty good shape too.

I miss 87.7 the Pirate and the Surf Day. I sure hope he wasn't closed down by the Feds with a stiff fine. Thomas Jefferson and I wouldn't like that.

Dean Martin's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1. Includes Everybody Loves Somebody, You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You, and Houston. Bruce Pavitt, now a SubPop gazillionaire, was playing this last song when I went to visit him ca. 1982 in his apartment above and west of the present Danger Room. He was the only other person of my generation I knew who appreciated Dino as a singer.

Also tonight: Florence Foster Jenkins on Side A, Jenny Williams and Thomas Burns on Side B-- The Glory (????) of the Human Voice. When Florence was singing all four of my cats ran out the door. Only by shaking a bag of crunchy treats was I able to bribe them back inside before it got dark and they became prey to marauding raccoons. 

Here's Buddy Greco (1968?)

He's still alive so far as I know.

Cloud Nine / George Harrison (1987). There is no mistaking George on guitar once the needle drops into the groove. One of the better albums by a former Beatle. It's interesing that out of the four, George seems to have maintained the Beatles "sound" more than the others, at least to my ear. Great songs in this one, including George's take on his Beatles experience, "When We Was Fab."

Burt Bacharach Make It Easy On Yourself (1969).

You couldn't get away from this guy in the 1960s-early 1970s, and his work was easy to make fun of for us young folks. Today I can appreciate his pop music for what it is and feel some nostalgia when it plays. In this album, Burt actually sings the album title song, which was probably a big mistake.  

Steve Wolcheck and His Polka Kings, Polka Party (Looks like it is from the 1950s)

Put this baby on the turntable, dance around and frighten your cats! We know how to get the morning started right-smart up here in the hills.

Blame Daylight Savings.