Discography Year Two - Week 32

For those of you who don't remember (I'm talking to the broader world, and not the esteemed members of our Discography family) it's our latest thematic week.  This one was chosen by the truly excellent Cyndi Brandenburg.  Here are her directions:

"For the next thematic week, each of you will have to revisit the dark
recesses of your early adolescent brains.  As you enter those green
grimy walls hung with cobwebs, try to ignore the possibility that this
is what eternity looks like, and instead  focus on the treasure hunt
task at hand. Here is what you are looking for:

What were among the very first albums that you personally purchased
for yourself, probably in middle school or high school and in the form
of vinyl or CD?  What popular song(s) compelled you to make said
choices? And most importantly, what unknown song did you discover as a
result, as a cut buried deep, that proved to be the kind of hidden gem
that redeems your naive choice in ways that still make you happy?"

We are down to four months left before the end of our second year.  I suspect that we'll take a little break then, although not too long.

Dave Wallace

The Fabulous Poodles - Mirror Star

I'm not sure that this song technically meets the requirements of this week's theme as described by Cyndi.  But it was the first song that occurred to me, and I hadn't even thought about the song in years, so it definitely emerged from "the dark recesses" of my "early adolescent brain."  Rather than being a surprising deep cut from an album, I bought the Fabulous Poodles's album specifically for this song.  I liked some other things from that record (and it definitely was a record), but this was easily the best thing on it.  A minor hit for the Poodles, I love the Kinks-vibe of the song. I send it out to all of you who may have played being a mirror star at some point.

Kevin Andrews

When I was born in 1960 I had three siblings, who were 9, 13, and 14. I think my sister, 13 at the time, was responsible for bringing most of the records into the house for the next ten or fifteen years. Between her and AM radio in 1960’s Philadelphia, there was plenty of music to go around. Consequently, my appreciation started early. I must have started buying 45s around the age of eight or nine: Elvis Presley’s In The Ghetto (Seriously?), David Bowie’s Space Oddity, Cat Stevens’s Wild World. The Cat Stevens track must have stuck with me. 

The first album I owned was Cat Stevens’s Teaser and The Firecat.  My favorite track was Peace Train  At the time, it seemed to my 11-year-old self that the adults of the world had fucked things up pretty good and that someday when my generation came of age, things would get fixed. Yeah, so much for that. It reminds me of a time when I could feel hopeful about the future in spite of assignations, Kent State, Cambodia, etc. I’m tempted to be optimistic sometimes and then I read the Islamaphobic comments under this beautiful song and remember some people will go on hating. I can choose not to.

Oh, please train.

Mike Kelly

Drain You -- Nirvana 

Like most self-respecting middle schoolers with an aesthetic that departed from the Color Me Badds of this world, I bought Nirvana's Nevermind. I didn't really understand what I was listening to but I knew it was different from the hair bands I had l heard thus far. It didn't hurt that Kelly Siedel (a hot 9th grader) had the concert t-shirt.  

Put differently, I was the very dude Kurt Cobain wrote about in the chorus of In Bloom.  As April turned to May, I got a little more sophisticated about what I was hearing and read the liner notes for the lyrics and the poignancy of the record became more clear to my 7th grade self.  I finally listened to other songs aside from Lithium (I could understand the words) and Smells Like Teen Spirit (because Dave Grohl goes hard) and found Drain You.  

What makes this deep track such a hidden gem was that up until that point, the songs I heard offered up a wholly sanitized version of romance replete with teddy bears, roses and Boyz II Men songs. It was an ideal of what it meant to like someone else that even then I remember being bored by.  

So when KC screamed about simultaneously making out and eating dinner, a whole slew of possibilities that departed from the anesthetized awkwardness of trying to make everything perfect came into sight.

Dave Kelley

I only have one sibling and she is seven years younger than me.  My parents were into their thirties when I was born and had no interest in rock music at all.  They liked big band music from the 30's and 40's and the classic crooners like Sinatra and Nat King Cole.  Suffice it to say that my introduction to rock music came later than most.

In high school we had an aesthetics class, and the teacher was cool enough to let Dave Wallace and another friend named Scott do a presentation on the music of The Who.  I was instantly hooked.  The first record I bought was Who's Next.  I got it in 1978 on vinyl.  I listened to it non-stop and at amazingly high volume when home alone.  The classic songs on that record: "Won't Get Fooled Again", "Behind Blue Eyes", and "Baba O'Reilly" were the ones that most attracted me initially.  That is understandable because they are fucking awesome and still hold up today.  The Who and Stevie Wonder are the only musicians whose early 1970's synthesizer use still sounds great in 2018.

Perhaps my favorite song now from the record is "Bargain".  I think that is partially because it was not overplayed for decades like some of the others.  It is also just an amazing song that captures many of the best elements of The Who IMHO.  The rhythm section is still unmatched in the history of rock music to me.  Moon at times played lead drums, and the bass is amazing as well.  Daltrey was never the greatest singer, but he had the 70's cock rock style down cold.  Pete played an amazing rhythmic sort of lead guitar and was also one of the great song writers in the history of rock music.  "Bargain" features both he and Daltrey singing lead.

At one time my record collection consisted of every release by The Who, a couple of bootleg live albums, and a couple of their solo releases.  The only other record I owned was "Darkness" which I won in a record store giveaway.  Then I saw Bruce on The River tour, and I had a new obsession.  I am glad I am no longer so fixated on one or two artists, but I still love The Who and am taken back in time whenever I hear them.

Alice Neiley

Well, we're closing in on the end of the semester, which I'm rather happy about this year. It's been a doozy. The only thing I'm pointedly UNHAPPY about is that the blog will be on hiatus for the summer months. What am I supposed to read on Saturdays now?? 

That said, Cyndi's crazy theme week took me for quite a ride. Given that I was sort of...well...a geek in middle and high school. I mention this a lot, only because of how shocked I still am to have found so many other geeks (which makes me feel like less of one ;)). Anyway, I suspect all of us had similar nerd experiences way back when in one way or another, so I'll specify. I sang to myself in the empty auditorium at lunch, read while I walked, looked for four leaf clovers by myself every recess in a patch of grass by the middle school fence, knew nothing (and I mean NOTHING) about sex until I was in college, had no awareness of Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Eminem, or Missy Elliott, and hung out with the band kids even though I wasn't in band. Any questions? I thought not. 

That said, there is no question about the first album I purchased for myself: the soundtrack to the Sister Act II movie. It was released in 1993, but I watched the movie for the first time in 1996 then immediately bought the soundtrack. Some of you may know, this is the Sister Act with Lauryn Hill in it, though I only knew her as Rita Louise Watson (her character in the movie), a role she mastered a year or two before joining the Fugees and 5 years prior to the release of her Miseducation Album.  So. I suppose you could say "I knew her when", but it attests to my geekiness that the Miseducation album took 10 more years to show up on my radar because the next albums I bought for myself after the SAII soundtrack obsession were in 1999/2000, and they were Ella Fitzgerald sings Cole Porter and Gershwin, and Stevie Wonder's greatest hits...*pushes up glasses shyly*. 

Anyway, I bought the soundtrack because I wanted so desperately to go to a high school with a choir like that, and listening to the choir tunes gave me that chest-inflating energy we all want out of our education/vocation/etc., and took me out of my actual life and into the one of a badass singer in a badass choir with badass friends.  Specifically, the 'choir's' version of 'Joyful Joyful' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Us9wOGOCLM&index=9&list=PLGPBMkAH50UA6P4KXdtczkZBPsv-ERCb0  and 'Oh Happy Day' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_ni4LEA_nI&index=4&list=PLGPBMkAH50UA6P4KXdtczkZBPsv-ERCb0 were high on my list -- partly because they are 2 out of 3 of the BEST scenes in the movie, but also because the fellow who solos on 'Oh Happy Day' (Ryan Toby) has an insanely fun falsetto, and Lauryn Hill is a goddess on 'Joyful Joyful', not to mention the greatness of bad rap and fun mini-groups with tight harmonies featured throughout. 

The hidden gem concept is complicated because, while I wouldn't consider this hidden exactly, it is understated, and its scene in the movie is incredibly moving. It's a duet between Lauryn Hill and Tanya Blunt -- to this day is the most beautiful rendition of 'His Eye is On the Sparrow' I've ever heard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz0FIKiL4dQ&list=PLGPBMkAH50UA6P4KXdtczkZBPsv-ERCb0&index=6. 

And back then, when I listened to it, I felt transcendent. Like I could escape what I wanted to escape, like I could follow my voice too. It sounds cheesy. Well, no, it IS cheesy, but that's where I was in life, and that's where this song was in me. 

Aside from that, there are some fun tunes featured on the soundtrack that I don't remember EVER listening to back when I bought it, but that I've grown fond of since, especially to pep me up on a tired day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qyFD8jgSng&index=7&list=PLGPBMkAH50UA6P4KXdtczkZBPsv-ERCb0

Cyndi Brandenburg

It is true...I did sort of Wehmeyer this one, but mainly because it turned out to be so much harder that I thought.  First of all, my pre-pubescent and adolescent taste in music kind of sucked, and second, it turns out that most all of the songs that were any good were pretty well known.  I do know that my sister and I bought every Billy Joel album produced over a 10 year period or so, and while this assignment did sponsor some really fun phone conversations with her about our vinyl collection, we never could determine for sure who purchased what.

In the end, I am going to go with Everybody Has a Dream, which is the last song on Billy Joel's best album, The Stranger. 

I like it because of it's slight gospel/spiritual feel, and because it morphs into a cool reprise of the album's title track to close out, and because of the lyrics -- especially the last verse.  (This one would have totally worked on the camel ride, Scudder.) I honestly haven't looked yet at the blog or what anyone else has posted, and am pretty excited to do that now knowing one of us, any of us, could win for "worst song."

Gary Scudder

Boz Scaggs, We're All Alone

I suppose it's surprising that the first album I ever owned was not a Neil Young album.  Instead, it's Silk Degrees by Boz Scaggs.  The first concert I ever saw (with the esteemed Jack Schultz) was Boz Scaggs, which doubtless helps explain my first album purchase.  The biggest hit from the album was Lowdown, although several songs on the albums received heavy play on the Cincinnati stations. We're All Alone was the last song on the album, and it's the perfect choice to close out an album.  Rita Coolidge had a bit hit with a cover of it a year later, which I had sadly forgotten.  The song itself is just a heartfelt ballad, but nevertheless I've always felt that it was one of the most beautiful love songs.  It's evocative and sad, and more than a bit elegiac, more than it is a happy and sunny love song, the former attributes I would argue are essential for a great love song.  I don't remember much of the concert itself, but I do remember at the very end of the show Boz waited for everyone else to walk off stage, even putting his hand on the shoulder of the last guy to shepherd him off and to insure that he was the last one, and also the last one to wave to the audience.  There was nothing bossy about it, and it wasn't like he was being egomaniaical or anything, but rather it was clear that he never dreamed that he'd ever be so successful that he'd be playing stadium shows and he clearly wanted to soak up every bit of the experience, including being the last one who waved to the crowd to say thank you.