Saturday, March 22, 2014

Blood on the 8-Tracks, Track Three: Plus Shipping and Handling

About that other CD I bought...



A few weeks after the New Stereo Phase...


My life is broken up by Phases by the way. 

Your too. But yours are normal, like High School, College, Engagement, Marriage, Kids, etc.  

Mine are more like Beatles/Sixties, Allman Brothers are God, Jackson Browne is God, The In Between Phase When No One is God (otherwise known as the Little Feat Phase, the New Wave/Punk/Neil Young is God Renaissance Phase (which has still not ended...)


Please don’t mention this to Mrs. Jaybee.



...Came the Brief Record Club Phase


I realize that these two Phases don’t appear in the above list. Let’s call them mini-phases.  


Anyway, me and some friends formed a cabal to share a single record club membership. No single one of us could scrape up the money (or survive the parental fall out) for an entire record club membership on our own. This record club deal was planned and executed with the secrecy of a heroin smuggling operation.


You know how these clubs worked: records were one cent each, with the small print explaining the $50 shipping and handling fee. You’d think that spending so much on s&h would get the damned things delivered in less that 6-8 weeks, but whatever.


And what was my take, you ask?  Well, there was Elton John’s Honky Chateau, which was out of stock and would escape me for another twenty years or so. Then there was Poco’s A Good Feelin’ To Know, which we’ll discuss later, and Yes’s Fragile.

Fragile.jpg



Yes! Yes! A Thousand Times Yes! (Minus 998)

I guess I was in my Prog Rock mini-mini Phase...

As much as I loved Close To The Edge, I liked Fragile’s calmer, more song-centered nonsense almost as much at the time, and more so now. More songs, more melody, the playing just as good, just not as grandiose. Plus you don’t have Rick Wakeman waving his huge organ in your face. I still like the tunes and the guitar.And as such you can put it on in more varied circumstances.  There are several songs that aren’t all that well known but sound just great anyway.


And with Mrs. Jaybee loving “Roundabout”, Fragile has a longer half life than CCTE. You can listen to it on a long drive. (which I don’t recommend for CTTE, which is more like a religious experience, which, like drinking, shouldn’t be done while driving.)


It’s Jon Anderson and band in their prime, right before going off the deep end. A-


When to Play: When you’re high.
When NOT to Play: When you’re drunk.




Next: Hello, I Must Be Going

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Blood on the 8-Tracks, Track Two: 1972

For some reason - probably the embarrassment of us having borrowed a friend’s stereo and never giving it back - my parents made a decision they’ve regretted ever since. They decided to give me and my brother Pat a “stereo” for Christmas.


Now, technically speaking, when they asked what I wanted for Christmas that year, I said a guitar. After some grumblings about me somehow shooting my eye out (or was it them blowing their brains out? I don’t remember now), they changed the subject, and we ended up with the stereo.


Comprised of a radio tuner, turntable and 8-track tape player, it was - not counting the guitar - all either of us could have hoped for.


And if we were going to have an 8-track player, we’d need a tape or two to try it out.


Right around that time I’d heard the boffo climax to the title track from Yes’s then-new Close to the Edge on the radio. So when I ran across it in 8-track format at Korvettes, I did something unthinkable:
I Bought It For No Other Reason (not my Birthday, not Christmas, not anything) Than I FELT LIKE IT. This event rivaled that incident in 1971, when I spent almost THREE DOLLARS(!!!) on an Elton John record.  I somehow survived both incidents, but still think I’m going to Hell.


Which was how Close to the Edge became our very first 8-track.

Close to the Edge 8 Track Front Cover.jpg\



In case you don’t know, 8 track tapes divided albums up into four equal parts. Where “8 track” comes from, I have no idea and don’t care.  If you do, look it up here.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape but don’t try to explain it to me.

Close to the Edge 8 Track Back Cover.jpg


Given the structure of the album - one eighteen minute song and two nine minute ones - it arrived relatively unscathed in its conversion to 8-track. Oh, the title song took up two tracks and was chopped in two, but the cut was done during a spacey interlude so it sounded okay. The loud click as the track changed sounded kind of like your parents knocking on the bedroom door asking what the hell was going on in there. But once you got used to it, you weren’t startled anymore. It was fun watching your friend’s first reaction, though.


Another shortcoming of 8-tracks was the almost non-existent packaging. If there were liner notes and lyrics, you weren’t going to get them.


And when you don’t have a lyric sheet you tend to make up the words when you try to sing along. Well, now that I have the CD, I can see the lyrics. And damn if Jon Anderson wasn’t actually singing the same nonsense I was singing! But I should have known, with titles like “Total Mass Retain” and “Solid Time of Change”? I knew there was a lot of pot going around at the time, but not THAT much.


I’ve long since grown out of prog rock. After all, if you’re going to be silly, at least intend to be silly. But that’s whole other post, isn’t it?


So while Close to the Edge is totally over the top, the music is real pretty and the band is just awesome. (Technically speaking, anyway. I wish Rick Wakeman has taken some vacation days, though.)


And the proof was in the pudding as they say. Since getting the CD, we’ve played it many times.


So is it grandiose and vague and New Age-y way before the actual New Age? Sure, but is it fair to criticize Liberace for how he dressed? A-


When to Play It: When You Can’t Make it to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for high mass.
When Not to Play It: Hangovers

"And You and I"


Next: I’m Not Quite Done Saying Yes Yet.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Blood on the 8-Tracks, Track One: Limbo



Back during the same record store trip that yielded Soundgarden and Lucinda Williams link, I also found a couple of potential “re-buys” - records I already have, but could use a new CD copy of.


There were two in particular that I’ve had my eye on for a while. But it wasn’t because they were scratched, or had poor sound.  It was because I originally got them on 8-track.


You see, if I want to hear any of my vinyl albums, I can always just go to the basement, where I’ve got the old turntable set up. Ditto my cassettes.


But if I want to hear any of my 8-tracks, I’m stuck. These albums exist in a non-playable limbo because I haven’t had an 8-track player for over thirty years.


Greek Chorus: So what’s the problem, Jaybee? Just buy them as CDs.


Well, I know some people did this with their vinyl when CDs came along, but I’m far too much of a cheapskate for that. Otherwise I would have replaced all my Beatles vinyl by now.


But the more exact reason is this: When I buy a record, I don’t want to unwrap it, play it once and file it away. I’m a music addict, not a “collector”. So the “completeness” of my library doesn’t concern me. (Not as much as how its actual contents may be the reflection of a warped psyche.) I find such ambitions to be a pipedream, anyway, unless you’re the type who’d kick out a family member because you need the space for your Neil Young bootlegs.


When I buy an album I want to listen to it a lot. And this won’t necessarily happen if I’ve played the record to death already. Call it a record’s half-life.  Even the best records have them. Otherwise I’d still be playing Abbey Road every day.


Plus, there are other records out there, and I try - when all else is equal - to opt for the new.


And while I haven’t kicked out family members for Neil Young, I may have practiced birth control to avoid the situation. The house is only so big.


So when I do take the plunge, I want it to be worth it. Money-wise, plays-wise, time-wise, and space wise. Not everything makes the cut.


But that day, these two records did. (Okay, I admit it. They were only four bucks each.)


Greek Chorus: Hey Jaybee, were you planning on telling us what records they were?


Yes.   

Next Time: 1972