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.

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.

“Heart of the Sunrise”

Next: Hello, I Must Be Going