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Post by Rit on May 27, 2004 18:12:27 GMT -5
how are you doing, Jackory?
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on May 27, 2004 22:01:47 GMT -5
how are you doing, Jackory? I guess I'm doing as well as can be expected. Haven't had as much time to contribute to these boards as I might like, having just re-established an e-mail communique with a friend I graduated with (back in 1980), who moved to Chicago some while back and whom I hadn't heard from in over 15 years. He's got a blog on the web at longinus62.blogspot.com/ where he describes himself as a right-leaning evangelical straight man in a dialogue with a left-leaning reform Jewish homosexual man. I've checked it out, and it's pretty cool. Mainly political stuff, and my friend seems to post the bulk of what's there. But yeah, I'm fine. Hope you are as well. maarts, I knew you probably had heard that Aphrodite's Child CD. It's the only one by them I ever heard. And I HATE that "Infinite" "song". That's the point of the album where I'd skip the track if I had it on CD. Have you noticed that one of the Verve's "Urban Hymns" songs is a direct rip-off of one of that albums tracks? I don't remember the names of either one, just remember that the first time I heard the Verve song it sounded extremely familiar, but for the longest time I couldn't put my finger on where I'd heard it before. Then, as if out of the blue, it dawned on me...it was straight from the 666 album. Finished burning Ken the first half of a 2 disc Red House Painters/Mark Kozelek/Sun Kil Moon compilation, and was hoping for some input from other RHP fans as to my selection of songs. The first disc is called "RHP: The 4AD Years" and includes selections from the first 4 albums. The songlist: 1. Grace Cathedral Park 2. Medicine Bottle 3. Sundays & Holidays 4. New Jersey ( Bridge version) 5. Over My Head 6. Mistress 7. Strawberry Hill 8. Moments 9. Michael 10. Bubble 11. Katy Song 12. Japanese To English 13. Mistress (Piano Version) Anything there that shouldn't be? Anything that should be that isn't? The second volume is gonna be a LOT harder to compile, because that era of Kozlek's work is so diverse. There's no way I WON'T include THESE songs, though: *"Duk Koo Kim" (SKM) *"Salvador Sanchez" (SKM) *"Glenn Tipton" (SKM) *"Ruth Marie" (MK) *"You Ain't Got A Hold On Me" (MK) *"River" (RHP) *"Make Like Paper" (RHP) I really need to listen to Old Ramon and Songs For A Blue Guitar a few times to decide what else to include from those two. These days practically the only thing I listen to is Ghosts Of The Great Highway... |
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Post by samplestiltskin on May 29, 2004 16:31:20 GMT -5
Wow, I am the only person logged in right now. Figures.
In the last week I've discovered so many bands I love. I gotta share! If anybody's heard of these, I'd l9ove to hear their opinions on them.
Rasputina - Normally I loathe female bands, but this is exceptional. Two cellos and a really cool voice... I understand she just came to concert in Denver like 30 seconds from where I live now. Sang these totally pessimistic, ironic songs completely deadpan.
Apoptygma Berzerk - goth eletronic. Lyrics on this one album (not sure of the name) just make me want to burst out crying, but in a good way.
Alien Sex Fiend - goth... but hard to pigeon-hole.
Wumpscut - goth electronica i think. german?
Current 93 - self-described as "apocalyptic folk"
The Legendary Pink Dots!! How could I have missed this band?
In short, I'm in heaven. Things are coming together all of a sudden, and of course my issues immigrated with me, but at last I see a path that seems to lead somewhere. New music, new city, new friends, new life. I don't even care that nobody cares..
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on May 29, 2004 23:05:37 GMT -5
:wumpscut: is frightening. No wonder you like it...     A rather strange and disturbed young lady who I worked with at the CD store was a huge fan of :wumpscut:. She lasted about a month on the job and couldn't decide if she wanted to be a hardcore satanist or a charismatic non-denominational Christian. Sounds like I'm joking, but I'm not. Her name was Marya, and she hated me. |
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Post by maarts on May 30, 2004 6:43:02 GMT -5
JAC, I can't really fault your RHP-compilation at all...I'd personally add Lord Kill The Pain, perhaps even Take Me Out to it. Sundays And Holidays is a great choice- my fave off the Shock Me-EP.
Currently coming to terms with heaps of CD-purchases of which Devandra Banhart seems to have the most staying power in my player. Also Sixtoo which is apparently some Canadian DJ/producer and features Damon Suzuki and several Godspeed-members in a pretty boring mix. Sometimes the descriptive sticker on an album is more impressive than the album itself..aimless menaderings with strings and the occasional wailing guitar. Thank you, exit stage left please.
Then there's the new Pan Sonic-album which goes from strength to strength, lots of Coil (Horse Rotorvator, Love's Secret Domain and Unnatural History 1 & 2, which includes the unreleased themes for Hellraiser- dar electronica at its finest) and I also lpayed quite a few DVDs lately- Meet the Flower Kings (fantastic Nordic symfo!), Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, Doves live and Fields Of The Nephilim.
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Post by samplestiltskin on May 30, 2004 17:23:20 GMT -5
JAC - Yikes! Well I don't believe in Satan and you probably know how I feel about Christianity, so I imagine I'm not quite so bad as this young lady. And if you gave me a chance to work in your record store (ANY record store) I'd work my butt off to make sure I could stay. As it is, I start my new job telemarketing for public safety (cops, fire dept, Vietnam vets, etc) tomorrow and I'm veryvery nervous.  I don't have "the gift of gab", I'm not on speed, and I honestly don't care whether or not people donate to this stuff. Plus my voice is naturally very quiet. But! It's a temporary income. Until I can find a job at a record store.  |
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on May 30, 2004 17:49:26 GMT -5
 maarts, can't say I'm too fond of "Lord Kill The Pain"...it's just never been one of my favourite RHP tunes and it seems out of place in the grand scheme of Down Colourful Hill. But that's just me...  I listened to Tom Waits' Blood Money when I came home from church today. Whew, that was strange, lemme tell ya. My wife doesn't like Waits. She wanted to know how anyone could take him seriously with the way he sings. I said, "You just don't get it, I guess"... Sheesh. Samps, when I open my CD store maybe I'll give you a call. You can't be as loopy as some of the people I've worked with... |
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on May 31, 2004 18:27:47 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]8-Tracks REMEMBERED![/glow] It's been almost 20 years since the demise of the 8-Track tape, and boy do I miss 'em! Actually, no...I don't. In fact, having been spoiled by the pristine audio fidelity of the compact disc, I often wonder how in the world I ever tolerated the murky sound of 8-Tracks, not to mention the "bleed-over factor"...in case you're too young to remember, inevitably you could faintly hear music from, track 2 during soft passages or between songs on track 1 or 3 (depending on whether the head on your player was misaligned to the north or the south). Music from track 3 could very well be heard on tracks 2 & 4. And so forth and so on... Classical music, with it's dynamic range, was virtually impossible to enjoy on 8-Track for this very reason.  If that weren't bad enough, the very nature of the way music had to be sequenced on 8-Track tapes left you with no choice but to listen to at least 10 minutes of other tunes until you could hear your favourite song again. If you wanted to hear "Tomorrow Never Knows" twice you were required to listen to "Yellow Submarine" and "Got To Get You Into My Life" on the same track before the tape loop returned to "Tomorrow Never Knows". Now that particular example is not so bad, since there's not really a "bad" song on Revolver (with the possible exception of "Yellow Submarine", that is), but what about an album with 2 or 3 good songs plus a bunch of filler? Albums like that were a dime a dozen in the era of 8-Tracks (or at least it seemed that way). Tough. You just HAD to suffer through the songs that came before or after the ones you liked.  Even that was not the worst thing about 8-Tracks. Inevitably, due to time restrictions, many songs recorded on 8-Tracks faded out in the middle to be continued on the following program (for those unfamiliar with the 8-Track medium, they contained 4 "Tracks" or "Programs", which contained about 15 minutes worth of music each and played in a successive loop). This was especially frustrating if you were really getting into a song, rockin' out and singing along when all of a sudden the volume starts to dwindle. Then you'd have to wait for the loud "click" that let you know the programs had changed (and if your player was old and worn out there was always the chance that it wouldn't "click", and instead would just repeat the program). By the time the song resumed you'd most likely lost the spirit of the whole thing.  I listened to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here so many times on 8-Track that I can tell you exactly where the first program-change fade-out was...the volume began fading right in the middle of the baritone saxophone solo about 16 minutes into "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". By the time the volume was back to normal on the 2nd program the tenor sax solo had taken over. Even now, when I hear that passage on CD, I half expect it to start fading out around that time. continued...
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on May 31, 2004 18:30:03 GMT -5
 Another feature of the 8-Track tape which was facillitated by time restrictions was the "repeated song(s)". On some 8-Tracks, in an attempt to avoid the hated "fade-out", they would just duplicate a couple of songs spread out on multiple tracks. If you were lucky, the repeated songs would be the good ones you wanted to hear again, and if you timed it right you could switch programs and replay the song having only to hear a short portion of the one that preceeded it. Which was fine and dandy, unless you were playing an album straight through, and then the repetition would inspire deja vu.  When 8-Tracks were at the height of popularity (a phenomenon proving that even total crap can catch on and spread like wildfire) you could buy what we used to call "bootlegs". 8-Track bootlegs weren't the same thing as vinyl LP bootlegs, but they were just as illegal and a bane to the record companies whose revenue was tapped into by the inexpensive, inferior copies. Bootlegs were sold mainly in truck stops and 5 & dime stores (though I used to purchase them in a restaurant my family dined in often). The people who made them would simply record a vinyl album to 8-Track, make a few hundred copies, paste an amateurish looking song list on the front or back and then sell 'em for a fraction of the cost the "better sounding" originals were going for.  I confess that I owned a TON of bootlegs, and my favourite ones were the compilations, where the guys who made them would choose what they considered to be "The Best of British Rock" or "Acid Rock Monsters of the 70's" or "Super Hits Volume 35", etc. (some less imaginative bootleggers simply titled their compilations after the genre of music contained on it...for instance, you might find a bootleg with the one word moniker "Rock"). continued |
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on May 31, 2004 18:32:02 GMT -5
 I used to LOVE my copy of "The Best of British Rock Volume 2", but now whenever I hear the closing chords of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" I get all pumped up and ready to hear the opening riffage of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" (which followed hot on the trail of the Who song on the compilation). Nowadays I get somewhat confused when "Bargain" starts up on my CD of Who's Next because I'd become accustomed to the song order on the "Best of British Rock" collection. Oh well, it was a crash course in some great music...  Another thing about bootleg distributors...they weren't above selling half of a 2-record set as an individual product. I remember seeing The Beatles (White Album) Volume 1 sold seperately from Volume 2. And I vividly recall listening to the second half of Jesus Christ Superstar, even knowing it by heart before hearing the first half many months later. While vacationing with an aunt and uncle in Missouri I happened upon their copy of the entire rock opera and I spent several hours getting familiar with the part I'd never heard before. But ya know, I never really minded only having "Part 2"...There's STILL a "freshness" to the first half that I hear which sort of fades away when "The Last Supper" begins...  Still, if it had not been for cheap bootlegs I might never have heard Frank Zappa's We're Only In It For The Money, The Moody Blues' In Search Of The Lost Chord or Alice Cooper's early works, Easy Action and Pretties For You. Not only was I financially strapped, too much so to buy the "originals", but we didn't have a record/tape store in our small town that sold 'em. What we DID have was a revolving supply of bootleg 8-Tracks that rack jobbers would supply to the 99'er restaurant... continued |
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on May 31, 2004 18:34:23 GMT -5
 I did, however, have my share of "original" 8-tracks, most of which were purchased in the clearance racks at Sound Warehouse in OKC (which I always made a point to visit whenever we were up that way), all bought for between a quarter and a dollar. I got some pretty doggone good stuff in those bargain bins, if I say so myself. A short list would include bands like Nektar, Magma, Sparks, the Pretty Things, the Faces, P.F.M., Focus...a real prog-rockers wet dream. At one point I had at least 30 8-Tracks on the Beserkley label, including a COMPLETE Jonathon Richman & the Modern Lovers collection.  As my family's personal economy improved I was able to buy more "original" label 8-Tracks, facillitated by the grand opening of the much missed "Record Parlour" in a nearby city. My pride and joy was a complete Led Zeppelin catalogue on 8-Track. Yep, I was actually very proud of that, believe it or not. My brother, inspired by my completist tendencies, wound up collecting all of the KISS albums on 8-Track, and he seemed to be as fond of them as I was my Zeppelin tapes. At least the KISS songs were usually too short to require fade-outs...the same could not be said of "Achille's Last Stand"...  The only thing I ever had that probably sounded just as good on 8-Track as it did on vinyl was Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Each selection on that album was exactly the same length anyway (13:01, I think), so there were no fade-outs or song repeats, and with this album you could randomly switch between the four programs and not be able to tell that you were listening to something different (the bleed-over factor probably even worked to this tape's advantage, making it even more densely noisy than it already was). I always thought Metal Machine Music sounded like someone fiddling around with a short wave radio during a bad electrical storm...  I hear that copies of Metal Machine Music on 8-Track sell for hundreds of dollars to 8-Track collectors these days. I've read an article where Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore was singing the praises of it's 8-Track incarnation, so maybe that's helped spike the interest amongst collectors. Can't imagine why anyone would want one, though...  Yes, the glory days of 8-Track tapes are long gone history. Anyone who complains about the sound quality of even a non-remastered CD was most likely not around during the 8-Track age, or (as is the case with me) has become spoiled by digital audio's superior fidelity. If this essay has brought back nostalgic memories of the bygone 8-Track era or whetted your appetite to know more about those neat little cartridges we used to shove into the player...usually also requiring a matchbook inserted between the tape and the player's recepticle to prevent wobbly sound or excessive bleed-through...I suggest you check out www.8trackheaven.com. These guys seem to hope the 8-Track will one day make a grand comeback... Many thanks to the folks at 8-Track Heaven for the jpegs of old bootleg 8-Tracks... |
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on Jun 16, 2004 12:04:19 GMT -5
 I've been in the mood for something a little different from my usual listening fare, and so I've been giving The Original Bad Company Anthology a spin the last couple of days... They play this stuff WAY too much on classic rock radio, but since I rarely listen to radio it's been a long time since I've heard these songs. Solid, tight musicianship and Paul Rodgers has the voice Robert Plant should have had. Travesty=Post-Paul Rodgers Bad Company...  |
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Post by RocDoc on Jun 16, 2004 14:14:23 GMT -5
Wow, that's definitely a nice stroll through memory lane, JAC!
8-tracks were SO close on the heels(if not simultaneous)to C-60 and C-90 cassettes, that I never had a player nor even one tape of my own.
Shit, I could have RECORDABILITY and pretty decent fidelity with the ol' 'Compact Cassette'(of which I've still got boxes and boxes full), that somehow 8-track 'technology' never became a draw...tho I had LOTS of friends who went into 8-tracks, so the weird pauses and having to listen to all the songs to hear the last song in a given 'program', those are familiar from endlessly cruising around and um, usually gettin' high...
Actually I DO remember buying an 8-track copy of Layla...or ACTUALLY, it was an early Clapton anthology on 8 track(w/bits of Layla)JUST to give it to a friend of mine who had this excellent HUUUGE Electra 225 convertible(his Dad's actually)w/8-track, but ONLY a copy of Brain Salad Surgery, which I fucking hated. He was also a resident of a Lake Michigan beach resort town that MANY of of us Chicago Lithuanians used to go to, first with our parents, THEN later, on our own just to seriously party our asses off at the beach...man, what a heavenly place this Union Pier Michigan was!!!
But this guy was our 'hip local' who hung out with all the Chicago kids...
...and the Clapton tape was the solution to getting some great music into Paul's ride that summer.
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on Jun 16, 2004 18:21:48 GMT -5
Thanks Doc! I was wondering if anyone was ever gonna read that...  Howzabout that photo of Paul Rodgers? Kinda has a Jim Morrison feel to it, don't you think? |
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Post by stratman19 on Jun 16, 2004 18:40:26 GMT -5
Haha! Boy was that ever a trip down 8-track memory lane! As a young man, I had tons of 8-tracks...so many in fact, that I had a veritable 8-track "suitcase" that I carried in my vehicle. It only held 30-40 8-tracks as I remember (it was HUGE), so as my preferences would change, I'd have to rotate some cartridges out of the case in order to replace them with new favorites. Man, those were the days!
JAC, sorry I'm here, I imagine this won't be a regular stop, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to visit some boards I don't normally check out.
To be honest, what prompted me to even post here, was the pic and comments on the Bad Company Anthology. I still have a great fondness for Bad Company. They've always been one of my favorites. You hit the nail on the head...Paul Rodgers has a GREAT voice; he did Free proud too, and I've always been a fan of Mick Ralphs' playing. I loved Bad Company's kinda blues/hard rock "crunch" (especially on their first 2 albums, which remain my favorites).
I own the anthology CD(s) pictured above, as well as several of their other albums. The first two are my favs, but I also like Run With The Pack (their 3rd) well enough. And there can be no Bad Company without the voice of Paul Rodgers! Christ, enough of this rambling...
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I don't have "the gift of gab", I'm not on speed, and I honestly don't care whether or not people donate to this stuff. Plus my voice is naturally very quiet. But! It's a temporary income. Until I can find a job at a record store. 
