LP of the Week - "Katy Lied," Steely Dan (1975)

Every year around Thanksgiving time, I think of this album because of the opening cut, "Black Friday" - a song that predated (by two or three decades) the capitalistic bacchanal that "the day after" has become.  Even with that being the case, there is a lyric that could easily apply to what the day has become in the modern age:

When Black Friday falls you know it's got to be
Don't let it fall on me

I didn't give "Katy Lied" its proper due when the album was released in the spring of 1975, but in my defense, a) it was released on the heels of three consecutive masterpieces; and b) I was only 15 years old.  At the time, I lamented the fact that "Steely Dan" no longer seemed to be a band.  This was the first of their albums that openly listed all of the session contributors, and while over time it would come to be a given that "Steely Dan" really meant "Fagen and Becker," that wasn't the case back then.  Back then, I didn't appreciate all the names appearing in the album's credits- Phil Woods, Michael Omartian, Jeff Porcaro, Hal Blaine, David Paich, Rick Derringer and Larry Carlton among them - but nearly four decades later, it's pretty clear that when it came to session men, Becker and Fagen chose nothing but the best.

It's also fair to say that "Katy Lied" was a transitional album, bridging the gap between the the eras when the band really was a band and the glossy sound that would characterize "Aja" and "Gaucho," the final two albums of the Dan's first incarnation.  But having said that, "Katy Lied" is brilliant in its own right, and includes at least three songs that deserve a place in the "Dan pantheon" - "Doctor Wu," "Chain Lightning," and "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)," as well as several others ("Bad Sneakers," "Rose Darling," "Black Friday" and "Everyone's Gone to the Movies") that are nearly as good.  The only real weak cut on the LP is the last one, "Throw Back the Little Ones," which if nothing else gives a clue to the direction that Becker and Fagen would be heading on their next effort, "The Royal Scam."

Another sign of the direction that Becker and Fagen were heading with Steely Dan is in the rather lengthy description (longer than the musical credits) of how the album was recorded.  In it, there's references to "very expensive German microphones," "master lacquers done on a Neumann VMS 70 computerized lathe," "variable depth helium cooled cutting heads" and "computer logic circuits."  Knowing what we now know about the dynamic duo, this very well could have been an early manifestation of their somewhat odd sense of humor.

LP of the Week - "Willy and the Poorboys" (1969)

"Willy and the Poorboys" was the THIRD album released by Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1969.  Just wrap your head around that fact for a while.  Nowadays, artists that release an album a year (and frankly I can't think of any, off the top of my head) are called "prolific."  But Creedence wasn't like any other band, and back around that time they enjoyed one of the most artistically fruitful 24 months (or so) that a band has ever had.

The album clocks in at an economical 34 minutes, and it's really more like 29 since "Poorboy Shuffle" and "Side o' the Road" are not much more than filler.  But it makes the most of that half hour, featuring four bonafide rock classics ("Down on the Corner," "Fortunate Son," "Don't Look Now (It Ain't You or Me)," and "It Came Out of the Sky") two classic covers ("Cotton Fields" and "The Midnight Special") and two side closers that prove that Fogerty could stretch it out a bit and still stay true to the Creedence sound ("Feelin' Blue" and "Effigy").  Add it all up together, and it's an album that richly deserves its status as one of the all-time greats.

Some quick fun facts:

- I got the album for my birthday when I was in fifth grade.

- My youngest brother (who was four years old at the time) loved "Down on the Corner," and liked to listen to it on my transistor radio with the single earplug stuck in his ear.  If my parents knew how loud he liked it, I doubt they would have been very happy.

The only perfect Creedence albums are the two "Chronicle" collections, but it's a fair statement to say that they never released a bad one and came through with at least three enduring classics.  "Willy and the Poor Boys" is one of them.

LP of the Week - The "King" Kong Compilation

It's not quite in mint condition, but I suspect that "The "King" Kong Compilation" is one of the most valuable albums I own.  Currently, Amazon.com is listing 3 new copies available on CD, starting at $206.  I've looked for a CD version myself for years, to no avail.  Finally, I just went ahead and converted each song on the album to MP3 format, so I could listen to it on my iPod.

Why the album has virtually fallen off the face of the Earth is a mystery, because there's no question that it's one of the handful of landmark compilations ever compiled. A collection of reggae recordings produced by legendary producer Leslie Kong from 1968 to 1970, it features most of the early reggae legends - Desmond Dekker, The Maytals, The Melodians, The Pioneers, Delroy Wilson, Bruce Ruffin.  About the only major Kong artists not represented on the album are The Wailers and Jimmy Cliff, and they really aren't missed - the songs are that strong.

Track Listing:

Israelites - Desmond Dekker and the Aces
Monkey Girl - The Maytals
Sweet Sensation - The Melodians
Freedom Street - Ken Boothe
Let Them Talk - Tyrone Evans
Samfie Man - The Pioneers
It's My Delight - The Melodians
Peeping Tom - The Maytals



Rivers of Babylon - The Melodians
Gave You My Love - Delroy Wilson
Bitterness of Life - Bruce Ruffin
Night Flight (Sentimental Journey) - Ansell Collins
Long Shot Kick de Bucket - The Pioneers
It Mek - Desmond Dekker and the Aces
Why Baby Why - Ken Boothe
Monkey Man - The Maytals



The best known songs are those that open each side of the album, but it's really not a stretch to say that every song on here is great - no exceptions.  It's impossible to listen to it without feeling better, about music, or just life in general. 



The "King" Kong Compiliation: a great, great album.

LP of the Week - "Hotter Than July," Stevie Wonder (1980)

Just as a reminder, the posts in this category are about an album that I own only on vinyl.

If you asked a random music fan to name what he/she thought was Stevie Wonder's best album, I'm sure one of the first you'd hear would be "Songs in the Key of Life."  No doubt there would be a few "Innervisions," some "Talking Book," and probably "Music of My Mind."  I doubt that many people would say "Hotter than July," but today we're going to try and do something about that.  And don't get me wrong; even I wouldn't say that "Hotter than July" is his greatest work.  But what I am saying is that it belongs on any short list of great Stevie, and is in fact my favorite Stevie Wonder album.

From start to finish, with absolutely no roadblocks along the way, "Hotter than July" is classic Stevie Wonder.  It's got great dance tunes ("Did I Hear You Say You Love Me," "I Ain't Gonna Stand For It," "As If You Read My Mind"), it's got great political tunes ("Cash In Your Face," "Happy Birthday"), it's got an all-time tear jerker ("Lately"), and it's got  "Master Blaster (Jammin')," a Bob Marley tribute that I'm convinced, nearly 35 years later, is one of his greatest songs.

And the band?  Just absolutely smoking hot.  Particularly in his latter career, Stevie was one of those guys (like John Fogerty) who liked to do it all himself, sometimes to the detriment of the songs themselves.  But here, he is accompanied by a classic band, the core being Nathan Watts on bass, Benjamin Bridges on guitar and Dennis Davis on drums.  And they are awesome - driving each song well past its limits.

You could almost call this Stevie's "Tattoo You" - the last great album from an indisputably great artist.

LP of the Week - "Traveling Wilburys, Volume One" (1988)

So what happens when a group of stars, superstars, and living legends decides to get together, work on a few tracks, have some fun and record an album?

One answer, and perhaps the best one, is "Traveling Wilburys, Volume One."  From first track to last, it's an absolute delight, without pretensions or any notion that the resulting work product was intended to be anything more than a bunch of really talented guys having fun and proving that you don't always have to serve up a plate of deep meaning with your rock 'n roll meal.

For those who weren't lucky enough to be there at the time, the Wilburys consisted of Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison.  Ably assisted by old session hands Jim Keltner, Jim Horn and Ray Cooper, the old codgers came up with 10 pop songs that at the time were as good as anything any of them had recorded in quite a while.

And that's nothing to sneeze at; let's just consider Dylan for a moment.  Over the course of the 1980s he'd released a series of albums that, while they contained some good songs, threatened to tarnish the legacy of a man who had long ago established his rightful place at the very top of the pantheon.  He comes in and records a couple of playful albums with the Wilburys ("Volume Two" was very good, but not quite at the level of the original), and the next thing you know, he's on the comeback trail, first with a couple of good electric LPs, followed by a couple of classic acoustic sets, and then a series of masterpieces as good as anything the man recorded during the height of his Sixties powers.  His "Congratulations" and "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" are probably the two best songs on the record, but more importantly, they are the songs on which Dylan seems to have rediscovered his sense of humor.  Whether "Tweeter" is an homage to Bruce Springsteen or just Dylan playfully making fun of him doesn't really matter; what's important is that he once again demonstrates the wordplay that...well, made him Bob Dylan.

But those are hardly the only good songs on the album.  Both "Handle With Care" and "Heading for the Light" are top-notch Harrison tunes, Orbison's "Not Alone Any More" is better than anything he recorded for his comeback album produced by Bono, and both Petty and Lynne contribute lightweight but immediately catchy and danceable tunes that are akin to the icing on the cake.

It won't likely go down as the best thing that any of them ever recorded, but what the heck - every now and then, boys just want to have fun.

LP of the Week - "Reggata de Blanc," The Police (1979)

The year "Reggatta de Blanc" came out, Charles M. Young included it in his list of favorite albums of the year in Rolling Stone's end of year issue.  In his notes he made a comment along the lines of it, even more than the band's debut album, demonstrating why the band had staying power and was destined to be around for a long, long time.  At the time, demonstrating that you're never quite as smart as you think you are when you're 19 years old, I strongly disagreed with that assessment, and out of pique (if nothing else) filed the album away, where it sat for many years, not unlistened to but certainly less so than the band's other four LPs.

Fast forward to 2007, when the Virgin Megastore (remember those?) in San Francisco was doing a dump of CD Box Sets for ridiculously low prices, and with a bunch of birthday cash burning a hole in my pocket I decided to pick up "Message in a Box," which includes every song from all five Police albums, plus a handful of alternate takes, unreleased songs, and live recordings.  Listening to it for a while, a couple of things became crystal clear - one, the band never got enough credit while they were still a band (perhaps because of the bleached blonde marketing campaign for their first two records), and two, not only was "Regatta de Blanc" their best and most consistent album, but it was their best by quite a margin.  So Charles M. Young, I apologize - I'm sure you've been agonizing for years over this petty disagreement.

On "Reggatta de Blanc,"the band refines and perfects the formula they established on the first album - "new wave rock tinged with the beats and rhythms of reggae," I guess you could call it, while avoiding completely the calculations and pretensions that would dog the later albums and keep them from achieving classic status.  From "Message in a Bottle" to "Walking on the Moon" to "The Bed's Too Big Without You" to "Bring on the Night" to "Does Everyone Stare" (and I could go on, but you get the point), "Reggata de Blanc" is classic song after classic song.  Frankly, I don't know what the hell I was thinking back in 1979.  But then again, for a while I thought The Knack was a great band, a notion that I will neither deny nor defend.

You really can't go wrong with any Police albums, although in the end "Synchronicity" (outside of "Every Breath You Take," their greatest song) is really overwhelmed by a sense of self-importance.  But even though it took me nearly 30 years to realize it, "Reggatta de Blanc" is their best album.

LP of the Week - "The Roches" (1979)

Just as a reminder, the posts in this category are about an album that I own only on vinyl.

"The Roches" was a subject of disagreement from the time it was released in 1979.  On the plus side, Christgau gave it an "A," and it finished 11th in that year's Pazz & Jop Poll (right between Donna Summer and Dave Edmunds).  On the negative side, Greil Marcus panned the album in a pretty aggressive way, and if memory serves chalked its critical success up to New York critics.  Which is probably true; the three sisters (Maggie, Terre and Suzzy) were born in New Jersey, and if the legend is to be believed, honed their vocal chops singing on NYC street corners, the songs more often than not being Christmas carols.  They're probably best known for "We Three Kings," their 1990 Christmas LP, which if you're interested is one of the greatest pop Christmas albums ever released.  But at least at the time, this record was a pretty big deal, because it sounded so different than anything else being released at the time.

And there's no doubt about it, "The Roches" is a singular album.  I'm not sure that I'd call it great, but it includes three undeniably great songs - "Hammond Song," "Mr. Sellack," and (especially) "Pretty and High."  The vocals throughout are drop-dead perfect, as is the spare instrumentation (the album was produced by Robert Fripp in "audio verite," whatever that means).  The album is most successful (in the form of the three songs above) when it stops being so self-conscious, and focuses on the songs themselves.  There are other songs on the record that are nearly as strong, "The Troubles" and "The Married Men" among them, but on those the sisters (in their writing and singing) are trying to be a little too clever for their own good.  I wonder whether they would seem stronger when performed live; there's clearly an interplay between artist and listener that's being attempted, but it comes across less effectively on vinyl.

And "Pretty and High" - man, what a great song.  The opening is just perfect:

She came on the stage
in a dress like the sky
she had painted a sunset
around her eyes
and all of the people
were charmed and surprised
at how pretty and high and shy she was
pretty and high and shy

As for the ending, well; it's best to just listen all the way through:



"The Roches," 1979.

LP of the Week - "Wild Planet," The B-52s (1980)

"The world's greatest new-wave kiddie-novelty disco-punk band," Robert Christgau called them in 1980.  And while the novelty piece of that equation is fair, it's also fair to note that they're still around today, some 38 years after they first came together in Athens, Georgia during the year of our nation's bicentennial.  And that they've had precious few lineup changes over those years - the only permanent one being when guitarist Ricky Wilson died of an AIDs-related illness in 1985.  Keith Strickland, the original drummer who then assumed guitar man duties, no longer tours with the band, but still considers himself a full-fledged member.

"Wild Planet" was their second album, released just two weeks before I would leave home for college in September, 1980.  To be fair, it's not as good as their debut, but that's not much of a criticism, because the debut was an enduring masterpiece that remains one of the greatest New Wave albums ever released.  If the self-titled debut was an A+, the follow-up is no worse than an A-, and a lot of bands have done a lot worse than that.

The only thing that really distinguishes "Wild Planet" from the album that preceded it is the lack of a single track as strong as "Dance This Mess Around" and "Rock Lobster."  It's remarkably consistent, and yes, they were sticking to a formula, but you could sure do a lot worse than record and release an album that features 9 eminently danceable, fun tracks without ever missing a beat.  "Private Idaho" is probably the best song, but "Devil in My Car," "Quiche Lorraine" and "Strobe Light" come close.  There's a reason that the album was one of the staples of my Berkeley experience, and the band's near-universal appeal is the reason why so many people in our dorm were enthusiastic about attending the band's two Bay Area concerts during that time.

Rock on, dance on...it still sounds great today.

LP of the Week - "Spectres," Blue Oyster Cult (1977)

You don't hear much about Blue Oyster Cult anymore, but they were a pretty big deal in the 70s.  I'm probably the type of fan that hard-core devotees would scoff at, because (along with a couple of million people) I jumped on the bandwagon when "Don't Fear the Reaper" hit the airwaves, and the album from which that song came, "Agents of Fortune," hit the top of the charts.  Christgau referred to that album as "the Fleetwood Mac of hard rock," and that's a fair description.

I'm confident that this puts me in the minority, but my favorite album of theirs was "Spectres," the follow up to "Agents" released in the fall of 1977.  The album may lack a single song with the power of "Reaper" (although "I Love the Night," a vampire tale that could be viewed as a sequel to the earlier song, comes close), but it's remarkably consistent, with all of the band's songwriters - Eric Bloom, Joe Bouchard, Albert Bouchard, Donald (Buck Dharma) Roeser, and Allen Lanier - contributing at least one strong tune.

The album's best known song, "Godzilla," opens the album and sets the tone of a band that isn't taking itself too seriously, despite their reputation.  "Golden Age of Leather" follows that, and is another example of the band, essentially, making fun of itself.  Other strong tracks include "Searchin' For Celine," "Fireworks," and "Goin' Through the Motions."  There really isn't a bad track on the album.

I saw them perform once, in the summer of 1979 on a double bill with the red-hot (at the time) Cheap Trick.  It was a good show, and I'm pretty sure some version of the group is still out there playing somewhere.  At the end of the day, Blue Oyster Cult may not have quite been Hall of Fame material, but they were pretty darn good.

LP of the Week - "Brotherhood," New Order (1986)

Back in 1980, when New Order rose from the ashes of Joy Division following the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis, you could have gotten really good odds on whether there would still being a working band called "New Order" more than 30 years later.  But even though they've broken up a couple of times and made a couple of personnel changes, they're still out there, even releasing an album every few years.

What the band proved in the 1980s was that Joy Division was not a one-man show.  Rightfully so, that band has come to be associated with Curtis' dark, brooding and frankly scary vocals, but even then, the music was just as important to the sound of the band as the vocals and the words.  Wikipedia refers to New Order's sound as a synthesis of post-punk and electronic dance music, and while that is perhaps oversimplifying things a bit, it's essentially correct.

"Brotherhood" was their best album, the album where they sounded most human.  There isn't a bad track on the LP, but there are three standouts.  On the first side, "Broken Promise" builds to a climax of guitar feedback and pulsing bass and drums that still makes my heart race almost 30 years later, and on the album's closer "Every Little Counts," the band proves that yes, it does have a sense of humor  But the highlight of "Brotherhood" is the song that I'd argue is the best they ever did, and one of the greatest singles of any era you might be tempted to choose - "Bizarre Love Triangle."  Again, Peter Hook's pulsating bass drives the music, until the end when Gillian Gilbert lays down one of the most beautiful synthesizer lines in rock history.  It's one of those songs that, were it released today, would sound innovative, new and fresh.  Just like it did back then.

The band has released a number of compilations over the years, many featuring various remixes of their most popular songs.  But if you want to dive into New Order, "Brotherhood" is as good a place as any to start.

LP of the Week - "Red Headed Stranger," Willie Nelson (1975)

Listening to this record feels like falling into a time warp.  To call it spare in its sound hardly does it justice; it's practically primitive.  On some songs all you hear is Willie singing, accompanied by his guitar.  On others, there is Bobbie Nelson's piano, and every now and then you get a snippet of bass and drums.  For all intents and purposes, it's an old field recording.  It's the kind of record that sounds good with a few snaps and pops every now and then.

It's hard to imagine today, but there was a time when Willie Nelson was one of the great unsung musical heroes of our time.  He'd penned some famous songs ("Crazy" by Patsy Cline, for example), but for the most part, no one had ever heard of the guy.  That was certainly true when this record came out in 1975, and it's probably no coincidence that within three years, Nelson was a bonafide superstar.

It's a short album, and the bulk of the songs are covers - "I Couldn't Believe It Was True" by Eddy Arnold, "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain" by Fred Rose, "Can I Sleep In Your Arms" by Hank Cochran among them - but the concept is all Nelson's.  The late, great critic Paul Nelson called it "a phonographic western" evoking the works of John Ford and "Shane," and described the narrative as follows:

The album traces the life of a Montana cowboy who finds his true love with another man, kills both of them and later another woman, then drifts through Denver dance halls into old age, forever unable to cut his early loss but managing in the final years of his life a moving, believable synthesis of all he has missed.

Not exactly cheerful stuff, and even in its music, the album is mournful for most of its running length.  But it's brilliant throughout - quite likely the greatest work that Nelson has produced.

LP of the Week - "Boston" (1976)

There are memories associated with "Boston" that are so engrained in my mind that when I hear the songs in question, a sense of nostalgia overwhelms me to the point where I feel that I've been transported back to those very moments.

Memory #1:

In August 1976 (August 12, to be exact) I was hired to my first job - at McDonald's.  I would work there for four years (right up to when I left for Cal in September 1980) and eventually become the "grillman" training coordinator for two different stores, but for the first few months of that job I hated it unlike any other I've ever had.  Back in those days, the workforce at McDonald's was comprised almost entirely of high school and college students.  The managers weren't much older than the regular crew, and were usually promoted because they were good at their jobs, not because they had any particular talent at managing 16-18 year olds.  The expectations were high, the rules were strict, and even though I would come to appreciate everything that I learned there, for a while it was so bad that I'd have fantasies about the place burning down in the middle of the night (that actually happened in the mid nineties, but by then I was long gone - I swear!).

There are three songs that cause all of those emotions to rise up in me as if I had jumped in the wayback machine - Heart's "Magic Man," Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music," and "More than a Feeling" by Boston.  But for some reason, it's the latter song that does it the strongest.  The memory has never released itself from the song.

Memory #2:

From the time I was 7 years old until the year that I graduated from high school, I was in a bowling league.  For the last two years, the league bowled on Friday afternoons, and during that time I religiously stuck to a ritual.  When we were finished (my younger brothers were also in a league, but they usually took a little longer than the "older kids" did), we'd adjourn to the game room, I'd go to the jukebox, and play "Smokin'" by Boston.  After a while, it almost got to be a joke - but there was no way I was leaving that alley until I'd heard "Smokin'."

Memory #3:
 
We're now in the winter of 1977 - around the time of the beginning of the second semester of my junior year of high school.  By far, that was my roughest year in high school, mostly because of my distaste for two classes that plagued me at the time and which I wonder why I ever took in the first place (probably because they were required for an eventual college-bound student such as myself).

Every Friday night, I'd go to a basketball game with one or two of my friends - and seemingly every time, "Foreplay/Long Time" would come on the radio.

Memory #4:

Flash forward to the summer of 1977 - the summer of "Star Wars," and the summer of my first "serious" girlfriend (well, I was serious, but I'm not really sure she gave a sh*t).  By this time, I had figured the job out, and was actually beginning to enjoy it a bit.  We had a good crew at the time, and I was still one of the youngest ones.  When I think back on those times, it amazes me the amount of responsibility that this mostly crazy group of young kids was afforded - I mean, it was only a McDonald's, but holy cow, we were running the damn place, and there's no doubt in my mind that the lessons I learned there were just as (if not more) important to the person and worker I am today than anything I learned in school.

That summer, "Peace of Mind" was the song on the radio (usually, right after Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner").  The vision that comes to mind when I hear that song today is driving home from work in the gigantic Kingswood Estate, all the windows down, and the radio turned up (AM radio, of course) as LOUD as it would go.

Memory # 5:

Holiday season 1977, our crew holiday party.  By this time I'd come to my senses and split with the girlfriend (in all honesty she dumped me, but whatever), and decided to actually ask someone from the crew to be my date at the party.  I go pick her up, we go to the party, and since I'd been asked to provide the music (even back then, I was the master of music) I throw in a unlabeled mix-tape (I've always liked to be surprised at what might be coming next) and the first song on it is "Something About You," one of the few cuts from the album that was never released as a single.

So think about it for a moment - for almost 18 solid months, "Boston" pretty much dominated the airwaves.  If memory serves, it sold more than 10 million units, which isn't bad for a band that no one had ever heard of, pretty much right up to the moment when "More Than A Feeling" hit the airwaves in the late summer of 1976.

To these ears today, it still sounds like a great album - one of the greatest debut albums in the history of rock.  It's a throwback, no doubt - not just in the type of music that was being embraced by the critics of the day, but also for me personally in the development of my musical tastes.  Within two years of buying "Boston," I would also buy my first albums by the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Ramones, Talking Heads, Pretenders, Gang of Four, English Beat, The Specials, Nick Lowe, and I'm sure a few others that I've forgotten.  Certainly in attitude but also in sound, this was a very different kind of music than what one heard on "Boston."

But after all these years, there's still a place for all of those bands in one record collection.  And I'll defend "Boston" just as much as I've had to defend Gang of Four's "Entertainment" over the years.

LP of the Week - "I Just Can't Stop It," The English Beat

I failed to fully appreciate "I Just Can't Stop It" when it was released in the late spring of 1980.  Then, the song that stuck with me was the band's cover of "Tears of a Clown," which in retrospect was probably little more than a gimmick designed to grab attention and add to radio play/record sales.  Don't get me wrong; it's a great cover version of what I consider to be an iconic song - but it's hardly the best thing on the album.

Along with The Specials, The English Beat (simply "The Beat" in England, but christened "English" in the States because there was another (lesser) active band with that name at that time) was formed during a period of economic uncertainty and social unrest in the U.K., and was often aggressively political in its songs.  At the same time, they were a great dance band, and their songs have held up for more than three decades now.  Drop this album on the marketplace in 2014, and it would sound just as fresh and lively as it did way back in the dark ages.

Where it started to come together for me was when I saw them live, in October 1980 at Zellerbach Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus.  They were opening for Talking Heads, and even though I've seen a lot of great artists play a lot of great shows since then, that show still ranks in my all-time Top 5.  You had Ranking Roger dancing around the stage, you had Saxa (still alive and presumably kicking at age 84) parked on a folding chair on the side of the stage, blowing his horn; and you had the rest of what was a great band playing like their lives depended on the outcome.  It was great, and I was sold.

Looking at the track listing now, it's amazing how many great songs are on there - songs that you still hear on the radio every now and then, or used in a film - "Mirror in the Bathroom," "Hands Off, She's Mine," "Twist and Crawl," "Click Click," "Ranking Full Stop," "Stand Down Margaret," "Best Friend" - and that's before you even notice that they've also covered "Can't Get Used to Losing You," an old Pomus/Shuman song made famous by Andy Williams, of all people.

It's all great, and all these years it makes one wonder what might have happened before the band split in two (becoming General Public and Fine Young Cannibals) before starting tours (that last to this day) under various incarnations using the word "Beat."  Before dissolving, they made three albums, and they're all great.  Could it have lasted longer?  Alas, it's questions like these that have no answers, but that's part of what makes it so much fun to be a music fan.  And who knows - in an alternate universe somewhere, the band just might be getting ready for its induction into the Hall of Fame.

LP of the Week - "Dirty Mind," Prince

Prince first hit the airwaves in 1979, with his radio-friendly hit "I Wanna Be Your Lover."  It sounded great then (as it does now), but one could be forgiven at the time for not seeing him as the future Hall of Famer and icon that he would become.

No, the hints toward that status came on the next album, "Dirty Mind."  I don't remember exactly when I bought it (my first Prince LP was "Controversy"), but it was clearly the album that opened the door to the possibility that this kid from Minneapolis just might be an otherworldly amalgamation of Jimi Hendrix, James Brown and Michael Jackson.

And aptly titled, it was.  In his essay that accompanied the results of the 1980 Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll, Robert Christgau - who had taken most of the year off, while compiling and editing the first of his Consumer Guide compilations - wrote a little bit about each of the albums finishing in the Top 40.  "Dirty Mind" placed ninth, and Christgau (who had the album 3rd on his list, behind only "London Calling" and Talking Heads' "Remain in Light") wrote this about it:

Prince's Dirty Mind: Although the vocals are love-man falsetto, the metallic textures and simple drum patterns are as much Rolling Stones as Funkadelic. And where the typical love man plays the lead in "He's So Shy," Prince is aggressively, audaciously erotic. I'm talking about your basic f*ckbook fantasies--the kid sleeps with his sister and digs it, sleeps with his girlfriend's boyfriend and doesn't, and stops a wedding by gamahuching the bride on her way to church. I mean, Mick Jagger can just fold up his penis and go home. 

And that pretty much says it all, in addition to demonstrating why Christgau became the Dean of American Rock Critics.  The album is barely thirty minutes long (artists used to do that in the old days, little kiddies, but then you could also find albums for as low as $3.99), but there isn't a wasted moment in those minutes.  It kicks off with the pulsating title track, where Prince takes a simple synthesizer riff and wrings as much sexual tension out of it as he possibly can.  And then he follows that up with "When You Were Mine," which is, oh, only one of the greatest songs he's ever written.  On the second side, surrounding the sexual fantasies (or maybe not, this is Prince after all) of "Head" and "Sister" are the  great party anthems "Uptown" ("Black, white, Puerto Rican, everybody's just a freakin') and "Partyup," which closes out the show on an appropriately upbeat note.

I don't think this is his best album, but it is certainly top tier Prince - strongly setting the stage for the genius that was still to come.

LP of the Week - "Country Life," Roxy Music

And so begins another series, this time focusing on an album that I own only on vinyl, in the long-playing 33 RPM format.

We start with "Country Life," helpfully billed on the lyric sheet as "the fourth Roxy Music album."  It was recorded during the summer of 1974, released later that year, and I bought it in early 1977, my junior year of high school.  It placed seventh in the 1975 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, ahead of Roxy's next album, "Siren," which placed 13th (the winner that year was "The Basement Tapes," followed by "Horses" and "Born to Run").

The first thing you'll notice (assuming you're familiar with seventies Roxy, which is probably not an assumption I should make) is that the version I own has the censored cover, without the hot female models, one of whom was topless (but covering her breasts).  Just Google "Country Life cover" if you want to see the original European version.

This was the second Roxy album I bought, after "Siren," and at the time I thought it was a steep drop in quality.  It still surprises me that it finished ahead of that album in Pazz & Jop, but listening to it again after all these years, they're a lot closer than my 17-year old head could get its ears around.  What wasn't clear at the time but seems pretty obvious today was the sense of humor with which Bryan Ferry approached the album.  Who else would have the nerve to begin an album side with a song that includes lyrics that are translated into German, and then close it out with a song called "Prairie Rose" that begins with the lines:

Texas, That's where I 
Belong
It seems to me

Texas, Lonesome Star
Shine on
The big country

Texas, With open skies
And you
For company

Texas, Oh prairie rose
How happy
I should be

Let's just say that I'm having a little trouble buying Bryan Ferry as a Texan. 

It's also a nervous album - Ferry won't let the listener get comfortable; the pace and rhythm of the songs jump all over the place.  The album begins with its longest song ("The Thrill of It All"), which anyone else would probably have saved for the end.  But it's on "Country Life" that the band really meshed into what I would call its classic sound - Brian Eno was now long gone, and the core of Ferry as auteur and on vocals, Phil Manzanera on guitar, Andy Mackay on saxophone, and Paul Thompson on drums demonstrate that they are a great band, and not just Ferry's sidemen (that era would come later).

For some reason, this album freaked me out a bit when I was 17.  Now, it just sounds like Roxy Music demonstrating some of the things that they did best, while in their prime.