Blue Oyster Cult “Cultosaurus Erectus”

I never heard this record (before I listened to it, just recently) since by 1980 I was fully immersed in punk rock, and these guys seemed like “dinosaurs.” And based on this record (a play on scientific names and porn, I guess?) they also liked dinosaurs. The cover art seems to illustrate a kind of speculative text that the Earth’s former inhabitants were weirder and ever more savage than previously imagined—prompted somewhat, I’m guessing, by the original Alien movie, which came out a year earlier. And just imagining the sequel where the cat explodes and the aliens conquer the world—that’s the Alien sequel we were all expecting back then! A pretty good rendering of that distinctive alien mouth, on the cover—which was fresh back then (before it got ripped off by every movie with a monster, and counting). I guess the idea that we’re in for a new age of the dinosaurs makes a lot of sense, and might even be supported by the lyrics—but I can’t quite make them out, and there’s no lyric sheet, and I’m not willing to do more research—I’m not writing a thesis here! It’s good enough that the songs are actually quite catchy, and even fun. I have to admit, hard rock isn’t my thing—but a good song is a good song. What I recall from my BOC records from the Seventies is they wrote some catchy tunes. It seems like they kept the band together for a while, too—and I’m not sure what became of them—but it seems like I saw some version of the band on a recent festival lineup. If a feature-length, streaming, Blue Oyster Cult documentary hasn’t already been made, you can count on it soon.

The Kinks “Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One”

SO, I was sitting here on a Thursday afternoon listening to a digital version of this record, thinking what a fucking really great record this is—and have I written about this on the DJ Farraginous site yet? I think I have it, because I can picture the well-worn album cover. So I looked it up, and… no I hadn’t. Maybe I didn’t have it after all—maybe it was one of the records that I tragically lost during my last move. Well, regardless, it was time to pick a record to write about, using a random number generator, and then looking up the record on a spreadsheet where I have all of my records listed (a piddly 500 or so, lest you think I’m a spreadsheet wizard or anything). And believe it or else, the number picked THIS record—which I did have after all! What are the odds? (Well, 500 – 1.) You can’t make this stuff up. Well, you could, but in that case I’d say something more outrageous, like I was at Starbucks and saw Ray Davies in the queue, ordering a double Chocaccino with oat milk or something.

The cover is one of the low-key classics—it looks like a guy drew it in high school science class. It opens, however, and there’s even more of this “art”—but also the lyrics, in a 1970s font called “eyestrain.” But yes, this is yet another record from 1970—is it weird I keep picking out records from 1970? At some point I’ll use my spreadsheet wizardry to figure out just how many records I own from that magical year. It starts out with a verse of straight country & western—but it’s a fake-out intro—not that it would be terrible to have a straight C&W record by this band—and they are essentially a country band—just a smart one—and also, a pop band, and a rock band, and a punk band. This is just a great record from start to finish. There may be few songs I don’t like as much as other songs, but in that case I listen to the lyrics. The catchy songs are so catchy that I couldn’t care less if they were singing about snaking out the sink or something—maybe they are.

I am, of course, playing my trashed vinyl copy, now, and it sounds pretty much like the perfect idea of what a record should sound like. No matter all the scratches and noise—it’s so present I can smell the bass player’s aftershave. “Lola” is one of those songs I should be so sick of I never want to hear it again—seeing how I’ve heard it one million times. It was the first Kinks song I was ever aware of. Yet, it’s such a good song, every time I hear it I pay attention—it surprises me even. On this listening of the whole record there was one odd moment that struck me. In the song “Top of the Pops” there is one of the laziest guitar solos I’ve ever heard. That’s the best way I can describe it—lazy. Yet for all its laziness, it’s somehow just totally sublime. Then it occurs to me what I’ve always liked about the Kinks and never put into these words—the quality I love is their laziness. This is both incredibly obvious and shouldn’t be taken the wrong way—like, as how much I think they sweat or care—which is something else altogether. Nor do I mean effortless. Nor do I mean relaxed. It’s a quality of sound, you know it when you hear it—laziness. It’s a good thing—there’s probably versions in all music of all time. I could cite examples, but I’m not going to. I’m sure someone said this better than I, too. I could look it up, but I’m too lazy.

Terry Gibbs “It’s Time We Met”

Knowing nothing about Terry Gibbs, I picked up this record because the cover is so excellent—it’s a painting by Jack Lonshein of an intense looking guy (presumedly Gibbs) emerging from an abstract field of blue and green paint splotches, his ghostly hands balancing a couple of mallets—and the vibraphone depicted expressionistically by a few bright yellow rectangles. The image of his face, however, looks almost photographic—and weirdly resembles the actor, Mike Connors, who played Mannix on TV around this time. (Mike Connors and Terry Gibbs were born only about a year apart, in Brooklyn, with different names than Connors and Gibbs.) Anyway, it’s the best cover I’ve seen in a while. The internet tells me Terry Gibbs is still around, at 96, and has released dozens of records from 1951 up to 2017—kind of amazing—but mostly throughout the Fifties and Sixties. This one is from 1965—mostly uptempo, but with a few slower, bluesy, jazz instrumentals. Terry Gibbs is on vibraphone, with a band that includes saxophone, organ, guitar, bass, drums. None of the songs are familiar to me, but they have great names, like: “We Three,” “Bathtub Eyes,” “7 F,” “Big Lips,” and “The Tweaker.” The liner notes indicate that the songs are all by Gibbs. I especially love the organ—practically dismantled by Nat Pierce—and the vibes, of course. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t just listen exclusively to vibraphone-centric jazz records—I suppose one needs variety to fully appreciate what one loves most. My only criticism of the record is that on some songs, or some parts of some songs, it’s way too sax-heavy for me. The tenor sax, piloted by Sal Nistico, just really dominates—that guy sounds like he could honk several sets a night, until well past closing time, and still be able to talk his way out of a parking ticket. But if you’re a fan of a “blowing session”—as it says in the liner notes—this is your record. I mean, I like this record just fine—it’ll probably even cut though the construction cacophony and leaf blower apocalypse outside. If it was about 50 times longer, I might be able to clean my apartment to it. Plus: seriously—album cover hall of fame.

Tammy Wynette “Stand by Your Man / Bedtime Story”

This is a double record, but not a double record, in that it’s two individual LPs put together in double record format. Stand by Your Man from 1969 and Bedtime Story from 1972—both are great albums. If you could only have two Tammy Wynette records, these two wouldn’t be bad choices. And if you could only have one country record (which would be a sad, inhumane restriction), you could do worse than with this one. Both records are produced by Billy Sherrill. Every song is fine, and there are like 22 of them. The first side starts with the song, “Stand by Your Man,” the number one hit song that—even if you knew no country music—you’d know it. If country music was Mount Rushmore, but there was only one song instead of four presidents—it would be this song. It’s kind of like that southern thing of, anything that’s liquid, calling it a Coke. It was never my favorite, particularly, but maybe that’s just because it’s as ubiquitous as Coke. If I had to pick a favorite song on this album, I’d guess I’d say, “If This Is Our Last Time,” the Dallas Frazier number—but they’re all good. One funny thing about the album cover, the front is the Bedtime Story cover art, with a superimposed Stand by Your Man cover—about the size of a undersized CD cover—in one corner. And on the back, it’s the reverse. There’s a list of all the songs on both front and back. And then it opens up, and there are two, full-size, black and white photos of Tammy Wynette—pretty good ones. No credits or liner notes, just ten matchbook-size, black and white images of ten more great Tammy Wynette albums. By this time, when I was 12 or so, she was something. I will forever regret not going to see her at the county fair.

James Taylor “Sweet Baby James”

I’ve always been a big fan of James Taylor—or at least the idea of him—I don’t actually go out of my way to see him live, or pay tons of money for his records—though I think you can find this one pretty easily—I suppose they pressed a lot of them. As I’ve mentioned before, the song “Fire and Rain” was one of my favorites when I was eleven or twelve, when I heard it on my “Superstars of the Seventies” collection—and it’s still a song that gives me goose bumps—a least until the end (which they should have maybe faded out before it goes into the rinse cycle). I know that might sound overly critical, but you still hear that song regularly on the radio—I’ve probably heard it 3 million times over the years—and so you develop an opinion. That kind of airplay could be blessing for an artist (if there’s some kind of royalty compensation)—or a curse (no escape)! Overall, it’s an okay record—there’s some gospel, some blues, some country, some folk, some rock’n’roll, you name it. Put it all together, I guess, and you get “singer-songwriter.” I feel like a lot of people are kind of negative about that concept, lately (or maybe for decades)—which isn’t really fair—but I suppose it’s human nature to pick on something—it almost doesn’t matter what it is—as long as the cowards have backup. James Taylor is about as singer-songwriter as you can get—but, even more, he’s James Taylor—as in, kind of legendary. It didn’t hurt that he was in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), one of the best movies ever, which he’s great in—even if he does look about as comfortable as a civilian trying to land a plane after the pilot has died. Which is one of many things great about that movie. “Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone.” All the songs are fine, they’re good—but that “Fire and Rain”—I’m gonna listen to it again.