CCR

Props for Pops (71st Birthday Edition)

May 3, 2013 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

I have written more than once about my mother (here and here) but I haven’t said a great deal (here) about my old man. That is, in part, because he is still very much with us, and our story is still unfolding. For a variety of obvious reasons, I hope that continues to be the case for a long, long time.

But anyone who knows me understands that my relationship with the old guy (Pops, to me; Jack, to others, Pa, to his two grandchildren), which I’m happy to report has always been more than solid, is a non-negotiable facet of my existence. Certainly, after what he and I (and my sister and her husband) went through during and after the death of my mother, things could never be the way they were. On literal and figurative levels. When I talk to others about this inevitable part of many people’s lives (e.g., losing a parent long before it’s expected or acceptable), I usually offer the opinion, based on what I’ve witnessed and experienced, that the crisis either pulls families closer together or pushes them farther apart. At least once a day, on some level, I’m grateful that our family had the foundation to rally around one another and work together on healing, a process that is measured not in years or months or even weeks but in days and sometimes minutes. We went through it, together and we’ll go through it, together.

I had the opportunity to toast my old man on his (surprise) 60th birthday party, which occurred at his favorite local restaurant, Dante’s. It was amazing to take him back there Tuesday night for a mano a mano dining adventure (keyword: soft-shell crabs) and reflect on how much has changed in the last ten years. But mostly we did –and will– focus on how little has changed: it’s still family first, we celebrate all of these occasions together and I remain as grateful as I’ve always been that this good man brought me into the world. It’s a world I would have been ill-equipped to enter, as an adult, without his guidance and support. It’s a world I’m more grateful than I’ve ever been that he is still very much a part of. We will celebrate those bonds of love and devotion tonight, like we always do.

Enough. There are plenty of things to say about Pops, but today, on the occasion of his 68th (EDIT: 70th!) birthday, I would like to acknowledge, and celebrate, the bond of music that we (like my mother and I) share. Pops is no aficionado, but he has (some) game and I always am pleased to recall the handful of original LPs I happily stole from his collection. One of my earliest musical memories, along with the old Fantasia coloring book sessions, was Curtis Mayfield’s masterpiece, the soundtrack of Superfly. It is not an overstatement to suggest that this album set an aesthetic tone early in my formative development that made me more open (and, of course, susceptible) to all types of music. But no need to linger on the nuances; the nitty gritty of the situation is that holding the original fold-out double album of this blaxploitation classic was a seminal ’70s experience. It was immensely gratifying to give the old man a copy of the remastered reissue of this bad boy on his birthday in 1998.

Curtis Mayfield, “Freddie’s Dead”:

Another one that was in his slight but not unimpressive collection was the original pressing of Janis Joplin’s last joint, Pearl. I even have a picture of him, on his birthday (must have been ’71), happily holding the album up. Shame on me and not getting my scanner set up yet (stay tuned, and be forewarned). Of the “big three” who left us that unfortunate year, Pops never cared much for Jim, and never fell deeply in love (as he should have) with Jimi, but he did –and does– love Janis. Who could blame him?

Janis Joplin, “Get It While You Can”:

Wonderful memory: remember back in the ’80s when radio stations (even before “classic rock” stations became all the rage mid-decade) used to do their Top 500 countdowns on holidays (often either Memorial Day or Labor Day but occasionally July 4)? I used to live for those things and would listen, dutifully scribbling down the entries. Anyway, back in the early ’80s it was very unusual to hear unedited, long songs on the radio. So a song like Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do” was one of those rare treats you’d catch a couple of times a year, if you were lucky. I didn’t own that album (yet) but that only made it more of an event if/when it came on. During one of the countdowns, on July 4, this one came on and Pops and I were heading back from the pool to cook out pre-fireworks. The famous “talk box” section was yet to occur, so we pulled up in the driveway and Pops simply let the car idle. Too enraptured in the moment to even miss a few seconds before we could dash into the house and turn it on the stereo, we sat there, in our soaked swimsuits and savored the moment. These are the types of shared encounters that, I suspect, sustain the father-son relationship a decade down the road when curfews are being tested and new boundaries are being established.

Peter Frampton, “Do You Feel Like We Do”:

1980: there weren’t a ton of bands (or albums) that all of us could enjoy (and by all of us, I mean my parents and me because my sister was never on board although, by 1980 she was already a teenager, so we’ll forgive her), but Bob Seger’s Against The Wind definitely made the cut. In fact, that may have been the only album (aside from The Beatles’ Blue Album) that we owned on LP (mine), cassette (hers) and 8-track (his). Pops has always had a thing for Seger and insists he is a better live performer than Bruce Springsteen (he has never seen either in concert, so we’ll forgive him).

Bob Seger, “No Man’s Land”:

Speaking of 8-tracks…

The Ford Grenada (speaking of the early ’80s!) sported an 8-track and anyone who lived then may recall the not exactly cutting edge way this “technology” handled the transition from one “track” to the other: if a song had not ended before the next “track” was programmed, it would just fade out where it was, then click, and fade back in (I’m sure the artists at the time were thrilled with this development and the ways it butchered their songs). There are more than a handful of albums we owned that, to this day, I can remember (and still, not without some fondness, hear) where these transitions occurred. One of the albums from that era that warrants a serious reexamination is Pat Benatar’s debut In The Heat of the Night. That album holds up remarkably well (indeed, the only two songs I don’t listen to these days are the two hit singles, the generic FM paint-by-numbers anthem “Heartbreaker” and the egregious Blondie rip-off “We Live For Love”). I’m serious. If you haven’t listened to this one in ages, or never owned it in the first place, I’m sure you can –and should– get a used copy real cheap at Amazon.

Pat Benatar, “In The Heat of the Night”

Another band whose catalog we owned on 8-track was Heart. Speaking of another band that deserves a sustained critical endorsement (mental note): their first five albums were solid, and while Little Queen and Bebe Le Strange are minor masterpieces and the first album, Dreamboat Annie, has one of the great first sides of the ’70s, for my money their finest hour is 1978′s Dog and Butterfly. This one got much play in the Grenada and it still gets a lot of play at my crib. When she was in top form, as she is throughout this album, there were few voices as compelling and out and out sexy as Ann Wilson’s. (Pops had the LP version of Little Queen and I used to happily gaze at that front cover for hours. Still gives me a little tingle even today.)

Heart, “Mistral Wind”:

Pops is from Boston (as was my mother), so in addition to the accent he’s never lost (much to many of my friends’ delight), we cruised up north each Christmas and most summers. These were eight or nine hour jaunts (more if traffic or weather were issues and one or both invariably were) and I recall fantasizing, as a ten year old, how amazing it would be to just kick back and watch movies in the back to pass the time. I think of this now and how lucky today’s snot-nosed little brats are (not that I’m bitter or anything) to have video-on-demand installed into the headrest in front of them.

We got through those trips the old-fashioned way: painfully. Lots of reading, Mad Libs and music. Especially music. By the time I got to high school, sis was in college (ironically, in Boston) and moms usually flew the friendly skies, so it was a mano a mano adventure for many years. My father, being very much a man of routine, had (and has) his favorite discs (then cassettes) for each trip. Many, which we fortunately agreed upon, were mandatory, such as CCR (see below), Skynyrd (ditto), The Beatles (see above), Heart (ditto) and a handful of rotating flavors-of-the-year (I’m still not sure I’ve recovered from his infatuation with the Fine Young Cannibals circa 1989).

Funny story: one of the worst fights we almost got in was not due to alcohol, drugs, or a pregnant cheerleader, but whether or not we could (should) listen to the full (and, in hindsight, insufferable) 18 minute version of “In-A- Gadda-Da-Vida”. The fifteen year old me voted yes. Let me explain: this was the summer of either ’85 or ’86 and I was already long past the point where I took music a bit too seriously. At his request, I brought along one of my mixtapes (a long lost art I could have done graduate work in or made a career out of, had the world ever been kind enough to offer graduate degrees or paychecks for such consequential and benificent endeavors). Anyway, that song came on and about half-way through my pops –because he was sane– grew tired of the interminable organ and drum noodling, and since (although he is a seismologist, has a profoundly anti-technology acumen) he could not figure out how to fast forward the tape (you know, that fast forward button) he told me to move things along. I invited him to do it himself if he was so eager to get through the song. Hilarity ensued. Not one of my finer moments, but it was a matter of principle. And, considering I really did like that song at one time, and had not done any drugs, this proves two things: one need not be stoned, only immature, to find pleasure in Iron Butterfly; and I was, clearly, already pretty far down the rabbit hole in terms of the whole music thing.

Iron Butterfly, “In A Gadda Da Vida”

Usually, there were no issues regarding music. Mostly because it’s not that difficult to fill up nine hours. The trips almost always kicked off with CCR, not only one of the all-time great American bands, but absolutely perfect road trip music. Full props to the old man for having an original LP copy of the almost-immaculate Cosmo’s Factory, which I spun like a squeaky clean Jeffrey Lebowski.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Long As I Can See The Light”:

Otis: Because sometimes you have to break out the big guns.

Otis Redding, “Pain In My Heart”:

I knew I liked Skynyrd (I remember when “That Smell” got played on the radio in ’77/’78, and thinking that nobody else sounded like they did) but I did not know I loved Skynyrd until I asked for –and received– the double LP Gold & Platinum for my 12th birthday. This one has the (incredible) live version of “Gimme Three Steps” and, of course, the ultimate (live) Bic Lighter anthem “Free Bird”. Later on I crafted a mix that incorporated more material from the very overlooked Second Helping, but that original cassette copy kept us energized, and sufficiently southern, as we headed north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: “Simple Man”:

More on the musical memories, and Pops, another time. For now, it’s good enough to give credit where it’s due, celebrate a beloved father’s continued health, and acknowledge 68 (EDIT: 70!) well-lived years. Most of all, it’s nice to know this particular story is still being written.

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Bob Seger, CCR, Curtis Mayfield, Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Otis Redding, Pat Benatar, Peter Frampton

Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine*: Part One

December 26, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas to me.

So, a year or so ago I did something I’d been meaning –and promising– to do for ages: I acquired a turntable.

I knew it was inevitable. I still had that blue milk crate in my old man’s basement. I still had about one quarter of the albums I used to own; the ones I had not given away, lost or sold for (literal) pennies on the dollar back when I, like everyone else under the age of 30, was convinced that albums were irrelevant and traded them in, cheap, to acquire more compact discs. The story has a happy ending, sort of: I still have all the CDs I bought, going back to 1986 (ask anyone who has been to my place), and I tended to keep the LPs that meant the most to me, either for sentimental or aesthetic reasons. As a result I typically sold albums of more recent vintage, invariably by more forgettable acts. Since LPs did not have nearly the street cred, or value they would gradually accrue after a couple of decades, it was the “hit” albums that had a better chance of being sold at used record stores circa 1988.

Sidenote: it’s important for younger people to know, if impossible for them to understand, how different the world used to be. By the time the mid-’80s rolled around, some of us embraced digital technology like it was the Holy Grail. The act of purchasing an album meant immediately making a recording of it on a thing called a cassette (ask your parents): the reason for this was that from the first time you played a new album it would never sound that good again. Things like dust, time and repeated listens invariably caused skips and old-fashioned wear and tear. So in essence, you made a “pristine” copy on a demonstrably lower-fidelity solution (cassettes, which gave birth to thing called mixed tapes, of which more, HERE), in order to preserve that unsullied sound. Thus, when compact discs arrived, the notion of hearing it for the first time, every time was about as inconceivable, and magical as time travel (much more on that phenomenon and all it entailed, HERE). Listening to a compact disc was, for old-timers, what seeing Blu-ray was like for today’s lucky punks, only ten-fold (hundred-fold? million-fold?); it was like listening to the voice of God. And, if like me, the musicians you listened to were worshipped like gods, it all made a sick, wonderful sort of sense.

Of course, in recent times, turntables have assumed a new life, in part inevitable hipster bandwagon jumping, understandable nostalgia and the ceaselessly cyclical imperatives of trends and fashion. As such, people have increasingly asked me: Do you rock old school vinyl? I had to answer, no, but not for lack of trying. Not anymore. And in the meantime, I’ve had the opportunity to raid a good friend’s attic, I’ve had a colleague with a thing for estate sales scoping out the stacks, and above all, the aforementioned milk crate. With the turntable fully functional, and being home for the holiday, I made the sentimental journey down those wooden steps and there it sat, resilient yet filthy after about a quarter-century of neglect. I poked through, holding my nose as the dust flew in every direction. I also held my breath, figuratively: I had little recollection of what I’d saved and what I’d consigned, unwittingly, in the full flowering of arrogant youth, to the dustbin of history. Almost miraculously, so many of the wonderful memories were staring back up at me, wise eyes that had been abandoned for too long, ready to forgive, forget and air it out on the wheels of steel. There they were, the ones I’d bought, the ones I’d received as gifts, the ones my best friend’s father, a rehabilitated hippie, gave me in the early ’80s, and the handful my old man (not an aficionado, but not without a little game, of which more HERE) held over from the great old days.

It was information and memory load, in a good way. To think that my 7th grade nephew helped me lug the heavy crate to my car was, if not full circle, at least semi-full and not without its own unforced poetry.

What follows is a celebration, in two parts, of some of the finds that have provided the most delight and joy. To be certain, all of these are available in my digital library, and some receive repeated airplay. But the tactile sensation of seeing them, touching them, and then listening to them…let’s put it this way: when’s the last time you heard a needle easing down onto an LP? That impossible-to-replicate crackle, and then the warmth of that sound? For me it had been at least since high school and that is entirely too long. Hosting good friends for cocktails the other night I was struck by one thing above all else: how often I had to keep getting up to put a new record on. In a world of discs, iPods and shuffling playlists, it is arresting to recall that, at most, albums typically lasted 20 minutes per side. During the course of a lubricated evening, that is a lot of 20 minute intervals (and a lot less depending on how old the album in question is). That will inexorably lead to sobering thoughts: how old we are, how young we were, how much slower everything seemed, and mostly the irretrievable reality that we used to spend a great deal of time with analog sounds and hard-cover books because there were no other alternatives. It’s, as always, better to have more options and enjoy the best of all worlds. But it’s nice to take that long, strange trip down the yellow-brick road and remember all the things you realize, as you listen, you never really forgot.

*Incidentally, this milk crate was a gold mine of sorts, but the title comes from a great song full of inscrutable (if evocative) images and lines, by one of my all-time favorite bands. (Much more on them, HERE.) That line provided the title for a double LP collection that figured prominently in young Murph’s musical evolution. That’s it in the front row, peaking out at my old man’s original pressing of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Respect!

So, in chronological order, let’s take a look at ten original album covers, and feature a personal favorite from each album.

(Rescued/redeemed from a box in an attic. To have some original Beatles vinyl is like finding dinosaur bones. Sound quality: tolerable!) “Think For Yourself”:

(From my boy’s old man, handed over like an heirloom from another family; you can still smeel the skunk weed in the grooves. Figuratively.) “White Room”:

(This is actually a pretty medicore effort from Jim’s “Fat Elvis” period, but appreciate the misleading original cover, and the fact that it does not exist with this cover, even on CD.) “Universal Mind”: