Ramblin' with Roger

25. Bill Cosby: Why Is There Air? (1965)
Answer: “To blow up volleyball, basketballs.” It’s how I could ‘”see” Lombard Street in San Francisco a couple decades before visiting it in person. I learned that “traffic tickets are like savings bonds; the longer you keep them, the greater they mature.”

24. Paul Butterfield Blues Band: East West (1966)
The band with Michael Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. Features a Monkees song (‘Mary, Mary’) and the classic jazz tune ‘The Work Song’.

23. Sly & The Family Stone: Stand (1969)
If I can’t put the greatest hits on the list, this is the album: ‘I Want to Take You Higher’, ‘Sing a Simple Song,’ ‘Everyday People,’ ‘You Can Make It If You Try’, and the title track, plus some interesting non-singles tracks, too.

22. Neil Young: After The Gold Rush (1970)
‘When You Dance, I Can Really Love’ was my song to the college girlfriend. Has a bunch of other good stuff too.

When you think of the first name Roger, who are the first people you think of? (I mean besides me, of course.) That was the question in this segment of the TV show Family Feud; I’m sorry it is incomplete.

50. Temptations: With A Lot O’ Soul (1967)
Usually a Temptations album is under the direction of one producer, such as Smokey Robinson or Norman Whitfield. But this was a transitional time, which made the album more eclectic.

49. Beatles: White Album (1968)
Remember hearing it for the first time in the basement of the Unitarian church in Binghamton, NY.

48. Roberta Flack: Chapter Two (1970)
Three extraordinary songs out of the eight.

47. Doors: Waiting For The Sun (1968)
‘Hello, I Love You’ is the single, and the least interesting song on the album.

Now back to our regularly scheduled list:

75. Donovan: Barababajagal (1969)
Love IS hot.

74. Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding (1967)

73. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass: The Lonely Bull (1962)
I preferred the cover of Whipped Cream and Other Delights, but I liked the music of this album better, which was not only the first one by the TJB, but also the first album on A&M Records.

72. Big Brother And The Holding Company: Cheap Thrills (1968)
This is the Janis Joplin album with the R. Crumb artwork

71. Crosby Stills & Nash: Crosby, Stills, and Nash (1969)
The first supergroup: guys from The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies, though I did not know this at the time.

70. The Jackson 5: Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5 (1969)
My near twin Gordon once noted that Michael’s vocal on Smokey Robinson’s ‘Who’s Loving you’ belied his tender age.

69. Bob Dylan: Nashville Skyline (1969)
My high school girlfriend really turned me on to Dylan generally, and this album specifically.

Re: Amy’s question about Dusty Springfield: I’ve had a greatest hits album for quite a while, but I’ve only gotten Dusty in Memphis fairly recently, certainly since she died, so it doesn’t have the multiple plays to make the list. Also, there are additional songs on the CD (some leaking into the next decade – 1971) which I like as well or better than the songs on the original LP.

Before that, though, gotta mention one album on SamuraiFrog’s excellent finale. Judy Garland: Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961) is not on my list. I never owned it, though I was certainly aware of it. The Capitol Records LP inner sleeves from the mid-1960s – the Beatles and Beach Boys were on the label – always featured it. Probably the first of several albums on his list I’ll have to check out.

125. The Who: Sell Out (1967)
Another album I discovered only in the past decade, via my old friend Fred Hembeck. The motif of faux ads was stolen on some SpongeBob SquarePants CD I own.

124. Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1970)
Love the Frenchman’s introduction – “Joe Co-CARE”

123. Rascals: Collections (1967)
The second album, not a greatest hits.

122. Beach Boys: Sunflower (1970)
Underrated at a point the Beach Boys were pretty much written off commercially.

121. Doors: Strange Days (1967)

The Fagbug meets Equality House.

Arthur: “When I was a kid, I expected life to be a certain way, and that way did not include being true to myself. I simply couldn’t imagine that one day I might be a full citizen.” Here is his favorite speech (it IS a hoot) and his favorite moment in the marriage equality passage in New Zealand.

The Man On the Street: Three Decades of Street Harassment.

This month in 1889, the so-called “Unassigned Lands” in what is now central Oklahoma were opened to white settlement, the celebrated Oklahoma Land Run. “The Native tribes, you may be sure, aren’t quite so enthusiastic about celebrating.”

Mr. Frog re: Spike Lee’s School Daze and a Ramble About Racism.

10 Cover-ups That Just Made Things Worse.

27 science fictions that became fact in 2012.

Meryl: Logos: The power of grounding logic and expectations in our communications. Also, Optical Illusions and their role in Education, Brain Training, and Visual Literacy; at least check out the video at the end of the latter one.

J: The sexiest letter.

Neil Gaiman: There wasn’t anything in there that indicated that I was going to be a writer, a real writer, with something to say, except for one thing, and it was this: I was writing. There was lots of writing going on.

I whine a lot about writing, but I never have whined quite so persuasively as this.

Healing the Wounded Womb.