music Archives - Page 73 of 268 - Ramblin' with Roger

What’s the best B-side in music history?

CSNY, Beatles, Petty, The Clash

Super Black Market Clash Greg Burgas, curse him, asked “What’s the best B-side in music history?” Wait, it gets harder.

“I should clarify that I’m looking for songs that don’t appear on any of the band’s albums (unless it’s on a compilation from years later).” OK, let me think about this.

Greg came up with Hey, Hey, What Can I Do, the B-side of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song from 1970, which is a fine choice.

The first ones I thought of were a pair very much on the nose. The B-Side by Blotto is the flip of When The Second Feature Starts. Of course, I own this vinyl relic of the Albany-based band. It later shows up on a Blotto CD collection. Our “B” Side I first heard on Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1965-1975. B-side of Shambala.

Find The Cost Of Freedom is a simple but effective song on the B-side of Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Actually, NEITHER song was on a studio album until a greatest hits collection. Both do appear in live versions on their 4-Way Street double album.

Some radio stations I listened to liked playing Sugar Mountain by Neil Young in the early 1970s because of its seemingly mysterious origins. The live cut was the B-side of The Loner (1969) before it showed up on the Decade collection in 1975.

Fab

Dealing with The Beatles was complicated because there are a number of songs that were on US LPs but not initially on UK albums. Sticking to the US criteria, I am a sucker for I’m Down, which the Beatles performed at Shea Stadium, then ABC-TV aired the following year.

Some songs I’d count ended up on that Hey Jude/Beatles Again album: Rain (B-side of Paperback Writer), Old Brown Shoe (w/ The Ballad of John and Yoko), and Don’t Let Me Down (w/Get Back). I remember that Kelly correctly highly praised the latter.

And speaking of Beatles, sort of, One Day At A Time is a John Lennon song that Elton John put on the B-side of his version of – can you guess? – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

I have a certain fondness for Surfing and Spying by the Go-Gos, the B-side of Our Lips Are Sealed. It’s in part because when I saw the band at J.B. Scott’s in Albany in the early 1980s, it was the ONLY song they performed that wasn’t on their debut album, Beauty and the Beat.

Time to cheat

OK, there are tons of B-side ALBUMS, e.g., here which reminds me of other B-sides I own.

Elvis Presley Blvd. – Billy Joel is on the flip side of Allentown. It’s an OK tune.

There’s a slew of tracks I like on The Best Of 1980-1990 by U2.

Gator On The Lawn – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the B-side of “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me),” July 1981 a great rockabilly song at 95 seconds. It’s on the boxed set. Greg, I may have put this on one of those mixed CDs we used to exchange.

One of Greg’s commenters suggested The Kinks’ I’m Not Like Everybody Else. The A-side is Sunny Afternoon. I have it on a compilation.

But, and I may be missing some, I’m going to select Mustapha Dance by The Clash. It is a dub version of Rock the Casbah, and the B-side of that 1982 single. It appears on Super Black Market Clash, an album I love.

Finally, I recommend to you Attack Of The Killer B’s. This is NOT the Anthrax album, but rather a 1983 Warner Brothers various artists compilation. It contains, among others, the very weird Walk The Dog by Laurie Anderson, the B-side of O Superman.

The zen of refiling music CDs

Lessee, H is after G

For years, I’ve played lots of compact discs each day. In time, I would engage in the zen of refiling music CDs.

You might say, “Why don’t you just play your music digitally?” And I have quite a bit of music accessible on both my laptop and my newish cellphone. But somehow, it doesn’t bring me as much JOY as the physical music. For one thing, I tend to read the liner notes. Who wrote those songs? What other artists appeared on the tracks?

Optimally, every three or four months, I sort through my recently played CDs First I sort them alphabetically by artist. There are separate piles for TV and movie soundtracks, classical music (arranged by composer), and other specialty categories.

We recently got a round table from my MIL; no knights were involved. It replaced a rectangular table we had borrowed for over a decade. Square or rectangular tables are easier to sort than round ones. Those 90-degree angles make it easier to create piles of A-F, G-L, et al.

As a matter of course, I always cover the table with a thick blanket or quilt, lest I scratch the surface with nicks. That bad outcome would make my spouse… unhappy.

Taurus, Gemini

And I know I took WAY too long because some of the piles grew so tall, they risked toppling over. It was necessary to put several letter categories in small boxes. You’d think, being retired, getting to this process would be easier, but no.

I could tell I hadn’t sorted the CDs since May because I had albums from David Byrne, Bob Dylan, and the Stevies Winwood and Wonder. Yes, I tend to play the music from the artists’ birth month in that period.

What I find useful in the sorting. Some of it is the exercise of alphabetizing. But the other is trying to identify the artist by album cover color/design/font. This is an oddly satisfying exercise, as I do rather well.

At some point, I suppose, I’ll start to get rid of my physical music. maybe next year. Or the year after…

February rambling: Black Present

Sojourner Truth; Kyiv; Colorado isn’t a rectangle

Cosmic Perspective

Walking the World: Kyiv. In a beautiful no man’s land between Russia and the US

Tennessee Pastor Hosts Massive Book-Burning At His Church and McMinn County’s Maus Problem

Trump Makes It Clear He’d Be an Out and Out Dictator If Reelected in 2024

When the Dying COVID Patient Is 23

The New Orleans funeral reminds us that grief is a burden that can be shared

It’s Coming! The 1950 United States Federal Census. Share with family and friends and help ensure their family’s records are accurate and complete.

A Quarter of Children in US Lived With At Least One Foreign-Born Parent

What Kind of Writer Accuses Libraries of Stealing? A wrangle on the topic of Controlled Digital Lending.

Global Ranking of Free Wifi Hot Spots in 2022

Colorado is a rectangle? Think again.

Cartoon: candy polyamory

The secret MVP of sports? The port-a-potty

Mary Tyler Moore Show Reunion – Oprah 2008

Black History

The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) Black History Matters 2022 program

Building Albany’s Free Black Community in the Early 1800s

State Archives find historic court case of Sojourner Truth; Documents concerning Truth’s 1828 fight for her son

Tom Cotton Says Slavery Not About White Supremacy But Was A Necessary Evil

Reconstruction: Why Students Need to Learn and Teach the Truth

Rightwing Anti-CRT Network

Black Present

How Racism, Segregation, and Redlining Has Widened the Homeownership Gap

The possibility of first Black woman SCOTUS nominee prompts misogynoirist pushback

Black Health and Wellness

Understanding mental health issues among Black Teens

Cross-country exploration of Black history

Racism in the NFL

Breaking Boundaries in Black Tennis

Minor League Baseball adds to inclusion efforts with The Nine

Whoopi was Wrong and Wronged

Now I Know

A Different Type of Presidential Mudslinging and The Loch Ness Moose-ster? and The Very Long Novel That Saved a Man’s Sanity and The Green Vines Grow All Around

Music

control_group_2x — **From https://xkcd.com/2576/ This is absolutely why I never learned the Macarena.**

Mingus Ah Um album – Charles Mingus, plus a nice Howard Hesseman story

Music honoring and celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Free Man In Paris – Peter Sprague with Pam Pendrell on vocals

Bylina by Vasily Kalinnikov

The Tango: Vaccine – Randy Rainbow

Mozart: Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola, and chamber orchestra, K. 364.

Bone Music: Forbidden Soviet Records Made From Used X-Ray Films

Meat Loaf – Coverville 1389: Tribute Mini-Episode and a Keef cartoon

Nachtschwaermer by Carl Michael Ziehrer

K-Chuck Radio: Three songs with hidden curse words (that still get played on the radio)

How John Stamos Came to Record ‘Alone’ Before Heart Did

Singer Michael McDonald is 70

Patti, Aretha, Christopher Cross

As I’ve mentioned, as a fan of Steely Dan, I was happy to see the Doobie Brothers were selected for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020. That means contributing Dan vocalist Michael McDonald got in. When Dan pared down to a duo plus session musicians, I thought McDonald’s singing was integral to the sound.

That said, I was a big fan of the Doobies before McDonald joined the band. Of course, his addition was out of necessity, as founding member Tom Johnston was very ill. And his presence changed the alchemy of the band.

The Warner Brothers Loss Leader Leader called Cookbook (1977) was “Focusing on Warner’s black acts.” The only predominantly white group represented on the 2-LP set was the Doobie Brothers doing Taking It To The Streets, which went to #13 pop and #57 RB in 1976.

On the next few albums, McDonald dominated the sound, leading to some band acrimony, which Wikipedia covers well. One of the truly remarkable things about McDonald is the sheer number of albums he has appeared on, as a vocalist, keyboard player, and/or songwriter for other artists.

Occasionally, it was felt, he/the Doobies was competing with other songs he contributed to, which in time diminished the McDonald commercial appeal. But he and the group have gotten together occasionally.

Some songs

As a solo artist, he put out several albums, including Motown and Motown Two, well-regarded cover albums of… I’m guessing you can figure that out.

Doctor Wu – Steely Dan, 1975
Red Streamliner – Little Feat, 1977
Peg – Steely Dan, #11 pop in 1978
What A Fool Believes – Doobie Brothers, #1 pop, #72 RB in 1979
Minute By Minute -Doobie Brothers, 14 pop, #79 RB in 1979

Ride Like The Wind – Christopher Cross, #2 pop for four weeks in 1980
This Is It – Kenny Loggins, #11 pop, #19 RB in 1980
Yah Mo B There – James Ingram ft MM, #19 pop, #5 RB in 1984 (Ingram, BTW, was born Feb 16, 1952, and died Jan 29, 2019)
On My Own – Patti LaBelle ft. MM, #1 for three weeks pop, #1 for four weeks RB in 1986
Sweet Freedom – Michael McDonald, #7 pop, #17 RB in 1986

Ever Changing Times – Aretha Franklin ft. MM, #19 RB in 1992
LIVE: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough/Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing – Michael McDonald with Ashford and Simpson. McDonald’s studio version of Mountain went #111 pop in 2004

My friend Mike Attwell, RIP

lives by the spring

mike attwell cropped I don’t remember exactly when I met Mike Attwell – the late 1980s or early 1990s – but I certainly know where. My friend, the late Norm Nissen, and I played racquetball at the Albany YMCA on Washington Avenue.

Some combination of Danny, Charlie, Mike, and his co-worker Alan wanted to know if we wanted to play games with partners, two on two; or cutthroat, in groups of three. We did, and from that point until 2010, when the Y closed, we all played about thrice a week with whoever showed up, which eventually included Tyrone and others.

You learn a lot about a person when you play racquetball with them. Mike wasn’t the fastest guy; that’d be Tyrone. Or the best (Danny or Charlie). But he may have been the most tenacious. When we played as partners, he’d almost always play the front, because he anticipated well and could get to a lot of shots.

But, in the earlier days, he was also the hardest on himself, often spouting an invective that included MF, always at himself. Interestingly, I think he played better after he stopped the cursing.

After the Y closed, he occasionally drove me to Siena College so we could play with some of the others, but it fell by the wayside.

Singing

In 2000, when I started attending First Presbyterian Church, I got to sing with Mike. I might have participated in a FOCUS service or two with him, but this was the first time on a weekly basis.

You learn a lot about a person when you sing with them. Mike, a tenor, was usually present unless he was traveling. He worked hard to get his part right. When the weather was lousy, he’d sometimes give me a ride home after choir rehearsal.

I got to see him in other aspects of church life, notably on the finances. He explained to the congregation the fiscal responsibility of the use of the endowment. This could be MEGO territory, but Mike, who dealt with numbers for New York State, explained it amazingly well.

In August of 2003, he married Sue, again. They’d been married in a private ceremony six months earlier. But as the pastor noted at the time, they wanted to have a public event so their church family could be witnesses.

At the reception, Mike was discussing a nice resort in Poland Springs, ME that he thought my wife and I should go to. It didn’t allow anyone under 18. (I believed they’ve since changed that rule.) We went that very month and had a lovely time. No one knew yet that my wife was pregnant, so it was a particularly sound suggestion.

Bible guys

After I retired in 2019, I joined the Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. group of Bible Guys. But when COVID hit, my daughter’s school was remote, so she didn’t need to get up as early. The two groups then operated on something called ZOOM(?), so I ALSO joined the Thursday at 7 a.m. gathering.

Mike Attwell was in that Thursday group. He shared a lot of his personal biography, from his roots to certain difficulties in his past. I did not know this: The meaning of Attwell is “lives by the spring”, as in water, which seems apt.

Though the facilitator rotated, it was always Mike, who introduced the group to John van de Laar, offering prayer by the liturgist. I suppose if I were to pick one for Mike, who died last week, it might be this one, which begins:

In the midst of grief, we choose to celebrate,

because it reminds us of hope,

and brings comfort to our broken heart.