On the Thirteenth Day of 2024: Home Alone with Snow and Old Records

My brother and my brother-in-law both bequeathed to me their record collections. In my brother’s case, he let me cull and pick out things I knew I wanted in my collection. My brother in law just gave me a big ol’ box. Finally, after years of storing these things in my basement, I went through these albums to see what was playable, which titles were interesting, which ones might just be important to have whether I liked them or not, and which ones I knew I would never play. Out of about 80 titles, a handful were good for the trash, about 50 of these I earmarked for trade-in at my favorite local record store, because I already had a copy (Supertramp’s Even in the Quietest Moments), or because I knew I would never listen, (Loggins and Messina), or because I knew it was music I didn’t like (Journey’s Escape). About a quarter of these records, I wanted to keep, and I am spending the day, at least partially, listening to some of these things and filing them upstairs in a place of honor with the rest of my vinyl collection. Here’s a quick run down of some of the keepers, written as, or shortly after, I listened from start to finish.

It’s A Beautiful Day, It’s A Beautiful Day. Embarrassed a little bit to admit it, but even though I have seen this album cover a thousand times, and wondered in stupefaction at the ridiculousness of this band name and this album cover, I didn’t know until I put it on the turntable that this was the band responsible for the monster 1969 hit, “White Bird.” That alone made this album a keeper–but man, the rest of it. Super strange and goofy, kind of progressive, experimental, and silly–like the song about the woman without eyes. File between Icehouse and Joe Jackson.

Donna Summers, Bad Girls. How about a song about prostitutes that includes the lyric, “toot toot, beep beep.” Or an entire side of an album with three distinct songs over the exact same disco drum beat with nary a break or transition between them. But these tunes, when I was a lad, were inescapable and good, and even though in 1979 I had signed an oath on the side of the disco sucks tribe, this stuff remains inescapable and good. And it is so much more than a disco record. The tunes on this album are varied and soulful. Dumb lyrics, sure. But almost all pop music lyrics in 1979 were dumb. File between Sting and Supertramp.

This might be totally baffling to a young person who has become a vinyl enthusiast, but here’s a total blast from the past for music fans of my generation: remember stacking 33 RPM records on the console turntable? Donna Summer’s double album has side 4 as the flip side to side 1, and side 3 on the flip side of side 2, and this was done so that the listener could stack these babies for continuous play.

Al Green, Green Is Blue. I have no Al Green records in my collection. Until now, anyway. As a kid, outside of what I was exposed to on the radio (which I remember liking), once I began my trajectory as a serious music listener and collector, soul music was just not in my musical diet. Not proud to admit it, but I was an adult before I started listening to black artists, generally speaking. But I am convinced that there would be no Fishbone without Al Green. Green is an undeniably great singer–and there is something so groovy and chill about his music and his performances. File between John Grant and Grizzly Bear.

It’s snowing, by the way. It’s 17 degrees. The snow is actually coming down as ice now, I think, because in between tunes I can hear the crackling through the windows. Have you ever been listening to a record when the power flickers off? It’s pretty great. Al was momentarily stalled by a power outage, but he came back after only about 20 seconds in full-on Green Is Blue mode.

Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. I have never cared for Dylan. Sacrilege in some circles, I know. There were some things I’ve liked, but for the most part, I thought he was a terrible singer. And, I pretty much hate the harmonica. What I understood, though, and appreciated, was his impact on American folk and rock music. And I understood and appreciated his lyrics, but I must say that I was nevertheless surprised by the Nobel Prize win in Literature. Is he that good? I’m still not sure. So I acquire this record for a couple of reasons. There is no questioning its status as a classic. From the outside looking in, it seems to me to be one of his most famous records. There’s an energy here, an anger, an almost punk aesthetic that is palpable. And it’s not unpleasant to listen to, except for the harmonica. The lyrics are undeniably smart and interesting. Exhibit A: “Ballad of a Thin Man.” And the picture of Dylan on the cover totally demonstrates his unmitigated cool. Mostly, it’s a record I think I should have. File between The Dresden Dolls and Earth, Wind, and Fire.

The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request. At the risk of committing more sacrilege, I will say that The Rolling Stones have never been a band I was crazy about. As a child, I listened to my sister’s records and there were a bunch of early Stones records there. Songs like “Under My Thumb,” “19th Nervous Breakdown,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” “Satisfaction,” and the entire Flowers album, these records I liked; these records made an impression on my little brain. Here’s a record, from 1967, which seems to be an answer to, or an effort to imitate, the far superior efforts in the same year from The Beatles and The Beach Boys. With the exception of “She’s a Rainbow,” it’s pretty terrible. It’s a sloppy mess. A bunch of drug addled musicians just screwing around. I don’t know how many times I will listen to this thing. It might be worth keeping just for the cover–which has the original lenticular 3D photo of the band–a better cover, I would argue, than the musical contents of the record deserve. File between Rhye and Rostam.

Jefferson Airplane, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane. I’m not sure about this, but I think this may have been the first band ever to release a “Worst of” compilation. I think it might be a tongue-in-cheek title, as this record contains some of the hits, as far as I am familiar with Jefferson Airplane–you know, “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.” I don’t recognize anything else by title. Outside of those two songs, and the material that would someday come from an outfit called Jefferson Starship, I know nothing about this band. It’s a psychedelic folk thing and it’s pretty pleasant to listen to. All of these recordings, from ’67 to ’69, sound surprisingly good and modern, with a few terribly annoying exceptions, like this ridiculous thing called “Chushingura,” hands down the worst thing on this worst collection. File between Japanese Breakfast and Jellyfish.

These are the records I spun today. Still in the stack are 70’s and 80’s records from Foreigner, Men At Work, the Flashdance soundtrack, Van Morrison, Pablo Cruise, and Boz Scags, all of which, I’m certain, will provide many more hours of bemused listening. This era between the 60’s and the 70’s in recorded pop music seems to me perhaps the last great chasm–technologically speaking, in terms of the quality of both the recorded performances and the potential staying power of the music. I mean, there’s tons of stuff that’s odd and too much of its time and not very enduring for me, personally, about the 70’s and the 80’s (any decade I imagine, except for the current one, from which I have zero distance), but when I think about the artists from my early childhood to which I still listen, I can probably count them on one hand. The breadth of what I loved and listened to in each successive decade of my life only seemed to widen and expand.

I have one more thing to say. Some of these old records from the 70’s and 80’s, some of them original pressings, if well taken care of, sound great. Outside of the limitations of the source material, there’s nary a pop or noise on these babies. Sometimes I’ll buy a new record, one recorded and pressed and brought to the music market within the last months or so, manufactured with the very best of vinyl pressing technology available, and, without a single mark on them, they pop and spatter and are full of more ugly noise artifacts than they are music. This makes me angry. Makes me want to go back to buying CDs!

It’s been a lovely snow day at home alone with the dogs and the music from my brothers. But I worry how I’m going to get to the airport tomorrow to pick up my wife and son. Me attempting to drive in this stuff won’t do anybody any good. Wish me luck.