It’s 1968. Hey, I know, let’s
open up a rock record
with Eric Satie and
follow that with some
wild, short, orchestral
Satie variation thing, and then we’ll
play the funk rock real hard
with horns and organs and
lyrics about getting
yourself together
and then we’ll swing
harder than any jazz
band and the drummer
will just kind of go crazy
through the whole thing.
Next, there’ll be a ballad
with flutes and soft singing
and the drummer is still
going crazy, but quietly.
Even in the quiet song,
we’ll change time signatures
about a half a dozen times
and the drummer just goes
crazy. Every once in a while,
though, he’ll stop playing.
The first hit single will
begin with a harmonica
and move into a kind
of cut time, almost polka
thing, and it will be a song
about dying. “I swear there
ain’t no heaven and I pray
there ain’t no hell.”
We’re all white guys, but
let’s play music infused
with black influence
and people won’t know
until they see us what
color we are. Holy shit,
this is a great record we
are making. “What goes up
must come down.” This
“Spinning Wheel” song
will be a huge hit, and
it will genre-hop like
all these other songs
and people will love it.
And this one, “You’ve Made
Me So Very Happy,” while
it might be kind of schmaltzy,
it’ll be sufficiently complex
and difficult and heartfelt
and it will make the girls go
crazy in this summer after
the summer of love.
Michael Jarmer
is only four years old,
but he’ll listen to this album
on the precipice of his
61st birthday and he will
say to himself, Christ,
this is a great record.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Columbia Records, 1968. I don’t remember how how this record got into my collection. I thought it was inherited from a sibling. But maybe I bought it used someplace. The sticker is puzzling–priced at $5.00, with handwritten “P.E. Sample, 9720” after the price. I have no clue what this means. But the record is in stellar condition.
In case you’re just joining me: I am listening to (almost) every record in my collection in alphabetical order and writing a poem-like-thing in response to each artist represented there. It appears that my collection in the letter B is pretty vast! I will “be” here for a while!
michael jarmer 
Can’t wait to see if you have any early Chicago albums in the queue. (They, too, were just killing it with their horns and guitars and keys and drums and songwriting and social commentary and experimentation long before their ’80s resurgence via a parade of ballads.) If not, it’s not too late to pick up CTA before you hit the Cs…
I’ve got the first two Chicago albums . . . ON CD! No vinyl! They are terrific records, a band way ahead of their time–or perfectly of their time. Bands could get away with a lot in the early days of the rock and roll record industry. Sometimes, today, artists get away with crazy stuff–but they’re typically not hit records. It’s wild to remember how crazy complex some of those big hits were. This Blood, Sweat and Tears record is a great example of that.
Years ago, when I attempted a similar listening challenge with the CD collection, I did do some writing about Chicago! https://michaeljarmer.com/2015/07/16/notes-toward-a-musical-autobiography-volume-iv-letter-c-2/
Somehow I missed that 2015 post. Good stuff. And Cheap Trick! And Cake! Damn good stuff.
I told Erin recently that I miss our old 5-CD changer. It was a great way to listen to five albums in their entirety.
Listening to albums in their entirety has been replaced by on-demand electronic jukeboxes and never-ending curated streams of songs I (mostly) enjoy. It’s too easy.
Although … those streams have turned me on to a couple artists I’d otherwise know nothing about: Vienna Teng and Portland’s Karyn Ann, to name a couple.
Thanks for this alphabetical nudge to listen to a few albums (okay, CDs since I, too, jettisoned my vinyl collection a couple decades ago in the name of decluttering a few cubic feet of space — space that today, I’d gladly sacrifice in order to reclaim that clutter, but I digress…) in their entirety.