Category: Music

I never planned three of these in a row. I would have guessed I had 10; turns out it is near 40. Greatest hits records are a good value for filling in a collection, but they aren’t really albums; they are like streaming—commerce, really.

Bob Dylan had many great hits. Ten on this record, plus 30 more compilations not including all the boxed sets of bootlegs playing with the Band when Dylan went electric. He has more greatest hits records than most band had hits.

Five on this record are great hits: Rainy Day Women #12 (first hashtag!) & 35, It Ain’t Me Babe, I Want You, Positively 4^th Street, and Just Like a Woman.

Four are immortal: Blowin’ in the Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Like a Rolling Stone, and Subterranean Homesick Blues (proto rap).

And one is perfect, I realized while playing it this time: Mr. Tambourine Man. The other songs on that list are short: The Letter, by The Box Tops, 1:58 and I Got a Line on You, by Spirit, 2:37. Dylan maintained perfection (the way I heard it) for 5:32. I hope I go out with one hand waving free, forgetting about today until tomorrow.

PG&E

I saw the Pacific Gas & Electric Blues Band, as I remember their name then, at a tiny club in Cleveland in 1968. It was a dump in a basement at 107th and Euclid, named La Cave. [I was in on that joke, cave being French for basement.] The club sold beer to high school kids, which made me feel extremely cool; I bet they never got raided because the beer had no alcohol in it at all. I don’t know how bands could afford to play such a small place—it was very close to buying eggs for 3 cents and selling them for 2 cents.

It was an unsophisticated time. I saw one local band open a show by doing all the songs they could play; they looked thrilled that we applauded enough they could do an encore, but all they could do was repeat the number that had got the biggest hand (a good cover of “Down by the River.”)

I loved all the bands I saw in high school—I don’t think I had any critical capacity at all. Many of them will show up in my record collection. I can remember Linn County Blues Band, Taj Mahal, Paul Butterfield Band, B.B. King, Joan Baez, New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. Too bad I missed the MC5 and Velvet Underground. I should get out more now.

These guys were Pacific Gas & Electric on their first record—weren’t there legal departments at record companies? I’m sure there are other examples.

This is not a great record. I have an early record of theirs which is better—it has the best version of “Motor City Is Burning” I’ve heard. The guitar player left, and the lead singer turned the band toward R and B/gospel. They cover “Heat Wave” and “When a Man Loves a Woman” in a workmanlike fashion, but there is no reason in the world to cover those songs unless you nail them. The singer sounds like Taj Mahal doing funk—not bad, but there are better things to listen to. The liner notes say that the band ran out of gas at the end, as do the liner notes. Too bad.

There are some Best of/Greatest/Very Best of/Hits albums that don’t deliver what the title promises. More to come on that.

This version of Staggolee has a .41 caliber gun—I keep track of what size gun gets mentioned in songs. It also mentions a $300 funeral and a $1,000 hearse—that was extravagant in those days (keeping track of inflation for you). Short Dogs and Englishmen calls out Les Paul.

One purpose for this blog is to correct big errors other people make on the innertubes. Now that I buy my electrons by the barrel, I can spread myself as thin as I want. Today a blog trashed Paul Kantner. That is very wrong. Disclaimer: I am guilty of having been in high school in 1968. I add that I am not dead yet–two months ago I drove 500 miles to be in Austin on Wednesday night to see James McMurtry and I see Lydia Loveless every chance I get.

The Jefferson Airplane recorded a lot of rock love songs, for which I commend them. Don’t know if it was Kantner or Balin or both, but they never got cynical. Further disclaimer: I have been lucky in love for the last 50+ years. ‘It’s no secret/you’ve got me jumping up and down.’ ‘Even when I close my eyes/all I see is you.’

After Bathing at Baxter’s is an all-time great album. When I was buying new speakers in 1975 (effin’ burglars), I took it along as my test. One employee played it VERY loud with the door open. The aging freaks circled around like moths to a porchlight.

It is fashionable to criticize We Built This City. I heard it once. It was okay. I am sorry if anyone heard it ten thousand times, but it’s not Honey or Me and God Are Watching Scotty Grow. Be serious.

Greatest Hits!
Kinks
Reprise, 1966

Not Big Hits (that was the Rolling Stones’ first greatest hits record) or even Greatest Hits, these are Greatest Hits! by the Kinks. This is a silly name. Look at the cover—it says The Kinks Greatest Hits!, but Amazon and Wikipedia parse that as The Kinks [artist’s name] Greatest Hits! [album name]. This is the first LP I owned. I am proud that it is monaural (mono, it’s called). I can’t explain mono to you if you are under 50 years old; just take my word that it saved me $12 in today’s dollars when I bought the record.

This is an odd record in many ways. Much of it is not great. Just 10 songs on it, 25 minutes long including the spaces between the songs, and not all of them were hits. “Something Better Beginning” is a bad Beatles imitation (“I saw you standing there” and “I hold your hand”? Why didn’t they say “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah”?)

There is clapping in “Everybody’s Going To Be Happy” that isn’t on the beat or double time, just rhythmless.

But “You Really Got Me,” “All Day and All of the Night,” and “Till the End of the Day” are classics. When the band struggled playing those tunes live, it led to speculation about who really was playing on the record.

“Dedicated Follower of Fashion” mocks consumer culture before there was consumer culture:  “got to buy the best,” “all the latest fads and trends,” “pleasure-seeking individual,” and “flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly.” And “Well Respected Man” sends up the Thatcher era 20 years ahead of time, as in “doing the best things so conservatively” while a very proper-appearing family mom is soliciting young men, dad boffs the maid, and the kid has his eyes on the family fortune.

If Ray Davies pronounced the words more clearly, this wouldn’t have gotten to vinyl–“frilly nylon panties” (worn by a male; this from a band named the Kinks) and “father [unintelligible] the maid.”

Much mix tape material here. Train to work and back home (as in Taking Care of Business and Morning Train among others), Regent Street and Leicester Square (I could do a tape with references to London streets and neighborhoods: Jethro Tull has a song with Leicester Square in the title, “Play with Fire” has St. John’s Wood, Stepney, Knightsbridge).

There are many words you won’t hear in other songs: pater (as in Latin for father), conservatively, suave, foreign trade, matrimonial, councilors, punctuality, Carnabetian (as in of or pertaining to Carnaby Street).