My Son's Interest in My Favorite Music

My youngest son asked:

Dad & Bro,

If you had a list of 5-10 albums from your life that you thought I should listen to (front to back), what would they be?

- Alex

 

Alex:

Thank you for asking.

I can't narrow this list down from the twenty-four albums listed here. Down to ten is just impossible. This list is really down to the barest essentials.

 I can't judge recorded music by technical virtuosity because I don't read sheet music and I don't play instruments. My criteria for my absolute favorite artists, albums, or even individual songs is based on my visceral responses.

The Muse: "In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts." The Muse is thought of as some sort of spiritual source of inspiration. Musicians will sometimes say they "call upon the Muse" for inspiration when composing or for a higher level of skill when singing or playing an instrument. On rare occasions I will hear an artist or band, an individual performance (a single) or a group of performances (an album or an even larger body of work) that to me sounds like some higher threshold is reached that seems to "touch the Muse" or come into contact with some higher force than what mere talent can offer. Once I hear that almost otherworldly excellence, I will hear it thereafter every time I hear that recording. It always remains there for me. It must feel like hitting a home run in baseball or winning a race, that moment of recognition.

In this list of albums I hear what sounds to me like that feeling of the Muse has been summoned and achieved. Technical virtuosity is not required. Roy Orbison or Patsy Cline had voices they could control perfectly that soar to the Heavens. Gut bucket blues musicians playing an electric guitar can sound like a old pickup truck that has trouble starting on a cold morning (Hound Dog Taylor, Muddy Waters, Elmore James). When it comes to lesser skilled musicians it is fun to listen to music that resembles following a drunk driver who looks like he has trouble keeping his car on the road. It sounds like a train wreck about to happen or a tightrope walker about to fall. That tension creates fun for me as a listener.

On this list, the Beatles receive short shrift and I feel bad about it. They produced a body of work that deserves examination from start to ending. They reinvented themselves almost annually in ways I have never seen or heard before. Even though none of them were individually great guitar players, those four guys together created a musical synergy that I can't compare to anything I have ever seen or heard. They remain peerless.

Not on this list but whom would be if I doubled it would include Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Walter Horton, Robert Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Turner, Elvis Presley especially with Scotty Moore, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Everly Brothers, Wanda Jackson, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Coasters, the Marcels, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, the "5" Royales, Lonnie Mack, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Travis Wammack, the Trashmen, the Yardbirds, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Solomon Burke, Otis Redding, Etta James, Arthur Conley, Sam and Dave, O. V. Wright, Hank Williams SENIOR, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Buck Owens and the Buckeroos, Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant, Moon Mullican, Marvin Rainwater, the Cramps, Deke Dickerson, and Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys.

For some reason I have not yet figured out, most new musicians I have discovered are women. Have I changed or have the young ladies become tougher as musicians? First Aid Kit, Courtney Barnett, Band-Maid, Shannon and the Claims, the Mona Lisa Twins, Babymetal,.

Having said all that here, then, is the list you asked for:

 

 

 

Beatles	A Hard Day’s Night	motion picture soundtrack
Beatles	Help	motion picture soundtrack
Blasters	Self-titled	2nd album, rockabilly
Cream	Fresh	deluxe edition of 1st album
Dale, Dick	King of the Surf Guitar	compilation on the Rhino label
First Aid Kit	The Lions Roar	deluxe edition
Hendrix, Jimi, Experience	Are You Experienced?	first album
Iron Butterfly	In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida	popularized LONG songs
It’s a Beautiful Day	self titled	first album
James, Elmore	One Way Out	many similar compilation exist
King Crimson	In the Court of the Crimson King	first album
King, Albert	Blues At Sunrise	live at Montreaux, Switzerland Jazz Festival
Littlejohn, Johnny	Chicago Blues Stars	boozy Chicago blues
Morells	Shake and Push	rock 'n' roll
Orbison, Roy	All-Time Greatest Hits of…	compilation on Monument label
Patsy Cline	12 Greatest Hits	compilation on MCA label
Quicksilver Messenger Service	Happy Trails	second album, live and studio recordings seamlessly blended
Self, Ronnie	Bop-a-Lena	rockabilly at its most extreme
Shannon, Del	Greatest Hits	compilation on the Rhino label
Taylor, Hound Dog & the Houserockers	self titled	first album
Vincent, Gene & the Blue Caps	self titled	second album
Waters, Muddy	Fathers and Sons	one each studio & live album
Weather Report	Mysterious Traveler	4th album, superb example of 1970s jazz-rock-fusion
Wray, Link	Rumble: the Best of Link Wray	compilation on the Rhino label

 

My Twentieth Anniversary of Having Ménière's Disease

 

Today, February 4, 2024, marks the twentieth anniversary of me having daily symptoms of Ménière's Disease, which is an inner ear disorder that causes dizziness, vertigo, and balance disorders. It was on the morning of February 4, 2004, when I got out of bed and noticed I felt dizzy and that it was not going away the way brief dizziness does, for instance, after falling down. Clearly, the dizziness was coming out of my left ear and I could feel it running up and down the left side of my body and not the right side. Imagine a localized sense of dizziness that does not affect your entire body. That might be hard to imagine! Twenty years later, I still feel the same way. Doctors at Topeka Ear, Nose, & Throat and Tallgrass Balance, Hearing & Physical Therapy diagnosed me about a year apart during 2004 and 2005 as having Ménière's Disease. On this post I am resisting the urge to describe the chapters in this twenty year journey. Instead, in the following paragraphs I will describe something I very rarely see in print: there are different KINDS of dizziness. Let me describe what I have learned and experienced and why I consider myself luckier that other sufferers of Ménière's Disease and the related Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV). If you are bored at this point, you may stop reading, since I realize many people fortunately will never be affected or know anyone who will.

 

Dizziness and balance is controlled by an organ in both of your ears. Illustrations show the Semi-Circular Canals of the inner ear, three circular-shaped tubes, attached to a bone. That organ is located above the Cochlea, a separate organ, shaped like a spiral, that controls the sense of hearing. Both are terribly important. Both are sealed in solid bone that are, surgically, not easy to reach. Each of these two organs have a dedicated nerve stem that reach the brain, sending their respective sets of information.

 

Of those three circular shaped tubes described above, the TOP one points generally upward from the bone to which it is attached. If a person's dizziness makes them feel like they are falling forward or backwards, likely it is THIS tube that is malfunctioning.

 

Similarly, if a person feels like they are falling to the left or right, it is likely the MIDDLE tube is malfunctioning It generally points outward at about forty-five degrees. 

 

If the sufferer feels like they are shifting horizontally to the right or left or both at the same the likely affected tube is the BOTTOM one, which points generally at ninety degrees outward from the bone. It is THIS kind of dizziness that I experience ALL the time. Some random head or eye movements will cause a momentary spike in my dizziness which will settle down in a minute, down to my normal level of dizziness.

 

My guess is that if a person had to pick the least dangerous of the three positional forms of dizziness described above, in order to minimize the risk of falling, the best one would be the third one. You may be miserably dizzy, but this type of dizziness would least likely make one feel like that they are BEING PULLED DOWNWARD. It is for this reason that I feel at least a little bit lucky, given the circumstances.

 

Another point about different kinds of dizziness:

 

It is common for people feeling dizzy to have the condition exacerbated by motion, such as riding in a vehicle, aircraft, boat, or bicycle. This type of dizziness often causes nausea, up to the point of vomiting, best known as motion sickness. Fortunately, I do not have this kind of dizziness. In fact I have the opposite. My experience is that driving or riding in a vehicle or an aircraft actually MASKS my sense of dizziness to a notable degree. My dizziness is more acutely felt when sitting still and quietly. I have no trouble going to or staying asleep. But when I get up in the morning I feel very dizzy and almost always remain so until the early afternoon. My head then clears up some by then. 

 

There is more to share but this essay is probably more than enough. The last thing I want is for anyone to be frightened by the descriptions of this particular condition. But Ménière's Disease is real with no known cure and very few effective treatments. 

 

One last thing: I gave up bicycle riding and amusement park rides twenty years ago!

Universal Tape Vault Fire and its Continuing Revelations

 

On Sunday, June 1, 2008, a fire erupted at the tape vault at Universal Studios in Hollywood. Universal's record division was on its way to becoming the largest record label in the U.S. Universal was already a huge and storied record company dating back to 78rpm records, released under brand names Decca, Coral, Brunswick, Vocalion, Kapp, Uni, & MCA. Add to that the numerous labels that Universal had acquired like Chess and ABC (ABC itself had acquired several great vintage r&b labels before leaving the record business in 1979, all of which was acquired by Universal.). News of the fire in 2008 was brief, short on detail, and quickly removed from the news cycle. 

 

In 2019, eleven years after the fire, the New York Times Magazine published a heartbreaking article about what was thought to have been destroyed. To record collections and fans of vintage rock 'n' roll and rhythm 'n' blues, the initial news in 2008 and the Times article was nearly as shocking as the bombing of Japan in World War 2. 

 

On August 9, 2023, a website called Tracking Angle posted a video on YouTube nearly one hour and forty-five minutes in length of a tour of Universal Record's tape vault near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The startling point made in this video and the accompanying article is that the warehouse that caught fire was in the process of being emptied and its contents being transferred to Pittsburgh. Further, the author asserts that among those master tapes lost in the fire, first generation copies of many were safely stored by Universal Music at facilities elsewhere, such as Germany. Earlier reports suggested there were no duplicates anywhere, which I doubted, considering how many reissues and compilation albums by vintage artists are released in the European countries and Great Britain. 

 

So, if you are interested in this process of reissuing vintage recordings on CDs and records (physical formats), I am sharing links to the video and relevant articles.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxZPFNpB6yY&t=674s

 

https://trackingangle.com/.../universal-music-group-opens...

 

https://www.nytimes.com/.../universal-fire-master...

 

https://variety.com/.../universal-music-fire-archive.../

 

 

The Five Australian Football League games I attended.

This is likely of importance to very few people but it is something I think about every day. I am a fan of Australian rules football. It is my favorite sport. My fellow Americans are largely unaware that Australian rules football exists. It is neither American "grid iron" football, soccer, or rugby. It is a unique "code" of football. It is hugely popular in Australia where the sport has been played since the 1850s. 

In 2013 my wife and I had a wonderful trip to Japan and Australia. Our youngest son and family were stationed in Japan in the U.S. Air Force for three years. We visited them for six days, then spent six days in Australia, then four more days in Japan before returning to the U.S. 

While in Australia, we attended all five Australian Football League games held in Melbourne, Victoria, during the first weekend of August. Of the ten teams playing in Melbourne that round, nine of them are teams I like or at least respect. Those were among the happiest days of my life. 

On Friday we took the guided tour of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (the MCG), an outdoor stadium that seats one hundred thousand people. Aussie rules football is played during Winter and cricket during Summer, so stadiums like this nationwide are in use year round. Friday evening we saw the North Melbourne Kangaroos beat the Geelong Cats at the Docklands, a stadium with a retractable roof that seats 55,000 people. The coaches of both teams were twins! 

On Saturday afternoon we saw the Richmond Tigers beat the Hawthorn Hawks at the MCG. Saturday evening we saw the Fremantle Dockers beat the Carlton Blues, again at the Docklands. The Dockers would play their first Grand Final (the Super Bowl equivalent) later that year. 

See highlights of Carlton V Frementle:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIyOLFEI-5I

On Sunday, back to the Docklands again, we saw the Sydney Swans (that year's champions, which Aussies call "Premieres") beat the Western (Melbourne) Bulldogs. Then a quick commuter train ride to the MCG again to see the Collingwood Magpies (my favorite team) beat the Essendon Bombers for the second time that year, mostly under the lights after sunset.

See highlights of Collingwood Magpies V Essendon Bombers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21zFG10ajDw

That week, the Hawthorn Hawks were number one on the ladder, and the Geelong Cats were number two. In spite of the fact that both teams lost, they retained their ladder positions. The Grand Final that year, played in late September, pitted the Hawthorn Hawks versus the Fremantle Dockers. It would be the first of three in a row Grand Final wins for Hawthorn (2013, 2014, & 2015). 

The graphs seen here are screenshots from <  www.australianfootball.com >, a superb website, perhaps the best online resource that documents the games of Australian rules football played in its home country. Here, one can see which team members played at each game and how well they performed. Click on individual charts to enlarge.

 

 

 

The Beatles 45 rpm picture sleeve on Tollie Records

Here's my story about the "Love Me Do"/"P.S. I Love You" picture sleeve on Tolie/VeeJay: I was eleven years old when the Beatles became a hit here in the U. S. I really wanted the "Love Me Do" 45 with the picture sleeve. So, one cold and rainy Saturday I had my mom drive me around to find the record. She sat in the car while I went into four stores and came out empty handed. Her patience had run out and wanted to know why I couldn't find the record. I confessed the stores had the record but in the plain sleeve, not the picture sleeve. (We didn't used standardized terms like "picture sleeve" back then.) She blew her top and told me to go back in the store and buy the record with the plain sleeve. That evening I made my own picture sleeve by cutting out the faces of each Beatle from a wrapper of Beatles bubble gum cards and glued them onto the sleeve. Not what I wanted but I had made a unique creation.

Tim Tams No Longer Exported to the United States, Well, that's over with now. Don't panic!

 

Update on September 8, 2021: All indications are that World Market stores in the U.S. are again well-stocked with original milk chocolate Tim Tams: https://www.worldmarket.com/search?store=store245&q=Tim%20Tam&lang=en_US

 

OLD NEWS but worth leaving here:

 

 This sucks so godawful bad. No more Tim Tams. G'day, mate my arse.

In late 2019 a private equity firm named Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) acquired Arnott's, the Australian company that has made Tim Tam chocolate cookies since 1964.

Prior to this Arnott's was owned by the Campbell Soup company here in the U. S. It is very common for successful Australian companies to be bought by bigger American companies giving them lines of credit, tech, manufacturing, marketing, and management resources.

Holden automobiles = General Motors

Smith chips = Frito-Lay

Network Ten = CBS

Woolworth's = Safeway

etc.

Campbells spun-off Arnott's to KKR.

Private equity firms are notorious for sucking their acquisitions dry of cash, then selling off the company and leaving the employees to fend for themselves.

So, what's new at Arnott's?

All exporting of products (including Tim Tams) has ended. Everywhere, including the U. S.

Arnott's, under direction of their corporate overlords, are now issuing complaints to the two biggest supermarket chains in Australia, Woolworth's and Coles, that they are being charged too much for shelf space in their stores. So, watch the big Tim Tam end caps in the cookie/biscuit isle like we saw at a Woolies in Melbourne to come to an end.

Tim Tams can be ordered from foreign third party sellers on Amazon. The prices are ridiculous and customer reviews report receiving damaged, melted goop. A risky option.

 

I have received email replies on this matter from Arnott's (who were reluctant to say much), World Market (probably the most reliable U. S. retailer for Tim Tams), and Keebler, who were the U. S. distributor (owned by Campbell's).

 

For me, this means no more Tim Tams, especially during the AFL Grand Final in September.

Even Boris Johnson loves Tim Tams

Chronology of Arnott's takeover

another change of ownership 

 Update on September 8, 2021: All indications are that World Market stores in the U.S. are again well-stocked with original milk chocolate Tim Tams: https://www.worldmarket.com/search?q=Tim+Tam&search-button=&lang=en_US

A Golden Era of Broadcasting Lost To Reusable Tape

I've been heartbroken by this for years. When videotape started being used in 1958 it quickly became a popular means of prerecording television programs that previously were usually broadcast live. Using videotape, it eliminated the process of developing film, if used. It allowed post-production editing which made stage programs end on time and eliminate missed cues by actors/personalities, cameras, microphones, & lights. It also allowed recording programs at decent times of the day instead of any time the program was scheduled for broadcast. What turned out to be a problem was that videotape was reusable. So a lot of videotaped programs, especially throughout the 1960s, were erased and the videotape reels were reused. It was rarely thought that most programs would be of any interest in the future. The sale & rental of old programs for use on home video equipment hadn't even been thought of. So, the wide belief was that the TAPE ITSELF was more valuable than what was recorded on it. Perhaps the worst offender was BBC in the United Kingdom. Its budget was mostly from a tax rather than the sale of advertising spots so this network saved money where it could. What is doubly bad about this is that so many wonderful programs were aired on BBC. It was during years like these that this television & radio network built upon its stellar worldwide reputation which remains to this day. By the 1970s television & radio networks realized the value of maintaining archives for several reasons, one of which was for copyright purposes, for protecting their intellectual property. The following article explains the process of worldwide searches for programs thought to be lost.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/wipe-out-when-the-bbc-kept-erasing-its-own-history?utm_source=pocket-newtab