What have they done to my song, ma? And don't get me started on the price tag stuck on this cover!
Now for a 180 of sorts from the last post. Here's that rock 'n' roll feel of the 1950s...applied to music from the 1750s. Or thereabouts.
101 Strings' Back Beat Symphony was famous for trying to meld the rock 'n' roll sound to classical music. This album, J. Gaines's Rockin' The Classics Suite, was not quite as famous for doing the same thing, but it does have a more interesting backstory.
Rockin' The Classics Suite was on Golden Crest Records, a Long Island label known mainly for its classical releases. But one major exception to that was a high-school-age group that Golden Crest's owner discovered on a trip to Washington state. The group was The Fabulous Wailers, and their hit Tall Cool One made rock 'n' roll history after the group drove cross-country to record it. If not for The Kingsmen, many say The Fabulous Wailers probably would have been the ones that made Louie Louie a hit.
The pieces here on Rockin' The Classic Suite were hits a couple hundred years before The Wailers. In fact, this album was released a couple years before The Wailers got their first national exposure. This 1957 Billboard blurb calls the album "very amusing," and if you're into stylistic mashups like this, it is. The liner notes (written by "Punk Cadenza") play the rock bit to the hilt. The last paragraph: "The guys on this date are some of the greatest. They really are. On one of the playbacks one of 'em thought he heard a funny whirring noise comin' outa the speaker. At first they couldn't figure out where it was comin' from - then one of them pinned it down. He said it must be the noise of these composers rockin' in their graves!"
J. Gaines gets the credit for this album, but the supporting players are lost to history since they went under names like Serge Sputnik and Mose Ligature.
As for Golden Crest, they're still around. Music historian and author John Broven married the founder's daughter and has great info on his site. Much of Golden Crest's back catalog is still available, but this album doesn't seem to be part of it.
Here's Liebestraum:
You might recognize this one from Allan Sherman's Hello Muddah:
I'd like to think I saved the best - and most interesting - of Radio Records month for last.
If you're of a certain age, you probably listened to 77 WABC. Practically everyone of that age did. And if you listened in the mornings, chances are you heard Herb Oscar Anderson, aka The Morning Mayor Of New York. Herb was a one-of-a-kind DJ. The housewives loved him. The teenage girls exchanged socks because he told them to. And he sang. Every hour on the hour, he'd sing, "Here's my best to you/Are your skies gray? I hope they're blue."
HOA sang well enough to record an album in 1967, toward the end of his reign on WABC. You could tell it was going to be a great album just by the names behind it: produced by Creed Taylor. Most arrangements by Don Sebesky. A couple of the songs were recorded in Nashville (and they were arranged by Bill McElhiney), but most were done in New Jersey, most likely at Rudy Van Gelder's famed studio in Englewood Cliffs given the Creed Taylor connection.
Some people might also have been able to discern that there was a dichotomy in play: HOA was playing the latest and greatest on one of America's biggest stations...but he had little knowledge, or even appreciation of it. Rick Sklar, WABC's ace program director, had to coach him on the songs and artists. In fact, that's what led HOA to leave WABC in 1968: he just didn't like the music, instead preferring the type of music here on this album. It's an interesting mix of standards like Pearly Shells and Long Way To Tipperary and country-flavored songs, with maybe a little folk squirted in here and there. It's a comfortable mix.
HOA's rendition of I'm Movin' On. He's having a lot of fun here with the scatting:
The title track, What Would I Be. An interesting question for sure, in this context:
Hey, did I see you at the fair? If it was the WFMU Record Fair, you probably did. I spent too much money, took not enough pictures, and drank no Chelada whatsoever (because they had the decency not to serve it this year)...but I had a great time and caught up with (and bought a few records from) a couple folks I haven't seen in a while.
I'll say one thing about the money, though: a lot of it was for a good cause. More than one, actually. First, of course, is WFMU. They're the coolest listener-supported freeform radio station in town, don'cha know, and they had loads of $1 LPs, several classes of CDs, and their own compilations (including one of guest appearances from a show a friend of mine hosts)...not to mention tons of swag and a prize wheel you could spin for a buck. All proceeds go right to the station.
The other good cause is this li'l ol' blog right here. I got plenty of blogger fodder for you to marvel at, and little by little you'll see some of it. You might even hear some. So even if you can't go today, you can get a taste for what's there.
The 69th Regiment Armory at 26th/Lexington is the new place for the fair. Right across from it on Lexington Ave. is what must be one of the smallest Popeyes in existence. They could've gotten away with calling it Olive Oyl's. It doesn't even have a bathroom, it's so small. Yet somehow despite that little oversight, it gets an A from the health department. Try the chicken & waffle tenders. But bring your own Purell.
You know what else I got?
Shirt love.
Two people asked to take a picture of my shirt. If you were there and missed your chance, I'll save you the trouble of asking. Pardon the mug - I didn't feel like cropping my head off...and selfies are hard. Besides, I needed a new facebook profile pic, and this was a quick-n-dirty way to get one.
If you want the shirt...make your record store print its own. They could use the publicity. Or see if CafePress has one like it.
Next best thing, of course, is to pick from the variety of shirts WFMU offers. Like I said, there's still time. And there's still a lot of music to discover in the coolest way possible.
Attention, east-coast record hunters: your favorite freeform radio station, WFMU, is having its world-famous (what? Well, it SHOULD be, dammit!) record fair this weekend.
One big thing to note is that it's moved from the Metropolitan Pavilion to the 69th Regiment Armory at 26th/Lexington in Manhattan.
If you haven't been there before, change some plans around so you can make it. It's huge. I'm talking literally millions of records from literally every genre, tens of thousands of CDs, and a whole lot of fun. WFMU DJs will be doing their shows live there, and others will be DJing just for you lucky showgoers. There might even be other things going on, too.
$7 a day Friday, Saturday and Sunday; or if you're a die-hard, $25 for the entire weekend with early pre-fair admission on Friday afternoon and unlimited admission all weekend.
Get the full scoop direct from the source. Maybe I'll see you there!
I apologize. I was away this week and preparations for the trip kept me from being as timely as I'd have liked with this post. But as it turns out, being away had a benefit. You'll see why soon.
The World's Fair. A showcase of the best that the present and the future had to offer. The Eiffel Tower was unveiled at the 1889 fair in Paris. The 1898 fair in Chicago introduced us to the Ferris wheel. 1939's fair in New York gave us television. The Space Needle stands as a lasting reminder of the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle.
And then there was the 1964/65 World's Fair. Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, NY played host, just as it did for the fair 25 years earlier. Only this time...it wasn't a real world's fair.
Robert Moses, New York's City's Master Builder, helmed the corporation in charge of the fair. He realized that the 1939 World's Fair lost serious money and he hoped to remedy that for 1964. In doing so, he charged the exhibitors rent - a huge no-no per the sanctioning body of the fair, the Bureau of International Expositions. Moses also made the decision to run the fair for two six-month seasons instead of just one, based on calculations that 70 million visitors would be required for the fair to be profitable. Strike two. Not to mention, the BIE had a rule that there could only be one universal exhibition in a 10-year period. With Montreal's Expo 67 already set to open, the New York World's Fair was not it. The BIE refused to recognize this fair and formally requested nations not to attend. The UK, Canada and Australia were among many who took the BIE's advice and sat out. Despite it all, Moses plowed ahead and opened the fair on April 21, 1964.
The visitors, all 51 million of them, got a tantalizing taste of tomorrow. AT&T (aka The Bell System) showed their Videophone. GE exhibited the Carousel Of Progress, a rotating display of America's technological progress imagineered by Disney. Speaking of Disney, they also did the work on Ford's Wonder Rotunda and Magic Skyway, which by all accounts was at least as good as GM's competing Futurama exhibit. And US Steel showed off the symbol of the fair, the Unishphere: the 120-foot, 700,000-pound marvel of engineering made entirely of stainless steel.
No doubt there were pleny of souvenirs. Among them: this album. The 1964/65 World's Fair may not have been official, but it did have an official album. Supposedly. For such a forward-looking fair, this album sure sounds old-timey. It really doesn't have a lot to do with the fair, either. The Little Old New Yorkers, with backing help from The Phil Romano Orchestra, look back to the past with staples like Give My Regards To Broadway, Lullaby Of Broadway and Chinatown My Chinatown. But there are these two originals, done "in the marching band style of the twenties combined with the modern."
Here's the title track, Take Me To New York, Take Me To The Fair:
And the closer, Queen Of The New York World's Fair:
Wild Bill Davison plays cornet...and record label owner. The album's on his Davison Records label. Al Davis, Jr. narrates...and as you'll hear on the first track, not all that well.
A better known (and probably much more official) World's Fair album is this one, which I discovered a sealed copy of while I was away:
Ferde Grofe was commissioned by Robert Moses to compose an official symphony. As Grofe said in the liner notes, It was a challenge: "Here was steel and concrete, nation after nation, a whole constellation of industries, entertainment as well as education - patterns upon patterns. Where to start?...the challenge appeared to be a big one!"
As with the fair itself, the World's Fair Suite is divided into five parts: Unisphere; International, with the Western nations represented by major chords and Eastern nations by minor chords; Fun At The Fair, a lighthearted musical frolic; Pavilions Of Industry, an ode to "both the productivity and promise of a better man-made world;" and National, which reprises the fanfare of Unisphere and its echo of the Fair's message of Peace Through Understanding.
The Suite made its debut at the opening of the Fair with Paul Lavalle as conductor. He's conductor on this album as well. Here's the first movement, Unishpere:
Record Store Day is coming in a few weeks. I'll write about it later. Meantime, let me tell you the story of a record store I once knew.
About three years ago, I heard about a magical place. Not just a record store, but an experience. I had to find it for myself. When I did, I found out the hype was real. This place not only sold music on those big, black discs...people talked about the music. They spent minutes, even hours, talking about not just what they've been listening to, but how it made them feel. They shared stories of acts they saw live. Customers not only conversed with the owner of the store, but with each other, despite being total strangers. It was like no other record store I'd ever seen. It was home.
But as Tom Wolfe said, you can't go home again.
The owner of the store planned to expand to a bigger location. He'd have a second floor with live performances. He'd be closer to the City, and the jazz lovers that called it home and sometimes came out to the Island, perhaps on their way to the East End for the weekend. With two stores, it would be the best of both worlds.
But it turned out not to be at all. The bigger store ran into zoning and occupancy problems and never opened. The smaller store, which had temporarily closed in preparation for the opening of the bigger one, ended up being shuttered permanently, leaving the owner with zero stores instead of the two he'd planned on. And it left us, his customers and friends, seeking the magic his store once had.
I, for one, never found that magic. I'd been to a couple of other stores since, but none were so welcoming, so eager to let you stay an hour after closing to talk music. Yes, they bought, sold and traded records and gear - but no...something was missing in each of them. I doubt I'll ever find it again, but I'd love to be proven wrong. God rest ye, Vinyl Exchange.
"Still I'm glad for what we had, and how I once loved you." - Carole King
Not often do I find the entire discography of a band without even trying. Apparently I did just that yesterday with these finds:
Spider has an interesting history. Lead singer Amanda Blue, drummer Anton Fig, and guitarist Keith Lentin started out in South Africa as a band called HAMMAK in the early '70s. After a few years of playing the Cape Town scene, forces (like college) convened to split the band up for a few years, but they reunited in New York and added bassist Jimmy Lowell and keyboardist Holly Knight to become Spider. As Spider, the band recorded two albums - these two - for Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman's Dreamland label.
Chinn and Chapman, as producers, gave the UK lots of hits, but here in America, are best known just for Sweet's "Little Willie" and Exile's 1977 country crossover "Kiss You All Over."
Dreamland Records didn't last long. In fact, monster label discography site Both Sides Now lists just seven albums ever released on Dreamland - and these Spider albums were the first and last, in 1980 and 1981.
After Dreamland, Spider found new life in 1982 - as well as a new name: Shanghai. Along with the new name came new keyboardist Beau Hill, and new record label Chrysalis. At the time, Chrysalis was riding high with hits by artists like Pat Benetar and The Pretenders. Unfortunately, Shanghai didn't ride the wave of success that its labelmates did, and the band ceased to exist by any name after just this album.
But fortunately, most of Shanghai are active to this day. Amanda Blue is not just involved in music..she's also a photographer and writer as well as a Core Healer with her own practice. Anton Fig, of course, has been busy most nights with a little project called The Late Show With David Letterman. Beau Hill and Keith Lentin have been busy as producers. Holly Knight's been busy writing for music TV and movies. Jimmy Lowell was last heard in a Canadian group called Fast Forward, which, like Shanghai before it, lasted just long enough for one album.
Two thrift stores, numerous finds - and many, many dollars saved at one of them.
I hadn't planned on going to the first thrift store, but what the hell - it was right there and I was too late to get to the 75% off sale at the other store in town. But what do you know - there was a 75% off sale at this one for items with white price tags. Just by luck, all the best vinyl had those white price tags. $60 worth of early-'80s rock I'd never heard of wound up costing $15.
But this was not just any early-'80s rock I'd never heard of (lay off, I was like 5 when most of it came out). Most of it was early-'80s PROMOTIONAL albums with press kits! It's almost like they expected some vinyl blogger to buy it and write about it like he knew what he was talking about. Some of these albums desreve their own posts, so check back every few days as I post them. Let's get right to the first:
Blowing in from New York City is a Hurricane Jones album from late 1981. This "hot new senation" (typo theirs) comprised Hurricane (real first name Melinda) and a few studio musicians from the legendary Sigma Sound in Philadelphia. TJ Tindall from Philadelphia International Records got them together. Noted engineer Eddie Ciletti gave them their sound. A Schenectady (NY) Gazette review in the press kit notes, "Hurricane Jones, the singer, has a flexible voice, a sure way with a yip and the ability to break a phrase, a la Janis Joplin."
You do now, espcially if you live in or near Manhattan.
'Case you missed the last post about it, the WFMU Record Fair is back with a vengeance this year. And it's next weekend! That's right, on Fri 11/22, Sat 11/23 and Sun 11/24, not only will you be in the presence of hundreds of thousands
(if not millions) of records to buy, you'll also hear live DJs. You can groove to flexi-discs like you used to get in cereal boxes! You'll thrill to lectures about things like fake Beatles records! You'll marvel at the genius of Telstar producer Joe Meek! And you'll stand (sit?) in peril as filmmakers ponder what would happen if media consolidation went too far.
And I hope you'll at least have some pizza and a Chelada for me since I still can't be there.
WFMU RECORD FAIR
Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W 18th St/6th-7th Ave
New York NY
7-10 PM Fri 11/23, 10-7 Sat 11/24 and Sun 11/25
$7/day; $25 all 3 days with early 4-7PM admission on Friday and unlimited readmission all 3 days
We're a month away from one of the best record events I know of: the WFMU Record Fair.
Some background for the unfamiliar: WFMU was formerly a college radio station. The college, Upsala College of East Orange, NJ, went bankrupt in the mid '90s. Through the fervent support of its freeform-loving listeners, WFMU survived apart from the college as a non-profit entity and thrives as one to this day.
WFMU has a lot of things going on - a blog, Twitter, Facebook, a free music archive, an app, and a live stream you can access in about 136 ways, to name a few. They're also getting a 100-seat radio theater in shape, so the Record Fair has a little more of a mission this year.
The Record Fair (capitalized for reverence) is back after a year's absence, and as always it's an orgy of sounds, sights and special events. Actual records for sale number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. WFMU even sells albums people have donated for $1 each to raise funds for the station.
But it's not just a record fair. Oh no, far from it. There are special events all weekend. Lala Brooks from the Crystals showed up one year; the Trashmen got back together to play Surfin' Bird again...and where else can you get a musical haircut? A guy with electric scissors and amplified clippers gives you a trim like you've never heard before. There are even screenings of music movies. A few years ago, I got to see End Of The Century: The Story Of The Ramones, with a Q&A after.
The dates are Friday 11/22 to Sunday 11/24, and the location is the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. Any day now, special event info should pop up at the WFMU's website, http://www.wfmu.org.
I'd hope to see you there, but I can't make it that weekend. So if you can, do...and let me know how you liked it.
I didn't quite get to AES in time to get to the story of the Peggy Lee album, but I did get to the story of 35mm film recording. And I learned a lot. For example:
- Classical music can be good. I liked an excerpt of a Mahler piece (Symphony No. 9 in D Minor) I heard during the demonstration.
- Queens may not be the cultural center of the world, but there was some fine music recorded there.
- I have to be more careful with what records I get rid of. One of the albums in the presentation was one I used to have.
The presentation was given by Tom Fine, whose parents both played significant roles in the history of 35mm recording: father Robert was an engineer who bought Everest's studio after Everest disbanded; mother Wilma worked for Mercury Records and oversaw its Living Presence series of classical albums from conception to its digital remastering in the '90s.
Cliffs Notes on 35mm sound: it started in the late '50s at Everest Records, a small label in Bayside, Queens. Its founders believed 35mm film was better because it was wider and thicker than standard audio tape of the day, and it ran faster (faster speeds = higher quality). It was also less prone to noise, like tape hiss.
Unfortunately, film was ridicuoulsly expensive, so Everest, which specialized in classical recordings, went under after only a few years. But bigger, better-resourced Mercury carried the torch for a few more years...and it blazed pretty brightly. Mercury's Living Presence albums were a marvel not only technically, but artistically.
On the heels of Mercury's success came 35mm albums from labels like Command, from the always-technically-forward Enoch Light, and Philadelphia-based Cameo/Parkway. Towards the end of the '60s, a turbulent time in general, things changed for 35mm..not the least of which was public taste. And the change in taste actually helped hammer the coffin shut for 35mm. The classical recordings typically done on 35mm, with their 3 microphones (or sometimes just one) over the orchestra, didn't need the editing, overdubbing or special tricks rock music did. Plus, improved tape formulations and the advent of technology like Dolby noise reduction rendered the advantages of 35mm moot.
But 35mm still lives on - barely. Time has not been kind to the reels of film recorded by Everest, Mercury, Command and Cameo-Parkway. Indeed, some have been lost forever, mainly due to improper storage conditions. There has been success in restoring Mercury's 35mm recordings. There are two sets of them now available on CD. The first might be out of print - it's now hideously expensive, but there's a second one available for a decent price, considering it contains about 50 CDs. But if you want it, you'd better act on it before the price goes up like it did with the first one. A few of the Living Presence albums have also been reissued on vinyl as well.
For once, I'll be on a trip where records aren't being purchased, but strictly learned about. I got late notice that the AES Convention is happening in New York this weekend (and of course, your notice is probably even shorter - sorry 'bout that).
If pro audio is a circle you travel in, AES needs no introduction. For the rest of you, AES is the Audio Engineering Society, an international organization of professionals dedicated to learning, teaching and innovating in all fields of recorded audio. They hold conventions twice a year, and they're massive - like an auto show for your ears. In fact, this AES is being held at a place where there's an auto show every year - the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Mnaufacturers will show their latest microphones, recording consoles, effects, and software. Some will even be hosting seminars. There are producers, engineers, and lots of big names in audio. One speaker manufacturer is even recruiting for jobs!
So what does this all have to do with vinyl?
Two things.
One is a presentation on an early stereo album. Peggy Lee's Jump For Joy was one of Capitol Records' first albums to be released in stereo. But it didn't originally get reissued to CD that way. Tomorrow, the mystery is revealed about how the proper stereo version of this album finally made its way to CD from the original tapes.
The other vinyl-centric feature deals with film. Yes, film. There was a time just after stereo was introduced when some engineers felt tape just wasn't up to the job of capturing evey detail of the dynamic performances they were recording. A small studio believed that 35mm film - the same type used for movies - could also be used to record music. The idea held promise...but tape made quick strides in quality during the '60s that left film behind. The rise and fall of 35mm film recording will be chronicled tomorrow.
AES runs through Sunday, October 21 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. You can learn all about it at http://www.aes.org.
I might as well have called this blog 33 1/3 Revelations Per Year with the pace I update the thing. What takes so long? Well, for one thing, there's new stuff coming in all the time. I'm just back from a trip I'll tell you about in a couple of months, maybe...and I happened to think that maybe I'd better post about my last major expedition while I'm thinking about it (again). So here it is.
They've always said New York is a melting pot: the entire world makes its home here. And there's great proof of that in the thrift stores. One in particular had just received a bunch of Greek albums. And in a moment of weakness, I grabbed a few. What would possess me to do such a crazy thing? A) they were 10 cents each, and B) I wanted to see just how many ways there were to spell the word "bouzouki." Apparently there are a lot. Oh, and C) some of the songs have titles that make them just BEG to be heard - even if you don't speak the language. Wouldn't you buy an album just for a song called "I'm Going To Smash Everything?"
These Greek albums are full of intrigue. Here's a 1974 album from...Roberto Delgado? Wow, um, OK:
I feel cheated by this one. It's 1974, disco was about to be the next big thing, and here's a song called Get Up And Do It. Did our "Greek" friend Roberto get all down and funk-ay with that bouzouki? No. It sounds almost like a belly dance. And as far as I know, belly dances aren't even Greek. Then again, neither is the name Roberto Delgado.
Duos and trios were popular:
Nothing memorable about the Trio Bel Canto. Duo Star, though, delights with cha-chas, fox trots, and even a couple of twists. One day I might get around to uploading a sample or two so you can hear them. But if not, please: no nasty comments telling me you're going to smash everything.
