Hey Out There, music fans! I see that so far (as of 17 November) 39 of you have scooped-up copies of my 20-page 1979-81 "great forgotten music" playlist RECORD STORE DAZE since it's available for FREE right now at Amazon.com's Kindle Store. And that's flattering.
But only 3(?) folks have bought the actual BOOK, my record-store memoir from Back In The Day, GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!, which is still available for a measly $2.99. And I happen to think it's worth a lot more. But maybe I'll have a Christmas Deal coming up for those of you Out There who are as broke as I am....
Stay tuned....
Meanwhile, now that it's too late to change -- don't get me started about the hoops me and the good folks at Amazon/Kindle have jumped through together to make these books happen -- I've had some time to think about some items that AREN'T on that long, detailed playlist, but should be. There's a few of them that just sort of slipped past me. Most of them you can live your life without, but a few are definitely worth hearing -- and are identified below with a *. This update is also available to you free, right here (whatta guy!).
Split Enz -- TRUE COLORS: *Poor Boy, *I Hope I Never, I Got You.
20/20 -- LOOK OUT!: *A Girl Like You, *American Dream.
Congress of Wonders -- *REVOLTING.
Hawks -- (FIRST ALBUM). Their "Let Me In" is a gorgeous chimey-guitar classic that IS included in my playlist....
Robert Fripp, etc. -- THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN.
Gary Numan and Tubeway Army -- REPLICAS. The English #1 "Are Friends Electric?" that leads this album off is included in the playlist....
Michael Nesmith -- INFINITE RIDER ON THE BIG DOGMA. Can't remember a thing about it except for that silly song about "Sunset Sam." And I think all the songs have one-word titles....
New England -- WALKING WILD, EXPLORER SUITE. The arty title song of EXPLORER SUITE is included on the playlist, but I get by with the old 45-rpm single just fine....
Rainbow -- DIFFICULT TO CURE.
Russ Ballard -- BARNET DOGS.
Snail -- FLOW.
The last half of these are albums we played only a couple times in the store, and some of them I can barely remember. However....
Split Enz's TRUE COLORS has a couple real classics on it, along with the almost-hit "I Got You." "Poor Boy" is a terrific, spacey, funny love song about the best kind of Close Encounter -- and along with the great vocals and silly lyrics it has some great spacey, eerie, sci-fi sound effects. It's wonderful, and you'll be singing along with the one-line choruses before the song's over. "I Hope I Never" is a melodramatic lump-in-the-throat masterpiece, and one of the few slow ballads the Enz ever did. I'll have a review of the Enz's great overlooked 1981 album WAIATA coming up soon....
20/20's "A Girl Like You" is a moody, bouncy piece of "power pop" with great group vocals, and "American Dream" is more of the same high quality, only artier and more abstract.
If you love the Firesign Theater, you'll at least like Congress of Wonders. They're really silly, and REVOLTING features a hilarious STAR TREK satire, among other things words can hardly describe....
Rockin' Bobby Fripp's LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN has some nice angular guitar sounds, as you might expect -- this time presented in a sort-of New Wave/dance-rock format. But it also includes Fripp's usual fripperies and subcontextual messages. I bought it at the time -- Fripp was my God back then -- but I don't think I played it more than twice. Course I'm more open-minded now....
I think that's about it for the additions, for now. These will all be included in an eventual updated version of the playlist -- and I'll be sure to get them in there if this all becomes a "real" book you can put on your bookshelf -- which is what I've been working toward all along.
I guess this is what happens when you try to write a book -- after a certain point it becomes so big you can't SEE the little details too clearly anymore....
I'm a perfectionist. Sorry for the lapses.
Not in The Book:
There's also a few minor details I somehow left out of GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! that I've now had 10 days to remember. Maybe I should have sat on the book and let it "cool off" for another month. Here's a few of those minor details that have since come back to me:
* Me and most of the friends I mention hanging-out with in the book were graduates of Meridian High School in Meridian, Idaho, just west of Boise -- all of us graduated between 1976 and 1978. I was a member of the Class of '77, myself....
* The trailer court that it seemed like we ALL ended up living in sooner or later was the Wheel Inn Mobile Manor on Meridian's east side. It's still there. When we all graduated, there were about 2,500 people living in Meridian -- now it's over 35,000....
* At one point in 1982 when there were NO JOBS in Boise, my friend Bob suggested we apply for a government loan and open our own used book and record store. Now I wish that we HAD. Bob was not the best at handling money, and in the depressed economy back then -- not unlike today -- we probably would have gone down the tubes in a matter of months. But it's been a dream of mine ever since....
* Bob once also suggested that we escape the no-jobs no-future of Boise in 1982 and go somewhere "more enlightened" -- Salt Lake City, for instance. Bob, if you're out there, I don't know about the "more enlightened" part, but escape still seems like a pretty good idea....
* Back in my record store days I used to buy music and books before I ever bought food -- or even gas for the car. I'm not sure if I ever actually came out and SAID THAT clearly in the book, though I'm pretty sure the feeling is there. It took me a few years to get into my thick head that you can't EAT music and books....
...There's a few other things that somehow didn't get into the book, but they're gonna need a little more room to explain, so I'll save them for later....
COMING SOON: Reviews of "one-sided classics" by The Records, New England, Spider, Red Rider, Tarney/Spencer Band, and more -- plus reviews of great forgotten albums by Glass Moon, Sky, Group 87, The Headboys, The Jam, The Rollers, Camel, Split Enz, Squeeze, Bruce Cockburn, Sally Oldfield, Judie Tzuke, Charlie Dore, Grace Slick, and many more....
Thanks for reading, and score a copy of GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!, would ya?
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