Incredible Music Albums ( #AtoZChalllenge )

      Incredible music albums can be found on my record shelf.  At least they are incredible to me.  Music is about perception and taste.  I've heard some people say they didn't care for music. Seems impossible, but maybe it's true.  I'd say that would be a matter of perception because not liking music seems in bad taste to me.

       Iron Butterfly?  Why'd I get rid of their albums?  I loved both of the albums I had by them, but they're now gone.  Likewise, my two albums by It's A Beautiful Day also gone and it was a group that featured a violin player.  Violin is a big theme instrument in many of my albums.   What was I thinking?  Well, at least I kept the following "I" albums...

Links to the music are included throughout the post if you want to hear the music.

The Illusion "If It's So"  (1970)  I heard this album on an AM station that emanated from Lenoir City TN.  I believe they played one side of this album maybe more than once. Whatever the case, once I heard it the music grabbed me, shook me, and marched me into the University of Tennessee bookstore soon after. That was the most likely place I figured I'd find this album in East Tennessee.  Fortunately they had it at their usual premium prices, but I had to have it. I'm glad I got it because this is one of the best rock groups from that era.  And now I'm glad I've kept it in my collection.

Janis Ian  "Between the Lines"  (1975)  In the early months of 1975 I was taking a break from working and living in a large cabin in Laurel Valley at the edge of Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Many mornings I would hang out in the main room listening to the FM receiver on my roommate's fancy stereo.  The song "At Seventeen" was getting regular airplay. It's such a beautiful song with a heartbreaking story.  I felt the need to have the album that the song came from so much that I got someone to take me into Knoxville so I could buy a copy of the album. It was a great purchase. If you have never heard this album you should take a listen.  Janis Ian is a masterful song writer who has been putting out great music since the mid-sixties. 

The Incredible String Band  "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" (1968),  "The Big Huge" (1969), "U"  (1970)     If music can be described as "magical" then this is the band that plays it.  This group has such a mystical and sometimes alien sound--psychedelic world folk hippy music or something.  I found my first two albums by them for a dollar each in the cut-out bins of Big K in Alcoa TN in 1970. I was puzzled on my first listening of  the albums but had to go back, and then back again and again.  I keep going back to their albums.  I really like this music.  Maybe you'd find it weird.  It's all a matter of taste.

          Anything in this list that you recognize?   Which artists starting with the letter "I" would be your favorites?  What do you tend to perceive from listening to music and how does that affect your musical tastes?

Hard to Get Rid Of Albums ( #AtoZChallenge )

     Hard to get rid of albums that touch me in some personal way.  Whether it was the music that carried me through certain times of my life or a spark these albums light in my mind, some albums I hang onto while others have left my possession.   Whether here or gone away, the music in my life stays somewhere within me.

           Hall & Oates, Heart, and Hendrix have been sold and are long gone.  Maybe I should have kept the H.P. Lovecraft album that gave me so much enjoyment over the years, but I didn't.  The rock history relics by The Herd and Hour Glass are now history as far as my collection is concerned.  Never fear though, there are still some pretty interesting albums left in section H...

Links to the music are included throughout the post if you want to hear the music.

Bonus Album!  On 8 Track Cartridge   Lee Hazelwood (and Nancy Sinatra)  "Nancy & Lee"  (1968)     My mother had gotten this through the Columbia Record Club in 1968 and I laid claim to it.  Even though the more known Nancy Sinatra was the main attraction of this album,  I consider it to be a Lee Hazelwood album thus I've put it under H.  Hazelwood produced the album and wrote some of the best songs on it.  And he sings in that deep voice.  Nancy may have had the star power, but Lee was the real creative force in this collaboration. 

George Harrison   "All Things Must Pass"  (1970)   Of all the solo Beatles albums this one is probably the best.  It's certainly my favorite.  There are so many sublime musical highlights in this three record set.  This was a Christmas gift from my mother in 1970.  Much treasured by me and with so many good memories of music listening pleasure.

Merle Haggard "A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (or, My Salute to Bob Wills)"  (1970)     I'm pretty sure my mother bought this for me as a Christmas present in 1970.  At the time I wasn't a big fan of country music, but I was appreciative especially if it had to do with fiddle playing.    This is a great collection of western swing music.  I liked this record back then, but now I have more respect for it.

Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks  "Striking It Rich" (1972) & "Last Train to Hicksville" (1973)   Memory now evades me as to when I first became aware of Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, but I'm pretty sure I had seen them in 1974 on a television show like The Midnight Special.  I liked the campy hot jazz sound.   And they had two violin players!  So naturally I went out and bought the "Last Train" album which they had featured in their TV performance.   This is a great, great album!

         In 1981 I went to see Dan Hicks and his Acoustic Warriors at a bar in Grand Junction CO. At first I thought the guy was sloppy drunk.  The music was loose and amateurish sounding.  Then they started playing some of the most intricate amazing campy jazz music I'd ever heard live.  I realized the start was just part of the Dan Hicks schtick.  The guy is a fantastic musician

         Years later--around 1994 or so--I went to hear him again with a new line-up of the Hot Licks at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano CA.  They were highly polished and slick.  It was a flawless performance.  The dual violinists were back as well as other top notch musicians.  A group worth seeing if you ever have a chance.

         I bought the "Hicksville" album for full price back when I first heard the group on television.  Sometime somewhere in the eighties I ran across the "Striking It Rich" album in a used record store. Had to buy it.  It's another good one.

The Hello People  "Hello People" (1968) and "Fusion" (1968)  In the early seventies I used to see the "Fusion" album at my friends Rick and Bill Page's house and it always intrigued me and I liked the sound.  Later, I saw both of the above pictured  Hello People albums in cut-outs and grabbed them both.  Two magical albums by one of the more unique groups of rock history.  In May of 1972 I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the opening acts for Alice Cooper at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium was going to be Todd Rundgren backed by the Hello People. It was a great concert with them coming first, followed by the solid rock and roll of the group Free, and closing with the outstanding theatrics of Alice Cooper.  However, for my personal tastes the highlight of the show was that opening act of Todd Rundgren and the Hello People.  These albums revive a heavy dose of music memories for me.

        

Hard Meat "Through a Window" (1970)   When I used to scour the record bins in the University of Tennessee Bookstore, there were certain albums I would keep stopping at to consider and then keep going.  Money was tight at the time and this record store was more expensive that mainstream stores, but they had some of the more interesting selections that I never saw elsewhere.  This Hard Meat album was one that I would always stop at and think "Should I buy or not?"  I thought the name was weird and figured the music might not be something I would like.  Then finally I succumbed. Maybe I had some extra money or something.  Whatever the case, I bought it.  So glad that I did.  This is some solid prog rock with a more acoustic bent in the guitars and some tasteful playing throughout.  Good songs by outstanding players.

          Are you familiar with any of these albums?    Have you seen any of these artists in concert?  What are some of your favorite H artists? 

Good Music from the G Spot of my Collection ( #AtoZChallenge ) ( #BOTB Results )

        Good music is what I search for and that is mainly what I have kept in my collection after over fifty years of accumulating vinyl LPs.  Of course it's all a matter of opinion, but I don't think there is a bad album in this post--or any of this year's posts.

        Gershwin is gone from my vinyl records, but he's been amply replaced in my CD shelves.  Same with Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, one of the greatest albums ever in my view--I've added the deluxe CD version of that one.  I never replaced my copy of the first Grand Funk Railroad album, which I like a lot.   But there is still a healthy representation of good albums under the letter G.  Just look and listen...

Links to the music are included throughout the post if you want to hear the music.

  Groundhogs  "Thank Christ for the Bomb"  (1970)  After the Groundhogs caught my attention when I heard them on a local radio station (kind of surprising to hear them on a Knoxville area broadcast), I checked out the University of Tennessee bookstore to see if they had the album that I had already sampled and there it was.   I bought the album at full price and never regretted it.  This is a dynamite group that certainly should have gotten more recognition than it did.  But at least I added one of their albums to my collection and have no intent on getting rid of it.

Grapefruit  "Deep Water" (1969)  Once I had purchased my copy of Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia in 1969 it became a guide for me to find interesting rock albums.  This now limited scope compendium provided me with hours of reading about rock music at the time and led me to purchase albums like this one by Grapefruit, the first group signed to the Beatles' Apple label.  I used to think that maybe they actually were the Beatles or maybe Badfinger undercover.  They weren't and they didn't last as long as Badfinger.  Still, they were a good group.  My friend Marvin scored their first album in a cut-out bin and that was a decent album.  So when I saw their second album in cut-outs, I grabbed it.  This is a decent album with some psychedelic sounds that found an appreciative audience with me.

Stephane Grappelli and Yehudi Menuhin  "Jalousie"  (1973)  I first heard about this album on an NPR show on the Knoxville university radio station.  As a violinist and aficionado of string music, I had become well aware of the legendary jazz fiddle player Stephane Grappelli who had achieved international acclaim with his work with the great guitarist Django Reinhardt.  Likewise, Yehudi Menuhin was well-known to even a young violin player like me.  The team of these two pairing up to play classic standard pop tune by the likes of Gershwin, Porter, Kern, and others seemed like a must have for my collection.  I paid a premium price for this one brand new and it's well worth keeping.

Guess Who "American Woman" (1970)  I found this album at a used record store on Cumberland Avenue in Knoxville sometime in the eighties.  Naturally I was very familiar with the hits from this album and like the music well enough to buy this album.  Definitely worth owning a copy because this is great rock and roll music.

Grateful Dead  "Anthem of the Sun"  (1968)  Before I really knew much about The Grateful Dead I found this album in a cut-out bin (in Big K I believe) and bought it for 99 cents.  It had a pretty cover, some long songs, and I figured it must have some kind of status.  Even though I didn't know their music at the time, I had heard about the group.  It's kind of a weird album even for me.  It's the only Dead album I have on vinyl though I've gotten a few since on CD.  Not that I'm a "Dead Head" by any means, but I like a good music library.

Good Rats           The Good Rats (1969)  One day in spring of 1970 when I was attending the University of Tennessee, I was in the Undergraduate Library perusing about and ran across a magazine that focused on classical music.  Oddly, in the review section, they had a piece about the first Good Rats album and gave it some high marks.  Since it was coming from a classical music magazine I figured the album was respectable enough for me to seek out.  I checked the University Bookstore, where I typically went to look for the more obscure albums, and sure enough they had a copy which I bought and enjoyed for several years.  Never heard anything more about the group until 1981 when I started running across many of their later albums in the cassette cut-outs.  Now obsessed, I found every other album they made and discovered that they were all better than that first album I had purchased ten years earlier.  Later I acquired LP versions of many of those cassettes as well as one on CD.  I haven't purchased many albums in recent years, but the most recent one was the "Good Rats...Live at Last" album which I bought at a used record store that my youngest daughter Angie took me to maybe 5 years ago or so.  When I saw this double album still unopened and for only $5 I figured I should spring for that.  This is one of the best live albums ever and the Rats are one of the best rock groups ever.  Many who have discovered this group are likely to agree with me.  You can listen and make up your own mind.

Rick Grech  "The Last Five Years"  (1973)   "Second Generation Woman" with Family  &  "Sea of Joy" with Blind Faith.   I couldn't find the entire album on YouTube but I've linked to a couple of tracks.  This is a compilation of some of the best songs by a virtuoso who has played with a number groups and artists.  I was familiar with his work as violinist and bass player for the supergroup Blind Faith.  This album has some excellent songs taken from other albums.

Benny Goodman "Trio, Quartet, Quintet"  (reissued 1968)  Of course I'd heard of Benny Goodman my whole life, but I didn't have that much of a deep interest in his music until I started college.  When I saw this album listed in a discount cut-out catalog that I used to get in the mail I figured it would be a worthy addition to my record collection.  The bargain price was definitely an incentive to buy.   A lot of great songs performed by Benny's small ensembles.  

Battle of the Bands Results

     My Battle was "Stormy Monday" as done by The Candymen and The McCoys.   I really like both of these.  Listening after over 50 years, The Candymen sounded much better than I remember.  Going in I figured I'd be voting for the McCoys, but in the final analysis I decided I liked the Candymen a tad better.

Final Vote Tally        

 The Candymen       5 votes

The McCoys            6 votes

Next Battle on May 1st

        But there's still more alphabet to go for the A to Z.  Tune in tomorrow!