ZOUNDS! We've Reached the End! ( #AtoZChallenge )

       Zounds!  Here we are at the end of another great Blogging from A to Z April Challenge and I'll count my 13th effort an absolute success.  There was a lot of work, but well worth it rediscovering some of the great music that I have collected over the years.  So let's get on with the often dreaded letter Z.

     Not much to see for the letter Z, but more than one might have expected.  Never got rid of any Z albums, but I never had many to begin with.  What I had, I kept. Here are my Z's...

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

Zoo (1969)  This album stood out and announced itself to me from some forgotten cut-out bin.  Big black letters on a bright orange background with the simple proclamation "ZOO".  And it was less than a dollar so why not?  Then there is the violin player in the band.  If you've been reading my posts you know what that means, but just in case I'll mention that I play violin so I'm always interested in any album featuring a violinist.  The rocked out electric violin is just one bonus feature of this little known (in the U.S.A.) French group.  They've got a big brassy horn section as well as a powerhouse rock singer who is a match for a singer like David Clayton Thomas of Blood Sweat & Tears.  The album rocks with tasty jazz overtones and the songs are downright funky good.  You won't see this album many places, but you will find it in my collection.

The Zombies   "Odyssey & Oracle" (1968)  Wrapping up my theme of "My Vinyl Collection" it seems appropriate to close with one of the best rock albums of any of the British Invasion groups of the sixties.  This album is a musical fireworks display of eclectic pop rock psychedelic fusion.  Lovely songs that evoke memory of  a sweet past and a hopeful future are found throughout this album.  Then there's that great Zombies hit "Time of the Season".   If you're looking for rock music with melody, heart, and intellect then look no further than this one.  Since I was a Zombies fan from the beginning, this album was a delightful find in one of my cut-out bin explorations.  I  would have bought it at full price, but the bargain was a pleasant bonus.  If you've never heard this album and love music of all kinds, do yourself a favor and give it a listen.  Maybe you'll end up loving it as much as I do.

      

          And so my A to Z Challenge series closes for another April.  These are posts that I'll return to frequently just to click on the great music links.  It was fun for me to go back to listen to these albums. I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I enjoyed compiling it.  I'll have to admit that I have a darn good collection of music on vinyl.  Maybe I'll eventually have to dig into the treasure troves of my cassette and CD collections which are far bigger than my vinyl collection.  Whoa!  Talk about epic!  That might be overwhelming.  But it might be well worth the effort.  What do you think?

       Did you know any of the Z albums?   Do you listen much to groups from countries other than your own?    What are some Z artists that you can name?

Yowzah! We've Almost Reached the End! ( #AtoZChallenge )

 Yowzah!  We've almost reached the end of another A to Z.  These last two posts will be short ones.   So let's get started.

       Never had many albums under Y.   The only one I've gotten rid of is one by Steve Young and that was a pretty good one that maybe I should have kept.  You can probably guess which Y artist I did keep and I kept several of his albums.

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

Neil Young takes up a lot of space in my music collection.  Pictured are the vinyl Young albums that I still have.  Most of my Neil Young albums are found in my CDs and cassettes.

Rather than provide a bunch of links (most of you likely know his music and either like it or not) I'll offer the rarer selection of Time Fades Away (1973), a live album that Young himself disliked and allowed to go out of issue until it was put in a 2020 box set.  It's one of my favorite Neil Young albums.

        Are you a fan of the music of Neil Young?   Have Young's outspoken views recently affected your opinion of him?    Are there any Y albums that you would add to this list?

X--The Scourge of the A to Z ( #AtoZChallenge )

 X is often the scourge of the A to Z Challenge and X was particularly difficult for me in finding albums to match.  That's when I have to be creative.  I don't think I did too badly.

      Gone are my albums by groups starting with the letter X.  Gone because I never had any.  But I had these...

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

Okay, had to get creative with X as usual.  Why these two albums?  They each have ten songs which in Roman numerals is X.   Works for me.  What are the albums?  Read on...

Celebrate the Son:  A Collection of Contemporary Songs from the Heartland Family of Artists  (1984)   This is a label sampler album that includes songs like "Love Lifted Me" by Cindy Richardson and "Shout It Out" by Prodigal.  This is an album I bought at a large discount book store on Kingston Pike in West Knoxville TN.  I bought a bunch of albums that day and mentions of some of them appear throughout this series.

Tropical Palmeras de Tampico  (@1975?)  contains 10 (or X) songs like Los Mandados for example.  This is a tropical style dance music from Mexico.  I bought this album in a record store in Ciudad Acuna Mexico in 1976 at the same time I bought a copy of a War album (see the W post).  It must have been relatively inexpensive since at that time I was watching my pennies.  I seem to recall that they were playing this album loudly in the store while I was looking at albums.  I must have been kind of moved by the music.

OXO  (1983) could have gone under O, but look at all those X's on the cover.  I'm not real sure where I bought this album, but most likely I got it in the late eighties.  I probably got it at a discount bookstore like I mentioned above.  I was buying a lot of things at those bookstores back then.  Seems like there were several in Knoxville and the surrounding areas. This is a pretty good album although I haven't listened to it enough for it to really sink in.  But I used to see the "Whirly Girl" video on MTV a lot and grew to like that song.  The video was pretty cool too.

  

        Anything in this post you recognize?   Is the X post usually a difficult one for you?   Besides the group X are there any X artists you actually come up with?