51 Years Ago

He Changed the World in Only 18 Months

Among other things, Buddy Holly popularized the rock lineup of two guitars, bass & drums.

He was the first rock star to write and produce his own songs.

He was the first rock star to wear glasses.

And the Beatles named themselves (in part) as a tribute to his band (the Crickets).

Who knows what he might have done if he'd lived.

Link for Gmail subscribers.


And one more for good measure.


RIP Buddy Holly (Sept. 7, 1936 - Feb. 3, 1959).

My Heart is In Neutral

The wind is whipping at my shirt and nothing really hurts.

I was standing still. And everyone else was moving.

Not just moving. Spinning. Faster and faster.

It was summer. And they were scattered to the winds. While I was still there. Subletting a room in a four-bedroom apartment on the edge of campus on the third floor in a building that looked like it had towers.

I had an on-campus job at the library (an eleven-minute walk), where there was enough work to keep one person busy for five or six hours. So naturally, they'd hired four of us. I spent a lot of time writing letters to the girlfriend I stupidly convinced myself was the love of my life. I missed her like crazy and somehow knew that things were all about to change (and not for the better).

It was this summer and I was listening to Tom Petty a lot. But I also had a mesmerizing tape of an album my friend Eric had -- by a bizarre band from Boston called Private Lightning.

[At this point, I'd usually have a YouTube clip. And these songs were up on YouTube a month ago, but they've vanished. So please go listen to them for free here on Rhapsody. I'll wait.]

Private Lightning formed in the late 70s and never quite fit in. They combined new wave sensibilities, arena-rock vocals, AOR guitars, hippie-prog lyrics, and cheesy synths. And, as if that weren't enough, they prominently featured an electric violin. On paper, there's no way that should've worked. In fact, there's no way it should even be listenable.

But Private Lightning gradually built an audience in and around Boston. So before long, record company scouts were wooing them and a bidding war erupted. They signed a seven-figure deal with A&M, convinced it was the right move because of the way A&M had broken both Joe Jackson and the Police.

But the record company didn't like the band's choice of producers and brought in someone else. They band hated the mix of the album, but were excited to have the songs released. And in 1980, the record finally came out (and got quite a lot of airplay in New England).

A&M, which promised a huge promotional push and lots of tour support, found themselves instead concentrating on new records by the Police and Joe Jackson (both of which appeared at the same time as the Private Lightning album). Something had to fall through the cracks, and it wasn't about to be Joe Jackson or the Police. So the Private Lightning album died without much fanfare.

Demos were recorded for the second album, but A&M had lost interest and the band was dropped. The album went out of print (and stayed that way for more than 25 years) and the band broke up.

And I flew to see the girlfriend and got dropped as well.

I came back to my sublet room on the third floor. I walked the eleven minutes to and from the library. I wandered around after work and tried to interact with people, but everything looked like I was viewing it through some kind of opaque, viscous liquid. I wrote more letters to the (now ex-) girlfriend, but didn't send them. I took long walks in the middle of the night, then came home, showered, and walked the eleven minutes to work at the library. There were only a few weeks left to the summer, but it was like time had stopped. My last day of work, I made it to the library in only three minutes (maybe my watch was fast, maybe time really was broken -- I'm still not sure what to believe).

And I listened to my cassette copy of the Private Lightning album that summer until I wore the tape down to a ghostly whisper. The songs sounded like a desperate missive from another world:

My heart is in neutral, this motionless summer
I write all these letters to drop in the mail.
In the cool of the evening, I find myself restless...

The song loops back on itself in the second verse, moving forward while echoing the first verse inside every new line. "What can I do?" the band asks, "I'm so lonely for you."

When my friends returned to campus and I moved out of the sublet, they were eager to talk about what they'd done and where they'd been over the summer. I couldn't explain anything about my summer. I found myself looping back between their lines, searching for meaning and finding none. Weeks later, I still felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. They'd all moved forward and moved on... while I was standing still, watching my heart slowly break apart and spill out all over the floor.

Years later, I can't tell you who else lived in the apartment where I sublet that room. I can't even remember who I sublet it from. But every note from that electric violin is burned into my soul -- and each song brings me back to that summer.



Last summer, Renaissance Records finally released the Private Lightning album on CD, complete with 13 bonus tracks -- demos from what might have been their second album.

And Steve Keith, the band's bassist, has posted alternate mixes of many of their songs here.

Check out "Physical Speed" at the above link.

Best Grammy Moment?

Honey, honey, does this make me look cool?

Forget Lady Gaga being dumped in the trash (and plucked out by Elton John). Forget a nearly naked Pink hanging upside down. Forget Taylor Swift singing without autotune (or just repress the memory).

Here's your best 2010 Grammy moment:

Connecting the Lost Dots

Another Loss From This Week.

Rhino and Tower Records are long gone. And now, J.D. Salinger and Miramax are gone. And, believe it or not, they're all connected.

If you hang around Los Angeles long enough, you start identifying places not by what's there, but by what used to be there. (This gets confusing for new arrivals, but always elicits knowing nods from people who've lived here a while.)

This week, Miramax closed their doors for good (in both New York and L.A.).

To be fair, Miramax had basically been dead for at least 8 months, so this wasn't unexpected news. But it's still a bit shocking. (And some would argue that Miramax was lucky to have survived the past 4 years without Bob and Harvey Weinstein, or that it was bad form for Disney to have kept the Weinsteins from using the name of the company they founded and famously named for their parents Miriam and Max.)

Let me back up a second and connect this to music.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I thought of Tower Records on Sunset and Rhino Records on Westwood as Temples. I'd visit them and browse through the aisles, feeling like I was a teenager again -- so much great music all in one place.

Rhino Records (the store) had the cool factor -- their selection wasn't great, but the clerks were amazing oracles of musical wisdom and they held parking lot sales the first weekend of every month (where you could choose from thousands of albums for $2 or under) -- and the cachet of being connected Rhino Records (the label), the greatest record company in recent memory.

But Tower had the history (John Lennon did a radio commercial for them in the 70s just because he thought they were cool; Elton John used to have them open up after hours so he could buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of music) and an insanely wide selection. Tower also had comically high prices -- $19 for a single CD was the norm rather than the exception even when places like Best Buy sold the same CD for $12 or less.

A few years ago, I had some meetings with people at Miramax, which was located in a funky office building with a cool fountain outside (and friendly valet parkers who offered to buy my 16-year-old Honda every time I was there). They were almost directly across the street from the House of Blues and just a few blocks from Tower Records. So I'd often pop into Tower either before or after going to Miramax.

At that point, I probably hadn't been to Tower in at least 5 or 10 years. When online music retailers started gaining traction, there suddenly wasn't as much demand for a physical store that would stock more than 30 different Paul McCartney albums. Plus, Tower prices stubbornly stayed high, even as other online and physical stores were slowly bringing down the cost of CDs.

Tower, expanded too fast and opened too many stores even as the market for CD sales was plummeting, announced they were going to close all their stores -- including their Sunset Boulevard store (and the one in New York where I bought the XTC/Three Wise Men Christmas single) and liquidating their stock. Since their selection was never the problem, the chance to pick through the store at a reasonable price was intriguing.

So after a meeting at Miramax, I headed over to Tower, which had a huge banner boasting of savings of 20-30% off (and more). I had a little money burning a hole in my pocket and I wanted to buy something -- maybe just as a way of reminding me how I used to view Tower as a Temple when I first moved here. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


But...

Even at 30% off, the $19 CDs were still more expensive than at Best Buy. So I left without buying anything. (I can't find the exact quote, but a commenter on the Lefsetz Letter criticized Tower's liquidation at the time, saying "They can't even go out of business well... no wonder they're f*cking going out of business!")

Over the next few weeks, the stock at Tower was gradually picked clean. They increased discounts slowly and I went back again a few weeks later after another trip to Miramax. And I wandered around, looking for something to buy. Because even at 50-60% off, that meant CDs were still around $10 (or more with tax). And by then, most of the popular stuff was long gone.

And after 45 minutes, the only thing I found that I even half-wanted was We Are Scientists With Love or Squalor.

So now, to honor the passing of Miramax, I offer up another song from that We Are Scientists album I bought at Tower Records going-out-of-business sale: "This Scene is Dead." (EMI disabled embedding on YouTube for this, so click here to watch.)

And I vow in the future to always refer to the House of Blues as being "across the street from where Miramax used to be."

RIP J.D. Salinger

Tenuous Rock 'n' Roll Connection to Current Events

J.D. Salinger died this week at the age of 91.

So rather than talk about Mark David Chapman or Spinner's list of 10 Songs Inspired by J.D. Salinger (or Mog's 5 Videos Inspired by J.D. Salinger), I offer this little gem from We Are Scientist's great 2005 album With Love and Squalor.

Yes, it's a tenuous rock 'n' roll connection to current events, but don't you think that everyone, even J.D. Salinger, understands how terrifying it can be to be chased by a guy in a bear suit?

H/t to JB's fine The Hits Keep On Coming blog for pointing out that Tom Nawrocki, who formerly wrote the great One Poor Correspondent blog, is back blogging over at Debris Slide. In an odd, roundabout way, that inspired this entry. And welcome back, Tom!

Grand, Yes. Funk? Maybe Not.

Coming to Your Town to Help You Party It Down.

I used to hear Grand Funk Railroad (later just Grand Funk) all the time on the radio. In the 70s, they were huge, filling arenas all around the country, having massive hits, working with producers like Todd Rundgren and Frank Zappa, and selling more than 25 million albums.

Their music is big, dumb rock 'n' roll: infectious, loud, and more than a little goofy.

In other words, it's hard to take them too seriously, but it's also hard not to love them.

And their song "Bad Time" is the first song I remember associating with a crush. We were maybe 8 or 9 and Linda had long brown hair, dark green eyes, and pigtails. She liked to play kickball and wore Keds sneakers every day (except for Wedenesdays, when she'd always wear brown leather shoes). One day she told me she liked me, then ran away. By the time I could tell her I liked her too, she'd already moved on to a guy named Larry who was the class Dodgeball star. This made me sad even though I wasn't quite sure why (and really didn't know what it meant to "like" someone anyway).

And then I heard this song on the radio. I'd heard it before, but I'd never really listened to it. And at the age of 8 or 9, I listened and nodded wisely (well, as wisely as you can nod at 8 or 9) and thought "yeah, this is exactly how I feel."


Anyone who loves vinyl will tell you how much better it sounds. It's warmer, deeper, and you feel like you can crawl inside the grooves of the record.

But people who love vinyl rarely tell you how precarious it is. You need to treat records right so they don't get warped. You need to clean them so you don't gather dust on the needle (and you need to make sure you have a good needle to begin with).

Still, sometimes, even though you care for records well, they still sound bad.

Now, thanks to YouTube, you can hear that for yourself. Among the many odd sub-genres on YouTube is a huge collection of people filming vinyl records playing. (I don't know why this is, certainly the craptastic camcorder microphone and sound negates any sound advantage the vinyl offers.) And that's where I found this video of Grand Funk:


The 45 is gold vinyl, which is pretty cool. But it sounds horrible. Watch the record spin around a few times and you'll notice the whole was cut off-center. So the record isn't quite centered and the tone arm is moving back and forth to compensate. Meanwhile, the platter is spinning at a constant 45 revolutions per minute, but since the record isn't centered, part of it spins a little too fast and the rest spins a little too slow.

This does no favors for Grand Funk Railroad, a band from Roger Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan whose name was a pun on the "Grand Trunk Railroad" spur that ran through town (and in no way an indication of any actual funk going on in their music) or to the single best use of cowbell ever in rock 'n' roll (Will Ferrell, Conan, Beck, and the guy from ZZ Top notwithstanding).

Here's a cleaner and clearer version of the song:


What does this have to do with Linda?

Shortly after my "Bad Time" revelation, my family moved. I didn't go to school with Linda anymore and might have forgotten her altogether by now. Except that I did see her exactly once more.

I was on the street in New York City after college, visiting a friend who'd moved there. And suddenly, there was Linda, walking towards me, wearing a Grand Funk "We're an American Band" t-shirt. Although she'd certainly changed in the 15 years that had passed, I recognized her immediately. Unfortunately, she didn't remember me at all (she also didn't remember Larry, which made me feel better -- and childish for feeling better).

I nearly told her she was my first crush. I thought about telling her I always thought of her when I heard "Bad Time." I almost pointed out that "We're an American Band" is an ode to female groupies who screw around and how ironic it was for her to wear that shirt. But I did none of those things. Because she really had no idea who I was. And we were both in a hurry.

So we parted, each scurrying off to a different part of Manhattan, no longer joined tenuously by a song, each marching to the beat of our own cowbell.

Go Here, Watch & Listen to This, Read That

More from the digital world of hunter/gathering.

Peter's Power Pop reminded me of the fabulous Mitch Friedman (a New York-based singer/songwriter who manages to corral both Andy Partridge and Dave Gregory from XTC to play on his records) and his very, very meta "This is A Song":


Swedesplease points out that this song from the Most is "perfectly crafted pop circa 1968" and the Jean-Luc Godard-influenced video could easily have come from 1968 (except for those shots of the cell phone):



And finally, Then Play Long (home of long, fascinating essays about each #1 British album of the rock era in order) draws the curtain down on the 60s (and the Beatles) with a meditation on Abbey Road. Give it a read.