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Showing posts from February, 2019

Horse Head Has An Idea:..."Grand Illusions" YouTube Channel

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HERE'S AN IDEA! Grand Illusions is a wonderful YouTube channel that is devoted to showing unique and inventive toys from the present as well as days gone by.  Host Tim Rowett , haling from Twickenham, London, England, shares his love and appreciation in all the toys he displays.  All varieties and themes. The toys range from silly and whimsical to stunningly clever  Mr. Rowett tells a little bit about each toy while showing it in action.  His gentle, enthusiastic nature is almost chicken soup.  Grand Illusions   is just one of a variety of channels I subscribe and look forward to.  He posts at a comfortable once a week pace. And each episode is seldom more than 6 or 7 minutes long.  Tim Rowett is a YouTube treasure for those lucky to have discovered his channel. "Grand Illusions" Good stuff. Casey Chambers Follow Me On FACEBOOK

I Went...SIRIUS...All The Way Home

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(a short jaunt) "Living In The USA" - The Steve Miller Band / "Sailor" (1968) A cool slice of atmospheric psych funkiness. From the revving engine at the beginning to the cheeseburger request at the end.  "Doot do do do do doot doot.  Living in the U.S.A."   That can sometimes become an earworm. "Look at You Look at Me" - Dave Mason / "Alone Together" (1970) A deep cut...AND a lost gem.  This is what we came for.  The song begins simple enough.  The hellos and goodbyes of our lives.  I get it.  But then Mason pulls everything together with a brilliant guitar solo with not a wasted note one.  And by the time the song fades away into nothingness, you realize that "hellos and goodbyes" are never simple.  Not at all.  And that's in your face.  Now sure, some of Mason's later albums were clusterfucks of patchiness, but we keep coming back on that off-chance he'll pull another white rabbit like this out

TCCDM Pulls One Out..."The Stylistics" (1971)

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"The Stylistics" - The Stylistics (1971) It wasn't until I got the album home that I saw five guys on the cover. (I only saw three initially.)  Camouflaging the group behind tall grass was a terrible idea.  I mean it was The Stylistics debut album after all.  But I guess it's all about the music anyway and this one doesn't disappoint.  From needle drop to lift, there is nothing but the sounds of sweet Philly soul magic for the ears.  It's Russell Thompkins Jr.'s familiar sweet falsetto timbre you will quickly recognize, but there are great vocals and production all around.  The album had five charting singles, but the songs left off the radio will pleasantly surprise as well.  One of the original Philly Soul rat pack, Thomas Bell , was responsible for all the arrangement and production plus he wrote all but one of the songs.  It's simply a terrific debut album.  I'm discovering I have a bit of a jones for the late 60s, early 70s soul stuff

TCCDM Dig and Flip: "Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson (2013)

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"Life After Life" ...Kate Atkinson (2013) 525 pages NO SPOILERS: This book is truly an ambitious sumbeach.  The story is very unique in the telling and must have been extremely challenging to write.  And Kate Atkinson almost succeeds in the attempt. In this novel, the main character keeps being reincarnated over and over again.  Her birth is always on the same day and year leading up to WWII.  And each one of her numerous life journeys may vary in length from only a few days to a few decades.  Each one ending in her death. As the number of her do-overs accumulate, she begins to remember small moments from her past lives and tries to change or divert incidents yet to come.  Destiny and free will and consequences.  The story is clever and fascinating...and falls just a little bit flat. The story is okay, but I never felt that “connection" I need to really care about any of the characters.  So midway through the pages, I wasn't so much looking forward

I Went...SIRIUS...All The Way Home

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(a short jaunt) "Samurai"   - The Pretenders / "¡Viva El Amor!" (1999) A deep cut from an album that simply passed me by.  Band member changes sorta left me lost back then, I suppose.  I'd forgotten how great Chrissie Hynde vocals can be  Both dangerous and sexy.  She wrote a good song here, too.  "Samurai" has a dreamy pensive quality I really like.  I'd never seen this album before, but the cover photo was courtesy of Linda McCartney which is pretty cool as well.  "Long Live Love." "The Spy" - The Doors / "Morrison Hotel" (1970) I love the way Robbie Kreiger makes his guitar sound the way I imagine Morrison's head feels in the morning.  Strange and a bit off-balanced.  When Jim Morrison sings... "I’m a spy in the house of love" ...it reminded me of a song title from a Was (Not Was) album.  Until I heard "The Spy" blast from my car radio, I thought Don Was came up

TCCDM Pulls One Out..."Inner Views" (1967)

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"Inner Views" - Sonny Bono (1967) This is Sonny Bono's plunge into the world of psych.  This was also his first (and only) solo album and, for better or worse, the brown acid got to him.  There are only five songs on this short LP.  The psych stuff sandwiches three songs in the middle.  A couple of pop songs and one “get-outta-my-face" ballad that sounds suspiciously like a Beatle riff from "A Day In The Life."  It's not a terribly good album, but it's not bad.  It just is what it is.  Sonny has always been more of a...hipster doofus than a Woodstock hippie, but you know that going in. The opening track is a psychy 12-minute sitar groove thing with Sonny tripping off rhymes that are often silly and a bit groan-worthy, but I enjoyed it.  The closing track on side two is what you came for.  "Pammie's On A Bummer."   This was his big psychedelic grandiosity.  The song opens with a 3-minute freak-out before Sonny begins singing t

Interview -- Danny Seraphine (Chicago)

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"It gets stronger and stronger and stronger and it's relentless." ~ Danny Seraphine ~ The importance of Danny Seraphine , the original drummer for over two decades with the iconic RnR HoF band Chicago cannot be over-emphasized.  Nor should it be.  Danny's presence was felt on every song.  Driving the band through the heavy rock poundage one minute and bopping and dancing off the jazzier moments the next.  Often in the same song.  Of course, that's what really great drummers are supposed to do.  Smash the odd time signatures out of the park.  And then, of course, let’s not forget the long string of top-40 hits.  Danny performed on 16 studio albums. (4 of them were freakin' double albums.)  His drums always sounded fresh and exciting...and way ahead of the curve.  He made it all seem easy. And Danny is a good songwriter, as well, having penned six charting songs while with the band which often gets overlooked.  When one steps back to look at the hi