The College Crowd Digs Me

(4 For Friday) *   You just can't believe everything you see.  Mind blow. *   An interesting Top-10 list of the favorite vinyl finds in 2021 from  PsycheDerek .   *  Did you get a puppy for Christmas?  Or already have a dog?  Here are 30 dog psych facts that will have you viewing your four-legged friend differently.  *   Hidden hologram on the Star Wars vinyl .  Very cool spinning on the turntable.  "May the vinyl be with you." "Lost Forever, Left For Dreaming" - Rockets / "Rockets" (1979) Good stuff. Casey Chambers Follow Me On FACEBOOK

  The College Crowd Digs Me "...if you were prone to stage fright... then you were in the wrong occupation." Pete Agnew (Nazareth) "There's a lot of benefits. But there's also a lot of fallbacks, too." Michael Conner Humphreys  ("Forrest Gump") "There were a lot of musicians that couldn't get off those dark roads." Liberty DeVitto  (Billy Joel) "It was really interesting because audiences at first didn't understand what was going on." John Lodge (The Moody Blues) "It put me at just the right height allowing me to bolt myself onto the sign. Then they drove away." Kevin VanHentenryck ("Basket Case") "...on the basis of these two songs, they traded me to MCA. Like a sports team trading a baseball player." Tony Carey (Planet P,  Rainbow) Good stuff. Casey Chambers Follow Me On FACEBOOK

"(No Pussyfooting)" - Fripp & Eno (1973) More avant-garde, than ambient.  Brian Eno is not quite there...yet.  More flibbety-floos to tapdance in your brain on this debut album... "(No Pussyfooting)."   Still,  you can definitely see the direction this experimental bend is leading.  Using tape recorders like jacked-up sewing machines, they thread loops and layers and tape delays of synth and guitar to create wonderfully strange and heady trance-like music. Two songs, "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and "Swastika Girls" make up the album.  Both are unique and enjoyable. This is the early beginnings of Eno's fascination with tape-delay manipulation and Robert Fripp's guitar trickery soon to be known as "Frippertronics."  In equal measure, each take their ideas further into the unknown.  On this album, you can't have one without the other.  Knowing of Eno's extreme ambient period to come, I was afraid "(No P...

"( R) Evolution" - Hedge & Donna (1971) This was a complete blind buy.  I grabbed it because the cover looked interesting and it had Joe Walsh playing guitar on the album.  Hedge & Donna were a mid-late 60s folk-rock duo out of California who had met in college, married, and were acclaimed enough to be asked to perform at the Atlanta International Pop Festival and The Smothers Brothers Show .  " R Evolution" was the duo's fifth album and finds them throwing down a groovier and more contemporary folk vibe.   I was expecting Joe Walsh's presence to be more obvious, but here he maintains a lower profile letting the two do their thing.  And it's pretty good for what it is.  Certainly enjoyable, but nothing really stood out for me either.  However, since spinning Hedge & Donna's " R Evolution" a few times, I've found the square to be a bit of a grower.  I just think my Walsh expectations threw me off.  "( R) Evolution...

(4 For Friday) *  Here are 20 unwritten rules of life  most should already be hip to. *  This is so enjoyable.  A 1968 Elvis Presley and a present-day  Martina McBride  together on stage singing "Blue Christmas."    Really well done and amazing.  You're gonna want to see this. *  An incredible macro photograph of just one simple itty-bitty snowflake. *  We all caught  Billy Preston  working the keys in the "Let It Be" documentary.  Check  Billy Preston,   at the spry age of 10 . ..(really?)...kicking it with Nat King Cole.  "Merry Xmas Everybody" - Slade (1973) Good stuff. Casey Chambers Follow Me On FACEBOOK

 (a short jaunt) "Perfect Day" - Lou Reed / "Transformer" (1972) The last episode of "Breaking Bad."   The very last scene.  Badfinger's " Baby Blue" was such a great song to go out with.  Fitting for sure.  But I always thought the irony in Lou Reed's haunting "Perfect Day"  playing out while the flashing police lights in the night keep getting closer and closer to Walter would've been an acceptable choice, as well. (OWN) "Nasty Dogs And Funky Kings" - ZZ Top / "Fandango!" (1975) If you remember, "Fandango!" is a part live / part studio album.  Side one had pieces of a live set thrown together.  Not a thing wrong with it.  But it's side two (the studio side) that begs spinning.  It opens with  "Nasty..."  and is everything I love about "southern rock."  Have a friend who needs an introduction?  Put this one on.  In fact, the entire of side two is just a "keeping...

"Emerge" / The Litter (1969 - Rei 2014) I've played this a bunch since cracking it open last week.  There are dustings of psych here and there, but this is one of the early golden nuggets that foreshadows the 70s hard rock poundage to come.  Proto-aggressive, and yet beautifully precise.  The guitars fuzz and burn in satisfying measure and sound fresh.  Even when the band chills down, like on "Breakfast At Gardenson's" or the jazz-bent "Silly People,"  the songs never drag or lose focus.  The lyrics are interesting and the frontman vocals are just fine.  Not great, but they do no harm.  From needle drop to matrix, "Emerge" ...is a tasty spin.  And when I need a bit of a hit, this is a nice one to light up. "Emerge" / The Litter (back) Of the 9 songs included on this reissue, two are covers.  Buffalo Springfield's... "For What It's Worth"  and Love's... "Little Red Book."   They didn't outdo...