Six Cool Songs About Winter

 Winter has arrived. Rather rudely, I might add. Like a drunken dinner guest, it showed up late and knocked over the dessert cart. What can you do but hunker down, have a few drinks and crank up some tunes. Here are a few of my favorite songs about winter. There aren't many but these are pretty good.

CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Possibly the Mamas & Papas greatest tune. "I'd be safe and warm, if I was in L.A" sums up many people's thoughts on the subject. Warm? Yes. Safe? Maybe, not.

HAZY SHADE OF WINTER: One of Simon & Garfunkel's rockiest tunes. I always wonder who came up with the guitar lick? Paul Simon, maybe? Simon is actually a pretty good acoustic guitar player, so it could have been him. The Bangles had a hit cover version in the eighties. Susannah Hoffs has such a cool voice. Both bands do it better live, see YouTube for proof. 

VALLEY WINTER SONG: Fountains Of Wayne was such an underrated band. Best known for their 2003 hit, Stacy's Mom, they released five albums of great guitar pop. Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger wrote jangly pop songs with Beatlesque harmonies and insightful understated lyrics. Think The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society. Valley Winter Song is no exception. Sadly, Adam Schlesinger died in 2020 at the age of 52 from Covid.

TEN DEGREES AND GETTING COLDER: A folkie Gordon Lightfoot song about a traveling musician freezing his butt off on the side of the highway, trying to catch a ride and pining for a woman. There are a couple of bluegrass cover versions of this song, one by J.D Crowe & The New South and the other by Tony Rice. Both are better than the original. Tony Rice released an album of Gordon Lightfoot covers that is worth checking out

IN THE BLEAK MID-WINTER. This is song is based on a poem that was written back in the 1800s. The poem was popular with soldiers during World War I. If you are a fan of the Netflix series Peaky Blinders, which takes place in the years following World War I, you may have noticed they utter the phrase, The bleak mid-winter, whenever somebody dies. There are many versions of this melancholy winter dirge. Two of my favorites are by James Taylor and Shawn Colvin. 

BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE. For some reason this is now considered a Christmas song, although it never mentions the holiday. (Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow & Jingle Bells have suffered the same fate.) It has also become controversial in some circles, but we won't get into that. There are dozens of versions, but Dean Martin's is still the best. Both the original and the one he recorded with Martina McBride. (Of course, he was dead for the later recording, but we won't get into that one either.) I imagine this would be a very difficult duet to sing. Goes down even better with alcohol. But don't they all.

Casey Redmond

January 27, 2022

Casey's Record Review; The Story Of Frankenstein, Dracula And The Wolfman (Sellthrough Entertainment, 1999)

 I am a sucker for Halloween. All of it. The crummy plastic pumpkins, the drugstore Halloween costumes, the low grade B horror movies, the carving o the 'lanterns and cheesy horror spoken word recordings.

As a child, we had a scratched up copy of Alfred Hitchcock's "Ghost Stories For Young People". We used to listen to this on long humid air conditionless (hey, it was the seventies!) summer nights. Sitting in a dark room, trying to scare each other. I also was a big fan of Disney's "The Haunted House", an album from the early seventies that actually went gold. 

Even though I have been a "grown up" now for going on forty years, I still love Halloween..When the days grow short and the leaves begin to fall, I love nothing more than sitting in the dark on my front porch and listening to these old recordings. Which brings us to, "The Story Of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman".

Most of the spoken word Halloween records I have collected over the years are from from the sixties and seventies but I found this recording on CD back in the nineties. There is no copyright date on the package and what little information I can find says that it was released in 1999 or 2006. I remember listening to this with my kids when they were grade school age which would make the date closer to 1999.  

The album was released by an entity called, Sellthrough Entertainment out of Tampa, Florida. The company formed in 1995 and, as far as I can tell, this is the only audio recording they ever released. In addition, there is no information on the voice actors or producers. It's a mystery. 

What exactly was Sellthrough Entertaiment? A multi-national conglomerate? A shell company for a shadowy South American arms dealer? A fifteen year old kid making scary spoken word recordings in his bedroom? I like to imagine, all of the above.

This was defintiely a low budget enterprise. From the pakaging to the sound effects to the actors, you can tell this was done with a budget in mind. That being said, it is a fun listen. As the title indicates, the CD containes the tales of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman. Frankenstein is definitely the strongest and the Wolfman the weakest but all of them are enjoyable listen and probably not scary to anyone over seven years of age.

It's worth picking up a used copy on Amazon or Discogs or you can listen to it for free HERE

Happy Halloween

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Casey's Record Review: Super Stars, Super Hits (1968)

 

I have a soft spot for compilation albums from the sixties and seventies. In my youth, I was a big consumer of K-Tel "hits" compilations.  Like K-Tel, Columbia Records put out a large amount of compilation albums featuring their own artisits but, unlike K-Tel, usually offered only a handful of hits filling out the rest record with B sides, failed singles and album cuts. 

"Super Stars, Super Hits, No.2" continues the formula with middling success. Yes, they include some bona fide hits; "Brown Eyed Girl" (Van Morrison), "The Letter"(Box Tops), "How Can I Be Sure" (Young Rascals) and "Do You Believe In Magic" (Lovin' Spoonfu), among others. But it's the more obscure songs that make it interesting.

Some of the highlights/lowlights include;

Out Of The Blue (Tommy James & The Shondells) This song was released as a single within' a year or so of a lot of his big hits but it failed to make the charts in the US. It did hit the lower reaches of the top 40 in Canada. The song was written by Bo Gentry and Richard Cordell who co-wrote other Tommy James tunes like "Mirage", "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Mony, Mony". One of the reasons for it's lack of succsess could be that it sounds like Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. Perhaps the kids didn't realize it was Tommy James. Maybe it is an homage to The Four Seasons. Who knows. A rather weird entry in his catalog. 

You Better Sit Down Kids (The Union Gap) A terrible but fascinating song by Gary Puckett and the gang. The song was written by Sonny Bono and was a top ten hit for his then wife Cher. A pretty bad song even when Cher does it, this version is even worse with the slowed down tempo and way over the top sixties "kitchen sink" pop production (schmaltzy strings, Vegas horns, corny background vocals etc..) "You Better Sit Down Kids" is a divorce song. It's the words of a Father saying goodbye to his children with fluctuating time signatures and confusing stops and starts. This is a poigniant subject and the Union Gap pull at the heartstrings for all they're worth. It was probably pretty controversial in it's time but the subject matter was covered more creatively by other artists

We Belong Together (Peaches & Herb) An interesting cover of the old Ritchie Valens' classic. Stays pretty loyal to the original but with a nice sixties soul twist. 

Pennies (The Cowsills) A great slice of sixties pop from the Cowsills. This is from their self-titled debut, the same album that spawned the hit single "The Rain, The Park And Other Things". The Penny Lane-esque trumpet makes the song. I have seen the 'Sills three times over the past couple of years. How many people outside of Rhode Island can say that!

My copy of this record is really scratched and beat up.. It was obviously played many, many times and not well taken care of. One of the things I enjoy about collecting used records is that it is actually an artifact from another age. I don't believe this album was ever reissued which means my copy is almost sixty years old. By the unhip song selection and the condition of the disc, I imagine it was owned by someone between, say, twelve and sixteen. Maybe it was a birthday or Chrismas gift. They probably played it on a cheap plastic record player in their room. Maybe they played Twister or Operation while listening to it. Come to think of it, it seems like the type of record one of the Brady Kids would have owned back then. Maybe Greg had a copy in his pre-Johnny Bravo days. Alice and the kids probably grooved to it all night long or at least until Mike came home for dinner.

Greg Brady; Pre-Johnny Bravo

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Lori Partridge: Unsung Prog Rock Hero

 

Lori Partridge unsung prog rock hero? Absoulutely. When we think of amazing keyboard players from that era, who comes to mind? Keith Emerson (ELP), Rick Wakeman (Yes) Daryl Dragon (Captain & Tennille) but, for some reason, Lori is largely forgotten.  

Sure, she never got to play twenty minute classical music solos at mach-speed (Keith Emerson) or got to wear a super groovy cape (Rick Wakeman) or make her keyboard sound like love mad muskrats (Daryl Dragon) but she had chops. Check out her harpsichord break on "I think I Love You". Do you need more evidence than that?

Emerson, Wakeman & Dragon

Unfortunatley, Lori was over-shadowed by her ego-maniacal brother, Keith, and her overbearing Mother.  After the Partridge's broke up, I thought she might join King Crimson or start her own prog-rock band (The Lori Partridge Experience, perhaps) but, alas, it was not to be.

Instead she joined a law firm in L.A and her hair turned yellow. A sad ending to a once promising career.

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Rust Never Sleeps or Neil’s Upsetting Haircut

It was forty-two years ago this week that Neil Young released Rust Never Sleeps. I saw the movie at a Midnight showing in the early 1980s with some high school friends. We were jacked up on Genesse Cream Ale.

The movie was great but I remember being disappointed that Neil had cut off his long hair. At the time, I wanted long hair in the worst way. But, being a Catholic school kid, we couldn’t have long hair because Jesus was against it.

I remember finding this confusing because there were pictures of Jesus all over school and he looked like a Deadhead. He also had blonde hair and blue eyes but was supposedly born in the Middle East. Needless to say, this was a confusing time for me.

Despite Neil’s haircut, it’s a good movie. Check it out.

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Casey’s Record Review: Neil Young’s Old Ways (1985)

 The eighties must have been a hard time for the classic rock gods of the sixties and seventies. After years of being the arbiters of all that was hip and cool in the culture, they turned into uncool clueless dinosaurs overnight. Listen to pretty much any classic rock artist’s eighties albums and you can hear the excruciating sound of old people desperately trying, and mostly failing, to remain hip.

Which brings us to Neil Young. Contrary to his hippie brethren, I don’t think Neil Young has ever made any attempt to “keep up with the kids”. That being said, it doesn’t make his eighties musical output any less bizarre.

Starting in 1983,Young released a series of weird albums  that saw him changing musical genres about as often as he changed his socks. From synth pop (Trans,1982) to rockabilly (Everybody’s Rockin’,1983) country (Old Ways, 1985), synth metal...maybe? (Landing On Water, 1986) to big band blues (This Note’s For You, 1988).

The constant genre hopping not only confused and alienated his audience but also so infuriated his record company that they sued him for, basically, being too weird.

By the early nineties, after putting out several critically acclaimed albums and being embraced by young bands like Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth, he was being hailed as St.Neil and The Godfather Of Grunge and his weird eighties albums were thought of, if they were thought of at all, as a regrettable period in an otherwise stellar musical career.

I purchased most of these recordings at the time of their release and have periodically gone back and revisited them and must say that most of it is at best forgettable and at worst, just plain awful. The only exception to that last statement being 1985’s Old Ways. 

Filled with the sounds of fiddles, steel guitars and banjos, this was Neil Young’s attempt to crossover to the country charts. To help legitimize him to the country audience, he even duets on a couple of songs with Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

Although it is now seen as just another one of his weird genre experiments, at the time, Neil gave every indication that he was leaving the rock n roll world to become a permanent member of the country music community. He made the rounds on a number country music talk shows, did a full length tour to support the album and, perhaps to help ingratiate himself to conservative leaning country music fans, even made statements supporting President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy initiatives. 

Needless to say his old fans were aghast at all of this, especially his support of Ronald Regan, while the country music establishment didn’t buy the hippie-in-a-cowboy-hat bit. As a result, Old Ways is the worst selling album in Neil Young’s entire catalog.

All that being said, Old Ways is a really good Neil Young record. Despite a lot being made of his use of Nashville studio musicians, the record is not much of a departure from his other acoustic based albums. Think Harvest or Comes A Time with just a little more twang.

Yes, the duet with Willie Nelson, Are There Anymore Real Cowboys and the remake of Gogi Grant’s 1956 hit, The Wayward Wind are a bit corny but the album contains some great original tunes. Bound For Glory, My Boy, Once An Angel and California Sunset can stand with anything on Comes A Time or Harvest Moon and the backing band, a combination of Nashville session heavyweights and some of Neil’s long time collaborators, is stellar.

Old Ways is worth checking out though it can be a little  difficult to find. It’s not available on many of the big streaming services but their are plenty of used cd and vinyl copies around. I actually bought a cassette copy on Amazon. How’s that for old ways?

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Casey’s Record Review: Sonny & Brownie (1973)

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An amazing early seventies set of Blues, Soul, Folk and Gospel from the incomparable Brownie Mcghee and Sonny Terry.  This album is a big departure from their usual acoustic duo perfrormances.  On this record they really stretch out using a full studio band with guest apperances by John Mayall, John Hammond Jr., Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Arlo Guthrie and Michael Franks (who also wrote three songs on the album). Interestingly, the album cover was designed by Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean fame.

Yes, you will get your fill of straight ahead blues, "Sonny's Thing", "Walking My Blues Away" and the humorous "White Boy Lost In The Blues" but it is the electicism of the material I find most interesting.  The album was produced by the legendary Maurice Rogers and, perhaps, he had a hand in pushing the duo to explore more contemporary and experimental material. They cover a couple of Soul classics; Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" and Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" plus a couple of great Gospel songs; "Jesus Make it Right" and the powerful and playful "God And Man" (written by producer Rogers). The highlight of the album may be their stunning rendition of Randy Newman's anti-slavery anthem "Sail Away".

Although they play with band accompainment throughout the recording, the production is laidback and tasteful giving Brownie and Sonny plenty of room to shine.  The duo laugh and banter throughout especially on the final track, a cover of the old blues classic "On The Road Again" where they reminisce about their many years traveling the world together.

I've read that despite outward apperances, Sonny and Terry did not get along well off stage.  Legend has it that Sonny Terry had been against recording with drums and electric instruments and was unhappy with the results. Things eventually got so bad between the two that though they continued touring they refused to appear on stage together, each bringing their own accompianist and performing without the other.

It's a shame the two couldn't work things out.. It would have been intersting to hear more recordings in this vein.  Still it is a great lost blues album of the Seventies and well worth a listen.

--Casey Redmond

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