A Slight Change in Direction, Man
If I'm going to maintain this blog with any regularity, I'm going to have to tweak its direction a bit. While I will continue (slowly) with the alphabet, I'm also going to write about my attempt to compose Uncorrected Proof: The Hippie Years.
Lately I've been listening to The Beatles White Album a lot--the #1 record of my household when I was a little Hollywood hippie (also, as is well known, very big in the Manson Family household). Kind of incredible to think of a time when an entire counterculture listened to the same records not just as commodities.
The same might not be said for CSN&Y's Deja Vu--also spun a lot lately on my turntable. Yeah, I know, it's exhibit A in the decadent rich hippie aristocracy patting-self-on-back offenses against humanity, but you could hardly say that about the household I lived in, and we listened to this record a lot.
I've also been spinning David Crosby's If Only I Could Remember My Name quite a bit. Even kind reviews would have you believe that it's entirely hippie trippy, but there's some aggressiveness here as well.
On the alphabetical front, I'm listening to a cheapie vinyl two record gospel collection on the "Hollywood" label called 22 Original Gospel Greats. I recall buying this the same day I bought a klezmer record. I'm ecumenical like that. Anyway, this is pretty good for a knock off comp. All the greats are here: from James Cleveland to Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Shirley Caesar to the Swan Silvertones to The Staple Singers. Also included is what I believe to be an early Sam Cooke recording in which he is fronting The Highway QC's. His vocal mannerisms are unmistakable--although I suppose it could be an imitator or someone he imitated. A very young Sam Cooke, I suspect.
Over on CD's it's a collection of Eric Dolphy tunes called Conversations. I suspect that some of it is from the same sessions as the Iron Man CD I wrote about the other day. My favorite tune on this one is their version of Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz"--not the usual type of song the far out guys generally played.
Lately I've been listening to The Beatles White Album a lot--the #1 record of my household when I was a little Hollywood hippie (also, as is well known, very big in the Manson Family household). Kind of incredible to think of a time when an entire counterculture listened to the same records not just as commodities.
The same might not be said for CSN&Y's Deja Vu--also spun a lot lately on my turntable. Yeah, I know, it's exhibit A in the decadent rich hippie aristocracy patting-self-on-back offenses against humanity, but you could hardly say that about the household I lived in, and we listened to this record a lot.
I've also been spinning David Crosby's If Only I Could Remember My Name quite a bit. Even kind reviews would have you believe that it's entirely hippie trippy, but there's some aggressiveness here as well.
On the alphabetical front, I'm listening to a cheapie vinyl two record gospel collection on the "Hollywood" label called 22 Original Gospel Greats. I recall buying this the same day I bought a klezmer record. I'm ecumenical like that. Anyway, this is pretty good for a knock off comp. All the greats are here: from James Cleveland to Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Shirley Caesar to the Swan Silvertones to The Staple Singers. Also included is what I believe to be an early Sam Cooke recording in which he is fronting The Highway QC's. His vocal mannerisms are unmistakable--although I suppose it could be an imitator or someone he imitated. A very young Sam Cooke, I suspect.
Over on CD's it's a collection of Eric Dolphy tunes called Conversations. I suspect that some of it is from the same sessions as the Iron Man CD I wrote about the other day. My favorite tune on this one is their version of Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz"--not the usual type of song the far out guys generally played.
posted by ken at 12:44 PM
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