20/20/20 vision, Part I

One of our local used record sellers had a “spring cleaning tent sale” in his back yard last weekend.

Jim promised “thousands of $1 LPs … under the tents!!” Indeed, Jim had lots of swell stuff.

When I was done rummaging through the boxes in the two tents, I had 20 albums for $20. That’s the raw material for a brief series of posts that begins … now!

Welcome to the first installment of 20 Songs from 20 Albums for $20.

Nothing real deep here. Just enjoy the tunes, coming at you more or less at random, the way I came across all these goodies under the tents.

“You’re the Love of My Life,” the Spinners, from “Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow,” 1977. Out of print. The link is to a CD release with this album and part of another Spinners album, “Labor of Love,” from 1981.

Great opening guitar riff and horn charts on this classic slice of Philly soul.

“When the World’s At Peace,” the O’Jays, from “Back Stabbers,” 1972. The album is out of print, but this tune is available on “The Ultimate O’Jays,” a 2001 CD release.

A nice, nasty bit from the place where Philly funk meets James Brown.

“Always Something There To Remind Me,” R.B. Greaves, from “R.B. Greaves,” 1969.

R.B. covers the great Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune.

“See Saw,” Tom Jones, from “I (Who Have Nothing),” 1970. Out of print, and not on any CD release I can find. However, it is on “This Is Tom Jones,” a 2007 DVD release of some of his classic TV variety shows.

TJ covers a little bit of Memphis soul by Don Covay and Steve Cropper.

More to come! (As soon as I rip them.)

The end of the night

Tickets for Neil Diamond’s August show at our local arena went on sale the other day. They sold out in an hour.

A review copy of his latest album, “Home Before Dark,” also arrived last week. That’s as close as I’m going to get to Neil Diamond in Green Bay.

It’s been a long time since I sat down and listened to a Neil Diamond album. “Tap Root Manuscript,” the African-flavored album he released in 1970, was one of the first albums I ever bought. I played it a lot in my early teens, then moved on to other artists, other styles.

“Home Before Dark” is an acoustic album produced by Rick Rubin. his second collaboration with Diamond. I enjoyed its music, its arrangements, its performance. It’s laid back, yet elegant. Diamond is nicely complemented by a group of old pros that includes Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Yet judging from his liner notes, Diamond seems insecure, even after more than 40 years in the music business. He wrote a dozen deeply felt songs, then fretted over them as they were recorded. Perhaps all the great ones do, and Diamond is one of the great songwriters of our time.

“Home Before Dark” is full of music for the end of the night, the time for quiet introspection, the time to ponder paths taken and not taken.

“Don’t Go There” and “Forgotten,” Neil Diamond, from “Home Before Dark,” 2008.

“Don’t Go There” is about the risk of bad choices when lust shows up before love. “Forgotten” could well be the insecure Diamond pondering his career.

Speaking of which … I realize it isn’t 1970 anymore, but this kept running through my mind as I listened: Jeez, Neil, does every song have to be a densely written 6-minute epic? Do you have so many serious, ponderous, important things to say that you can no longer write a pop song in which we get in and out in just 3 minutes?

Just sayin’, is all.

The ABCs of DE, Vol. 3

Before Dave Edmunds was in Rockpile, before he was an acclaimed solo act, even before he had his first big hit with “I Hear You Knocking,” he was in another band.

Love Sculpture was another of those UK blues-rock outfits of the late ’60s. What made Love Sculpture ever so slightly different was that it occasionally incorporated classical music. The band had a big hit with Edmunds’ speed-guitar cover of Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” in 1968.

Two years later, though, it was all but over for Love Sculpture. “In the Land of the Few” was its last single, released in early 1970 on the “Forms and Feelings” album.

As this single was released, hitting the charts with a thud, Love Sculpture went on a short U.S. tour, then broke up. It wasn’t “Sabre Dance,” but it may have held up better over the years. Listen to this cut, and you’ll know why Edmunds and ELO’s Jeff Lynne found common ground when they worked together years later.

“In the Land of the Few,” Love Sculpture, 1970, from “Dave Edmunds & Love Sculpture,” 1974, a Dutch import. Also available on “The Dave Edmunds Anthology: 1968-90,” a 1993 CD release.

The rush of memory

Whiteray over at Echoes in the Wind today offered a simple yet elegant tribute to the four students shot to death at Kent State University during an antiwar protest 38 years ago.

He posted the classic Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tune, “Ohio,” to accompany the names of the four dead in Ohio.

Seeing that and hearing “Ohio” in my head, it took me right back to that time. I was 12 that May day and became a teenager not too long afterward.

We were living in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a mostly white, mostly working-class city of 50,000 along Lake Michigan. It was the kind of town that in 1970 still had a band shell — albeit a nice new one — in the park right smack in the middle of downtown.

That summer, there was some kind of teen rock show or perhaps a battle of the bands. With it came a modest furor over one band’s plans to cover “Ohio,” which had been recorded and rushed into release in June, barely a month after the shootings. Neil Young’s rant about “tin soldiers and Nixon coming” did not play well in Sheboygan in the summer of 1970.

I don’t recall how the matter was resolved, but I suspect “Ohio” was covered and the teens remained peaceful, proving unwarranted the city fathers’ fears of unrest on 8th Street.

It remains a vivid memory is because it’s such a contrast to a more innocent memory of music from Sheboygan.

Only two or three summers separated the fuss over “Ohio” and the absolute, wide-eyed joy of discovering that some high school kids who lived up the alley had a garage band.

I was even younger then — 10, maybe 11. I don’t remember the names of the guys in the band, but they let us kids listen. Absolutely the coolest, man.

I’ll never forget the tune they played best. I tried to learn it when my dad brought home an electric guitar that had been damaged in shipping. (Dad worked for REA Express, sort of like today’s UPS, and if a customer declined a shipment, he could put in a claim for it.)

I finally got these chords down. But no, I never had a garage band.

“LIttle Bit O’ Soul,” the Music Explosion, 1967. Available on “Little Bit O’ Soul: The Best of the Music Explosion,” a 2002 CD compilation.

This tune by a garage band from Mansfield, Ohio, spent 10 weeks in the Top 10 on the singles chart at WLS radio in Chicago, from Memorial Day weekend through the end of July in the summer of 1967.

You can Go Home again

Longtime readers of AM, Then FM know that even though we are mostly about older tunes, we enjoy a good mashup now and then.

What a pleasant surprise, then, to see in the e-mail last week that UK mashup legend Mark Vidler has whipped up some new selections. One of the most prolific and influential mashup artists, Vidler last year posted of several years’ worth of his work, then took a well-deserved break.

Here’s what he says about his return:

“After several months of predominently ‘laying off’ the bootlegs/mash-ups, I just felt the urge to dabble again and see what turned up. Must admit it’s the most fun I’ve had for ages putting this lot together and I hope you share the enthusiasm, too. … I’d like to think of ‘Spliced Krispies’ as flight ‘back to the old school’ days and a future soundtrack for summer 2008.”

“Spliced Krispies” was put together last month. I grabbed five of its 11 tracks. Here are my favorites:

“Rolling Confusion” mashes the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” and “Gimme Shelter” and the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion.” Vidler says:

“This was quite literally the first track I created for this project. I think the Stones were getting a fair bit of airplay last month with their film coming out and I heard ‘Street Fighting Man’ somewhere and it sounded sooo good. Absolutely love ‘Beggars Banquet’ and that whole era of the Stones. Had to slow the tempo of the Temps vocal to fit but I think I got away with it. Quite like the way that the track slips between half and double time … you can’t dance to it. The drum break is pilfered from ‘Slave’ off the ‘Tattoo You’ album. … Amazing how relevant the lyrics of ‘Ball of Confusion’ are today. Frighteningly relevant.”

“Finally, Did You No Wrong” mashes the Sex Pistols’ “Did You No Wrong” and Ce Ce Peniston’s “Finally.” Vidler says:

“Well, if this doesn’t raise your roof when played at full volume, then nothing will. … Coming on like Status Quo fronted by a diva (said my mrs) and she’s not far wrong. As much as I tried to pump the eq on the bass frequencies of the Pistols track, I still couldn’t get my speakers to shake like they normally do, so I whipped out my trusty electric bass guitar and ‘played along.’ I doubt you’ll notice my playing but the bottom end is pretty phat now. I also added a ‘Stooges’ feel to the choruses via one-finger piano.”

Follow the “Spliced Krispies” link to Vidler’s Go Home Productions web site and get what you want right from the man himself. He’s created videos for each of the 11 cuts, and you can download those as well.