One of our local concert venues announced the other day that Hot Tuna will be playing an acoustic show in February. Which got me to thinking about records I used to have. I used to have a couple of Hot Tuna records.
This one, their debut LP from 1970.
And this one, another live LP from 1971.
I remember nothing about either record, other than they were full of meandering folk-rock-blues tunes, which I apparently once fancied. My friend Scott suggested this: “Back then you were probably smokin’ the same stuff they were.”
That’s entirely possible. It seems the kind of music you’d put on and zone out.
While record digging in my friend Jim’s basement last weekend, another guy had this record on the top of his stack.
I used to have that one, too. That was a double live LP from 1976. I remember nothing about it, other than it also was full of meandering folk-rock-blues tunes.
There might be a couple hundred records I used to have. Lots of them went out in The Great Record Purge of 1989, when we took a bunch to our friends’ garage sale. It was mostly stuff I’d bought in my teens and 20s that I wasn’t listening to in my early 30s.
Any and all Ted Nugent records? Gone. Any Styx record released after 1974? Gone. Those Starcastle records? Gone. Even a Rolling Stones record considered to be one of their best? Gone.
This is another record I used to have. This one, I’d like to find again. When keyboard player Jon Lord died this summer, it reminded me of how often I’d listened to — and enjoyed — Deep Purple when I was in high school in the early ’70s. I still have three other Deep Purple LPs, but not this one from 1974.
I suspect I won’t dig the whole thing as much now as I did then, but hearing it again likely will summon a rush of memories. That’s something to look forward to. Until then, this cut — grabbed some years ago from a music blog that has since gone dark — will have to do.
“Sail Away,” Deep Purple, from “Burn,” 1974.
Please visit our other blog, The Midnight Tracker, for more vintage vinyl, one side at a time.
AM, Then FM 
I loved Deep Purple in HS and thus far have not parted with my DP vinyl, including “Burn.” It’s part of my DNA, I think.
Burn is a classic. I love that Dead record, too. But Burn, man … “Might Just Take Your Life?” They fired on all cylinders on that one.
Oh, yeah…Deep Purple! When I worked at WKAU Appleton/Oshkosh/Green Bay back in the early 80s, one of my guilty pleasures was playing “Woman From Tokyo” which, to my surprise, was one of those odd “album cuts” we could play at night. “Burn” is a great song, too. The last time I heard it LOUD was over the sound system at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin following a concert with Don Henley & Sting in 1991.
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