462 - Marvin Gaye - Here, My Dear

There's a great story for Here, My Dear. Here it is courtesy of allmusic.com:

During the amazing success of I Want You and his stellar Live at the London Palladium album, Marvin Gaye was served with divorce papers from his then-wife Anna Gordy Gaye (sister of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy). One of the conditions of the settlement was that Gordy Gaye would receive an extensive percentage of royalties as well as a portion of the advance for his next album. Initially, Gaye was contemplating giving less than his best effort, as he wouldn't stand to receive any money, but then reconsidered at the last moment. The result is a two-disc-long confessional on the deterioration of their marriage...

Isn't that a great story? Alas, I found actually listening to the album quite disappointing. It is a pretty good album, but there are several songs that seem to me to have been created when he was going to make a lackluster effort. I'm sorry, maybe I'm not getting the joke, but "A Funky Space Reincarnation" is downright painful for me to listen to. It encapsulates some of the cheesiest and lame tendencies of disco and funk. While I loved the first version of "When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You," I didn't understand why there was another version of it in the second half (no "Part 2" or other amended title) AND there was also a reprise version that closed up the album.

Songs I knew I liked: None

Songs I didn't know but now like: "When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You" (first version), "Here, My Dear," and "Is That Enough"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: "A Funky Space Reincarnation," "Sparrow," and "Anna's Song" really grated on my nerves.

461 - Los Lobos - How Will the Wolf Survive?

Wow, this album sped right by at just under 34 minutes. The band sounds very tight on songs that sound like the band had played them 1000 times before. While most of the songs can be characterized as being, or influenced by, roots rock and Latino music, each song stretches the band in slightly different directions ("Lil' King of Everything" could easily be mistaken for a Richard Thompson song, IMO). Two songs that seem to be the biggest stretches from those two musical influences are "A Matter of Time" and "Will the Wolf Survive?"

Songs I knew I liked: None

Songs I didn't know but now like: I really love and will be buying a copy of "Will the Wolf Survive?" I also enjoyed "Don't Worry Baby" (not a Beach Boys cover) and "I Got Loaded"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: None in particular.

460 - Alice Cooper - Love It to Death

Another album that was a fast listen (about 36 minutes). I was caught a little off-guard about how simple some of the songs were. This album is more MC5 than it is KISS. There were really only two "theatrical" songs that ventured into epic gestures - "Black Juju" and "Ballad of Dwight Fry." Otherwise, most of the songs were straight-forward hard rock songs in the same vein as the hit "I'm Eighteen."

At the end of the album was a bit of a surprise, the seemingly upbeat "Sun Arise." This track switches gears from the doom or angst that characterizes many of the tracks. It is almost Beach Boys-esque (especially the last third of the song) with its almost-harmonious repetitious lines at the end.

Songs I knew I liked: "I'm Eighteen"

Songs I didn't know but now like: "Long Way to Go," "Second Coming," and "Sun Arise"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: I'd be happy to never hear "Black Juju" again.

University at High School for Boy Scouts

On Saturday, I attended the council's University of Scouting training day at Cullman High School (a small city about half way between Birmingham and Huntsville). The alarm went off at 5:45am...far earlier than I've awoken in months. I wasn't certain if I was going to get the preferred classes I signed up for in pre-registration and wanted to get there early if I needed to alter my schedule. Registration started at 7:30am and the opening ceremony was to begin at 8:45am, so I was aiming to get there around 8am. I was ready to leave the house early and the trip was shorter than anticipated, so I had a lot of time to kill between grabbing my schedule and when things started kicking into gear. I sat in the high school's auditorium killing time and trying not to fall asleep. When one of the scouts from my troop showed up, he verified that I looked dead tired.

I spent much of the day distracted by the school. The high school consists of several buildings grouped together with covered walkways connecting them. I've never been to a school where each building was essentially a hallway of classes and exterior covered sidewalks connected each of these hallway clusters.* It was a very rainy day, so some of my enthusiasm of attending a school of this sort was tempered by how wet I got below the knees from the blowing rain.

The cost of high school text books was another thing highlighted. Every class had the text book required for the class in the desk. No personal copies for these students. Considering the size of the text books, they certainly looked like they would compete with some of my college books on cost. I was already expecting to see whiteboards instead of blackboards, but was intrigued that every room had a SMARTboard. I just wish I could have seen them at work for any other purpose than a screen for the projected computer images.

When not daydreaming about what it would be like as a student at Cullman High, I was on the lookout for a high school friend of mine's twin boys. Liz and I were really good friends in high school and she has obviously regaled her twin sons with stories of our/my quirks and hi-jinx. Each time they spotted me, they'd touch my nose and say "Nose!" (something I did in high school), grunt "quark" (something Liz and I did during physics class), and call me "Honey" (which was how Liz usually addressed me and, to much laughter, accidentally my dad). I tried to warn the boys I had a cold and a runny nose, but they didn't pay that any mind. So...I hope they aren't sick this week. :)

The following may only be of interest to chris21718, who shares my enjoyment of exploring back roads. ;)

The trip was also nice in that I took a route I haven't taken in years. Twenty some-odd years ago, when traveling from Huntsville to B'ham, my family would take Hwy 231 south out of Huntsville, across the Tennessee River, and head west on state hwy 36...but instead of taking it to I-65 in Hartselle, we turned SW at Cotaco (essentially an intersection with a few abandoned businesses and a couple of gas stations) from 36 to take "Eva Road" that ran past Brewer HS, through Eva, and we'd take that to Cullman, where we would turn west onto hwy 157 to join up with I-65. My dad said it saved a few minutes when he timed it in the 80's. Now that we have I-565 joining Huntsville to I-65, a lot of people don't take 36 anymore and I certainly haven't had a reason to take Eva Road even when taking 36. On Saturday, I took that route and learned something particularly cool considering my circumstances. The north end of Eva Road is at 36 in Cotaco. The south end of the road comes to a halt in Cullman...right in front of Cullman High School. I had never ventured further south than state hwy 157 on Eva Road, so it was neat to see that just a couple of curves later on the road, I was delivered to my destination.


* The first comment you'll typically hear from folks that attended my high school alma mater is how Grissom doesn't have windows. Students navigate via an interior hallway that encircles the school office/AV Room downstairs and the library upstairs. Branching from that central circle are "pods" where the hallway goes to the middle of each octagonal pod with class rooms making up slices of each octagon pie-like pod. To see the weather, you had to go out of the building for a portable classroom or head to the south wing of the school where there was a large glass-fronted hallway between the classroom area and the gym, lunchroom, and music wing.

459 - EPMD - Strictly Business

This is an album in the middle of the transition between "old school" and the East Coast style that is the foundation for Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G, etc. While the duo's monotone delivery was and somewhat continues to be criticized as a weakness to their music, Jay-Z would probably have a completely different delivery if EPMD hadn't existed. Maybe if EPMD weren't dissin' suckass emcees, doing party anthems, and talking about chicks and. instead, they had the life and lyrical content of Jay-Z; they may have gotten more respect and would be somewhere on contemporary hip hop's radar today. Nah.

The tracks benefit generously from some great structures of samples, thanks to coming in at the end of the golden age of sampling when fair use hadn't taken a royalties bite out of hip hop. EPMD can freely sample Kool & the Gang's "Jungle Boogie" on two different songs, snag some Steve Miller Band ("Fly Like and Eagle" AND "Take the Money and Run"), and an eclectic collection of other artists that would cost a fortune to sample just a few years later - Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin, Beastie Boys, Rick James, Otis Redding, and Eric Clapton. And not for the "take the whole damn chorus" way that Diddy brought in later. This was a DJ that was showing the diversity of the black community's exposure to pop and rock music. Get tracks by artists the listeners would recognize, but pick and use samples in such a way that you reclaim that riff for your own...just as the Stones and Zeppelin had swiped blues riffs freely. In the end, this whole paragraph merely highlights my love for the DJ feature on the album - "DJ K La Boss."

Songs I knew I liked: None

Songs I didn't know but now like: "I'm Housin'," "You Gots to Chill," and "DJ K La Boss"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: I wouldn't mind hearing anything here again.