Other people’s turntables and column speakers

I’m not an audiophile. Neither am I a musical elitist. My taste does, however, run to the slightly esoteric. Where it’s not esoteric, my favorite audiophile refers to my taste as schmaltzy. Hardcore music lovers, especially elitists, might drop the gloves if accused of such heresy. I laugh it off because I’m just a guy. Labels mean nothing.

Ten inches

I subscribe to the school of vinyl. Not necessarily because of the difference in fidelity but because I believe in the whole story told by an album. Whether part of a concept novella or simply the sum total of disparate tracks cobbled together, every vinyl LP tells a unique story. The latter can be as personal as the former. Vinyl demands patience.

In a world where media — a song, a video, a blog, a vlog — is judged in 15 seconds or less, and we invest 3 minute increments in those that pass muster, the time needed to live inside an artist’s mind for forty-plus minutes, is now the equivalent of reading Tolstoy. One needs to be smart — and creatively curious in a rare way — to read War and Peace.

Get it?

Waiting for Columbus — Little Feat

Six words: Fat Funk Silk Weasel Cash Blast

This concrete poem doesn’t need to make sense right now, especially because it’s not a concrete poem, but it might after you’ve listened to all four sides. If not, you’ll conceive your own set of six unrelated words to describe the visceral experience of Little Feat.

Butcher Holler meets The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Folsom Prison meets Walt Whitman. Billy Holiday meets Van Halen. Miles Davis punches Frank Zappa square in the jaw, brawling at the intersection of Beale Street and Bowery.

Buy Waiting for Columbus

Certified Live — Dave Mason

Australia is home to many weird species. It’s a massive island that was home only to the Aboriginals until the 18th Century and, let’s face it, a contained culture breeds curious voices and more curious biologics. Islands are funny things that way.

Dave Mason ain’t Australian, he’s a Brit. And, while the U.K. is an empire, England is most definitely an island — an island with a contained culture that’s almost impervious to outside influences and as portable and exportable as The King James Bible.

Mason’s voice was the metaphorical bass line of the British Invasion — the soil within which the seeds of a contained culture were planted in the new world — and from which a very curious and interesting life and library sprung forth. Somehow, Dave bridged the gap between the impervious and the completely vulnerable. The worldview of a working class Englishman, a romantic, thrives without the anger common to peers trying to throw off the shackles of class.

Buy Certified Live — Dave Mason

Mothership Connection — Parliament

Conspiracy theorists suggest that aliens crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Maybe they did, but the Mothership didn’t come looking for another 28 years. Enter God’s technicolor funk pimp —the first incarnation of the atomic dog — George Clinton.

In 1975, FM disc-jockeys lived in the red light district of the mind. It was always four o’clock in the morning with a cigarette smoldering next to the turntable. Ten-inch LPs were handled with a reverence otherwise reserved only for Communion wafers. Your mind was expected to expand.

Watch any sci-fi movie with space invaders and you’ll agree that they never speak our language — they expect us to learn theirs. George Clinton is no exception.

Buy Mothership Connection — Parliament

Something/Anything? — Todd Rundgren

Time — the only fundamental and universal constant — is separated into two sections: B.C. and A.D. The birth of one man defines the difference.

Musically, to me, time is measured in C.B. and G.B. That is, it’s measured in the time before and after CBGB opened at 315 Bowery in 1973.

Todd Rundrgen is one of those believers who has lived on both sides of time. And, while Todd might not be God, despite what many of the finest minds contend, he most certainly is an apostle. Rundgren isn’t the guy around which the great metronome in the sky was built but he definitely had a big say in the tempo of the culture of the 70s.

On Something/Anything?, Rundgren does it all. He plays almost every instrument, writes every lyric, produces every track. He controls a rose falling from a skyscraper in hurricane-force winds and makes it sound like he’s just performing magic.

His gift is self evident. Its sound is quintessential. Life is unfair. Get over it.

Buy Something/Anything? — Todd Rundgren

Music Is My Life — Billy Preston

I accidentally bought a single from this album — the 45 rpm kind — when I was nine years old. I don’t know why. Spinning the disc between my palms, like a magician, analyzing the nothingness of the sleeve and label, I wondered, with intent, if the dollar I was about to invest would be worth the return.

It was. So much so, that I bought the whole album years later when I found that 45 tucked away in a safe place that I’d forgotten.

Billy introduced me to Soul.

Buy Music Is My Life — Billy Preston