The Beatles (ii): The end of an era

December 9th, 1980. Something seemed very strange that day when Dad came home from work. He seemed to be very distraught about something, but it didn't seem like it had simply been a bad day at work. The only thing I remember happening next was that he fell to his knees, was hugging me tightly, and in tears about something. And then the next thing he told me really took the rug out from under me: John Lennon, from the Beatles, from the band whose works I'd really been enjoying for the past year or so, had been shot and killed yesterday.

Wow, talk about how everything within you just ceases, as it starts sinking in. I remember seeing an article about it in the newspaper that day, and although I didn't read it, that's when I felt that it must be true if was in there. It was pretty quiet in the house the rest of that day, and there wasn't a lot of partying going on in the house after that. The holidays were coming, but that seemed to be the only thing on anyone's mind.

This was the first time I'd ever felt anything like this. It really did feel like a death in the family. A couple of weeks later, after the cloudiness around the house had disappeared a little, I remember sitting by the Christmas tree, as Dad played some of Sgt. Pepper and some other things, but it just didn't feel the same anymore. The magic and wonder that had once been attached was now gone. I found it highly depressing to listen to, for the time being. The loss I felt hung over me for the next few months.

Creedence Clearwater Revival

This was one that I heard in its entirety one afternoon when it was just mom and myself at the house. Not only was it not yet another K-Tel conglomeration of dross, but something amazingly good, and one that I immediately took to right away. Just some straight-ahead rock tinged with country and swampy bayou influences, with one killer cut after another. Greil Marcus' liner notes on the inside sum it up perfectly: Because of the total absence of gimmicks, posing, and prettifying, their records stand up better today far better than almost anything else made at the time. Of course, "Lookin' Out My Back Door" is going to hook in any four-year-old, and I was no exception. To this day, when I hear this album, or any songs that are on it, I fondly remember that sunny afternoon, with the snow melting outside, and the only things in the world that mattered to me were my family, our dog, our cats, our house, our friends, and the great times we were having.

New sounds, new formats!

This was around the time that the old Zenith Allegro stereo system was retired to the back bedroom and succeeded by a whole new stereo system that Dad bought at the old Sears store downtown on one his days off. I got to go with him there, check out the albums section, and then ride home in a taxi with him as he had a number of big cardboard boxes with him containing something interesting.

It was an LXI receiver with two speakers. I don't remember when he got the new turntable, but I do remember when he got this new contraption called a cassette deck, with these strange little cartridges that had two holes in them that played when you loaded them into the player. And this is what I first remember hearing on this new format...

Dad still had the collection of 8-Tracks, but they were also relegated to the back room, so in order to hear those, we had to go into the back bedroom, which was not terribly often.

Dad also would tape-record things onto cassette, mostly with a microphone placed near the speaker of the TV set; it was kind of funny if he were recording a comedy show off of Showtime or something, as he would also pick up the laughter of himself, mom, Red Fred and whoever else was there, which made it more funnier, whenever I got to hear the recordings. Although I wouldn't get familiar with this format until a couple of years down the line, this is where I first saw and heard them.

K-Tell Hell (slight return)

With the summer over and Angie back in school again, I was home during the day with mom and our German Shepherd, Sadie. Mom would often slap albums on the turntable for our enjoyment, if not a way to keep me entertained and not in front of the TV all day. For some odd reason, she always seemed to grab the K-Tel and Ronco compilation albums, and play them all the way through. As noted in a related blog, a lot of the stuff was garbage, but there were also some gems to found amongst the trash.

This was one that had a few good cuts among some other stuff I'd just as soon forget about. My favorite cut on this was "Wildwood Weed" by Jim Stafford; I had a very vague knowledge of this one being about a bunch of good ol' boys discovering a certain green, leafy plant growing on the farm (such was my upbringing). This was followed by Golden Earring's "Radar Love" and Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama".

This was another one with a couple of tolerable cuts on it; I always found it amusing they put Dr. Hook's "Cover of The Rolling Stone" on here with its cartoony references to drugs and groupies next to things like "Funky Worm" and "Love Train". One song on here that I absolutely detested was Clint Holmes' "Playground In My Mind", with the dreaded chorus about "My name is Michael, I got a nickel...". Mom would always say, "That's Mikey's favorite song!", just because it had my name in it, but this was farther from the truth than you could imagine. After the last number of months of quite an interesting mix of stuff I'd been hearing lately, this song was nowhere near being any kind of favorite!

I wrote about the Fun Rock album in the last blog, but after hearing "Gitarzan" by Ray Stevens, I found the album by that name in Dad's collection. There was a picture of Ray himself on the cover, but I remember thinking that he was Alan Alda from M*A*S*H!

One last related album that came our way was something called Merry Snoopy's Christmas, a sort of compilation of songs by The Royal Guardsmen and other stuff that was kind of tied together to make a Christmas-themed album. I don't remember much of it apart from the opening cut, "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron", which quickly became a favorite.

Lately, some of Geoffrey's favorites have been cuts from some of the other K-Tel albums I have since picked up for cheap along the lines while on vinyl hunts over the years. Some of his favorites are cuts by Ray Stevens, "Mah-Nah-Mah-Nah", the Pink Panther theme, and "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" (he got excited about it when I told him that the song was about Snoopy!).

Jethro Tull

Here's another one that was playing one afternoon when Dad had a day off, and I took a little more interest in it than the episode of Sesame Street that I was watching. Actually, I'd heard some of these guys back at the White house, but this was really the first time I'd given their music a studious listen, as it could get a little on the complex side. One that really caught my attention was one where a huge balloon was suspended over some manic-looking guy on the front cover, and clutching a flute on the inside gatefold. And he had a strange name: Jethro Tull.

Of course, I was told right away that this was the name of the band, not specifically the name of one guy in the band (I had thought the same thing with Black Sabbath, for some reason!).

On the back cover, one of the guys (Barriemore Barlow, their drummer) had a beard and was wearing a white bucket hat. He reminded me of the stop-motion farmer I would see on Sesame Street, and thought they were the same guy!

One of the covers in the collection really caught my attention, one called Stand Up, where you open the gatefold, and this is what you see:

To a four-year-old, that's just the coolest thing in the world!

Of course, there was much more to discover. One that became of my favorites was a best-of album with a simple white cover, though Dad took a few markers and filled in the simple line-drawing of Ian Anderson with some color. I liked "Thick As A Brick", but it would be a little while before hearing the first half of the ultra-long title track, and being blown away by it. It was supposedly a take-off on the whole progressive-rock genre, but it sounded far from a joke to me! And, of course, "Bungle In The Jungle" is going to suck a kid right in, with its animal sounds and references; I still get a smile when I'll hear it on the supermarket PA on occasion.

And, of course, Geoffrey likes it that they have a song with his name in the title...sort of, aside from the different spelling!

What's so funny?

Of course, in that house, there were a lot of laughs, and not necessarily from just us. Dad had a select number of comedy albums in the collection, and I heard some of them whenever company was over...and sometimes even when it was just him and myself.

I heard this one many a time there. Oddly enough, I heard this album a few years before I ever saw the movie. I had to use my imagination a bit to figure out what was going on during the dialogue segments on the album, though the little picture-scenes on the back cover were a great help. My favorite bit was the "Lard-Ass" exchange with Sergeant Stedanko. In the coming years, we would watch these guys' movies whenever they came on cable, and they were always a great laugh.

Dad played this one, by this guy who seemed to be working his middle finger up his nose. I was amazed that there was one guy on stage getting laughs by cracking knuckles, making farting noises and swallowing water onstage, and the audience roaring. But I was really amazed at the last cut on the second side, where he was talking about "dirty words", rather than just saying them and getting cheap laughs. Of curse, in the coming years, I would be a George Carlin disciple, and stayed with him and his works all the way up to the end, and it all had a profound influence on me and the way I think, which still continues on to this day.

This one had just come out; I had never heard of this guy, who was "up here, sweatin', and telling dirty Polish jokes", but that's where I first heard Rodney Dangerfield. Caddyshack would make him an instant comedy legend, but that wouldn't be for another year until I saw it. I didn't understand all the jokes, but I liked the picture of the dog peeing on him while he's waiting for the bus.

Of course, then, this was the funniest thing I had heard. What little I was able to hear of it, that is, over the loud laughter from everybody in the room, and then before being shooed away because this one was a little too blue to be hearing. But I caught the part where he's doing a bit about a guy getting drunk at the bar and gets slapped and kicked around the place; it was uproarious because it sounded so real. I liked the album cover, and even tried to find the front-cover shot on the back side...no luck!

And then there was Gene Tracy...I had heard a couple of his tapes back at the White house, but this would occasionally get played here. This was pure raunch and filth, but everyone else in the room was having a great time listening to his jokes and stories.

Lastly, on cable TV, we would catch the occasional comedy special on Showtime or HBO. I walked in on one show by a guy with a hat and mustache, who was busy smashing apples, cans of beer and then a watermelon into the audience. Gallagher was his name, and this was another guy we followed well into the next decade. His observations and jokes on life were another eye-opener, and a humorous way of looking at things.

The Kinks

Dad pulled this one out and put it on the turntable one night. The opening cut was "You Really Got Me", and this loud, rowdy guitar riff came hurtling out of the speakers. Whoa! I asked him what this was, he said "The Kinks", and for some reason I thought he said "The Cakes"! I heard most of that record that evening, and I was very impressed by it.

Around the same time, I heard "Sunny Afternoon" on the Best Of Britain album, and really liked what I was hearing. It wasn't the usual riff-rocker from them, but very melodic, with a memorable opening bass line.

There were some videos by them a couple-few years later that we used to see on MTV. "Predictable" cracked us up, especially with Ray Davies as a long-haired hippie, exactly the kind of guy we knew quite well!

By 1989, I hadn't heard them for a long time, so I pulled out the Greatest Hits album that I knew so well, played it loudly, and it sounded as great as ever. But I really got back into them when The Pace were doing a few sons from the You Really Got Me album; oddly enough, we never touched that song! But we did do some semi-obscure cuts that we picked from a few albums and tapes of theirs that I began buying, and a few of them stayed in out repertoire. "Come On Now" was a lot of fun to rock out on, "I Need You" was undoubtedly a great song to play, and "Beautiful Delilah" was always a great stomper.

Eric Clapton

Dad pulled this one out one late summer afternoon. It was a compilation album, although I didn't know it at the time. I looked at the cover, which had a cartoon drawing of a guy playing the guitar, which looked like something from The Electric Company. The first song I heard from it was "Let It Rain", and I was hooked immediately by the "falling rain" notes on the piano, reminding me of that Doors song I heard a little while back. What a cool song! So what if it was nice outside? There were also some good cuts on it, like "Layla" and "Bell Bottom Blues". I still remember that sunny afternoon with a smile whenever I hear these songs now.

This was another of this guy's albums in the collection. I kept hearing some song about something called "cocaine" and that "she didn't lie"...I had no idea what the song was about. It was around this time that we took ownership of a pair of rabbits that had been left behind when the people next door to us moved out. One was white, and the other one was reddish-brown. Red Fred immediately christened them--respectively--Cocaine and Quaalude. So, then, whenever I heard that song about cocaine, I thought of our new white rabbit!

Fleetwood Mac

I remember seeing this one back at the Blue House...

Dad played the song "Hypnotized", and I was immediately hooked by its opening drum riff in 6/8 time, and the song's minor chordings. I wasn't sure what was going on on the album cover, although I liked the illustration of the gorilla and the old wise man on the beach, even if it made no sense to me. On the inside cover, with the black-and-white group shot, I thought guitarist Bob Welch was Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP In Cincinnati.

At the Red House, I began hearing a couple of their subsequent albums with some regularity. I took their word that it was the same band, although there were a couple of new faces in the band, but what I heard was pleasant enough. When the newest album, Tusk, was out, Dad bought a copy of it at the Sears store downtown the same day he bought a new LXI stereo system, which was going to replace the old but beloved Zenith stereo, and that was one of the first things we heard on it.

One amusing incident happened a year later at the next house we lived in, with their next album. Dad had just gotten the Live album in the mail from the Columbia House record-club, and there was a bit of a windstorm going on outside. Halfway through the first side of the album, the power went out...for only about fifteen second, and then came back on. The stereo was still on, as was the turntable, but when the power came back on, the surge coming on so abruptly had caused the turntable to spin backwards! Dad turned it off right away, but we all thought that was funny, and I remembered that any time that the album was played after that.

In the later '90s, when the Rumours-era band was doing their reunion tour, Dad went back and began collectin some of the really early stuff by them, from when they were a hard-core British blues band. Then Play On became an instant favorite, despite being a downer, and then we got the videotape compilation The Early Years, showcasing songs from the blues years. I really took notice of Mick Fleetwood's drumming, as I was just starting to play drums for The Pace at that point. I began buying up anything from that lineup of the band, especially as various compilations and live albums were really starting to come out, and I really enjoyed their works.

A splendid time is guaranteed for...some, anyway!

Sometime in the middle of the summer of 1980, when Dad was home, this came on one of the cable channels. I had no idea what this was...

I recognized these guys from a couple of albums in the collection, but they were now a group together? And singing Beatles songs? What could this be???

It was the movie version of the Sgt. Pepper album, which had apparently laid a mighty egg in the theaters a couple of years beforehand, but that was not known to me at the moment. I was immediately taken by this, it being similar to Tommy, where there was virtually no talking in it, save for some narration bits by George Burns, whom I equated with being a Mr. Hooper sort of figure in this. No talking, just Beatle songs the whole way through?...I'm in!

Something about the movie just felt right on that bright, sunny afternoon. Just a perfect setting for what I was seeing. I imagined that the town's gazebo would fit just perfectly over at the McCarver schoolyard. As it went on, the more bizarre it got (Mr. Mustard's female robots, Lucy & The Diamonds, etc.), but was still enjoyable. There was that "wild and crazy guy" I recognized from The Muppet Movie, singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", and then Alice Cooper serenading a room full of Hitler Youth Scouts with his rendition of "Because".

Of course, I didn't like the part where Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina) gets killed just after the guys beat up Aerosmith and save the day (and, apparently, the world!), and the ultra-depressing sequence with her funeral. (My God, I was depressed about that part for a couple of days afterwards, even though I knew it was "just a movie", but that was just too sad to see.)

But then, the magical weathervane comes alive and makes everything alright again. Yayyyy! All is well!

The soundtrack album to it turned up at the house, and was being played with regularity around the house (and we didn't even have a copy of Abbey Road !). It even followed us to the next house we lived in, with a few more viewings (including one last viewing for a while on KCPQ-13), and Red Fred won a copy of an exploito "soundalike version" of the soundtrack album (on the Springboard label) in a ring-toss game at the Seattle Fair.

After the last time I saw it in 1981, it pretty much vanished from cable TV, and I got to tape it from the USA Network in late summer of 1989, but it wasn't until 1996 that it started showing up on cable again, perhaps as a tribute to the late George Burns, who'd left us earlier that year. This time, it was being seen uncut and uninterrupted. It felt great watching it again, just like being back at the Red House, and seeing it again for the first time.

Much later on in 2004, I scored a DVD copy of it, and once lent it to a friend who hadn't seen it in some years, and when he told me what he thought of it after a period of years, he summed it up thusly: "The only thing missing were a couple of singing Muppets, or a talking dog!". Indeed, you could easily imagine Scooby-Doo joining the Heartland gang in Mr. Mustard's van!

As the years went on, it was both a guilty-pleasure, and a reminder of happy times back at the old house, as the sun began setting on that magical summer of 1980, and it would be one of the last things we all enjoyed together immensely as a family then. I showed it to Geoffrey in May of 2013; he was familiar with both Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, and he was intrigued by what he was seeing. He recognized most of the songs, loved Strawberry Fields, and slinks from the room when Alice Cooper comes on to sing "Because". It's now one of his most-requested movies, somewhere between Monsters, Inc. and the Toy Story trilogy.