My Musical Evolution – Page 13 – Mapping Influences Over Time

My Musical Evolution – Part 293 Roach Days Revisited Third Stage

Wow, the first Boston album to come out in years! I had heard all manner of rumors regarding the long absence of new Boston material. One was that the guitarist severely broke his hand and was rehabbing for years. I should see if Bing.com heard that one. OK so the reality is much more frustrating and less glamorous. It all revolves around lawsuits and contract disputes.

I must admit that I never felt that Third Stage lived up to my hopes. I liked Boston’s first album, it was one of my first two Compact Discs. I loved Don’t Look Back even more. Somehow, Third Stage just didn’t do it for me. I do like how they reworked my favorite song, The Journey from Don’t Look Back into The Launch. A few years later I would often crank The Launch on my super stereo in my truck.

Apart from a few initial listens and some select tracks on some mix tapes, Third Stage has long gone unplayed. As I listening to it again today, I’m not sure why. I can hear all the things that I love about Boston. The unique sounds of the guitars, the eloborate orchestrations and vocal elements all scream classic Boston, yet somehow, the songs don’t seem quite as attention grabbing. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Imagine taking a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with Turkey, mashed potatoes, and all that stuff. Now repackage everything. Instead of Turkey carved at the table, it is the deli kind of turkey you might get on a Subway sandwich. Turn the mashed potatoes into french fries. The result, is that it is still turkey and potatoes but it isn’t Thanksgiving anymore. Does that make sense?

This album would have been much more admired if it didn’t have the previous two albums to set the expectations. I mean if you could go back in time and take a couple tracks of this album and include them on each of their previous two, they would fit nicely and sound like they belonged. They really are good, it is just that the bar was set so damned high.

In a wierd way, this album reminds me of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells 2. On that album he does several tracks that seem to be sort of alternate takes from Tubular Bells. As a fan of Tubular Bells, it is easy to pick out each segment and relate it back to the corresponding piece. Here it seems that The Launch is the Third Stage version of The Journey. To Be A Man = A Man I’ll Never Be. Cool The Engines = It’s Easy. Maybe i’m reading too much into it.

Amanda

The Launch / Cool The Engines

Can’tcha Say (You Believe In Me)

My Musical Evolution – Part 292 Roach Days Revisited Mozart

If you have been following along from the beginning, you’ll recall that My Musical Evolution had a good sized dose of Classical music way back in my early childhood courtesy of a few classical compilation albums that my mother had. My interest in classical music exapnded with the discovery of Switched-On Bach at my aunt’s house in Vermont. Along the way, classical music would drift into the picture, usually in a very indirect manner.

I purchased my own copy of Switched-On Bach and explored the “original” versions behind those Moog-ified gems. Still my focus was primarily on Bach. I reasoned that my background in math and computer science was what attracted me to the precise and mechanical nature of Bach’s music. With Bach, the timing and the arrival of each note in the piece was expected like in a computer program. I often felt that Bach didn’t write music so much as outlined a framework of rules and the music what whatever was left after the rules were all applied.

My appreciation for classical music would be re-ignited and expanded by Mozart. I saw the movie Amadeus on A&E during the Roach Days. It really had an impact on me. The first part was not unlike my Doors discovery on that hike with Adam back to Doc’s camp. As the movie progressed, I realized that I was quite familiar with several of Mozart’s compositions without know that they all belonged to Mozart. The second piece of this puzzle was the story of Mozart as presented in the film was fascinating. I looked ahead in the cable guide and on the next airing commited the film to Betamax.

Where Bach was mechanical and precise, Mozart was emotional free to compose whatever he felt. It also gave me a new appreciation for the woodwinds. As a kid, the Star Wars soundtrack made me a fsan of Brass. Those powerful horns bellowing out the theme. Somewhere along the line I shifted toward the string section and loved the versatility of violins, violas and cellos. Here with Mozart, oboes, clarinets and bassoons were utilized in such an amazing way that I couldn’t help but crave their subtle sweetness. You’ll hear what I’m talking about on Serenade For Winds. Mozart’s body of work is truly amazing. Eventually I would collect all of his symphonies and numeorus other works. He was a prolific composer and while they might not all be “hits” there is a certain something about his music that is worth checking out. Doesn’t it seem odd to be into Metallica so much just a few posts ago and to be into Mozart so much now?

Symphony Number 25

Serenade For Winds – See what I mean about subtle sweetness of woodwinds?

Symphony Number 29

Piano Concerto In E Flat

Don Giovanni Act II Commendatore Scene

Requiem Confutatis

Piano Concerto In D Minor

You really should see this film if you haven’t yet.

My Musical Evolution – Part 291 Roach Days Revisited Time Passages

Here is yet another example of how pursuit of a song from an earlier era resulted in a newfound appreciation for the artist and that in turn twists the linear evolution into a tangled yarn. I suppose that really isn’t a fair assessment. Perhaps this musical connections to childhood and reconnections later in life are the very essence of evolution in this context.

I wasn’t ready for Al Stewart when I was in The KISS Age. I liked Year Of The Cat but I wasn’t ready for Al Stewart until this point in The Roach Days. Along the way, I’m sure that I had heard Time Passage, Song On The Radio and of course Year Of The Cat. This CD had all those plus 8 more. They don’t all have that chart toppoing appeal but they are well crafted and make for good listening.

As I listen to it now, I find it difficult to categorize. At some points it is Top 40 radio from the 1970’s, then it turns into a sort of showtunes kind of expression, then early FM easy listening. One thing this album isn’t would be harsh. It has its moments of intensity but the deliver is always smooth and approaching soothing.

Roads To Moscow reminds me of Ennio Morricone. There is a hint of Ecstacy Of Gold in that chorus. I’m surprised I don’t know much about Al Stewart. While I may not have played this album much recently, during a period in The Roach Days, and for a while after, I played it frequently. I must say that I’m really enjoying it now.

Song On The Radio just came on and it feels like it should be on the Time-Life Kickin’ Back 70’s Collection. What a great cruising song.

Time Passages

Roads To Moscow

Song On The Radio

Year Of The Cat

My Musical Evolution – Part 290 Roach Days Revisited Welcome To The Machine

Wish You Were Here is another of the Iconic Album Covers collection. It seems strange to me now to think that this album was on the shelves by the time The KISS Age started. I saw it there in the record stores. I wondered about the significance of the man on fire.

At this point in My Musical Evolution, Pink Floyd was still defined by The Wall, Dark Side Of The Moon and most recently, Meddle. Shortly after I bought my first Compact Disc player, my friend Scott was motivated to do likewise. He liked Pink Floyd as well and since I already had Dark Side Of The Moon, he made Wish You Were Here his first Pink Floyd CD.

I was vaguely familiar with some of the songs from this album from listening to Rock 104 but it wasn’t until Scott brought this CD over that I gave it my undivided attention. The first song I can remember being mesmerized by was Welcome To The Machine. It almost makes me laugh now because that is now my least favorite track on this album.

Is it just me or does Wish You Were Here seem to get lost in the shuffle of Pink Floyd’s catalog, often overlooked. I wonder if you asked people on the street to name 3 Pink Floyd albums, how many would remember this one. It is an amazing piece of work and yet I find myself guilty of forgetting it. My 3 would most likely be The Wall, Dark Side and Meddle, maybe even The Division Bell. I don’t know why. Wish You Were Here feels like the middle child that always behaved and got good grades but didn’t get the attention like his less successful siblings.

Every time that I’ve seen Pink Floyd in concert, it was the song Wish You Were Here that has the entire crowd singing along and really participating in the moment as a collective. It surpised me, there are so many other songs that I felt were more popular or more sing alongish yet it was the middle child that drew all those Bic lighters out into a swaying chorus.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Welcome To The Machine
Have A Cigar

Wish You Were Here

My Musical Evolution – Part 289 Roach Days Revisited Isn’t Life Strange

During The Scratchy 45 Days, The Moody Blues was synonymous with Nights In White Satin In The Academy Days, that expanded to include The Voice. The notion of Won’t you take me back to school was something I occasionally dreamt about but aprt from that, I really didn’t know much about The Moody Blues. Oh except that middle school joke about the radio station WPMS where they play three weeks of Moody Blues and one week of Ragtime.

You can imagine how cool it was to find a Compact Disc that had both Nights In White Satin and The Voice on it. This was still a couple decades before the download a single song age [a practice that I do not condone] so in order to get that one song from The Scratchy 45 Days, I had to find it on an album somehow. I freely admit that this method makes the project more expensive but the benefit is the bonus acquisition of stuff that the you didn’t know you were missing.

That was especially true in the case of Voices In The Sky. It is a Best Of compilation ad as susch there are numerous tracks here that support that claim. Some of them were familiar some that became my favorites, I had not heard before.

Isn’t Life Strange is one of those that I had never heard before but it reached me. It strikes me as oddly interestesting that even as a young man I was somehow aware of the passage of time and the cycle of the years as they related to a lifetime and the generations before and those to follow. Isn’t Life Strange is a song that tapped into that emotion in some way. I made video for that song using old home movie footage from my Grandparents that was taken in the 1950’s it seemed to go along with it.

The rest of the album delivers as well and here again as with America, the pursuit of a single song has a ripple effect through My Musical Evolution and I would become a fan of The Moody Blues during The Roach Days. It makes me wonder if this would have happened if the Compact Disc did NOT impress me they way that it did. It also underscores the connected nature of My Musical Evolution and how things that might have seemed insignificant way back then were anything but. That is why I feel compelled to drop as much stuff in these posts as possible because we never know when that moment of inspiration will germinate or which spark will develop into flame.

Ride My See-Saw

Talking Out Of Turn

I’m Just A Singer (In A Rock & Roll Band)

Gemini Dream

The Voice

Isn’t Life Strange

Nights In White Satin

My Musical Evolution – Part 288 Roach Days Revisited America

I mentioned this album a couple posts back. It was my example of how the advent of the Compact Disc had ruined my linear Musical Evolution. I loved the new Compact Disc format. I still do. I was driven to collect as much of My Musical Evolutionon CD as possible.

I bough this Compact Disc during The Roach Days because I was pursuing Horse With No Name which was a favorite from The Scratchy 45 Days. This is where things sort of get out of control and my linear evolution becomes a tangled ball of yarn like String Theory as described by that Quantum Leap guy. Horse With No Name belongs in The Scratchy 45 Days but this album belongs here.

It was during The Roach Days that I discovered that America had a lot of great songs beyond Horse With No Name. I played this CD a lot on those hot, lazy and air conditioner-less days of summer.

Ventura Highway made me think of life in Vermont. The acoustic mellowness has made this my favorite America song and a staple of the mix tapes of the future. There is something about this song that calls me to a long road trip. The rest of this album follows along with melodic simplicity. It is soft and easy to digest and makes me wonder why I never purchased any other America albums.

A Horse With No Name

I Need You

Ventura Highway

Only In Your Heart

Tin Man

Lonely People

Sister Golden Hair

My Musical Evolution – Part 287 Roach Days Revisited I Want My MTV

I find it interesting to look back at the past 100 posts, particularly the ones that feauture the music from the radio and MTV. Seeing it all in this condensed time lapse format highlights how quickly the popular mainstream music sound changed over the course of the decade. Men Without Hatsand Culture Club faded away and INXS and Tears For Fears took over those spots at MTV. Bruce Spriungsteen andJohn Mellencamp brought us back down to earth with working class, small town sensibility.

With the dawn of the Compact Disc, my own musical identity was all over the map. Up to this point, My Musical Evolutionmuch like my actual life, was compartmentalized into very distinct and tidy boxes. If you have been following along since January, you know about The Scratchy 45 Days, The KISS Age, BFMS, The Academy Days, Space Mountain, College Intermission, The Rise & Fall Of ’84, The Metal Years and Roach Days Revisted. With few exceptions, music from each of these eras for one reason or another stayed in those eras. That isn’t to say that I didn’t listen to The Go-Gos during The Roach Days, just that when I did, it was usually to reminisce about The Academy Days.

Life moves forward and for the most part, so did My Musical Evolution Now, with the advent of the Compact Disc, I was possessed with idea of acquiring all the music from My Musical Evolution on Compact Disc. That project was very similar to to this one. I think that one while more expensive was considerable easier becaue it didn’t require much thought. If I found Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me on a CD, I knew it was fromThe Scratchy 45 Days and I bought. This project requires more head scratching and memory jogging.

While I was giving all my money to Wooden Nickel and Musicland, MTV and the radio were providing music that I couldn’t justify on my budget.

Suzanne Vega – Luka

Swing Out Sister – Breakout

Ben E. King – Stand By Me

Belinda Carlisle – Mad About You – Belinda bummed me out, she left The Go-Gos, a band that I really liked and she dropped 20 pounds. I thought she was prettier before. She wasn’t bad after but I thought before that she was voluptuous and after my first thought was that she was ill.

Tina Turner – Better Be Good to Me – Tina was still a good performer and looked amazing for her age at the time. I felt though that MTV promoted her as a way to legitimize itself. She was a respected entertainer form the previous generation and her she is again. Kind of like those guys that say “I like R.E.M. bunt only their early stuff.”

Tears For Fears – Head Over Heels – I can’t say that I was a fan of Tears For Fearsback in the 80’s but after enough hammering by MTV they were able to enter my collection via the nostalgia side entrance.

Harold Faltermeyer – Axel F – You already know that I like electronic instrumental music. This was my favorite of the BHC soundtrack

Wham! – Freedom – Like Tears For Fears I was not crazy about Wham! but the girls liked it and eventually, long after the fact, it was nice to hear again.

Bruce Springsteen – I’m On Fire

John Cougar Mellencamp – Lonely Ol’ Night – I liked John Cougar much more than John Mellencamp. I understand his desire to help with Farm Aid and all that but he really turned me off when he went Activist. Not because of anything he did specifically, I just cannot get past that notion. Same with Springsteen. Do great songs and ditch the soap box.

My Musical Evolution – Part 286 Roach Days Revisited Madonna Don’t Preach

Madonna’s next album, True Blue opened up with controversy. Her song Papa Don’t Preach seemed to bother activist groups all over the place. The religious groups thought the song was promoting premarital sex. The Pro Choice people were upset that she didn’t get an abortion. What bothered me was that this was turning point where Madonna ceased to be a song, dance and fashion icon and adopted the role of artist which is just a step away from activist. That transition always bothers me. I really hate it when popularity artificially elevates the opinions and expertise of somebody who is not really qualified.

True Blue is still a good album and there are numerous gems here. Sadly the Madonna that I loved from the prior two albums was disappearing. You can hear it. Her voice is more mature and the themes and delivery conjure images of a woman who has risen to the top and is now concerned about staying there. The bubble gum fun and simplicity has been replaced with the drive to be excellent.

Live To Tell is a prime example. That song was on MTV every 15 minutes it seemed. This isn’t the Dress You Up girl, is it? I understand that Madonna had to evolve. She couldn’t remain Like A Virgin forever. She was doing what she felt she needed to do to secure her position as Queen of Pop. I can respect that but it didn’t make me miss the old Madonna any less.

For the music video of True Blue, Madonna partnered with MTV and opened the creation of the video to the public as a contest. For weeks and weeks, viewer submitted videos for the song were played on MTV. The eventual winner was a good one and was key in motivating me to buy this album. True Blue wasn’t like previous Madonna songs but it was still good. It had this faux 50’s do-wop kind of feel. After owning the album for a while, La Isla Bonita emerged as the favorite. Listening to it right now, it is still a great piece of work.

Papa Don’t Preach

Open Your Heart

Live To Tell

True Blue

Here is the contest verison

La Isla Bonita

My Musical Evolution – Part 285 Roach Days Revisited More Over The Airwaves

Even with my voluminous collection of music, there are still thousands of songs that passed through My Musical Evolution that never made it to The Eclectic collection. You can buy everything. Who knows, maybe if I wasn’t playing Compact Disc catch up, some of these artists during The Roach Days might have made to my shelf. In most cases, they eventually would.

Whitney Houston – I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Starship – Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

Los Lobos – La Bamba

Crowded House – Don’t Dream It’s Over

Tiffany – I Think We’re Alone Now

Chris De Burgh – The Lady In Red

Duran Duran – Notorious

Cutting Crew – (I Just) Died in Your Arms

Genesis – Land of Confusion

Huey Lewis & The News – Hip to Be Square

My Musical Evolution – Part 284 Roach Days Revisited The Art Of Buying Lots Of Compact Discs

I had my own Compact Disc player and at the time it seemed like Digital Compact Discs were going to be the meduim for music forever. My mission had three goals. 1. Replace my old cassettes and vinyl LP’s with CD’s. 2. Buy the music from my life, namely things from The Scratchy 45 Days on CD’s. 3. Buy new music going forward on CD. This three pronged attack presents a challenge to me now in documenting My Musical Evolution. It muddies the timeline a little and has an unexpected effect on the overall evolution.

For example, mom had Horse With No Name on 45. During The Roach Days, I bought History America’s Greatest Hits, in order to acquire Horse With No Name. What happened was I fell in love with that album and Ventura Highway became my favorite. So now, where Horse With No Name was originally rooted in The Scratchy 45 Days, now America is more closely associated with The Roach Days. Prior to the Compact Disc Era,My Musical Evolution was nice and linear. After leaving behind mom’s 45’s, I rarely bought anything from that era. When I transitioned into cassette, I didn’t try to replace my KISS albums on cassette. When I switched back to vinyl, with a few rare exceptions, I didn’t replace my cassettes with vinyl LP’s. Now, with the CD, I felt compelled to acquire all the music from my entire evolujtionary journey on Compact Disc. I had decided that this was going to be my official format.

Even though Compact Discs were twice as much as vinyls, I acquired hundreds in the first few years. I had more CD’s than anybody else I knew. It was not unusual for me to walk out of Wooden Nickel or Musicland with $300 in CD’s . The cost was significant. I had to prioritize. Brand new music was easy, it was always on CD. Music from my childhood was almost like new music. That meant that replacing my vinyls were low on the list. When it came to replacing my records, I really tried to apply some logic and select those albums that, like Dark Side Of The Moon, would really benefit from the digital format. That put all the Heavy Metal records at the back of the bus. It was a balancing act.

Availability was also a factor. If you weren’ t there, it must be hard to imagine that something as ubiquitous as CD’s were at one time rare and difficult to find. For years, most albums apart from new releases were simply not available on CD. Sounds crazy I know. We had to wait until the record company decided to release Meddle on CD.

On of the by products of this early lack of CD support was the rise of numerous Hits compilation CD’s. The Have A Nice Day Super Hits Of The 70’s is an example that comes to mind. That series seemed to be taken directly from mom’s 45’s We’ll talk about them some more soon. The point I wanted to make here is that 1986 to 1988 was a condensed recap of My Musical Evolution as I scrambled to get as much of it as I could on CD.