My Musical Evolution – Part 243 Roach Days Revisited No More Gravity

During The Roach Days, a guy named Chuck who used to play drums for us, introduced us to some good music. Billy Thorpe’s Children Of The Sun was among them. There was an allure to Children Of The Sun it might have been the story. It could have been the music. It might even have been that it was damn near impossible to find.

The story at the time was that Billy Thorpe had created this space opera called Children Of The Sun, the record company pressed a fairly small run then suddenly went out of business. The rights to the album were legally tied up for a long time. I haven’t done any research to verify any of this, just telling it like I heard it.

I eventually found a copy at the Wooden Nickel Collector’s Store which specialized in previously owned and hard to find stuff. It was used but it good condition. For a long time, I was the person in our crowd that had the elusive Children Of The Sun album. I cannot help but think of how the internet has solved so many of these problems.

For a long time, I was really enthralled by the song Children Of The Sun. It had that space alien element in the lyrics. It had spacey effects mixed in with the music. The music didn’t seem overly complex and there were any really screaming guitar parts but something about it connected to me.

The rest of the album was OK but it never got the attention of the title track. In the 1990’s I found Children Of The Sun…Revisited. It was a reworked version that had replaced half of the songs. Basically they dropped side one of the original vinyl and added 4 new ones to the end.

The songs aren’t bad to listen to but they just don’t seem to grab you like Children Of The Sun although East Of Eden’s Gate stands out to me.

Children Of The Sun

We’re Leaving

Solar Anthem

East Of Eden’s Gate

My Musical Evolution – Part 242 Roach Days Revisited Echoes

Those of you that have been following along know that up to this point, my Pink Floyd experience has been Dark Side Of The Moon courtesy of a guy named Chip from The Academy Days and The Wall which was a devastatingly poignant punctuation at the end of The Rise & Fall Of ’84.

I liked Pink Floyd well enough, it just didn’t occur to me to dig any deeper. I had seen that album cover with the guy on fire but never really considered exploring Pink Floyd any deeper. That notion floors me given how I feel about Pink Floyd today. I guess that’s just the nature of Evolution.

I have a guy named Tim to thank for my introduction to Meddle and more specifically Echoes. Tim and I worked together at Pizza Hut back in The Roach Days. We ,ust have been talking about Pink Floyd as we closed one night. He couldn’t belive that I had never heard Echoes. So it was decided that we’d check it out after work.

Tim was an early audiophile. He had collected an impressive quadraphonic stereo system with high end components and four industrial strength Klipsch professional grade speakers. When we got to his house, he meticulously arranged all four speakers around a pair of bean bag chairs in the center of his living room floor. This was still years before Surround Sound was popular. He was ahead of his time. He was also the first guy i knew that saw the importance of bass. His Dodge Dart was bumping years before those bass tubes where everywhere.

He put a single candle on top of each speaker and we sat on the bean bag chairs and by candle light absorbed Echoes. The song turned out to be 23 minutes long and while we listened, the effort to set up the speakers and candle became justified.

I bought Meddle and though I enjoyed it, it wasn’t until the 1990’s that it slipped into the number on spot of my all time favorite Pink Floyd albums. I just love the whole thing. Man, I’m listening to San Tropez right now and thinking it is such a great piece. The piano part reminds me of Vince Guaraldi a little.

Pink Floyd, The Wizard Of Oz & Stanley Kubrick

I can’t imagine how Aric and I heard about The Dark Side Of The Moon & The Wizard Of Oz thing back in The Roach Days. That seems like a perfect thing for the yet undiscovered Internet. It must have been the old school grapevine. Somebody told us that if you play The Wizard Of Oz on your TV but turn the sound down and instead listen to The Dark Side Of The Moon, you would see a lot of strange coincidences. I don’t remember how to start it. It was something like when the MGM lion roars the second time, press play on your CD player. It was fun to try and I remember seeing Dorothy walking on the fence during Balanced on the biggest wave. The Great Gig In The Sky seemed to go along with the tornado sequence. My favorite was at the end of the album. When Dorothy puts her ear to the chest of the Tin Man to listen, the heart beats.

Now, I mention this to demonstrate that this kind of thing was fairly common back in The Roach Days. We would often turn on some nature show with the sound turned down and find coincidences with whatever music was playing. One night we were watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. During that last portion, Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite. Somebody suggested that the lights whizzing by were like a Pink Floyd light show. The original thought was to find a few of my favorite Pink Floyd songs and set them to those visuals. I taped 2001 off A&E when it ran again. At first I discarded Echoes which was a favorite but I thought it would be too long of a song for that section of video. When I timed, the video, I discovered that it was the same length as the song, almost to the exact second. The results seem too good for coincidence.

To recreate this, put 2001 in your DVD player and Meddle in your CD player. Go to the last scene in the move then skip back a few seconds so you have time to let it roll while you get ready ro press play on the CD player. The screen will go black then the words Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite will appear. When they do, press play. The first Ping should happen just as the words fade out. The rest of the ride is automatic. There are several scenic changes throughout the video and in every time, the music seems to not only change but change to something that matches the pacing and mood of what is on the screen. Check it out down below.

In the 1990’s I saw that 2001 was going to be broadcast on a movie channel. I configured my stereo and VCR to capture the video from cable and the sound from the CD player. The tape turned out great. In the 21st century I did the whole thing with DVD, CD and PC.

One Of These Days

A Pillow Of Winds

San Tropez

Echoes

My Musical Evolution – Part 241 The Metal Years Megalomania

I met Scott in September of 1984 in Calculus. Arica and Scott had gone to high school together. It wasn’t untilThe Roach Days that we really started to hang out together. 30 years later and we still hang out together. We have weekly coffee sessions. I’ve been to the boundaries with him. He’s been on Vermont’s Long Trail with me.

Scott is the youngest of four kids. He has three older sisters. It makes for a great example of how birth order can affect one’s Musical Evolution. He had 3 older siblings, and eventually their husbands, steering his musical journey.

Aric, Scott and I all seemed to be musically in the same area. Aric and I are the oldest in our respective families and we took the KISS, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Dio route to The Metal Years. Scott’s brother-in-law took him via the AC/DC, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, Dio route. That had an effect on My Musical Evolution and a great example is Black Sabbath’s Sabotage.

I had a pair of Sabbath albums that I really though were good but I was more of an 80’s hair metal fan with a strong Iron Maiden element. I’d be more likely to listen to Ratt or Accept than Black Sabbath. Scott on the other hand was and still is the biggest Black Sabbath fan that I know. He was definately more classic metal than hair metal.

Scott was still living at his mom’s house on Fricke Avenue during The Metal Years. Don’t look for it. It isn’t there anymore. On a cool autumn afternoon, I was a t Scott’s house. He had recently bought these giant speakers called Colossus that were massive with 15″ woofers and multiple mids and tweeters on the sides and tops. Yeah, this was still the 80’s before sub-woofers when speakers had to be big to deliver the pounding with clarity at high volume. Anyway, I can’t recall how we got on the subject of Black Sabbath but the result was that he felt the need to demo Sabotage for me. The song he selected was Megalomania.

It was one of those moments where everything just seemed right, the temperature, the frame of mind, the Colossi, and Black Sabbath. It sounded incredible, the intro conjured images of the barbarian hero entering the mysterious temple of the ancients to confront the necromancer. The studio effects on the backing vocals sounded like something out of Dr. Who.

I bought Sabotage shortly thereafter and discovered numerous other gems. It was different than Paranoid and Master Of Reality but still a very good offering.

Hole In The Sky

Symptom Of The Universe

Megalomania

Supertzar

Am I Going Insane

My Musical Evolution – 240 Roach Days Revisited Dawn Of Mix Tape

What comes to mind when you look at the image over there –>? I have over 100 of these. Some look exactly like this one. Over the years, I’ve made mix tapes mostly on TDK, Maxell, and Memorex cassettes. I eventually settled into Maxell MX 110 as my cassette of choice. At just shy of an hour per side, it just seemed right.

If you have been following along since the beginning, you might have noticed how technology and the media available dictated how I listened to music. A few posts back, I was talking about listening to entire ablums because on vinyl, shuffle was not an option. I’ve come to the realization that mom’s 45’s andThe Scratchy 45 Dayswere all about shuffle. It may not have had the random aspect of true shuffle but the results were quite similar.

As I began to purchase albums, I felt compelled to listen to at least entire sides. Who wants to get up and swap out albums after a single song? The practice continued on 8-Track and and cassette. That barely functioning auto-skip feature hadn’t been invented and when it was, it didn’t work well on the cassette deck I had. It wasn’t until The Roach Days that I really began to create mix tapes.

It started out with WILD Wild 108 FM, my fictional radio station. I stole that idea from Aric who had made a few WES tapes. WILD was basically a metal only station that would feature my favorite songs from The Metal Years, fictional concert promos for metal bands, and interview exceprts that I was able to record off actual radio or MTV. WILD didn’t last long and was soon changed to WIRD Weird 108 FM. This was a better reflection of My Musical Evolution it featured all kinds of music and any bizarre bit of audio that I’d create.

It was necessity that mothered the mix tapes of The Roach Days. The mix tape allowed me to be both co-host and DJ. In the days leading up to a party, I would meticulously craft the music for the entire evening. I’d usually make up 4 or 5 tapes that would be played in a particular order giving us around 7 hours of non stop music. It would be a mix of music and humorous elements, often movie quotes like George McFly breaking into the middle of a song to say “Hey you! Get your damn hands off her!” or Chipmunk Punk type tracks. Since I was the architect, I knew when to watch the crowd for the response. I also built in cues to tell me to get ready to switch tapes. The playlist was engineered to generate a response. The songs were often suggestive and aimed at that promiscuity button. The goal was to steer the night with the perfect music.

The Champs – Tequila Pee-Wee Herman made this popular, hard to believe that movie is so old. There was one party where we had so many people doing the Pee-Wee dance that I could feel the floor bouncing and thought that it might cave in. We did a lot of dancing at our parties.

The Beastie Boys – Fight For Your Right To Party

Stacey Q – Two Of Hearts

Samantha Fox – Touch Me

Wang Chung – Everybody Have Fun Tonight I’d mingle ans ask the girls if they were “wanging chung”

Lloyd Williams – Shout

Berlin – Take My Breath Away The girls of 1985 loved to slow dance to this song. I couldn’t have been happier to oblige.

My Musical Evolution – Part 239 The Metal Years Metal Heart

Aric picked up Accept’s follow up to Balls To The Wall. It was called Metal Heart and it picked up where Balls To The Wall left off. The opening track appealed to my love for classical music. Here in the intro of Metal Heart was the fusion of classical and metal. How cool was that. I just wish it would have lasted longer. It seems funny now to hear the first line of the lyrics, “It Is 1999 the human race has to face it.” I’m sure that they felt that 1999 was way off in the future. I think it is odd that 1999 is almost exactly the halfway point between now and when Metal Heart was released. Throw in a little Beethoven on the guitar solo and it really works.

I love the German industrial sound of Accept. I can’t tell you for certain if that was what they were going for or if that is just a product of my own preconceived notions of German Heavy Metal. There is a kind of machine like aspect to the music and the gothic chorus gives it that operatic aura. The vocals are gutteral and full of that German phlegm.

One thing that I have disovered during My Musical Evolution project is that The Metal Years were in fact much shorter than I had remembered. Well may it is just a trick of perception. I’m cruising through as lifetime of music in one year so it all goes pretty fast. I guess that what I’m really trying to say is that when I consider the metal records of the era, I can see where I really played the crap out of the early ones and the follow ups, even though they were released a short time later, got much less attention. Take Accept for example, I was intimately familiar with every track. Metal Heart came out just a couple years later and I tell by listening to it now that I didn’t listen to this one as much. Most of the songs don’t sound familiar at all. I like what I’m hearing, it just seems that for most of this album, I don’t recognize it. Is that due to my drifting away from Metal or the advent of the Mix Tape?

Metal Heart

Midnight Mover

Wrong Is Right

Too High To Get It Right

My Musical Evolution – Part 238 Roach Days Revisited Call My Answering Machine

More 80s Girls Living at The Roach Motel with Aric was a blast. I couldn’t have asked for a better house mate. I hope I was as courteous and supportive to him as he was to me. I almost said that I was at the perfect age again but that really doesn’t cover it. It was a great time to be living on my own. The work was easy, the parties were epic and the women were abundant. The middle 80’s were a turning point of sorts. The glitz and glamour of the early 80’s [as depicted here ->] had slid into Madonna’s shabby chic and was working its way out again toward a more home grown sensibility. The transformation was gradual.

The music followed the same sort of arc. The Out There type stuff like Safety Dance and Culture Club got overshadowed by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Steve Winwood and John Mellencamp. The bubble gum, new wave, electronic cycled down a bit and the return of regular guitars and traditional rock songs cycled up.

Along the way I discovered an excellent way to meet girls. Back in the days before mobile phones, an answering machine was essential because we weren’t home to answer the phone too much. Typically, people have trouble summoning the courage to give somebody their number or to call the number they have been given. The method I developed eased those nerves. First, I’d create an unusual 30 second answering machine message. 30 seconds was all that our old dual cassette type machine could handle. I found that I could use my Sears dual cassette enabled stereo to ovedub from Tape 1 to Tape 2. Repeating this procedure allowed me to make these multilayered 30 second pieces that featured soundtrack, background sounds, sound effects and dialogue.

Next I’d approach girls in groups of two or more. I’d give them my number then tell them to call my answering machine and check it out. It was easy to approach girls and ask them to call because i wasn’t asking them to call me, just my machine. On top of that I had acquired what Mike Damone called the Attitiude.

Giving the number to a girl who was by herself was not as successful as giving to the group. If you give it to the group, they will encourage each other to call it. Calling a machine also put them at ease. They know that they have the option to just listen and hang up or to leave a message of their own. Again girls in groups would often be brave enough to to say something.

Sade – Smooth Operator

Julian Lennon – Too Late For Goodbyes

Tina Turner – Typical Male

Robbie Nevil – C’est la vie

George Michael – I Want Your Sex

My Musical Evolution – Part 237 The Metal Years Too Fast For Love

Mötley Crüe’s success with Shout At The Devil and Theatre Of Pain led to a reissue of their debut album Too Fast For Love. It started to show up in records stores. So we did what we had to do as Mötley Crüe fans. We bough it.

I can’t say that I didn”t like it. It was rough and raw had that unpolished and low budget sound. Many of my Mötley Crüe friends like it because of that. I didn’t. Yeah it was early Mötley Crüe and there was a dangerous element to it but I had been listening to a lot of refined metal. I had become accustomed to the style and sound of Randy Rhoades, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, Vivian Campbell, even later Mick Mars and this seemed like a step backwards in a garage-ish sort way.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good songs here. It just sounds kind of muddy. Maybe it is Vince Neil’s vocal parts. I can’t quite put my finger on it. All I can say is that Too Fast For Love was not my favorite Crüe musically.

Now attitude is another story. In The Roach Days I felt that I was Too Fast For Love. I had been through a pair of relationships that ended in heartbreak and had decided that I simply was not cut out for long term steady relationships. I guess my desire to find that one special woman got left behind The Wall.

Live Wire

Come On And Dance

Public Enemy #1

Take Me To The Top

Piece Of Your Action – This is my favorite track on this album. Aric and I used to play this back in the day.

Too Fast For Love

My Musical Evolution – Part 236 Roach Days Revisited Guitar Exchange

You might recall that I had bought a guitar from the pawn shop and struggled to get anything but pain from it. I also bought a Fender Dual Showman Tube Bass Amp from Brian with a big Woodson cabinet sporting dual 15″ speakers. I don’t know why I bought a Bass amp for my guitat. The price was right and maybe something in the back of my mind saw the future.

Aric had been a Gene Simmons fan ever since his KISS Age. He felt that he wanted to play bass. Like me, he went to the pawn shop and bought a hideous economy model bass guitar. It actually had dimes wedged under the bridge to raise it. I don’t think Aric ever got around to buying an amp for it. He played around on it but was not getting any satisfaction.

So we move into The Roach Motel and a peculiar thing happens he starts playing my guitar and it seems to work. It takes some time as you would expect but before long he is making some pretty cool music on it. Not playing any songs yet, just making some music.

My switch to bass started with Ratt’s Wanted Man. Aric started getting some guitar magazines. Some of the magazines included sheet music. I remember being home alone one evening just doing a bit of housework and listening to Out Of The Cellar. For some reason, I zeroed in on the bass line, it seemed to stand out from the rest of the track. Up to that point, I had always focused on the guiatr parts but now, I was really appreciating the contribution that the bass line was making.

I rifled through the stack of guitar magazines and found one that had the music for Wanted Man. I don’t read music but I sat and listened and followed along on page seeing what Wanted Man looked like as a series of dots on the staff. Then I noticed that the music included tablature that translated the whole thing to the fret board for you. How much easier could it be?

I got Aric’s bass out and plugged it into my Fender Amp. It really was a crappy guitar but the tube amp gave it a fat rumble. In about an hour, I was most of the way through Wanted Man. It was not too difficult really. A lot of thumping and repition with a couple interesting changes. When Aric got home, I had to show him. Within a couple days, I was playing along with Wanted Man and You Shook Me All Nite Long. It was exciting to be able to actually play something and that just motivated me further.

Duran Duran – The Wild Boys

Don Henley – Boys Of Summer

Steve Winwood – Higher Love

Heart – What About Love

Tina Turner – We Don’t Need Another Hero

My Musical Evolution – Part 235 Roach Days Revisited Getting Into The Groove

You might have noticed a few photos of Madonna attached to some of these posts. Part of it is because I was trying to visually express the look and style of the girls of the 80’s. Madonna was the Queen of style back in 1985. Sometimes the style got a little over the top but not too often where I was. I loved the look.

I also loved Madonna. Well maybe not Madonna personally. I liked her music very much but what I loved most about Madonna was her contribution to my sex life. Look at her belt buckle in this picture. She popularized that attitude. She made provocative outfits and sexuality popular. She unleashed a wave of promiscuity that I was able to enjoy for years. There were legions of girls that were eager to emulate Madonna and weren’t tied to the notion of going steady or committed relationships. The taboos were disappearing and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Thanks Madonna.

I may still have been a quasi metal head but MTV was back on the menu. After The Rise & Fall Of ’84, I didn’t have regular access to MTV. Aric and I had cable and MTV was on frequently. It was the alternative to radio. It was on in the background most of the time giving the opportunity to stop and watch when a cool song came on. I know it must sound kind of crazy to be such a fan of MTV given what is has become. I really wish you could have seen the first 5 years of it. It really was something worth watching in a passive sort of way. They really used to play videos and concerts and interviews with bands that you recognized. All the reality TV crap had not been invented. Unfortunately, the format doesn’t support a DVD collection like MTV Season 1. It is too bad that there isn’t a 15 Disc set like The Best Of MTV 1981 compiled and presented in a way that really demonstrates the essence of the progamming.

Madonna – Gett Into The Groove

Don Henley – All She Wants To Do Is Dance

Katrina And The Waves – Walking On Sunshine

Howard Jones – Things Can Only Get Better

Sly Fox – Let’s Go All The Way

My Musical Evolution – Part 234 The Metal Years Rock & Roll Rebel

As I post this photo of the Bark At The Moon album cover, a thought occured to me that I had not considered before. Who had the idea to dress Ozzy up as a werewolf? Did Ozzy approach the record label and say “I’d like to be a werewolf on the cover of the next album?” and thus realize a childhood dream of lycanthropy?

Maybe a young record exec approached Ozzy. “Picture it Ozzy. A dark, cloud covered November sky. A white full moon shines coldly through a break in the clouds. Below we see you done up like that guy from American Werewolf In London.We can get the same guy to do the make up effects for us. Whadda you say?”

Next time I see Ozzy, I’m going to ask him that. Aric had Bark At The Moon which is how I initially heard it. It has some good songs but overall, I didn’t quite get into it like his previous two albums. Another timing issue? Randy Rhoades was gone and Jake E. Lee stepped up to create some memorable guitar parts. What I didn’t know at the time was that Jake E. Lee was part of the earliest incarnations ofRatt.

It strikes me that the guitar work like that featured on Bark At The Moonwas how many of the guitarists sounded back then. This was before bands like Metallica would rise to prominence. It seems that after Eddie Van Halen guitars when through this Eddie emulation and after Metallica that guitar parts sounded more like Metallica.

Another thing that I find peculiar about Ozzy Osbourne is that when he sings, he announciates very well. I can understand him quite clearly. When he speaks, his accent mashes all the words together with stutters and mumbles and I can barely understand him at all.

Bark At The Moon

You’re No Different

Rock & Roll Rebel

So Tred – Bark At The Moon’s Goodbye To Romance