The last group in that little trifecta courtesy of my cousin was Boston. Their album Don’t Look Back had just come out and Flavia had it. The cover to the original vinyl LP was configured likeit was a double album. I used to look at that cover intently. It had so many cool things going on. There was a placid green valley with crystal mountains and a huge guitar shaped space ship. It was designed to capture my imagination. click on the picture. I included a fairly large one so you can check it out. Inside were some pitcures of the band and a shot of a pair of glitter encrusted high-top sneakers that would play a role in my wedding 10 years later.
After living in Vermont this long, I discovered that my favorite time of day was that magical time when the sun had gone behind the mountains but before it got dark. With the sun being blocked by a mountain, it really stretched out that twilight time. It was then, in the cooling of evening that I’d look down the green valley and imagine a brightly lit guitar shaped space craft silently gliding my way. In my mind The Journey would play.
As with Kansas and Styx, there seemed to be a lot of orchestration in Boston’s music. With distinctive guitar sounds and layer upon layer of musical elements adding that third dimension in sound. I really have to thank my cousins for introducing me to Kansas, Styx and Boston. I still enjoy these bands very much to this day. Of course as I wrote that I realized that I haven’t seen any of them live. A missed opportunity perhaps? Maybe it is better to keep them pristinely preserved in my memory.
Don’t Look Back
The Journey / It’s Easy
The Journey has been my favorite Boston track since I first heard it. It invokes such imagery and that bass note that resonates through most of it is a thing of beauty. I read that The Journey was also Tom Scholz’s favorite piece too.
Another of my cousin’s albums that I had the great fortune of sampling was The Grand Illusion by Styx. Like Kansas, Styx seemed to be very melodic and symphonic with so many layers of sound and instruments to explore and immerse myself in. I don’t think that I was as enraptured by Styx as I was Kansas. I really liked their sound and The Grand Illusion was another of those albums that I could listen to over and over again. For some reason, I never really liked the song Miss America. It seemed out of place against the rest of the album. Come Sail Away was the first track to get my attention and Castle Walls was an early favorite.
I can’t tell you why but even though I liked Kansas so much more than Styx, I eventually bought almost every Styx album on Compact Disc. It took me almost 35 years to do that but I did. Again, The Grand Illusion is another one of those albums that I owned on cassette then vinyl then again on Compact Disc. And like those Kansas albums, even though I was first introduced to Styx in the BFMS era, it was until Cornerstone that I really became a Styx fan. That happens in 1980 which will be soon, here.
At some point during my middle school years, my cousin bought a few albums that would be among my all time favorites. Two of them were Kansas albums. Leftoverture, and Point Of Know Return I think we talked a little bit about Leftoverture a while back. The first Kansas song I can remember hearing was Magnum Opus. My cousin was in this gymnastics program and was using this as the music for her floor routine. So I got to hear it a lot while she developed and practiced that routine.
The peculiar thing about Kansas is that for as much as I love Leftoverture and Point Of Know Return, I’ve never felt compelled to buy any of their other albums. They’ve released 14 albums from 1974 to 2000 and yet to me they only have two. As you’ll see when I get old enough to have money and begin to buy my own music, I have this tendancy to discover a music group then go back and purchase their existing catalog. Not the case the with Kansas and I’m really at a loss as I write this for why I never did. Another thought regarding Kansas is that even though BFMS was where I first got a hold of these two amazing albums, it was really the next era The Academy Days where I played the crap out of them. This raises the issue that I knew was going to present itself at some point. That is the cyclic notion that changes in the medium have this sort of re-introductory aspect. For example: These two albums, my cousin was kind enough to put on a cassette for me. Leftoverture on one side, Point Of Know Return on the other. For years that was my Kansas music. As you know, even the best cassettes eventually die. In the early mid 1980’s I replaced that casset with two pristine vinyl LP records and my Kansas era began again. In the late mid 1980’s those two Vinyl LP’s were replaced with two pristine Compact Discs and the cycle began again.
I’m tempted to put every track from those two albums here as I’m that fond of every single one of them. We’ll discuss the concept of loving every track on an album a little later.
Carry On My Wayword Son
The Wall
What’s On Your Mind
Miracles out Of Nowhere
Opus Insert
Questions Of My Childhood
Cheyenne Anthem
Magnum Opus
Point Of Know Return
Paradox
The Spider
Portrait (He Knew)
Closet Chronicles
Lightning’s Hand
Dust In The Wind
Sparks Of The Tempest
Nobody’s Home
Hopelessly Human
Oops! I did include all the tre tracks. i just couldn’t bring myself to leave any out.
I can’t understand why there ended up being such an anti-disco movement. I thought some of it was rather clever. You know taking the Star Wars theme or classics like Beethoven’s 5th and discofying them. I feel fortunate to be able to look back at this time in My Musical Evolution and find these great pieces and performers there.
One of the mainstays of the BFMS Dances was the Bake Sale. Students would volunteer to bake stuff to sell at the dance to raise funds for whatever school would raise funds for. One time I volunteered to bake some cookies. I don’t recall where I got the idea but basically I made four batches of cookie dough like you might use to cut Christmas cookies. I used food coloring to make each batch a different color [Red, Blue, Green and Yellow] Then I’d take a little pinch from each color and twist or mash them together before baking. They came out looking tie-dyed. I called them “Gloids”.
It is surprising what appears just beneath the surface when even the smallest scratch is applied. Go make yourself some Gloids and dance under the mirror ball.
The Bee Gees – You Should Be Dancing
Walter Muphy – A Fifth Of Beethoven
A Closer Encounter
The Bee Gees – Tragedy
Kool & The Gang – Open Sesame
Donna Summer – Our Love
Olivia Newton-John – A Little More Love
I think it is interesting that Olivia Newton-John was among some of my favorite Scratchy 45’s and her she is again with a completely different style not to mention her performance in Grease.
In the 7th Grade, a classmate of mine named Danny discovered, The Marx Brothers. He had a big book called “Why A Duck” which essentially is a a few Marx Brothers movies presented in comic book format using stills from the films above the typed out dialogue. It didn’t take me long to be hooked on the Marx Brothers as well. Danny was all about Harpo. I gravitated towards Groucho and another very funny friend of ours named Gary took on the role of Chico. We’d act out scenes from the movies [as portrayed by the book] and disrupt classes in a very Marx Brothers manner. I feel sorry for my English teacher. A large part of that class seemed to be students acting out scenes from Shakespeare or Huckleberry Finn and I had always felt that instead of simply playing Montague, I had to play Groucho playing Montague with the funny walk and frequent trips to the edge of entendre.
How do The Marx Brothers impact my musical evolution, I hear you ask? Well, my 7th grade home room teacher also happened to be a fan of the Marx Brothers and he let me borrow his 4 record set called Three Hours, Fifty Nine Minutes..Fifty One Seconds With The Marx Brothers. The record is a collection of old radio broadcasts featuring the brothers doing comedic bit as well as several musical numbers. While I don’t think that an individual song from this record or any of the Marx Brothers films stand out as a favorite, I feel compelled to include them because I really liked the flavor of the era. There is something that really grabs me about the entertainment of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any recordings I have that focus on that time period apart from this.
Being from the age of Vaudeville, the Marx Brothers had reasonable musical skills to go with their comedic presence.
Did the films Grease and Sgt Pepper come out in the same year? It feels that but if I give it a second though, Grease was first then Sgt Pepper. Hang on, I’ll check. Both 1978 according to imdb.com. I remember having the stylized Sgt Pepper Logo T-shirts. Even though Frampton Comes Alive had been out for two years, this was my introduction Peter Frampton. This raises an interesting point. It is 1978 and although I believed that I had a fairly broad range of musical taste and had appreciated numerous artists along the way, it is surprising to think of the bands that I did not know at this time. That list includes, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and so on.
I’m pretty sure that I did not know at the time that all the music from Sgt Pepper was by the Beatles. As kids we just took it for what was presented on the screen. As far as we knew, it was just a musical boy meets girl type of story that takes place two towns away from where Willy Wonka had just given his Chocolate Factory to a kid named Charlie Bucket. For the most part, this was the only context we had for those songs.
George Burns – Fixing A Hole
Strawberry Fields forever
I ended up getting the double album soundtrack to Sgt Pepper. My cousin picked up the Beatles Sgt Pepper. I’m pretty sure at that time I liked the movie version better. It seemed more polished and featured all those celebritiies like Steve Martin and George Burns. If you skipped George’s version of Fixing A Hole, scroll back up and check it out. George was having this resurgence. He was in Oh God with John Denver and a couple other popular films around then. There is something about George’s delivery that reminds me of my perceptions of Vaudeville.
As I was listening to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, I realized that I never have seen that movie. I guess at some point in the 1990’s I saw a good chunk of it on TV. For me, Saturday Night Fever was just a double album of really great dance music. My cousin had the record back then and I heard it enough to become attached to nearly every track. I have to say nearly because I was nver that crazy about Boogie Shoes or Jive Talkin’. The scientist me would love to be able to point to a formula or mathematic equation that would conclusively prove why those songs didn’t capture my affection like the rest of that album.
As I scan the memory banks of the late 1970’s, once we get past the enormous impact of Star Wars, the three things that stick out are Saturday Night Fever featuring John Travolta and The Bee Gees. Grease, featuring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. And Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band featuring The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton. Was it coincidental that these three seemingly montrous hits all involved some combination of John Travolta and the Bee Gees?
We were already watching Happy Days and Welcome Back Kotter so the transition to Grease was an easy one to make. Mom’s Scratchy 45s paved the way for the 1950’s sound. We saw the movie and like everybody else we loved it.
Greae Is The Word
I can’t hlep but notice that the theme to this 50’s era story sounds like a 70’s era Disco song.
Summer Nights
It seems funny how non-intimitading these “tough guys” are.
Hopelessly Devoted To You
Beauty School Drop Out
Look At Me I’m Sandra Dee
Greased Lightnin’
You’re The One That I Want
I seem to recall Bowser Sha-Na-Na appearing at this time as well. It has been a long time since I’ve seen Grease. Some of these clips bring back fond memories. Of course it would be inevitable that a 1950’s themed middle school dance would have to happen after this. And that guy who wore the suit to the dance was now wearing the white t-shirt, blue jeans and somethng that was supposed to be a leather jacket.
It wasn’t really a dance hall. It was the gym at Bellows Falls Middle School. Looking at it from a parent’s or administrators point of view, the middle school dance seems even more awkward than it felt when I was in 7th grade. I can’t shake this notion of it being a primitive rite as a precursor to selecting breeding pairs. What is the point of gathering up a bunch of pre-teen boys and girls under a mirror ball in a darkened gymnasium to the beat of suggestive disco music? Don’t misunderstand. I appreciate the effort. I really enjoyed the experience. Maybe it is reflective of the changes in the legal face of our society. The whole thing screams liability to me now.
I find myself about to say “I was at the perfect age” again. I think I’ve done that more than a few times only to immediately consider that perhaps everybody feels that way about their youth. I guess Anne Frank might be an exception here. Did she ever get to hold a sweaty, nervous hand in the emboldening darkness of the school dance? To steal an awkward yet exhilierating kiss near the end of that slow song? I guess I’ll have to read her diary.
I am going to go out on limb and suggest that I was, in fact, at the perfect age for the disco era. Had I been younger, I would have missed it. Had I been older, I might have been more interested in the scene than the music. As it was, I was in that 12 to 14 range where I could safely get a taste of what was beyond the dance floor under the guided supervision of certified chaperones.
Back in the late 1970’s we were still a few years away from Tipper Gore and the PMRC. Back then, music didn’t come with warning labels. Record companies seemed to take that extra step to keep things more suggestive than explicit. Doesn’t that seem to serve as another example of how allowing government intervention backfires and just makes things more extreme? Really, after all the PMRC stuff, music seems to be more explicit than ever. Would it have gone that way anyway? No way to know but I’m sure that there is a certain demographic that seeks out that little warning label. Maybe we should pick the PMRC up again later.
Are all middle school dances the same? A darkened gym with a mirror ball casting a swirl of “stars”. A few auxillory lights splashing the floor with three colors. Banners hand painted by some student committee. The girl who allegedly smokes pot with the older sisters, making out with a tough looking guy at the top of the bleachers. Girls swarming in flocks to and from the bathroom. Guys in small packs of 3 or 4 roaming the perimeter. The Wallflower girls swaying just inches away from that wall of speakers. That one guy who wore a suit. Not the cool John Travolta Saturday Night Fever suit. Just a Sunday go to meeting suit who thinks he looks like the John Travolta suit. He is out there in the middle of the floor dancing by himself doing all the Travolta moves while a faint circle surrounds him. No that wasn’t me but I could get away with dancing. I had a reputation for sillines and being kinetically unpredictable so the risk of looking unusual on the dance floor was low.
I know that Disco music would soon fall out of favor in a big way with the general public but I liked it then and I still do. It is sad that since my first post in the BFMS, 2 of the artists mentioned then have since died. Robin Gibb and Donna Summer were a big part of my Middle School Dance Hall Days.
The Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive
Donna Summer – Dim All The Lights
Olivia Newton-John – Magic
Meco – Star Wars / Cantina Band
Here we combine Disco music with one of my other favorite things at that time, Star Wars.
Yvonne Elliman – If I Can’t Have You
Doesn’t this song speak directly to every 7th grader? Didn’t we all feel that there was always somebody just out of reach?
The Bee Gees – More Than A Woman
David Shire – Night On Disco Mountain
Again, I’ve come to end of a post feeling like I should be on an infomercial. All these songs really take me back to a simpler time.
Earlier, I began to explain why I have such trouble keeping the music of the BFMS era clearly defined. When I purchase music, I can usually remember more details about where I was when I bought it and it makes it easier to say “This song belongs to that era!” With BFMS, I was listening to the radio so much more than I ever did. I was around people who let me have limited access to their records. It all get jumbled up. My concern is that I’ll include a song into the BFMS era and later have it brought to my attnetion that the song I thought I listened to on the radio in 1978 actually wasn’t released until 1980. In fact I struggle with this in my mind. Obviously, I’d like to be as accurate as possible in this self discovery but then the other hemisphere of my brain says “Just go with how you remember it without endless research into dates and times. Afterall, you must remembere it this way for some reason” Perhaps that reason my be some subliminal key that shouldn’t be overlooked.
So in a more free association approach, I’m going to just think if the radio in the BFMS era and share with you the first things that come to mind.
Paul Simon – Slip Sliding Away
This one reminds me of skiing. I almost taste those Charleston Chew bars.
Little River Band – Lady
Dan Hill – Sometimes When We Touch
This is another one of those songs that is linked to a moment. I used to take skiing lesson on Mt Ascutney on Saturdays. In the morming we’d all pile on a bus and ride up there. The bus driver played the radio for everybody. One day as I was getting on the bus, not only was Sometime When We Touch playing on the radio, but this pretty blonde girl that I had a mild crush on named Leisl was singing along. She was just having fun but as I climbed up the stairs, our eyes met and I was sure that she was singing it to me. Of course she probably doesn’t remember that moment like I do and she probably doesn’t even remember who I am but for a few seconds on a Saturday morning in the cold blue light of snow, we were in love and this was our song,
Debbie Boone – You Light up My Life
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
At this point in my life, I had never heard of Bruce Springsteen. Years later after picking up some Bruce and finding this was a Springsteen song, it seems so obvious.
The BFMS era is one that seems the most fuzzy, grey or undefined. the Scratchy 45 Days had fairly distinct borders. The KISS Age was also fairly precise. BFMS is the era that my memory questions the most. There are some distinct areas but much of the time i find myself thinking “Hang on was that Boston album then or was it later?”
I think a couple of things are at work here. One being that I was in a new environment where sitting around the house playing records didn’ happen as often as roaming about the countryside following streams or hiking through forests. I had become quite a bit more outdoor oriented which meant leaving music behind. This was a few years before the Sony Walkman or even those early boom boxes.
This was also a point in my life where apart from finding some 8-Track tapes on the side of the road, my music acquisition had come to a halt. I think that this is the main reason behind the issue. I was more or less being flooded with new music from my two cousins. I had a stack of KISS albums and a couple of others like the Star Wars soundtrack but Flavia and Jamie had albums of their own that covered several different artists. Since i wasn’t buying my own music at this time, it makes it easy for all this stuff to get jumbled up. On top of that, I was also checking out my Aunt and Uncles meager record collection. My Aunt and Uncle didn’t seem to be drawn to music in the way that my mom was. My Aunt liked music a lot but she was more into playing her piano, or organ or violin and not so much into collection 45’s or albums. They did have a few but they were more or less Old Timey type stuff. Here are a few samples from that comes to mind
Spike Jones – Cocktails for Two
Cocktails For Two appealed to my appreciation for humor in the way that Benny Bell’s Shaving Cream did.
Eddie Fisher – Oh My Papa
Who can explain why certain combinations of musical notes or the composition of lyrics appeal to us or inspire us?
Marty Robbins – El Paso
I always thought that this was a well told story.
Apart from Switched-On Bach that we already talked about, the bulk of Aunt Roberta’s record were more Christmas and classical compilations that came from gas stations like my mothers. Aunt Roberta was more about the radio. WHOM broadcasting from high on Mt Washington. I can’t recall the contemporary stations that we listened to that came out of New Hampshire.
The last group in that little trifecta courtesy of my cousin was Boston. Their album Don’t Look Back had just come out and Flavia had it. The cover to the original vinyl LP was configured likeit was a double album. I used to look at that cover intently. It had so many cool things going on. There was a placid green valley with crystal mountains and a huge guitar shaped space ship. It was designed to capture my imagination. click on the picture. I included a fairly large one so you can check it out. Inside were some pitcures of the band and a shot of a pair of glitter encrusted high-top sneakers that would play a role in my wedding 10 years later.
