My Musical Evolution – Page 35 – Mapping Influences Over Time

My Musical Evolution – Part 73 BFMS Found On a Country Road

As we discussed in the previous post, while jogging on one of Vermont’s Country Roads just north of Saxton’s River, I found a box that among other things contained some 8-Track Tapes. Of the half a dozen or so tapes, I kept 3. I’m pretty sure that I listen to all of them at first and decided that the other ones where not my style. The ones I hung on to each had roots in the Scratchy 45 Days. Was that part of why I decided to keep them?

All I know was that at first, I was really crazy about the sound of The Ventures and listened to it quite a bit. However, John Denver struck a chord with me that for some reason I could not stop listening to those two tapes. [Greatest Hits, Back Home Again]

I am at a loss to explain why at this time in my life, the KISS kid was relentlessly playing John Denver albums over and over again to the point where my cousin had had enough and took them and hid them [maybe even threw them away] I can only guess that being a city kid that elected to leave the city for a small village in the green mountains of Vermont, John Denver’s song spoke directly to me. Simple, slow folksy stuff that described a pure life in majesty of natural surroundings. John was talking about Colorado and West Virginia but to me, he was talking about Vermont. Maybe my love for these songs is really an expression of my love for Vermont. I never did buy a John Denver Album on vinyl, 8-track or cassette. After the loss of my 8-Tracks I really didn’t listen to John Denver again until I replaced those 8-Travks with CDs.

To this day 30 years later, these songs remind me of the outdoor adventures I had in the forests, rivers and mountian tops in Vermont. Everything seemed so clean, crisp and friendly. I think about the miles I put on my old red Schwinn on those old country roads.

Yeah, mom had a few John Denver records mixed in the Scratchy 45’s but it wasn’t until these 8-Tracks in Vermont that I would become a true fan of John Denver. I don’t listen to him like I did then but I eventually replaced my missing 8-Tracks with CDs As I sit here listening to these songs again, I realize that John Denver is one of those artists that I don’t really play in mixed company. You know as background music or driving in the car. With John Denver, there is something uniquely personal about these albums that leads me to listen to them when I’m all alone. I guess that I feel that any guests that I try to share them with would not have the emotional attachment to them or the context or whatever so I just keep them to myself. I’m not ashamed of liking these old John Denver albums, it’s just personal.

Poems, Prayers And Promises

Rhymes And Reasons

Starwood In Aspen

Take Me Home Country Roads

Sunshine On My Shoulders

Annie’s song

Cool And Green and Shady

Back Home Again

Sweet Surrender

This Old Guitar

My Musical Evolution – Part 72 BFMS Found On The Run

So what can you do when you are a middle school aged boy living in the foothills of the Green Mountains in a town that would make Cicely, Alaska look like a booming metropolis? You ride your bike and run on the miles and miles of hidden trails and old dusty roads. Exploring. One day as I was jogging along a stretch of a little used roadway, something in the woods caught my attention. Amongst all that green were a few colors that I didn’t expect. Upon further investigation, I found a box that contained half a dozen 8-Track tapes and a few other items that were of such low interest that I’ve forgotten what they were. I remember it was a box full of “stuff” but only three of the items became mine. Three 8-Track tapes. The Ventures – Walk Don’t Run, John Denver – Greatest Hits, John Denver – Back Home Again.

First, The Ventures – Walk Don’t Run. If you have been following along from the beginning, you’ll recall that the Ventures’ Hawaii 5-0 theme was an early favorite and that later on the anonymous “Doo-Doo-Doo” song. Somehow though, for me, The Ventures didn’t exist as an entity until this 8-Track.

I remember being nervous about putting an 8-Track that I found by the side of the road into my Aunt’s 8-Track player. Would it even play? Worse yet, would it destroy my Aunt’s 8-Track player? Eventually curiosity put its foot down and I was delighted with the twangy, early 60’s sound of surf guitars. I became of fan instantly. There is something about the Ventures. I won’t say timeless because it is quite the opposite. Their music always seems to make me think of life on the west coast in 1963. Maybe it is because the Ventures never seem to make the cut when it comes to the Oldies radio stations. So much other music from bygone era’s seems to get recycled in some fashion and thus can transcend in a way. Think about it, when was the last time you accidentally heard a Ventures song? Maybe Rebel Rouser sneaked onto the Forrest Gump soundtrack but that was Duane Eddy.

So who gets the credit for this influence? As I think back on it now, the contents of that box in the woods had to have been stolen from somebody’s car and abandoned there. Why else would a box of perfectly useful 8-Tracks make it’s way to the side of a dirt road in Vermont? If I take a minute to think about it, so many things had to happen just right in order for me to know about the Ventures. Somebody bought the 8-Track, somebody else stole it out of their car [probably] and left it on the side of the road. I happened to be in Vermont and discover it while on a run before it was destroyed by weather or cunsumed by wild animals, my aunt had an 8-Track player and the the tape worked. The result is that I’ve been a fan of the Ventures since the late 1970’s.

I have no idea what happened to my Walk Don’t Run 8-Track. I’m pretty sure that it was discarded along with my last 8-Track player which would have been some time in 1984. I’m pretty sure that it didn’t end trasgically like so many of the casssettes that I owned did. We’ll get to them later. Perhaps my cousin is to blame. As you’ll see in the next post, my John Denver 8-Tracks were abducted.

For me, apart from those early entries in the Scratchy 45 Days, this 8-Track was my Ventures world until I’d pick up some CD’s in the late 1980’s but that is getting ahead of the story.

Night Train

Walk Don’t Run

Sleep walk

My Musical Evolution – Part 71 Getting Switched-On To Classical

Was it destiny that brought us to Switched-On Bach on Robert Moog’s birthday? As we discussed in earlier posts, I have had some exposure to Classical music. In the late 1970’s it was my Aunt’s Switched-On Bach album that really connected me to Classical. The artist was called Walter Carlos back then but goes by Wendy these days. Switched On Bach was a great step into Classical. The instrument was a Moog synthesizer created by birthday boy Robert Moog. Moog developed the Moog synthesizer in the 1960’s and in 1968 Walter/Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach.

I loved the electronic sound of the synthesizer and the mathematical compositions by Bach. In the past I listened to classical pieces on mom’s old gas station albums but never got into it enough to learn the names of the compositions or the composers. With Switched-On Bach, it was obvious that Bach was the master behind the music and it lead to me seeking out more Bach works. In essence, Wendy Carlos is responsible for Bach being my first favorite composer. Even so, I was still years away from my first Classical music purchase.

It is sad that Wendy Carlos so aggressively scours youtube.com for any postings of his/her pieces then threatens legal action on anybody who dares to share. I really would have like to have shared some of them with you. They really are fantastic. As I searched for Switched-On Bach, I found several Bach pieces played on synthesizers and more than a few negative messages directed at Wendy Carlos. Even Amazon doesn’t seem to be able to supply samples.

I guess all I can do is show you a few samples that kind of convey the spirit of this album. I would have to consider Switched-On Bach as one of the cornerstone albums of my life. Mom’s classical compilations where the fertile ground but Switched-On Bach represents the root of what would become my classical collection.

My Musical Evolution – Part 70 BFMS

Where do these often lame titles for my musical eras come from? In my mind, my less than perfect memory and desire to categorize and organize has always had these “groupings” for the music that I have collected over the years. There are maybe half a dozen main categories. You’ve already been through The Scratchy 45 Days and what I’ve called The KISS Age. As you seen there are little side spurs to the trail that often go unidentified. The next section has been known as BFMS which stands for Bellows Falls Middle School. It could have been called something like The End Of The 70’s. I don’t know why I chose BFMS. it is kind of like the nickname you don’t really want but it is the one that sticks. I guess BFMS made sense since it covers the music that I was listening to while attending BFMS.

This a somewhat of a departure from the naming convention used so far. The Scratchy 45 Days were named for the hundreds or 45 rpm records that mom had. The KISS Age centered around the band KISS which tells you how impactful I believe they were. No other bands have risen to the level of having an Age named after them as far as I can tell. With BFMS, the name comes directly from the school and is the first era in which the window of time is given this much weight. Again, I will have to apologoze to chronology fans. As with previous eras and ages, BFMS is not an orderly manifest of musical release but rather a bucket in time in which all the music has been carelessly tossed. I’ll be pulling these out of the bucket with little regard to release dates or charting appearances. The basic window runs from September of 1977 to September of 1979. That would be 7th grade, 8th grade and the follwing summer leading up to high school.

A couple of the most impactful selections came courtesy of my younger cousin Jamie. BFMS had the annual magazine drive to raise funds for the school. The kids were sent out to sign up anybody they could for magazine subscriptions. There were prizes involved if you could sell ridiculous amounts of magzine subnscritptions. My cousin Jamie was highly motivated. She sold enough to get a stereo system and a bunch of albums. I think I got a giant slo-poke for subscribing to SKI magazine myself.

The stereo she got wasn’t anything ultra amazing. It was a good sounding 1970’s style unit with a turntable, AM FM radio and possibly an 8-Track player. When I compare it to some of the systems I bought just a few years later, it makes for interesting design conversation. Anyway, it sounded good and the music she chose, well I have no idea where she got the idea. These next few came from Jamie.

Billy Joel – Rosalinda’s Eyes. Up to this point my exposure to Billy Joel was only Piano Man. Jamie got Billy Joel’s 52nd Street which to this day is still my favorite Billy Joel album. Is it for sentimental reasons? Perhaps, maybe it was because everybody plays The Stranger including me a couple years later. I don’t know there is something about it that takes me back to sitting on the hardwood floow in her room listening to Billy Joel by the glow of the dials on her new stereo. I wrote about 52nd Street at BunchoShizzo.com you can check it out there. I just did I wrote that a year and a half ago and said a lot of the same stuff I said here. interesting. You may not know that 52nd Street was the first album to be commercially sold on this new format called Compact Disc. I was 7 or 8 years away from my first CD player and at the time when Jamie and I were listening to 52nd Street almost nobody had heard of CDs.

Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven. What possessed Jamie to get Led Zeppelin 4? It just seems so uncharacteristic. I had never formally heard of Led Zeppelin but quickly became a fan of this album.

Donna Summer – On The Radio. Quite a departure from KISS, eh? Disco had reached the country roads of southern Vermont. I thought Donna Summer was beautiful and the songs on this album may not have been classics but they certainly are unforgettable.

Bee Gees – Night Fever. I’m so glad that she got the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack. I never would have. This album had so many great songs and evokes such emotion. Again it is the nostalgia of innocent middle school dances that I’m referring to not the excesses of Studio 54.

Kansas – Magnum Opus. Wow. Kansas amazed me. It seemed to blend the orchestration that I like about John Williams and the London Symphony and popular music. So much more intricate than KISS. Leftoverture would become one of my favorite albums of the time.

I have to thank my cousin Jamie for sharing her music with me.

My Musical Evolution – Part 69 The KISS Age

Alive II was released and found its way into my collection of albums which still was comprised of mostly KISS albums. Alive II brought a temporary renewed interest in KISS. It was cool to hear the live translations of some of my favorite songs from the previous three studio albums. Side four was a few studio tracks. At the time I wondered why they didn’t do all four sides live. I recently noticed that they didn’t include any songs that were on the first live album. All three lives sides only included songs from Destroyer, Rock And Roll Over, and Love Gun. Side four would have been where those favorites from the first three albums would have lived.

The photo on the inside cover showed what looked like an amazing stage set up with stairs and fire and rising platforms. I enjoyed the record but it didn’t carry quite the impact it would have year later only because of the competing demands for my attention. I was in a new environment with new activities, new friends and hearing a lot of new music. Priorities were changing. It isn’t that I liked KISS any less, they just occupied less real estate in my mind.

All through the KISS Age, Ace was my favorite. Was it the spaceman character or the lead guitar that captured my imagination? I can honestly say that I don’t know for certain. I begged my parents for an electric guitar for a few years in hopes of learning to play like Ace. They never did. Six years later, I bought my first real six string at the 5 and dime, well actually it was a pawn shop down town. It was a horrible budget model but I’m getting ahead of the story. I only mention it because the root of my desire to play guitar was right here with Ace Frehley in the KISS Age.

My Musical Evolution – Part 68 The KISS Age

The KISS age was beginning to wind down. Out in the country, I didn’t have access to all those magazines and record stores that fuelled my KISS addiction. The guys in school didn’t seem all that interested in KISS. More importantly, the girls I was interested in certainly weren’t interested in KISS. If I was going to KISS the girls it seemed that I’d have to kiss KISS goodbye. OK so maybe it wasn’t quite that dramatic.

I think the biggest change was that I was really listening to the radio more. I was also hagning out with my two female cousins more. Flavia was a couple years older and her sister Jamie was a year and a half younger than me. By this time the classic rock of the 1970’s was all but gone and the Disco era was in full swing and the popular music on the radio was more polished sounding.

This album, Love Gun, came out and to be honest looking at it all these years later it really does invoke a certain Spinal Tap-ness. Love Gun would be the last studio album of KISS’ that I’d buy for a number of years. I’d get the Alive II follow up later on and I’d get Ace Frehley’s solo album for Christmas a year later. I never stopped liking KISS and even now with this trip down memory lane I’ve listened to a lot of my favorite old KISS tunes and still enjoy them completely.

KISS – Love Gun

KISS – Christine Sixteen

KISS – I Stole Your Love

KISS – Shock Me

KISS – Then She Kissed Me

I can’t put my finger on it but I really liked the cover of Then She Kissed Me it seemed in sync with those 7th grade notions of kissing girls under the stars of a clear Vermont sky.

My Musical Evolution – Part 67 KISS Meets The Phantom

As I started 7th grade, it seemed that music took a temprary back seat. There was so many new things going on. I was in a new school hundreds of miles from home. In 7th grade it was the first time that I changed classrooms for every class. It was the first year without recess. I didn’t know how I was going to survive. The big KISS news was that they mnade a movie that was going to be televised. Again it is hard to imagine our world without the internet. I’m not even sure how I found out about it. When it was on I made sure I was in front of the TV at my Aunt’s house. It was a ridiculously small black & white TV. I think i even captured the move on audio cassette as it was one. If VCR’s were around i would have done that.

KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park might have been the most corny production ever but it had KISS and thus had my attention. I’m 100% certain it i thought it was better then it actually was. I recently acquired the movie as part of the KISSology DVD series but I’m almost afraid to watch it.

My Musical Evolution – Part 66 Did I Mention Donny & Marie?

I know we talked about Donny Osmond and Donny & Marie in the context of the Scratchy 45 days but I think it is worth mentioning Dony & Marie again in the context of their variety show. I’m not sure how influential this really is in the scope of My Musical Evolution but Dony & Marie had a music based TV show that our family watched every week. I can’t really recall anything specific about it. Even the I’m a little bit country. I’m a little bit Rock and Roll part is fuzzy at best. so I’m just throwing this out there in case you see somethng that I might have overlooked.

Well there are a few samples. I think it captures the essence even if it doesn’t bring back any specific memories. I wonder if we’ll make any connections down the road.

My Musical Evolution – Part 65 The KISS Age

I’m not sure when it was that I decided to abandon the notion of going to Franklin Junior High and instead attend Bellows Falls Middle School. Here are a couple of things that of which i’m certain. My Aunt, Uncle and 2 cousins lived in Vermont. When I was very young, somewhere in the 4 to 6 range, we went there to visit them. One of the things we did there was walk around the campus of Vermont Academy. At the conclusion of the tour, my uncle asked me if i was going to go to school there. Isaid “Yes” and everybody laaughed. I eventually did go to Vermont Academy. The other thing I knew was that after spending two consecutive summers there, I truly loved Vermont. I loved beingout of the city where the only barriers I faced was how far my bicycle would take me. Back in the city, it was pretty restrictive. I don’t blame my mother for being protective but it may have been a little paranoid. We weren’t allowed to wander too far and there really wasn’t much to do unless you had money and a ride.

The time seemed right. I was going to a new school anyway, I might as well take the plunge and go to a new school 785 miles away. So in August of 1977 I packed up my KISS records and headed east. It was a brilliant decision. I thought so then and I still think so now. As a parent, I have to give my mother heaps of credit for letting me go. I can only imagine the feeling of letting my son go away to school at 12 years of age. One of the first things I did when I got there was make my Aunt Roberta go see Star Wars.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ll probably say it so many more times that you’ll be sick of hearing it. There are songs linked to people, there are songs linked to moments in time. There is a song linked to my first day of school at Bellows Falls Middle school. The routine was to get up and turn on the radio. i’d listen to music while getting ready for school. On this day, the song on the radio was Blood Sweat & Tears – And When I Die

Was this song some kind of foreshadowing? Blod Sweat & Tears? And When I Die? Was the radio trying to tell me something? I listened to the message even if I didn’t understand it. Funny how the mind works and how vivd the sound of this song makes recall that morning 35 years ago.

It was a different world out there in the clean and sleepy hamlets of New England. You know, most of the kids in my grade had never heard of KISS and the ones that did didn’t have any KISS records. It was a big mental shift to make. To leave TV and records and movies and shopping malls and embrace nature and doing stuff outdoors and sports that is playing sports in school not watching NFL games. There was music there too but it was almost always on the radio and not in a neatly organized collection. Not yet any way. It wasn’t long before I was sharing my KISS usic with my new friends much to their parents dismay I’m sure. I was the new kid from the city like Kevin Bacon in Footloose. I had to be a trouble maker.

My Musical Evolution – Part 64 A New Hope

I’ve been spinning my wheels and and trying to keep this transitional period organized. As I probably mentioned before, so much seemed to be going on at this point in my life. In my mind the timeline is written on a piece of paper that is crumpled and wadded up so it seems that things are out of order and everything touches everything else. I’m trying to smooth it out to its original linear form. I had just completed 6th and final grade at Franke Park and thus would be changing schools when the fall semester started. I was still heavily invested in KISS but something else happened that summer. I saw Star Wars about 50 times. It is so odd to come to this realization at this very moment but it just occured to me that my Franke Park Elementary school friends whith whom I shared KISS, The Six Million Dollar Man, Planet Of The Apes and so much more, we never talked about Star Wars. We didn’t because it happened after school was over.

Anyway, like the rest of the world, I was hooked on Star Wars. I couldn’t get enough of it. Books, magazines, posters, toys, T-Shirts and of course the original soundtrack. As I mentioned before in the disney era, before VCRs were everywhere, records were as close as we could get to reliving the film in our homes. I acquired the soundtrack and would play it over and over visualizing the film in my imagination. At first I loved it because of the movie but I also believe that it gave me a deeper appreciation for a full orchestra. All of those instruments teaming up to create such a wide range of sound and emotion.

I was the perfect age when Star Wars first hit theaters. I was 12 years old and fit the target demographic to a T. As the Disco era was coming into prominence, a Disco version of Star Wars was to be expected.