Book's Music podcast #72

For those of you who haven't listened in awhile (or at all), I have a music podcast at PodOMatic.com called Book's Music. You can stream and listen or download it to your digital player of choice. Good music all around from the vaults of me.

Digging In The Magazine Box: The Cure

An ad for a 1984 Cure show in Seattle.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: UB40

Unemployed? No problem, go check out the UB40 show. Because you know, a "UB40" in England means... eh, you know the deal. An ad for a UB40 show in Seattle, circa 1984.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Ted Nugent

Say what you want, but The Nuge is The Nuge, and will be that way until death. Here he is, an ad for a show where I'm sure he played like there was no tomorrow. Nothing mellow here.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: The Hooters mini-LP review

I wasn't a diehard fan of these guys, so I'm not sure why I saved this record review from Record magazine. I liked a few songs by The Hooters but other than that, that's it. It's a review of a record they did before they moved on to a major.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Green Monkey Records

There was a time when C/Z, eMpTy, and Sub Pop did not exist. One of the great labels of Seattle in the early to mid-80's was Green Monkey, a place where you could order a catalog and spend money on some good music. Here's a blurb from The Rocket about a 4-hour radio show organized by the label's Tom Dyer and some young kid named Jonathan Poneman.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Quiet Riot

First off, Happy Kamehameha Day to my fellow kama'aina.

Yes friends, there was a time when Quiet Riot could fill up a place like the Seattle Center Coliseum. In truth, they were one of the biggest bands in heavy metal once upon a time, and like many bands who were at the time, they've received a bit of bad rep for simply working.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Eurythmics

Circa 1985.

Digging In The Magazine Box: Bryan Adams

I saw Bryan Adams when he and his band opened up for The Police in Honolulu at the Aloha Stadium. Good show. Here's a show that may have been just as good, circa 1985.

Thrift Store Archives: Inside Track Rerecording (78 rpm): Side 1

I have not visited thrift stores in quite awhile and I'm sure someone is assuming "damn John, if you're not going to thrift stores you must be broke". Well, it's not so much that I am or am not broke, but gas is high, I don't have a bike to ride around but it's getting to that. Conservation more than "buy records in semi-moderation". But soon, I'll be heading out to a few stores again.

In the meantime, I pulled this record out of the "archives". It's an old 12" 78rpm record that someone made for themselves, similar to Recordios. In this case it was one made on RCA's "Instantaneous Recording Machine", where you would place the record on the record player, turn it on, and it would record you or whatever you were feeding into the microphone. You had one chance and one chance only, and of course these records were one-of-a-kind items. The best ones are those that are personal letters to family members or friends, or where a group of friends decided to go into their basement, have a few drinks, and sing.

Sometimes it was nothing more than someone making a "safety" record of another record, not unlike someone burning a copy of a CD to play in the car (so that the original wasn't ruined). I believe this is the case here, a record with handwriting which says Inside Track Rerecording August 14, 1945 and in red pencil the initials T.V. - ATOMIC BOMB. I decided to create MP3's for the two tracks on side 1. The first one is a song playing straight through, the second song goes almost to the end before it is interrupted by a radio broadcast about the bomb and the threat of Japan. By looking at the thickness of the grooves, it seems there was room at the end to put more content, so you can hear the music and the radio broadcast slightly mixing in, possibly due to the grooves mixing in with each other. It's unusual to hear a jazzy melody play and then lead to a discussion about how the powers that be are playing with the elements of the universe to cause destruction.

With a 78 there will be a lot of pops and crackle, so there was a good amount of editing involved. No noise reduction was used, I prefer to hear surface noise than to have something sound super clean, resulting in taking away elements of the recording itself. Outside of fixing one or two skips, the MP3's represent the recording of both tracks "as is".

If anyone knows what these songs are, or the source of the radio (or perhaps television) broadcast, please send an e-mail.

Side 1 - Track 1 (320kbps)
Side 1 - Track 2 (320kbps)

Digging In The Magazine Box: Siouxsie & The Banshees

Siouxsie Sioux hits Seattle, circa 1985

Digging In The Magazine Box: Frank Zappa

It's hard to believe this man was once of this Earth. Maybe he's jamming with Sun Ra and laughing at the continued stupidity of his former planet.

A few songs from this performance were used on You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 3.

Digging In The Magazine Box: Echo & The Bunnymen

Spare us the cutter, dude. This is an ad for a Seattle appearance from Echo & The Bunnymen, with The Church opening, circa 1985.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Herbie Hancock Album Ad (1984)

Sound System was the album Herbie Hancock made after his highly successful Future Shock LP. This is his "how ya like me now?" look.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Run-DMC

An article from Record magazine:



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Dio/Whitesnake

Dio. Whitesnake. In terms of hard rock and heavy metal, you couldn't get any better than this. Yeah. Circa 1984.

Digging In The Magazine Box: Seattle Headbanger's Ball!!!

YES!!! Being a fan of hard rock and METAL, this was the kind of show I always wanted to go!!! TKO were the pride of Seattle's metal scene, which is why they got the top bill!!! Little did they know that the band below them, Metal Church, would move on to becoming much more than just local "demo tape legends"!!! I didn't attend this, but I did get a chance to see Metal Church when they opened up for Anthrax at the Tacoma Dome!!! Not the main Tacoma Dome floor, but one of those siderooms, where I was able to witness the metal strength of one Jeff Gilbert, who was talking with some friends!!! Not sure of what happened to Shadow, though!!!

Taken from The Rocket!!!



(Click thumbnail to see ad in full!!!)

Digging In The Magazine Box: Steve Lawson Productions

Ads like this sold me to what it could have been like to not only be an artist with all of the great machinery and buttons, but perhaps to become a producer or recording engineer. This, among other things, brought this fat boy joy. $50 an hour for top-notch studio time? When home recording was a distant dream and reality, this was the way to go.

Seattle residents will now know this recording studio as Bad Animals.

Digging In The Magazine Box: Otari MTR multi-track tape machine

There was a time when recording innovation meant not doing a Google and Rapidshare search for plug-ins and w@rez. Even though 4-track home recording was available in the mid-80's, going into a professional recording studio was something most musicians wanted to do. Those who could afford it bought a machine like this for their home/basement studio. Most recording in the 21st century is done in digital, but some say that analog recording still offers the best results. It's safe to say that you will not see ads like this one in magazines anymore, but analog junkies look at machines like this with pride. Taken from The Rocket.

Digging In The Magazine Box: Seattle Helps The Hungry

There was a time in our history when efforts like this weren't considered corny or an opportunity to boost someone's failing career. This is a brief article showing the making of "Give Just A Little", Seattle's answer to the Band Aid/USA For Africa relief effort. Most of you will no doubt remember the songs "Do They Know It's Christmas" and "We Are The World", but what some may not know (or remember) was that it moved many local and regional music scenes to create their own benefit record to help raise money for food relief in Ethiopia and other African countries. The We Are The World compilation album on Columbia featured Canada's contribution, and there was also Hawai'i For Africa's "The Way Of Love".

When I bought my copy of the Seattle Helps The Hungry 45 at the U-District Tower in Seattle, I clearly remember a number of other benefit 45's, including one from Los Angeles featuring a number of Mexican singers and entertainers, and I want to say that Cheech Marin was on it. I don't have an MP3 of the song with me, but the song was very much in the vein of "We Are The World" in that each singer contributed a line or two and it lead to a chorus by everyone in the group. In this case, there were two versions because of the amount of singers who wanted to help out.

The record also represents what the Seattle music scene was circa 1985, and yet this doesn't even begin to truly represent the diversity Seattle's scene had to offer. Had this record been released five years later, the lineup would have been very different. No Kurdt Vanderhoof here, but you did have Uncle Bansai, Jr. Cadillac, Mondo Vita, and (yes) Rail, all of whom were staples of Seattle's live scene in the early to mid-80's. Even Cindi Reinhart was on the record.

The following scan is taken from The Rocket.




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Digging In The Magazine Box: Paul Hardcastle cassingle

There was a time in our history when people used to complain about formats. Vinyl vs. compact disc, 8-tracks vs. reel-to-reel, mini-disc... eh, I don't think too many people debated the merits of an MD (I may be wrong).

There was a time in our history, not so long ago, when record companies wanted to let people know about the great format known as the cassingle. For you new kids, the word "cassingle" is a combination of the words "cassette" and "single", so you would have the contents of a single (for you new kids, that was a 7 inch 45 rpm record, generally with a large center hole that you played on a phonograph/record player/turntable) on a tape. To be honest, before the official format surfaced, I actually made drawings and discographies of songs I would not mind seeing on a new format I created called the "cassingle". At the age of 10 I had no concept of trademarks or patents, otherwise I might have scored big time. When the "cassingle" did surface, I constantly said to myself "I made that".

Some of the first cassingles I saw were titles on IRS Record and one by Devo. But here, in a clipping from Billboard magazine, Chrysalis Records were ready to spread awareness of this new "cassingle" with a song by Paul Hardcastle.

Yes, I did buy this cassingle, and I think I still have it somewhere.



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Digging In The Magazine Box: Vitamix-1984 (cassette review)

Awhile back I transcribed an article about hip-hop from the Pacific Northwest circa 1985, featuring Sir Mix-A-Lot and Vitamix. The former would gain attention outside of the area, while Vitamix's glory remained more low-key.

When I moved from Hawai'i in 1984, Vitamix was one of the first names I became familiar with as a representative of rap music in this new place I called home. One could keep track of his tapes and shows by reading The Rocket but unfortunately I never got a chance to hear any of his work.

This is a review that I've kept all of these years, from The Rocket circa 1984 for his 1984 release.



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An update

First off, for those of you who may have had this web page bookmarked and are wondering where are the updates, I'm sorry. I haven't done any thrifting since my last entry, and of course since then gas prices have gone up big time. I know, "a true vinyl junkie doesn't fear rising gas", but as before I go through droughts and eventually come back. I will be thrifting again very soon.

If this is one stop of many trips you make to read my work, then you know that I haven't been dormant. I remain active on the writing front, so for those who don't know about my other writings, here's a list of where you can go to check out my latest efforts:

The Run-Off Groove (column)
Originating at Music For America, that website shut down which made my column homeless. Rather than wait around, I have moved it to a temporary home and you can read it there, literally next door from this place. Some of the news items and videos I've placed in JB's Music has become a part of my column. I have a new column every week "around" Tuesday, so please bookmark it.

Book's Music (podcast)
This is my podcast, a/k/a my digital broadcast, an hour's worth of music from various sources. New, old, classic, stuff I've found while thrifting, it would be great to be able to expand this to something better. Satellite radio, I know you're waiting for me. Until then, my podcasts are free.

Crut's MySpace page
Crut is of course me and my output as an artist. You can listen to old and new music, be updated on the taking-forever-to-complete new album, and occasional foolishness in the bulletins page.

FudgeFM
A brand new website that will make its grand opening very soon, I blog there along with many other gifted writers, artists, producers, and contributors, become a part of the community you've been longing for.

Okayplayer Reviews
This is the music and DVD reviews section at Okayplayer, the official home page for the hip-hop band The Roots. I've been a member of their writing staff for a little over two years and had been an active member in their forum for about nine, but if you like my column, you'll like the work I've done here, along with reviews from the rest of the OKP writing staff.

For something away from my music:

Book's Foodie (food blog)
Yeah, it's another food blog but it's MY food blog. Updated whenever I can.

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I will be starting a few other blogs very soon, so stay tuned for updates. I'll also be updating JB's Music with some old clippings that for whatever reason I saved. Now it's my time to share.