Tag: Popular Culture

Last week we examined the original vinyl record of Live at Leeds.  Due to the technological limitations of vinyl, it was only about 45 minutes, give or take a couple, long.  The album was rereleased in 1995 on CD, and because that medium is capable of much more time, around two hours, many more tracks were added that had been recorded at the time.

Tonight we shall listen to those tracks and discuss whether or not we think that they are good.  I think that they are all no worse than very, very good and that many of them are outstanding.  Please listen and tell me what you think.  For those of you who have not signed up for an account, please do so so that you can comment in future.

Let us get started.

Live at Leeds was the first live recorded record album by The Who that was legitimate.  There were plenty of rather crudely recorded, pirated versions of many of their live performances, but back in 1970 those analogue ones, mostly recorded by audience members under cover, rapidly were degraded by the very process of analogue to analogue copying, making even third generation copies almost unintelligible.   That is too bad, because some of those performances were great.

After the huge success of Tommy, and the concomitant success of the associated tour, Kit Lambert and The Who decided to record an actual live record that would capture their sound.  Live at Leeds did it well, but was too short because of the limitations of vinyl records at the time.  Remember, and I have covered this topic before, only 45 minutes, give or take a few, were possible with the vinyl technology at the time.

Let us examine what is really a wonderful record.  Note that there is very little video available, so that just the music is usually given here.  By the way, the album charted at #3 in the UK and at #4 in the US.

Hello, all!  This installment was inspired by Kossack dsteffen who correctly identified a rather obtuse reference to the abovenamed comedy troupe in the comments at the big orange Wednesday past on My Little Town.  I gave him two honorable mentions in the comments there, but perhaps this more than honorable one will get him some notice.

The Firesign Theatre was, and continues to be still, a very bizarre and very funny comedy troupe.  This is going to be an extremely difficult piece, because most of their work was on vinyl, and around 45 minutes long.  In addition, everything sort of interlocked, so what is hilarious in context is likely to fall flat without the previous half hour or so of it.

I shall attempt to extract the ones that can sort of stand alone, and for the ones that do not shall attempt to include what might seem to be rather long pieces that do not make sense until the end.  Hey, that is what we do here sometimes.

This may be a bit of an enigmatic title, so I shall explain posthaste.  I have quit listening to and watching the extreme right wing talkers.  I have monitored them for years, so you do not have to do so, but I finally just had enough, and could not take it any more.  There are a couple of reasons, but the largest one was that I was stupider after listening than before.

Ma always told me that after I read a book, listened to a radio program, or watched a TeeVee show to ask myself one question:  what have I learnt?  In the case of the radical, hate filled, ultra right wing talkers, NOTHING lately.  I learnt some time ago who they were and what they were preaching, and it is nothing but hatred and fear.  I guess that I was just listening more recently for how they would do it.

That is enough.  I am gone.  I quit listening to the drug addled and deafened Limbaugh some months ago because all he does is bellow.  More to follow.

This shall complete our discussion of Tommy, the seminal record album by The Who from early in 1969.  We had an excellent discussion last week, and hope to have an equally good, if not even better one tonight.  I was particularly interested that there was a range of thoughts about it, from some who just hated it to those who just loved it.  That is fine.  That is just personal taste.

I should go on record to say that my mum liked Overture.  She was pretty reserved about music other than the Swing Era kind, since she came of age then, but allowed to me that she really liked the French horn.  I was pretty dumb at the time that we were listening to, on the radio, one of the most important bands that ever existed.

With no more ado, here is the second disk (the third side) of Tommy.  Please comment profusely.

In 1969, the seminal Tommy was released by The Who.  Track Records, The Who’s own brand, in collaboration with Polydoor was the UK record company, and in the United States Decca was.  I have a mint Decca one.  It was billed as the first rock opera, but it actually was not.  There had been at least a couple before Tommy came to us.

Not counting the composition effort (by far the bulk of it by Pete Townshend), it took the better part of year to record, edit, and redub the work.  This was Kit Lambert, their producer, at his finest, and also extremely fine efforts by all of the band and the production and engineering staff.  It is truly a masterpiece.

This piece is a result of a couple of pieces that I have written before and some interaction in comments on pieces from others about prescription drugs advertisements.  They are rife in the popular culture these days, on TeeVee, on radio, and in print.  I really think that this is a horrible idea, and will explain as time progresses.

First, I must do a bit of historical treatment.  When I was in pharmacy school (I did not stay long, because I decided that I should be on the other side of the wall, developing new drugs, but that did not work out either) adverts for prescription drugs were only allowed in professional medical journals.  I mean it.

Those you 50 or older will probably, if you think hard enough about it, days when these drugs were not in the popular media.  Some of you might also recall that tobacco adverts were!  I still remember the jingles for cigars and cigarettes.

I am assuming that tomorrow will not be the end of the world, as the Camping followers believe, so did not write about The Who for the last time tonight.  This piece proves the point that I do not always write about things that I really like.  This was not really a bad band, but in my opinion were not that important creatively.  Some, perhaps many, will beg to differ me, and that is fine.  I do not really dislike them, but they would not make it into my “stranded on a desert isle” box of music.

They actually had quite a few hits that charted well, a TeeVee show, and of course laid the groundwork for the later solo career of Kenny Rogers.  He moved towards country and out of rock later, and this post only includes treatment of The First Edition material.

First of all, this is really a very poorly titled record album.  It had nothing to do about being on tour.  It is actually their first compilation album on Decca, their American label.  When this came out in 1968, the way that songs were released was a bit different than later, but it looks like, in the digital age, we are sort of returning to the older ways.

Back then, the single ruled (actually, they were doubles, 45 RPM vinyl pressings with an “A” side (the “good” song) and a “B” side (the ugly cousin)).  That ceased to be the norm after around 1969 or so, when the album started to dominate and singles were released in accordance with how well specific tracks on the album got airtime.

In any event, this is a compilation from many singles the The Who had released over several years.  It had a companion in the UK, and we shall discuss that presently.

For those of you who read my pieces (here, and my other two regular series, Pique the Geek and My Little Town), you know that I appreciate multitalented individuals.  This artist certainly fulfills that criterion.  Not only a talented musician himself, he is also a studio wizard, outstanding technician, and excellent music producer.

I am not his biggest fan, but I do appreciate his talent and like very much several of his original works.  Please do not take this statement as holding him in some sort of dislike:  I like him very much but there are others that I like better.  This is not to detract from his contributions, but rather to describe my musical tastes.

He has been around for a long, long time with no apparent sign of quitting.  Please come with us to examine the career and some of the better (in my opinion) work of this creative genius.