Thanks, I'm Just Browsing

I had about an hour to kill while waiting for them to re-install the cd/mp3 player in my 4Runner, so I wandered around the Best Buy store to pass the time.
For record store day, I did a little article on record stores-which turned out to be an excessively long article that reminisced the importance of those places while honestly acknowledging that I don’t miss them much any more.
There was a long-standing dream that I had where I wanted to run a record store, but who didn’t? The plan was to open up one in Macomb, Illinois-a small college town in West Central Illinois that may have had a record store already, if I recall. I just remember visiting the community once where everyone was in the town square for some celebration. Most of the stores were open to take advantage of the traffic, but the record store was suspiciously closed.
This seemed unbelievably stupid.
So the business plan was to be open during local events and to make sure that every Beatles album was in stock. I was convinced that eventually, people would want to buy every Beatles album ever made.
What stopped me? The owner of the Record Collector.
Actually, he never came out and discouraged me. In fact, it was just the opposite. We were having a conversation once and I was telling him how lucky he was and how I wanted my own record store too. I jokingly said “I would totally buy your store if you ever wanted to sell it.”
Not even a second past before he replied “I’ll sell it to you if you want to buy it.”
I thought he was joking at first, but he was dead serious.
I became suspicious.
Anyone who wanted to sell their established record store that quickly clearly knew something that I didn’t and what was known was probably not that good.
Looking back now, of course, I’m very glad that my “I want to own a record store” dream never made it out of the bullshitting stages.
But back to Best Buy…
I’m walking through the cd section, which if you haven’t been there in a while, you’ll be amazed at how small it is lately. For real: the fucking Blu-Ray DVD section is now competing for its floorspace, and I’m not totally convinced that Blu-Ray is even a legitimate product.
Nonetheless, I slowly make my way through the alphabetized sections just like the old days and not once does anyone approach me. Even the Best Buy staff stays clear of the cd section!
And no wonder: there’s barely anything there nowadays.
I tried to go about the section with a blank slate, looking for anything to jump out at me, but nothing managed to grab my attention.
I thought about Def Leppard’s High ‘N Dry for a moment, but got pissed at the band when I saw that they’d recently released a “deluxe Legacy edition” of Pyromania.
Asking price?
Twenty-two fucking dollars.
Understand, Pyromania was in everybody’s car stereo when it was first released. Everybody’s. You could not drive down Main Street without hearing the ending of “Too loud man! Too loud!” from “Rock Rock (‘Til You Drop)” from someone’s cassette desk. Or “Said welcome to my shooowww!” from “Stagefright.” Or the “Gunter glieben glauchen globen” opening of “Rock Of Ages.”
By the next summer, I was done with Pyromania and Def Leppard.
But High ‘N Dry is a good album. Really good. The last really good Def Leppard album.
Not that Pyromania is bad-I already own it on cd, actually-but it was just the idea that it needed to be revisited, remastered, and reissued as a special edition. It was sterile enough when it was originally released, why did they need to compress it further under the guise of a “deluxe” edition?
Bonus tracks? Well, there is a second disc of a live show from that time period, but no b-sides, outtakes, or demo material.
And for all of this, they’re charging over twenty dollars?
Fuck off!
I made my way to the Jethro Tull section.
That’s right. I said Jethro Tull.
Specifically, Songs From The Wood, Living In The Past and maybe Heavy Horses. Then I’d be done with Jethro Tull.
All Best Buy had was the obligatory Aqualung and multiple copies of greatest hits compilations. They also had some live disc from a Jethro Tull from a few years ago, which I thought was pretty pointless. To be totally honest, I actually saw the show-or something similar to it-just a few weeks ago, which got me into the Jethro Tull section to begin with.
But thanks to a diminishing inventory, there would be no Jethro Tull purchases tonight.
Throughout the aisle, I kept noticing cds packaged in boxes with eco-friendly shopping bags. You know, the ones you’re supposed to bring to the grocery store with you. At first, I thought that maybe the bags featured the name of the band or artist-but no, they are just standard issue green bags with some recycle logo that even grocery stores themselves have moved away from.
It didn’t look like there was any jewel case in the box either.
Did you catch that?
It’s housed in a fucking box! Just like those long-boxes that they did away with two decades ago for environmental concerns! So here’s an “eco friendly” item packaged in a very non-eco friendly way with a music cd that really has no connection with the shopping bag whatsoever. Who approved this?
And the cds that you can get? Usually they’re greatest hit compilations (big surprise) of artists like Pat Benatar. Hit me with your best shop(ping bag)!
Moving down from the B section, I noticed an album that I hadn’t seen in years, Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s 4 Way Street, a double live album that I had no intention of actually buying, but I wanted to gander at anyway.
Asking price?
$27.99.
Now this is a double album, but $27.99 is just dumb.
This wasn’t a re-issue. There were no bonus tracks. This was a case of a long-forgotten album that is collecting dust, living in an era where cd sales are almost non-existent because of the perception that cds are overpriced pieces of filler.
And here was CSN&Y proving exactly that.
At this stage of the game, there’s no reason for this or any other title that doesn’t boast some matter of collectability can’t be marked down for quick sale. If that $30 copy of 4 Way Street hasn’t sold by now, it isn’t going to.

Meet The New Boss (Same As The Old Boss)

Glam-Racket reached somewhat of a milestone today: it was banned at work. For some reason, the site was tagged by the IT department so that now every time I try to access it, I get a nasty message indicating that it is banned by the “administrator.”
While I don’t troll around at my own site at all hours of the day, I occasionally will transpose a Word document or two with the idea that I’ll be able to finish my thoughts later, without interruption. It’s not that big of a deal; I can always just send the item to my email addy, but it is nice to get the formatting shit started while on the company dime.
Besides, they’ve changed my lunch schedule so I don’t have anyone cool to chill with in the cafeteria so I just hang in my cubicle and surf the net with my delicious ham, turkey, and havarti sandwich, Cheese Its, and whatever little bag of cookies that I swipe from the kids (this week has been Dora the Explorer animal crackers).
So now, the site has joined the ranks of MySpace, Facebook, Hotmail, and Cum Fiesta. It’s a proud moment here.
In other news:
I passed a test that I originally flunked at word (poor study habits) which means something, but I can’t really figure out what. I learned some shit about annuities, which has no bearing on my job whatsoever.
The little man E apparently does not enjoy going to the Episcopal Church. I dragged his ass there last Sunday (he refers to it as the “Halloween” church because of all the stained glass depictions of Peter Murphy in the windows. He’d rather stay home and watch Yo Gabba Gabba, but who wouldn’t? Oh yeah, we had to enroll him into kindergarten, which is mind-blowing.
Speaking of: Calli is ready to fucking walk (already!), is getting in her teeth (cute!) and is starting to get a little attitude (fuck!). She enjoys wrestling around, kissing the boys at daycare, and chewing on everything. She also has a penchant for dancing (she especially likes the Juno soundtrack and crawling around naked.
The wife is good. I enjoy having sex with her.
Life is pretty swell.
It’s kind of a drag that I don’t have a helluva lot of time to do all the reviews I want to or devote a ton of time listening to music like I used to.
Priorities, baby.
At the same time, I’m thoroughly enjoying going back and searching for those off-the-wall albums that I remember owning at one point in time before mysteriously losing it or (even worse) selling it. It’s fun being able to remember the words to some of this shit, even when it may have been in upwards of three decades since I last heard it.
For real: I spun Jethro Tull’s Heavy Horses the other night after everyone went to be and remembered every fucking word to “The Mouse Police Never Sleep” even after it’s been decades removed from any playback machine.
And fuck you: Jethro Tull had a few decent jams back in the day.

Living In The Past

Jethro Tull. What the fuck? Can anyone possibly like these guys? I mean, they rank pretty fucking low on the cool meter and it’s hard to remember a time in which they were ever cool. But they were once. And I tolerate them.
These unshaved English minstrels pooh-poohed around hard rock in the late 60’s and, from what I’ve been told, were second to The Who during The Rolling Stones’ “Rock & Roll Circus.” I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never seen “Rock & Roll Circus” and, prior to Tull’s “Living In The Past” single, I know jack squat about Jethro Tull.
For some reason, “Living In The Past” b/w “Christmas Song” entered into my singles collection when it was originally released. I thought the flute sounded cool, but consider that even a fart sound pretty cool to a 6 year old. I liked the b-side of the single too because Ian Anderson references Santa at the end of it. To a 6 year old, Santa’s pretty fucking cool too.
The following year, Jethro Tull’s “A Passion Play” made its way into my album collection. The artwork was cool: a ballerina bleeding from the mouth graced the black and white cover art while a more appropriate one graced the back sleeve. The gatefold album opened to reveal a mock play program guide. One figures that this was to represent the actual performance of a passion play.
When one finally gets around to playing the one track album (literally, if you don’t include the “intermission” piece) they’ll find that there is very little tying this album together. Occasionally, you’ll hear a word about “acting,” “passion,” “play,” and combinations of the last two words, but that’s really all a listener has when looking for some linear meaning. And when you approach “A Passion Play” with any attempt at linear thought, you’ll walk away from it considering the effort to be one of the most worthless albums ever cut.
Consider approaching it instead with no expectations and with an eye on execution. When I do this, I find “A Passion Play” to be a work of extreme curiosity and intricate performances. Essentially, there are different songs within the one track structure of the album, but they’re segmented affairs filled with lyrics like “the ice cream lady wet her drawers to see you in the passion play.” It’s as if Ian and company simply threw some lyrics together without any idea that maybe they should review and possibly rewrite some passages after they worked out the musical arrangements.
And there’s where the album really takes off. The men of Tull pull out some incredible musical chops on the album, with total disregard for the fact that all of the rehearsal time would be spent on accompanying a piece that would be universally panned upon release.
For a young boy, that kind of highbrow criticism was lost. I knew Dylan wrote some strange words at that age, so it was totally acceptable for me to hear the lines:
“And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. (The examining body examined her body.)”
Plus it had the interlude “The Hare That Lost His Spectacles.” This is a fucking children’s story placed smack dab in the middle of the rockin’! As a child, it was cool. As an adult, it was annoying…until I picked up the cd re-issue of “A Passion Play” and saw the promotional clip for the “song” that was included on the cd. Its trippy Alice In Wonderland meets Winnie The Pooh is refreshingly bad and nicely dated to 1973.
Apparently, there is an actual story to the album. There is a guy who dies, he’s taken to a viewing room to revisit moments in his life, he’s sent to Heaven, doesn’t like it, sent to Hell, doesn’t like that either, so the fucker is reborn again. Got it? Fuck it, just nod like a retard and agree “the rain only gets in sometimes and the sun never leaves you alone” is a pretty clever line, even when you’re not baked.

The album made enough of an impact on me to explore Jethro Tull further with the albums “Heavy Horses” and “Songs From The Wood.” Both of these albums were purchased on 8-track and have not been replaced digitally. I did throw down some cash for a Tull comeback album of sorts called “Broadsword And The Beast” or something, but the album sucked and I sold it back to the record store a few weeks later. It must have been bad enough for me to even avoid some of Tull’s more popular moments, or I must have finally grown up enough to realize that they were an uncool band to continue supporting.
But fuck that shit: I actually like “A Passion Play.” I love the pretentiousness of it, I love the grandeur of nothing, and I love guys that wear overalls when they rock. Seriously, every dude in Jethro Tull looks like a farmer down the road in Iowa. I’ll grant you that the farmer’s probably growing organic foods and weed at his farm, but he is a man of the earth nonetheless.
Probably my biggest respect now comes from the fact that at their core, J.T. is a band firmly entrenched in England’s musical roots. And as uncool as that looks or sounds, it’s pretty cool that some hippies stumbled on to the idea and were able to make a pretty successful career out of it.
Did Ian go punk? Fuck that shit, Ian didn’t even go disco. He did go a little overboard with the “A” album where he starts the thing as an overdue solo album, but then realizes there’s more money to be made on a Jethro Tull tour than an Ian Anderson one. The only notoriety they seemed to get during the 80’s was a “Best Heavy Metal” award at the Grammy’s and they only won that because half of the voting committee had heard of them.
For the past 15 years, Tull has pretty much stuck to a compilation album every three years followed by the occasional memory lane tour. I’m sure that they’ve released a few original titles during this time, but name me a rock station that plays them. Like other progressive sorts, theirs is only pursued by hardcore fans, glanced at by novices, and ignored by children who now know John Fogerty was once on The Wiggles. A musical retard would also add that the drummer for Crowded House, who just committed suicide, also had a recurring role on that God-forsaken children’s show.
Anyway, for all of you musical elitist who constantly bag on the Tull: I completely understand and will even provide you with stones to throw. But when we’re done talking about how pretentious a progressive rock band can be, I’ll throw in “A Passion Play” to remind myself how innocent even the most overreaching band can be when listened through child’s ears.