448. Clifton Chenier: Bogalusa Boogie
449. Cherrelle: Affair
450. Ava Cherry: Streetcar Named Desire
451. Don Cherry: Complete Communion
452. This Is Maurice Chevalier
453. Chic: Risquè
454. Chic: Real People
455. Chic: Take It Off
456. Chic: "Jack Le Freak" 12-inch
457. Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits
458. The Chieftains 2
459. The Chieftains 4
460. Everything You Always Wanted to Hear By the Chiffons
461. Chiffons: Flips, Flops & Rarities
Mixworthy: "Good Times," #453; "Le Freak," #456 (the original, tacked on as a B-
side); "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" #457; "Mná na h Eireann," #459;
"He's So Fine," "Sweet Talkin' Guy," and "Nobody Knows What's Goin' On (In My Mind
But Me)," #460; "What Am I Gonna Do With You (Hey Baby)," #461. The Chieftains piece
was later used in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon--beautiful. And yes, one from Chicago. As
George Costanza said when chastized for eyeing a 15-year-old's cleavage, "What am I,
trying to win an Academy Award here?"
There are a few subsets running through my collection of things I bought because of
specific books. They almost all trace back to the late '70s and early '80s, when the
now out-of-control desire to canonize--I'm as guilty as anyone; I would appear to be
doing exactly that right here--first started to take hold. Some of the more esoteric
examples: there's the Stranded subset (Jesse Winchester), the Logan and Woffinden
Rock Encyclopedia subset (Family's Bandstand--the Logan book was the one with color
reproductions of album sleeves, so that was an extra hook), the Christgau's Record
Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s subset (James Talley's Got No Bread, No Milk, No Mon-
ey, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love), the Rock Critics' Choice subset (which explains
the goofy Can album), and, most influential of all, the Rolling Stone Record Guide
subset, the book that had a lot of future rock-critic weasels such as myself discov-
ering their great mission in life: to collect every single five-star album as desig-
nated by the all-knowing, all-seeing Guide. Hence the Clifton Chenier album, my one
and only zydeco record.
________________________________________________________________________________
462. Chi-Lites: (For God's Sake) Give More Powere to the People
463. Chi-Lites: Greatest Hits
464. Chi-Lites: Half a Love
465. Chilliwack: Dreams, Dreams, Dreams
466. D.J. Chuck Chillout & Kool Chip: Masters of the Rhythm
467. Alex Chilton: Live in London
468. The Chordettes
469. Chris & Cosey: Technĝ Primitiv
470. Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian
471. Chrome: Red Exposure
472. Cimarons: In Time
473. Circle Jerks: Group Sex
474. Eric Clapton: At His Best
475. Dave Clark Five: Having a Wild Weekend
476. The Best of the Dave Clark Five
477. Dee Clark: Keep It Up
Mixworthy: "Have You Seen Her," #462; "Fly at Night (In the Morning We Land)," #465;
"Let It Rain," #474; "Try Too Hard," #475; "When I Call on You," #477. I never liked
the Chi-Lites as much as the Stylistics or Spinners--a couple of other songs by them
are borderline. What I'm really excited about in this lot is discovering that my key-
board is capable of reproducing the crossed-out "o" in the Chris & Cosey album title.
Another Nerve shout-out, this time to Chris Twomey: Hail, Satan!
When I worked upstairs at "Backtracks," a spin-off of the downstairs Sunrise store
specializing in marginally overpriced reissues from the '50s and '60s (our stock was
bought from a similar store a few blocks west, so unavoidably we were overpriced),
we had a lot of people coming in wanting to buy a good compilation by the Dave Clark
Five. This would have been 1988, give or take a year. I think the renewed interest
may have had something to do with a song of theirs turning up in a movie or a commer-
cial, something that was happening with regularity at the time. There wasn't a decent
compilation available, however--the story was that Dave Clark was hoarding all the
masters until he could get some exorbitant amount of money to rerelease them. I seem
to remember that this may have been the result of his having been burned in an Allen
Klein-type scam a few years earlier; sorry the details are so sketchy, but it was all
a long time ago. Anyway, all we had were a few singles and a couple of really shady
collections, the kind that come with a disclaimer about "one or more original mem-
bers." I hope Dave got what he wanted, because I'm guessing the demand has slowed
down a bit in the years since.
________________________________________________________________________________
478. Petula Clark: Downtown
479. Petula Clark: I Couldn't Live Without Your Love
480. Petula Clark: Greatest Hits
481. Sanford Clark: The Fool
482. The Clash (Canadian/British version)
483. The Clash (American version)
484. Clash: Give 'Em Enough Rope
485. Clash: London Calling
486. Clash: 16 Tracks
487. Clash: Sandinista!
488. Clash: Combat Rock
489. Clash: Cut the Crap
490. Class of '55
491. The Classic Swing of Buck Clayton
492. Buck Clayton: Just a Groove
493. Cleftones: Heart and Soul
Mixworthy: "Downtown," #478; "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love," #479; "Don't Sleep
in the Subway" and "I Know a Place," #480; "Garageland," #482; "Complete Control"
and "White Man in Hammersmith Palais," #483; "Train in Vain," #485; "Police on My
Back," #487; "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" #488; "Life Is Wild," #489; "Heart and
Soul" and "Time Is Running Out on Our Love," #493. I think 16 Tracks is the first
bootleg I've listed thus far--I have maybe half a dozen of them. In view of the ways
in which music changes hands today, the idea that they used to cause such a fuss--at
least one Toronto store got shut down for selling them--is bizarrely quaint.
My Clash picks would strike almost any Clash lover as extremely superficial, espe-
cially those from London Calling/Sandinista!/Combat Rock. To me, they're just more
proof of how great they were--that even someone who was a casual fan (bootleg not-
withstanding, I was never more than that) wouldn't have any trouble coming up with
seven songs for what's supposed to be a bare-bones discography. Almost forgot "Life
Is Wild," which I only caught while double-checking "This Is England"...Petula Clark
is the same kind of lithmus test for a rock and roll audience as the Carpenters. If
you were young enough when she was charting (by which I mean under 12), you probably
love a number of songs; if you were older at the time (between 15 and 25), I bet you
dismiss her altogether. I'd definitely take the four songs I've listed over any four
of Dusty Springfield's mid-60s hits...The Buck Clayton albums were part of a large
purchase I made from the father of somebody I worked with at the record store--Brit-
ish guy, can't remember his name. The father was making the transition to CDs and
selling off almost his entire collection at $5 a record, a little more for doubles.
I bought a lot: 40 or 50 albums, at least $250 worth. Thinking back on it, there's
no way I would have been in any kind of financial position to spend that much all
at once, but I did, and quite likely without much hesitation. I always used to tell
myself that if the price was good enough, go ahead and buy; 20 years down the road
the albums will still be with me, and whatever I paid for them, and whether or not
I could have afforded to pay that much, won't make any difference at all. From my
vantage point today, I'd have to say I was right.
________________________________________________________________________________
494. Bill Clifton & Paul Clayton: A Bluegrass Session 1952
495. Climax Jazz Band: The Entertainers
496. Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits
497. Patsy Cline: Always
498. Patsy Cline: Live at the Opry
499. Patsy Cline: The Last Sessions
500. The Best of George Clinton
501. Club Nouveau: Life, Love & Pain
502. Club Nouveau: Listen to the Message
503. Club Nouveau: Under a Nouveau Groove
504. Coasters: Their Greatest Recordings: The Early Years
505. Eddie Cochran: My Way
506. Eddie Cochran
507. Eddie Cochran: Remember Me...
508. Eddie Cochran: Legendary Masters Series
509. Bruce Cockburn
510. Cocteau Twins: Treasure
511. Cocteau Twins: Victorialand
Mixworthy: "Walking After Midnight," "Sweet Dreams (Of You)," "She's Got You," and
"Leavin' on Your Mind," #496; "Riot in Cell Block #9," #504; "Something Else," "Sum-
mertime Blues," and "Come On Everybody," #508; "Going to the Country," #509. So The
Best of George Clinton occupies the coveted #500 spot. It's true--I'm the funkiest
man alive.
Perfect snapshot of my first radio show, perfect snapshot of where my musical head
was at in 1988: not one, not two, but three Club Nouveau albums. I just gave "Situa-
tion #9" a test run, and I'm sorry, it did not pass the audition...I keep coming
across LPs that belong to big, memorable bulk purchases. Three of the Eddie Cochran
albums were among a bunch of French imports that turned up for $5 each at some store
in the Eaton's Centre (weird, because I don't remember the Eaton's Centre as ever
housing a worthwhile record store, yet I'm positive that's where it was). I also
came away with a handful of reissued Fats Domino originals, and maybe a dozen Blue
Note titles, including Herbie Nichols Trio, one of the guys A.B. Spellman profiled
in Black Music and something I coveted at the time. Record stores, both retail and
used, tended to react one of two ways to the great vinyl funeral of 1988-1991: a few
treated records as a suddenly extra-precious commodity and raised prices accordingly,
while most of them threw in the towel at some point and more or less started giving
stuff away...Ever become obsessed with acquiring something that probably doesn't ex-
ist? For 25 years, I've been hoping that one day I will magically stumble over a copy
of Bruce Cockburn's soundtrack for Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road (1970), my favor-
ite Canadian film ever. From the bit of research I've done, those songs were never
preserved in any format outside the film itself--neither on a soundtrack, on one of
Cockburn's albums, nor anywhere else. I still hold out faint hope that they exist
somewhere. Standing in for them, "Going to the Country," which predated Shebib's
film by a matter of months, captures the look, sound, and feel of Goin' Down the
Road very well.
________________________________________________________________________________
512. Songs of Leonard Cohen
513. Leonard Cohen: Songs From a Room
514. Nat King Cole: The Christmas Song
515. This Is Nat "King" Cole
516. Nat King Cole Sings/George Shearing Plays
517. Nat King Cole: L♥O♥V♥E
518. Nat King Cole: 20 Golden Greats
519. The Music of Ornette Coleman: Something Else!!!!
520. Ornette Coleman: The Shape of Jazz to Come
521. Ornette Coleman: Change of the Century
522. Ornette Coleman Quartet: This Is Our Music
523. Ornette on Tenor
524. The Best of Ornette Coleman
525. The Ornette Coleman Trio at the "Golden Circle" Stockholm, Vol. 1
526. The Ornette Coleman Trio at the "Golden Circle" Stockholm, Vol. 2
Mixworthy: "Winter Lady" and "The Stranger Song," #512; "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy,"
#513; "The Christmas Song," #514; "Let There Be Love" and "There's a Lull in My
Life," #516. I thought I'd be listing more from Nat King Cole, but the most famous
stuff on 20 Golden Greats is a little over-familiar. "The Christmas Song" ranks
with Judy Garland's "Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas" as my favourite song on
that front. (Who came up with the "George Shearing" pseudonym for #516? Clearly
that's Paul Shaffer.)
As you can see, I tried (and failed) to really like Ornette Coleman. The aforemen-
tioned A.B. Spellman book had something to do with that, so did Christgau's panegy-
ric to Of Human Feelings in a 1982 Consumer Guide, and so did certain pretensions
I had at the time to being a deep-thinking jazz afficianado. But mostly it was an
attempt that sprang from the immediate affinity I had for John Coltrane's music--
if I love Coltrane, I reasoned, then it follows that I'll love Coleman. As anyone
familiar with the music of both will know, they couldn't sound more dissimilar.
I'll try to articulate why I gravitated to Coltrane so readily a couple of entries
from now, but basically, I just didn't find Coleman anywhere near as compelling.
Listening to his Best Of now, it doesn't sound as foreign or as stilted as it used
to, and I can see the appeal. But it's taken me 20 years to travel that far, and I
don't expect to get much farther...Two songs that are absolutely inseparable from
the film where I first encountered them: "Winter Lady" and "The Stranger Song" as
used in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller. (Actually, I'm not 100% sure that
that's true--I may have already owned Songs of Leonard Cohen. If so, it's a moot
point, as the music has been thoroughly absorbed into images I carry around in my
head from the film.) My attachment to "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" has much more pro-
saic roots in a high-school crush.