1706. Midnight Star: "Operator" 12-inch
1707. Midnight Star: Headlines
1708. Midnight Star: Greatest Hits
1709. Midnight Star
1710. Adrian Miller: Empty Promises
1711. The Best of Glenn Miller
1712. Glenn Miller: A Memorial 1944-1969
1713. Mitch Miller and the Gang: Sing Along With Mitch
1714. Roger Miller: Thank You
1715. Steve Miller Band: Sailor
1716. Milli Vanilli: Girl You Know It's True
1717. Milli Vanilli: "Girl You Know It's True" 12-inch
1718. The Million Dollar Quartet
1719. M.D.C.: Millions of Dead Cops
1720. Mills Brothers: In a Mellow Tone
1721. Mills Brothers: Great Hits
1722. Ronnie Milsap: Country Music
Mixworthy: "A String of Pearls," #1712; "My Family's Just a Little Weird," #1719.
Spent: Girl, you know it's true: somewhere along the way, I lost interest in the 20th
century's musical arch-villians.
I used to put the M.D.C. song on every punk compilation I ever made, but, like some
other things I've categorized as mixworthy, it's really listed above by default. I
don't think I realized till now that M.D.C. and Millions of Dead Cops are not inter-
changeable (hence the misalphabetization)--M.D.C. is the band, Millions of Dead Cops
was their first album, and the acronym took on a different meaning for every subse-
quent release. I found this out at the group's website. Some marginal hardcore group
I liked 20 years ago has its own website. Of course they do--I have one, so why not
them?...One of my favourite movie-music segments: "String of Pearls" during the Ted
Williams section in Ken Burns' Baseball...Famous story in my family: when I was four
or five, I mistook the statue of Christ in the lobby of Toronto's St. Joseph's Hos-
pital for Mitch Miller...Finished the Godard film tonight. Always interesting, occa-
sionally moving, often incomprehensible. Great ending (I'm paraphrasing): "What if
you had a dream where you walked through paradise, and in the middle of your walk,
someone handed you a flower. When you awoke from the dream, the flower was still
in your hand. What would you say? I was that man." As soon as I figure out how to
apply the same elevated rhetoric to Kylie Minogue and Mocedades, I'll be back with
more LPs.
_______________________________________________________________________________
1723. The Best of Charles Mingus
1724. Charlie Mingus: The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
1725. Charles Mingus: Mingus at Antibes
1726. Charles Mingus: Better Git It in Your Soul
1727. Charles Mingus: Passions of a Man: An Anthology of His Atlantic Recordings
1728. Liza Minnelli: Results
1729. Kylie Minogue: Kylie
1730. Minutemen: 3-Way Tie (For Last)
1731. Minor Threat
1732. Minor Threat: Out of Step
1733. Mission of Burma: The Horrible Truth About Burma
1734. The Mistaken
1735. Brenda Mitchell: Don't You Know
1736. Joni Mitchell
1737. Joni Mitchell: Clouds
1738. Joni Mitchell: Blue
1739. Joni Mitchell: For the Roses
1740. Joni Mitchell: Court and Spark
Mixworthy: "Filler," "I Don't Wanna Hear It," "Minor Threat," #1731; "Cashing In,"
#1732; "Night in the City," #1736; "Chelsea Morning," #1737; "Carey," #1738.
The consecutive Minutemen/Minor Threat/Mission of Burma threesome is probably with-
out parallel in my collection: three hugely iconic bands from the same moment and,
broadly speaking, the same genre (i.e., the Amerindie sprawl of the mid-80s--obvi-
ously, Minor Threat and the Minutemen hardly sound at all alike). All three get
chapters in Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, and they're situated
consecutively in there, too. Minor Threat was the only one of the three I cared
about. There was a purity about their small recorded output (25 songs?) that was
inspiring, and you didn't have to be some Maximum Rock 'n' Roll buckethead to feel
it--my deepest interest in alcohol coincided exactly with the period I listened to
them most avidly, so the asceticism they were so fixated on was more than a little
remote from my own life. (Which doesn't mean I didn't sometimes find their single-
mindedness in that area admirable anyway--more often it seemed weird, and at times
I found it corny.) What reached me instead was the same thing I got from Hüsker Dü:
an overwhelming wash of sound, incredibly fast, surprisingly melodic, clean and
lucid at every turn. I actually wrote to Ian MacKaye sometime after the group's
"Salad Days" single (45 only, else I'd be listing that too) with a rather amorphous
idea for a book that would have involved his own band, the Shoes, and the Chantels.
I'm sure I wouldn't have explained the connection very well (I couldn't explain it
very well today; I was just kind of, uh, "feeling" it), I think I'd done about six
record reviews for Nerve at that point, and all things considered he wouldn't have
been out of line to take a deep breath and count back from ten and maybe I'd go away.
But he replied with a postcard gracious enough that I didn't at all feel like I'd
just made the most harebrained proposal in the world, a gesture for which I've always
felt some gratitude, coming as it did when I was just starting out. (I've had nobody-
editors make me feel smaller.) I never followed any of MacKaye's post-Minor Threat
projects--I think I occasionally played Fugazi when I was at CIUT--but I'll support
the idea that he's one of the genuine good guys out there...Charles Mingus: I'd be
more inclined to listen to him than I would Ornette Coleman, and I remember thinking
that parts of The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady sounded like good film noir music,
but he's still pretty heavy going for me. I want to make Joni Mitchell happy, though,
so I've very painstakingly arranged for the two of them to bookend this group.
_______________________________________________________________________________
1741. Moby Grape
1742. Moby Grape: Omaha
1743. Moby Grape: 20 Granite Creek
1744. Mocedades: Eres Tu ("Touch the Wind")
1745. Modern Jazz Quartet & Guests: Third Stream Music
1746. The Art of the Modern Jazz Quartet
1747. Modern Jazz Quartet: In Memoriam
1748. The Modern Lovers
1749. A Moment With the Moments
1750. Thelonius Monk: Monk's Music
1751. Thelonius Monk: Thelonius Alone in San Francisco
1752. Thelonius Monk: Monk's Miracles
1753. Thelonius Monk: Always Knows
1754. The Monkees
1755. Monkees: Greatest Hits
1756. Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys: Radio Shows 1946-1948
1757. Bill Monroe's Greatest Hits
Mixworthy: "Hey Grandma," "Omaha," and "Indifference," #1741; "Ain't That a Shame,"
"I Am Not Willing," and "Going Nowhere," #1742; "Roadrunner," #1748; "Love on a
Two-Way Street," #1749; "Well, You Needn't," #1750; "Take a Giant Step," #1754;
"A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday," #1755.
Spent: "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm a Believer," #1755.
I've never played Moby Grape with any great regularity--it's "Ain't That a Shame"
from the budget-priced reshuffle Omaha that I've included on numerous mix-tapes over
the years--but listening to it right now for the first time in a while, I'd say it's
almost as good as legend would have it. I've got a bad association with the album for
the stupidest of reasons: one of the later pressings turned up as a remainder at the
old Yonge St. Cheapies store in Toronto, and because I was too stubborn to replace a
worn-out needle on my record player, I ended up returning two or three copies before
giving up on it. I found a used copy sometime after that (with the poster included),
but, irrational though it may be, the Cheapies episode lingered. For anyone who keeps
track of such stuff, I'll mention that all middle fingers are observing proper decorum
on my copy's cover...Speaking of which, #1750's utterly absurd cover shot of Thelonius
Monk sitting in the wagon is one of my favourites. It's hard to tell from behind the
shades how he felt about the whole idea; allowing for the fact that, if the playful-
ness of his music is any kind of a barometer, the concept for the shot may have been
his own, his expression nonetheless has "Are you really sure we want to do this?"
written all over it...Even though this whole exercise is all about records, most of
the important listening I've done in my life has taken place in the car, whether off
the radio, cassette deck, or CD player. "Roadrunner" documents that experience more
joyously and more perceptively than anything that has ever addressed the subject, and,
in doing so, becomes the thing itself; nothing sounds better in a car than Jonathan
Richman singing about how much he loves to listen to rock and roll in his car. I don't
remember Richman being invited to do the anthem at any of last year's Series games in
Fenway, but Red Sox management ought to take out a lifetime retainer on "Roadrunner"
the way Steinbrenner has on "New York, New York."
_______________________________________________________________________________
1758. Montreal Featuring Uchenna Ikejiani
1759. This Is the Moody Blues
1760. Look! It's the Moonglows
1761. The Moonglows Vol. II
1762. Jane Morgan's Greatest Hits
1763. Lee Morgan: Delightfulee
1764. Lee Morgan: The Procrastinator
1765. Van Morrison: Astral Weeks
1766. Van Morrison: Moondance
1767. Van Morrison: Wavelength
1768. Van Morrison: Common One
1769. Bob Mosley
1770. Elton Motello: Pop Art
1771. Mothers of Invention: Cruising With Ruben & the Jets
1772. Mothers of Invention: The **** of the Mothers
1773. Mott the Hoople: Brain Capers
1774. Mott the Hoople: All the Young Dudes
1775. Mott the Hoople: Mott
Mixworthy: "Question," #1759; "Sweeter Than Words," #1760; "Flower Punk" and "Mother-
ly Love," #1772; "All the Young Dudes," #1774; "I Wish I Was Your Mother," #1775.
If the estimate I gave early on of 3500 albums is correct, I passed the halfway mark
with the previous group. In terms of where I'm sitting as I type all this up, I pass
a second halfway marker of sorts with this group; everything up to and including
Elton Motello--every last Jet Boy and Jet Girl--has been shelved to the left of me,
but beginning with the Mothers of Invention, everything's now shelved to the right.
Actually, I can tell at this point that my original estimate was a little low--I'm
going to end up in the 3,600-3,700 range...I'd rather be listing "Go Now" for the
Moody Blues, but "Question" will do. Best of all would be the middle break from
"Tuesday Afternoon" as a standalone, the reflections-of-my-mind part that you can't
resist singing along to. First thing I think of in connection to the Moody Blues:
sitting in class in grade 12, listening to "Legend of a Mind" (a.k.a. "Timothy
Leary's Dead") on headphones while I was supposed to be listening to cassettes of
course-related material. The punchline: it was Mr. Paul's chemistry class!...If I
had Freak Out! on LP (the traumatic details of which can be found back in the entry
for Country Joe & the Fish), I'd be listing "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" and "Trouble
Every Day." In general, I think the reverential worship attached to Frank Zappa is
weird--he obviously recorded a lot of stuff that barely reaches the level of puer-
ile diddling around, and the smugness that permeates even the great early records
gets tired very fast. (Something Lester Bangs deflated perfectly in a 1971 review
of Filmore East: "Uncle Frank as all-purpose conscience pointing out our lameness
and simultaneously educating us to that great wide world of music out there beyond
our punky ignorance, his pointer guiding us from track to track, 'See this is jazz,
and now for a taste of Stravinsky, and notice how we've interwoven it all with a
few Motown arrangements and fuzztones that all you stupid little "Louie Louie"-
brained bastards can understand...'") The first three sides of Freak Out! are great,
though, and "Trouble Every Day" is like the "Anarchy in the U.K." of 1966...Moon-
dance was one of the first few dozen records in my collection. I listened to side
one fairly regularly in high school, and I probably included "And It Stoned Me" on
a couple of the earliest mix-tapes I compiled for personal use. When I stopped play-
ing it within a couple of years, I stopped for good, and Astral Weeks didn't make
it to a fourth listen. The other two albums were added somewhere along the way...A
beginner's guide to Elton Motello: a taste of Stravinsky, a few Motown arrangements,
fuzztones we can all understand.
_______________________________________________________________________________
1776. The Move: The Greatest Hits Vol. 1
1777. The Best of the Move
1778. The Move: Split Ends
1779. The Move: 'Shazam'
1780. Mtume: Juicy Fruit
1781. Mud: Mud Rock
1782. Mud: Use Your Imagination
1783. Maria Muldaur
1784. Jerry Murad's Fabulous Harmonicats: Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White
1785. Shirley Murdock: A Woman's Point of View
1786. Elliott Murphy: Aquashow
1787. Elliott Murphy: Lost Generation
1788. Anne Murray: Talk It Over in the Morning
1789. Anne Murray's Greatest Hits
1790. Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls
1791. Musical Youth: The Youth of Today
1792. Musical Youth: Different Style!
Mixworthy: "Wave Your Flag and Stop the Train," #1777; "Do Ya" and "Message From the
Country," #1778; "Talk It Over in the Morning," #1788; "Dream Sequence I," #1790.
"Message From the Country" was among the songs I included on "Beatlesque," a mix-tape
I once compiled for a teacher (and Beatles lover) who was leaving my school. The idea
was pretty self-explanatory, with a fluid enough interpretation of Beatlesque to guide
me that, along with obvious things like the Knickerbockers and Big Star and Traffic's
"Hole in My Shoe," I had "Take the Skinheads Bowling" and Hüsker Dü's "Books About
UFOs"--songs that don't sound like the Beatles at all, but which seem to me to cap-
ture something fundamental about what they might have been doing had they existed in
a different time and different set of circumstances. "Message From the Country" is
more of a straightforward soundalike, although I can't point to any one specific per-
iod it aligns itself with--White Album-Beatles would be the closest match, I guess.
As a warm-up for their Beatles flirtation, "Wave Your Flag and Stop the Train" joins
the Five Americans' "Western Union" in a surreal mini-genre I've mentioned before:
the Imitation Monkees Genre. I don't know if there was ever an Imitation Electric-
Era Cult Genre, but that's about the only possible parallel I can conceive of.