968. Let's Take a Sea Cruise With Frankie Ford
969. Frankie Ford: New Orleans Dynamo
970. Forgotten Rebels: Tomorrow Belongs to Us
971. David Forman
972. 45 Grave: "Phantoms" 12-inch
973. Frank Foster and Frank Wess: 2 Franks Please
974. The Best of the Four Freshmen
975. The Four Seasons Story
976. Four Tops: Greatest Hits
977. Inez & Charlie Foxx: Greatest Hits
978. Frampton Comes Alive!
979. Connie Francis: Rock n' Roll Million Sellers
980. Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Welcome to the Pleasuredome
Mixworthy: "Walk Like a Man" and "Let's Hang On," #975; "Baby I Need Your Loving,"
"It's the Same Old Song," and "I Can't Help Myself," #976.
Spent: The Four Tops are, surprisingly, the first major Motown artist I've encoun-
tered thus far, and Motown's going to make for the hardest calls between "mixwor-
thy," "spent," and some place that exists between the two. It's all Lawrence Kasdan's
fault--The Big Chill, specifically the kitchen scene where everyone starts dancing
to the Temptations, tapped into something very deep for the generation one ahead of
me (they've got a name, but who wants to use it...), and, for the next few years,
stations like CHUM here in Toronto played Motown to death. Ironically, my own inter-
est in Motown had peaked just before The Big Chill, when its catalogue was purchased
by MCA, leading to older copies of the various Anthologies turning up for as little
as $3.99 new. I wasn't sure if I'd be listing anything by the Four Tops, but what
I've named still sounds fine. Even "Reach Out," likely the most overplayed Motown
song of all, sounds more alive than I thought it would. And that's the place that
exists somewhere in between--far too familiar to ever put on a compilation for any-
body, but not quite dead yet.
Short entry before a bunch of Aretha Franklin albums. Frampton Comes Alive! and
Welcome to the Pleasuredome make a good pair. Which improbably epoch-defining LP
is (a) more anchored to its moment, (b) more likely to be treated with a measure of
respect by rock critics, and (c) more commonly found at garage sales and Goodwills?
I'd say (a) is a tie, (b) goes to FGTH ("Relax" and "Two Tribes" at least have some
club-credibility attached to them; no one ever writes anything nice about Peter,
except for maybe over at Wah-Wah Monthly), and (c) would be Frampton Comes Alive!,
simply by virtue of its having sold so much more. The truth is, I don't remember
either one turning up very often when I'd make the Saturday-morning rounds of
garage sales.
________________________________________________________________________________
981. Aretha Franklin: The Legendary Queen of Soul
982. Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
983. Aretha Franklin: Lady Soul
984. Aretha Franklin: Aretha's Gold
985. Aretha Franklin: Spirit in the Dark
986. Aretha Franklin: Young, Gifted and Black
987. Aretha Franklin: Amazing Grace
988. Aretha Franklin: Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky)
989. Aretha Franklin: Sweet Passion
990. Aretha Franklin: Who's Zoomin' Who?
991. Aretha Franklin: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
992. Fraser & DeBolt (With Ian Guenther)
993. John Fred and His Playboy Band: Agnes English
994. The Best of Freddie and the Dreamers
995. Donnie Fritts: Prone to Lean
Mixworthy: "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and "Ain't No Way," #983; "I
Say a Little Prayer," #984; "Day Dreaming," #986; "Angel," #988; "Who's Zoomin' Who,"
#990; "Do the Freddie," #994.
I know that Aretha Franklin would be extra proud to be sharing space with her only
true peer from the 1960s, the King of British Soul, that guy who used to flap his
arms around spastically in the name of something called "the Freddie"...The last
time I made a list of my 100 favourite songs (Radio On #2, Fall '91; I had devised
a similar list a couple of years earlier for my radio show), I had Aretha's version
of "I Say a Little Prayer" at #4. I've worn it down some in the intervening years,
but if I made such a list today, it'd still be on there somewhere. As much as I like
a lot of songs by Aretha Franklin--I've listed six, putting her alongside the Beach
Boys and some other people in my second tier of favourites--"I Say a Little Prayer"
is the only time I find myself whole-heartedly swept away by the genius that's always
ascribed to her. (Maybe "Ain't No Way," too.) What she does with what was already a
great single in the hands of Dionne Warwick just astounds me from start to finish.
The rest of what I like best pretty much amounts to the pop version of Aretha; I'd
also be listing "Until You Come Back to Me" if I had it on vinyl. But the Aretha
who’s the most revered female soul singer ever--the Aretha of "Respect" and "Chain
of Fools" and "I Never Loved a Man," the grand diva whom all the other divas crowd
around on VH1 specials like she’s Ted Williams at the All-Star Game six years ago--
doesn't do a whole lot for me. It's not even necessary to label "Respect" as spent;
I can’t ever remember a time when I liked it...Fraser & DeBolt, an early-70s Canadian
duo, used to be managed by the most unusual person I've ever worked with: Willie Weck-
esser of Woolco-Woolworth. I proofread advertising flyers there for a year or so after
I left the record store, and Willie was my supervisor. It's difficult to know where to
begin in trying to describe what was so unusual about him, but here's a quick story.
Willie liked all the push pins on the bulletin board used by the proofreaders to be
arranged neatly--rows, columns, evenly spaced. There was this guy John who worked with
us for a few weeks (it was obvious he wasn't going to be around for long), and one day,
to mess with Willie's head, he scattered the push pins all over the bulletin board be-
fore leaving work. Willie didn't say a word about it the next morning, but all the pins
had been returned to their usual rows and columns. Ever seen the dish-towel scene from
Sleeping With the Enemy? It was kinda like that...I bought the John Fred album for 99
cents during the waning years (early/mid-80s, I think) of Sam the Record Man's famous
third-floor junk room. There'll be a couple of Kingsmen albums turn up later that came
from there, and also Tommy Roe's Dizzy. From what my friend Tim tells me, a few years
earlier and I would have found albums by the likes of the Bubble Puppy and the Godz.
Fantastic place to rummage around for cheap records--like an overstocked iTunes store,
except you got to walk around and touch things, and $0.99 got you a whole LP instead
of a song.
________________________________________________________________________________
996. Lefty Frizzell Sings the Songs of Jimmie Rodgers
997. Remembering...The Greatest Hits of Lefty Frizzell
998. The Legendary Lefty Frizzell - His Last Sessions
999. Fugs: Golden Filth
1000. Full Force: Guess Who's Comin' to the Crib?
1001. Full Force: Smoove
1002. Best of the Bobby Fuller Four
1003. Curtis Fuller: New Trombone
1004. Annette Funicello: The Best of Annette
1005. Funk Band Inc!
1006. Funkadelic's Greatest Hits
1007. Funkadelic: Tales of Kidd Funkadelic
1008. Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove
1009. Peter Gabriel: So
1010. Patsy Gallant: Ses Plus Grands Succès
1011. Gang of Four: Entertainment!
1012. Gang of Four: Solid Gold
Mixworthy: "Let Her Dance," #1002. I always liked Lefty Frizzell's Jimmie Rodgers
tribute a lot, but I can't think of one specific song that stands apart. Peter
Gabriel's "That Voice Again" was a favourite for a time, but that had more to do
with having a big crush on the woman who used to manage the record store I worked
at.
I wrote about my recent discovery of the first two Fugs LPs for Stylus a few months
ago, but their live album's a live album--I've had it a long time and don't think
I've played it more than twice. There was a Canadian punk band named My Dog Popper
who once put out a record called 668, the Neighbour of the Beast. I always thought
the line was their own, but in checking around online to confirm the band's name, I
see it's a common joke. In any case, I've been doing transformational geometry with
my three math classes, and to mark the completion of my first thousand albums on
here, I would like to hereby change the title of Golden Filth to 999, the Number of
the Beast as Rotated 180º Around the Point of Origin. Better suited to a Wire album,
mathematically, but absurd enough for the Fugs, too.
________________________________________________________________________________
1013. Judy Garland: "Collector's Items" (1936-45)
1014. The Best of Judy Garland
1015. Erroll Garner and Andre Previn: Keyboard Kapers
1016. Siedah Garrett: Kiss of Life
1017. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell: United
1018. Marvin Gaye: M.P.G.
1019. Marvin Gaye: Super Hits
1020. Marvin Gaye: What's Going On
1021. Marvin Gaye: Trouble Man
1022. Marvin Gaye: In Our Lifetime
1023. Marvin Gaye: Midnight Love
1024. Gloria Gaynor: Never Can Say Goodbye
1025. Gloria Gaynor: Love Tracks
1026. Gear Dads: 9 Feet Tall
1027. General Public: ...All the Rage
1028. General Public: Hand to Mouth
Mixworthy: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," #1014; "Too Busy Thinking About
My Baby," #1018; "Ain't That Peculiar" and "I'll Be Doggone," #1019; "Never Can Say
Goodbye," #1024; "Tenderness," #1027.
Spent: I likely would have listed "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" at some point in my
life, and indeed I've included it on early-70s-soul mixes I've made. What's Going On
in general is one of those albums that makes me feel like I'm studying and appreciat-
ing it more than I'm actually enjoying it.
Looks like I'm all alone for a couple of weeks; this album-inventory business can be
a brutal one...Since you asked: I'm 43, I'm single, I keep a fairly tidy house, and,
yes, I own two Judy Garland albums. What of it? As you can see, I also like Gloria
Gaynor. Uh, wait a minute, let me try that again...