1549. Los Popularos: Born Free
1550. John D. Loudermilk: Language of Love
1551. The Lounge Lizards
1552. Charlie Louvin: Country Souvenirs
1553. Love: Forever Changes
1554. Love/Hate: Blackout in the Red Room
1555. Under the Influence of...Love Unlimited
1556. Lyle Lovett
1557. Lene Lovich: Flex
1558. Andy Fairweather Low: La Booga Rooga
1559. Golden Hour of the Lovin' Spoonful
1560. Lovin' Spoonful: Everything Playing
1561. Nick Lowe: Jesus of Cool
1562. Nick Lowe: Labour of Lust
1563. L'Trimm: Grab It!
1564. The Lucy Show: Mania
1565. Jimmie Lunceford: "Rhythm Is Our Business" • Vol. 1 (1934-1935)
Mixworthy: "Do You Believe in Magic" and "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice," #1559; "So
It Goes," #1561.
Spent: Love/Hate's "Slutsy Tipsy" and "Slave Girl." Just kidding--how could "Slutsy
Tipsy" ever lose its appeal?
Two more from the basement stash: Forever Changes and Everything Playing. I knew the
Lovin' Spoonful when I came across these albums, but not Love, so finding out later
that Forever Changes was a "masterful" record "justly regarded as one of the all-time
rock classics" in Logan/Woffinden's book, and then seeing it ranked #16 in Gambacci-
ni's, was big news. It's an album I never took to, though, and I've tried many times
(as with 2001: A Space Odyssey, I go back every few years to see if anything clicks).
I don't dislike it, and I thought about listing either "You Set the Scene" or "Alone
Again Or." When I try again in 2008, maybe I'll feel the need to come back and fix
that...My dad always claimed that Zal Yanovsky used to hang out at the YMCA across
from his milk store (College and Dovercourt corner in Toronto) in the early '60s, so
that factors into whatever good feelings I have about the Lovin' Spoonful. They seem
pretty slight anyway. If I didn't designate "Daydream" or "Summer in the City" (two
songs I loved when I first started listening to the radio) as spent, it's only because
at a certain point of saturation, you pass into the realm of "uber-spent," a category
unto itself...Before going any further, I'd like to wish success and happiness to all
bands everywhere. Now move your van.
_______________________________________________________________________________
1566. Lydia Lunch: Queen of Siam
1567. Rowland S. Howard/Lydia Lunch: "Some Velvet Morning" 12-inch
1568. Lurkers: God's Lonely Men
1569. The Teenagers
1570. Frankie Lymon: Rock 'N' Roll
1571. Here's Loretta Lynn
1572. Loretta Lynn's Greatest Hits
1573. Loretta Lynn: Back to the Country
1574. Loretta Lynn: Home
1575. Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty: Dynamic Duo
1576. Barbara Lynn: You'll Lose a Good Thing
1577. The World of Vera Lynn Vol. 2
1578. Vera Lynn: Favourite Sacred Songs
1579. Lynyrd Skynyrd: Second Helping
1580. Lynyrd Skynyrd Band: Gold & Platinum
Mixworthy: "Out in the Dark," #1568; "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," "ABC's of Love,"
and "I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent," #1569; "Sweet Home Alabama," #1579; "Tuesday's
Gone" and "Comin' Home," #1580.
Spent: I'm aware that there's been an obvious disconnect between some of the songs I
place in this category and some that I leave out. "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Whole Lot-
ta Love" would be at the very top of many people's lists of never-need-to-hear-again
songs, the very definition of spent, yet I've included both in the mixworthy group.
There's no real explanation as to why I never seem to tire of them in the way that
"Satisfaction" and "Purple Haze" have been dead to me for years, or why the opposite
might be true for someone else. So really, a quantitative measure of overexposure is
not the final arbiter of this category at all; it's as subjective as its partner mix-
worthy.
I was talking to someone at work just last week about "Sweet Home Alabama," refuting
the notion that it was intended as a show of support for George Wallace. I've come
across such an interpretation of the song on at least a couple of occasions. Depends
on what you make of the first two lines in the third verse:
"In Birmingham they love the governor/Now we all did what we could do"
To me that seems clear: we didn't vote for the guy but the rest of the state did, so
get over it. Coming back with the rejoinder about Nixon and Watergate is brilliant (as
is the use of rhetoric in the Muscle Shoals verse), so much so that I always took the
bit about "Does your conscience bother you?" at face value, an accusation that it was
the rest of the country that was to blame for Nixon's reelection. Checking the appen-
dices of The Making of the President 1972, though, I see what should have been obvious
all along: Alabama voted overwhelmingly for Nixon, with a 73% level of support that
ranked behind only Georgia and Mississippi. So now I'm not really sure what that line
means. In any event, I continue to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" as a perfect combination
of wisdom, anger, joy, humour, and audacity. That Neil Young had added it to his set-
list within a year or two of its appearance isn't surprising; when you're cut down to
size that convincingly, all you can really do if you're smart enough, and have a good
enough sense of humour yourself, is wave the white flag.
_______________________________________________________________________________
1581. M: New York•London•Paris•Munich
1582. MC Lyte: Eyes on This
1583. Con Machito y sus Afro-Cubanos: Tremendo Cumban
1584. Madhouse: 8
1585. Madonna
1586. Madonna: Like a Virgin
1587. Madonna: "Angel"/"Into the Groove" 12-inch
1588. Madonna: True Blue
1589. Madonna: I'm Breathless
1590. Taj Mahal and the International Rhythm Band: Live & Direct
1591. Mahavishnu Orchestra: Birds of Fire
1592. Malibooz Rule!
1593. Main Ingredient: Greatest Hits
1594. Mainline: Canada Our Home & Native Land
1595. Maisonettes for Sale
1596. Major Lance: Major's Greatest Hits
Mixworthy: "Holiday," #1585; "Shoo-Bee-Doo," #1586; "Get Into the Groove," #1587;
"Open Your Heart," #1588; "Get Down To," #1594.
My heart's not really into the Madonna picks at this point, but I'll do with her what
I did with Hüsker Dü: go with the songs I used to love the most, without bothering to
check how any of them hold up right now. I mentioned earlier that we wrote a lot about
Michael Jackson in Radio On; take that and triple it, and that's how much there was on
Madonna. By the time I reviewed Music a few years later (there's a link to the review
elsewhere on this site), I think I'd said everything I'd ever conceivably want to say
about Madonna. I'll use her instead as an example of something I've noticed while mak-
ing my way through this, something that applied equally to Janet Jackson when I wrote
about her, and that will later apply to the Pet Shop Boys and R.E.M.: that it feels
odd writing about people who have large, or at least important, parts of their careers
on both sides of the vinyl/CD divide. Most of the artists I'm writing about here are
(posthumous compilations excluded) strictly vinyl. There are a lot of others who, even
though they've continued to record into the CD era, are (to me, anyway) vinyl artists
in spirit if not fact. Rod Stewart would be an obvious example, but I'd also include
Neil Young, Dylan, and Lou Reed in that group; the only stuff of theirs I care about
predates CDs. The flipside of that would be my favorite music of the past 15 years
made by people who (without getting overly nitpicky about it) belong strictly to the
CD era. That group is much smaller: Imperial Teen, Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, and a cou-
ple of others, none of whom I'll be writing about in this context. (Yes, I know, Yo
La Tengo dates back to the mid-80s--one of their early albums will be listed here.
But all their best music comes later, well after CDs had dislodged vinyl.) And then
there are the in-between people like Madonna and R.E.M. I have albums by them--famous
ones like True Blue and Murmur, LPs that seem very much part of a vinyl continuum
stretching back through Rumours and Sgt. Pepper and The "Chirping" Crickets--but
they also put out music I love that may not even exist on vinyl: "Ray of Light,"
"Beautiful Stranger," Automatic for the People. (I bet there were a few hundred
copies pressed of the latter.) There's vinyl-Madonna and there's CD-Madonna, and
the continuity between one and the other feels a little strange to me. Does that
make sense? I'll have to ask Scott Woods if he's noticing the same thing as he
makes his way through his own collection...I have no idea if #1583 is filed cor-
rectly or not. All I know for sure is that it belongs with the M's or the C's or
the A's. Unless "Tremendo Cumban" is the artist and it belongs with the T's.
_______________________________________________________________________________
1597. Mamas and the Papas: If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
1598. Mama Cass: Dream a Little Dream
1599. Melissa Manchester: Greatest Hits
1600. The Five Faces of Manfred Mann
1601. The Best of Manfred Mann
1602. Manfred Mann's Earth Band
1603. Manhattans: There's No Me Without You
1604. Carl Mann: The Legendary Sun Performers
1605. Shelly Manne & His Men: Vol 1: The West Coast Sound
1606. Marcels: Blue Moon
1607. March Violets: "Deep" 12-inch
1608. Teena Marie: Emerald City
1609. Great American Hymns by the Mariners
1610. Pigmeat Markham: Here Come the Judge
1611. Marley Marl: In Control, Volume 1
1612. Bob Marley & the Wailers: 'Natty Dread'
1613. Mars
Mixworthy: "Got a Feelin'," #1597; "Talkin' to Your Toothbrush," #1598; "Midnight
Blue," #1599; "Do Wah Diddy Diddy," #1600; "Pretty Flamingo," #1601; "Blue Moon,"
#1606.
I like the Mamas and Papas more than just the single song indicates. "Got a Feelin'"
is up there with the Everlys in terms of harmony, and their half-speed cover of "Do
You Wanna Dance" is as good in its way as the Ramones' breakneck version (there's a
good algebra problem in there: "Let x represent Bobby Freeman..."). "California Dream-
in'" and "Monday, Monday" are great, although right now they're in that grey area for
me between mixworthy and spent. The grey area is a good place for the former--if the
day's dreary enough and "California Dreamin'" comes on the radio, it still has the
intended effect. And "Talkin' to Your Toothbrush" from the Mama Cass album, with its
dreamy Hawaiian morning-after feel--I'm predicting that Dreamy Hawaiian Morning-After
will be the next big thing once grime runs its course--might be better than any of
them...I'm surprised to discover that I have a Bob Marley album. I must have got it
towards the end of my record-buying days, because for the longest time I was conscious
of the fact that I didn't have anything by Marley. I've been trying to get a vinyl copy
of Birth of a Legend for some time, after really liking a couple of mid-60s ballads on
a tape someone made for me. For the most part, though, I was tired of Marley's two or
three FM-radio hits from the '70s before I ever got a start on buying his albums.