1960. Jeffrey Lee Pierce: "Love & Desperation" 12-inch
1961. The Nat Pierce-Dick Collins Nonet/The Charlie Mariano Sextet
1962. Webb Pierce: Country Songs
1963. Pilgrim Jubilee Singers: Walk On
1964. The Best of the Pilgrim Travelers, Vol. 2
1965. Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
1966. Pioneers' Greatest Hits
1967. Pioneers: Pusher Man
1968. Gene Pitney: Greatest Hits of All Time
1969. Plastercine Replicas: Glow
1970. Robert Plant: The Principle of Moments
1971. Plastic Bertrand: J'te fais un plan
1972. Platters: 14 Hits
1973. Platters: Encore of Golden Hits
1974. Plimsouls: Zero Hour
1975. The Plimsouls
1976. Poco: Pickin' Up the Pieces
1977. Bonnie Pointer
Mixworthy: "Looking Through the Eyes of Love," "It Hurts to Be in Love," and "Last
Chance to Turn Around," #1968; "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," #1973.
I forgot--I do like Roy Orbison, I just like him a lot more when he goes under the
name of Gene Pitney. I had "It Hurts to Be in Love" #1 on my Radio On Top 100 (fol-
lowed by "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" at #2), home of one of the hugest drum
barrages of the mid-60s; taken together, the three songs listed were mainstays of
every incarnation of my CIUT show. When Pitney sings the chorus of "Last Chance to
Turn Around," he sounds every bit as desperate and apocalyptic as the title implies--
that, and the fact that the last chance referred to is an exit-ramp back to Brooklyn,
always makes me think of Charlie and Johnny Boy's ill-fated attempt to flee in Mean
Streets whenever I hear it...I've seen at least one prominent music critic argue that
there's more to the Platters than meets the eye, but I think they're generally viewed
as doo-wop's version of Nat King Cole: too heavily orchestrated, overly fussy, a lit-
tle bland. My attachment to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" traces back to American Graffi-
ti: I think it's one of the songs Ronnie Howard and Cindy Williams dance to at their
homecoming...Seeing as I have an Elton Motello album without "Jet Boy, Jet Girl,"
it's only fitting that I complement it with a Plastic Bertrand album sans (that's
French) "Ca Plane Pour Moi." Some enterprising budget-CD label should pair them up
for a reissue: Your Once-Casual Interest in New Wave Has Developed Into a Full-Time
Problem.
________________________________________________________________________________
1978. Poison: Open Up and Say...Ahh!
1979. Poisoned
1980. Police: Outlandos d'Amour
1981. Police: Reggatta de Blanc
1982. Police: Synchronicity
1983. The Pop
1984. The Pop: Go!
1985. The Pop Group: For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?
1986. Pop•O•Pies: The White EP
1987. Pop Tarts: Age of the Thing
1988. Iggy Pop: The Idiot
1989. Iggy Pop: Lust for Life
1990. Iggy Pop: Soldier
1991. The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 3
1992. The Genius of Bud Powell
1993. Mel Powell: Out on a Limb
1994. Precious Metal: Right Here, Right Now
1995. Prefab Sprout: Two Wheels Good
Mixworthy: "Message in a Bottle" and "Walking on the Moon," #1981; "Don't Blame Me,"
#1991.
Spent: "Lust for Life," #1989.
There was an Idiot vs. Lust for Life thread on ILM recently. Opinion seemed evenly
split for the first 20 or so posts, at which point Iggy himself stepped in and sug-
gested that everyone try to get along--not really, the matter is probably still being
thrashed around days later. (My friend Peter once perfectly captured the special kind
of lunacy that keeps an all-sports radio station operational day-in and day-out: it's
3:30 in the morning, there's a Blue Jay call-in show going on, and Marvin from Scar-
borough opens up with, "Yeah, when Cito made that pitching change in the 7th inning
against Baltimore three nights ago...") I liked The Idiot much better, especially
"Dum-Dum Boys," but it's been ages since I've listened to either, and, same old story,
I can't imagine any circumstances where I'd feel the need to ever again...The Pop•O•
Pies got some attention for their jokey hardcore cover of "Truckin'", but I used to
find "Timothy Leary Lives" from the same EP funnier. Can't remember any specifics,
though, so I won't list it...The flipside of all those Rolling Stone greatest-ever
lists that evolve from year to year at such a glacial pace; the late-80s Spin list
where they (which really must mean some deranged he or she) declared Two Wheels Good
as one of the 20 greatest LPs ever made. They were so ahead of the curve on that one,
even Prefab Sprout hadn't heard of Prefab Sprout yet...Much to my surprise, the Cana-
dian government has declared tomorrow a statutory holiday for all people conducting
online inventories of their album collections. With a very large white whale looming
just over the horizon, I'll see you back here on Saturday.
________________________________________________________________________________
1996. Elvis Presley: The Sun Collection
1997. Elvis Talks!
1998. "The Elvis Tapes"
1999. Elvis Presley: Blue Christmas
2000. Elvis Presley: 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong
2001. Elvis Presley: C'mon Everybody
2002. Elvis Presley: Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits, Vol. 1
2003. Elvis Presley: The Other Sides: Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits, Vol. 2
2004. Elvis Presley: A Legendary Performer, Volume 2
2005. Elvis Presley: Moody Blue
2006. Pretenders
2007. Pretenders: Extended Play
2008. Pretty Poison: Catch Me I'm Falling
2009. Pretty Things: Real Pretty
2010. Andre Previn Plays Songs by Vernon Duke
2011. Lloyd Price: The ABC Collection
2012. Lloyd Price: Mr. Personality Revisited
Mixworthy: "Mystery Train" and "Blue Moon," #1996; "Kentucky Rain," #2002; "(Marie's
the Name) His Latest Flame," #2003; "What's the Use," #2009.
Nice to see 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong holding down the two thousandth
spot. If not for some earlier misfilings, it might have been Prefab Sprout or Pre-
cious Metal; it's easy to envision Precious Metal in gold lamé, Prefab Sprout, not
really...I've been holding off on box sets thus far--some are filed at the front of
whatever shelf they alphabetically belong to, the rest are grouped together between
the main section and a shelf of classical LPs--but I'll jump the gun on the Elvis
boxes (#2002/2003) and include them with the rest of his albums. I'm self-conscious
enough about listing so few Elvis songs, and, without the boxes, I'd be down to an
even more embarrassing two. My Elvis Problem is my most conspicuous blind spot of all
in a lifetime of listening, much more so than my Otis Problem or JB Problem or any of
the other gaps I've talked about herein. (In stature, he actually pairs up well with
my great literary blind spot: all my early attempts at Shakespeare were miserable
failures--only university course I flunked, although I'll defensively add that it's
more accurate to say I gave up, which amounts to the same in the end anyway--and I've
never gone back for another try.) I know how bizarre and maddening it would be to any-
one who counts Elvis as his frame of reference for everything to see the entirety of
his discography collapsed into a couple of Sun recordings, a late-60s comeback hit,
and a bit of throwaway soundtrack fluff. The handful of times in my life where I've
had people tell me they didn't have any use for the Beatles, it was like an invisible
but meaningful barrier between us had instantaneously appeared; "How can anyone feel
that way?" So I wish I liked Elvis more, and I'm not at all sure why I don't. Neither
am I sure to what extent I was aware of him when pop music first started to matter to
me. Through the mid-to-late '60s, when I was listening from the back seat of the fam-
ily car, I don't recall him being much of a presence; he was back on the radio with
"Burning Love" when I really started turning into a radio junkie in 1972, but it was
far from one of my favourite songs. (I liked the imitation-Elvis via imitation-CCR
"Long Cool Woman" much more.) I definitely got hooked on the wave of '50s nostalgia
then taking hold, but, possibly because of protective licensing, Elvis didn't seem a
part of that--none of his music was used in American Graffiti, and he never turned up
on any of the Jukebox-Revival compilations popular at the time. Getting The Sun Col-
lection early in university led to a brief period where I listened to more Elvis than
I ever had before, and once that ended, that was it; I loved Marcus's Dead Elvis, but
I'm not sure that it inspired me to take a single Elvis record off the shelf. I read
somewhere last year--it may have been Marcus himself who said it--speculation that
Elvis's hold on the popular imagination was finally beginning to wane, and that 50
years from now, he'd be no different than Robert Johnson or Bing Crosby or any other
important but historically remote figure. I think that maybe already happened with
me quite a while ago. (It may be my own bias speaking here, but, if that does turn
out to be true, I don't think the same fate awaits the Beatles, not anytime soon,
anyway. To me, there's something intrinsic in the music of the Beatles that makes it
accessible and likeable to virtually anyone; I always sense that of all the music I
play for my students, they're able to connect more easily and more immediately with
the Beatles than with anyone.) In an odd sort of way, I think my most tangible con-
nection with Elvis is a picture I have of my dad taken sometime in the '50s. It's
pretty obvious who carried the rock-star-glamour gene in my family. It must skip a
generation; I apparently inherited the gene associated with the other Elvis, the
rock-critic-with-glasses gene, from my mom.
________________________________________________________________________________
2013. Ray Price's All-Time Greatest Hits
2014. Charley Pride: The Happiness of Having You
2015. The Prime Movers
2016. Primitives: Lovely
2017. Prince
2018. Prince: Controversy
2019. Prince: Dirty Mind
2020. Prince: 1999
2021. Prince and the Revolution: Purple Rain
2022. Prince and the Revolution: "Let's Go Crazy" 12-inch
2023. Prince and the Revolution: "America" 12-inch
2024. Prince and the Revolution: Parade
2025. Prince: Sign "O" the Times
2026. Batman (O.S.T.)
2027. Prince: Graffiti Bridge
Mixworthy: "Crash" and "Stop Killing Me," #2016; "Erotic City," #2022; "Mountains,"
#2024; "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man," #2025.
I don't have 11 records by too many artists, and of those where I do, I probably care
less about Prince than any of them. I like him fine--I'd add "Raspberry Beret" if I
had Around the World, and I could add another three songs from what I do have without
too much of a stretch--but I have zero nostalgia for his heyday, and I lost interest
in him altogether at the same time that every other casual Prince fan did (I think
'92 or '93 was when radio started to turn away from him). Supposedly he's put out a
lot of very good music since; all I have is Emancipation, which I bought as a cut-out,
and I only got through it once. When records started to die out, you could have put
together a complete post-Purple Rain collection on vinyl for under $10. I know Prince
had one or two #1 LPs after Purple Rain, but Warners must have been banking on some-
thing even more massive, because those late-80s LPs were ridiculously over-printed--
Graffiti Bridge, a double, was everywhere for $1.99, the only reason I have it. (Tevin
Campbell has a song on there I like, though.) Will he ever matter to the larger pop
audience again? You've got to believe that he will at some point--going by his sud-
den reemergence a couple of years ago, there's obviously already an effort underway
to make that happen. He's living only a 30-minute drive from where I sit; maybe I'll
drop by later tonight and get his thoughts on the matter ("Unknown intruder ripped to
shreds by guard dogs on Prince's Bridle Path estate")...By way of contrast, only one
Primitives album, but two of my favourite songs ever. I've used them almost inter-
changably over the years: if I've included the Primitives on 25 mix-tapes or CD-700s,
13 times it's been "Crash," 12 times "Stop Killing Me" (I included the latter on a CD
I burned just today for my students).