2028. John Prine: Common Sense
2029. Prime Prine: The Best of John Prine
2030. John Prine: Aimless Love
2031. Procol Harum: A Whiter Shade of Pale
2032. Procol Harum: A Salty Dog
2033. Product: Style Wars
2034. Professor Longhair: Crawfish Fiesta
2035. Proletariat: Soma Holiday
2036. Psychedelic Furs
2037. Psychedelic Furs: Talk Talk Talk
2038. Psychedelic Furs: Forever Now
2039. Public Enemy: Yo! Bum Rush the Show
2040. Public Image: First Issue
2041. Public Image Ltd.: Second Edition
2042. Public Image Ltd.: The Flowers of Romance
2043. Public Image Ltd.: This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get
Mixworthy: "Sophisticated Bitch," #2039; "Public Image," #2040.
Spent: "Pretty in Pink," #2037.
Kind of an unattractive mix for me: two early-80s favourites (Second Edition and
Talk Talk Talk) that dropped off the radar years ago; a landmark hip-hop group I
sometimes liked and more often had fun making fun of; Richard Butler and Chuck D
and John Lydon one after another, a veritable Murderer's Row of blowhards; some
useless punk (Product and Proletariat); and the usual venerated name (Professor
Longhair) who goes right past me. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is my teaching assis-
tant Dianne's favourite song; if I go back far enough, there was a time it was
one of mine, too.
________________________________________________________________________________
2044. Don Pullen: Montreux Concert
2045. Do It Right! The Best of James & Bobby Purify
2046. Pursuit of Happiness: "I'm an Adult Now," 12-inch
2047. Pussy Galore: Pussy Gold 5000
2048. Pylon: Gyrate
2049. Stacey Q: Better Than Heaven
2050. Stacey Q: Hard Machine
2051. Stacey Q: Nights Like This
2052. Quarterflash
2053. Queen Latifah: "Come Into My House" 12-inch
2054. Quicksilver Messenger Service: Happy Trails
2055. Jody Harris/Robert Quine: Escape
2056. Robert Quine/Fred Maher: Basic
2057. Radio Birdmen: Radios Appear
2058. Rain Parade: Emergency Third Rail Power Trip
Mixworthy: "I'm Your Puppet," #2045; "Love Should Be So Kind," #2052.
The Qs, the Qs--anyone worthwhile in the Qs? (the ultimate inside joke--it may not
even make sense to the one person it's meant for)...I'm not sure if I always had
#2055 misfiled, or if I relocated it from the H's to have both Robert Quine LPs to-
gether. The one thing I associate with Escape is that Lester Bangs gave it the max-
imum 30 points on his last or second-to-last Pazz & Jop ballot--the same one that
served as the blueprint for anybody who ever used a year-end poll to engage in stop-
the-world-I-want-to-get-off melodramatics. (Bangs' screed came out of nowhere and
was great; it was turned into shtick before long--I should know, I tried it out
once myself--but happily no one seems to attempt anything similar anymore)...If
you're not Canadian and have never heard "I'm an Adult Now," you'd likely find it
quite striking the first time; my own experience is that it becomes very annoying
very quickly...Pussy Galore, Pylon, Radio Birdmen, the Rain Parade: never got Pylon,
took a brief interest in the latter two, and Pussy Galore, well, they were scuzzy
enough to have a whole genre named in their honour--the "pig-fucker" tag Christgau
hung on them, Sonic Youth, Big Black, and likeminded bohemians--which I guess is
almost as good as a novelist getting a word into the dictionary. I tacked on "Pret-
ty Fuck Look" near the end of a few history-of-punk mixtapes I made at the time
(pre-Nirvana--it really did feel like the end of the line), but I'm leaving it off
mixworthy so as not to accidentally summon forth the ghosts of Sam Kinison and Mor-
ton Downey in the process...Today your love, tomorrow the Ramones. Or maybe the day
after--it's report card crunch for the next 10 days, so I may be skipping the odd
night.
________________________________________________________________________________
2059. Ramones
2060. Ramones Leave Home
2061. Ramones: Rocket to Russia
2062. Ramones: It's Alive
2063. Ramones: Road to Ruin
2064. Ramones: End of the Century
2065. Ramones: Pleasant Dreams
2066. Ramones: Subterranean Jungle
2067. Ramones: Too Tough to Die
2068. Ramones: "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" 12-inch
2069. Ramones: Animal Boy
2070. Ramones: Halfway to Sanity
2071. Randy & the Gypsys
2072. Rank and File: Sundown
2073. Rascals: In Retrospect: A Selection of Classic Recordings 1966-1969
2074. Raspberries: Starting Over
2075. Raspberries' Best Featuring Eric Carmen
Mixworthy: "Loudmouth" and "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World," #2059; "Oh Oh I
Love Her So," "Carbona Not Glue," and "Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy," #2060; "Sheena Is
a Punk Rocker," #2061; "It's Not My Place," #2065; "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg," #2068;
"I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore," #2073.
I spent about two minutes flipping through the Ramones LPs and deciding which songs
I'd most want to save; I'd have to set aside at least a night to accurately see where
I stand right now--I haven't listened to any of the albums for years--so I'm not at
all confident of the mixworthy list. "Bonzo" (used beautifully in School of Rock),
"Sheena" (never a favourite until I included it on a "'70s Mastermix" for a school
assembly three years ago), and "Oh Oh I Love Her So" I'm fairly sure of, the rest no.
I had "Pet Sematary" on a year-end once, so maybe that would go on too; I hardly know
anything at all from their last two or three albums. My period of greatest interest
in the Ramones coincided exactly with my start at Nerve, so I ended up writing about
them on five separate occasions within the space of about 18 months: a review of "Bon-
zo" that was the first thing I ever submitted to Nerve (not published); an LP-by-LP
career overview for Rock Box, a hardcore hip-hop fanzine put out by Scott Woods; a
review of Animal Boy for Nerve; an interview with Joey and Dee Dee, also for Nerve;
and a review of Halfway to Sanity earmarked for the Voice that was either lost in
transit (something called "fax machines") or is still undergoing a thorough edit 18
years later. I'd all but shifted into full-out deification of the Ramones around
that time--not their newer music, but something less tangible, something they seemed
to represent--I think because they were a nostalgic step back from a lot of the noisi-
er and weirder (and often useless) stuff I was then listening to, back to my introduc-
tion to punk a few years earlier. I don't know; they seemed very heroic and forgotten
in 1986. Anyway, after all of that I'd worn them out, and it was only last year's
documentary (rather than repeat myself, I'll link to some comments I had on the film
earlier this year), Joey's "Maria Bartiromo," and of course all the deaths that closed
out their story abruptly which brought them back into focus for me after 15 years of
not caring what they were up to. And that's that. For as long as I'm teaching, I'll
try to play them for my students once a year on the anniversary of Joey's death, like-
ly something from album #1, and try to explain why their sitting there giggling and
looking befuddled is no different than the giggling and befuddlement that greeted the
Ramones in 1976--as well, that is, as someone who was listening to the Alan Parsons
Project in 1976 is able to explain.
________________________________________________________________________________
2076. Rattlers: Rattled!
2077. Raunch Hands: El Rauncho Grande
2078. Learn to Whap-a-Dang with the Raunch Hands
2079. Ravens: The Greatest Group of Them All: Roots of Rock and Roll, Vol. 3
2080. Lou Rawls: Close-Up
2081. Lou Rawls: All Things in Time
2082. Don Ray: The Garden of Love
2083. Raydio: Rock On
2084. Razorbacks: Go to Town
2085. Ready for the World
2086. Ready for the World: Long Time Coming
2087. The Records
2088. Come and Get Your Redbone: The Best of Redbone
2089. Red Crayola with Art & Language: Black Snakes
2090. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry: "Cut Down" 12-inch
2091. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry: "Open Up" 12-inch
2092. Sharon Redd, Ula Hedwig, Charlotte Crossley: Formerly of the Harlettes
Mixworthy: "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine," #2081; "Love You Down," #2086.
Both are borderline--the one indispensible song from this group, Raydio's "You Can't
Change That," I already listed back with Ray Parker Jr.'s Greatest Hits. There's a
Ravens song I'll get to when compilations come up.
I have so very little to say about this group of records--Joey Ramone's brother was
a Rattler; there, finished--I've had to take the unprecedented step of getting off
the chair, walking down the stairs, and retrieving an interview I did with the Raunch
Hands in 1987. Mike Mariconda, guitarist: "I think Sputnik's records stand up as far
as dance music goes. I'd rather see my kid liking them than looking up to Boy George.
To me, Sputnik lies on the same plane as Z.Z. Top: they're cartoon characters, but
there's nothing wrong with that." I was oddly obsessed with Sigue Sigue Sputnik at
the time--I even wanted to know what the Raunch Hands thought about them.
________________________________________________________________________________
2093. Otis Redding: Otis Blue
2094. The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul
2095. The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads
2096. The Immortal Otis Redding
2097. The Best of Otis Redding
2098. The Otis Redding Story - Volume One: Mr. Pitiful
2099. The Otis Redding Story - Volume One: Deep Soul
2100. Dewey Redman Quartet: The Struggle Continues
2101. Reducers: Cruise to Nowhere
2102. The Best of Jimmy Reed
2103. Lou Reed
2104. Lou Reed: Berlin
2105. Lou Reed: Rock N Roll Animal
2106. Lou Reed: Sally Can't Dance
2107. Lou Reed: Coney Island Baby
2108. Lou Reed: Street Hassle
2109. Lou Reed: Take No Prisoners
2110. Lou Reed: The Blue Mask
2111. Lou Reed: Legendary Hearts
Mixworthy: "Baby What You Want Me to Do," #2102; "Real Good Time Together," #2108.
Otis Blue may have been the first import I ever bought--either that or the weird
German copy I have of Loaded, part of the "Original Rock Classics" series. I didn't
even know what an import was when I found Otis Blue at the old Queen Street Record
Peddler in Toronto--I distinctly remember being very excited that I'd stumbled over
an original copy of an album I coveted because of the write-up and the picture in
Woffinden and Logan's Rock Encyclopedia. This would have been 1979; discovering the
Record Peddler and Records on Wheels, and finding out that long-unavailable LPs were
still being printed elsewhere in the world, accelerated my record-buying habit signi-
ficantly, and simultaneously learning of Toronto's growing network of used stores--
Vortex, the Vinyl Museum, Around Again, Driftwood--sent it through the roof...So
many Lou Reed albums, so little interest in them now. Street Hassle was one of my
favourite records for a time in the early '80s, so I'll take a song from that (done
better, probably, on 1969 Live, but the Velvet Underground mixworthy list will be
overcrowded anyway). The Blue Mask, the commotion over which I found inexplicable,
basically put an end to my interest in Lou Reed for good; "He can't sing anymore"
was all I got out of it. Absurd drinking story: my friend Norm had a Lou Reed fixa-
tion far greater than my own, so one time we placed a call to CBGB's and asked if we
could speak to "Moose," Reed's bass player (Norm had read somewhere that this Moose
person was a fixture there). Sure enough, we got him on the line. I'm guessing the
ensuing conversation was some kind of low point in human history...I was surprised
to learn from Jimmy McDonough's Shakey that Jimmy Reed figures so prominently as an
influence on Neil Young. Outside of Young's blues album (which, happily, I've never
heard except for the single), I don't hear the connection. The best-of listed above
has a very unusual kind of hypnotic appeal.