#533: Gettin' in tune....

Slightly-off-the-wall music-therapy continues at my job, & I think a good number of my customers R finally starting 2 Get It. Along with all my usual overplayed oldies hits, recent nites' playlists have included....

Todd Rundgren -- Dust in the Wind, I Saw the Light, Intro/Breathless, The Night the Carousel Burned Down, Saving Grace, Real Man, You Make Me Crazy, The Very Last Time, Song of the Viking, A Dream Goes on Forever, We Gotta Get You a Woman, Just One Victory, Couldn't I Just Tell You?, Bang the Drum All Day.
Carlene Carter -- Little Love Letter #1, Every Little Thing, Sweet Meant to Be, Little Love Letter #2, Heart is Right.
Brewer and Shipley -- One Toke Over the Line.
Christie -- Yellow River.
Jeff Lynne -- Every Little Thing.
Bruce Springsteen -- Rosalita.
Go-Go's -- Head Over Heels, You Thought, Forget That Day, Capture the Light, I'm With You.
Bangles -- If She Knew What She Wants, Let it Go, September Gurls, Angels Don't Fall in Love, Not Like You, Manic Monday, In a Different Light, Walk Like an Egyptian, Return Post, Hero Takes a Fall, Dover Beach, Going Down to Liverpool, Everything I Wanted.
Kate Bush -- This Woman's Work.
Pat Metheny -- Praise, The Search.
Van Morrison -- Caravan, Into the Mystic, Wild Night.
Neil Diamond -- Crunchy Granola Suite, Holly Holy, Soolaimon.
Gordon Lightfoot -- High and Dry, Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Summer Side of Life.
Bob Dylan -- One of Us Must Know.
Billy Joel -- All for Leyna, Traveling Prayer.
Jefferson Starship -- Find Your Way Back, All Nite Long, Fading Lady Light, Freedom at Point Zero, Save Your Love.
Blue Oyster Cult -- Astronomy (IMAGINOS version).
Dion -- Ruby Baby.
Chicago -- Critic's Choice, In Terms of Two.
Donovan -- Season of the Witch.
Fleetwood Mac -- The Green Manalishi.
Donna Summer -- I Love You, Heaven Knows.
Stones -- Worried About You, Waiting on a Friend.
Elton -- (Gotta Get a) Meal Ticket, Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, Teacher I Need You.
Dave Clark Five -- Catch Us if You Can, Any Way You Want It.
Crabby Appleton -- Go Back.
Beach Boys -- Trombone Dixie, Let's Go Away for Awhile, The Trader.
Boston -- My Destination, Can'tcha Say/Still in Love, Hollyann.
Pete Townshend -- Give Blood, A Little is Enough, North Country Girl, Prelude, Face Dances Part 2, Slit Skirts.
Waterboys -- A Life of Sundays.
Paul McCrane -- Dogs in the Yard.
Stories -- Darling, Love is in Motion, Hey France, Changes Have Begun, Top of the City, Circles, Words, Believe Me, Please Please, What Comes After.
Rollers -- Hello and Welcome Home, I Was Eleven, Stoned Houses #2, Washington's Birthday.
Mary-Chapin Carpenter -- Passionate Kisses, This Shirt.
Tricia Yearwood -- Wrong Side of Memphis.
B.J. Thomas -- Rock and Roll Lullabye.
Poco -- A Good Feeling to Know, Here We Go Again.
Queen -- Need Your Loving Tonight, I'm in Love With My Car, You're My Best Friend, '39, It's Late.
Linda Ronstadt -- Party Girl, How Do I Make You?, I Can't Let Go, Talking in the Dark.
Barbra Streisand (with Fanny) -- Stoney End.
Supertramp -- From Now On.
Steve Winwood -- Valerie.
John Lennon -- Stand By Me.
Bowie -- Suffragette City.
Roxy Music -- Over You, Same Old Scene, The Thrill of it All.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band -- For You, Heart on the Street, Stranded.
The Who -- Daily Records.
Tommy James & the Shondells -- Ball of Fire.
Genesis -- Like it or Not.
Rare Earth -- Under God's Light.
Bread -- Let Your Love Go, Look What You've Done, Truckin', Guitar Man, Been Too Long on the Road, Everything I Own, It Don't Matter to Me, Mother Freedom, Down on My Knees, Too Much Love.
.38 Special -- Caught Up in You, Chain Lightning.
Cyndi Lauper -- Money Changes Everything, When You Were Mine.
Bonnie Raitt -- I Can't Make You Love Me.
Paula Abdul -- Blowing Kisses in the Wind.
Travis Tritt -- T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
EnVogue -- Free Your Mind.
Boz Scaggs -- You've Got Some Imagination.
Journey -- Spaceman.
Bob Seger -- Feel Like a Number.
Cars -- Dangerous Type.
Heart -- Mistral Wind.
Clannad -- In Fortune's Hand.
Foreigner -- Do What You Like, Rev on the Red Line.
Crack the Sky -- Lighten Up McGraw (live).
Bram Tchaikovsky -- Let's Dance.
Jim Croce -- It Doesn't Have to be That Way.
Deborah Allen -- Baby I Lied.
Love -- You Set the Scene.
Albert Hammond -- I'm a Train, Names Tags Numbers and Labels.
Steve Tibbetts -- Ur, Three Primates, You and It.
Glass Moon -- Solsbury Hill.
REO -- Roll With the Changes, Blazing Your Own Trail Again.
ELO -- Twilight, The Way Life's Meant to Be.
Wigwam -- Bless Your Lucky Stars, Kite, Do or Die, Simple Human Kindness.
The Pop -- Go!
Golden Earring -- Snot Love in Spain.
Three Dog Night -- My Impersonal Life.
Suzanne Vega -- Small Blue Thing.
Pentangle -- Light Flight.
Jane Wiedlin -- Rush Hour.
Traffic -- Glad.
Mark Knopfler -- Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero).
Dream Academy -- Life in a Northern Town.
'Til Tuesday -- Maybe Monday.
Tracey Chapman -- Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution.
Joni Mitchell -- Coyote.
Byrds -- I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better.
Rush -- Show Don't Tell, Manhattan Project, Time Stand Still.
Monkees -- Porpoise Song, Tapioca Tundra.

I of course vouch 4 the mostly high quality of all the stuff listed above -- & ESPECIALLY the stuff you've never heard B4.
...Most of this went down pretty well. A lot of my customers seem suprised that I'm now rocking out EVERY NITE after about 8 pm. It sure keeps me happier, & energized so I keep movin' & get my work done. Works WAY better than a strong cuppa coffee. & it's probly healthier, 2. Seemsta make my customers happier, 2....
Don't remember much about specific responses -- it was a busy week -- but I remember 1 woman telling me I "always have the most awesome music playing" whenever she comes in2 the store -- thanx 4 that -- & I remember having 2 Xplain that "Life in a Northern Town" was my son's Favorite Song In The World when he was 2. & I remember a young couple saying they enjoyed Manfred Mann's Earth Band (I think it was), even tho the music was older than THEY were.... 1 woman said she was "trippin' out" 2 hear Bread's "Guitar Man" again: "I think the last time I heard it I was about 17 years old, drivin' down the road ... probably smokin' a joint...."
That's about all I remember. This shoddy handling of incoming data isn't gonna do my federal grant application NE good....

Mike Zwerin's CLOSE ENOUGH FOR JAZZ (1983) is an often-hilarious memoir by a jazz-trombonist & VILLAGE VOICE columnist who toured Russia in the '60s with Earl "Fatha" Hines, played alongside Eric Dolphy in Orchestra USA in the early '60s, & tried 2 masquerade as a steel-company president until he realized he was turning his back on his True Calling.
When I 1st got the book & saw Zwerin was gonna open with his (brief) steel-company Xperience, I paged idly thru the resta the book looking 4 something 2 grab me, & the 1st sentence I read in full made me laff out loud. Oddly, this sentence was about 1nce seeing jazz-saxophone legend Charlie Parker throwing up in a gutter. Zwerin immediately adds: "I was 16, anything Bird did was all right with me."
If you're a big jazz fan, I'd urge you 2 start on pg. 169, with 1 of a series of pieces about touring Europe with various bands. These write-ups Rn't all fun&games, tho they mostly R -- but Zwerin's recounting of the Russian tour is pretty grim, & politics plays in2 it heavily.
Europe clearly appealed 2 Zwerin -- he moved 2 France the day Richard Nixon was inaugurated, & was still there when this book was published in '83. That doesn't keep him from looking at the worldwide jazz scene, or from going all the way back 2 the invention of the saxophone in 1840.
Zwerin has a very funny, punchy writing style with a good handle on the Jazz Attitude. The book is full of hilarious jazz stories, + recounts his Xperiences as the VOICE's jazz columnist -- a gig that didn't work out quite the way either party Xpected.
Zwerin sez the VOICE kept pushing him 4 more "hard news" -- the features & profiles that make up this book prove he was on 2 The Right Stuff. ...& it's not all about jazz: 1 long section near the Nd gets Xtremely personal (marriage problems, affairs, etc.), & even offers some tips 4 Growing Old Gracefully, tips I can use.
From his 1st tour of the South with Claude Thornhill's band in the late '50s (all the band's members may have been nuts), thru a stint with Maynard Ferguson's blaring jazz band, 2 his later adventures in France, this is mostly hilarious stuff. There's a great-but-2-short chapter on the uselessness of jazz critics. + there's 8 bonus profiles or "tags" that close the book, & some of them (Chet Baker, Elvin Jones, John Cage, Jaco Pastorius, Sun Ra, ECM Records chief Manfred Eicher) R brilliant jazz-writing miniatures.
Wouldn't have minded if it'd bn 2wice as long. Worth tracking down....

Also read most of Philip Harbottle's VULTURES OF THE VOID: THE LEGACY (2011), which I thot was a history of bottom-dwelling British pulp-science-fiction publishers of the '40s, '50s & '60s. & there is SOME of that. But mostly the book (which I'm pretty-sure is self-published) is a reminiscence about Harbottle's lifelong efforts 2 get forgotten British SF writers like John Russell Fearn back in2 print. There's also an Xcellent LONG chapter about Harbottle's adventures editing the British SF magazine VISION OF TOMORROW at the end of the '60s.
There R neat insights from SF writer E.C. Tubb & others. & tho I'd hoped 4 lots more dirt on low-level British SF publishers like Curtis Warren -- companies that had writers cranking-out 120-pg novels in 2 weeks for $60! For YEARS! -- there is unfortunately not enuf of this.
This is an intresting book about a lost time-period in British SF, & some of Harbottle's memories about The England That Was R pretty neat. But I think you'd havta B a pretty hard-core SF fan 2 get much enjoyment out of it....