DAVID SOUL: Playing to an Audience of One (Private Stock; 1977)

Track Listing: 1) Silver Lady; 2) Tattler; 3) I Wish I Was; 4) Rider; 5) Going in With My Eyes Open; 6) Playing to an Audience of One; 7) Tomorrow Child; 8) By the Devil (I Was Tempted); 9) Nobody But a Fool or a Preacher; 10) Mary's Fancy

How can you resist picking this one up for a buck? Today, people might get a chuckle out of seeing a collection of tunes released by Starsky (or was he Hutch?), but many forget that before David Soul became a TV icon thanks to that great 70's cop show, he actually aspired to be a singer. Lest we forget, he had that number one single in 1976, "Don't Give Up On Us Baby" (which would then appear on every mushy K-Tel "Sex on the Beach", "Music By the Fireplace", "Smoochin at Sunset" compilation you can think of). That song is not on this album. Therefore, the title of this LP is amusingly ironic. As far as his singing career was concerned, most of us think of David Soul as a one-hit wonder. So, for camp value alone, this album is a real find. It likely got made thanks to his TV success, and his hit single, and surprisingly, time has been rather kind to it. I could envision one or two of these tracks making their way onto a soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino film.

I confess to having a soft spot to 70's easy listening music (and I guess that makes me a perfect Tightwad Music Collector, doesn't it?), but I will be objective here and admit that although I like the sound itself, there is really little variety there. To be sure, there are plenty of synthy strings, dreamy steel guitar riffs, and lots of lyrical moaning about unrequited love and passing through another town. David Soul's singing is pleasant enough, sounding somewhere between Jim Croce and Harry Chapin, yet his thin voice blends too well with the soupy surroundings. The thing I like most about 1970's music, of most genres, is that they seemed to blend with other forms and sounds. Even mushy music (which we now refer to as "Adult Contemporary") attempted to be mildly experimental with various colourings of sound. Case in point, during these unremarkable moanings, one can hear clarinets, ragtime-ish pop (which was briefly fashionable at the time), and even a guitar with a wah-wah pedal, however with a found not too phat that it would scare away the mild-mannered suburban white audience that this record was targeting. There's some diversity here, but it's not much.

Tightwad rating: **1/2 /5

Happy record hunting!

Love,

The Doctor

THE GUESS WHO: Guess Who's Back (RCA; 1981)

Track Listing: 1) C'mon Little Mama; 2) Vancouver; 3) Never Trust a Chorus Girl; 4) Raisin' Hell on the Prairies; 5) Sweet Young Thing; 6) Keep on Shining; 7) Moon Wave Maker; 8) Laid It on Me Anyway

Personnel: Jim Kale (bass, vocals); Kurt Winter (guitar, vocals); Don McDougal (guitar, vocals); Vance Masters (drums, vocals)

For my money, bar none, the greatest Canadian rock band ever was/is The Guess Who, with due nods to acts like The Tragically Hip, Rush... hell, The Guess Who is even better than Serial Joe! Anyway, the period we usually refer to as their golden years were from the late 1960's to the early 1970's, when Burton Cummings was the front man. No self-respecting Canadian can get away without being able to sing along to at least one of their hit singles.

After the band dissolved in the mid-1970's, someone at RCA nonetheless decided to get the band back together. And "The Guess Who" did record a few more records. I put the band in quotation marks because hardcore Guess Who fans usually wrinkle their nose at this outfit, from which Cummings was glaringly absent. Instead, bassist/vocalist Jim Kale became the front man, and although on a couple of tracks, he's trying really hard to get his voice into the upper register to try to fill Burton's long shadow. This album isn't great, but nor is it the sacrilege that Burtonites will have you believe.

One can always find used records of The Guess Who at any second-hand music shop- it's Canada, right? But finding one of the Kale albums is a discovery, predominantly because they took a quick hike to the delete bins, and only occasionally resurfaced "used". The greatest sin GUESS WHO'S BACK commits is of course trying to fill Burton Cummings' shoes, and it's not a bad attempt, really. Despite Kale's thin voice, there are nice harmonies that are signature to the sound, and Kurt Winter's guitar solos are as ear-splitting and show-stopping as always.

Other than that, the music is amiable at best, even if the ambition was rather modest to begin with. Tracks like "C'mon Little Mama" or "Raisin' Hell on the Prairies" are indicative of the usual good time party rock that fills a thousand albums. Gone is the intensity, the firey youthful lust, and the autmnal mourning. For its day, GUESS WHO'S BACK would be the perfectly undemanding, vacuous soundtrack from someone's 8-track deck while travelling on a lonely Canadian highway searching for the next Tim Hortons. Today, it's an also-ran.

Tightwad rating: *** /5

Happy record hunting!

Love,

The Doctor

THE TERRELL TRIBE: Today Was The Day (B/W) Get Lost (Caledon Records; 1980?)

One Saturday in late spring of 1981, after I had performed my weekly ritual of checking out yard sales on my three-speed, for whatever reason I decided to go into the mall at the east end of town. (This was in the days when having an indoor mall in a town of 13,000 was still new, and people sometimes went there just to go there) Shortly in front of where the Canadian Tire exited into the main walkway to the A&P at the other end, where the smaller stores in between took advantage of those passers-by, played a band named The Terrell Tribe. They played the same 45-minute set all afternoon (I stayed for two of them) of covers of inoffensive pop tunes or adult contemporary songs that the adults would like, and no country, so the kids wouldn't throw up.

Most memorable was their cover of The Irish Rovers' "Wasn't That a Party", which was a huge hit at that time. During the lyric with "that old police car", the keyboardist-vocalist-leader even had an orange light on top of his piano which simulated the cherries on top of ole Smokey. I also remember a tall slim brunette with a Debby Boone haircut who doubled on the flute (I can't remember for what song... was it the Kenny Rogers hit "You Decorated My Life"?) Goddamn, for this hick town, this was news to have a band play in the mall on a Saturday!

Why all the excitement you ask? Well, someone had the shrewd marketing idea to draw attention to the grand opening of a small clothing shop named Birdie's. They even had someone in a yellow duck suit giving out helium balloons. To take full advantage of this crowded affair, The Terrell Tribe (was this a family band like The Cowsills? I'm not sure) was giving out free records, 33 RPM's the size of 45's. I took two; one for my mother. Just around suppertime, I tied a longer piece of string to the helium balloon and from my backyard I flew it around like a kite.

Before I finally got my own little portable record player at a yard sale for five dollars the following year, I used to sneak this record on my mother's stereo system in the living room when she wasn't home. Remember when the family stereo wasn't some little boom box, but some whopping piece of furniture with tan varnish? "Today Was the Day" opens up the four-song collection with blandish country-AC so indicative of the listener-friendly original material fledgling musicians would play in the hotel on a Saturday afternoon. Then we get to the good stuff- "Get Lost", the track I played to death. Opening with a Chuck Berry riff, we then hear some catchy lyrics where the vocalist's laments over his woman walking out on him are cured by jamming with his friends. "My friends said come and play with us/ Plug in that old guitar / We started to rock and we never stopped / Who needs that rotten chick now?" ). A whisper of soul pervades "Sweet Talking", with an emphasis on strong vocal harmonies, but the sound is still whitened by the typical southern Ontario steel guitar licks. Rounding out this mini-epic is a rendition of the easy listening favourite "Sealed With a Kiss" with a countrified accent and a curious, Ray Manzarek-sounding organ solo.

I cannot account for where anyone of The Terrell Tribe is today, but I wonder if anyone remembers the day they gave our small town a buzz? Sometimes I still put on "Get Lost". Oh, and by the way, Birdie's closed in less than a year.

Tightwad rating: ***1/2 /5

Happy record hunting!

Love,

The Doctor

THE KINGSMEN: Greatest Hits of the Kingsmen (Elite; 1991)

It is no secret how much the government can waste people's money. Think of how much tax dollars went down the drain for Zippergate only to discover what everyone already knew in the first place. Case in point, what on Earth were the US' elected officials attempting to prove by spending people's IRS money decifering the lyrics to "Louie Louie"? Did the expect to find cryptic keys to a revolotion? Well in a sense that was probably true.

"Louie Louie" had been recorded before, but it was the version by the Kingsmen that immortialized it. True, it was revolutionary, but only in hindsight. No, it wasn't inspiring kids to rape and pillage, but "Louie Louie" was perhaps the first punk song ever recorded. This tune was asethetically a slap in the face to the recording industry. The indecipherable lyricist is buried among the overamplified instuments, the timing of the musicians is all of over the place... thus it is all wrong, yet correct. Nonethleless, this cut solidified The Kingsmen's reputation as garage band par excellence. In fact, it is interesting to note that although the band continued (from 1963 to 1966) with escalating production values, they still retained the raw immature power of a bunch of pals rocking out in the garage on a Saturday afternoon. Even when they did standards, they still continued to de-construct music to their own crude ideals. The over-amplified, fuzzy organ in "Money" has all the thudding rambunctious ambition of every over-achieving future wannabe musician who toils away until reality sets in. It's like the soundtrack to a lost Arch Hall movie, where the classically bad actor in a white dinner jacket and skinny tie is jamming next to a plump blonde doing The Frug. And then you could just picture a B-movie montage during "Death of an Angel" where the bug-eyed kid is in silhouette at the beach at dusk playing for his new girlfriend, as she lies on a towel, simply awestruck by his musical prowess.

The Kingsmen also seemed to exploit the use of stereophonic sound so that each channel was crammed with audio. Rather than divide up the sound and add more clarity to the instruments, instead, like in "The Climb", the voices are all crammed onto one ear as the plastic sax crowds out the other. In other words, the dynamics of stereo are intentionally subverted for the canned sound so crucial to "garage".

What a blast for a buck! Before Rhino tirelessly began re-releasing a lot of oldies acts for the days of the CD revolution, one could pick up cheap greatest hits cassettes at some discount retail store on some fly-by-night label which temporarily acquired the rights to the masters of yesterday's heroes. This Elite label (a subsidiary of Poly-Tel!) got access to the Wand catalogue just to put out a collection of a scant eight songs scarcely adding up to 16 and 1/2 minutes!

Having all of the enthusiasm of The Young Rascals (but not their polish), this precocious bunch re-invented all that was trendy from 1963 to 1966 (surf, R&B...) and reduced it all to their own messy sensibilities. With any new revolution in rock -be it punk or grunge- which offers an alternative to the top 40 blandness of the day before that movement itself is reduced to top 40 blandness, isn't it any wonder why we harken back to the early progenitors of the revolution- when there was greater risk for having a different voice, and to do things one's own way in their own ragged glory?

Tightwad rating: **** /5

Happy record hunting!

Love,

The Doctor

HUBERT LAWS: The Chicago Theme (CTI; 1976)

Ah, where would THE TIGHTWAD MUSIC COLLECTOR be without some reference made to the label of Creed Taylor? Taylor used to produce for Verve Records back in the 1960's.. In the 1970's, on his own label, he cashed big on the jazz fusion market with innumerable albums featuring top players of the day. Even when the music was genuinely good (although predominantly, it was syrup), the CTI label treated it with production values as thin as tissue. Even when a number featured 12 musicians, it still sounded like a 7th generation recording made in a phone booth. At this time in the 1970's, jazz was dividing into small camps- all influenced by the notion of fusion. It could be tinny elevator music, hard-ass rock, discofied renditions of pop tunes, or cop show funk. The opening title tune provides plenty of the latter. With Laws' long notes on the flute, accompanied by the inimitable 70's "weh-eh-eh" funk guitar, this is an infectiously catchy number. I keep envisioning guys in tan leather jackets running down the street when this gets played. Life is full of paradoxes- among the most perplexing is the demographics behind rinky-dink instrumentations of pop tunes. Oh sure, Bob and Verna still wanted to look "with it", even though they were pushing forty. The purple turtlenecks and groovy mood rings only did so much. But rather than buy the latest pop record to keep up with their kids, they just waited for some jazz guy to do a version of it. Case in point, "You Make Me Feel Brand New". This rendition of the Stylistics hit is not flyweight enough to disppear into the realm of "fuzak" mind you, but Taylor nearly succeeded in such with a customarily flat recording. At least the bass is just thick enough for it not to be piffle, but the arrangement is breezy enough for Bob to play on the 8-track while driving to work and still feel hip.

Tightwad rating: **** /5

Happy record hunting!

Love,

The Doctor

THE LOVE MACHINE: Music To Blow Your Mind By

There are two things that are certain to get you ridiculed if you buy them at the supermarket- shoes and records. Remember when at the checkouts you could buy cheap records (cheap in both senses of the word) featuring artists you've never heard of (nor will again)? I cannot account for the origin of this album, but I suspect it is of that ilk. One day I went online and did a Google search for "The Love Machine Electronic Music To Blow Your Mind", and all I found was some guy selling this LP for 25 bones (US!). Ah, how times change...

It was one sorry day to be alive in 1987. One Sunday I bought a handful of albums at a flea market for 25 cents each. Then I came home and got shit because I forgot to put my latest two-week statement of earnings in the mail to the people at the unemployment office. I had been laid off for three months and was not only getting cabin fever, but also I was always being asked, "What are you gonna do with your life?"- a question I was already asking myself more often, anyway.

So anyway, I hopped on my ten-speed and looked for a convenience store that had stamps to sell so I could mail this thing. Having done my good deed for the day, and having the house to myself for the rest of the day because my mother was at work, I decided to have a listen to my recent acquisitions. Well can you imagine my dismay when I opened up the K-Tel compilation "Disco Fever"? I picked this up because Meco's version of "Star Wars" was on it. To my rude surprise, this compilation was a double album, and one of the records was missing. Guess which one? Shaking my head, I pulled out the vinyl to this strange band called The Love Machine. Pretty cool cover, too. All psychedelic swirls with some cartoon of some guy's head with round glasses and a big moustache. Was this cover illustration made with "Yellow Submarine" in mind? Who knows? Anyhow, I was just getting into Tangerine Dream at the time, and so the title "Electronic Music To Blow Your Mind By" was an instant enticement to me. Well, my frown hit the floor upon hearing the infantile, paper-thin wankery on this album. Imagine someone rocking out on that tinny organ they play at a hockey game. No more. I resigned from listening to any more of my fool's gold, so I grabbed a beer and sat down to watch "Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer Boris Karloff", which I taped off The Cat's Pajamas the week before.

13 years and six changes of address later, I dig this thing out of the closet. It still has the red sticker that someone wrote "25 c" onto. Because my friends and I were still basking in the revival of the lounge lizard nostalgia, and because I had one too many shots of Southern Comfort one Saturday afternoon, I decided to treat my ears to another listen of this truffle. And you know? It actually improved with age. The bass lines sounded thicker- there are some cool grooves... it actually felt like there was an actual band on this album! Just like those cheap, flat blue running shoes you used to be able to buy at the supermarket- the ones I always got picked on for wearing in Grade 7; in the early 90's during everyone's 70's schlock nostalgia kick, they came back in style! I noticed the lead singer of Dr. Pop and the Noise wearing them during The Beaches Jazz Festival. Who knew? Just like this album. In 1987, I would never have imagined that this substitute for a frisbee would suddenly be retro chic.

Tightwad rating: **1/2 /5

Happy record hunting!

Love,

The Doctor