Father's Day Gift Guide

Father's Day is nigh upon us and you will probably say "I don't know" when asked for gift ideas to commemorate the occasion, or maybe you don't know what to get one of the dads in your life.  This post aims to alleviate that problem.

Men in Love and/or the Trainspotting collection

If you read G:TB you were probably born between 1968 and 1978 which means you are of exactly the right age to have seen, and been absolutely blown away by, the movie Trainspotting when it came out in 1996.

Barry!  The book on which it's based is just as good and it got me into other works by Irvine Welsh including all the sequels and prequels involving the same group of radge jakeys which are available on Amazon as the "Trainspotting collection."  This does not include the latest installment, Men in Love, which takes place shortly after the end of Trainspotting and before Porno.  This means the new book is a sequel and a prequel.  As a fan of the series I enjoyed it greatly.  I guess you could come to it cold but I suspect you'll enjoy it more if you already read the other books, or at least Trainspotting.  I've cited some favorite Welsh quotes before--my top choice from Men in Love is from Sick Boy (natch) and it's at least tangentially related to Father's Day:

Pah-pah, Papa: even a broken clock is right twice a day.  I thank God that out of the billions of retard sperm that this miasmal mongol hound shot from those festering hee-haws intae my ill-omened mother (and countless Leith hoors), that it was the solitary, exceptional, perfect bastard that managed to penetrate her egg and furnish this saintly woman with her only son.

Onlae a dozy bam couldnae relate to that!

Syitren R300 CD player

zwoman got me one of these small modern CD players for my birthday.  It has AUX and optical jacks and Bluetooth so it works with AirPods or any other Bluetooth device.  More importantly, it justifies keeping all my CDs, especially the ones that are currently only on Notify (like Done By the Forces of Nature which was removed from Spotify because I suspect it includes exactly zero cleared samples).  I dig the Scandinavian vibe of the walnut version.  Who doesn't dig Scandinavian vibes?

Patagonia R1 Air Hoodie 

zson borrowed my softshell to clean out stables in the rain and a horse bit the zipper off (don't ask) so I went to REI to replace it during their recent 25% off sale.  They didn't have anything that fit the bill, but I spend a lot of time in fleece jackets and two of them are close to crapping out so I perused REI's selection and discovered Patagonia's new (at least to me) Air Fleece.  I'm not sure how it works but it keeps you warm without getting too warm (unlike their Better Sweaters) and the medium fit me perfectly.  They are wildly overpriced, even at 25% off, but it's replacing two fleeces (one of which I bought about 12 years ago) and zson is about my size so he can wear it too (so long as he avoids the zipper-eating horse) so I justified it to myself and I'm hoping it will last a long time.  I went with the hoodie version because who doesn't like hoodies?  

A subscription to The Atlantic

There might not be a better source of content outside G:TB than The Atlantic.  It's chock-full of think pieces from deep thinkers, cultural observations from cultured observers, and short fiction from non-fictional writers of all heights.  Notable writers include Tom Nichols, Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Robert Kagan, McKay Coppins, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Jonathan Chait, Adam Serwer, Derek Thompson, Annie Lowrey, Jamele Hill, George Packer, Eliot Cohen, Alexandra Petri and a boatload of other Washington Post defectors.  They put out new stuff online daily and offer a web-only subscription but for an extra $10 you can get also get the dead tree version mailed to your house along with a tote.

New Recurring Feature: Les Coole's As a Single LP Series

Bloated. Self-indulgent. Lacking self-control and self-awareness. A massive ego trip. 

These are labels often used to describe (a) me, (b) my blog posts, and, most pertinently, (c) double and triple albums throughout rock'n'roll history. Yes, for decades, 99.9% of original release pop and rock LP records were single vinyl discs to be played at 33⅓ rpm, and they usually held 20 to 22, no more than 23 minutes a side. Along the way, though, there were occasional, more robust submissions of multiple discs – those in the .1% – with varying success. 

[Of Note: compilation and live albums are exempted for obvious reasons. They can and should go long. Doy.] 

The Double Album. What a statement. Our work cannot be contained within a single disc! We have more! You need more! The push-back from fans and critics often would become a personal statement about the artist(s), like “The audacity that you wouldn’t pare this down to the standard listening length! Where is your sense of rock album decorum?” 

And let’s face it, sometimes that backlash is warranted. Sometimes recording artists need someone tastefully judicious like George Martin or Rick Rubin sitting there going, “ Nope… nope… nope…” and x-ing out the tracks that clutter up what could be a svelte, sleek piece of musical brilliance. 

The artists need that, but they don’t always get that. You have people like Billy Corgan musing, “We had one solid record and one hit record… let’s go massive double album, baby!” And while I’m sure someone at Pumpkinland (actual studio name) at that time must have told him he shouldn’t, nobody told him he couldn’t. 2 hours and 1 minute of Pumpkins. Phew. 

Then, sometimes you’re The Clash, who boldly released the punk rock Hall of Fame double album London Calling (1 hr 5 mins) in 1979 to incredible fanfare! Success against the odds! And then, validated, just threw the kitchen sink onto tape onto their triple album Sandinista! a year later and didn’t hold back (2 hrs 24 mins). Wowsers. 

For all of that, there are instances when the scope creep does work. In addition to the aforementioned magnum opus from The Only Band That Matters, London Calling, the Stones’ high-water mark to a vast number of fans and critics is Exile on Main Street (1 hr 7 mins). Others are out there. Tommy. The Wall. Songs in the Key of Life. 

Goodbye Vinyl Brick Road 

When vinyl fully gave way to cassette along the way in the 1980’s, the double album became less of a big deal. For one thing, it happened less frequently – there was no decade in music as senselessly sprawling, as dilated and diluted with decadence as the 1970’s. Punk rock at its inceptive core was at least in part an angry reaction to 10-minute epic raga saga songs on double albums belted out in flairs and heels with feathered butt cuts. Punk begat new wave, and the 1980’s were a go. (“It's called the 80's, and it's gonna be around forever!”) 

Brevity was suddenly the wit of soul, rock, pop, and other genres in the 80’s. [Except for reggae. And “Purple Rain.” And “Rock Me Amadeus (Salieri Version).”]

Also, cassettes could handle the load on one unit! For the most part, cassette tapes could run up to 45 minutes a side, so even The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime and its whopping 43 songs was a single tape! (They’re short songs… 1 hr 14 mins.) But wow! 

[Oh, but not Sandinista. That’s two tapes, buddy. Talk about extravagant, boyo.] 

In this cool new medium, runtimes on tapes could elevate beyond the previously established ceilings and nobody really knew or cared. In fact, with the advent of dual cassette stereos and boomboxes, you could have a Maxell (way better than Memorex) 90-minuter with Murmur on one side and Reckoning on the other! And I did! 

Those were great days. Oh, minus the underreported impact from the loss of amazing album art, as liner notes and gatefold album covers were basically eradicated. Also crappy was the inevitable snapping of the tape and the resplicing with scotch tape and a pencil. And the eventual faded warble that cassettes’ sonic brilliance became with overuse. But hey, no scratches like on records! Glad that scratches are gone for good! Oh. Wait for it… 

All Music Media Things Must Pass 

Ah, yes. Then came CD’s. Mind-blowing for the audiophiles. 

Compact discs in the late 80’s and early 90’s were another sea change for squeezing albums onto media. Roughly 74 to 80 minutes on music, so a number of the “double albums” in the original issuance became 2-CD sets. (A little better for album art; still not the same.) 

ooh, the original master recording

Multi-disc releases were boxed and organized a number of different ways, from the big fat double jewel case (could handle 3 or 4 discs but usually just a deuce) to cardboard experimentation to just 4 CD cases that get strewn about in your collection and lost. 

Lose Your Illusion 

So I give short shrift to double albums on CD. Even moreso for streaming. By a looong shot. Doesn’t matter any more. Feels like progress, eh? It’s not. Hell, albums of any kind are secondary items. All the world’s a jukebox and we are merely players of that jukebox now. Only Mr. KQ and a few others spend quiet time with an album and its art. Kudos to that. 

And the seemingly arbitrary time limits of yesteryear? Well, they protected us from overlong kitchen-sink stuff. Hey folk, here’s the demo of the 1st-take acoustic (with oboe) instrumental version of “Layla.” And then Takes 2 and 3 of that. Sweet. 

You know what’s better? Concise? Taut? Crisp? Powerful? Sharp? 

23 minutes on Side A. 

23 minutes on Side B. 

Flip it. Flip it again, if it’s really good shit. 

So… the current malaise has to be remedied. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Marls? I have a greater responsibility to our collective gheorghian music entertainment than you can possibly fathom. 

As such, without anyone asking for it, this is an exercise I have performed for you, albeit one that’s been done – not to death, but ad nauseum in certain music forum spaces on the world wide web. And everyone out there has different opinions, as it damn well should be. So therefore I cannot offer a definitive take on it . . . except that I’ve been hanging with Dave for 37 years so far and so, therefore, this is indeed truly definitive! 

I offer you a premier look at: 

Les Coole’s The “As a Single LP” Project 

:wherein I take double and triple albums of the rock and roll canon and give you a pared-down, svelte, bad-assed rendering of what these records would be like on a single vinyl platter. As in, a Side A and a Side B.  Wander down the road with me if you will. 

Stay tuned. Like right away, the first edition is set to pop, accompanying this post 1-2 like . . . like it's a . . . yep.  A double album. 

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Four

On the fourth day of Gheorghemas, the swarthy Romanian gave to me:

Four reasons to save 68 CDs
Three balls a-rainin'
Two more automotive wormhole websites
And a bald guy and some random hor-seys

You all have heard me cyber-whining about our ongoing/neverending renovation. We are approaching the ninth inning of the project. And while I wonder if it's a fifteen inning game, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. A point of influence to my wife amid this project was the need to purge objects as we prepare to settle into a wildly different home. I am an anti-pack rat, but my wife likes to hang onto things. We hit a purge groove last w/e. When we were both under the influence of wine, I got her to part with some stuff. I strongly urge you all to use wine as a lubricant to get the wife to purge items with little emotional value. And to get her in the mood for sexy time.

I decided to lead by example (again) last w/e. I made the hard decision to get rid of my CDs. They are stored in many (very) heavy boxes. I have moved them many times since burning them to a hard drive about a dozen years ago. It is inconceivable to think I will ever need ALL of them ever again. Removing boxes creates space. Everybody wins, right?

So I pulled all the boxes down from the attic and stuffed them in the garage until we figured out how to recycle them. But then I got nostalgic and decided to rip through them one last time, for old time's sake. Memories flooded back. I saw CDs I special-ordered from The Band Box. I saw CDs I had bought on cassette and vinyl. I saw CDs that expanded my mind in high school. I saw CDs that blew my mind in college. And I saw shit sandwiches. TONS of them. So much wasted money!

I decided I should hold onto a select, manageable group of the CDs I own. I gave myself no limit on saving. I just went through every one and kept each one that checked some opaque box in my brain/heart, keeping the hurdle rate pretty high. I looked at the keepers pile as I was almost finished sorting and became excited in an immature way, given where I thought the total might land. So where did I end up? 68 CDs. 68. Sorry dudes. I would love to have serendipitously landed at 69, but a CD had to meet some emotional threshold to be kept. No Korn. No MC Serch solo album. No POD. No Pietasters. No Rave 'Til Dawn. And no Dee Lite. Little Feat didn't make the cut either. Is it fun as hell? Yes. Yes it is. But is it an emotional anchor? No. But they did play at Jazzfest during my bachelor party. The reasons are entirely personal. Some I could explain and some I couldn't.

So here are the four reasons why I saved 68 CDs:

1) My kids may want the social equity from a robust collection of "old school" music, much like I gained with my hippie-ish mother's classic rock vinyl collection. So they now have a stack to choose from.

2) If I die one day (which some folks say is possible), my kids can play some of these and hear a lot of the music that influenced me as a kid and young adult. This was a key (and largely irrational) reason behind my decision to stash some tunes. My kids already like some Beatles, Rolling Stones, White Strips and Widespread Panic that I play them. So those are layup keepers. McCoy Tyner, Velvet Underground and Terrapin Station may take a bit longer to resonate, but they're still building blocks, at least in my warped view.

3) It hurts too much to be so clinical and toss all of it away. This is the soundtrack to my days as a young buck, when I was bird-dogging chicks and banging beaver, after all!

4) Adding an element of emotion to the process of decluttering makes my wife think I'm a normal human being and lets her know I'll give a bit of an emotional cushion when it comes to chucking crap into the garbage. Happy wife, happy life.

Here are the 68 CDs I saved. They skew towards rock for obvious reasons. Metal made it in the mix a bit  (Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Iron Maiden). Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet is my lone hip hop album. The collection might have been bigger had I not lost so many CDs along the hazy days of my youth. I'd bet a couple of you out there have a scratched-up CD w/ "TAR" scribbled on it.

Artist	Album/Box Set
Allman Brothers Band	Live at the Fillmore
Beatles	Rubber Soul
Bob Dylan	Blonde on Blonde
Bob Dylan	Blood on the Tracks
Bob Dylan	Bootleg Series Volume 1
Bob Marley	Songs of Freedom (Box Set)
Broken Social Scene	You Forgot it in People
Bruce Springsteen	The River
Bruce Springsteen	The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle
Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds	Live at Luther College
Dave Matthews Band	Crash
Elton John	Greatest Hits
Elton John	Greatest Hits Vol II
Grateful Dead	Reckoning
Grateful Dead	Shakedown Street
Grateful Dead	Terrapin Station
Guns n' Roses	Appetite for Destruction
Iron Maiden	Live After Death
Jane's Addiction	Nothing Shocking
Led Zeppelin	Led Zeppelin I
McCoy Tyner	Blue Bossa
Metallica	Kill 'Em All
Metallica	Master of Puppets
Michael Jackson	Off the Wall
Michael Jackson	Thriller
Mooney Suzuki	Electric Sweat
Motley Crue	Shout at the Devil
My Morning Jacket	It Still Moves
Neil Young	Decade
Neil Young	Harvest
North Mississippi All Stars	Shake Hands With Shorty
Old & In the Way	Old & In the Way
Pearl Jam	Ten
Phish	Live 10/31/98
Phish	Rift
Public Enemy	Fear of a Black Planet
Rage Against the Machine	Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against the Machine	Renegades
Robert Randolph & The Family Band	Live at the Wetlands
Robert Randolph & The Family Band	Unclassified
Rolling Stones	Let it Bleed
Rolling Stones	Sticky Fingers
Rusted Root	When I Woke
Sly & The Family Stone	Greatest Hits
Soundgarden	BadMotorfinger
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble	Greatest Hits
Strunz & Farah	Live
Styx	Grand Illusion
Talking Heads	Stop Making Sense
The Band	Music from Big Pink
The Band	The Night They Drove Old Dixe Down
The Doors	LA Woman
The Doors	Morrison Hotel
The Doors	The Doors
The Samples	No Room
The Strokes	Is This It?
The Word	The Word
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers	Greatest Hits
Van Morrison	Moondance
Velvet Underground	Peel Slowly and See (Box Set)
White Stripes	De Stijl
White Stripes	Elephant
White Stripes	White Blood Cells
White Stripes	White Stripes
Widespread Panic	Ain't Life Grand
Widespread Panic	Don't Tell the Band
Widespread Panic	Everyday
Widespread Panic	Space Wrangler