This might end up being very bad.

Round about 4th grade, I started to buy albums for myself.  Well, technically speaking, the first album I ever actually owned was "Snoopy's Christmas," but that was bought for me because I absolutely loved anything to do with Peanuts.  My first personal album purchase must have been early 1977 because it was an album called - pause to cringe dramatically - Hustle '76.  It was an instrumental album of elevator versions of disco songs.  And my second personal album purchase was the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever.

Why am I even admitting to this?

You have to understand that my parents were playing the easy listening station.  They were playing music that as a child I thought was absolutely awful.  And really, Dean Martin is kind of awful.  Did he leave a trail of slime as he walked?  But Frank Sinatra is actually pretty cool, especially when you know some of the dramaz of his life.  He wasn't a squeaky-clean pop phenom, ya dig?  He had some authenticity to him.  I love that word, that concept, authenticity.  I'll talk about it a lot.  There was also a lot of Gordon Lightfoot, who I loved, then hated, then reached a kind of peace with.  And Roger Whittaker, who I loved, saw live, and later realized was insufferably pompous.  (And I mistakenly typed Roger Waters into google - little different ahahaha.)

But my grandma had the tv on constantly - she was the kind of person who couldn't stand a quiet house.  It was cable tv, which was spiffy and new back then.  It was before MTV, before HBO even!  But we could watch the television stations from New York City, which seemed to have the inarguable virtue of running Green Acres and I Dream of Jeannie reruns at all hours of the day.  And the advertisement were always for these questionable compilation albums.  I bought another one called Freedom which was basically 60s protest music, which at the time, I understood about as well as I understood the decadent sexuality of Cabaret.  I wish I had that album now though - it had "All along the Watchtower" and "Candles in the Rain."

By 5th grade, we were allowed to play records during recess.  It was sort of a status thing to get to play our records.  I think I was precocious in my love of music - I had more 45s than anyone else.  The rest of the class kind of hated me for it - but they hated me for lots of things.  They hated me for being a smart kid, a teacher's pet.  They hated me for my parents, who were very upwardly mobile, and snobs.  This was something it took me a long time to understand.  Class consciousness is pretty unconscious in American children, especially middle-class ones.  They hated me because I was a strange girl, introverted and dreamy.  We were in an alternative, non-graded elementary school.  Basically, we weren't required to do anything.  So I spent the entirety of second grade staring out the window, dreaming.  Unlike my classmates, who spent the year learning long division.  In fourth grade, I had a teacher who wasn't having any of that fancy, modern philosophy.  She made me learn long division - in two weeks.  This is why they hated me.

They still played my records, though.

Let me see if I can remember some of those tunes...I may have blacked a lot of it out though, due to trauma or embarrassment...some of my favorites were these atrocities: "Kiss You All Over," "Wham Bam," and "No Tell Lover."  The last one was the last gasp, pretty much, of Chicago (well, no, actually YouTube reminds me that there were a lot of pretty sad written-by-the-numbers Chicago hits in the 1980s).  Another early lp I bought was their greatest hits compilation.  Some of that holds up pretty well...it's ironic though that as a child I listened to so much "adult-oriented rock," and as an adult, I'm mortified when one of my darlings, like Tori Amos, has a hit on the dreaded AOR charts.

Disco was still around, but not for long.  Everybody's favorite song was "Le Freak."  We also loved "A Fifth of Beethoven," but I'll leave that to the next post.

To my credit, I loved the gleefully silly "Ballroom Blitz." To my very great credit, I always thought that Kiss was absolute rubbish.  But to my eternal shame, I missed the boat entirely on Queen.  How could I not have bought a copy of "Bohemian Rhapsody," how?  Insert pause to rent my garment and pull the hair from my head.



Playlist:

Snoopy's Christmas - I hate most Christmas music.  It's so sappy, and the few pieces that are really lovely, like "Carol of the Bells" or "We Three Kings" get so overplayed that you come to loathe them.  Nevertheless, I still love Snoopy.  I suppose the karma of it all evens out.

Open Sesame - Of all the pieces on the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack, this is the only one that doesn't make me want to throw myself through a plate glass window.  It's funky and self-consciously ridiculous.  I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for camp.  Also, I can't help but think that this is what happens after a few too many lines of coke at Studio 54.

Last Farewell - omg, is this some kind of Hornblower fanvid ahahaha?   Well, it could be a really beautiful song, and Whittaker has an incredible voice.  But the arrangement is absolutely unforgivable.  The "majestic" horns, the jingoistic drums, the insufferable chorus - it's like imperialism set to music.

The First Time - And as if to prove my point, here's an example of how an arrangement can make all the difference.  Gordon Lightfoot does this old torch song stripped back and unplugged - absolutely gorgeous.  Someone do the same for "Wicheta Lineman."

All along the Watchtower - At last, something I can endorse without my tongue stuck a little in my cheek.  Absolute genius.  And don't miss the clip which includes Jimi playing the guitar with his teeth...

Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) - It's like the soundtrack for the apocalypse.  Somehow spiritual and spooky at the same time.  And so much soul in her voice.

Kiss You All Over - Ohgodohgodohgod this is a sleezy song, and I'd never actually seen the band before watching this video and they are CREEPY. I'd tell you to avoid it, but it helps sometimes to know just how bad that bad can be.  But if you want to go watch Jimi Hendrix again instead, I approve.

Beginnings - OK, yeah, AOR.  Le sigh.  But listen to the horns.  Roger Whittaker, THIS is how you do horns, m'kay?  Also, just wait for a sunny day, driving down the highway, and put this on.

Ballroom Blitz - They are wearing tulle and glitter pants.  There are no words for the awesomeness of this.

Le Freak - I can't decide whether this is old skool cool, or really, really bad.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Let's end on a high note.  There's a reason why this got 39 million views on YouTube.  Why didn't someone make an opera of this?  Better still, why didn't Queen just re-score every opera in existence?