Thank you for not clearing your 'favorites' settings...

Sorry, there's no new material just yet. The Dylan covers and Nico discography projects will continue this year, but for the moment I wanted anyone still alive out there to know that a post on a humor blog I used to do has its first new post in a couple of years and it's music related. Just FYI.

I hope you like visual puns.

Hall of Shame Update 2013

.....Before the year ends I should note that the recent list of inductees (pared down from an earlier list of nominees) released by the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, as well as last year's, contains names from my 2011 list of deserving candidates who have been undeservedly passed over. My "Checklist of Shame" occupied ten posts over three weeks plus one the following January. The shame, it should be noted, was on the Hall, not the artists. I named over 150 acts in the Checklist itself and more in the ranty paragraphs that began and ended each posts. In the rants preceding the second post (Sept. 29, 2011) I included Lou Adler among the non-performers "inexplicably missing"; he was later inducted in 2013. Next year Kiss and Peter Gabriel are due to be inducted. Also, as I correctly predicted (Sept. 28, 2011), Public Enemy was inducted last year in its first year of eligibility.

.....Hopefully I'll be able to record more of my thoughts in the coming year (perhaps update that list), even if it's only a random "what I'm listening to at the moment" approach; anything to prime the pump and stimulate further productivity.

.....We'll see what the New Year brings. You're always welcome to leave questions and suggestions in the comments. Even when I leave gaps between posts, the comments are forwarded.

Thanks,
pblfsda

Happy Halloween

.....You may have guessed by now that I was one of hundreds of thousands if not millions to suffer from power outages in the northeast U.S. in the wake of a freak snow storm. This should not have had any impact on completing the long overdue Cramps compilation which, frankly, I should have posted in August. However, for the previous week I'd been doing some cooking and caretaking for a relative recovering from major surgery. I brought my notes to complete editing the final track selection to make sure it fits the time limitations of the various formats. During my stay the best I could manage was to edit and post a previously written "Checklist Of Shame" installment. Now that I'm back in a position to get to work I'm finding it physically impossible to type fast enough to get this out for Halloween.

.....By some small way of compensation, I could refer you to the series of Halloween music compilations I suggested last year for those who hadn't discovered the blog. There should be a Halloween label to click on in the list to the right. Also, all this month you could have been enjoying the daily posts on http://theroadsofautumndusk.blogspot.com/ as well as http://historiesofthingstocome.blogspot.com/ for all variety of Halloween goodness (and badness), not just the musical end. Where I am trick or treating has been postponed for reasons of safety as much as convenience. Until all downed power lines have been reconnected it's best to give the kids one more day of anticipation. If I give up sleep, it might be all I need to finish the post. (And for readers in the U.S., don't forget to vote next week. You may not have any say in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, but you should have a say in your own fate.)

Update on Volume One

.....Last year I got an e-mail about one of my posts asking for an mp3. Generally I don't embed these because: (a) I don't own publishing rights to any of this music; (b) my computer has limited capacities that I have to use economically; and (c) it's really just a blog, not a full blown website, and the purpose is to organize all of these loose notes I have piling up and loose memories that dim with age and put them into a more manageable and maneuverable form. I admittedly invite millions of strangers to watch, even comment and contribute, but ultimately it can never be anything more than a personal endeavor.

.....That being said, I am not averse to connecting interested parties with hard to find music. In a sense, this blog has always done that by the mere fact of its existence. It doesn't help anyone for there to be millions of uploaded songs online available to be heard if no one knows they exist or knows what their names are to search. As I've said before, there are quite a few songs I blog about that were rare or underexposed back in the mid-90's when I made most of these compilations, but which have become more common since then, often making it to CD for the first time as bonus tracks on remastered albums or incentives in a boxed set. Some just haven't. So when a commenter requested a copy of the punk version of the Mr. Rogers' theme song by P.B.S. (originally on a Troubled Youth 7") I thought I should contact the band (we had friends in common a lo-o-ong time ago) and ask if they had any objections to posting it. Google searches got pretty frustrating pretty quick. I don't normally track down people often enough to make it worth subscribing to sites that do so routinely and I found far more people than I expected to with the same names (complicated by the fact that both the band name and the song title are famous for many more reasons than the record). Then I started developing technical problems, which, when fixed, required me to work through backlogged plans for my comic blog, and if you've been reading for any length of time, you know the rest.

.....Well, it seems the question has been resolved for me. Better than a fourth generation mp3, the band (or a former member) has posted the actual original 1980's video on You-tube. You can find it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ad8PkYZzqU

...and you can find the band's page at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/pbsoww

.....So, if anyone has been attempting to patch together their own compilations following the play order, this shouldn't be quite the obstacle it once was. I should also give the band proper credit.

• Mike Bourque: Vocals, Guitars
• John Saylor: Vocals, Bass
• Peter-oww-Oldrid: Drums
• Produced [actually, "Prduced"] by Hirsh Gardner
• Engineered by Bruce Macomber
• Recorded at Sound Design Studios

.....There are also photo credits and thanks to friends and family members not relevant to most readers. One curious detail I hadn't noticed earlier is that both sides (TR-001-A and TR-001-B) have the same mastering number (23445) both on the labels and in the trail-off grooves. Hunh. Oh, well, small labels have all kinds of quirks much stranger than that. We'll see what I can remember (and how accurately) in the new year.