A note: I’m getting some interesting Top Tens from my 2008 blog songs for the Great Vinyl Countdown, which will involve a reposting of the ten reader favorites. Don’t let others vote out your preferences! Here's what you need to do about it.
Christmas was taken seriously at my house, and at those of my cousins. I have video (Super 8mm transferred to DVD) that shows all of us gathering together, and there were a lot of us. My mom was the youngest of ten children, and while none of my uncles and aunts reproduced to that degree, there were plenty of cousins.
We all gathered at my grandparents’ house in Gary, at 340 Adams, half a block from the South Shore electric railway. At night, you could see sparks from the electrical contacts that reached up from the engines to the overhead wires. Across the street was a row of apartment houses, dark-brown brick, and all around us were two-story frame houses. My grandmother sold the house in 1969, and in 1971, the City of Gary demolished it, because the new owners had left the doors and windows open to the elements, and it had become uninhabitable. Soon, so many houses would reach that state that the city simply stopped tearing them down; some sat as wrecks for twenty years, which you know if you have ever driven past Gary on the Indiana Tollway.
But in the mid-1960s, everyone in Gary was working in the steel mills, drugs had not taken hold as the primary local commodity, and Christmas was a superb time to go downtown.
At some point, my parents received from my cousin Manetta an LP of Christmas recordings played on music boxes. A Music Box Christmas (Columbia 8498) used music boxes from the collection of Rita Ford, a Manhattan purveyor of antique music boxes, to bring extraordinarily high-fidelity recordings of music as people would have heard it just before the dawn of the Recording Era.
Nowadays, when you open up a jewelry box or anything that has a little mechanical device, you get a tinkly sound that reminds me of water dripping. Not so with the Ford music boxes. They existed to produce the full dynamic range of sound, a substitute for the not-yet-existent technology for recording musicians. While today’s little boxes play one song, these machines played cylinders or platters that could be swapped out, with new songs available at music stores. The larger music boxes undoubtedly served as the engineering prototype for the first cabinet-style record players of the 1890s.
Every year, the Christmas LPs came out after Thanksgiving, and this was my favorite. For the first several years, I managed not to destroy the cover, so I was able to recall its design. What stuck most in my memory was a golden, trumpet-playing, winged cherub, which hung in the upper right-hand corner of the photo. You can see the cover, and bid on a sealed copy of the LP, here.
After the LP lost the valiant battle to survive in the Great Vinyl Meltdown of 1972, every Christmas involved nostalgia for the family gatherings, for the wreath covered in Brach’s butterscotch candies that one of my cousins always made up for us, for my mom, and for that album. The song selection, which included tunes I have never heard elsewhere, the idea of very old technology creating new Christmas traditions in an era that gave us a lot of the traditions we now follow blindly, and the simple beauty of the song arrangements, all worked to make this a great album and a great memory.
And so, I met with a staggering surprise one day in the mid-1980s when I was walking through College Mall in Bloomington, Indiana. There, in the Christmas-music bin, sat the LP. As soon as I caught my breath, I grabbed the album and bought it. I went straight home and played it. My then-spouse probably had not seen anything like caithiseach transfixed, staring at the stereo. The rush to reissue music had not started, or perhaps I could say it started with this LP.
The following year, probably 1987, I found the album again on CD, with the cover smaller but intact. Had I seen the CD first, then the LP, I have no doubt that this would have been one of the few times that I would have bought the LP anyway. The whole package deserves the full-sized treatment.
After I got the CD, it seems that someone else in Bloomington got it, too: one of the radio stations used one of the songs in a number of commercials for a couple of Christmas seasons. Whatever. I was able to hear the music and smile at the memories, rather than be annoyed at the commercialization of the recording.
I am bringing you two recordings, one a song I’ve not heard elsewhere, “Monastery Bells,” the song I had most strongly associated with the album in the 14 years I did not have a copy. The other, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” displays the dynamic range of the 19th-century Regina music box to its best advantage.
I was pleased to learn a couple of years ago that someone is putting out tabletop music boxes similar to the old ones. They use flexible but durable plastic platters, interchangeable so you can hear a variety of songs. I think the sound is electronic rather than mechanical, but I won’t be able to confirm that until I visit my dad in a few days. A search is not showing me a model similar to the one his wife has. I won’t bother to bring up the subject again, but you can ask what I learned, sometime around the end of the year.
Next time, I’ll wrap up Christmas with a tale of the year I played DJ for the entire neighborhood. Then, post-Christmas, I’ll bring in a couple of odds and ends, and on the 31st is the Great Vinyl Countdown. The results are getting weird, so you need to vote!
Monastery Bells
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Showing posts with label Columbia Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Columbia Records. Show all posts
Friday, December 19, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
L'affaire Santa
Have you voted yet for your favorite songs from the 2008 blogging year? Don’t let others vote out your favorites! Here's what you need to do about it.
When I wrote last February about my discovery of ten-inch 78-rpm records, I mentioned that I learned how Columbia 78s were constructed when one of my two Jimmy Boyd 78s broke. I didn’t talk about who Jimmy Boyd was at the time, because I had scheduled a discussion of him for today. The 78 that broke? “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” (Columbia 39871).
Sure, you know the song. John Mellencamp did a ragin’ Cajun version of it. The Ronettes recorded a Spectorized version. Darn near everyone who has coughed up a Christmas album has recorded this evergreen. Spike Jones took it into the Top Ten, and Molly Bee squeaked into the Top Twenty, both in 1953. The 4 Seasons took it onto the Christmas chart in 1964. That’s it for chart action, except for thirteen-year-old Jimmy Boyd, who enjoyed two weeks at #1 in 1952 with this top-notch example of what my friend Seana’s father called “Christmas schlock.”
Never mind that Mr. G., Seana’s father, called “Silver Bells” and “Winter Wonderland” Christmas schlock as well. I love “Silver Bells,” partly because we sang it for our Christmas show when I was in the fourth-grade choir. I am nostalgic enough about that one that I found the original sheet music and took the time to arrange my own version on my keyboard. And as for “Winter Wonderland,” the absence of that song from Christmas would mean no Annie Lennox version, so forget deleting that one.
But “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” doesn’t strike me as the greatest stroke of genius ever to leak from Tommie Connor’s pen, nor was its sequel, “I Saw Mommy Do the Mambo with You Know Who.” Or “Binky Bonky the Old Gray Donkey.” Or even “The Biggest Aspidastra in the World,” which is amusing. No, I would have to give the most credit to Tommie’s rather large corpus of Ireland-related songs, but there’s some bias there.
If you haven’t heard Jimmy Boyd’s debut version of this song, you have the chance to do so now. Jimmy sounds young enough to believe that Santa and Mom are smooching, though by age thirteen he should be expressing concern about Mom’s infidelity, or at least he should be shocked into silence by the fact that Santa is really and truly in his house. Instead, he’s simply amused and wishes Dad could check out the spectacle. Never mind that Santa might go to the Great Sleigh in the Sky if Dad caught him.
Five-year-old caithiseach wasn’t as uptight about this song as I am now, but I still preferred the B-side, “Thumbelina,” to this one. Something I notice now is the terribly awkward chord progression starting through this part: “Oh what a laugh it would have been/If Daddy had only seen/Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night.” One time, I heard a recording where someone had revamped the progression and made it sound listenable (of course, I don’t know who did that one), but I wince every time I hear most versions.
Jimmy Boyd is, I would say, an acquired taste. But in 1952, he was all that. He was from Mississippi, but his family moved to California when he was two. When Jimmy was seven, his brother talked a country dance band into letting Jimmy sing and show off his guitar work. The crowd went nuts. He was given a weekly gig at $50 a pop, 200 times what his father had made each day when he was a Mississippi cotton-picker. Music fans of all ages went nuts over Jimmy.
When he recorded today’s song, he sold 2.5 million copies in the week it was released. He was as big as Miley, and, undoubtedly, as talented as any kid star of any time. Ed Sullivan loved him, had him on five times, and bumped adult guests to make room for Jimmy. Jimmy recorded hit duets with Frankie Laine and Rosemary Clooney. He wound up working with an incredible number of music legends, most of whom came to him for the privilege.
Then he did television, and films, and Broadway, and he married Yvonne Craig. Dang. All that, and a song (today’s hit) that was banned in Boston. They thought little Jimmy had brought sex into Christmas—what about the fact that the song featured a fictional character who detracted from the main message of Christmas? Hmm.
So, Jimmy has had quite the career. All told, he has sold sixty million records. Now, he can sell CDs, because The Best of Jimmy Boyd is available via Collectables Records. The collection doesn’t include “Thumbelina” or the other two sides I had on 78, but you can’t have everything.
A quick aside: Thanks to the West Virginia Surf Report, I discovered the perfect Christmas present for YOU. It’s a website that allows you to take any YouTube video, paste in the video ID (beginning after v=), and the site will show the video and attach to it the Benny Hill version of “Yakety Sax.” I could not find anything more bizarre to share with you than the Benny Hillifier. It’s much fun. Go here: http://james.nerdiphythesoul.com/bennyhillifier/. Feel free to regift this one.
The next two posts will be about songs I owned on LPs when I was a kid. For Saturday, I’ll bring you a song I remembered primarily because of an angel on the LP cover. See you then, and don’t forget to vote in the Great Vinyl Countdown.
Jimmy Boyd, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
When I wrote last February about my discovery of ten-inch 78-rpm records, I mentioned that I learned how Columbia 78s were constructed when one of my two Jimmy Boyd 78s broke. I didn’t talk about who Jimmy Boyd was at the time, because I had scheduled a discussion of him for today. The 78 that broke? “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” (Columbia 39871).
Sure, you know the song. John Mellencamp did a ragin’ Cajun version of it. The Ronettes recorded a Spectorized version. Darn near everyone who has coughed up a Christmas album has recorded this evergreen. Spike Jones took it into the Top Ten, and Molly Bee squeaked into the Top Twenty, both in 1953. The 4 Seasons took it onto the Christmas chart in 1964. That’s it for chart action, except for thirteen-year-old Jimmy Boyd, who enjoyed two weeks at #1 in 1952 with this top-notch example of what my friend Seana’s father called “Christmas schlock.”
Never mind that Mr. G., Seana’s father, called “Silver Bells” and “Winter Wonderland” Christmas schlock as well. I love “Silver Bells,” partly because we sang it for our Christmas show when I was in the fourth-grade choir. I am nostalgic enough about that one that I found the original sheet music and took the time to arrange my own version on my keyboard. And as for “Winter Wonderland,” the absence of that song from Christmas would mean no Annie Lennox version, so forget deleting that one.
But “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” doesn’t strike me as the greatest stroke of genius ever to leak from Tommie Connor’s pen, nor was its sequel, “I Saw Mommy Do the Mambo with You Know Who.” Or “Binky Bonky the Old Gray Donkey.” Or even “The Biggest Aspidastra in the World,” which is amusing. No, I would have to give the most credit to Tommie’s rather large corpus of Ireland-related songs, but there’s some bias there.
If you haven’t heard Jimmy Boyd’s debut version of this song, you have the chance to do so now. Jimmy sounds young enough to believe that Santa and Mom are smooching, though by age thirteen he should be expressing concern about Mom’s infidelity, or at least he should be shocked into silence by the fact that Santa is really and truly in his house. Instead, he’s simply amused and wishes Dad could check out the spectacle. Never mind that Santa might go to the Great Sleigh in the Sky if Dad caught him.
Five-year-old caithiseach wasn’t as uptight about this song as I am now, but I still preferred the B-side, “Thumbelina,” to this one. Something I notice now is the terribly awkward chord progression starting through this part: “Oh what a laugh it would have been/If Daddy had only seen/Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night.” One time, I heard a recording where someone had revamped the progression and made it sound listenable (of course, I don’t know who did that one), but I wince every time I hear most versions.
Jimmy Boyd is, I would say, an acquired taste. But in 1952, he was all that. He was from Mississippi, but his family moved to California when he was two. When Jimmy was seven, his brother talked a country dance band into letting Jimmy sing and show off his guitar work. The crowd went nuts. He was given a weekly gig at $50 a pop, 200 times what his father had made each day when he was a Mississippi cotton-picker. Music fans of all ages went nuts over Jimmy.
When he recorded today’s song, he sold 2.5 million copies in the week it was released. He was as big as Miley, and, undoubtedly, as talented as any kid star of any time. Ed Sullivan loved him, had him on five times, and bumped adult guests to make room for Jimmy. Jimmy recorded hit duets with Frankie Laine and Rosemary Clooney. He wound up working with an incredible number of music legends, most of whom came to him for the privilege.
Then he did television, and films, and Broadway, and he married Yvonne Craig. Dang. All that, and a song (today’s hit) that was banned in Boston. They thought little Jimmy had brought sex into Christmas—what about the fact that the song featured a fictional character who detracted from the main message of Christmas? Hmm.
So, Jimmy has had quite the career. All told, he has sold sixty million records. Now, he can sell CDs, because The Best of Jimmy Boyd is available via Collectables Records. The collection doesn’t include “Thumbelina” or the other two sides I had on 78, but you can’t have everything.
A quick aside: Thanks to the West Virginia Surf Report, I discovered the perfect Christmas present for YOU. It’s a website that allows you to take any YouTube video, paste in the video ID (beginning after v=), and the site will show the video and attach to it the Benny Hill version of “Yakety Sax.” I could not find anything more bizarre to share with you than the Benny Hillifier. It’s much fun. Go here: http://james.nerdiphythesoul.com/bennyhillifier/. Feel free to regift this one.
The next two posts will be about songs I owned on LPs when I was a kid. For Saturday, I’ll bring you a song I remembered primarily because of an angel on the LP cover. See you then, and don’t forget to vote in the Great Vinyl Countdown.
Jimmy Boyd, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Friday, October 10, 2008
Credibility Gap
After today's song post, please note the comments on the future of this blog. Thanks!
When three-year-old caithiseach was enjoying “Motorcyle” four years prior to his intersection with the trajectory of a hit-and-run Harley, there was another side to the single. There were also several facets to the recording career of the songwriter/lead vocalist of “Motorcycle.” I can without hesitation say that I was listening to this guy regularly years before even you fifty-year-olds picked up on him.
A brief aside: in that aspect, I was setting the tone for later music choices. In early 1978, on some alt radio station, I was introduced to the Cars, and people smirked at me when I brought them up. Ha! And when I trotted off to college, I took along the Blondie album Plastic Letters. No one would listen to it, but once “Heart of Glass” hit the airwaves, I was recognized as a music prophet. So it was with this “Motorcycle” guy, even if the song isn’t up to the caliber of his later material.
Mr. Motorcycle got his start in high school in Queens. There, he sang with a classmate. The two were named “Tom & Jerry” by their label, Big, and they reached #49 in early 1958 with “Hey, Schoolgirl.” Then came several years of very little success. Mr. Motorcycle wrote the song “Red Rubber Ball” under the pseudonym “Paul Kane” and “Motorcycle” under the name “Jerry Landis,” the name he used to record a #97 single, “The Lone Teen Ranger,” in 1963.
Jerry Landis was writing and producing for Amy Records when he discovered Tico and the Triumphs. He took these young people—Mickey Borack, Marty “Tico” Cooper and Gail Lynn—and had them learn some songs he had written. Gail left the act, and Jerry became part of the mix, along with Howie Beck. The group recorded “Motorcycle” with Jerry singing lead, and today’s tune, “I Don’t Believe Them,” features Marty Cooper on vocals.
A couple of years later, Jerry reunited with “Tom,” and they scored a recording contract with Columbia Records. They released a folk album that didn’t do so well, and Jerry went off to England to try his luck there. While he was gone, the producer of the album, Tom Wilson, remixed one of the tracks, adding electric instruments to what had been a folky acoustic piece. The pumped-up version went to #1 on January 1, 1966, and while Jerry muttered about artistic integrity and all that, he probably kept in mind that he had perpetrated “Motorcycle” with the same instruments and an out-of-tune sax to boot. He came home and started cashing royalty checks.
He and “Tom” started on their follow-up album, which included the electrified #1 version of that folk tune. I see that song as a prophetic statement about music in this decade when it says that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls.” The debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M., had been a slow starter, and Sounds of Silence, including “The Sound of Silence,” fared better, but not up to the standard of the later #1 albums.
For a staid record company like Columbia, signing Tom & Jerry under their real last names must have taken some soul-searching. But despite “Tom’s” long last name, Garfunkel, being known as Simon & Garfunkel didn’t hurt the duo as much as being associated with a cartoon cat and mouse might have.
And after his time with Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon went on to score 21 solo Hot 100 hits, including one #1, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and five other Top Ten hits. It’s funny that detailed compilations of his non-Simon & Garfunkel work fail to include “Motorcycle” . . .
I didn’t listen to “I Don’t Believe Them” a lot, because, well, you heard “Motorcycle.” Who needed another Tico and the Triumphs song in the rotation?
All the Tico information you could want is right at this page. I will now post the correct guesses. I should offer a reward to people who were able to pick out Paul Simon’s voice. I didn’t figure it out on my own; I did some reading about twenty years ago that clued me in.
Gee, I just checked my calendar. Monday is Paul Simon’s 67th birthday. Happy birthday, Paul.
Next week, we embark on a strange journey that will take us through the end of the month. First up is the innocuous side of an obscurity you probably have never heard. Then comes the other side, which will set the tone for October. As with some other posts, I have been waiting impatiently for a year for this series to have its turn. See you Wednesday!
Tico and the Triumphs, I Don’t Believe Them
Comments and a request: I want to note that the counter on my blog rolled over the 10,000 mark this week. I got the idea to use a counter from reading my friend whiteray’s blog, and the counter offered me a bit of reassurance that I was not the only person reading my posts (apart from whiteray, whom I pay $10 a month to read it). Reaching 10,000 hits means that I am topping 250 hits per week, or 125 per post. I am well aware that many music blogs receive several hundred more hits per week than mine does, but I always figured my collection of cutout 1960s 45s would attract a smallish niche readership. I would write it for even a handful of appreciative readers, and so I am grateful that I can, via the demographics, identify a satisfying number of regular, if mostly anonymous, readers. I know vaguely where you are, if nothing about who you are, and each time your city pops onto the counter, I thank you silently for coming back.
Now, we are getting to the end of 2008. A year ago, I sketched out 104 posts, which means I have 22 more to present this year. At that point, I will be virtually out of childhood 45s to discuss. I will not, however, be tired of writing about music I know.
So, I have been meditating for several months on what I might do next in this space. The blog title can be valid for whatever I do, since I will be breaking down the songs into their component parts, as I have been doing this year. I think, though, that I should not assume too much about my readership.
I always hope for more feedback about the artists and songs than I get, which is fine, but this time, I need some guidance. If something about three-year-old caithiseach and his box of vinyl intrigued you (even if you couldn’t tear yourself away, as when you witness a train wreck), but you don’t see any reason to read once I ring the curtain down on my old 45s, do let me know. If everyone bails, I’ll retire.
If you would keep reading, because it’s part of your routine or for any other reason, then you get to shape the blog so you’ll be glad you stuck around. In this U.S. election year, you get to vote for yet another thing: my Wednesday and Saturday topics for the start of 2009. I really need to know the blog matters to someone; I figure I’ll keep it going if I get at least ten opinions. Otherwise, I might start thinking that my sister is getting one of her hacker friends to jigger my counter to give me delusions of grandeur.
You can vote by leaving an anonymous comment on this post, but I don’t need the comment total to be prodigious or ostentatious. Therefore, you can also email me a thought at caithiseach at gmail.com. (You know how to put that together as an email address.) Doing it that way will be less anonymous, but I won’t start spamming you, so you’re safe.
Possibilities that my music collection allows (vote for all that you like; I’ll start with the top two, and I’ll switch topics when I run out of material):
1. Instrumentals, their writers and artists. 1950s on, maybe some older stuff.
2. Really old artists, 1890-1954. From Irish tenors to rock’s precursors.
3. Women. I could do a year on the women in my collection alone. I mean my music collection.
4. World music. My journalism has exposed me to some incredible world acts.
5. This day in the 1950s charts. I have the chart book, and there are loads of tidbits to discuss.
I’ll leave it there. Pick something, and I’ll write about it. Pick nothing, and I’ll stop altogether in January. Thanks!
When three-year-old caithiseach was enjoying “Motorcyle” four years prior to his intersection with the trajectory of a hit-and-run Harley, there was another side to the single. There were also several facets to the recording career of the songwriter/lead vocalist of “Motorcycle.” I can without hesitation say that I was listening to this guy regularly years before even you fifty-year-olds picked up on him.
A brief aside: in that aspect, I was setting the tone for later music choices. In early 1978, on some alt radio station, I was introduced to the Cars, and people smirked at me when I brought them up. Ha! And when I trotted off to college, I took along the Blondie album Plastic Letters. No one would listen to it, but once “Heart of Glass” hit the airwaves, I was recognized as a music prophet. So it was with this “Motorcycle” guy, even if the song isn’t up to the caliber of his later material.
Mr. Motorcycle got his start in high school in Queens. There, he sang with a classmate. The two were named “Tom & Jerry” by their label, Big, and they reached #49 in early 1958 with “Hey, Schoolgirl.” Then came several years of very little success. Mr. Motorcycle wrote the song “Red Rubber Ball” under the pseudonym “Paul Kane” and “Motorcycle” under the name “Jerry Landis,” the name he used to record a #97 single, “The Lone Teen Ranger,” in 1963.
Jerry Landis was writing and producing for Amy Records when he discovered Tico and the Triumphs. He took these young people—Mickey Borack, Marty “Tico” Cooper and Gail Lynn—and had them learn some songs he had written. Gail left the act, and Jerry became part of the mix, along with Howie Beck. The group recorded “Motorcycle” with Jerry singing lead, and today’s tune, “I Don’t Believe Them,” features Marty Cooper on vocals.
A couple of years later, Jerry reunited with “Tom,” and they scored a recording contract with Columbia Records. They released a folk album that didn’t do so well, and Jerry went off to England to try his luck there. While he was gone, the producer of the album, Tom Wilson, remixed one of the tracks, adding electric instruments to what had been a folky acoustic piece. The pumped-up version went to #1 on January 1, 1966, and while Jerry muttered about artistic integrity and all that, he probably kept in mind that he had perpetrated “Motorcycle” with the same instruments and an out-of-tune sax to boot. He came home and started cashing royalty checks.
He and “Tom” started on their follow-up album, which included the electrified #1 version of that folk tune. I see that song as a prophetic statement about music in this decade when it says that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls.” The debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M., had been a slow starter, and Sounds of Silence, including “The Sound of Silence,” fared better, but not up to the standard of the later #1 albums.
For a staid record company like Columbia, signing Tom & Jerry under their real last names must have taken some soul-searching. But despite “Tom’s” long last name, Garfunkel, being known as Simon & Garfunkel didn’t hurt the duo as much as being associated with a cartoon cat and mouse might have.
And after his time with Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon went on to score 21 solo Hot 100 hits, including one #1, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and five other Top Ten hits. It’s funny that detailed compilations of his non-Simon & Garfunkel work fail to include “Motorcycle” . . .
I didn’t listen to “I Don’t Believe Them” a lot, because, well, you heard “Motorcycle.” Who needed another Tico and the Triumphs song in the rotation?
All the Tico information you could want is right at this page. I will now post the correct guesses. I should offer a reward to people who were able to pick out Paul Simon’s voice. I didn’t figure it out on my own; I did some reading about twenty years ago that clued me in.
Gee, I just checked my calendar. Monday is Paul Simon’s 67th birthday. Happy birthday, Paul.
Next week, we embark on a strange journey that will take us through the end of the month. First up is the innocuous side of an obscurity you probably have never heard. Then comes the other side, which will set the tone for October. As with some other posts, I have been waiting impatiently for a year for this series to have its turn. See you Wednesday!
Tico and the Triumphs, I Don’t Believe Them
Comments and a request: I want to note that the counter on my blog rolled over the 10,000 mark this week. I got the idea to use a counter from reading my friend whiteray’s blog, and the counter offered me a bit of reassurance that I was not the only person reading my posts (apart from whiteray, whom I pay $10 a month to read it). Reaching 10,000 hits means that I am topping 250 hits per week, or 125 per post. I am well aware that many music blogs receive several hundred more hits per week than mine does, but I always figured my collection of cutout 1960s 45s would attract a smallish niche readership. I would write it for even a handful of appreciative readers, and so I am grateful that I can, via the demographics, identify a satisfying number of regular, if mostly anonymous, readers. I know vaguely where you are, if nothing about who you are, and each time your city pops onto the counter, I thank you silently for coming back.
Now, we are getting to the end of 2008. A year ago, I sketched out 104 posts, which means I have 22 more to present this year. At that point, I will be virtually out of childhood 45s to discuss. I will not, however, be tired of writing about music I know.
So, I have been meditating for several months on what I might do next in this space. The blog title can be valid for whatever I do, since I will be breaking down the songs into their component parts, as I have been doing this year. I think, though, that I should not assume too much about my readership.
I always hope for more feedback about the artists and songs than I get, which is fine, but this time, I need some guidance. If something about three-year-old caithiseach and his box of vinyl intrigued you (even if you couldn’t tear yourself away, as when you witness a train wreck), but you don’t see any reason to read once I ring the curtain down on my old 45s, do let me know. If everyone bails, I’ll retire.
If you would keep reading, because it’s part of your routine or for any other reason, then you get to shape the blog so you’ll be glad you stuck around. In this U.S. election year, you get to vote for yet another thing: my Wednesday and Saturday topics for the start of 2009. I really need to know the blog matters to someone; I figure I’ll keep it going if I get at least ten opinions. Otherwise, I might start thinking that my sister is getting one of her hacker friends to jigger my counter to give me delusions of grandeur.
You can vote by leaving an anonymous comment on this post, but I don’t need the comment total to be prodigious or ostentatious. Therefore, you can also email me a thought at caithiseach at gmail.com. (You know how to put that together as an email address.) Doing it that way will be less anonymous, but I won’t start spamming you, so you’re safe.
Possibilities that my music collection allows (vote for all that you like; I’ll start with the top two, and I’ll switch topics when I run out of material):
1. Instrumentals, their writers and artists. 1950s on, maybe some older stuff.
2. Really old artists, 1890-1954. From Irish tenors to rock’s precursors.
3. Women. I could do a year on the women in my collection alone. I mean my music collection.
4. World music. My journalism has exposed me to some incredible world acts.
5. This day in the 1950s charts. I have the chart book, and there are loads of tidbits to discuss.
I’ll leave it there. Pick something, and I’ll write about it. Pick nothing, and I’ll stop altogether in January. Thanks!
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