Part musical time capsule, part musical biography – pulling 175 vinyl albums out of the crawl space.
Decluttering. Eventually, it is something we all need to do. It’s a challenge and even more so with people blessed, or cursed, with having a crawl space in their basement. It seemed such a clever idea to load up that storage space but sooner or later things have to come out.
At the far back of my crawl space, deposited 30 years ago were 175 record albums. When we moved here we moved on to CDs and were building that collection. The records, except for a few kept upstairs, were forgotten. I also found a box of 45 RPM records, but more on that later.
The records came from various sources. A lot were inherited. My wife and I bought many separately before our collections were merged. We bought a lot for the two of us reflecting our shared tastes and influences.
I had help organizing my thoughts on this. After entering all the records into a spreadsheet, I dumped the file into the Meta AI and asked it to give me release dates. That gave me a better sense of when they were purchased. It gave a fairly good response only failing when multiple records had been released with the same name and when the record was in French. I don’t speak French Meta AI informed me.
It also called what I was doing musical archeology, which I thought was a good idea and pretty creative for an AI.
Not surprisingly, looked at as a whole, in the largest group of records, 65 would be classified as the many genres of rock: soft, progressive, roots, folk, psychedelic, punk, blues, country, blues and new wave.
After that come 18 albums of classical music. There are 14 “Pop” albums, but I think some of these are misclassified. Should the Monkees (one album) be pop? What about Carol King or Bette Midler? And Brian Ferry falls into the pop category only for this album, These Foolish Things.
Then come 13 each of jazz, soundtrack albums (everything from My Fair Lady to A Fistful of Dollars) and Christmas albums. There are 12 folk albums if Don Messer is correctly classified as folk. Donavon certainly is.
There are seven blues albums and five easy listening and even four ragtime albums, which shows just how much the movie, The Sting influenced us. There are only three country albums and one each of Cajun, Reggae, and children’s music.
Unclassified? How do I classify my two albums of music by the Dominion Carillonneur?
In terms of the best represented groups, there are eight albums by the Beatles and five by the Rolling Stones. The next artist with the most records is Billy Vaughn with four; proof that many of the records were inherited.
To move a little bit more deeply into what AI called musical archeology I divided the records into four groups: pre-1965, when I began high school, 1965 to 1969 when I graduated, 1970 until 1975, my university years and when my partner and I moved to Ottawa. Then from 1976 until 1988 when we bought the last record.
There were only 17 records in the collection released before my high school years. Among these are 11 Christmas or classical albums and four Billy Vaughn’s. The remaining two are Dave Brubeck and Peggy Lee. We inherited all these, though I would like to take credit for the last two. Some of the records I purchased in this period have disappeared, including my first albums, Gunfighter Ballads by Marty Robbins and Wipeout by the Surfaris. I am fairly sure we had Twist and Shout and A Hard Day’s Night which left with my brother.
My high school years were big years for record collecting. There are roughly 55 from this period and I suspect many came as Christmas or birthday gifts given the cost. Here there are six Beatles records and just one by the Rolling Stones. About 16 records fall in the rock category if you include two by Bob Dylan as Folk Rock. Some of the records are very much of their time like I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die by Country Joe and the Fish and the first Steppenwolf album Steppenwolf
Other albums were by the Monkees, Blind Faith, the Cream (Wheels of Fire), the Doors (Stange Days), Ten Years After (Sssh), Jethro Tull (Stand Up), Jimi Hendrix (Electric Ladyland), the Who (Tommy), Pink Floyd (Ummagumma) and Procol Harum (Broken Barricades and Shine on Brightly).
Canned Heat with Cookbook and Living the Blues and John Mayall with his Hard Road album added blues. Donavon has two records, Joan Baez, the Mommas and the Poppas and Leonard Cohen have one each.
A few stand out for me. I was the first in my circle to have records by Steppenwolf and Neil Young’s Everybody Knows this is Nowhere. This was at a time when none of us could afford all the records so we each would bring what we had to every party. It was also a time when we listened to whole sides of records. For many of them I can still remember the track list and which song comes next.
Somehow the Vanilla Fudge and their You Keep Me Hanging On album remains embedded in my head. A blues album stands out for me, Fathers and Sons, a double album of blues masters like Muddy Waters, Michael Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Otis Spann, and Sam Lay. I played Mojo Working over and over. This was also the time when the Hammond organ found its voice in Rock and roll, with songs like You Keep Me Hanging On, Procol Harums Whiter Shade of Pale and Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride.
There are nine Christmas and classical albums from the era which were also inherited.
There are about 40 records in the collection from 1970 to 1975 of which eight, again, are Christmas or classical. Five of the records are soundtrack albums very much of their time: The Woodstock double album, the Rocky Horror Picture show, Clockwork Orange, and Jesus Christ Superstar. We may have inherited the last one, That’s Entertainment, but I’m glad it’s in the collection.
Twelve albums are rock with Neil Young, the Beatles and the Rolling stones making an appearance again. New to the list were Bachman Turner Overdrive (Not Fragile), Chilliwack, Led Zeplin making its first appearance with Led Zeplin III, Joe Cocker (Joe Cocker), the Steve Miller Band (Recall the Beginning) and Seals and Crofts (Sumer Breeze). Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town from 1977 was a standout with songs like Born to Run. Strangely, this is the only Springsteen album in the collection.
The movie the Sting persuaded us to buy four ragtime albums, and Stan Rogers (Between the Breaks) and Peter Allen (Tenterfield Sadler) brought folk music.
After seeing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee perform in Vancouver we went straight out and bought their self-named album which joined Golden Butter by the Butterfield Blues band in the blues group.
We played Rita Coolidge (The Lady’s Not for Sale) and Carol King (Tapestry and Writer) over and over during this period. We also discovered and loved Nana Mouskouri (British Concert).
Bob Marley and the Wailers (Live) and Zachary Richard (Mardi Gras) expanded our musical tastes to reggae and Cajun music.
The following 12 years brought us more than 50 albums. Again, 21 records in the rock group made up the largest number with only the Rolling Stones (Some girls) and Creedence Clearwater (Chronicle) returning. Only Hall and Oates, who were popular at the time, had more than one record (Beauty on Back Street, H2O, and Voices). New to the collection were Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Deja Vue), Dire Straits and the Honey Dippers with their self-titled albums, Billy Joel (Glass Houses), Huey Lewis and the News (Sports), Boz Scaggs (Silk Degrees), Rod Stewart (Footloose and Fancy Free) the Traveling Wilburys, and the Band (The Last Waltz). Among the albums we kept out and played in later years were, of course, Meatloaf (Bat out of Hell) and Jackson Browne (Running on Empty).
Roxy Music (Viva Roxy Music), Elvis Costello (This Year’s Model) and Kraftwerk (The Man Machine) brought a new sound to our house. Bruce Springsteen’s’ Darkness on the Edge of Town is surprisingly the only album of his we had.
Eight jazz albums showed a growing interest in the genre. They included AL Jarreau’s All Fly Home and Jean-Luc Ponty with his jazz violin (Mystical Adventure, Sunday Walk). Zoot Sims and his saxophone had us buy two albums (Air Mail Special and Warm Tenor) and Thelonious Monk with his record of piano solos, Solo Monk.. For quieter nights we had Washington Grover Jr.’s Winelight.
We had loved Bette Midler since we had first heard her and we bought her 1976 album Songs of the New Depression. This we classified as pop along with Kim Carnes Mistaken Identity from 1981 and Brian Ferry’s These Foolish Things from 1976. We bought two of Linda Ronstadt’s albums, Greatest Hits and Living in the USA. Judy Collins Album Judith remains a favorite after all these years.
Country music brought two Willie Nelson records, Stardust from 1978 and Phases and Stages which came out in 1974. We bought Bonaparte’s Retreat by the Chieftains and Simon and Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park over this period. We bought the Stringband record Thanks to the Following which was paid for by subscription. Each of the people who paid for it in advance had their names on the cover. While our names aren’t there we know a of the names on the cover.
We bought a couple of albums in Ottawa while we were taking French lessons, Andre Gagnon’s Le Saint-Laurant, and Pauline Julien’s Pour Mon Plaisir -songs by Gilles Vigneault.
There were nine Christmas or classical records but this time we had bought at least two, Ma Vlast by Smetana, a record I had loved since I had heard it in high school and Mozart’s’ Piano Sonatas.
So, of all of these records we bought in this period, which one did we probably hear most? I’m thinking One elephant by Sharon, Lois and Bram which was in constant rotation after 1983.
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There was one big surprise in the collection: A Millenium of Baptism in Russia, an album recorded by a Russian Orthodox Choir in 1987 and released in 1988. Based on the release date, it is one of the last two records added to our collection. The mystery of its arrival was recently solved. A friend of mine was a journalist in Moscow at the time and brought it back for Sharlene who had studied Soviet and Eastern European Studies in university.
Digging down into the musical archeology I don’t see dramatic changes. Rock remains a big element, but other genres play a larger role as we got older. We played all of the Christmas music and classical records we inherited more frequently as time went on. All told, this collection probably looks a lot like the record collection of other people my age.
As I look through these records it is a surprise how few of these groups I have seen perform. Of course, I saw Sharon, Lois and Bram with their Elephant Show at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa with our children. I saw Chilliwack in a coffee house in Ottawa back in the days when there were coffee houses. In the late 70s we saw Steppenwolf upstairs in a small Ottawa venue. Sharlene saw a Led Zepplin performance, but I didn’t. We were thrilled to be introduced to Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee in a bar in downtown Vancouver. I saw the Rolling Stones on their Bridges to Babylon Tour in Vancouver, and we saw Joe Cocker perform on Grouse Mountain. From high up in the Pacific Coliseum we saw a not to be missed Bette Midler performance.
Like everyone who has lived in Ottawa, I have heard the Dominion carillonneur.
But without doubt the concert that stands out most was a Pink Floyd concert in Regina on October 16, 1970. Very few famous groups came to Regina. The student union was flush with money and decided students deserved to see some top notch performers. They had brought in Ike and Tina Turner, then Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd was not as big then as they would become. They had put out four albums and the latest was Ummagumma in November 1969.
Pink Floyd put on a performance the likes of which Regina’s Centre of the Arts had never seen. I was working for the student newspaper and because the student council had brought them in, a group of us got to go back stage and interview them. It may not be the most sophisticated music review ever, but it is definitely the only time you can find my name linked to a supergroup on the internet. https://www.pinkfloydz.com/interviews/the-carillon-student-newspaper-16-oct-1970/ . I do actually remember the night. And I most remember the performance of one song on the album, Careful With That Axe Eugene. Roger Waters would later say the album had been a disaster.
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There are some albums I regret never having, among them the Moody Blues, Days of Future Past. I bought it three times and returned it three times because it skipped. Regina must have received a shipment of defective records. I would love to have had the Beatles White album. The first person who got it was a hero in our group. I missed Joni Mitchells Blue album and the Beach Boys Pet Sounds, a record even the Beatles admired. I would love to have had the Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow album and at least one Joplin album not by Scott. I’m old enough now to say I regret not listening to Dolly Parton.
I will probably only keep a few of these albums but there are some that would be hard to part with. Of all the Beatles albums I would keep Abbey Road and Sgt. Peppers. Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty remains a favorite, but I have it on CD. The same goes for Bette Midler. If I keep one Rolling Stones album it will be Let it Bleed. Because they bring back so many memories I would keep Wheels of fire by the Cream and Steppenwolf.
I will definitely keep Judy Collins if only for Brother Can you Spare a Dime and Born to the Breed.
I’ll keep Fathers and Sons. You can’t get it on CD. I will keep at least one of Carol King’s albums. We played them a million times. Willie Nelson’s Stardust gets kept for quiet nights when I am remembering. And maybe I will keep Vanilla Fudge and You Keep Me Hanging On just because I can listen to it and be 15 again.
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Musical tastes change, so the CDs we collected after 1988 do show a different direction. There is less rock and roll and more Lucinda Williams, Jimmy Buffett and Tony Bennett (another concert I saw). And more eclectic with everything from opera CDs to Miles Davis.
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And remember the 45 RPM records I mentioned at the beginning. It turns out I have 45 of them that would have come from Sharlene and her parents. A lot are songs and groups I don’t remember but there are five Elvis records and one by the Beatles, with I should Have Known Better and A Hard Days Night. Jan and Dean are there with Sidewalk Surfin and Creedence Clearwater with Run Through the Jungle.
A few are from big names in the early 60s, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Vee, Bobby Vinton, Andy Willaims and Pat Boone. These are records that got played at the grade eight dance when we had dreams of slow dancing. There is a Conni Francis and a Peter, Paul and Mary (Leaving on a Jet Plane – did you know this was written by John Denver?).
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We also have records by the Dixie Cups, Edward Bear, Tony Orlando and Dawn (the names were reversed on the record), and Nancy Sinatra with her Boots Made for Walking. There is even an Aretha Franklin – I Can’t See Myself Leaving You.
There are some novelty records: Ray Steven with The Streak, Party Pooper by Jerry Palmer, Dueling Banjos, and the Monster Mash
Don’t worry. My old Dual Turntable from the 1970s is still a quality machine that can play 45s. And I do have the adaptors that go in the middle.
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The following are some examples of the music I’ve talked about. These might not be my favorites but I have not included things everyone will have heard like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Born to Be Wild. In the interests of mental health, I have not included Careful With That Axe Eugene.
Vanilla Fudge – You Keep Me Hangin’ On
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Donavan – Season of the Witch
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Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Steve Still – Season of the Witch
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Fathers and Sons – Got My Mojo Working
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Chilliwack – Raino
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Carol King – You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman
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Joe Cocker – With a Little Help From My Friends
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Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee – You Bring Out the Boogie in Me
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Willie Nelson – Phases and Stages
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Bette Midler – Old Cape Cod
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Zoot Sims – Dream Dancing
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Zachary Richard -Ma Louisiane
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Judy Collins – Born to the Breed
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Judy Collins – Brother Can You Spare a Dime
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Procol Harum – A Whiter Shade of Pale
IBDP -MYP French Teacher - Language A & B
9 个月I am a record collector myself (friend of Daniel) and I’ve found your article very moving. What I like about records is the memories they carry with them. Merci !?