The Fabled Automatic

While the rest of St Louis is watching to see if the Cards can cap their improbable run with a World Series title tonight, I'll be seeing one of my favorite bands at the best venue in the StL.  Drive By Truckers at the Pageant This will be the 2nd time in a year I have seen DBT here and I am really looking forward to the show.  This band is a relatively recent obsession (spurred by Dad nonetheless) but I have gone in whole hog.  What I love most about DBT is they know exactly who they are, and they do it very well, both in the studio and on stage.  Fronted by two prolific songwriters (Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley) each with their own distinctive style, DBT are not especially progressive or groundbreaking, but they consistently deliver fantastic, edgy rock and roll steeped in the musical traditions of the south. Regrettably, I somehow completely missed this band during their early days in Athens, which completely coincided with my tim...

I don’t recall actively pushing music on my children, but they will tell you there was always music around; for the most part it was Classic Rock.   For me it was just music I’d gotten stuck on between the ages of 18 and 25.   If I was at home and the TV wasn’t on, I had the stereo playing.   I rigged up speakers in the basement workshop so I could have music down there.   Before the days of Walkmen and iPods I even rigged an old transistor radio with a headphone jack so I could listen to music while I mowed the lawn. In the car it was 96 Rock most of the time.   They played the artists I liked, but not just their hits. They also played deep cuts from older albums and new releases. I’d sometimes switch over to Fox 97, the “oldies” station that played 60s and 70s Top Forty and sing along, certainly mortifying my daughter when she had friends in the car. As Scott got be a teenager (I think of this as his ‘In Living Color’ phase), he would actively campaign f...

Wanted to post this after the awesome comment my friend Ben left us on "That Silver Record Player". Hope he doesn't mind, I'm going to quote him directly because he hit it dead on.  "I think we forget how trained our ears get to the new production styles. Plus the tactile feel of handling the jackets and the vinyl reminds me just how much value music has...and I like introducing my kids to this, as I want to make sure they understand the concepts as well. Music does not have to be disposable. Music is valuable." Damn.  Wish I could have written that.  It's not huge, but I love my vinyl collection, love my turntable, love putting on records, for all these reasons.  I even have albums I purposely do not own electronically so that if I want to hear them I have to get the record out. The day Clarence Clemmons died this past summer was tough.  The worst feeling was wanting to do something, but just not knowi...

I’ve been thinking a lot about the CD player that Mary bought me for Christmas 1986 and how it was the start of the musical connection that Scott and I have.   I was going to give him credit for the fact that Springsteen’s “Live 1975-1985” showed up under the tree, but apparently he was just along for the ride. His reference to “the amazingly cool upright silver record player in the corner Dad so cherished” certainly brings back fond memories. Now that we can all carry the contents of a large record store around in our pockets, it’s sometimes hard to remember the energy (and money) that went into feeding a music obsession in the pre-digital era.   My first stereo was a Christmas present freshman year of college   (I guess even Mom recognized the obsession…), a Zenith green plastic portable unit where the turntable folded up with a handle on top for easy transportation.     It had detachable speakers (wow!) and a “changer”; a tall mechanical spindle that ...

I know that music was around in my house from day one, but to be honest I don’t remember specifics.   Not until Mom bought Dad a CD player, Christmas 1986.   In 1986, a CD player was a big deal, new and a novelty. To this day I am not quite sure how she pulled it off, but I imagine that she appreciated his passion for Rock and Roll and understood that this technology and the sound that came with it would mean very much to him.   As far as I am concerned it was the most thoughtful and important gift Mom ever gave to Dad.   After buying it, she asked the guys at the record store ‘what is the best?’ What ‘CDs’ sounded so great that he would know that this was the future, and that the amazingly cool upright silver turntable Dad so cherished would soon be a thing of the past. There may have been other discs that Christmas morning, but I only remember two.   Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Live 75/85 .   If...

“I could easily get to the Trailways depot before she left Connecticut …but I wasn’t going to do it.   She was right, we had said a brilliant goodbye in my old station wagon; anything more would be a step down. At best we would find ourselves going over the same ground; at worst we’d splash mud over last night with an argument... I folded her letter, stuck it into the back pocket of my jeans, and drove home to Gates Falls . At first my eyes kept blurring and I had to keep wiping at them.   Then I turned on the radio and the music made things a little better.   The music always does.   I’m past fifty now and the music still makes things better; it’s the fabled automatic.”                                                  Stephen King, Hea...

I guess it’s not surprising that my taste in music is relatively eclectic.   My formative years were spent in the heyday of vinyl and Top Forty radio.   As the fourth of nine children I usually didn’t have a lot to say about what we listened to.   There was one radio, one record player (an old monaural Zenith) and, for at least one whole year, no television.   I remember spending hours listening to my parents’ albums as a family.   Fifty years on I can still recall a few of the artists; Jerome Kern (Big Band, I think), Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo playing the vibes, the Four Lads and The Lettermen singing beautiful pop harmonies.   My sisters and I danced the reel to the Billy Vaughn’s rendition of The Orange Blossom Special, twirling around the living room.   We sang along with Mitch Miller albums.   Mom’s show tunes also had their place, especially South Pacific and The Music Man. Thanks to my mother I discovered the genius of Les Paul yea...