Debate: The ODL tournament Saturday went off with only the most minor of hitches. One judge suffered a blackout the night before and didn't get online until around noon, but online he finally did get. A no-show student judge turned out to have been dropped by the coach not through the tournament email, which I always have in front of me, and not in my private email, which I check regularly, but in my old vestigial email that I check every few days without fail to follow the news from IGN. Otherwise, rounds were scheduled and rounds took place, and at the end of the day a swell time was had by all. I mostly handled this one alone, since I had nothing else going on. I've been known to work an ODL and a live tournament simultaneously, and while it can be done, it's pretty exhausting. This one was merely tiring, and the first thing I did when the last shot was fired was to hit my comfy chair and take a nice little catnap.
Obits: This morning Times readers were treated to a double blast of 60s flashback. Bob Weir and Erich von Däniken both got write-ups that demanded to be read. I'm not a deadhead in the sense of quitting my job and camping out for a year with my little portable tape recorder, but I have been a fan since their second album, "Anthem of the Sun." (Their first album was nothing special, and nothing particularly Dead-ish.) I only saw them live once, and they were disappointing, but that was always the risk with them, that you might come away awed for life or totally cold. As for von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods was required reading in the 60s for anyone even remotely SF-ish. It wasn't that you took it with a grain of salt, but that you marveled that anyone in their right mind would take it even with that grain of salt. Apparently some people still do, but then again, being in one's right mind nowadays is a rarity few if any of us enjoy. Which is why, after the obits, I read little of the rest of the paper.
Listening (audit playlist division): Sedaka comes after Diamond and then Young if you search for Neil in Spotify. Oh well. "Sedaka's Back" is a compilation of songs he released in England for Elton John's Rocket Record Company. As you listen to it, you realize that the man is a hell of a songwriter. Good songwriting, and good songs, contain things you don't expect, unusual chord changes or notes that other people wouldn't have put there, complete constructions that are musical narratives. It's a communion of craft and art and inspiration that results in something the listener will ultimately luxuriate in. It is not just a collection of great lyrics, although often the greatest popular songs are written both by the music person and the lyricist person. Some people, of course, could do both. Perfection is reached when you can listen to the music without the words, or listen to the words without the music, and still love every minute of it. It took George and Ira both to come up with "When every happy plot / Ends in a marriage knot / But there's no knot for me" usually sung as "there's no knot, not for me" while Cole alone wrote to ascending notes "flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do" with all those eye sounds... But I digress. (I always digress. It's my inner Tristram Shandy.) Sedaka is in the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, deservedly so. I will continue to listen to all of his work, and grab pieces here and there to add to my main playlist. He is irresistible. (Disney connection? Of course. Does the name Neil Moussaka ring a bell, Food Rocks fans?)
Listening (podcast division): I mentioned "A History of Rock in 500 Songs" a day or two ago. It is exactly what it sounds like, and it is excellent. I'm up to "Sympathy for the Devil," which means I've actually ived through everything the mind behind it, a guy named Andrew Hickey, has said so far. There was no question that people my age really cared about music in the 60s, and followed things as closely as one could when there was no internet. We learned from liner notes more than any other source, plus whatever we picked up on the street. And we didn't go behind the curtain all that much; it was the music that counted, not the producers or arrangers or even in many cases the artists. For instance, I couldn't have told you back then much about all those people were cited in Echo in the Canyon, or more to the point, that they were all in Laurel Canyon. But nevertheless I had all their records and knew their music intimately. So Hickey is, for me, filling in many gaps. He also does good technical analysis, and roots things in their historical time. I cannot recommend this one enough.
In the Sympathy podcast (broken down into 4 long parts, and covering more than just that song or that album), there is discussion of "Their Satanic Majesties Request." It is, indeed, the least Stones album of any Stones album, and Hickey does talk about the whole psychedelic era where everyone was throwing the kitchen sink at their recordings, trying to achieve their own Sgt Pepper. That the Stones next released "Beggars Banquet" was not necessarily, he says, a return to form, as the beginning of what over time would be their real form. I think there's a few songs before Banquet that, ten years later, would not have fit poorly in later albums, but one makes one's own judgments when it comes to taste and preferences. In any case, I mention it because the podcast got me wondering, because Hickey claimed that the mono version is better than the stereo. And of course, Spotify offers both. So yesterday morning I gave it a try, in mono.
Verdict: better than I remember. Good? Well, okay. Pretentious? Well... But one can apply the old line, a bad record from the Stones is better than a good record from (mostly) everyone else. I can live with that.
I did own the original vinyl, by the way, with the reticular cover. I ended up passing it along to a collector when I was tossing out my mostly worthless vinyl, scratched into oblivion by a series of cheap stereos.
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