Tuesday, April 29, 2025

1969: Circa '69 tape, songs and info on albums

Circa 1969 Tape Notes

 

 

                                  Songs on Circa '69 Tape

Side A                                                                    Side B
Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie                                                        In Brooklyn
Prologue/Someday (8/29/68)                                                                       The Boxer
Spinning Wheel                                                                                  Can’t Find My Way Home
Easy To Be Hard                                                                                   Here Comes the Sun
You Should Have Listened to Al                                                         We Can Be Together
Magic Carpet Ride                                                                            Monster/Suicide/America 
Good Shepherd                                                                                              Undun
The Weight                                                                                        A Song For All Seasons
Woodstock                                                                                                 Fire and Rain
FISH Cheer and I-Feel-Like-                                                             Across the Universe
I’m-Fixin-To-Die Rag                                                                               Oh! Susanna
Fortunate Son 
Volunteers
Joe Hill

Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie and Spinning Wheel are from Blood, Sweat & Tears, released either in late 1968 or early 1969.    Prologue/Someday (August 29, 1968) is from Chicago Transit Authority, released in 1969.  Both  BS&T and CTA were produced by the same guy, James William Guercio.

Easy To Be Hard is from Three Dog Night’s 2nd album, Suitable For Framing, which, like their first album, was released in 1969.  Easy To Be Hard hit the top of the singles charts in July 1969—information I got from the group’s web page, which includes a current photo and has a link that says, “To find out how to book Three Dog Night please click here.”  (History question:  What “giant leap for mankind” occurred in July 1969, about three weeks before Woodstock?)

You Should Have Listened to Al and In Brooklyn are from Al Stewart’s second album, Love Chronicles, released in 1969 and called the “folk album of the year” by Melody Maker magazine.  I bought it in 1974.  Jimmy Page plays lead guitar on this album.        Magic Carpet Ride is from Steppenwolf The Second.  Even though the album came out in 1968, the song is in one of the 1969 scenes from “The Spy Who Shagged Me,” no doubt because it’s a groovy song.  I thought it might have been from 69 until I checked—yes—the  Steppenwolf web site.

Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album, their last album together, was released in November 1969.  It’s the main album that inspired me to make this tape.  The songs on here from the album are Good Shepherd, Volunteers, We Can Be Together, and A Song for All Seasons.          The Weight is from The Band’s first album, Music from Big Pink, released in 1968.  Jackie DeShannon’s version of the song was on the radio starting in January or February 1969—the version most people (including me) first heard. 

Woodstock, written by Joni Mitchell, is on her Ladies of the Canyon  album.  The album was released in 1970, but several songs on it, including Woodstock, have 1969 copyright dates.          One of the anti-war highlights at Woodstock was Country Joe and the Fish’s (revised)  Fish Cheer and I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag, which both appeared on the group’s 1967 album, I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixin’-To-Die.   Machine gun and other war sounds are part of the original song.   I recorded this song, as well as Easy To Be Hard, The Weight, and Magic Carpet Ride, from a CD called The Summer of  Peace, Love and Music, Vol. 3 (1994).

Fortunate Son is from Creedence’s Willy and the Poor Boys, released in November 1969.        Joan Baez singing Joe Hill was another anti-war highlight at Woodstock.   I recorded Joe Hill onto this tape from my prerecorded Woodstock cassette, which I bought in 1970 when the album was released.

Bridge Over Troubled Water was Simon and Garfunkel’s last studio album together, released in 1970.  Most of the songs, including The Boxer, have 1969 copyright dates.           Can’t Find My Way Home, by Steve Winwood, is from Blind Faith (1969).  Eric Clapton, Rick Grech, and Ginger Baker were also in the group. 

Here Comes the Sun, from Abbey Road (1969), is by George Harrison.      Steppenwolf’s Monster came out in 1969.   I had a cassette copy of it back then, but for this tape I bought a clean vinyl copy at Papa Jazz Record Shoppe (in Columbia, SC), where I also bought Canned Wheat Packed by the Guess Who (1969).  The album version of Undun begins with a brief piano solo.

Sweet Baby James, with Carole King on piano, was recorded in December 1969 and released in 1970.  Fire and Rain has a 1969 copyright date.  Stephen Foster wrote Oh! Susanna.

The Beatles, who broke up 30 years ago this month, released different albums in the United Kingdom and the U.S.  Some are the same, but some U.K. releases were not released in the U.S., and vice-versa.  Across the Universe is on Let It Be (1970), a U.S. release, but the version I used here (nature sounds included) is in an EMI (U.K.) Beatles collection I borrowed from Trip Martin and recorded in December 1983.   This version of the song originally appeared on a benefit album for the World Wildlife Fund (other groups besides the Beatles had songs on it) called  No One’s Gonna Change Our World, released in 1969.  Peace!

                                                                                                                      
DWT  April 8, 2000

In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of  ev’ry glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
“I am leaving, I am leaving.”
But the fighter still remains
Lie-la-lie . . .

Thanks to Deborah for use of equipment and some CD’s, and encouragement toward finishing this project.

1969: Circa '69 Collage

1970 tape song list and notes

                            Side A                                                              Side B




From the Movie of the Same Name
Ball of Confusion
    (That’s What the World Is Today)
13 Questions
Old Times Good Times
    [Jimi Hendrix on electric guitar]
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
To A Flame
Give Me Just A Little More Time
Something In the Air
Top of the Pops/Money-go-‘round
Working Class Hero
   [F-word warning]
Give Peace A Chance
War
Goin’ Back
Come and Get It
Hollywood Dream #2
Instant Karma!
Domino
Biloxi
Them Dance Hall Girls
No Matter What
Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy/Mr. Bojangles
[Rainy night in South Carolina, Dec. 17, 2000]
Rainy Night In Georgia
Accidents
Two of Us
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) [1971]


Further additions and corrections to 1970 Tape Notes (June 2003)


(any further corrections/additions are in red below)

Unlike Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison of The Doors didn't die a few weeks after the Isle of Wight festival, as I said in the original notes.  He died almost a year later. Since several other prominent young rock stars died at about the same time, I’ll just give the list here: 



Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle on November 27, 1943 and died in London of drug and alcohol related asphyxia on September 18, 1970.  Janis Joplin, was born in Port Arthur, Texas on January 19, 1943 and died in Hollywood, California on October 4, 1970 of a heroin overdose.  (I saw the news story on the Today show before I left for school the next day, so I was for a brief moment in the 11th-grade the center of attention in the hippie wannabe group I was standing around with before school started.  I remember a girl named Ann Hutchings saying she didn’t believe me, which was understandable given that Hendrix had died less than three weeks earlier.) 



Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida on December 8, 1943 and (as far as I can tell from recent reading on the Web) died mysteriously of a possible heart attack in a bathtub in a hotel room in Paris on July 3, 1971.  The Doors song Riders on the Storm had just been released that summer.  Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison were all 27 years old when they died.  Duane Allman was born in Nashville on November 20, 1946 and died in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia on October 29, 1971. 


I mention in the original notes below that Peter Rowan complimented the looks of my bass drum when my band played at a house party in 1991—a party at a rock-music photographer's house in the Hill Country near Austin.  I was happy to get the compliment, as Rowan's band was setting up, because I'd refinished the drum myself in 1989 with a natural finish after stripping the black paint off it.  I've had that Slingerland bass drum, and the tom-tom that goes with it, since 1967.  They were used drums when my parents got them for me (the date November 11, 1965 is stamped inside both drums) as part of an agreement that I’d take drum lessons and be in the band at school.  I managed to more or less keep my band buzzard status a secret—popular kids weren’t in the band, and I was morbidly interested in being popular in the 8th grade—because I was in the “training band” and never had to play in public, although I also played snare drum with the Dial Singers so I had to do some public performances. 


Additions and corrections to the 1970 Tape notes
I was a bit hasty in putting together the info for the 1970 tape, so I’m sending corrections, and, while I’m at it, some additional comments and more media material (other side).
Quoting from the Pearls Before Swine album notes, the (rather famous) cover art on The Use of Ashes is "French or Flemish, late XV Century tapestry, ‘The Hunt of the Unicorn VI; The Unicorn is Brought to the Castle,’ from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, gift of John D, Rockefeller, Jr., 1937.”

Rainy Night In Georgia addenda:  Benjamin Franklin Peay (1931-1988), a.k.a. Brook Benton, was born in Camden, South Carolina;  “Hoverin’” is the first word in the song;  the original lyrics say “ you’ve got to do your own thing” instead of  “you just got to play the game," which is indeed what I remember now from seeing the sheet music.  Rather different interpretations!    Marshall Miller did hear the song, but not for the first time, in Germany—it may have been '70 or '71, he says, and it was a rainy night during an Army training exercise in a field (not on the base), and it did seem like it was raining all over the world.

Seatrain, originally a Boston band, later was based in California (not Central Texas), and Peter Rowan was only a member for a couple of years, not the head of the band.  Rowan has bluegrass roots despite being from Boston (see http://www.dirtywater.com/ links to Seatrain and Peter Rowan); he was also in Old and In The Way with Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, circa 1973, and also wrote "Panama Red"  (recorded by New Riders of the Purple Sage) and "Free Mexican Airforce."   13 Questions (not written by Rowan) peaked on the singles charts at #49 in April 1971.  As far as the Earthtrain/Seatrain connection is concerned, I didn’t know Rowan had been in Seatrain until I happened to look at my copy of the album a few years ago, long after the demise of Earthtrain.  The album photos sure look like central Texas to me. . .
Idlewild South is the second, not the first, Allman Brothers' album.  Their first album is The Allman Brothers Band, released in 1969.

Thunderclap Newman had three members (and one album): the 16-year-old guitarist Jimmy McCulloch (later in Wings), the 30ish drummer/ lead vocalist/songwriter John 'Speedy' Keen, and the 35ish pianist/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Andy 'Thunderclap' Newman.  All three are shown in the tiny photo of the original album cover at the top left of my photo collage.  The Hollywood photos, showing Keen in cardboard cut-out form, are from the 1973 re-release of the album.
The photo of Paul and John (apropos Two of Us) is from a short article titled "Why They Were Fab" in The New Yorker of October 16/23, 2000.  The caption on the photo says:  "Paul and John, at Joe's CafĂ© in Liverpool, in the early sixties, after performing in Operation Big Beat, at the Tower Ballroom."  Lennon turned 30 in 1970, and was killed in 1980. The songs of his on my tape show him as angry (Working Class Hero), philosophical (Instant Karma!) and hopeful (Happy Xmas (War Is Over) and Give Peace a Chance).  At least that's my interpretation.
I won't bother to correct my misspellings and grammar errors, or my inappropriate use of the word "interleaved."  This is just a hobby, after all.  But how long will it go on, you wonder.  Look for '71 and '72 tapes (or CDs) in the mail in the future.                                    DWT, February 19, 2001



1970 Tape Notes



All songs on the tape are from albums (or were singles) released in 1970, except for Happy Xmas (War Is Over).


From the Movie of the Same Name is on The Use of Ashes by Pearls Before Swine (Tom Rapp, singer/songwriter).


I recorded The Tempations’ Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today) from the CD ­Soul Train 1970.  The song was recorded on May 7, 1970 (info I got from the group’s Anthology album).  I also recorded Give Me Just A Little More Time (Chairmen of the Board), War (Edwin Starr), and Rainy Night In Georgia (Brook Benton) from this CD, which is © 2000 by Rhino Records.  Ball of Confusion and War were both written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong; Give Me Just A Little More Time by Ronald Dunbar and Edith Wayne; Rainy Night In Georgia by Tony Joe White (as I recall from seeing the sheet music, the lyrics saying “you just got to play the game” are not the original lyrics—I don’t recall what they are, however).

13 Questions is by SeaTrain, a central Texas band headed by Peter Rowan, no longer together.  Rowan is still playing, however, and was part of the recent Austin City Limits tribute to Townes Van Zandt.  Rowan played at a 1991 house party in the Hill County outside Austin where my band also played. He complimented the looks of my bass drum.  My band was named Earthtrain, but Steve the guitar player would never tell me how he got the name.  A few years later, after Earthtrain was derailed, I made the connection with SeaTrain’s name.

Old Times Good Times and To A Flame are on Steven Stills first solo album.  Jimi Hendrix plays only on Old Times Good Times.  Hendrix, of course, died in 1970, soon after his appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in August (ditto Jim Morrison).  The video of that festival was not released until 1995 and is well worth renting, but not primarily for the music.   Steven Stills, the album, is “Dedicated to James Marshall Hendrix.”

In Memory of Elizabeth Reed is on the Allman Brothers’ first album, Idlewild South.

Something in the Air, Hollywood Dream #2, and Accidents are on Thunderclap Newman’s album Hollywood Dream, which I bought in 1971 from Threshold Record Shop (owned and run by Pat Calkins and Jim Kennedy) in The Hut on Cherry Street.

Top of the Pops and Moneygoround are on The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One.  I don’t know if a Part Two was ever made.

Working Class Hero is on the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album.  The original version of Give Peace A Chance was released as a single in 1969; this version is from the movie “The Strawberry Statement,” released in 1970 and based on James Simon Kunen’s book about the 1968 Columbia University student revolt.  The soundtrack, as I recall, was better than the movie. (Yep, I left out Instant Karma! in original notes.  In these tape/CD notes, by the way, the first time I mention a musician, I list all his/her songs that I used.) Happy Xmas (War Is Over), written by Lennon and Yoko Ono, was released as a single in 1971.  Background singing is by the Harlem Community Choir.  I almost left this off the tape because I heard it twice this Christmas season as background music (in a coffee shop and at Piggly Wiggly).  But it fit on the tape, and applies to the very immediate and potentially catastrophic Israeli/ Palestinian conflict.

Goin’ Back is on Writer: Carole King; James Taylor plays acoustic guitar on the throughout the album, but sings only on this song.

Come and Get It was written by Paul McCartney, who donated it to Badfinger for use as their debut song, featured in the (not very good) Peter Sellers/Ringo Starr movie “The Magic Christian.”   No Matter What is on No Dice, but I recorded both these songs from The Best of Badfinger CD, which was “digitally re-mastered at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, March 1994.”  Actual recording dates of these songs are, respectively, August 2, 1969, and May 13/May 20, 1970.

I recorded Domino from The Best of Van Morrison, a 1990 compilation.  If you have trouble understanding one part of the lyrics, it’s probably where he says, “Or vice-a-versa.”

Biloxi is from Jesse Winchester’s first album, recorded while he was living in Canada as a draft resister.  I suppose he illegally traveled a few miles south or east to Bearsville, New York, where Todd Rundgren (engineer) and Robbie Robertson (producer) recorded the album.  Robertson and Levon Helm also play on some of the songs, but the particular ones are not specified.
Them Dance Hall Girls is from Fraser and DeBolt, featuring Allan Fraser, Daisy DeBolt, and Ian Guenther (fiddle).  DeBolt, a Canadian, now has a website; Fraser is said to be “keeping quiet.”

The Uncle Charlie Interview and interleaved Mr. Bojangles (written by Jerry Jeff Walker) are from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy.  The interview was recorded in April 1964, the year Uncle Charlie died.  When Teddy died is not mentioned.

I put a microphone near my opened window in the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, December 17 (Daddy’s 79th birthday) and recorded the rainy night sounds that precede Rainy Night In Georgia.  Marshall Miller once told me he heard Rainy Night In Georgia on a rainy night at an Army base in Germany.  I’d like to think, for the improved dramatic effect and relevance to this tape, that he first heard it then and that it was in 1970, but I’ll have to check with him on that.

Two Of Us is the first song on Let It Be.        


Best Wishes for the year 2001!   DWT, December 19,2000

1971 CD/Tape song list and notes


                          1971 Tape songs: 
            A                                             B

Heart of the Country                                           Peace Like A River
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard              Orleans
The Wind                                                            Military Madness
All I Want                                                           What’s Goin’ On
Wild Night                                                          The Prisoner
Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get                             Hobo Blues
Tuesday’s Dead                                                  Wounded Bird
One Toke Over the Line                                     Vincent
Arkansas Traveler                                               Wailing Wall            
I Wanna Grow Up                                               Mother and Child Reunion
   To Be A Politician                                           Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
Oh Mommy                                                         Indian music excerpt
It Don’t Come Easy                                            Blowin’ In The Wind
Beware of Darkness                                           The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
While My Guitar Gently Weeps                         Long Ago and Far Away

1971 Tape/CD Notes

The tape (recorded on August 1st and 5th, 2001) is now a CD, minus four songs and plus two songs.  I had to leave out some songs in order to transform the cassette into a single CD, since the cassette is about 94 minutes of music and only 80 minutes can be put on a CD.   After deciding the songs to take out, I had some extra time left and put two short songs at the beginning and the end of the CD, and I switched the order of the sides, with side B of the tape being first on the CD.  Also, since one channel on my reel-to-reel went out when I was originally recording What’s Going On, I re-mixed it directly from CD onto the master CD I used for making the copies.  Otherwise, I left the original mix as it was.

The four songs I left off the CD are The Prisoner by Gil Scott-Heron, Vincent by Don McLean, Wailing Wall by Todd Rundgren, and Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get by the Dramatics.   The first three of these are about listening or the lack of it, with Wailing Wall allowing a hint of optimism ("nobody listens/and nobody seems to care/ but every day/you'll find them there/and . . .").  I had the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—where wrong is being done by both sides—in mind when I combined the songs Vincent and Wailing Wall (which is on Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren).  I replaced these two with Babylon, the last song on Don McLean’s American Pie album.  Also, as a further tribute to George Harrison, I put the Bangladesh Benefit Concert version of Here Comes the Sun at the end of the CD.

Apropos of the song Babylon, here’s the dictionary entry for Zion, taken from several dictionaries.  I had definition 3 mainly in mind when I decided to record the song, although I was also influenced by the front page news on October 22 showing the Israeli bus in flames (this time the gas tank exploded, which is not usually the case in the suicide bus bombings).   zi·on  also Si·on  n. usu cap [from Zion, height in northeastern part of Jerusalem, Palestine, that was once the site of Solomon’s Temple and the seat of government of the kingdom of Judah and that was later identified with Jerusalem and Palestine as the birthplace and spiritual center of Judeo-Christianity and the earthly abode of  God. . .] 1.  a. The historic land of Israel as a symbol of the Jewish people. b. The Jewish people; Israel. 2. A place or religious community regarded as sacredly devoted to God.   3. An idealized, harmonious community; utopia  <sought to set up perpetual Zions in the backcountry--W. H. Hale>.    (History question:  Where was Babylon located?)

Peace Like A River, Hobo’s Blues, Mother & Child Reunion, and Me & Julio Down By the Schoolyard are from Paul Simon, released in February 1972 but copyrighted (and recorded, I assume) in 1971.  Stephane Grappelli co-wrote and plays fiddle on Hobo’s Blues.  The percussion on “Me & Julio” (the most prominent thing being a talking drum, I’m guessing) is played by Airto Moreira.  All songs on the album are good, and most are even relevant to these times and to middle age craziness.  See http://www.paulsimon.com/ for more info, including lyrics to all his songs.

Orleans is a traditional song that I suppose comes from France, since it’s in French.  This version belongs to David Crosby’s would-be eponymous LP, If I Could Only Remember My Name, which is a better photo album than song album—inside there are 24 excellent photos of various Grateful Dead/Jefferson Airplane/Quicksilver musicians and hangers-on, including photos of Crosby, Nash & Young but not Stills. 

Military Madness and Wounded Bird are from Graham Nash’s Songs For Beginners.  Nash, by the way, was born on February 2, 1942 in (as you would expect) Blackpool, England.   The song Willy on Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon is about Nash, whose nickname is/was Willy (I heard this tid-bit on KUT radio November 7, 2002, which was Mitchell’s 59th birthday).  Also, Nash’s song Our House on DĂ©jĂ  Vu is about Joni Mitchell.  I would guess the love songs on Songs For Beginners are also about Joni Mitchell, written in the aftermath of the couple’s break-up.  Lyrics for the song Willy can be found at  http://www.jonimitchell.com/    Note added Saturday December 7, 2002:  Nash was in Austin and interviewed yesterday on KUT (http://www.kut.org/).  He had good things to say about Mitchell, and said he’d written many songs about her, including Our House.  But the interviewer couldn’t remember which song Mitchell was supposed to have written about Nash--although he’s the same guy who’d gotten a phone call on November 7 telling him Willy is about Nash!  Nash has both a new book (interviews with writers of famous songs, I think) and a new album out.  I recorded the KUT interview, which is about an hour’s worth of talking and a few songs sung by Nash in the studio.  Let me know if you want me to send you a CD copy of the recording.

 I recorded What’s Going On from the CD Soul Train 1971.  Marvin Gaye co-wrote the song with Reynaldo Benson and Al Cleveland.  (If you’ve got a copy of the tape, Whatcha See is Whatcha Get, by the Dramatics, also came from this CD.  It’s the only CD I used in making this 1971 tape/CD.  All other songs are from LPs, except for Wild Night, which is from a cassette tape of The Best of Van Morrison, released in 1990.)

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey and Heart of the Country are from Paul and Linda McCartney’s RAM album, which also features David Spinoza, Hugh McCracken and Danny Seiwell (all on guitar, I believe, and Spinoza also plays on at least one of the other songs in this 1971 collection—“Me & Julio” on  Paul Simon).

The Concert for Bangladesh album turned out to be the source of six songs on this CD.  I hadn’t expected that to be the case after I bought the album from Papa Jazz Record Shoppe (yep, I was still shoppe-ing there) in the summer of 2001.  (Another history question: whose radio ad in Pine Bluff in the early 70’s said “Where you shop does make a difference”?  Maybe it even said, “Remember, where you shop does make a difference.”  So true, I found recently when I was buying clothes, which I do as rarely as possible.  I should have remembered…)  Anyway, the songs on the CD from the Bangladesh Benefit Concert are Bangla Dhun (an excerpt, and not really a song), Blowin’ in the Wind, It Don’t Come Easy, Beware of Darkness, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and Here Comes the Sun.  This is another album, like Paul Simon, that was recorded in 1971 and released in early 1972.  Much info can be found on the Web, including the site http://www.bangladeshshowbiz.com/concert_for_bangladesh/concert_for_bangladesh_main.htm



Gil Scott-Heron went to prison in November 2001, due to being charged with possession of cocaine and his refusal to agree to treatment as an alternative to prison, due to his claim that he is not an addict.  His song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is on Pieces of a Man, recorded on April 19th and 20th 1971.  The Prisoner (on ’71 tape) is also on this album.  Musicians are: Bernard Purdie, drums; Ron Carter, bass; Burt Jones, electric guitar; Brian Jackson, piano; Hubert Laws, flute and saxophone; Johnny Pate, conductor; and Scott-Heron, of course, doing the vocals. 

Long Ago and Far Away is on Mud Slide Slim.  Joni Mitchell sings back-up vocal.  Jumping ahead slightly in the order albums are recorded on the CD  (okay, I did that already by mentioning Wild Night above), I'll put in a note about Joni Mitchell’s song All I Want, which as you probably know is on Blue:  James Taylor plays guitar on this song.   Stephen Stills also plays guitar on one or two songs on Blue, but not on All I Want.

 I was among those who thought poorly of Cat Stevens for his reported comments regarding Salman Rushdie and Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses.  As the NY Times letter I photocopied for the 1971 tape collage indicates, however, and as Cat Stevens has repeatedly said, he didn't claim that Rushdie should be murdered for blasphemy.  Anyway, Stevens' two songs from Teaser and the Firecat on the 1971 Tape/CD are The Wind and Tuesday's Dead.  Lyrics can be found at http://catstevens.com/ .  Some lyrics from Tuesday’s Dead:  

Whoa, Where do you go? When you don't want no one to know?
Who told tomorrow--Tuesday's dead

Oh preacher won't you paint my dream, won't you show me where you've been
Show me what I haven't seen to ease my mind.
Cause I will learn to understand, if I have a helping hand.
I wouldn't make another demand all my life.

What's my sex, what's my name, all in all it's all the same.
Everybody plays a different game, that is all.
Now, man may live, man may die searching for the question why
But if he tries to rule the sky he must fall.

Now every second on the nose, the humdrum of the city grows
reaching out beyond the throes of our time.
We must try to shake it down. Do our best to break the ground.
Try to turn the world around one more time.
Yeah, we must try to shake it down do our best to break the ground
Try to turn the world around one more time.


Brewer and Shipley were (and may still be) West Coast musicians who had several albums released in the early seventies.  One Toke Over the Line and Oh Mommy are from Tarkio.  Jerry Garcia plays pedal steel guitar on the album. (Yeh, I wrote “pedal steal” in an earlier version of these notes, the reason most likely being that a guy named Sneaky Pete plays pedal steel guitar on both Blue and Byrdmaniax [see below], but his name is spelled Sneeky Pete in the former album’s musician credits.)  1971, by the way, is when airline hijackings to Cuba became so common that airport security started to become an issue.  Also, the only attack on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia (so far) occurred in 1971--thus the lyrics in Oh Mommy about not speaking Spanish on a plane and not polishing off the Liberty Bell

The Boggy Road to Milledgeville (Arkansas Traveler) is on David Bromberg’s epynomous LP, which also includes a humorous song by Bromberg and George Harrison called The Holdup (which also is on a later Bromberg album, possibly a live album).

I Wanna Grow Up To Be A Politician, by “McGuinn/Levy © 1971 Blackwood Music, Inc./Patian Mus./Jackalope Mus. (BMI),” is on The Byrds’ album Byrdmaniax.  Roger McGuinn was the main singer/guitarist for The Byrds, but there’s no indication in the album notes of who “Levy” is.   Byrdmaniax  is not a very good LP, and was maybe The Byrds’ last one.  Did they do anything really good after David Crosby left?  I don’t think so.   I thought I Wanna Grow Up To Be A Politician became relevant after the 2000 presidential election, and I think it seems even moreso now.  (RT in Columbia SC and JKW in Austin will no doubt disagree with that assessment…)

Have I forgotten anybody?  E-mail me with info or comments.  You can also look forward (?) to a 1972 CD soon--the last one in this prolonged recording project, which I originally intended to be just a 1969 tape. 

Best holiday wishes!      DWT  December 8, 2002

(corrections or additions done afterwards are in red)







1971 collage



Circa '72 tape pre-notes


Circa ’72 pre-recording notes.  Some additions and corrections: 10/16, 10/20, and 12/4/03; 2/21 and 8/15/04; and 6/20/05.

The 1972 CD is still a work in progress.  I tried several times during the summer and fall
of 2002 to put a meaningful mix together, but it didn't happen.  The idea I have in mind is expressed by a sign on a display in the downtown Austin library, where I'm writing this.  The display is a photographic history of the library called "Where the past meets the future." 

Anyway, I realize now some of the songs I originally wanted to use are from 1973, so the CD will be a Circa '72 recording, with songs from both '72 and '73 on it.  



The photo of me shown above was taken in '72 or '73 by Carl Bell in his bedroom at 2105 Oak Street in Pine Bluff, where he had his equipment for recording albums onto
7’’ reel tapes and then onto 3’’ reels and cassette tapes to send to military hospitals in Vietnam starting in 1969, when his son Rick became an army surgeon in Danang.

My brothers and I and friends of ours, along with many other people, including the Raley brothers who owned Raley's House of Music, loaned albums to Mr. Bell.  Later on some of us helped him with the taping.  I started doing that when I got my Sony cassette deck and other good hi-fi equipment in the fall of '72 when I was starting classes at Hendrix College.   TAPES of Pine Bluff, as Mr. Bell (a friend of my Trulock grandparents) called his group, also sent tapes to other places
during and after the Vietnam War—to Guam, Okinawa, the Philippines, South Korea, and other overseas locations where there were U.S. military bases with large hospitals. 

U.S. soldiers, by the way, quit fighting in Vietnam after the Paris peace treaty was signed in January 1973.  American POWs came home; very heavy B-52 bombing of Cambodia took place from then until about August 1973 (helping inadvertently to set up the beginning of the Pol Pot / K
hmer Rouge terror and genocide in Cambodia from '75 through '79); and the South Vietnamese were left to fight on their own, which continued until April 1975, when the emergency U.S. embassy evacuation took place as the North Vietnamese Army finally took over Saigon and won the war.

(Corruption--mainly various illegal methods of keeping a lot of money in the hands of the people in power-- was widespread in the South Vietnamese government both before and during the war.    When the U.S increased its spending in Vietnam, this problem was only worsened.  In this respect, the people of South Vietnam were losing the war before it even started.)

Late in the summer of 1972, Rick Bell returned to Pine Bluff with his wife Lee, a nurse from Taiwan.  (He was divorced from his first wife, Julie, while he was serving in Vietnam.)  He works in Pine Bluff now as an emergency room physician at Jefferson Regional Medical Center.

The other photo was also taken at the Bell's house on Oak Street.  I should say that both Mr. Bell and his wife Jane were friends of my grandparents, and it may have been Mrs. Bell who took this photo of my grandfather, which has the date March 1973 written on the back.  Mrs. Bell gave me both these photos and several more when I had lunch with her in
December 2000 at Fu Mae's on Main Street in Pine Bluff.  I'm not sure about the spelling of Fu Mae, but I really enjoyed that meal.  Fu Mae's unfortunately is closed now, and that was the last time I saw Jane Bell, although I talked to her on the phone once or twice afterward.  She died in August 2002; Carl Bell died in June 1994; my grandfather died a month after the photo was taken; my grandmother died in June 1972.    The photo of me had to have been taken between August 1972 and August 1973.  That's the only time I had my hair parted in the middle and the only time I wore a POW/MIA bracelet.  

Another historical note concerning this taping project is related to my semester-long tenure as a DJ at the campus radio station at Hendrix in the fall of 1973, which is when the radio station was first established.   I called my once-a-week, two-hour show Pat's Fish Market, which was the name of a fish market on Blake Street in Pine Bluff (they had some neat looking house plants in the window) but which I also chose because my best male friend during Jr High and high school was Pat Calkins (as of this March 2003 writing, he's still working on the restoration of the Pioneer Inn in Maui). 

As a DJ I learned to cue up a song on an album, an essential skill for starting a song on an LP at the moment you want it to start.  It's done by putting the needle on the groove at the beginning of the track you want to play, letting the song start and then immediately turning off the power to the turntable (automatic turntables are not made for doing this, but it can be done; DJ turntables have a simple on/off switch).  Then you rotate the turntable platter and album backwards until the needle is just at the beginning of the song, plus about half a turn so the turntable can come up to speed before the song starts.

So, in putting songs onto the reel-to-reel tapes from albums during this taping project of mine, I was cuing up one song as another one was playing--which is what makes it fun and challenging to make the master tapes because if I messed up the timing of the start of a song or didn't have it ready to go when the previous song was ending, I'd have to go back and start recording all the songs over again (or go back to wherever I'd left a gap between songs).   On Blowin' In the Wind, on the '71 tape/CD, I forgot to keep the fader positioned correctly and
near the end of the song, you can hear me cueing up The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.  

In order to be able to create these segues ("segways") between songs recorded directly  from LPs, I bought a second turntable in the spring of 2001.  The 1969 and 1970 tapes were made using one turntable, a CD player, and, for a couple of songs, a cassette deck.

Okay, time for me to shut up and get back to work on the Circa 1972 CD.   The next thing you'll be seeing on this page is the list of songs in the order they'll appear.  I also have two comedy albums I'll be using some excerpts from: Firesign Theater's Dear Friends album, from '72, and a Mel Brooks/Carl Reiner album called 2000 & 13, recorded in August 1973. 
(Mel Brooks is "the 2,013 year old man," interviewed by Carl Reiner.)

Adagio Cantabile  
from Pathetique piano sonata (excerpt)                        Beethoven
Live from the Senate Bar                                              Firesign Theat
er
(If you call that living!)
IF THE SHOE FITS                                                         LEON RUSSELL
A CHILD IN THESE HILLS                                              JACKSON BROWNE
VENTURA HIGHWAY                                                     AMERICA
TIME IS PASSING                                                           PETE TOWNSHEND
LISTEN, LISTEN                                                             SANDY DENNY  (FAIRPORT CONVENTION)
HYPNOTIZED                                                                  FLEETWOOD MAC
SUPERSTITION                                                               STEVIE WONDER
BIG BROTHER                                                                     "           "
FREDDIE'S DEAD                                                             CURTIS MAYFIELD
THE DIRTY JOBS                                                             THE WHO
HELPLESS DANCER                                                           "       "
A couple of conversations from
2000 and 13                                                                        MEL BROOKS AND CARL REINER
RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME                                           DR. JOHN
AMERICAN TUNE                                                             PAUL SIMON 
TIGHTROPE                                                                      LEON RUSSELL
SEND IN THE CLOWNS                                                     from cast recording of Ste
phen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music"
EVERYBODY PLAYS THE  FOOL                                      THE MAIN INGREDIENT
WAS A SUNNY DAY                                                          PAUL SIMON
ROCK ME ON THE WATER                                               JACKSON BROWNE
More from 2000 & 13                                                            MEL BROOKS AND CARL REINER
MAGIC MIRROR                                                                LEON RUSSELL
TOAD AWAY                                                                     FIRESIGN THEATER
Adagio Cantabile
 
from Pathetique piano sonata (NO. 8, OPUS 13)                        Beethoven


Well, that's a possible line up, anyway, and there may still be some room left to squeeze in a few more songs. If you yourself want to make a suggestion for a song you want included, anonymous or not (as far as the notes and the CD are concerned), be my guest.   To help you make a choice, here's a link to a website with the top 100 songs of each year  and their lyrics:  (see the previous page for this link)
And, of course, you know my e-mail address.  So you like "Brandy" or "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia"?  Not a problem.  Make your request.

Okay, thanks for the requests.  I’m not sure about the request for “My Ding-A-Ling,” which wasn’t Chuck Berry’s finest moment.  But as Bob Dylan said about being so much older then and younger than that now, I have to admit I find it more humorous today than I did in 1972.  And that line about “future Parliament out there singing” has no doubt come true, so maybe it’ll fit in nicely after all. And yes, it could be dedicated to Bill Clinton (for what was not his finest moment). Anyway, time to wrap up these pre-notes and get to the taping, now that I’m getting settled in at a  new/old place and am feeling like doing some recording again.  Best wishes, DWT, 9/11/03.

(The above notes were mostly written in the first half of 2003, with a pause of several months between the next-to-last and last paragraphs.)

10/16/03.  The never ending pre-notes continue. . .   I’ve been having problems with my CD recorder for almost a year.  I sent it to the Philips factory service center in Houston during the summer and it came back with only one of the problems fixed.  Since I didn’t get it returned to them within the 30-day labor warranty period, it’ll cost a minimum of  $200 to have it repaired there now.  So the recording project is currently on hold because of technical difficulties. But I’ve gotten some advice from my contact at Matthews Electronics in Pine Bluff (chief subcontractor on NASA’s Orbiting Spunklab project) on what the problem might be, so I’m going to look into it and will be giving an update here soon.  Also, I’m still searching for a ’72 or ’73 recording of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” piano sonata, with the University of Texas music library being my best bet at the moment.   I do have a deadline in mind for finishing this project, by the way.  I’m planning on having the CD’s in the mail by Thanksgiving.  
10/20/03.  Nothin’ new to report, except to say that the recording is not really on hold, since I can go ahead and make the master reels anytime.  I even have a 1972 recording of the Pathetique piano sonata checked out from the Austin public library, but it becomes too scratchy sounding about halfway through, so I’m still looking for a cleaner copy of that (part of the “Beethoven Bicentennial” collection) or a BBC recording from ’72 with Stephen Bishop playing piano, which the UT music library has but which I have to go back during M-F business hours to find out if I can check out.  Check back later.

12/4/03.  I didn’t finish the recording as I’d planned to, but it keeps changing as I keep trying to record something I really like.  The UT library’s copy of Stephen Bishop playing the Pathetique is all I hoped for, except for one thing.  It can’t be checked out!  That’s why it’s in near perfect condition.  They have dubbing booths in the Fine Arts library, and I was able to take my CD recorder there and hook it up to the headphone jack of the built-in cassette recorder.  I’ll leave out the details of how I did that, but the problem now is that the recording’s dynamic range is so good that it overloaded the input circuit of the cassette recorder (a Sony) and the loudest split second of my CD recording is distorted. AUUUGH!  But, this is a hobby, so even the setbacks are part of the enjoyment.  A very small part as far as enjoyment is concerned, but if the result is good enough, it’s worth the effort.  I now plan to have the project finished on or by the 17th, so I can mail out the recordings in time for Christmas.  And just a side note on a recent music release, namely The Best of R.E.M. 1988-whatever.  By far the best of R.E.M was what they did before 1988, when they were on IRS rather than Warner Brothers or whichever label they’re on now, so if you’re not familiar with their earlier songs, I recommend a Web search and listening.  Gardening at Night, Driver 8, Begin the Begin, Cayuhoga, etc.  (2/21/04:  there is the album REM Eponymous, a sort-of greatest hits of their IRS albums, but it has way too little on it.)  6/20/05:  Okay, let me belatedly thank Steve Holcombe, who made two 60 minute REM compilation cassette tapes for me in March 1989, a few weeks before he and I went to see REM at the Erwin Center in Austin; and also let me say that I do like Green, REM’s first Warner Brothers album, which came out not long before the REM ’89 tour.  

2/21/04.  I said a while back that I’d shut up and get to work on the tape.  Well, okay, time to do that.   No more will be written here until the tape is done, after I say these two things:  Thanks to David Potter for the Stephen Bishop album, which David’s son Geoffrey delivered to me on Christmas day; and, one of the physics professors I had at Hendrix College, Laymont Woodruff, an ex-military guy who nevertheless had a high-pitched, sing-song voice (and only a master’s degree, not a PhD) would occasionally when I was leaving his office raise his right hand as if in greeting and would say, “peace!”  I think he got that from Dave Garraway, the original host, in the 1950s, of the Today show, so that expression did not originate with the peace movement or hippies of the 1960s.  Peace!

August 15, 2004.  The never-ending pre-notes are now officially ending.  I recorded the two reel-to-reel tapes on July 17-18, then made the master Circa ’72 CD on July 31-August 1.  Not to say there won’t be more stuff added, such as this page of PBHS 1972 "Class Announcements."  (not added yet)