One of the benefits of housekeeping is finding those treasures from yesteryear, dusting them off, and enjoying them again. And so it goes, as I’ve been dusting off my old compact discs, I have found several of those long since forgotten favorites and thus the third of the “More Favorites” series, Compact Disc. The first in the series was Comedy Movies; this is the second in the CD series.
It’s hard to believe, but CDs have been in mass production now for over 25 years. I remember the first ones were classical recordings – clearly geared to the more affluent consumer, but regrettable in that most were only digital re-masters of older analog recordings. In fact, according to one of the corporate pioneers of the Compact Disc format, the disc was built to accommodate the longest version of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony that could be found in the archives.
As an early adopter of the format, I have a few oddball discs in my collection. Here are five of them.
Big Lizard in My Backyard, The Dead Milkmen
The record has been re-released on Restless Records, but my original was on Enigma. The Milkmen had a cult hit in the late 1980’s with “Punk Rock Girl,” but this record predates even that. The standout songs are “Rastabilly” and “Bitchin’ Camaro,” with “Camaro” itself ranking as a bit of a cult classic with the majority of the track being taken up with an oddball dialogue.
The Milkmen were truly “Seinfeldian” in their approach to music – much of it is about nothing, or at the very least nothing terribly important, although it was quite entertaining. By the time “Punk Rock Girl” was released, I was well past my interest in the Milkmen, but it’s still a fun listen every once in a while.
White City: A Novel, Pete Townshend
The original disc was released by Atco in 1985 as a concept album using despair as a story line and in the White City area of Hammersmith & Fulham in London. The two singles I remember from the album were “Face The Face” and “Give Blood.”
I’ve always taken the lyrics to “Give Blood” to relate the message that welfare begets dependence and it’s only being provided in the absence of doing anything in prevention (“Parade your pallor in iniquity.”)
“(Give blood) They will cry and say they’re in our debt
(Give blood) But then they’ll sigh and they will soon forget…
So give love and keep blood between brothers”
“Damn Good” (promotional CD), David Lee Roth
David Lee Roth was off the relative success of his record “Eat ‘Em and Smile” – his first since his split from Van Halen – and was following it up. The album, “Skyscraper,” was a lot more polished than “Smile” and he took some hits for it from fans who were looking for something different.
As part of the promotional campaign for the record, Warner Bros. released a promo copy of a CD single of “Damn Good” to radio stations. I wish I had a great story as to how I came into possession of this disc, other than I was probably in the right place at the right time.
But what a great song. My opinion at the time, and it remains the same, was that this was a song that deserved more attention than it got; as I get older, I can more fully appreciate the sentiments behind it:
“Hey, take a look at this picture, can you believe that was you?
And who’s that standin’ there in the corner? Not me!!!”
How many of those moments have I had? Yeah, this was one of those records that should’ve been far more popular, but sadly, it was buried with an album that just never caught on.
Radio K.A.O.S., Roger Waters
Roger Waters’ second solo album after leaving Pink Floyd was another concept album with a very odd storyline behind it, something not unlike the 1980’s movie “War Games.” The story goes, something like this: Billy, a disabled man in his early 20’s, can receive radio signals without a receiver and while he cannot talk on his own, he has learned how to communicate with the aide of a computer and has learned how to control the worlds’ most powerful computers with a phone. He grows to think of the bombing of Libya as political theatre – “wagging the dog” as it came to be known in a later movie – and he sets out to stage his own theatre.
The liner notes from the album spell out the story line as it relates to the lyrics of the album.
In true Waters fashion, there are several hidden messages in the album – in the written Morse code of the album cover (the artist, title and track listings of the album) to the audible Morse code that begins and ends the record (a message against the marketing of violence in popular culture).
In The Eye of the Storm, Roger Hodgeson
The former lead singer of Supertramp had this album issued right at the start of the CD revolution, and was one of the first I remember owning. Where later CDs came packaged in paper boxes that were exactly half the size of a standard 12″ LP case, they originally came in these disposable plastic shucks. I can still see myself trying like heck to get that disc out of that case.
The single was called “Had a Dream (Sleeping With the Enemy)” and just missed the Top 40 (as an edited single – the album version is almost 8:30), making it even more curious that the young man would have had the wherewithal to procure this record. That song was one of political persecution and alienation and the need to now take a stand. I suppose one could look at it as his serving notice on Supertramp (and the listener) that he was also taking a stand to make this record his own.
He played almost all the instruments himself (save a few) and demonstrates a progressive music bent not in evidence in the later Supertramp records. This was definitely his record.
