Kakki wrote: >Besides this being amazing it brought back a wonderful memory for me. A >friend had a cousin who was a big shot in the record biz back then and one >night she came over with an armload of promo records he'd given her for both >of us, including "This Was," the first CTA and the Al Kooper Blood Sweat & >Tears "Child is Father to the Man." We sat for hours playing these albums, >none of which were yet released yet. One of the greatest nights of music >I've ever experienced. Somewhere in college, I'm afraid they ended up in >someone else's record collection.
I bought each one of those the day they came out, and devoured them eagerly. Alas my record collection got lost in a fire. Fortunately I've been able to replicate most of them on CD, but it's not quite the same. Records had cover art you could see, the discs were artifacts that would yield their secrets under the needle, each was fresh and new and a mystery. Each charted unknown territory -- or territory we all knew but hadn't found a way to listen to yet -- and sometimes the learning curve on understanding the music was steep. But the music was ours and hadn't quite been coopted by corporate America. (The Man Can't Bust Our Music, one of Columbia's lamer advertising campaigns.) Weren't these all released through Columbia? "This Was" was on Chrysalis, but wasn't that distributed by Columbia? The first Chrysalis CDs were Columbia. Columbia was late jumping on the rock'n'roll bandwagon because Mitch Miller, head of A&R, *hated* rock'n'roll. > > What a sense of community we had back then. > >Yes we sure did and it's so great to hear from someone else who was there, >too. There are probably more of us than you think. >The previous year we put on a student art show at the school and >blasted Country Joe and the Fish's "Electric Music for Mind and Body" the >entire day and I sold one of my psychedelic pieces to one of the student >counselors. I first heard that album in Georgia in the army in 1967. It was the closest I got to the Summer of Love. >NP: Jethro Tull - Living in the Past Is this because you're "living in the past" yourself. (*gasp* A metaphor for your whole life? *choke*) Or is it because the title song is in 5/4, and you feel yourself to be an asymmetrical meter living in a world of common time? Gil NP: Steve Reich, "Six Pianos"
