Park It Out in Back

It’s widely believed that Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska was made up of demos that were deemed good enough for release as is. Not exactly. The songs were recorded by the full E-Street Band, but everybody involved preferred the haunting demo versions Springsteen had recorded himself. So he recut the songs in the same fashion, and that’s the Nebraska album that was released in 1982. But today, at the bootleg site ROIO, you can hear the original demos Springsteen carried around on a cassette in his pocket before the E-Street sessions on Alone at Colts Neck: The Complete Nebraska Session. In addition to all but one of the songs that ended up on Nebraska, the album includes acoustic versions of “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Pink Cadillac.” This “Born in the U.S.A.” is similar to the one that turned up on the Tracks box set in the late 90s. “Pink Cadillac” is transformed from bombastic party record to a sly blues number you really ought to hear.

Elsewhere around the blogs today:

My Hmphs explains where Styx jumped the shark. You can probably guess before you click it—I certainly did, because if you followed the career of Styx, the point is obvious. I can recall only a couple of times in history where an album was so bad it actually left me not just disappointed, but angry, and that’s one of them.

Debris Slide salutes Tommy James on his birthday, with a list of the man’s accomplishments by age, and provides the most bizarre/interesting trivia nugget you’ll read all day. Meanwhile, AM, Then FM dials the radio back 40 years.

Radio programming note: Sunday night from 7 to midnight, Chicago radio legend Dick Biondi celebrates 50 years since his first broadcast on WLS. He’s currently on WLS-FM and streaming online, but the best news about the special broadcast the station is putting together is that it will be simulcast on the Big 89, which is the way the show ought to be heard. Also from the history of WLS: Biondi’s got 50 years, but one jock’s dream came true with a single show there.

Noted on Facebook: a new page The Mrs. will be interested in called WGN Radio: Fire Kevin Metheny. He’s the program director who is presiding over the ongoing destruction of the station’s 80-year legacy. As of this morning, the page has 63 fans, one of whom is Kevin Metheny. Also: If you use Facebook, you have probably heard about the latest infringements on your privacy—there’s going to be much more sharing of personal information without your permission. Gawker provides a quick guide to protecting yourself as much as possible.

And one more thing: You can now follow me on Twitter, and I wish you would, because it’s kind of lonely out there so far. I think one of the reasons I have been reluctant to embrace Twitter is that verb—”to tweet.” I don’t care what you’re saying,  no matter how profound or significant you think it is—to say you’re tweeting it makes it seem trivial and unimportant, which makes Twitter perfect for dick jokes and whatever’s on Sarah Palin’s mind. But I’m trying to get over that prejudice, and I do find Twitter tempting for launching random bon mots into the void. (You can see my Twitter feed in the right-hand column of this page, near the bottom.) So help a brother out: If you can suggest some interesting people and things for me to follow, tweet them my way.

Coming Monday: the final installment of one-hit wonders who peaked at Number 94 on the Hot 100.

A Once Upon a Time

A while back, I told the story of the only thing I wanted for Christmas in 1974—Elton John’s Greatest Hits. It marked the beginning of a year of Eltonmania, not just for me but for much of the civilized world, as Elton enjoyed a period of cultural ubiquity like nothing since the 1964 Beatles. His ubiquity was only different and not new, though. By the spring of 1975, Elton John had been a fixture on the radio for a couple of years. His dominance was remarkable. Over a period of 173 weeks, between December 9, 1972, when “Crocodile Rock” spent its first week on the Hot 100, and April 3, 1976, the final week for “I Feel Like a Bullet,” Elton failed to appear on the Hot 100 in only two weeks. (They were the weeks of July 21 and 28, 1973, after “Daniel” had dropped out and before “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” charted.)

“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” took Elton from 1974 into 1975 before falling off the Hot 100 for the week of March 8, 1975. It was replaced by “Philadelphia Freedom,” about which I was completely crazy. (Performance on Soul Train here.) From the first time I heard it, I craved hearing it again, and I’d quite literally run to the radio and crank it up whenever it came on. Within a month, it was Number One. Oddly enough, I didn’t buy the single, although my brother did; I was waiting for the album. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy came out in late May 1975, a couple of weeks before school got out.

But Captain Fantastic did not include “Philadelphia Freedom,” and I can remember listening to it for the first time on the big console stereo in the living room with a sense of disappointment, because I had just spent $5.98 or $6.98 or whatever it was and I still didn’t have my favorite song. But it didn’t take long for the album to ingratiate itself with me. The album package was totally over the top, with an elaborately illustrated book of lyrics, another booklet of memorabilia that included a comic-strip biography of Elton, and a poster of the album cover that adorned my bedroom wall until I moved away from home for good, five years later. I’d never heard any music as ornate and interesting, and I listened to it obsessively.

There was one song that bothered me, though—the album closer, “Curtains.” The album was autobiographical, and for that reason, “Curtains” sounded like a farewell. Of course, Elton didn’t retire. He scarcely waited a reasonable interval to release another album, Rock of the Westies, which came out only 5 1/2 months later.) But eventually, “Curtains” became my favorite song on the album.

The lyric contains the usual degree of Taupinesque opacity, but as reminiscent poetry goes, it ain’t bad. It dropped into just as my freshman year in high school was ending. I had always been reluctant to let academic years slip away—always preferring the life I had to the one implied by the fact of change—so I latched onto the words about time and memory almost immediately, and I’ve never let them go.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

I appear here today to honor the birthday of a woman who will probably never be mentioned among the great TV babes of the 1970s—your Farrahs, your Linda Carters, etc.—yet for a particular kind of geek, she will always rank there.

Ladies and gentlemen, Marcia Strassman.

She started as a model and became a stage actress while still a teenager, but grabbed her first TV role on M*A*S*H. She appeared in only six episodes during the first season as Nurse Margie Cutler, but that was enough to make an impression—on me at least. Her most famous role came as Gabriel Kaplan’s TV wife Julie on Welcome Back, Kotter, which ran from 1975 to 1979. She was extremely fine by that time. I was a sucker for girls in eyeglasses, and I vividly remember one episode where she came on set dressed entirely in denim, long hair flowing, wearing those big glasses in style back then, and it nearly put me into a coma. She spent the 1980s doing various TV roles, and in 1989, she appeared in the movie Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and in the 1993 sequel. After that, it was back to mostly TV roles. In 2007, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, although her prognosis is extremely good, apparently; she’s working for a drug company whose product helped her fight her disease. And based on the photos on the Facebook page devoted to her current work, she still looks mighty good.

This little tribute has a musical angle, for way back in 1967, the teenaged Marcia Strassman had a brief recording career. She cut some singles that were co-written and produced by Jerry Goldstein, who later produced several albums by War and managed Sly and the Family Stone. (Earlier this year, Sly sued him for $50 million, alleging stolen royalties.) “The Flower Children” was a fairly substantial hit on the West Coast in May 1967, hitting the Top 10 in San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Escondido, Santa Maria, and Monterey, and going Top 20 in Los Angeles. It’s sometimes credited with coining the phrase that would be so frequently applied to the young generation starting that summer. I suppose that could be true, although it’s just as likely that Goldstein and his songwriting partners plucked a phrase from the California air that spring. A followup single, “The Groovy World of Jack and Jill,” got fewer plays on fewer stations. A third single went nowhere, and Marcia was free to focus on her acting career after that.

But “The Flower Children” remains, an artifact of its time—not just of the Summer of Love, but of the time when nearly anybody could make a record and score a hit, even if they weren’t a particularly good singer, which the teenaged Marcia Strassman was not, though it pains me to say so. But if anybody’s going to forgive her for that, it’s going to be me.

You can hear “The Flower Children” here. There’s much more Marcia, including photos, here.

Recommended Reading: I can’t recommend this post from Michele Catalano at Sound System strongly enough. Go read it now.

Jack and Me

Yesterday, I began telling the incredible-but-true story of the time I interviewed for a job at WGN in Chicago. The year was 1994; I was out of work at the time and wanting to abandon radio altogether, but when you get a shot, even a ridiculously long shot, at one of the greatest radio stations in the observable universe, you take it. As it turned out, my conversation with the station’s assistant program director was mostly a courtesy—they knew I couldn’t afford to move to Chicago for a job that paid $200 a week, but I appreciated their kindness in taking the time to talk to me.

So anyway, my interview with the APD is over and I’m on my way back to obscurity in Iowa. But as I am walking out of the Tribune Tower, Jack Rosenberg is walking in. Rosenberg spent many years alongside sportscaster Jack Brickhouse producing Bears and Cubs broadcasts on radio and television; in all, he spent 40 years at WGN. At the time, he was the radio sports director. I’d met Rosenberg a year or two before at a Tribune Company affiliates blowout, and I see a glimmer of recognition as our eyes meet. He stops; I stop; I introduce myself. “What brings you to Chicago?” he asks, his voice full of that distinctive Chicago gravel.

“I interviewed for a production assistant’s job.”

“Looking for a job, are you? If you’re not in a hurry, why don’t you come back to my office?”

Holy crap.

A moment later, we’re in Rosenberg’s office. He asks about my job search. “You’re in the Quad Cities, right?” He picks up the telephone, calls WOC, the full-service AM station and Tribune affiliate in Davenport, and asks for the program director. “Bob, Jack Rosenberg, WGN. I’ve got a fine young man in my office name of Jim Bartlett, lives in the Quad Cities, up here for a job interview. We haven’t got anything for him here, but I’d consider it a personal favor if you could do something for him there.”

Across the desk from Jack, about 75 percent of me is remaining cool. The other 25 percent is freaking the fuck out. As I try to maintain my purchase on the chair and not float up to the ceiling, I look down at Rosenberg’s desk and notice the stapler. A label-maker label on it says “Vince Lloyd.” I had grown from a boy to a man with Vince Lloyd in my ear every summer, because he spent 23 years as radio play-by-play man for the Cubs. He had retired after the 1987 season—but his stapler played on. That this is a thing I would notice captures the surreality of the whole morning.

I don’t know how long I was in Jack’s office—maybe 15 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe a day-and-a-half. Finally he escorts me back to the lobby, bids me good luck, and says, “If you’re ever going to be back in town and I can fix you up with some Cubs tickets, you just let me know.”

I have no idea how I managed to find my car, let alone navigate it back out to the tollway or drive it back to Iowa.

Bob, the program director at WOC (who, interestingly enough, ended up as the program director at WGN for a time years later) didn’t do Jack the personal favor he asked for, but it occurs to me now that he didn’t have to. WGN had already done me a much bigger favor: The day was a validation. I never would have been at WGN at all if they hadn’t considered me at least theoretically worthy of a job there. To quote Bill Murray in Caddyshack: I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Recommended Reading: At Popdose, Jeff Giles reviews The Age of Miracles, the new album by Mary Chapin Carpenter, officially out today. She’s a favorite of ours around here, and I’ll probably own the album by the time you read this.

The Call

(Slight edit since first posted.)

Did I ever tell you about the time I interviewed for a job at WGN?

Seriously.

WGN in Chicago is one of America’s legendary radio stations, a Midwestern powerhouse for 80 years (at least until recently), home to enough famous names to fill an entire hall of fame. One fine day in 1994, The Mrs., a dedicated WGN listener, came home from her afternoon commute all excited. It seems the afternoon guy had mentioned he was looking for a producer, and he’d said that if you knew anything about radio, you should apply. Ha ha, very funny. We lived in Iowa at the time; I was job-hunting at the time. But because a man’s got to know his limitations, I know there is no way I am going to get a producer’s job at WGN. Nevertheless, mostly just to please my beloved, I print off my resume, cobble together a flippant cover letter, stuff in an aircheck tape, put the package in the mail, and forget all about it.

One fine day weeks later, the phone rings. I answer it, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t the assistant PD of WGN. “We got your package,” he said. “We don’t think you’re right for the producer’s job, but we always like to talk to people we think have something to offer. If you’re going to be in Chicago anytime soon, let me know and we’ll set something up.”

Holy crap.

I mumble something, hang up the phone, and stand there in the dining room with a dumbstruck look on my face. The Mrs. isn’t there, but my brother happens to be. He sees the look and wonders who died. When my reason returns I tell him, “I think I just got The Call.” The Summons, the Invitation to a potential job at the greatest radio station on Earth.

Needless to say, I arrange to be in Chicago in fairly short order. A few days later, I find myself walking into the Tribune Tower, going into the WGN lobby, introducing myself, and telling the receptionist I’m there for an interview. I meet the APD, he gives me the tour, we talk. I can’t remember who was on the air at the time, or who was in the newsroom, or much of anything about the tour at all, because I couldn’t believe I was there. (I can’t remember the APD’s name now; I am not sure I could remember it then, either.)

The APD is kind enough to ask me about my career and my future plans, even though it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that this is mostly a courtesy interview. The current opening they have is for a production assistant, a job that pays $10,000 a year. “I doubt you’re interested in that,” the APD says, and he was right. “We realize it doesn’t pay very much, but we don’t have to pay very much because this is a place people want to work.” He doesn’t say this in an unpleasant or egotistical fashion, but as something both of us know to be the truth. After maybe 45 minutes, we part, he escorts me back to the lobby, and I head for the door of the Tribune Tower, which also is the portal back to obscurity in Iowa.

But as it turns out, I won’t be leaving yet. Come back tomorrow to find out what happens next.

Three Steps From True Love, Roberta Has Bad Luck

Here’s a third installment of our series on Billboard one-hit wonders that reached as high as Number 94 on the Hot 100. If you’re guessing that some are forgettable dreck and one or two are unjustly forgotten gems, you’re guessing right.

“Roberta”/Bones (11/4/72, two weeks on chart). Here’s a group you’ve heard, although you probably didn’t know it. As the Peppermint Trolley Company, they  famously sang the theme song for The Brady Bunch, and had earlier charted with “Baby You Come Rollin’ Across My Mind” in 1968.  After making a single album as Bones, Jimmy and Danny Faragher would later record as the Faragher Brothers and chart once more in 1979 with “Stay the Night.” Danny Faragher later wrote music for The Facts of Life and Who’s the Boss?

“One Way Sunday”/Mark-Almond (2/19/72, two weeks). Mark-Almond was a staple of record racks in the 1970s—a band whose records I saw everywhere but never heard or bought. After playing together in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Jon Mark and Johnny Almond (who died last November at age 63) left in 1970 to form their own band, which eventually grew to seven members. They made seven albums between 1971 and 1980; “One Way Sunday,” from Mark-Almond II, was their biggest hit single, and it’s a lost classic, with an easy acoustic sound and two long flute solos (on the album version).

“Outlaw Man”/David Blue (6/2/73, four weeks). Greenwich Village folkie and friend of Bob Dylan, Blue made seven albums between 1966 and 1976; the Eagles’ cover of his most famous song, “Outlaw Man” was their only early single to miss being included on the gazillion-selling Greatest Hits 1971-1975 album, which probably cost him a fortune in royalties. The album with Blue’s version, Nice Baby and the Angel, features contributions from Glenn Frey, Dave Mason, and David Lindley. Blue died in 1982 at age 41.

“Tell Laura I Love Her”/Johnny T. Angel (6/22/74, four weeks). Here’s another for the Wyatt (Earp) McPherson Memorial Obscure Artist File. All I can uncover about Johnny T. Angel is that he’s Canadian, and he cut “Tell Laura I Love Her” for Bell. The existence of this record can probably be chalked up to the rising wave of nostalgia for the pre-Beatles era sparked by American Graffiti and Happy Days, although another remake of a popular teenage death record, “Last Kiss,” had been a smash in Canada earlier in 1974, so there’s that possible reason as well.

More along this line is after the jump, with some mp3s as well.