artie_fufkin wrote:

That's great stuff. I knew nothing of that. Of course, in 1977 I was 15 and like every other teenager had dismissed anything having to do with a parent's musical tastes as haplessly uncool.
BTW, for J and Max, my dad was also an enthusiastic Moody Blues fan. Which under the "if you have nothing good to say ..." rationale is why I took a rare pass on yesterday's discussion. But I'd rather pierce my eardrums with knitting needles than listen to "Nights in White Satin" for the ten zillionth time.

[For Mags] That was news to me also.  Thanks for the information.

Artie - I was into the Moody Blues until I decided I knew what was cool and that they were not.  I used to take great pleasure in telling people stuff they liked was crap.  Strangely, while the rest of me has gotten increasingly sclerotic over the years, my opinions on music have softened.  I think I can discern higher from lower quality if I put my mind to it, but am not as quick to pass judgment as before.  That isn't to say I don't appreciate and can't be blown away by something really good.  It does mean I take more of those passes, as you just did (or tried to do), and sometimes look silly praising works of dubious value simply because they made me feel good at one time or another.   I haven't listened to the M.B.s in years but am always open to giving them another shot.  Except for that ten zillionth hearing of "Nights in White Satin", with or without the "poetry".

It's starting to become obvious that having watched three different versions of A Christmas Carol - one of them twice - over the last two weeks is mellowing my harsh.  Maybe I should head up to Boston and drive around a while to get my edge back.

"I used to take great pleasure in telling people stuff they liked was crap.  Strangely, while the rest of me has gotten increasingly sclerotic over the years, my opinions on music have softened."

Unfortunately, I have yet to cross that threshold, but I like to think I'm getting better about it. Most of these guys know I spent my summers during college working at a record warehouse with a bunch of musicians who mostly attributed their failure as such to their standards of purity. My heavy metal proclivities weren't appreciated too much, so I developed a pretty acute internal defense mechanism.
On the plus side, while everyone else was almost coming to blows any time a rep. from a record label dropped off complimentary samples from or concert tickets to Husker Du or the Meat Puppets, I was able to score CDs and tickets to Van Halen or Kiss or AC/DC without too much competition. Good seats, too. So good Michael Anthony once splashed Jack Daniel's on me.

Mags wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

"The last I heard of the hottie was my wife telling that the woman had visited my office and entered into a lengthy discussion with my wife and her secretary as to whether she was behaving improperly by having an affair with her husband's brother."

If she divorces her husband and marries his brother, does that make her the aunt of her own children?

I think we're about to start talking about Faye Dunaway now.

Uh oh. I don't know about this. I knew she was married to Peter Wolf for about a month, but I never knew she married his brother.
Bonnie & Clyde is a damn fine movie, nevertheless.

JV wrote:

I used to take great pleasure in telling people stuff they liked was crap.

I think with age and increasing sophistication one comes to an understanding, a sort of grace and acceptance about music that is not immediately to one's liking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-mjt1ypiF8

Last edited by Max (12/23/2010 8:21 pm)

artie_fufkin wrote:

"Maybe I should head up to Boston and drive around a while to get my edge back."

Well, you'll always have a ready guide and a place to stay, if you're ever able to successfully navigate the maze of one-way, dead-end streets.  And keep that middle finger at the ready. It comes in handy.

1.  You'll definitely need that guide.  Someone decide years ago that if you're in Boston and surrounding areas, you shouldn't be there unless you know where you're going.  So street signs aren't necessary.

2.  You also need to have a quick foot on the break pedal.  There's a hell of a lot of fender benders but the general attitude of drivers seems to be if you need, take it and will try to stop even though you're making a left turn across three lanes of traffic.

3.  Actually, I found the people in Boston who weren't connected with the colleges and universities to be among the nicest I've ever met.  A couple of times, we had people see us pulled over to the side of the road studying a map who stopped and asked us where we needed to go and then when out of their way to get us on the direct route.

And unlike N.Y., you almost never heard someone sit on their horn.

Max wrote:

Mags wrote:

Gary Guthrie!!

Shame on you, forgetting a last name like Guthrie.  That's like reminiscing about a young female singer in the 1960's, Nancy Somethingorother, whose father was one of those crooners from the 40's.  She and her dad went on to sing a duet about something, too, I recall.

Your point is well taken.  But you have to appreciate that we have a lot more Guthries than Sinatras in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma.  Come to think of it, isn't their a Guthrie on Wall Street?

artie_fufkin wrote:

The way the signs were posted, you were going south on 128 and north on 95, at the same time.

I think any of the midwesterners will have noticed that when the two lane highways meet in an any small town, usually around the town square in a county seat, there's a pretty good chance you are going in as many as three directions, and I wouldn't doubt that someone can find a place where you are going all four.  Not that it would cause anybody to get lost in one of those towns, the big, big ones probably only have four roads out of town, and many have just two, or maybe three.

Last edited by Max (12/24/2010 10:56 am)