The Vinyl Dialogues Blog

Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Category: The Vinyl Dialogues Book Page 8 of 16

When you get caught between America and Christopher Cross, the best that you can do is fall in love with the music

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On January 29, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

There’s a lot to like about Christopher Cross, not the least of which is that I once used one of his songs to impress my then 10-year-old daughter.

My daughters grew up on my music – the Beach Boys, Hall & Oates, America, the Doobie Brothers, Three Dog Night. But like all of us, they eventually developed their own musical tastes and starting following the bands of their era.

In 1997, the boy band NSYNC invaded our family’s musical sensibilities. The 10-year-old girl in our house had a Beatles-like fanaticism for the boys – Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone and Lance Bass. And like our parents did for us and our music, we bought her the debut self-titled NSYNC album on cassette tape.

You remember cassettes, right? They were the preferred technology of listening to music for a time between 8-track tapes and CDs. And our car … Read more

The Lords of 52nd Street: We still like them just the way they are

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On January 16, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Billy Joel had made four albums for Columbia Records in the early to mid-1970s – “Cold Spring Harbor” in 1971; “Piano Man” in 1973; “Streetlife Serenade” in 1974: and “Turnstiles” in 1976. Joel had moderate success with a couple of those albums, but not enough for the Columbia suits. They wanted better sales results.

Columbia thought that Joel needed a strong producer on his next album, which would be called “The Stranger.” And Sir George Martin, the man who had produced the Beatles and was famous enough at that time to be known as “the Fifth Beatle,” was interested. He was coming to see Joel and his band, which included Liberty DeVitto on drums, Doug Stegmeyer on bass, Russell Javors on electric and acoustic guitar and Richie Cannata on saxophone and clarinet, all of whom had contributed to the “Turnstiles” album.

Martin liked what he saw and after the show … Read more

From Bob to Bruce: The Best Concerts of 2016

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On December 31, 2016

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

There are many aspects that make a good concert experience. Primarily of course, is the music. How does the artist and the band sound? Is what I’m hearing on stage like what I hear on the vinyl?

Maybe we all have different criteria, though. I am particularly fond of hearing an artist sing the hits live. I want see and hear Hall & Oates sing “She’s Gone” and “Sara Smile”; I want to see and hear Brian Wilson sing “Surfer Girl”; I want to personally witness Elton John sing “Rocket Man”; I want to be in the stadium and experience “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen.

As a music writer, there are several other aspects of a concert that add to the experience for me. Oftentimes, I interview the artist and write a story for my media group advancing the show. Was the interview a pleasant experience and did I … Read more

Paul Anka capable and comfortable being the ‘Keeper of the Cool’

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On December 17, 2016

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Paul Anka is a lot of things: singer, songwriter, entertainer, actor, author, one-time teen idol, boyfriend of Mouseketeer Annette Funicello when they were kids and de facto Rat Pack member and confidante.

Add Keeper of the Cool to that list.

Frank, Dean and Sammy would be proud. Anka is a professional, a showman and has always realized the importance of being a snappy dresser. At age 75, he still dances with the one that he brought and closes his show with “Diana,” a song he wrote as a teenager and recorded in 1957 that was a No. 1 hit in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and reached No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.

Certainly one’s level of cool is subjective in the eye of the observer. And this was my first time seeing Anka perform live. But here’s how cool he was at his Dec. 16 … Read more

Still stone in love with the music of The Stylistics

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On November 26, 2016

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

It was pretty exciting when my dad got me a cassette tape recorder and a handful of blank tapes. Given the audio technology of the times, my plan in 1972 as a 13-year-old eighth-grader was to record my favorite songs off the radio onto the blank tapes and create my own music library.

Recording songs off the radio wasn’t an exact science. Growing up in central Illinois, I was listening to WLS out of Chicago. If the disc jockey didn’t give the listeners an advance heads up as to what songs were going to be played, one had to be able to recognize a song from the first fews notes, then simultaneously push “play” and “record” on the recorder.

I wasn’t very good at that. And I didn’t want to start the tape during the commercials because I didn’t want the ads messing up my music. Thus, I had entire … Read more

‘One Toke Over the Line’ meets the Lawrence Welk Show again . . . 45 years later

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On November 13, 2016

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

In their stage show, Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley are fond of telling audiences that they’re the only guys on the planet – “and probably in the universe” – who have written a song that has been performed both on the Lawrence Welk Show and by the late Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

That song, “One Toke Over the Line,” first recorded by Brewer and Shipley in 1970 and featured on the duo’s third studio album “Tarkio,” became an interesting and unique bit of pop culture. It got the attention of the Nixon administration, which labeled the singer-songwriters subversives to American youth because the song contained a drug reference in its lyrics.

But because it was a hit single, the song also attracted the attention of Lawrence Welk, who liked to feature popular songs of the day sung by Welk Musical Family singers on his weekly television show. In … Read more

Elton John live: A unique perspective from behind the stage

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On September 24, 2016

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

The first time I saw Elton John perform live was in 1976 at the Chicago Amphitheater. It was my first concert.

We had secured tickets from a young fellow named George Jasinski, a Chicago native and a student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, who was the teaching assistant for the first journalism class I took in high school. He would become a big influence on me becoming a journalist, despite the fact that he abandoned journalism altogether and decided to go to law school to become a lawyer, which he is to this day.

We called him “Mr. J.” and he was Chicago cool. One day after class he taught Mikki Milam and I how to do “The Hustle” dance. Her father, Jerry Milam, owned Golden Voice Recording Co. in South Pekin, Illinois, where the Head East album “Flat as a Pancake” was recorded in 1975. The making of … Read more

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