Monday, November 5, 2007

TVD Recalls the 70's | Day One: 1970



I didn't grow up with an older sibling in the house...a brother or sister who'd clue me in as to what's hip or not. I relied on that blue, round thing right there in the logo -- my AM radio. Before you laugh, the AM dial was more alive than you'd think back in the day. I grew up in New Jersey and was force-fed NYC's radio stations with surprisingly good play lists. Any moment you'd hear such classics as...well, wait a minnit. Why spoil the surprise?

Over the next 10 days, we'll dig into the best of AM radio as it informed and shaped my brain. MY AM classics as I recall them and most likely they're yours as well. So sit back, open your lunchbox, and let's get started...


The Beatles - The Long and Winding Road (Mp3)
Carpenters - Close to You (Mp3)
Mungo Jerry - In the Summertime (Mp3)
B.J. Thomas - Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head (Mp3)
Partridge Family - I Think I Love You (Mp3)
George Harrison - My Sweet Lord
Badfinger - Come and Get It


1971...brainwashed by the likes of Alice Cooper, Bowie, KISS, Sweet. You can see it in the eyes.

Friday, November 2, 2007

TVD's Weekend Shots




...70's AM radio-style.

Thin Lizzy - She Knows (Mp3)
Boz Scaggs - Lowdown (Mp3)
Todd Rundgren - I Saw the Light (Mp3)
Atlanta Rhythm Section - So Into You (Mp3)
Gerry Rafferty - Right Down the Line (Mp3)
Exile - Kiss You All Over (Mp3)
Foreigner - Fool For You Anyway (Mp3)
The Babys - Isn't It Time (Mp3)
Eagles - Witchy Woman (Mp3)
Steve Forbert - Romeo's Tune (Mp3)

TVD's Morning Wax



I'm sitting behind a drum kit that's littered with hay in the upstairs of a huge open air barn. To the left of me, the rolling hills of Virginia are blanketed in orange. We've just had a blistering rehearsal. I mean, it's really beginning to gel after all the months of practice. The new rhythm guitarist is fitting in perfectly and hell, with a practice space like this he could be just awful and I'd have him in. Then ye olde bomb drops -- the front man and songwriter is moving to Finland to be with his girlfriend. "I'm getting too f'n old for this, man" I guessed, breaking down my gear. "Sci Fi Lullabies" was the soundtrack for that drive through the quiet, tense countryside back home to DC -- Fall, 1997. And actually, he's still in Finland.

Suede - My Dark Star (Mp3)
Suede - The Living Dead (Mp3)
Suede - Where The Pigs Don't Fly (Mp3)
Suede - Killing Of A Flash Boy (Mp3)
Suede - Every Monday Morning Comes (Mp3)

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

TVD's Morning Wax




I know Halloween's coming but really, no - I'm not trying to scare you with this morning's wax. (Wack?) Never really cared for Frankie as they were trotting out the singles..."Relax", "Two Tribes"...I mean, I guess. Sure it was exciting with the T-shirts and all and that guy in the leather who just dances there, pre-Bez. But musically? Not for me. UNTIL the release of the 2-LP "Welcome to the Pleasure Dome." The local radio station was hyping the release BIG TIME and upon its arrival, they played the LP from beginning to end. I tuned in as they we're getting to side three (AFTER the singles) and heard a BAND and not JUST a Trevor Horn production. The originals...the covers (Springsteen?) ...the lunacy - it just clicked. It was the soundtrack for Fall into Winter, 1984. Raking leaves. The sound of trains in the distance. A sort of sweet solitude. I was 17. And as the swell of "Mersey" slides in (here's listed as "Tag") I am again. (Whoops - gotta run to a meeting now that I'm, uh - 40.)

"Liiife goes on day after day after day after day..."


FGTH - Fury (Mp3)
FGTH - (Tag) (Mp3)
FGTH - San Jose (Mp3)
FGTH - Krisco Kisses (Mp3)
FGTH - Black Night White Light (Mp3)
FGTH - The Ballad Of 32 (Mp3)
FGTH - The Power Of Love (Mp3) (The 12" mix of the song, featuring actor Chris Barrie impersonating DJ Mike Read's banning of the single "Relax" on air.)

Friday, October 26, 2007

TVD's Weekend Shots



Ten Cole Porter-penned standards to keep you warm and dry this rainy weekend. (Just think of them as post-punk tunes and you'll be fine. Really.)

Betty Carter - Everytime We Say Goodbye (Mp3)
Bill Henderson - At Long Last Love (Mp3)
Billie Holiday - Easy To Love (Mp3)
Billy Ekstine - In The Still Of The Night (Mp3)
Dinah Washington - I've Got You Under My Skin (Mp3)
Fred Astaire - I Concentrate On You (Mp3)
Helen Merrill - You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To (Mp3)
Lena Horne - Love For Sale (Mp3)
Morgana King - Ev'rything I Love (Mp3)
Oscar Peterson - I Love You (Mp3)

TVD's Morning Wax



like a child could have the trigger and the best man needn't fall to understand that heaven could be any place at all just five colours set in motion and I try again to place it and it's features are obscured every time I turn to face it but I still chase it oh it's twists are cruel and hopeless like neglect has worn it thin and it could rip the sky wide open and let the rain come tumbling in and we wait on every whisper like it makes us more alive there's a sense we didn't have and I feel it in the other five see the pity and the pride in the same sea of emotion cup my hands and touch the tide and expect to feel the ocean it's just a notion and the knife has got my number and the number that you keep and the knife has called division and it's drawn when I'm asleep oh it's twists are cruel and hopeless like neglect has worn it thin and it could rip the sky wide open and let the rain come tumbling in

Aztec Camera - Knife (Mp3)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

TVD's Morning Wax



The ginko trees on the 1300 block of Corcoran Street, NW where I resided for 13 years would all seemingly - at once - turn the color of this cover. Boom. Orange. Coincidently, during this orange phase, Arnold's "Bahama" was #1 on the turntable making this very breezy, summer record, well...rather Fall 2001.

Arnold - Climb (Mp3)
Arnold - Tiny Car (Mp3)
Arnold - Hangman's Waltz (Mp3)
Arnold - Oh My (Mp3)
Arnold - Pavey Ark (Mp3)

By the way, don't ask questions -- just download these.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

TVD's Morning Wax



I had been thinking about The Faces this week after reading this:

Ron Wood: Keith threatened my life
Ron Wood says that Keith Richards threatened his life in an attempt to get him to stop freebasing cocaine in the 1980s. The New York Daily News published an excerpt from Wood's new autobiography, Woody. In the book, Wood writes, "Everybody was angry with me around this time, and after a row with Keith one day, he stormed off to get his gun... He returned with his derringer, pointed it at me and yelled 'You f***ing b**!' I calmly pulled out my .44 Magnum. And that was the last time Keith drew his gun on me... until the next time."

Wood recalls another fight between the pair: "He barged in, broke the glass bowl of the pipe, and came straight at my face... He smashed a bottle and cut me with it. I stormed out and went to find Mick (Jagger) and Charlie (Watts), who were working on a song in a room along the corridor. While I stood there bleeding all over the carpet, Mick looked up and asked: 'Have you got any ideas for the middle eight?'"

According to Wood after he returned to his hotel room, Richards "pulled out his huge ratchet knife, put it to my throat and yelled... 'I'd f***ing cut your throat, but your girlfriend would never forgive me for all the mess I'd make...' (This from a guy who) did heroin for 10 solid years."

Wood, whose battles with addictions have been an ongoing concern for him up until last year, says that he's not done creating good work. "(It) tells me I've been to quite a few places, and not done quite enough yet, but what I have done is very satisfactory. It's like when you're painting, really -- you don't know how far you've got, or maybe if you've reached your pinnacle, or if you've loads more to do."

The jokes write themselves. Seriously.

The Faces - Wicked Messenger (Mp3)
The Faces - Devotion (Mp3)
The Faces - Shake, Shudder (Mp3)
The Faces - Flying (Mp3)
The Faces - Nobody Knows (Mp3)