Farewell Monkee Peter Tork / Additions to the Record Shelf

Another loss to the music world: the passing of the Monkees' Peter Tork. Despite all the accusations of the Monkees being "phonies!", Tork joined the "manufactured TV show band" as a talented player on bass, guitar, banjo, and piano. He recorded, toured, and acted with the Monkees until late 1968, when he bought out the remaining years on his contract and left the group. Tork led an eclectic life afterward, pursuing musical, TV, and movie projects, and even teaching at schools for a few years. His dopey character on the Monkees' TV show was quite contrary to his true serious and thoughtful nature. When I think of Peter, I am reminded of his wacky vocal contributions on Monkees songs Your Auntie Grizelda and the spoken-word tongue-twister track Peter Persival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky... and his more down-to-earth shared vocals on Words and Shades of Gray. Rest in peace, brother Pete.

Peter Tork, far right... the likable dope of the Monkees' TV show

____________________________________

On another note, I've found some inexpensive albums on vinyl lately. 

After nearly two months of record shopping withdrawal, I found a few bucks to invest in some new (old) music. First I hit the local thrift shop, Value Village, where I dug through the rapidly vanishing stock of LPs to find two Beethoven Symphonies, No. 5 (duh-duh-duh-DUH) and No. 7. I already have these on CD, but hey, there's something unique about the sound and the listening experience with records. The Fifth Symphony, released in 1960, I believe, is conducted by Otto Klemperer with the Philharmonia Orchestra. The Ninth Symphony, release date unknown, is a 1963 performance led by Rafael Kubelik and played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. I find that as long as classical music is on a very clean record (meaning few, if any, snaps, crackles, and pops), it plays back with more feel or sensitivity for the hall in which it was recorded. As though the listener is sitting right there at the performance. Both recordings are beauties.

Then yesterday I hit, for the first time, a local indoor flea market. I should have done this sooner! There were only a few record sellers, but boy, they have the goods. Actually, I missed one of them because their tiny inventory was always monopolized by browsing customers... I kept waiting for the area to clear but it never did, and I forgot to go back. But the other two sellers had impressive batches of vinyl goodies. The first guy had a modest set-up with just seven crates, but his records were in fine condition, reasonably priced, and there were many good albums to choose from. But I hesitated to pick up too much at my first stop. I settled on Triumph's hard rock classic Just A Game and Black Noise by Canada's progressive jazz-rock trio FM.

At the other stall, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the crates of records, both clean LPs and more used-looking copies. I saw a lot of things of interest, but decided to go with a few that were actually on my wish list: Steely Dan's 70's gems Katy Lied and The Royal Scam, both very clean and cool albums; and Elton John's number one seller Rock of the Westies, which was recorded in Colorado, USA - actually sort east of the Rockies, isn't it? Having reached the limit of my budget (just under, actually), I walked away without further exploration of the bins. Too tempting to spend too much. This market takes place once a month, I think, so I'll come back for more later. 

Very cool music, and though I haven't listened to all of my flea market purchases, so far everything sounds great... no complaints about record flaws. So for under forty bucks total, I got myself seven records over the past two weeks. Not bad. Except that my audio stand's record  shelf is now nearly packed tight. I'll need to take over other shelves to expand the collection, or maybe get myself a new LP storage unit. Then the real fun begins.