In The Listening Room

I haven't bought much in the way of music lately, but I have certainly been enjoying the records and CDs that I already own. For instance, I've been revisiting some 80's Rush, mainly because of the biography I'm reading right now. It's called Limelight: Rush in the 80's, by author Martin Popoff. This is book two of a trilogy of really nice hardcover tomes detailing the albums, writing, recording, touring and lives of the legendary Canadian prog-rock trio. So I've dug back into the archives for some satisfying re-discovery of Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows.

Then last night, after finishing a movie, I cracked open another beer and started flipping through my reasonable-ish-sized record collection (200 at last count), popping on album sides at random.

Several music formats: CDs, cassette tape, 8-track tape, vinyl LP records

My first thought was to crank up my latest acquisition, the vinyl LP of Too Many Gods, by English band Cats in Space. This group came to my attention not too many weeks ago, and then I was all over their Youtube videos. Certain that I wanted some Cats for my collection, I ordered the Infinity Edition of Too Many Gods. I actually wanted the original pressing on black vinyl, single disc, nothing fancy. But those were in very short supply, and expensive - worldwide! - so I opted for the later special edition pressing of it, which was very reasonably priced. So I've got the original album PLUS a second record of additional studio and live tracks. I'm not fussy about the live recordings but the extra studio stuff is very cool. Excellent album overall... I highly recommend it to fans of 70's-early 80's rock along the lines of Boston, Styx, Journey, ELO, Supertramp, and so on. These guys (a modern band, I should add) successfully blend elements of those classic sounds into something all their own. Well, here and there they really do sound like Boston or Styx, but that's not so bad,  is it?

Anyway.... all that to say that I did NOT play the Cats in Space album. It is just too damned catchy, and having already suffered (well, in a good way) from serious earworms from previous song and full album listens, I wisely avoided that issue. Nothing like a tune that won't go away as you're trying to drift off to la-la land.

Therefore, aware of my susceptibility to musical earworms, I chose music that wasn't super catchy and that I wasn't all that familiar with. Since I wanted a bit of variety in my last waking hour or so of listening, I decided on playing just one side per album... and so I chose the side with the songs I was most interested in at the time.

First up, I put on side 2 of The Birds, The Bees & the Monkees. Great late 60's pop-rock, by the TV band who were eventually allowed to play their instruments and write some of their own songs. And this LP is testament to their success in those creative departments! Fave tunes here are I'll Be Back Up On My Feet, Valleri, and Zor and Zam. Though a long-time Monkees fan, it wasn't until later in life that I finally bought and got to hear these "later" albums and songs. I only knew two songs off this disc, thanks to a greatest hits I owned many many years ago. Yep, you know the other one - Daydream Believer. Anyway, having heard this stuff very little, it's still fresh to my ears.

Then I went with the Elvis 1973 double-album hits collection. The one I bought on 8-track tape when I was a kid (still got it), and now own on vinyl. I opted for side two with gems like Stuck On You, Good Luck Charm, and Return to Sender (a favourite Elvis song of mine). This went down easy since I haven't over-played the album since I was probably thirteen years old.

Next up, I put on side one of 1979's critically-acclaimed Broken English LP, by Marianne Faithfull. This was a freebie that a local record seller gave me for being a loyal customer. Knowing nothing at all about Faithfull, other than that she had been with a Mr. Mick Jagger years before, I was unsure about what I was getting, but the guy assured me it was worth a listen. And boy, was he right. This is low-key, moody, late evening music. Sort of dark, pop-ish rock (early New Wave, perhaps?) with a hypnotic electronic component to it. Intriguing arrangements and sound treatment. I like it, not to listen to repeatedly, but to save for the odd appropriate occasion.

I think that was it for the night. Good but fairly laid-back music to calm me down for a solid sleep, which I got, thankfully.

My K-tel Records! From K-tel!

You've got to be a person of a certain age, maybe in your 50's to remember the "classic" K-tel records and the TV commercials associated with that company's products. I sure am, and I sure do recall the ads for K-Tel's music collections on vinyl and their other endless array of wacky household gadgets and gizmos. Like the Blitzhacker food-chopper, the Fishin' Magician, Mood Shirts, the Patti-Chef, Salad Queen, the Veg-O-Matic, and the K-tel Record Selector, of course (I had one!). Check the original TV ad here: 

I have fond memories of one of my early music purchases, an 8-track tape of K-tel's Music Express. That tape introduced me to Elton John, War, and The Stampeders, among other rock and pop stars of the 70's. That was the one and only K-tel purchase I made back then, and for decades, until a couple of years ago, when in a fit of re-building a record collection, I ordered several vintage K-tel albums online. Expecting seriously worn grooves and record sleeves, I instead was happily surprised to see (and hear) clean-sounding and clean-looking album packages. Nice!

The history of K-tel is an odd one: in the early 1960's, Philip Kives, a demonstration salesman in Saskatchewan, began to buy and market on TV a series of unique and unusual household items. Kives even worked with the Ronco company (similar stuff) for a time, until in '68 he formally incorporated K-tel. The company thrived through the 70's (notably selling hundreds of millions of LP records internationally), until late in the decade, when too much product diversification forced its previously successful international divisions to fail and shut down. But after a lot of legal and financial struggle, the Canadian side of the business was saved through Kives' determination to keep K-tel going. He regained the Canadian company in '91, and within a few years, posted incredible growth and sales that lasted during the rest of the 90's.

K-tel still exists, but its main income is thanks to Kives' foresight in acquiring the rights to reproduce the songs of many popular music artists back in the day. He actually negotiated directly with the artists and labels, adding their recordings to the K-tel catalogue, thereby securing a long-term asset that would serve him and his company well into the future. Those were mainly songs from the 50's through 80's, but K-tel continues to flourish by distributing those hundreds of thousands of hits to digital platforms like Spotify, Amazon and iTunes. They also license songs from their catalogue for use in TV shows and commercials.

To quote a Wikipedia entry: "K-Tel helped define the way people purchased music in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2013, Forbes wrote a piece on K-tel, entitled "K-tel Records: The Spotify of the 70s", pointing out that the way people discovered new music in the 70s was through K-tel compilations, in the same way that Spotify playlists are now used to find related artists." (article by Michele Catalano, Forbes)

The colourful and often gawdy album sleeves certainly were eye-catching, always boldly proclaiming: "20 Original Hits, 20 Original Stars" and "As advertised on TV!". From what I understand, these records were assembled very cheaply, cramming as many tracks as possible onto each side of the vinyl. That sometimes meant editing songs down in length and by reducing the width of the already narrow groove... which reduces the audio fidelity. But did we care? Did we need to know? Not really. These records were an introduction to artists and their top hits. If something caught your interest, well, then you'd go out and buy the proper album recording by the artist. There you go. These were pre-internet days, so this was the best way to test drive a variety of new music, aside from the randomness of radio programming. K-tel was a huge part of pop culture, and their still-existing records and tapes are a gateway back in time, each album a time capsule of a given year, so listening today is full of nostalgia. The warm and fuzzies.

Oh, and K-tel also created original recordings, including the Grammy-nominated Hooked On Classics series of classical music.

Anyway, enough about them. Now on to my K-tel records. As I said before, a couple years back, when I was beefing up my fledgling vinyl collection, I found an online seller with a bunch of K-tel albums that interested me. Through these records, I got a cool cross-section of several musical genres, like pop, rock, soul, funk, disco, country, R&B, and so on. I don't have a lot of these albums, but there's a large and diverse selection of music packed on what records I've got. All fun for DJ-ing an evening of retro listening.

K-tel's Mind Bender collection, 1976

Super Star Collection, 2 LPs!, 1978

Star Power, 2 LPs, 1978

Dynamite, 1974

Expressions, 1980

Right On, 1977

MusicExpress, 1975

... also, a Marty Robbins "Gold" original 20 hits album, a K-tel release

How Heavy is Heavy in Music?

When I first ventured into the world of music as a young lad, I first listened to pretty lightweight stuff like The Beatles and Monkees on records, and those same artists plus The Partridge Family and other pop-ish fare on TV. But then one day in the schoolyard, somebody was showing around a Kiss record, raving about this scary-looking bunch of rockers. Little did I know.

These clowns opened the door and led innocent little

ol' me down the path of deviant heavy metal music

I heard Kiss for the first time on a record I bought sight unseen... a complete blind buy. It was the band's debut album, its front cover bearing that high contrast image of their garishly painted faces. Pretty cool, so I figured the music couldn't disappoint. And it did not. Right from opening track Strutter, I was immediately immersed in a new type of music, nothing like the jangly, fun, dancy pop I was familiar with. Kiss sounded loud, raw, heavy, and tough. I was hooked.

Strutter is actually a lighter tune on that album; I'd say Firehouse, Cold Gin, Deuce, and Black Diamond are much meaner and heavier in comparison. And that's where this "heavy" issue gets tricky. It's all relative.

Strutter completely annihilates something like The Monkees' song Sometime in the Morning in the heaviness department, and yet it is kind of breezy and bright in the context of that first Kiss album.

Once I discovered rock radio stations on the family FM stereo, I was introduced to far heavier music by the likes of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Deep Purple, and Scorpions. These guys made Kiss look like kiddie time.

Now while I didn't measure how much I liked a band based on how heavy they were, it was evident that some form of guitar distortion and aggressive vocals were required to get me pumped. Not everything I liked in my formative years was as loud and harsh as Sabbath and Priest, etcetera, yet some level of volume on the part of the guitar and drums - and vocals - always seemed to be present in the stuff I gravitated toward. Like prog-metal pioneers Rush, heavy rockers Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Nazareth, and Blue Oyster Cult. All varying degrees of heavy. Each of those artists had at least some music that was noisily wonderful in my books.

And yet fast-forward just a few years, and suddenly that level of heaviness is surpassed by a new generation of rockers who would assume the true "metal" moniker. Certainly Judas Priest was wearing that badge (and leather and studs) proudly already, but they now had serious competition in newcomers such as Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Accept, Venom, and even Ozzy, just beginning his solo career after departing Sabbath. This early 80's rebirth of the genre would come to be known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Not strictly all UK artists, but many Europeans and others emerging during that era would ride that wave.

But even those imposing purveyors of metallic music would be supplanted by brand new subgenres sprouting from all corners of the world. The heaviness factor would be cranked up a notch or two as Thrash metal was born out of the complex guitar and drum influences of the NWOBHM, ratcheting up the speed and aggression with a punk attitude. This fusion gave us the heaviest music to date, by the likes of Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth.

At the time, I was most enamored with the sounds of Metallica, only learning of them through some tape-trading deals, since commercial radio never played such extreme music. Not yet. Slayer was too noisy for my tastes, I didn't know Anthrax well enough to get into them, and Megadeth had yet to really fall on my radar. Just wait.

 Oh, and I mustn't forget a little Quebec, Canada act called Voivod, who melded progressive techniques with thrash speed to invent their own unique brand of sci-fi prog-metal. Early Voivod is raw and punk-ish, soon giving way to a more metallic streamlining, jaw-dropping in technical and creative scope, yet never straying far from their discordant and manic roots. And I am a fan, mainly because these guys are imaginative songwriters and proficient musicians. The fact they are pretty damn heavy is just icing on the cake.

The image often, though not always, jived with the sound of a heavy musical artist. Look at 80's Metallica and Slayer. Denim and leather, indeed. Not as polished and preened as Judas Priest or Iron Maiden (spandex and bright colours), but perhaps hungrier and dirtier, more streetwise and ready for action. The ethos of the Thrash movement. The powerful sound and look of metal felt so alive back then. Some say this was the pinnacle of metal history. I'm not sure I am in full agreement, but I can see how the genre's activities in the 1980's extended the life of what the 70's pioneering and refining churned out, allowing it to flourish and expand. Not that it died in the 90's, but to a big extent, metal went underground at that time. And that led to even more subgenres of extreme music. Faster and heavier.

Thrash blossomed throughout the 80's, yet I still clung to my more old-school traditional metal roots. Metallica ascended to world domination at a modest pace, so I had time to enjoy a bit of the glam metal (including the L.A. Sunset Strip) scene's music while it lasted; Def Leppard, Guns'n'Roses, Whitesnake, Ratt, a bit of Motley Crue, Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister crawled out from under the shadow of late 70's/early 80's hard rock/near-metal sensation Van Halen. Few of these artists made a lasting impression, for most felt to me like a passing phase, not quite gifted enough or heavy enough.... in both sound and image. Leppard and GNR enjoyed more success in my CD player than the rest, though I had a personal favourite in Ratt. These groups did have their edgy songs, loud and raucous and party-hearty, just not as earth-shaking as Metallica or even Maiden, who were still chugging along quite nicely with a world-wide following.

While Metallica reigned well into the 90's, I felt they were losing steam after their Enter Sandman days. That's when I gave Megadeth the nod and dove deeper into their catalogue, finally realizing just how superior ex-Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine was in his very own band. Megadeth wielded instrumental virtuosity with furious speed and aggression, sort of Rush meets Metallica. Sort of.

Around that same time, I found someone even more appropriate for that analogy, and that was Dream Theater, a progressive metal band (plenty heavy, but also adept at lighter fare) that led that genre's charge through the 90's, and inspired others to experiment and follow their own musical dreams. Like Swedish prog-death outfit Opeth, who completely floored me when I first heard their music. One moment sweetly angelic, pristine clean vocals and lush guitar - and the next it's the most blood-curdling screaming/growling and horror movie backdrop of sounds. All performed with an ear for effect, for contrast, and for storytelling. Opeth has recorded a variety of styles in later years, yet I lean toward their more extreme musical message on early albums.

Norwegian metal, more explicitly Black Metal, was largely unknown to me during its heyday, and yet once I did latch onto a bit of it, it was hard work. Challenging, to say the least. This was extreme music from another planet, as far as I was concerned. Two acts who I came to appreciate are Carpathian Forest and Satyricon. This isn't a genre that I love, or can even listen to very often, but I am fascinated by the imagery of the bands' stage appearance, album artwork, and in their very music. This is not only heavy, it is HEAVY... dark, eerie, chilling, even disturbing. Effective, for what it is.

Heavy is heavy, whether in sound, the lyrics, the visual image. There is Kiss heavy and there is Black Sabbath heavy. Sabbath versus Slayer. Slayer versus Opeth. Dare we compare? Why make one artist seem less worthy just because they came before another. Talented musicians are always moving forward, pushing the boundaries of their instruments, their sounds, their songwriting. If heaviness is the only goal, then I think it's rather silly and pointless. Isn't this about creating music... something musically pleasing, no matter how fast or aggressive it is?

I still find Kiss' Destroyer album an electrifying experience, massive guitar chords and stinging solos. It doesn't matter that Sabbath or Slayer or Opeth are louder, more frightening, or more obnoxious. The point is that it's just right for what it is. Detroit Rock City, by Kiss, is still a heavy song, and so is Neon Nights, by Sabbath. I know there are Death Metal, Black Metal, and Grindcore (and genres I've never heard of) songs that'll knock those old classics out of the park in a purely heaviness contest. But is it good heavy? It may be fast and loud and noisy, but is it listenable? Is it a good song?

If it comes right down to it, just gimme some Kiss and I'll be happy.