Category: Music

Days of Future Passed Again

Sony SRS-BTX500

This is just about as silly and minor as a blog post can get. I’m playing around with my Bluetooth speaker in the sun room. By switching the wireless link over from speaker mode to headset mode, I can make it sound just like a cheap AM radio.

After spending so much time and money on listening to music from the Sixties in the best possible sound quality, I’m getting a nostalgic kick from making it sound like it did on a transistor radio from 50 years ago. For excellent audio, I can recommend the recent vinyl re-issue, by recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees the Moody Blues, of “Days of Future Passed.”

Living Zombies!

I was going to see the Sixties British band the Zombies in Boston this past February, when Colin Blunstone fell ill on the day of the show. It wasn’t just rescheduled, but canceled. Happily, Blunstone recovered, and another date was set, but sadly I was not able to attend when the Zombies returned to Boston in May.

The occasion for this tour is the 50th anniversary of the album “Odessey and Oracle”. Recorded in 1967, but not released until ’68, “Odessey and Oracle” is one of the finest albums ever produced. In my opinion it rivals the very best of the era, including Sgt. Pepper, with a breathtaking range of originality, creativity, whimsy and profundity, compliments of Rod Argent and Chris White.

Herb Alperfection

For 50-cents each, I recently bought the four LP’s that Herb Alpert put out between 1965 and ’66. As Denro says, “There is no doubt that those albums sold millions and millions of copies in the 60’s….every thrift store across the USA has the proof!”

According to the dates engraved on the inner grooves, the copies I came upon aren’t first generation, but they are original pressings from those years. Recorded by Larry Levine at Gold Star studios in L.A., the sound quality is uniformly superb. I have listened to this track from “S.R.O” a half dozen times, and I imagine the musicians of the legendary Wrecking Crew must have been smiling when they heard the playback.

Note: As far as I know, only some of Alpert’s touring band, assembled after the fourth album, recorded with him in the studio.