Into Early 1970 Again

Originally posted January 16, 2010

Well, we’re going to talk about the second week in January 1970 again, if you don’t mind.

Yesterday, when I looked at the January 16, 1970, survey from San Diego’s KCBQ, I mentioned that the surveys from the Twin Cities’ KDWB that I used to examine at The Oldies Loon were no longer available.

Well, that’s not precisely true. Jeff, our pal at AM then FM, emailed me last evening, telling me he was getting to the surveys just fine. I tried again, and I can get to the KDWB page there that lists the years. From then on, it’s iffy; no page that has in its URL a tilde – the little mark that looks like this: “~” – will come up in my browser, and most of the annual pages for KDWB’s surveys fall there (as do many other pages on the website). I use IE Explorer, but I tried Firefox, too, with no joy. And it’s not just my computer; we tried to get to those pages using the Texas Gal’s laptop, and all Vista would tell us is that there might be a firewall in the way.

I emailed the folks at The Oldies Loon, and we’ll see if they have anything to say. If any readers have any ideas as to what’s going on, suggestions for solutions would be helpful. Come Monday, if I haven’t figured anything out, I might give a call to Dale the Computer Guy down on Wilson Avenue and see if he knows anything.

In the meantime, however, Jeff was kind enough to send along, as part of our Friday evening email exchange, the KDWB “6+30” for the week of January 12, 1970. The top fifteen on KDWB was significantly different than the top fifteen from KCBQ that I looked at yesterday. Here’s what we were listening to most frequently in the Upper Midwest that week:

“La La If I Had You” by Bobby Sherman
“Venus” by the Shocking Blue
“Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin
“Holly Holy” by Neil Diamond
“Leavin’ On A Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul & Mary
“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” by B.J. Thomas
“Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” by Steam
“Jam Up, Jelly Tight” by Tommy Roe
“Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday” by Stevie Wonder
“Someday We’ll Be Together” by the Supremes
“Midnight Cowboy” by Ferrante & Teicher
“Don’t Cry Daddy” by Elvis Presley
“Early In The Morning” by Vanity Fare
“Jingle Jangle” by the Archies
“Brand New Me” by Dusty Springfield

More than half of the records in the top fifteen of KDWB’s survey were absent from the San Diego list I posted yesterday: Those are the records by Bobby Sherman, Neil Diamond, Steam, Tommy Roe, Stevie Wonder, Ferrante & Teicher, Vanity Fare and the Archies.

(The artists in KCQB’s top fifteen who were absent from KDWB’s top fifteen were: The Jackson 5, R.B. Greaves, the Plastic Ono Band, the Originals, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Tee Set, Jay & the Americans and The Band. The Jackson 5, Greaves, CCR and The Band show up lower down on the KDWB survey; the others are completely absent.)

To be honest, the KCBQ top fifteen is a more listenable set of songs than the stuff I was hearing most frequently on KDWB. Along with the continued presence of the Elvis tune and “Raindrops,” there are three major ouches in KDWB’s top fifteen: First of all, Bobby Sherman at No. 1 is a concept that stretches my mind a great deal. Secondly, I’ve never been quite as tickled as other folks by the winking naughtiness of “Jam Up, Jelly Tight.” Third, anything beyond “Sugar, Sugar” is just a little too much of the Archies for me.

Nevertheless, there are some treasures in KDWB’s top fifteen that weren’t getting the same kind of airplay in San Diego. (I know, the dates aren’t quite the same, but they’re close enough for anything that’s not rocket science or accounting.) Those treasures – and here we come to the sticky matter of individual taste or lack of the same – are “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” “Holly Holy,” “Midnight Cowboy” and the utterly luminous “Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday”

It seems that for most folks, the Stevie Wonder songs that stand out in this time period are “For Once In My Life” and “My Cherie Amour,” and those are both beautiful songs that made for beautiful records. But neither of them ever touched me the way “Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday” did at the time. I’ve never quite understood why, and I’m not sure I could, or even want to, figure it out now. Whatever the reasons were, I imagine they’re lost in time, but it was the song that was piercing my heart forty years ago, and it’s today’s Saturday Single:

“Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday” by Stevie Wonder [1969]

In Early 1970

Originally posted January 15, 2010

After running some errands this morning and despite having a more full agenda than most days this afternoon, I wanted to stop by and at least offer something here today.

This year, 2010, turns out to be the fortieth anniversary of one of the more important years in my musical life. For all of 1970, I listened intently to Top 40 radio, and that’s the only year about which I can say that. My Top 40 habit came upon me, as I’ve written here before, during the summer of 1969 (and as I write that, my internal jukebox starts playing Bryan Adams), and by the latter months of 1971, I was listening more and more to the album rock played at night on KVSC-FM, St. Cloud State’s student station.

But for all of 1970, I tuned my radio to either KDWB in the Twin Cities or – in the evenings – to WJON just across the railroad tracks from Kilian Boulvard and, later in the evenings, to WLS in Chicago. And by the time that year began, with four months of listening tucked away, I knew when a record was new to the playlist. I was no longer – for the most part – trying to sort out what was current and what had been current six months or a year or eighteen months earlier. That meant I had a cogent answer available if the locker room jabber turned to music and one of the guys asked me, “Whaddaya think of the new Temptations single?”

Being able to know, in that case, that he was referring to “Psychedelic Shack” instead of “I Can’t Get Next To You” meant there was one more way for me to seem like I belonged in high school society. Or, alternatively, it meant that there was one less way for me to seem like a dork.

Anyway, I look these days at various radio stations’ playlists and surveys from forty years ago, and I see, for the most part, old friends. Even if I were alone more than I might have wanted – a condition not uncommon for those who are sixteen, I think – I had the radio. I won’t say that I recognize all the titles I see on every survey; but I recognize the vast majority of them, and I think that if I were to hear the records, I’d recall most of those whose titles are not familiar.

All of that serves as an introduction to the first of what I hope will be regular looks throughout this year at radio surveys from 1970. We’ll start with the “$ilver Dollar $urvey” for the week of January 16, 1970 from KCBQ in San Diego, California. Why KCBQ? Because I was unable to find surveys for this week from either KDWB or WDGY, the Twin Cities Top 40 stations of the day. (The KDWB surveys used to be available at The Oldies Loon, but no longer; the only WDGY survey available there from January 1970 is from a week earlier.) Given that, San Diego seemed like a fine place to start.

Here’s the top fifteen in that $ilver Dollar $urvey:

“Venus” by the Shocking Blue
“Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin
“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” by B.J. Thomas
“I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5
“Take A Letter Maria” by R.B. Greaves
“Cold Turkey” by the Plastic Ono Band
“Baby I’m For Real” by the Originals
“Someday We’ll Be Together” by the Supremes
“Don’t Cry Daddy” by Elvis Presley
“Brand New Me” by Dusty Springfield
“Leavin’ On A Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul & Mary
“Down On The Corner/Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Ma Belle Amie” by the Tee Set
“Walkin’ In The Rain” by Jay & The Americans
“Up On Cripple Creek” by The Band

That’s a pretty good – and very familiar – hour of listening. A couple of those records – the Elvis title in particular, as well as the Jay & The Americans tune – didn’t really speak to me, and years after having last heard it regularly, I’m still tired of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.” But several of those fifteen – the joyously excessive “Whole Lotta Love,” the R.B. Greaves tune and “Up On Cripple Creek” – remain among my favorites.

I should also note I have some affection for “Ma Belle Amie,” which gave listeners a useful French phrase for saying goodbye. (A young lady headed to a different high school for senior year actually wrote that French sentence, word for word, in my annual in May 1970. The next time I saw her was twenty years later in the role of Trudy Chelgren, one of the waitresses in the iconic coffee shop in Twin Peaks.)

The only record among KCBQ’s top fifteen from forty years ago that I didn’t immediately recall was the Originals’ “Baby I’m For Real.” Whether it got much airplay in the Twin Cities, I don’t know. All I can say is that I found the WDGY survey for the previous week, and “Baby I’m For Real” is not listed.

The Originals were part of the Motown organization, according to All-Music Guide, and after some records that didn’t hit all that well, reached the top of the R&B chart in 1970 with “Baby I’m For Real.” The record, produced by Marvin Gaye and co-written by Gaye and his then-wife, Anna, was the first of two Top 40 hits for the group, peaking at No. 14. (“The Bells” went to No. 12 in the early spring of 1970.)

Even though I didn’t recognize the title, it turned out I had the record on vinyl on a Time/Life anthology, and I did indeed dimly recall it. To my ear, it sounds more like something that would’ve come out of Philadelphia than Detroit, but it’s a sweet piece of modernized doo-wop.

“Baby I’m For Real” by the Originals, Soul 35066 [1969]

Note: I’ve corrected some title errors in the KCBQ survey. “Whole Lotta Love,” for instance, was offered as “Whole Lotta Lovin’.”

Saturday Single No. 169

Originally posted January 2, 2010

Holidays tend to disrupt my internal clock. We spent yesterday doing very little: The Texas Gal read and worked on a quilt for a few hours; I read, played a little bit of tabletop baseball, puttered around with some mp3s and watched a fair amount of college football.

It was a Friday, yesterday was, but it felt like a Saturday. So when I got up this morning, I looked forward for an instant to a nice plate of bacon, our Sunday tradition. Then I realized that, damn, it’s Saturday, and I’ll have to wait another twenty-four hours for bacon. And I also realized that I’d put even less thought than usual into what I was going to do for a Saturday Single.

But that’s okay. Improvisation is good for the soul. Let’s take today’s date – 1/2 – and convert it into a 12. And then we’ll sort some 42,000 mp3s by running time, go to the middle of the pack and then go random twelve times from there. (I’ll use my usual framework when we get to No. 12: Nothing from before 1950, nothing after 1999, and nothing that will go into the Ultimate Jukebox. I generally exclude the very odd things I tend to collect, but not today. I’m feeling edgy.)

First up is “Mercury Blues” by the Steve Miller Band, a chugging 1968 track that was included in the soundtrack to a film called Revolution. Two other bands contributed to the soundtrack as well – Quicksilver Messenger Service and Mother Earth – and while dissing the soundtrack slightly, All-Music Guide notes: “[I]t is really difficult to knock an album that includes liner notes beginning with the following advice to the reader: ‘Next time you use the word revolution, you’d better include in your concept a beautiful blonde who went to San Francisco and illegally changed her name from Louise to Today.’”

From there we go to “Love Lament,” a traditional song of the Nez Perce Indians, who made their homes across the Pacific Northwest of the United States before being confined to a reservation in Idaho in the latter years of the Nineteenth Century. The song, performed by Len Weaskus, was included on a CD titled Lewis & Clark: Sounds of Discovery, which recreated the sounds – man-made and natural – that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their companions heard during their travels through the American wilderness during the years 1804-1806.

Next comes “I Don’t Know Where I Stand” by Barbra Streisand, which turns out to be a delicate and somewhat moody ballad from Streisand’s generally enjoyable 1971 album Stoney End. I’ve no doubt heard it before, but I might not have ever really listened to it, and there is a difference.

The Strawbs are one of my favorite Brit-folk groups, a group that began as a bluegrass band but which grew into a band with a broad understanding of folk descended from British traditions. That makes the Strawbs’ music more interesting than that recorded by those groups who hewed closer to the original sounds and instrumentation of British folk. The fourth song on this morning’s trek is “The Battle,” an epic story song from the Strawbs’ 1969 self-titled album.

From there, we dip into my supply of soundtracks for “A King Reborn,” written by Trevor Morris for the second season of The Tudors. And on we go for our sixth stop.

Wikipedia tells us that Old and In The Way “was a bluegrass supergroup in the 1970s.” Its members were Jerry Garcia, Dave Grisman, Peter Rowan, Richard Greene, Vassar Clements and John Kahn, with fiddler John Hartford filling in at times. The track we’ve found is the Rolling Stones’ tune “Wild Horses,” which was included on Old and In The Way’s self-titled album. Wikipedia says the album was released in 1975, while All-Music Guide says 1973. I’ve got the mp3s tagged with 1974, which I must have seen somewhere. I’ll maybe check out the discrepancy this week.

It only takes one or two notes of a song to recognize Bonnie Raitt’s voice. Her “Cool, Clear Water” from 1994’s Longing In Their Hearts is our seventh tune this morning, reminding me that I need to put the CD in the pile of things I plan to listen to in their entirety late at night. Raitt’s self-titled debut album from 1972 and her 1973 album Takin’ My Time are already in that pile.

Number Eight is “Rostemul” by the group Romashka from a 2005 CD entitled Gypsy Muzica for Dancing & Dreaming. I’ve recently found several blogs that focus on Eastern European folk music of all types. The stuff from Romashka is just okay, but I quite like the Latvian folk songs I found at one of the blogs.

The TV game show Name That Tune used to have a feature called “Bid A Note,” which had the host reading a clue about a song and the contestants bidding for the opportunity to name the tune in as few notes as possible. Even without a clue, I recognize Bob Dylan’s “If You See Her, Say Hello” at the first sound. The song was the flip side of the “Tangled Up In Blue” single, and during the autumn of 1975, I used to play it at least twice a week on the jukebox in the snack bar at St. Cloud State. Does “Even without a clue” mean I’m clueless? I have been at times.

Tenth is “Cocaine,” Eric Clapton’s 1980 cover of J.J. Cale’s subtle song about the perils of the drug. According to Wikipedia, Clapton once noted: “It’s no good to write a deliberate anti-drug song and hope that it will catch. Because the general thing is that people will be upset by that. It would disturb them to have someone else shoving something down their throat. So the best thing to do is offer something that seems ambiguous – that on study or on reflection actually can be seen to be ‘anti’ – which the song ‘Cocaine’ is actually an anti-cocaine song. If you study it or look at it with a little bit of thought… from a distance… or as it goes by… it just sounds like a song about cocaine. But actually, it is quite cleverly anti-cocaine.”

From there we find Brit singer-songwriter Boo Hewerdine and his heartbreaking “Please Don’t Ask Me To Dance” from his 1999 CD Thanksgiving. I’ve not kept up with Hewerdine’s career for a few years, which is an error that I will soon correct.

And that brings us to our twelfth song of the morning:

It comes from Donovan’s 1970 album Open Road. The album was an interesting outing for the sometimes twee singer-songwriter, according to AMG: “Although it was a disappointing seller and signaled the start of Donovan’s commercial decline, Open Road could have been a new beginning for the singer. Stripping down to a Celtic rock format that managed to be hard and direct, yet still folkish, Donovan turned out a series of excellent songs, notably the minor hit ‘Riki Tiki Tavi,’ that seemed to show him moving toward a roots-oriented sound of considerable appeal. Unfortunately, he was derailed by record company hassles and perhaps his own burnout, and Open Road turned out to be a sidestep rather than a step forward.”

It’s not an album I know well, but that can be remedied. And that can start now, with today’s Saturday Single:

“Curry Land” by Donovan from Open Road [1970]

Complications With Fries On The Side

Originally posted December 3, 2009

Just up the road from our place, right next to U.S. Highway 10, is a vacant building. Sometime in the last year, the auctioneer came by. They sold the booths and the counters, the grill and the deep-fat fryers, the hydraulic lifts and the gas pumps, the tool cabinets and all of the things that made the little building a gas station and restaurant for as many years as I can remember.

It was called Townsedge, and that was accurate enough in a practical sense. For many years, when folks would come into St. Cloud from the Twin Cities, Townsedge was the first gas station or restaurant they saw. They’d pass by a few other places – the marine shop, the masonry place and a used car lot or two – but if folks on the road had the usual travelers’ needs, Townsedge was the first place they saw where those needs could be met: Fill your tank, check the oil, buy a pack of smokes, sit down in a booth for a few minutes and have a cheeseburger straight from the grill, with a couple of pickle slices on the plate and a basket of fries on the side.

It was the kind of place you don’t often find anymore, and that’s truly a shame. There was another place like Townsedge across Highway 10, Fred’s Cafe, a classic American truck stop, and both Fred’s and Townsedge did well for many years. When Fred’s went out of business – that happened during the years I was away, but I think it was in the early 1990s – a chain convenience store/gas station took its place, and I’m sure that took business away from Townsedge. And when a franchised burger place opened up a couple of years ago about half a block from Townsedge, that pretty much told the tale.

After Dad retired, my folks went to Townsedge for coffee a couple of times a week, and after the Texas Gal and I moved here in 2002, I’d walk over and join them every once in a while. As we sat, I’d look around the place and gauge the ages of the customers. I’d see a few single moms with kids, but not many. Most of the time, I was the youngest person in the place (except for one or two of the waitresses). Once Dad was gone and Mom moved, I had no reason to go into Townsedge anymore, and not too long after that, I saw the “Closed” sign in the window as I drove by one day. And eventually, the auctioneer came by.

Places come and go, but Townsedge – as it was in the 1970s, not as it was in its last years – was a special place for a couple of reasons. First, the fries. The French fries at Townsedge – golden and crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside – were among the best I have ever had. I’ve been to a few other places over the years whose fries were better, but when I was in high school, Townsedge had the best fries in town, and the little café was frequently the last stop during an evening spent out with friends.

Then there was the evening in early December 1970, during my senior year of high school. The St. Cloud Tech High School choirs had performed in concert, and a young lady and I were going to double up with another couple for burgers and fries at Townsedge. For some reason, the other guy had to cancel, so there were only three of us, my date and me on one side of the booth and the other young lady sitting across from us.

I dropped a quarter into the jukebox terminal in our booth. I have no idea what I played, but one of the other young folks elsewhere in the café had cued up the week’s No. 1 record, and that’s what we heard first. My date sang along for a few moments with the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You.” We all laughed, and I realized that my life right then was about as complicated as it had ever been. None of us mentioned it, but all three of us – my date, the other young lady and I – knew that if I’d had my druthers, I’d have been sitting on the other side of the booth, next to the gal whose boyfriend hadn’t been able to join us.

Then the waitress brought us our burgers and fries, and life moved on.

A Six-Pack From The Charts (Billboard Hot 100, December 5, 1970)
“I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family (No. 1)
“Yellow River” by Christie (No. 23)
“Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin (No. 44)
“Silver Moon” by Mike Nesmith & the First National Band (No. 75)
“Lonely Days” by the Bee Gees (No. 81)
“Maggie” by Redbone (No. 100)

At the time, as I sat in that booth, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of “I Think I Love You.” It was pop, but it wasn’t serious, I thought. Something like Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” now that was serious pop. It said something. The Beatles’ “Let It Be” was serious. The Partridge Family was a fake group from a television show, for cripe’s sake! The fact is, though, “I Think I Love You” remains – despite its very odd middle section – a well-produced record with a killer chorus/hook, not to mention a memorable and unmistakable introduction. But still, it was hard in the late months of 1970 to take the record seriously. The fact that the song wasn’t written by its performers seemed to matter a great deal. (The song came from the pen of Tony Romeo, a fairly prolific writer whose credits also include Lou Christie’s “I’m Gonna Make You Mine,” one of my favorite records.) Thirty-nine years later, that seems to matter very little, if at all. “I Think I Love You” was in its third and final week at No. 1 during the first week of December 1970.

Most of us who listened to “Yellow River” as it rolled out of our radio speakers in 1970 inferred, I am certain, that the narrator was just back from Vietnam or maybe – considering the narrator says his “war is won” – some mythical place like it:

So long, boy, you can take my place.
I got my papers, I got my pay,
So pack my bags and I’ll be on my way to Yellow River.
Put my gun down, the war is won.
Fill my glass high, the time has come.
I’m goin’ back to the place that I love: Yellow River.

The group Christie was made up of songwriter and singer Jeff Christie, guitarist Vic Elmes and drummer Mike Blakely. Wikipedia says that Christie first offered the song “Yellow River” to the group the Tremeloes, whose members included Blakely’s brother, Alan. The Tremeloes recorded the song but declined to release it and allowed Christie to use the backing track for its own version of the song. “Yellow River” spent eight weeks in the Top 40, peaking at No. 23. Christie’s follow-up, “San Bernadino,” barely edged into the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 100.

(Note from 2022: I’ve read in the year since 2009 that Christie actually had the U.S. Civil War in mind when he wrote “Yellow River.)

Back in late 1970, not much came out of the radio or the jukebox quite so insistently as Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” with its thunderous introduction and haunting wail. The immigrants of the title were, of course, the historical Vikings, descending from Scandinavia to raid, plunder and eventually trade:

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow
Hammer of the gods, we’ll drive our ships to new land,
To fight the horde, sing and cry: Valhalla, I am coming!

The record spent ten weeks in the Top 40, peaking at No. 16.

“Silver Moon” is a countryish gem from Mike Nesmith, who came to prominence, of course, as a member of the Monkees in the 1960s. Just a few months earlier, Nesmith had reached the Top 40 when “Joanne” went to No. 21. But “Silver Moon” didn’t quite catch on, peaking at No. 42 in mid-January 1971 before tumbling out of sight. I can’t help wondering if Nesmith’s work would have fared better a few years later during the rather brief heyday of country rock. I think it would have.

Rick and I were fans of the Bee Gees, so we were quite pleased – and tickled by the odd ending – the first time we heard “Lonely Days” sometime in December 1970. The record came from the album 2 Years On, which reunited Robin Gibb with his brothers, Barry and Maurice, following a brief separation. During that separation, Robin released a solo album, Robin’s Reign, while Barry and Maurice released Cucumber Castle as a Bee Gees album. We thought – and I still think – that 2 Years On was better than the two releases that came during the brothers’ rift. “Lonely Days” climbed into the Top 40 and spent ten weeks there, peaking at No. 3 in early 1971.

Redbone’s swampy pop-rock was still a couple years away from chart success, but “Maggie” provided a perfect preview to what listeners would get in 1972 with “The Witch Queen of New Orleans,” which went to No. 21, and then again in 1974, when “Come and Get Your Love” would go to No. 5. “Maggie” rose to No. 80 and stayed there for two weeks as 1970 turned into 1971 before falling out of the Hot 100.

Are these tracks the same as the singles? In two cases, I’m pretty sure that’s the case. “Maggie” is the single edit offered as a bonus track on Redbone’s Potlatch CD. “I Think I Love You” was ripped from a Billboard compilation on LP; the LP label listed the same running time – 2:28 – as did the Bell 45 label, but the actual running time was longer at 2:47. I suspect label skullduggery, which – as we all know – was quite frequent. The other four of these mp3s were pulled from the various groups’ albums, but the running times – based on comparison to labels from 45s found online – are about the same as those of the singles. Are they the same mixes as on the 45s? I have no idea.

Thanksgiving Tales

Originally posted November 25, 2009

Well, tomorrow morning, like millions of others here in the U.S., the Texas Gal and I – joined by my mother – will head off for Thanksgiving. In our case, we’ll be going to my sister’s home in the Twin Cities suburb of Maple Grove for turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Our contribution will be a plate of deviled eggs, a dish that’s become a holiday tradition for us since the Texas Gal first brought them along in 2000.

We missed Thanksgiving at my sister’s last year due to some health issues. And the plan to return there got me thinking about the various places I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving over the years.

For years – until I was out of  college, I think – we gathered at my grandparents’ home, first on their farm outside the small town of Lamberton, Minnesota, and then at their home in Lamberton itself. Sometime in the mid-1970s, after Grandma passed on, the Thanksgiving celebration shifted to my parents’ home here in St. Cloud. And after about twenty years there, the annual feast shifted venues again, and my sister and brother-in-law have hosted Thanksgiving since then.

Besides last year’s celebration, I can recall two other Thanksgivings that have found me in different places. In 1980, I think it was, the woman who was then my wife had the idea of hosting Thanksgiving in a restored 1860s cabin owned by friends of hers. We prepared the food in our own home and then moved the entire feast about two miles to the cabin. The food was fine, but the cabin was uncomfortably cold despite the presence of a fireplace. It was an interesting experiment, but I’d rather flip it: I’d be interested in using Nineteenth Century recipes and work from a modern kitchen.

The other Thanksgiving that found me in another place was during the time I spent in Denmark. The Danes don’t celebrate the holiday, of course, but my ladyfriend – another American – and I decided to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving meal for my Danish family and a few other students, both American and Danish.

There was no turkey for sale in Fredericia, so we made do with a couple of chickens. Potatoes were easy enough, as was flour for the gravy. Green beans amandine went well enough after a tussle with the Danish language. Not knowing where the nutcracker was, I looked up the word in my Danish/English dictionary and called my Danish mother at her office. Danish uses some sounds that are, well, foreign to English, so it took some time before she understood that I was trying to say nøddeknækker.

Beyond the linguistic difficulties, the main challenge of the day was the pumpkin pie. We could find neither canned pumpkin nor a fresh pumpkin in Fredericia. Luckily, my ladyfriend had made pumpkin pie from scratch with her mother, and she assured me that an orange winter squash would meet our needs. We cleaned it, cut it up and cooked it with the appropriate seasonings and then baked it in a homemade shell. As dinner came to a close that evening, our Danish guests were a bit puzzled by the pie, but our American guests marveled at how close we’d come to the Thanksgiving dessert they’d all had for years.

That may have been my most memorable Thanksgiving ever. Does that mean it was the best? Well, no. As the fourth Thursday of November comes along year after year, each Thanksgiving somehow seems better than the one before it . . . as long as I share that table with my loved ones, especially the Texas Gal.

A Six-Pack of Thanks
“Now Be Thankful” by Fairport Convention, Island WIP 6089 [1970]
“Thank You” by Led Zeppelin from Led Zeppelin II [1969]
“I Thank You” by Mongo Santamaria from All Strung Out [1969]
“Thank You For The Promises” by Gordon Lightfoot from Shadows [1982]
‘Thanks to You” by Jesse Winchester from Humour Me [1988]
“Be Thankful for What You Got (Pt. 1)” by William DeVaughn, Roxbury 0236 [1974]

Of these six, only the Fairport Convention tune really seems to fully address the sentiments of the holiday. The others generally work with only their titles; their content has at best only a glancing connection to the day. But that’s good enough for me.

The Texas Gal and I wish you a joyful Thanksgiving. May you all have many reasons to be thankful.

Plenty Of Nothing

Originally posted November 19, 2009

Casting about for a topic for this post, I thought about famous birthdays. Gordon Lightfoot’s birthday was Tuesday, and I have plenty of Lightfoot tunes in the stacks and in the folders. But another day would be better for that, as there is a tale connected that I’m not yet prepared to tell.

I thought about writing about the books on my reading table, as I do occasionally. But I started a book yesterday that’s fascinating, and I want to finish it before I write about it. So that will have to wait.

We’ve had an odd November: sunny and warmer than one would expect. But I wrote about my fascination with autumn not that many days ago, and a post about the weather itself should wait until we have some truly remarkable meteorological happening.

I glanced at the front page of the Minneapolis paper: Budget cuts, a fatal bus crash, health care advisories and so on. Nothing there I care to write about.

It’s just one of those days. So here’s an appropriate selection of titles.

A Six-Pack of Nothing
“There’s Nothing Between Us Now” by Grady Tate from After the Long Drive Home [1970]
“Ain’t Nothing Gonna Change Me” by Betty LaVette from Child of the Seventies [1973]
“Nothing But A Heartache” by the Flirtations, Deram 85038 [1969]
“Nothing Against You” by the Robert Cray Band from Sweet Potato Pie [1997]
“Nothing But Time” by Jackson Browne from Running On Empty [1977]
“Nothing Will Take Your Place” by Boz Scaggs from Boz Scaggs & Band [1971]

One of the things I love about the world of music blogs is finding great tunes by folks who I’ve never heard about before. It turns out that Grady Tate, according to All-Music Guide, is a well-regarded session drummer who’s done some good vocal work as well. I’d never heard of the man until I somehow found myself exploring the very nice blog, My Jazz World. The brief description of Tate’s album After the Long Drive Home and the accompanying scan of the album cover drew me in, and I’ve spent quite a few quiet moments since then digging into Tate’s reflective and sometimes stoic album.

I’ve tagged Betty LaVette’s gritty piece of southern soul, “Ain’t Nothing Gonna Change Me,” as coming from 1973, as that’s when it was recorded. But the story is more complex than that. LaVette recorded the album, Child of the Seventies, for Atco in Muscle Shoals. But AMG notes that after a single from the sessions, “Your Turn to Cry” didn’t do well, the label shelved the entire project. It took until 2006 and a release on the Rhino Handmade label for the album itself to hit the shelves. The CD comes with bonus tracks that include LaVette’s cover of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” which was also released as a single. (My thanks to Caesar Tjalbo.)

A listener without the record label to examine would be excused from thinking that the Flirtation’s driving “Nothing But A Heartache” came from Detroit. The bass line, the drums and the punchy horns all proclaim “Motown,” but this nifty piece of R&B came out of England on the Deram label. The Flirtations, however, had their roots elsewhere: Sisters Shirley and Earnestine Pearce came from South Carolina and Viola Billups hailed from Alabama, so the record’s soul sound is legit, and it sounded pretty good coming out of a little radio speaker, too. The record spent two weeks in the Top 40 during the late spring of 1969, peaking at No. 34.

For Sweet Potato Pie, Robert Cray and his band made their way to Memphis and pulled together an album of blues-based soul. The combination of the Memphis Horns, Cray’s always-sharp guitar work and a good set of songs made the album, to my ears, one of Cray’s best. “Nothing Against You” is a good example of the album’s attractions.

“Nothing But Time” comes from Running On Empty,one of the more interesting live albums of the 1970s: All of the songs were new material, with some of them being recorded backstage, in hotel rooms or on the tour bus instead of in concert. As it happened, the album’s hits – “Running On Empty” and “Stay” – were concert recordings. But I’ve thought for a while that the recordings from the more intimate spaces – “Nothing But Time” was recorded on the tour bus as it rolled through New Jersey (you can hear the hum of the engine in the background) – might have aged a little better. That thought could stem from weariness after hearing the two hits over and over on the radio over the years; I do still like some of the other concert recordings from the album.

To my ears, Boz Scaggs’ slow-building and echoey “Nothing Will Take Your Place,” carries hints of the sound that would propel him to the top of the charts in 1976 with Silk Degrees. I guess it just took the mass audience – including me – a while to catch up with him.

Bratwurst & Bennie

Originally posted November 17, 2009

As I’ve said before, one of the things I find fascinating about music it is its connection with memory: Some tunes, even the barest snippet, pull listeners back to a certain place, sometimes to a specific moment at that place.

Sometimes that place was important, sometimes the moment was. And sometimes, nothing about either seems significant at all. It’s just a musically triggered memory. One of those popped up the other day, as it sometimes will, when I heard Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” on the car radio.

There is, on St. Cloud’s North Side, a strip mall called Centennial Plaza. It went up in, oh, 1963 or so, and I think it was the second strip mall in the city. (For what it matters, it sits across the street from a residential development also named “Centennial,” which tells me that the development and the ensuing shopping center were planned in the late 1950s and named for the 1958 centennial of the State of Minnesota. I’d never thought of that before.) Its main tenant when it opened was a variety store called Grants, which sold the same sort of stuff as did the other dime stores of the day like Woolworth’s and S.S. Kresge. We didn’t shop there often, but when we did, I happily tagged along; the same old stuff seemed somehow different in a different store. In addition, a trip to Grants felt like an adventure: Centennial Plaza was on the north side, which was – in the mid-1960s – distant and unexplored territory. (An online mapping site tells me that the distance from our home on Kilian Boulevard to Centennial Plaza is 2.59 miles; it seemed much further than that in 1963.)

Along with Grants, one of the early tenants at Centennial Plaza was a tavern and restaurant that specialized in basic German food. In St. Cloud and the surrounding area, folks of German descent outnumbered any other ethnic group during the years I was growing up and still may do so. So the owners of the Bratwurst Haus were playing to their crowd, offering a multitude of sausages with sauerkraut and hot German potato salad, all washed down with beer. There were likely other dishes on the menu, but I don’t recall. The few times we went there, we ate bratwurst and kraut.

The Bratwurst Haus is long gone. I have no idea when it closed, but in its place is what appears to be a generic sports bar. One of the last times I went to the Bratwurst Haus was in the summer of 1974, when mom and I had lunch there with my sister, who was going to graduate school at St. Cloud State. I don’t recall what we ate – sausages and kraut and beer, most likely – but I do remember that another patron kept feeding the jukebox and playing “Bennie and the Jets.”

Now, that’s not anywhere near my favorite Elton John tune. If I were pressed, I’d nominate “Levon” and “Tiny Dancer” from among the hits, along with the album track “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.” But to this day, it’s the most memorable: From the first fade-in of the applause and the chopping piano chords, “Bennie and the Jets” puts me face to face with bratwurst and beer. That’s not necessarily a bad place to be, but I just wish it were a song I liked better.

So I began rummaging through Sir Elton’s catalog to see if there were any songs I liked more than “Bennie” that had any kind of memory attached to them at all. The three favorites listed above triggered nothing. I cast my net wider and saw in the list “Take Me To The Pilot,” from the 1970 Elton John album. The only time I saw Elton John perform, that was the song that changed a good performance into a great one: Following a slower number, Elton stood up and kicked his piano bench back out the way. Leaning over the keyboard, he murmured into the microphone, “I love this song.” And then he launched into a kick-ass version of “Take Me To The Pilot.”

The memory’s not quite as indelible as that of the Bratwurst Haus, but it’s a far better song in my mind. And as I pondered “Take Me To The Pilot,” I wondered about cover versions. So I went looking. All-Music Guide lists fifty-one CDs that contain the song; about twenty-five of those are Elton John’s own versions.

Among the other performers listed as having recorded “Take Me To The Pilot” are Kiki Danielsson, José Feliciano, Tony Furtado, Ben E. King, Latimore, Enoch Light, Hugo Montenegro, Odetta and Rick Wakeman. That’s a pretty diverse list.

I have cover versions of “Take Me To The Pilot” by groups named Orange Bicycle and Joy Unlimited. Orange Bicycle, says AMG, was a British psych-pop group that released half a dozen singles during the late 1960s and then put out one album, a self-titled release of mostly covers (with some tracks produced by the great John Peel) in 1970. The group’s cover of “Take Me To The Pilot” is competent if a little bit plodding.

Joy Unlimited was a German pop rock group fronted by a singer named Joy Fleming. The one album the group released in 1970 had three titles, depending on where it was released. In Germany, it was called Overground, in the U.K., it was titled Turbulence and in the U.S., the LP was called simply Joy Unlimited. (I’ve tagged it as Overground.) AMG calls the group’s music “a competent amalgam of trends in American and British mainstream rock, pop, and soul, rather like the kind flashed by numerous bands emerging in neighboring Holland at the same time, like Shocking Blue.” Joy Unlimited’s version of “Take Me To The Pilot” is certainly more interesting, what with the punchy horn parts and other production filigree. I can do without the hypersonic shriek at the end though.

“Take Me To The Pilot” by Elton John from Elton John [1970]

“Take Me To The Pilot” by Orange Bicycle from The Orange Bicycle [1970]

“Take Me To The Pilot” by Joy Unlimited from Overground [1970]

Play Ball!

Originally posted November 13, 2009

It’s a busy day today, but it’s for a good reason.

Tomorrow, my long-time pals Rick, Rob and Dan come into St. Cloud for our fourth annual Strat-O-Matic baseball tournament. From mid-morning to early evening, we’ll laugh, tell stories, listen to a wide variety of tunes and play a little tabletop baseball along the way.

Once again, Rob is the defending champion. In last year’s tournament, his two-time champ, the 1922 St. Louis Browns, were knocked off in the first round. But he took his second team – the 1995 Colorado Rockies – to the title with a remarkable combination of lots of offense, some good bullpen management and lots of luck. (Even he acknowledges that last part.)

So Rick, Dan and I will try to keep Rob from winning a fourth straight title. For those who are interested, here are the teams that are in this year’s tournament. (For those uninterested, you can skip to the next paragraph.)

Rob: The defending champion 1995 Rockies and the 1922 New York Giants
Rick: The 1976 Phillies and the 1990 Athletics
Dan: The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals and the 1927 New York Yankees
Me: The 1948 Indians and the 1961 Cincinnati Reds

Whatever happens, the day of the annual tournament is one of the best days of the year for me, a chance to share my home and some very good times with my long-time friends. The Texas Gal puts up with the noise and the disruption with an amazing amount of grace. I imagine that our two annual tournaments (baseball in the autumn and hockey in spring) leave her feeling as if she’s the housemother in a fraternity house for graying sophomores.

Each spring and fall, as we plan our menu and the required grocery and liquor store trips, she’ll remind me of something and say, “That’s for the Saturday the boys are here, so make sure we have enough.”

We’ll have plenty of everything we need tomorrow, when the boys are back in town.

A Six-Pack of Boys
“The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy from Jailbreak [1976]
“Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” by Brownsville Station from Yeah! [1973]
“Boys in the Band” by Mountain from Climbing! [1970]
“The Boys of Summer” by Don Henley from Building the Perfect Beast [1984]
“One of the Boys” by Mott the Hoople from All The Young Dudes [1972]
“The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” by Traffic from The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys [1971

The most anthemic of these is the Thin Lizzy track (though Don Henley comes close). With its almost relentless guitar riffs, “The Boys Are Back In Town” dares you not to tap your feet or bob your head or pound out a rhythm on the steering wheel. And if you’re in the car, there’s no way you’re not going to turn the radio up all the way. The single was Thin Lizzy’s only hit, peaking at No. 12 during the summer of 1976. Oh, and that line about “drivin’ all the old men crazy”? It’s a little disquieting to realize that if I were anyone in the song these days, I’d be one of those old men.

I always thought Brownsville Station’s “Smoking in the Boys’ Room” was kind of a silly song, but then, it came along a little bit after I left high school and before there were hardly any anti-smoking regulations came to our college campus: Smoking was definitely allowed in school. But it moves along nicely, boogies a little bit, and it does have a hell of a hook. The single went to No. 3 during the winter of 1973-74.

Mountain’s “Boys in the Band” is a subtle track, almost delicate at moments, that seems to belie the band’s reputation for guitar excess. But the elegiac tone fits perfectly for a song that has its protagonist saying goodbye to his band and life on the road:

We play tunes today
Leaving memory of yesterday.
All the circles widen getting in the sun,
All the seasons spinning all the days one by one

The title of Don Henley’s album, Building the Perfect Beast, fits, because Henley darn near built the perfect pop song in “The Boys of Summer.” Backed on that track by a stellar quartet – Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, Steve Porcaro of Toto, studio pro Danny Kortchmar and bassist Larry Klein – Henley melds haunting music and literate and thoughtful lyrics into a cohesive whole. And you can tap your feet to it, too. (Or pound on the steering wheel, if you’re driving behind that Cadillac with the Grateful Dead sticker on it.) The single went to No. 5 during its fourteen weeks on in the Top 40 as 1984 turned into 1985.

Hey kids! Hear that odd sound at the beginning of Mott the Hoople’s “One of the Boys”? When we old farts talk about dialing a telephone, that’s what it sounded like. That’s an honest-to-god dial telephone. There are other positives to the song, too, of course: It’s a crunchy piece of rock, with its chords shimmering in the glam persona of Ian Hunter and his band, and it’s another opportunity to bruise your hands on the steering wheel.

On a Saturday sometime around 1975, I was sitting in the basement rec room, reading and listening to Traffic’s The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. I’d borrowed the album from someone – maybe Rick – and was trying to decide if I should shell out some of my own coin for my own copy. I liked what I heard and was thinking about heading downtown later in the day to buy the record. As the languid title track played, I heard the door at the top of the basement stairs open and I recognized my dad’s tread. Steve Winwood sang:

If you had just a minute to breath
And they granted you one final wish . . .

My dad, coming into the room, sang, “Would you wish for fish?”

And from that moment on, every time I’ve heard the song, I remember my dad being silly. I miss him.

‘At Manager, No. 14 . . .’

Originally posted November 6, 2009

Despite my love of sports, I’ve never been an athlete. But thirty-nine years ago today, I wore a jersey as a member of a team for the only time in my life.

It was the last week of the football season at St. Cloud Tech. I was a manager, and I think we were all glad the season was coming to a close. It hadn’t been a good year: We were 2-6 heading into our final game. That was quite a come-down from 1969, when we were 6-3 and ended up ranked No. 9 in the state. (A three-loss team in the Top Ten? That was because we played a tough independent schedule, and our losses were to the top three teams in the state.)

There was a good reason that we’d not had a good season, though. That fall, St. Cloud had opened its second high school, Apollo High School, over on the north side. And when the kids from the north side went off to become the Eagles, about half of the underclassmen from the previous year’s team were among them. There was no way we were going to be as good as we had been or as good as we could have been, had we stayed one school. Things were no better across town at Apollo; the Eagles were 2-5 as the end of the season approached.

The Eagles’ difficulties, though, weren’t our concern. As the season had progressed, we’d kept up with our former teammates and their performances, and I assume that they kept an eye on how we were doing. We weren’t happy with their poor season, but we were pleased that they were doing no better than we were. And during that final week, we cared not one bit about their difficulties because our final game was against those same Eagles. It would be the first football game ever between St. Cloud’s two public high schools.

(One of the oddities of the split between the two high schools was where the boundary line between the two schools was drawn. On the East Side, the line was drawn at the north end of Kilian Boulevard, a block away from our house. It happened to fall right in the middle of the attendance area for Lincoln Elementary, and that meant that a number of kids I’d been in school with since first grade went to Apollo. Had the line been drawn only a little further south, I’d have gone to Apollo; I was relieved to stay at Tech.)

One of the long-standing traditions at Tech was that, on the day of a game or a meet, varsity athletes wore dress shirts, ties and sport coats to school. As a manager of the football team for two years and the wrestling team for three years, I did the same. But as our final week of practice came to a close and we gathered for a meeting Thursday afternoon, the captains had a question for the coaches: Since it’s our last game, and the first ever against Apollo, can we wear our jerseys during the school day on Friday instead of coats and ties?

The coaches looked at each other and thought for a second, then nodded. We left the meeting room, and as we headed for the locker room, I wondered how out of place I was going to look in school the next day. I didn’t have a jersey.

I pondered that as I went over our supplies in the training room, making sure everything was packed into the kits we’d haul to Clark Field, a block away, the next evening:  Bandages, various sprays, a couple of cleat cleaners and cleat wrenches, lots of tape and all the other things that we managers were responsible for. Well, I thought, as I packed the tape, I’ll just wear a coat and tie.

As I finished packing and was about to head out of the training room, certain that Dad was already waiting in the parking lot, one of the other seniors on the team, Scott, poked his head into the room. “So what are you gonna wear tomorrow?”

I shrugged. “A coat and tie, I guess.”

He shook his head. “C’mon,” he said, motioning with his hand as he walked through the locker room. I followed him to the equipment room, where Scott addressed the equipment manager, Mr. Kerr. “We need a jersey here,” Scott told him. “What can you do?”

Mr. Kerr pulled a jersey from the shelf and tossed it to me. Number 14. I pulled it on. I was of slight build, and the jersey was cut for shoulder pads, of course, so it hung on me like a large orange, black and white curtain. But it was, right then, my jersey. “There you go,” Scott said, as we walked back toward the training room.

I wore the jersey to school the next day, of course, and on the sidelines during the game that Friday evening. We beat Apollo fairly handily (a score of 26-14 pops into my memory, but I’m not certain) and crowded back into our locker room, happy to have ended the season with a victory. The next Monday, I handed the jersey to Mr. Kerr. I learned later that many of my fellow seniors had neglected to return their jerseys, eventually paying something like $25 for their “lost” jerseys. I wish I’d done the same.

A Six-Pack From Late Autumn 1970
“Let’s Work Together” by Canned Heat from Future Blues
“When You Get Right Down To It” by the Delfonics, Philly Groove 163
“Easy Rider (Let The Wind Pay The Way)” by Iron Butterfly from Metamorphosis
“Games” by Redeye from Redeye
“Too Many People” by Cold Blood from Sisyphus
“Who Needs Ya” by Steppenwolf from Seven

Bonus Track
“St. Cloud Tech School Song” by the Tech High School Band

During the week that we kicked off the Tech-Apollo football rivalry, six of the titles above were listed in the Billboard Hot 100. (See the note below regarding singles vs. album tracks.) There was one nice slice of Philly soul, one light rocker with some nice vocal harmony (Redeye’s “Games”) and four bits of fairly tough bluesy rock. I recall hearing “Let’s Work Together” once or twice and being intrigued, but I doubt that I heard the other five. Why not?

Well, only two of these six titles made it into the Top 40, which was guiding my listening: “Let’s Work Together” went to No. 26, and “Games” reached No. 27. During the week in question, the one that ended Saturday, November 7, 1970, these titles were strewn mostly in the lower levels of the Hot 100:

“Let’s Work Together” was already in the Top 40, sitting at No. 33. The Delfonics tune was at No. 56 after peaking at No. 53 two weeks earlier. Iron Butterfly’s “Easy Rider (Let The Wind Pay The Way)” would peak at No. 66 two weeks later. (I never paid much attention to Iron Butterfly after buying and quickly selling the group’s live album way back when, but I have to note that “Easy Rider” is a better and more interesting record than I expected it to be; it had been languishing, ignored, in my files with the rest of the Metamorphosis album for a while.) Redeye’s “Games,” on its way to its peak of No. 27, was in the Hot 100 for the first time and was sitting at No. 90.

Cold Blood’s “Too Many People” was in the “Bubbling Under the Top 100” section and had moved up one slot from No. 108 to No. 107. It would be gone when the next chart came out a week later. And Steppenwolf’s “Who Needs Ya” – a typical but fun Steppenwolf boogiefest – was in its first week in the “Bubbling Under” section, sitting at No. 119.  It would peak at No. 54 five weeks later.

As I was planning this post – I do plan sometimes – I called Gary Zwack, the current band director at St. Cloud Tech, and asked about a copy of the school song. He emailed it to me, and as I heard the song for the first time in what must be thirty-five years, I remembered all the words:

March straight on, Old Tech High
To fame and honor great.
The glory of our colors
We’ll never let abate.
We’re with you!
March straight on, Old Tech High!
Be loyal to her name.
Fight gallantly for dear old Tech
And all her worthy fame.

Gary added a note, telling me that the music for the song was written in 1931 by Erwin Hertz, who was Tech’s band director at the time. I wrote back, telling Gary that in 1964, I took my first lessons on cornet from Erwin Hertz, who was very close to retiring. Thanks for the help, Gary.

Note:
In five of the six cases, I’ve tagged the mp3s as coming from the various albums, as I’m uncertain whether the mp3 offered here is the single version. The only one I am sure of is the Delfonics’ tune.

I am nearly certain that the single that Cold Blood released was edited significantly, as the running times – 4:05 on the album version I have and 2:52 on photos I’ve seen of the single (San Francisco 62) – are so far apart. Redeye’s “Games” is not (as I erroneously reported originally) the same length on the single (Pentagram 204) as it is on the album, and Iron Butterfly’s 45 (Atco 6782) is timed at 3:05 while the mp3 runs 3:06, so I think those were the same, but I’m not sure.

As to the Steppenwolf and Canned Heat tracks: The running times I’ve seen on photos of those singles – Dunhill 4261 and Liberty 56151, respectively – are relatively close to those of these album tracks. That leaves me wondering if the singles and the album tracks were the same but the times were listed differently, as was often the case. But I don’t know.

Time Is Tight

Originally posted October 16, 2009

Whew! A chance to sit down. I’ve been running most days this week, taking care of various obligations and appointments, and time has been scarce. Instead of trying to squeeze in a post with any substance today, I’m going to beg your indulgence and start regular posts again tomorrow with a Saturday Single.

In the meantime, here are some songs that deal with this week’s rarest commodity. Though I like all of these, the Whitfield and Williams tracks really kick. But I’d urge you to try all of them.

A Six-Pack Of Time
“Time Lonesome” by Zephyr from Sunset Ride [1972]
“Tell Me Just One More Time” by Jennifer Warnes from Shot Through The Heart [1979]
“Pony Time” by Barrence Whitfield from Back To The Streets–Celebrating the Music of Don Covay [1993]
“Pearl Time” by Andre Williams, Sport 105 [1967]
“The Time Will Come” by the Whispers, Soul Clock 107 [1969]
“Good Time Living” by Three Dog Night from It Ain’t Easy [1970]

Bonus Track
“Give Me Just A Little More Time” by the Chairmen of the Board, Invictus 9074 [1970]

See you tomorrow!