Disconnected

Originally posted October 22, 2009

I arose a little later than usual yesterday, as I’ve been battling a stubborn cold, and came into the study to check a few blogs and prepare a post. As the computer booted, I picked up the phone to tell the Texas Gal – already at work – that I was breathing and upright.

No dial tone.

I went to the front rooms and tried that phone. No dial tone there. So I went back to the study, planning on sending an instant message or an email. We had no ’Net access, either. I clicked on the TV, got a picture and sound and assumed that was okay. (That was an error: It turned out that most of our cable channels were down, too.) Now I really needed to talk to the Texas Gal as well as the cable company.

We gave up our cell phones a while back, so I drove down to the neighborhood convenience store. There, hunching my shoulders against a light rain, I dropped a couple of quarters into the pay phone. The Texas Gal said she’d call the cable company and told me to go home and get in out of the rain. An hour or so later, she came home for a few moments and said that a service tech would stop by during the early afternoon.

And actually, two of them did, with the second of them bearing the unwelcome news that our services would not be restored until sometime around two in the morning. He said that we were one of nine customers affected by an equipment failure, but making the ten-minute repair would require disconnecting about three hundred customers. So his bosses, he said, had told him not to repair the fault; instead, a truck would come out sometime after midnight and take care of the problem.

It was a perfectly sound business decision, but it was still annoying and a little worrying. Missing the high end cable channels for a day was no big deal. Nor was being offline, I thought. But being without a phone in case of emergency? That wasn’t good, and I told the fellow that. He nodded. “I understand,” he said. “And I’ll pass the word on. But I can’t do anything about it.”

I nodded back, and after he left, I went and found my deactivated cell phone. I think – though I’m not certain – that even deactivated phones can call 911. So I charged the phone and put it on the dining room table just in case the worst occurred. It didn’t. We had a pleasant evening: some television, some reading and, for me, a little bit of tabletop baseball.

As pleasant as the evening turned out to be though, not having ’Net access was a major annoyance: Both of us missed our normal online activities. No email or Facebook, no new blog posts to read, no way to check my fantasy football teams or the Texas Gal’s quilting group. And that pointed out to us how large a part of our lives the online world has become. It’s amazing how, in a relatively brief bit of time, we’re living so much of our lives online.

Is that worrisome? Not so long as we can do without if we have to. The things that the ’Net brings to our lives are worthwhile, fun and maybe even important. But they’re not essential. (That holds true, too, for the high-end cable channels. The telephone is another story, I think.) Still, even though I was out of touch for only a day, it’s good to be back.

A Six-Pack of Communications
“Telephone Line” by the Electric Light Orchestra, United Artists 1000 [1976]
“57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” by Bruce Springsteen from Human Touch [1992]
“(I’m A) TV Savage” by Bow Wow Wow from I Want Candy [1982]
“Race of the Computers” by Pete Carr from Not A Word On It [1976]
“TV Mama” by Big Joe Turner, Atlantic 1016 [1953]
“Pick Up The Phone” by Lesley Duncan from Moonbathing [1975]

The first two of these are pretty well-known, I think, and Bow Wow Wow is, too, though maybe this track is less well-known than some of that odd band’s other music. (Sorry for the low bitrate on that one, but it’s all I had.)

Pete Carr’s name is more familiar as a session guitarist at Muscle Shoals than as a solo artist, but Not A Word On It is a pretty good solo album. All-Music Guide has a date of 1975 for the record, but I’ve seen 1976 in other places I trust, so I’m going with that. (Thanks to walknthabass at Gooder’n Bad Vinyl.)

Big Joe Turner, one of the premier blues shouters, recorded from the 1930s into the 1980s, but seems almost forgotten today. “TV Mama,” recorded when television was still very new, is an example of using the most recent fad or craze as a framework for a salacious bit of music. (I ripped this from a library collection long before I ever thought about bitrates, so this track, too, is at a lower bitrate than I normally share.)

Lesley Duncan was a top session vocalist in England during the 1970s and released a few solo albums that were critically praised but didn’t sell all that well, from what I can tell. “Pick Up The Phone” is a nice piece of mid-1970s pop; if you like it, you’ll like the rest of Moonbathing as well as Duncan’s other work, I think.

Six At Random

We’re going to put the cursor about in the middle of the 78,829 mp3s in the RealPlayer and see where we go on a random six-track trip. Here we go!

First up is “When She Loves Me” from the 1977 album Mama Let Him Play by the Canadian musician Jerry Doucette. It’s a sweet tune, and I wouldn’t have known it or anything about Doucette without the help of my blogging pal jb, who hangs out at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’. He asked me one morning if I had Doucette’s album, needing – I think – the title track. I didn’t, so I went and found it in the wilds of the Internet. It’s a decent late Seventies album, offering kind of a Canadian version of Pablo Cruise, and it got to No. 159 on the Billboard 200. I don’t often seek the album out, but when a track from it pops up on random, I hum along.

From there, we move back to 1957 and “Love Roller Coaster” by Big Joe Turner. “I ain’t never comin’ down to earth,” he sings. “I’m gonna stay up high, long as I’m up here with you.” The record wasn’t one of Turner’s greatest hits, and it came near the end of his charting days – it was the next-to-last record he placed in the R&B Top 40 – but it got to No. 12, and it sounds pretty much like a Big Joe Turner joint. In other words, you know what you’re gonna get when the record starts, and when it ends, you’re not disappointed.

Coldplay first came to my attention in 2001 when “Yellow” showed up on the playlist of Twin Cities radio station Cities 97. I remember looking askance at the radio the first time I heard it, wincing at some of the lyrics, which seemed not so much haunting (which I think was the goal) as vague. But “Yellow” brought Coldplay to my attention, which is good, as I’ve liked a fair amount of the band’s work since then. I know there are many who detest the band, and I don’t quite get that. But then, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t get, so I don’t spend much time worrying about Coldplay haters.

I paid no attention to T. Rex back in the day, except that there was no way anyone could ignore “Bang A Gong (Get It On)” during early 1972. But I missed out on everything else the band did, including “Jeepster” from 1971’s Electric Warrior album. The record went to No. 2 in the U.K. but was not released as a U.S. single. I’m not entirely sure what “Girl, I’m just a Jeepster for your love” means, but the track is catchy. And it’s very similar to Howlin’ Wolf’s 1962 single “You’ll Be Mine.” Wikipedia notes that T. Rex’s Marc Bolan acknowledged of “Jeepster” that he “lifted it from a Howlin’ Wolf song.” (Regular reader Yah Shure has since told me that “Jeepster” was in fact released as a single in the U.S., though it did not chart. My source for my statement was The Great Rock Discography, another volume that I have either misread or whose data I must now salt liberally.)

The late Larry Jon Wilson has showed up in these pages a few times, and I’m glad to see him pop up today as we wander randomly. “Loose Change” is a panhandler’s tale, the title track from Wilson’s 1977 album, and he tells the tale as he seemingly always does, with affection, with respect, and with an acute eye for detail. He released five albums – four in the 1970s and one in 2008 – and every one of them is a quiet gem. And as I write this morning, I feel as if I should listen to his music more than I do, because every time Wilson’s music pops up randomly, I’m drawn into it by his craft and his warm voice.

Among my musical idiosyncrasies is an affection for the music of Julie London, the 1950s and 1960s chanteuse who’s perhaps known for two things: her 1955 recording of “Cry Me A River” and her role as nurse Dixie McCall in the 1970s police drama Emergency! Today’s random jaunt brings up London’s performance of “I’m Glad There Is You” from her 1955 album Julie Is Her Name. It’s a quiet track, maybe not among her best, but if you want to know what the adults were listening to in 1955, it’s a pretty good example.

A Baker’s Dozen from the 1950s

Originally posted March 1, 2007

I’ve got a nice piece coming up for you tomorrow – a 1974 solo album by Toni Brown, one of the founders of the Berkeley-based Joy Of Cooking that Brown fronted with Teri Garthwaite in the early 1970s. But it’s not quite ready yet (and I need to be run a few errands this morning in advance of the snowstorm that’s supposed to set in before noon today), so I thought I’d throw out another random list.

This one, however, will be decade-specific: A baker’s dozen from the 1950s:

“Cat Called Domino” by Roy Orbison, unreleased Sun recording, 1956.

“Pearlee Blues” by Furry Lewis from Furry Lewis Blues, 1959.

“Somebody In My Home” by Howlin’ Wolf, Chess 1668, 1957.

“Playin’ Myself The Blues” by Cecil Gant, Decca 48231, 1950.

“I Don’t Know” by Sonny Boy Williamson II, Checker 864, 1957.

“Joliet Blues” by Johnny Shines, Chess 1443, 1950.

“Don’t Happen No More” by Young Jessie, Modern 1002, 1956.

“Lost Lover Blues” by Bobby “Blue” Bland, Duke session, 1955.

“Bird Dog” by the Everly Brothers, Cadence 1350, 1958.

“Can’t We Be Friends” by Frank Sinatra from In The Wee Small Hours, 1955.

“That’s All Right” by Elvis Presley, Sun 209, 1954.

“Prisoner’s Song” by Warren Storm, Nasco 6015, 1958.

“Shake, Rattle & Roll” by Big Joe Turner, Atlantic 1026, 1954.

Hope you enjoy these, and we’ll head into 1970s singer-songwriter territory tomorrow!