I thought I wouldn’t like this as much as the first CS&N album. Then I realized I was wrong, then right, wrong again and ![crosby_stills_nash___young_deja_vu[1]](https://thewalruswaspaul.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/crosby_stills_nash___young_deja_vu1.gif)
basically ending in right.
I’m kind of dry tonight – no thoughts for this notebook. So here’s a picture of the album cover.
And here’s Max again, getting ready to journal about his own fitness routine.
Some of the songs on each of the albums have a transporting effect and I find myself reliving particular events. I do that anyway for more memorable occurrences, good and bad, but now it’s more pinpointed to really minor stuff.
I vividly recall lying on my twin-sized bed in my tiny bedroom with records and a battery-operated record player sharing my space on the bed. This album was on the turntable, so rather than rising from my lounging position, I stretched out my leg and turned the record player on with my foot. I had very talented toes back then. I then lifted the arm with that same foot and gently placed it on side two. Except the arm slipped from my toes and the needle landed on “Wooden Ships” right on the second G in the word language. To this day the line plays as “Because that is something everybody, everywhere does in the same languid.”
Even without the dent I made in the record, it’s a very crackly album, and deservedly so. It still holds up. What a great blending of voices in a unique sound. This may make another appearance, when I’m just listening.
Oh, and of course I had a crush on Graham Nash, back from his Hollies days. And David Crosby too. I had a thing for facial hair.
I didn’t plan on exercising six days in a row, but after Cowboy Junkies I needed the pep of Cream, though I’ve never heard them described as peppy. Since I won’t be exercising Friday, it would be nice to have a mini break before I dive into a micro collection.
I wish side one hadn’t ended with Ginger Baker singing, but I guess we gotta get it over with. Why, with a voice like Jack Bruce’s, would they let Ginger Baker sing anything. The Muppets’ Animal sings better. I needed to play SWLAR, song two on side two, for an extra boost before hitting the floor. I won’t even mention singing along with “Mother’s Lament.”
This is another of the albums on which I found my brother had written his name, same as he had on Blind Faith. And he had stolen my Delaney & Bonnie and Friends album. Hmmm. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with a crush on Eric Clapton.
Wow – if this record were any slower, it would be playing backwards (and saying Paul is dead). Still, it’s a beautifully cool album that it would be best suited for company and mellowing out, but not for exercise. And that is one fine rendition of “Sweet Jane.”
Additional Fitness Report:
I had been weighing myself nearly every morning during the summer, and saw myself drop from 167 down to the mid and sometime lower 150s. My goal was to be under 150 when I went to the International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG) annual conference at the beginning of August. Not only did that not happen (close), I treated myself to eating whatever I wanted at the conference because, hey, I was on vacation. I lugged my weights and mat with me and only used the weights a few times over the three and a half days. So when I returned home, I did not weigh myself at all and dove into Ram workouts until starting this project on August 20th. I reluctantly weighed myself last week to find I was at about 152, where I thought I would be. Then upon weighing myself a week later, this morning, I am at 150. I’m not actually dieting, but I am a little more conscientious about what I eat and do allow myself a chimichanga or dessert now and then.
It’s a best of album I probably bought in the late 70s, maybe even the 80s, but not in the 60s when they were in their heyday. I loved the Dave Clark Five and The Animals, but don’t think I bought any albums of my own until the late 60s when my taste in music was becoming my own. I bought this to fill the void, but it is missing my favorite DC5 song “Bits and Pieces,” that’s shouted out in a raspy throatiness by the late, great Mike Smith, who had a little bit of a Paul McCartney look to him (yes, I had a crush on him, too). “Bits and Pieces” is a stomping song. I like stomping songs. And hey songs (ex-“That’s What I Like About You” by The Romantics, and the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin”). I remember “Because” as one of the most beautiful songs I’d ever heard at eight-years-old.
Cara A includes the other very recognizable DC5 classics, while Cara B seems to be made up of songs that came after their height of popularity, during which they covered other artists’ peace and love songs.
Fitness Report:
The hem of my size 12 pants are scuffing the floor just a bit, and I now fit nicely into the pants that was my first cross-over from 10 to 12 and are smaller than what I have been wearing for the past year. I’m sure I could squeeze into a size 10 now, but I’d look silly.
No, we haven’t crossed over to the Ds just yet. I’ve had to make a couple of decisions like this – where to place a certain album or albums in the alphabetical range depending on their affiliation. So, whether right or wrong, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the only album by Derek and the Dominos is filed under Eric Clapton. And if I didn’t have a crush on him before, this record made me head over heels. I’m sure it had similar effects on many a girl or woman back in the early 70s, many a boy or man, too. I still swoon and gush at the love story involved. I’m swooning and gushing now.
Though this is a double album, and I did write two separate posts for the White Album and Bowie Live, I can’t separate the song Layla from the whole record set, and it’s the second to last song on side four.
My perception of it is that the whole idea of the two-record set of love songs generated from the wrenched guts of one hell of a heartsick man, who was desperately in love with his very close friend’s wife. And what a song. Layla is equaled only in haunting romanticism to Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” and Roxy Music’s “More Than This.” And we have had the good fortune to be witness to both the screaming obsessive backed by his buddies, and the man obsessed in quiet solitude with only his guitar to help him slowly make his plea. A more sober, more learned man perhaps is displayed in the unplugged version, but it’s that screaming man that moved my 15-year-old heart way back.
The rest of the album is nothing to sneeze at either. It is filled with emotional angst and often plays out in physical metaphors, like “Layla – You’ve got me on my knees,” and the line “Do you want to see me crawl across the floor for you,” from “Bell Bottom Blues.” In their rendition of Billy Myles’ “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” Clapton even has the opportunity to sing “She’s in love with your very best friend.” And while I praise Eric Clapton for this masterpiece, I need to acknowledge Bobby Whitlock, who wrote many of the songs with Clapton, and whose full-bodied, emotive voice balances with Clapton’s thinner vocal sound. Whitlock’s “Thorn Tree in the Garden,” a quietly tearful song follows Layla and ends the tormented journey.
The guitar work on Layla is also phenomenal. I had thought, all those years back, that this was all Clapton’s handiwork, but learned later on that it was mostly due to the contributions of the late Duane Allman.
Listening to the song Layla more intently as I lie on my back with legs against the wall, I think it, particularly the instrumental wailing slide guitar with a piano base that ends with chirping birds, I notice what may well be a strong influence on Bruce Springsteen’s work in the 70s and his use of the fabulous Roy Bittan.
It’s another Ram alternative – sides one and four for a regular workout. The whole thing if I decide to go crazy.
Eric Clapton eventually won the affections of his friend George Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd, and they married. The perfect ending to a beautiful homage to unrequited love.
So it didn’t work out.
For those of you who don’t know, he cheated, a lot. The two-faced, lying bastard. And his drug and alcohol abuse sure didn’t help. Idiot.
Nonetheless, two days of inspired workouts.
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t exercise to the next album that had been interwoven from the exiled bunch of records. I can’t even imagine the last time I listened to A Child’s Introduction to Ballet, though I do recall taking an afterschool ballet class along with many other little girls with whom I went to elementary school. I also remember being bored, so my mother let me drop out. Now, I was already trying to think of excuses before dropping the needle on the record, but when I heard the narrations with bits of classical music, I knew I could not be inspired to exercise, and isn’t that the real purpose of the project? George Carlin evoked pleasant memories, and was still quite amusing. This album, while its stories were not horribly uninteresting, had to go. Plus, for an album made for children, terms like “passionate ambience” probably only succeeded in making this child feel stupid.
So I happily move on to the self-titled Eric Clapton album, with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge and other such musicians playing pivotal roles, which is representative of the sound I was into at that moment in my life. And I’m sure I had a crush on Eric Clapton, who makes several appearances throughout the collection. I don’t recall a lot of the songs, but I do remember Bonnie Bramlett’s voice piercing through the background vocals. What a set of pipes.
It was a light workout tonight as I had taken an hour and a half walk to get a facial yesterday and am a bit stiff. It’s Spa Week!
The children’s ballet album goes back into exile, un-exercised to. I just hope I’m not drummed out of the one-member club that I started.
Soooo looking forward to the next record.
Thank goodness The Cars were next in line. It’s a good album. The first for the boys from Boston. However, I chose not to follow up on them. It’s a very bouncy record, well-suited for a workout. I just wish I liked it more. I think I’m finding it a bit redundant, but nonetheless, it is a contender as a Ram alternate. I broke my rule of working on my bat wings to the second song of each album, as the second song of this one is “My Best Friend’s Girl.” As a matter of fact, I had to play it twice. I needed to write thoughts down immediately before they escaped, so I missed a little of the song, plus I just wanted to hear and dance to it again.
During the workouts, I keep two notebooks by the mat: this one – the workout journal; and another for any other thoughts. I may have said this previously, but I’m a notebook kind of gal. Of course I keep a pen handy (I love pens) and my cell phone, more for the time than anything else. Not to talk on it. I’m not big on talking on the phone. I also keep a small battery-operated fan and a glass of water nearby. If I work up a sweat AND get a hot flash simultaneously, I’m in trouble.
Coming up is another one of those albums.
Up until that moment I hit the start button on the turntable, it was still iffy whether I could do this or not. Oh the dilemma of exercising to an album devoid (mostly) of music. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of life’s dilemmas were of this magnitude? But, if not for this very George Carlin album, if I had just said from the get go – no, no, I cannot exercise to a comedy album, and had respectfully bypassed it, I wouldn’t have considered the albums relegated to the end of the collection as they really had no business hanging out with their rock n roll related counterparts. They are now interlaced throughout the collection and though Camelot was a bit of a snoozer, I will forge ahead because I did hit start and did exercise without music.
FM & AM came out in 1972. What a difference 12 years makes. I had many loves between the days of Camelot and my hippy-dippy years. The vast majority of those loves were as unrealistic to attain as those of my post-toddler youth. I managed to zone into the memories of the album, remembering back to the condition we were in when we would listen to it and how funny it was. It is dated now, and tame considering the shock value of George Carlin’s humor and his transformation from his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the sixties to his hairy self of the seventies and until his passing.
I learned how to mimic voices from this album as Carlin demonstrated his ability to imitate Ed Sullivan, in a nice little tribute to Ed, by using a cue phrase. I could do a mean Ethel Merman by belting out the word “WHY” as Ethel might, but mostly I would imitate people I knew. Like Old-Lady Beck, as we called the busybody next door as kids, with her phrase – “oooh hoo, Arthur.” Once as a teen when I felt no particular warmth to my neighbors I called out the phrase she would use to summon her husband, only to hear him moments later at their back door saying “Did you call me, Ann?” It wasn’t nice, I know, and I’m not proud of it, except for my impeccable imitation.
I think I will keep this album in its place in the C’s as it complements the genre of the collection and out of respect for a very funny man.
It was not easy taking Ram off the turntable and again sliding it into its sleeve then putting it back in the M’s. I wasn’t enthused to return to the project as I faced the 1960 Broadway cast album of Camelot, to be followed immediately by a comedy album.
I believe I might have been five or six when my father took my mother, my brother and me to see the show as I think it was the original cast of Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, Robert Goulet and Roddy McDowell, all of whom are gone now, with the exception of Julie Andrews, who I just loved in Despicable Me. I know for sure that Robert Goulet was still in the cast because as soon as he walked on stage, I fell in love.
At the time, I was also in love with Sonny Fox of Wonderama fame, and the man in the red pick-up truck who waved to me every time our car and his vehicle were side by side on the highway. So, I got Robert Goulet, but nothing else about the show. Everything else was over my head.
The workout itself wasn’t bad, mostly due to Max’s feistiness throughout side one as he challenged me each time I approached the spot he took in the middle of the room. His excitement over the workout game made it much more enjoyable. Side one of the record was in pretty good condition considering its age, except for the last song. “How to Handle a Woman” crackled badly as if someone had played it over and over, and it grew in crispiness until the end when it repeated the last note until I hit stop. I think same thing may happen when we get to Rickie Lee Jones.
I hope nobody minds that Camelot is going back to the end of the collection and does not retain a spot amongst the C’s.
Btw – The way to handle a woman is to love her, merely love her, love her, love her.
The Walrus Was Paul 