The Stickability of Songs

Mutterings continued.

A long and, in all probability, ultimately uninteresting story. Over the years I've let slip from my hands a number of LPs that I really loved. Chief among these were Manfred Mann's As Is, the original Mission:Impossible soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin, Guess Who's live album, Axiom's Fools Gold and the soundtrack from an obscure Australian musical from the early 70's called Manchild. Scouring of second hand record shops has meant that I've managed to replace MM and Guess Who, I won't say how I got Fool's Gold and M:I is available on cd. A plea on the rockandroll.scars forum brought me a clue as to where to find the Manchild LP - a store in the East owned, I think, by Glenn A Baker.

They had it! And it was only $20. Today I dragged out my turntable and hooked it up to the speakers to have my first listen to the album in over 30 years. The stickability of songs in this blog's title comes from the fact that I found myself singing along to songs I haven't heard since 1973.

Gotta love a 70's quasi-spiritual rock musical.

Still on a musical theme, I saw an "infomercial" last night about a series of cds that looked at first glance pretty interesting. It was one of those interminable Time-Life series about singers and songwriters. Hmm, Joni Mitchell, Janice Joplin, America....this looks interesting, I thought, until I realised that not only do you get the songs but a very annoying commentary by some guy with a dodgy Southern American accent named "Bart John". It seems that the Australian actor, who appeared in such memorable examples of Australian tv as Skyways, known as Bartholomew John, has metamorphosed into someone who sounds vaguely like a porn star.

And to continue the musical theme even further (at the risk of flogging it to death), I could never understand the reaction a lot of young kids (one of my nieces included) had to Kurt Cobain. Being a baby-boomer I guess I don't have the slacker mentality that made a hero of, what to me, was really a pretty uninteresting guy. Looks like I'm not the only one - Caroline Sullivan of the Guardian writes an interesting article on why the anniversaries are unhealthy.

And just to make sure that musical theme of today's blog is well and truly battered into submission, a quote from last November by Robbie Williams. "On the subject of Ye Robster, these were his thoughts on President Bush's UK visit, when queried about it last week, at a press conference at a screening of his new DVD, What We Did Last Summer: "I hope he arrives safely and leaves safely, and nobody gets hurt while he's here. I like tits and beer." At least he's honest.