Time again to play the vinyl community’s fastest-growing game: Who Among Us Remembers This Guy?
Reintroducing Robbie Patton, another likable wannabe rock star who caught his big break opening for Fleetwood Mac’s troublesome tour behind Tusk — although Christine McVie, whose discography I’ve been revisiting, clearly took a shine to him more brightly than she did the focus of our previous post in this deep dive, Danny Douma.
Wait, wait, wait … what’s this?
Is this a #VinylTwosDays pairing appearing on Friday instead?
Thorough readers — and thank you very much, you’re why I bother Instababbling — might have noticed a footnote on my previous post indicating I’m unshackling my chronicle of A&M Records from once-a-week confinement. Haven’t decided yet what hashtag (if any) ought to replace #TuesdaysWithJerry, in tribute to late label co-founder Jerry Moss. But that’s really no reason to stop me from plowing ahead.
We’ve reached the point in my year-old deep dive into Christine McVie’s vast discography where we must ask, for the first of several times: Who among us remembers this guy?
If you were lucky enough to catch Fleetwood Mac during the first North American leg of their Tusk tour in late ‘79 — and you bothered arriving on time — then you probably saw a warmup set from this likable fellow, Danny Douma.
Initially I’d planned for this lengthy look back at A&M Records to be a series of twofers, the better to coincide with #VinylTwosDays, a weekly scene I’m always happy to join. But as I started sorting through titles and structuring future installments, it quickly occurred to me that not everything will pair up so pleasingly.
I grew up between the two golden ages of Disney animation, when less-loved creations like ‘The Rescuers’ (’77) and ‘The Fox and the Hound’ (’81) portended a protracted slump from which the studio wouldn’t emerge until ‘The Little Mermaid’ leapt ashore at the end of ’89.
I know what at least four or five of you are likely muttering to yourselves right now: ‘Man oh man, is she ever gonna stop with these damn Tijuana Brass albums?!? It’ll be Christmas 2024 by the time this #TuesdaysWithJerry series finally gets to the Police!’
Some years ago, not long after we met, @kajigger and I started collecting these limited picture-disc pressings of soundtracks from classic Disney animated films alongside Pixar treasures and a few recordings related to Disneyland attractions (see my third post in this series, from Nov 26, for evidence of that). Our tally of titles is pushing two dozen; they’d make an eye-grabbing display if we ever framed ‘em.
Contrary to the impression I might have given with the sixth post in this ongoing series surveying past glories of A&M Records — I spend #TuesdaysWithJerry to remember late great mogul Jerry Moss — Joe Cocker was not in fact the first rock act signed to the rapidly rising label.
My #SoundtrackSunday timing with this one has proven fortuitous. Not long after I discovered Elmer Bernstein’s richly detailed classicist score finally had been pressed as a 2LP gatefold package — which I immediately acquired — I then realized Martin Scorsese’s sumptuous adaptation of Edith Wharton’s tragic romance is streaming until the end of this month on the Criterion Channel. (Gift idea for film friends: a yearlong subscription.)
If anyone was entitled to craft New Age-y yacht-rock with a dash of disco by the dawn of 1979, it was the Beach Boys. Except that’s giving them way too much credit, as if they’d planned to do exactly that — when in fact L.A. (Light Album), perhaps the group’s most forgettable collection, is nothing but a hodgepodge of solo material patched together to keep CBS Records from suing them for breach of contract, lest they turn in zero music two years after signing to that label.
