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.
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.
File this one under Soundtracks to Shows I’m Unlikely to Ever See alongside David Byrne’s backdrop for ‘The Catherine Wheel’ and his interludes dubbed ‘The Knee Plays’ and probably any quality productions of Sondheim’s ‘Pacific Overtures’ or ‘Chess,’ the musical composed by Tim Rice and the men of ABBA that gave the world ‘One Night in Bangkok.’
Hate sounding like skipping wax when I yet again insist I’m as eager as anyone to hurl my #TuesdaysWithJerry survey of A&M Records firmly into the era of Cat Stevens and Peter Frampton, to say nothing of the Police and Squeeze and scads more who arrived toward the end of that decade.
First: yes, I have decided aural replicas of long-demolished Disneyland attractions qualify for installments of #SoundtrackSunday.