Music

OK, all you guys are younger than we are, but even most of you grew up with records for a while.

Does anyone know of a machine that will play & record old records? There is one I found on google – and it is sold by a variety of sellers. When the first one proved a bit slippery (leave a phone message, send us an e-mail), I began to think it was pretty weird. When I googled some more and a really bad review of the merchandise showed up, I was quite ready to believe it. The seller I had been trying to get probably erected all those devices to distance himself from complainers. (That is the Songwriter which does seem not widely available but available.)

So, we still have the problem. I’m tired of having old players sitting around our living room & gather yet more dust; my husband has not used them in literally years (I suspect literally decades). But he doesn’t want to part with his collection nor the capacity to play them. (Well, you might want to suggest counseling for such things and I’m not going to argue with you.)

Thanks in advance if any one has a bright idea.

Revolutions come & go. Our world changes but Willie plays on.

Then &

now.

Longtime readers of this blog know of my musical obsession with Miss Marr’s music, e.g. here and here.

My favorite thing in all of creation is a woman singer with a great voice singing great catchy pop songs.

Lisa Marr is the best gal we’ve got these days in that category.

Of course, with the injustice we must expect in this fallen world, she is not nearly well enough known.

She just mentioned on her website that someone set up a new MySpace page for her, even though she is not a fan of MySpace. (I don’t understand MySpace, which makes things easy for me.) Anyway, the MySpace page has some good songs on it, as does this page from her website. The MySpace page has three videos, and there are more on this page as well.

If you are liking her stuff, I think the best albums are 4 AM, by the Lisa Marr Experiment; Funtown, by the Beards; the Spring Demo Collection by Miss Marr. These are all available off of her website. She has a somewhat convoluted back-catalog, which includes her entire early career with Cub (a great but nonetheless underrated band). I think Cub’s best album was Come Out, Come Out. But most of her stuff, with her various bands, is good, and some of it is stellar.

The magnificent Jackie DeShannon. The greatest era for pop songs was the mid-60s, and I am willing to argue that the greatest pop song of the era was “When You Walk in the Room”, and Jackie DeShannon wrote it. That makes her in some sense the greatest of the greatest. (Of course, she only had a minor hit with it, but the Searchers had a good version of it that was a huge hit.)

Jackie is lip-syncing in this video. In fact, she almost starts lip-syncing too early, but just grins and then starts in the right place. Even lip-syncing, just look at how cool she is: very expressive, acting out the song. And even though she is surrounded by go-go dancers, she is her own go-go dancer at the same time, and seems to be having a grand time with the whole thing.

Frank Allen from the Searchers discusses Jackie and her music in this excellent article: “‘When You walk In The Room’ is still my favourite of our hits, and that’s not simply because it was my first record with the group � . It’s just that it is a stunningly good song with a strong melody and one of the best guitar riffs ever.” Right on.

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