On Rockwiz the guests and contestants are always asked about the first album they ever bought.
This is my first. I bought it via a kid at school who had joined the CBS record club and needed help to buy some records to take advantage of a special offer. I had never heard or seen the record, but the catalogue said it had Blues music, and I knew the names of some of the traditional songs, so I took a chance.
What a great record, easily Taj Mahal’s best. I have a number of his other records but nothing is close. There is a version of Corinna on the Taj’s Blues compilation from the Rising Suns days which gives a hint, but Giant Step is the one.
The vinyl is top quality, thick and hard, and still in good condition nearly 40 years later – it was released in 1969! I remember playing the record at home for my first girlfriend, who was into daggy crooners. She didn’t get it, and the relationship went pear shaped.
I haven’t replaced this one with a CD yet. There doesn’t seem much point, I know every note, every beat, every word by heart. A seminal record for me.
La Grange was a big hit, but I didn’t know much about ZZ Top otherwise.
I was browsing through K Mart at Corio one day, and picked up Tres Hombres for about $7 in a vivid green cover, because La Grange was on it.
It was an instant hit with the boys and myself, but I don’t think it is a girl’s record. It is just plain loud, driven music.
It must have been the 80’s, I was surprised to find that the record was issued in 1973. I haven’t really liked anything else they have done since, but I certainly like this one.
The current version has been remastered and has three bonus live tracks. It also has a nice little booklet about the songs. Dusty Gibbons comments about Jesus just left Chicago, ‘The blues is everywhere, and we used His name to get the point across’. Might just play it next time I’m home alone!
I dreamed that you were afraid of your angel,
shadowing your sweet curls,
a burly man
with unruly hair and untidy beard,
dressed in a red t shirt and jeans.
I held out my arm to stop him
but he passed almost straight through,
and wakened me in a ghostly moment
from another space where,
maybe, that ghost is me.
Context (so what?)
This verse was written about someone I met who was starting to come to terms with life in the spirit. I remember when I first became aware of the spirit in my life, how frightening it was to come into contact with something so alien and powerful. I really felt for this person as she came into my prayer.
The dream happened in the week leading up to Pentecost. This is proper and appropriate, as Peter reminds us in his quote from the prophet Joel, ‘your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams’. Part of this dream is about my concern that my own perception of prayer and spirit could be creepy to anyone who doesn’t share my experience, part of it is about someone coming to terms with the spirit, beyond all preconceptions.
In the inevitable way of dreams, it all turned out to be too much for the young person, and she dropped out of my life.
The picture is of my prayer, drawn in the symbolism of Pentecost, on two levels. The spirit, my friend, and myself represented as tongues of fire joined together in our prayer of the spirit, as well as the more traditional understanding of the external tongues of fire linking ourselves and each other to God through the spirit.
A long, long, long, long time ago, before the rain, before the snow.
Before the MP3 when you couldn’t listen to samples on Amazon, we had to rely on reviews in the Green Guide to find out what was new. Mike Daly and Sean Carney used to write every week, and sometimes I would pluck up the courage to try one of their recommendations. It was always a risk, and CD’s were $25 – $30 each, quite an investment if they turned out to be duds.
One day after reading a glowing review of a new record by a band I had never heard of, I took a chance on Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
The rest is history. They had everything. The record is one of the all time best, and one by one the songs launched themselves into the hit parades until the Chilli Peppers were a household name.
And, Flea used to be someone’s boy next door in Mt Waverley.
We went up to Melbourne to see the Stray Cats for my birthday this year.
The doors were meant to be open but there was a queue. We walked up the lane without finding the end of the queue, then round the corner and down the street.
The queue moved along quite quickly once it got going, and we were soon inside the camp old Forum theatre waiting for the Stray Cats to come on.
The show was a revelation. Setzer was stunning. Slim Jim and Lee Rocker were amazing.
I had queued up around the block to see the Stray Cats, I felt like I was 19 again.
Some of the urban Blues recordings have lost their sparkle over the years, but this collection stands out because it continues to thrill.
I first knew the songs from the double album which my brother had. My CD is the Charley Blues Masterworks Vol 22 which I purchased in Colac over 15 years ago.
The songs have just continued to get stronger over the years. Sonny Boy shows off his versatility and ability in recordings made over a long period of time with a number of different bands. The album is arranged chronologically, the later recordings are especially powerful. A number were recorded with members of Muddy Waters Band led by the incomparable Otis Spann.
Great voice, great harmonica, great songs, great bands.
It was a bit sad when the turntable expired. We changed over to CD’s many years ago, but there are still hundreds of vinyl records. The cost of a replacement turntable was high, and the lovely new amplifier didn’t have a phono pre amp so there could be further expense. The old records were in dubious condition and might have been damaged by the old stylus before the turntable was retired.
I asked my wife to have a look at how many records needed to be replaced, and she decided that really, there weren’t that many. We could economically replace the important ones with new CD’s, which were mostly at bargain prices because the collection is so old.
One of the records my wife wanted to replace was an old compilation called Rockin’ Rod Stewart. I wasn’t too disappointed to find out that it wasn’t available.
Every Picture Tells a Story looked close enough, so I ordered a copy. When it showed up, it looked familiar, even though I had never owned it before. One of the kids from school must have had a copy.
It really is a gem. There are some great tracks. Lucinda Williams had played Every Picture at the end of her concert recently and I was ready to get into it again, Maggie May and Mandolin Wind had been on the other album.
You can really hear Ronnie Wood playing, and the album notes by Rod Stewart are a hoot. He credits the Mandolin playing to the Mandolin Player from Lindisfarne – can’t remember his name. Poor bloke.
But, the track with a memory is Reason to Believe. It had been popular when I was working at the part time job I had after school. There was a girl who had worked there, we had just been a bit playful, not close, and she didn’t work there for long. One of the older girls had teased me about asking this girl to go out.
I saw her again, once, a couple of years later as we walked past each other at the railway station without time to stop and talk. In the meeting of our eyes was the knowing that our moment had been and gone.
They say that in a perfect world, at the age of fifty you would know half as much as you thought you did at seventeen. Epiphanist is a collection of creative and original work about fifty odd years of leaps of understanding.
Needs
Look for anticipation in the frustration between understanding.
Prayers
Prayers of Love
like Heaven
fall in my garden.
I hear them in Peace.
Epiphanist prefers and
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