Certain things burn into your memory. This is an ad that appeared in the February 25th, 1978 issue of Billboard magazine. At the time I had just recently purchased Romeo & Juliet and had no idea who Alec R. Costandinos was beyond that and his work with Love and Kisses. But I loved those records, so I was determined to “collect the entire set.”
Even 40 years later I often found myself wondering if I had indeed succeeded in that endeavor. Finding this online I can confirm that yes, I have all of them in my collection—and then some—although when The Hunchback was finally released, it arrived with totally different artwork on the sleeve:
I could’ve sworn this came out my senior year in high school, but I guess if the interwebs are to be believed, it actually came out after I’d graduated. Like so many others, I played the hell out of it.
I discovered The Acid by way of HBO’s Sharp Objects and its use of some of their music in the soundtrack. Ambient, moody…it seems to be a perfect soundtrack for my life—and the entire country’s for that matter—these days.
No doubt before a lot of my readers were even born, but there was a lot of really good dance music that came out that year, and specifically that summer. Ironically it also marked the death of the genre called disco, only to have it go underground for a bit and be reborn even stronger as “dance music” in the 80s, defining the sound of the entire decade.
Of course I had to pull it out and give it a spin tonight! (One of the few pieces of my original vinyl collection to miraculously survive the purge in the late 80s.)
This was the go-to soundtrack for my first semester of college. Of course, it didn’t help that you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing If You Leave Me Now.
Born on this day: May 19, 1948 – Singer, songwriter, model and actress Grace Jones (born Beverly Grace Jones in Spanish Town, Jamaica). Happy 70th Birthday, Grace!!
Elton John: Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975)
This was probably the most-anticipated album release of my youth, and has remained my all time favorite EJ album my entire life. The entire album is pure genius from beginning to end. My favorite song from the album, Better Off Dead, is posted above.
Produced by Gus Dudgeon, it was recorded at the Caribou Ranch in Nederland, CO from June – July 1974. After the successful Caribou album, the prolific musician returned to the Caribou Ranch recording studio in the Colorado Rockies to record his next release. The concept album is an autobiographical account of Elton John and Bernie Taupin and the struggles they faced at the beginning of their musical careers. The single Someone Saved My Life Tonight, is about John’s half-hearted suicide attempt while he was engaged to a woman, faced with choosing her over his musical career (and still struggling with his sexual orientation at the time). His friend and former band mate Long John Baldry convinced him to break off the engagement (whom John’s refers to in the song as “Sugar Bear”). The album also marks the last time that John recorded with drummer Nigel Olsson and bassist Dee Murray until the Too Low For Zero album in 1983. Captain Fantastic makes history when it becomes the first album to ever enter the Billboard Top 200 at number one. For the original LP release, a limited number of promotional copies are pressed on translucent brown vinyl, with each album jacket autographed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. The album is remastered and reissued on CD in 1995 with the stand alone singles Philadelphia Freedom, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, and Elton’s cover of the John Lennon penned One Day A Time (B-side of Lucy), added as bonus tracks. Out of print on vinyl since 1989, the album is remastered and reissued in 2017. Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy spends seven weeks (non-consecutive) at number one on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified 3x Platinum in the US by the RIAA.
A couple weeks ago I went to take this album for a spin and to my absolute horror realized that I did not have it in my collection! HOW COULD THIS BE? Well, thanks again to discogs.com, I was able to score a mint, unopened copy for a very reasonable price and was reminded of how much better it sounds on vinyl than on any digital medium.
I also perhaps need to revise my opinion that Nightclubbing was Miss Jones’ greatest album. If you take a step back, you realize that like two sides of a single coin, Nightclubbing and Warm Leatherette are intimately connected. You can’t have one without the other; if you were throw together into a double album you have an absolute masterpiece.
Her best, IMHO. And if you haven’t, you really need to hear it on vinyl played through a good system.
What I still find amazing is how Pull Up To The Bumper—whose subject matter and lyrics, while certainly tame by today’s standards and definitely not about parking a car—got as much mainstream airplay as it did.
