A few pics from my youth....

Grandpa David and I holding our "loot", 1976....

New Mexico 1976

When I had hair, lol....

Always been a fan of snowballs....old school Audubon Zoo

Betty Jean Whitaker, Rest In Peace...

My Grandmother died today. She'd been ill for quite some time, cancer, but she'd beaten it before and I think we all believed she'd beat it again. Every week that went by she was stronger and more feisty. Just last week she spoke of buying a car because she felt cooped up in her condo in Covington. (She sold her last car months ago when she was really ill.) In my heart I knew she wasn't long for this world. She pulled out the same line my Mom did so many years ago, that she'd re-start treatment when she felt better and could handle it. A line that seems sensible enough, until you really think about it...

My Grandmother didn't really "know" me...I'm not sure anyone has ever truly "known" me, but she definitely understood me. I always seemed to baffle the rest of my family by my choices in life, but like my Mother who passed long ago she never judged me and just hoped and prayed for my happiness. Her and my Grandfather were always two of my best friends in the world, people I might have spent time with regardless of blood relation. Hopefully Mom, Grandma, Grandpa and my awesome brother Michael are all somewhere together, somewhere really nice.....

Sometimes a song gets stuck in your head...

I'm a big 45 nut....some of you know that, others don't. Even in this day of instant downloads, file sharing, iTunes etc... there is something still special about these magical little black 7 inch discs. Many songs on these have never seen the digital light of day. Here is a tale of one of those.....

 I easily own over 1,000 "Singles" as they are sometimes know as.....I have never understood why they are called this, because there is nothing singular about them. At the very least they have 2 songs, one on the "A" side and one on the "B", although I have seen a few rip-offs where the same song was on both sides. Some even have more than 2 songs, although usually these are 33 speed and not 45 and are basically 7" EPs. My personal favorite in this catagory is VOM's "Live At Surf City", which has 5 songs including the awesome "I'm In Love With Your Mom".

But I digress......"45s" as I will henceforth call them are just plane friggin' awesome. Where else will you here Marvin Gaye doing an up-tempo quasi-disco version of "I Wish It Would Rain" except for some wacky B~side? (ok I checked...you Can buy that on iTunes...). Often great stories will accompany the heroic discoveries of these little gems....this is not one of them. It's a mildly interesting anecdote that won't put people to sleep as fast as my treatise on 1840s US religious insanity.....

One of my favorite places to look for 45s is Friends Of Sound (check them out on the cool website Central Texas Grooves).

It's a nice walk from where I live and Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse is a nice stopping point roughly halfway there. I've found some really cool 45s there, the latest being "Little Girl/The U.T." by Lee Washington. Recently I listened to it amongst others in a big stack of possibles but put it back due to really poor condition. I made a note for myself to try to find a better copy later, as most of us geeks do......I purchased a good half dozen killers that day, but all the way home the song "Little Girl" kept playing through my head. 

When I got home I searched all over the net for it only to find a few google references including a picture of the label on one site about L.A. soul and a bizarre playlist from a possible radio show. The only copy I saw for sale was from some shop in England and it was $180 (stooopid). The next day I hurriedly walked back to the store and grabbed it. Upon close inspection the song was written and arranged by Don Julian, who also gave the world, and millions of wedding receptions, the "Electric Slide"....

 The "A" side is a really pretty song, kinda post-doowopy like early Curtis Mayfield. I did my best to rip a copy of it for the player below. Unfortunately the B~side, "The U.T. Side" is a not so great stab at a dance song, the kind of thing that Curtis would throw on a Major Lance record as filler....

In the interest of full disclosure I did find out later that this song is on a U.K. Import complilation called "L.A. Happening", but that doesn't take anything away from this discovery....in fact it make me happy that this song is out there on CD for others to enjoy...and who knows, maybe it has some cool liner notes!