I was looking through the Book of Face pages the other day and ran across a post about The Sidewalk Scene. I remember them, friend Ray Brandes having been a frontman for them how long ago? Two years so? Three years? The post linked to a page which showcased four studio-produced tracks, all jangly and sixties-oriented. Music, in fact, that I remember fondly.
Devon, you have no idea the trouble you have caused me over the years. Since hearing your most excellent Keep Your Silver Shined album back in 2006, I have been a slave to your music. I have written about it and promoted it and played it in the shower. I have taken your music for long romantic drives and have used it as background music for romantic dinners. I have listened to it, all of it, enough to have made it part of my DNA and I have even adopted the Smokey Mountains, though mountains they hardly seem to a guy who grew up at the base of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. That old Virginia block? My heart broke when you deserted it. You had me convinced that you would never leave the Blue Ridge. I mean, you sang about it!
If this was a real job, I would have been fired long ago. I spent a whole day and night piecing together the research for this weeks column which was intended to be fun and games with radio charts because, man, when you get into them (especially the ones from the fifties and sixties), they are fun as hell and, boy, the tricks you have to know to understand them, but once again things came along to kick the idea to the curb. It happens every week, swear to God, so I took a little trip down computer lane and counted the columns and column ideas I have started and not finished and it came to 27. The good thing is that I still have 27 ideas set aside for future columns. The bad news is that I haven’t worked on any one of them since. Sigh.
Here I go on one of my cerebral journeys, most of which run into a brick wall and consign themselves to the ash heap. I, like most of the world, have a very short attention span, it seems, and while I have bursts of genius (I swear!) little of it makes it to the outside world. This time, the message(s) is(are) spurred by a link posted by friend Greg Phipps, with whom I worked at Peaches Records in Seattle in the 80s (Phipps, btw, records under the name Palestinian Israel-Jones, should you desire to visit his planet), who has been on a roll finding and posting or reposting questions and videos worth my, if not your, attention. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, he asked about the negativity toward celebrities “selling out,” whoring their wares for profit.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 