In case I forget to tell you while I ramble in this blog… (oh yes, I feel a ramble coming on!) our last show was at the State Theater in Minneapolis and it was yet another sterling example of high level, medium energy popular entertainment. Beautiful venue, great sound, enthusiastic crowd. Other than being sad that we were leaving in the morning… it was an A plus evening.

The band continued on to play Wisconsin tonight. We were just IN Wisconsin, you will remember if you commit my blogs to memory like I assume you all do. Our routing is a little suspect this tour. I know they have their reasons for sending us back and forth across two large states on seven hour bus rides… I do suspect that the reason is that in this musical economy we all like to make what little money we can… so if there is a show offering us any money at all… we will go to suck it up like a Dyson vacuum cleaning the carpet at an AKC event. (yeah, I get around)

Here’s the dirty little reality of the tour… they booked the tour… we bought our plane tickets… and THEN they added an additional show in Wisconsin. BSR would have loved to play one more show. We are quite in the “groove” as the “Hepcats” say… but it would have cost us more to change our plane tickets than we would have earned doing the show. A lot more. We are an opening act. We get paid in catering food and complimentary hotel soap. So we did not change our tickets and will leave as we had originally planned.

So what I wanted to talk about is… Georgia and I found a record store. An actual real life Yeti of a record store. Wow. For Christmas Georgia bought me a turntable so I can wake up every morning, put on a giant slab of vinyl, and feel a hundred years old. No, it’s actually very cool to listen to and it’s been a lot of fun trying to recreate the record collection of my youth. The first LP I bought was the Four Tops Greatest Hits. I guess that’s why I was destined to write country music (cause every time I listened to it I was cruelly reminded that I was a white boy from Connecticut).

Here’s the ones I found on this trip:

Aja by Steely Dan
I know when I put this on the turntable it will have more scratches on it than a female convict in the General Population (I just finished reading Orange is the New Black. Great book.) but for heaven’s sake… this is the CD that the sound guys play in every venue to check the quality of the PA. One of the greatest engineered records in history. Even the snaps and pops are going to sound AWESOME!

Bustin’ Out by Pure Prairie League
I was IN this band and I don’t have any of their records. This was the LP I loved the most. This album made me nuts for Craig Fuller in  a big, yet hetero way. I shared hotel rooms with the guy so if it had been anything more than a professional crush we would be sharing a seaside two bedroom condo in Key Biscayne as we speak. Jazzman. Amie. Early Morning Riser! (I loved that song so much that I played it in every band I was ever in and when I joined PPL I re-taught it to THEM so I could keep playing it) Great, great album.

Whipped Cream and Other Delights by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
I was twelve. The girl on the cover is covered in whipped cream. I had to take my thrills where I found them. Plus the music was amazing. At least I remember it being amazing… truthfully I was too busy staring at the cover. When I get it home and put it on I will learn whether this was an aural thrill as well as a visual one.

Heart Like A Wheel by Linda Ronstadt
This album is an amazing classic. If you haven’t read Bob Lefsetz cut by cut blog of it you should. This album turned me on to so many things. JD Souther…..David Lindley… Lowell George… (yes, I was late to the party on that one)… my dear departed friend Andrew Gold…. Herb Pederson. It’s Linda’s least erotic cover so you KNOW I loved it for all the right reasons. (see above paragraph on Herb Alpert)

Peter Paul and Mary
This was their first album. True folk. Five Hundred Miles. If I Had A Hammer. Where Have All The Friggin Flowers Gone. You have to understand… this was my brother Randy’s album and I listened to it and it made me swipe his acoustic guitar and learn how to play and sing these songs. Their harmonies were the first three part harmonies I ever really studied. Before them there were the groups like the Four Freshman… that stuff was a little too sweet for me. Maybe this is unexplainable but holding this record in my hands make me feel like I just took a giant lap around the track of life and I’m back at the beginning before every step sent pain up my legs and every breath made my chest hurt.

In the interest of full disclosure… Georgia bought two Barbra Streisand records… Wet and Memories. I paid for them at the cash register. That is the extent of my involvement with them.