The Daily Spinner (July 21)
Can You Dig It? Yes I Can!
[A continuing feature here at CITF, where I detail what LP(s) I'm listening to each day at my office while going through my long-neglected LP collection. Check out the last entry.And yes, this is a little late.]

I'll admit it--much of my artistic sensibility and outlook on life was formed from the 1970s. And while it's one thing to say that I've been a Democrat since watching the Watergate hearings with my Dad as a 7-year old, it's definitely another thing completely to admit one's love for Bread, Jackson Browne, etc.--it just ain't too cool any more. Not that I'm looking for cool points. I recently got a mix CD from my friend Mikesell, entitled Songs from a Soft Rock Cafe (with such gems as Robbie Dupree's "Hot Rod Hearts" and "You're the Only Woman" by Ambrosia), and Mrs. F and I have had a hard time extricating it from the car stereo. Like Chuck Mangione once blew through his flugelhorn, it feels so good.

And maybe I'm becoming an old fogey just a tad early (still two years shy of 40), but dammit, there was a lot of great music from a good spectrum stream of styles back in the 70s, movies were better then, and politics... well... political scandals based on hubristic egoism are still conspiratorial and sucking the life out of a Repbulican presidential administration.

[Side note 1: Heck, there seems to be quite a lively industry in remaking 70s era entertainment--the new Bad News Bears (minus the original's definite article), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dukes of Hazzard, and the upcoming Poseidon Adventure remake--to the Logan's Run/Capricorn One hodge podge that is The Island (which, actually, is pretty decent popcorn fare--Mrs. F and I checked it out yesterday to get out of the heat).

Y'know, if they are hell-bent on excising all creativity in Hollywood in favour of the remake, they should do a remake/reworking of Americathon, where President Chet Roosevelt (John Ritter) decides to hold a telethon to help ease the budget crisis. Wasn't that great a movie, if memory serves me (to wit, it has Jay Leno playing a character nicknamed "Poopy Butt"), but it had a couple of good gags, and now's the perfect time to refresh and retool this idea.]

[Side note 2: Why did they have to remake The Bad News Bears--the greatest sports movie ever)!!!!!]

I started off my in-office listening party on Thursday with a slice of disco magic with Chic's Greatest Hits. It's still pretty foot-stomping good, but after many years of hearing "Le Freak" and "Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah," they're starting to sound almost like novelty hits. My 70s nostalgia kicked in big time when I dropped the needle onto Chicago's Greatest Hits, with the opening heavy guitar riff and shuffling drum kit to "25 or 6 to 4." You forget, after all their bland 80s pop hits that these guys were a tight, tight band who could move nimbly across a number of jazz-rock stylings.

But the album that really brings together the 70s for me is London Calling by the Clash--a punk album that at its core is the perfect rock album time capsule for the era. Listening to it now, it seems positively retro with classic 50s raver-style tunes (like "Brand New Cadillac") and poppish tunes that even Joe Strummer's gran loved (the great "Train in Vain"). But they're also filled with sly, subversive lyrics and arch-leftist politics. And the band was one of the first mainstream-ish bands to really incorporate reggae and electronic dub (a subset of reggae that incorporates lots of semi-random blips and bleeps)--foreshadowing some of today's biggest bands (Gorillaz has a lot to thank The Clash for). If you don't own a copy--get thee to a record store.