'Coat Of Many Colors'

One of the very few opportunities I'll have writing about Dolly Parton, who singularly rewrote the book as to how we perceived breasts along with Elvira.

Clearly, she was much more than a sex symbol. Coat of Many Colors makes this clear. This is an overly beautiful, sentimental and pastoral album stripped to its bare bone with minimal instrumentation clogging up the air thwarting Parton's beautiful, pristine voice. One of my favorites that I've listened to for this project.

Coat of Many Colors is actually Parton's eighth studio album doing all eight between 1967-71. She got her start on the Porter Waggoner Show (she apparently replaced a popular "Norma Jean" and was heckled after the replacement) and it was the host that urged her to cover "Mule Skinner Blues," which became her first real hit. She was 21 when she joined the show and recorded her first album.

Coat of Many Colors turned out to be her most popular album until Jolene a few years later and the super stardom was not far away.

I've got to admit, I'm sort of smitten with Parton. No one that is tremendously popular as Parton's been the last 40 years seems more genuine and nice as she does and I'm typically very critical of celebrities. I always think the worst.

Parton's had a very well-rounded and respected career. From movies, TV, a cultural icon and, of course, the music, she's rarely done anything half-assed or even poorly. I had zero idea that she was A) married or B) married for that long.

We equate celebrities with fly-by-night relationships, but Parton's been married to Carl Dean Thomas for nearly 46 years (they married in 1966 when she was probably penniless ... 20 years old). He has allegedly seen Parton perform once and is never seen in public or any of her events. They have no kids, but she is the godmother for Miley Cyrus. 

'Candy-O'

Arguably, an album more known for its album art than the music.

(I would like to note that The Cars were a heavy favorite of mine even as a youngish kid getting into rock music mostly because they knew how to write a hook. It's called a "hook" for a reason.)

The famous cover of the girl draped across the hood of a car was done by Alberto Vargas, the well-known pin-up girl artist, whose work appeared all over (he's one of those guys that you don't know but you've seen more of his work than anyone) including Playboy and Esquire.

Vargas was 83 years old at the time of the release of the album and the Peruvian was allegedly a fan of the band and agreed to come out of retirement to do the album cover.

One of Vargas' paintings sold for more than $71,000 at auction, so Candy-O is sort of like fine modern art than a dumb record.

On a more carnal note, nothing represented pure sexual urge than that girl in black high heels and that flat belly. Nothing.

'Rio'

What a cataclysmically gigantic album especially for the 1980s. Six singles and songs that still get massive airplay a good 30 years after the fact.

The initial plan was to film, essentially, an album of videos taking time between tours to knock out a bunch before one of the guys contracted a tropical disease and had to go back to England and postpone the upcoming tour.

Duran Duran and Rio were actually not as popular in the United States as you might have guessed. It took a little while for American audiences to embrace the album as it was killing in Australia and the United Kingdom. After an EP of Duran Duran remixes hit the club circuit, Rio itself started to gain ground and the album was remixed and re-released. Despite all the singles, it peaked at No. 2 in the United States.

It wasn't until 1983, two years after Rio was released overseas, that "Hungry Like a Wolf" and "Rio" started to climb the charts. They released Duran Duran that same year. At the end of the year, the next album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger, was released and the band had five singles in the U.S.'s top 20 from three different albums.

And, of Roger, Andy and John Taylor, none of them are related.

'Punishing Kiss'

Getting this one out of the way because it is terrible.

However, it is interesting. It's basically a covers album with The Divine Comedy (more on them on a later date) as her band doing songs of Scott Walker, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and Nick Cave. It's pretty unspectacular and boring unless you're into singer types.

Ute Lemper is German and she's described as a chanteuse, which translates to female singer, but the denotation is clearly above and beyond Grace Slick or Chrissy Hynde. There's a sort of regalness to the term and sophistication. It fits Lemper pretty well.

It's a lot like "magnate," which just means a "great man" although Albert Pujols is not a baseball magnate but Andrew Carnegie was a steel magnate. It's a cool word if you can get there with your life.

Lemper also is known for her renditions of Kurt Weill, the German-Jewish composer of the first part of the 20th century. Renowned all over the world, he fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and wound up in New York City. Among other well-known songs, he wrote "Mack the Knife."

'If Only I Could Remember My Name'

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released their highly influential album Déjà Vu in 1970, which spelled the beginning of the end for the super group.


Neil Young released his fantastic After the Gold Rush that same year. Graham Nash released Songs for Beginners. Stephen Stills released Stephen Stills. And David Crosby released If Only I Could Remember My Name. Three of those four are on the 1,001 records list (in addition to Déjà Vu). 


For one, Crosby's effort has the worst album cover of the four and probably one of the worst album covers for any reputable rock musician of all time.

At times, it's really good rootsy, folk-country rock. Other times it's as bland and vanilla as you can possibly get. It features the stylings of Nash, Young, members of Jefferson Airplane, Santana, the Grateful Dead and Joni Mitchell.

It also is the only recorded footprint of Ethan Crosby, David's brother. He, too, was a musician, playing guitar and jamming with David in the early-1960s. He also became a sort of anti-modern philosopher and after being disillusioned out of college and, eventually, the music business, he became a hermit and hid out in the hills and mountains of northern California in Big Sur and Mount Shasta.

He died at the age of 60. He'd been missing from his handmade, makeshift cabin in the wilderness, where he had left an apparent suicide note. His decomposing body -- half eaten by bears -- was found in the woods.

When you listen to If Only I Could Remember My Name, think of Ethan. And think of all the cocaine David snorted. 

'Three Brothers'

Three Brothers was a bit of a departure for director Francesco Rosi.

He was a central figure of Italy's post-neorealist genre, which tackled the problems in the years after World War II as Italy still tried to rebuild and the corruption that haunted the cities and governments. His films up until the release of Three Brothers in 1981, dealt mainly with political machinations, gangsters and intrigue.

Three Brothers, instead, deals with the death of the matriarch of the family as her three sons and her widower grieve and come to grips with their new lives. Meanwhile, they also deal with their personal lives that vary differently from the actual location (Rome, Turin, Naples) to what their lives are like (a judge presiding over a terrorist case, a religious youth counselor, a blue-collar worker attempting to keep his marriage together).

Each grieve in their own ways as they put together the pieces of how they feel about the death of their mother, each other and what they're going through on these respective islands.

'Written On The Wind'

A really, really dark film considering it was released in 1956 and had a pretty good cast of actors and actresses. This was edgy (or had to be) for the time and the place.

It involves sex, alcohol, domestic violence and a miscarriage. Not a date night film by any means.

It co-starred the extremely good-looking Lauren Bacall as "Lucy," a role she was pushed into by her husband, Humphrey Bogart, who was then sick with cancer and would die the year after the film was released. Bacall's career was already floundering even though she still had killer good looks and was only 32. She'd gotten a bad reputation after turning down a number of scripts. She'd do only three other films for the next eight years.

Written on the Wind was also a keynote performance for Dorothy Malone, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Marylee, the crazy nympho sister. For the film, she dyed her hair platinum blonde and remade herself as sort of a "good girl gone bad."

The director was Douglas Sirk, a Dane born in Hamburg, Germany. He studied film all through the 1920s and 1930s until leaving Nazi Germany in 1937 for political and personal reasons: His wife was Jewish. After a salty career of hits, he abruptly packed his bags in 1959, at the age of 62 or so, and went back to Germany and never directed another motion picture.

'The Quiet Earth'

What would you do if you were the last person left on Earth?

For one, I would first need to clarify whether there were any pets left on Earth. Did The Effect make every living thing disappear or just the humans.

This is a very important circumstance because the only real pitfall of being the last person left on the face of the planet is the loneliness. After a while, it would be debilitating. You wouldn't want to live because there'd be no one to have any intimacy or communication with. Even a hermit such as myself realizes this reality that is actually a non-reality.

If I could be like Will Smith on I Am Legend with the German shepherd, I'd be relatively set. Because, let's face facts, being the last person on Earth would be awesome.

You wouldn't need money so you wouldn't need a job. You have an unlimited amount of food, clothes and shelter. There would be almost zero manual labor outside of starting fires and killing off the escaped zoo animals foraging around your neighborhood.

Most importantly, you'd have the most valued of resources: Time. Watch movies (generator-powered, of course) and read books all the time. Take long walks (rifle in hand) and get in shape. Or don't get in shape. There's no one left to keep up appearances and what does it really matter if you live until you're 90 or 60? There's no expectations and unlimited time. How awesome does that sound?

'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere'

Neil Young recorded and released Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in 1969, his second solo record after Buffalo Springfield went the way of the buffalo (springfield).

It's the first of a long line of solo records through the mid-1970s that Young absolutely knocked out of the park, although I think this is one of his weakest efforts of this cadre of records. Still, it's better than most.

It seems a bit sophomoric and lacks focus or glue to hold the songs together. Seems like he was influenced by quite a number of genres (rock, country, folk) and that's fine, but I don't have to like it put together as an album.

Allegedly, the album's three biggest songs -- "Cowgirl in the Sand," "Cinnamon Girl," "Down By the River" -- were written on the same day when Young had a 103-degree temperature. And I would go out on a pretty weak limb and say that Cameron Crowe's used the entire album, song by song, in his films.

In Young's ever-changing world, later that year, he joined Crosby, Stills & Nash catapulting the group into the upper stratosphere of super groups and writing the song "Ohio." In 1970, he recorded another solo record, the amazing After the Gold Rush. Not bad work for a Canadian.

My question for Young: Who's dog is that on the cover and what's his/her story?

'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'

I really can't imagine a more timeless, perfect movie than Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I enjoyed it 12 years after it was released in 1986 as a high school senior and I enjoyed it 25 years afterwards, when they decided to do a car commercial starring Matthew Broderick in a Bueller-type getaway day.

It's perfectly written, directed, a dark underbelly of self-loathing and doubt mixed with his cheerful, innocent and carefree effervescence teeming to the brim.

Directed and written by John Hughes, maybe more than any of his films, it is a promotion video for the city of Chicago as Ferris, Sloane and Cameron go to the trade floor, art museum, Wrigley Field and a downtown parade.

Said Hughes: "Chicago is what I am. A lot of Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. And the more people who get upset with the fact that I film there, the more I'll make sure that's exactly where I film. It's funny—nobody ever says anything to Woody Allen about always filming in New York. America has this great reverence for New York. I look at it as this decaying horror pit. So let the people in Chicago enjoy Ferris Bueller."

Got to admit, Chicago holds a lot of charm even if a lot of Hughes' films are set in the suburbs and don't necessarily detail the beauty of the city quite like Ferris. 

The most interesting character in the entire film is clearly Cameron. Based on a real person, it's never clear his issues with his parents, particularly his bad, or how it is that he's dealing with all of this, like pretending to be sick.

Cameron's dad is no different from quite a number of other days. Cameron, however, is a lot more sensitive, who never follows in the callous attitude of his father toward having a relationship. The evidence in Cameron's angst is evident in, actually, Ferris' father. He is attentive and caring. He looks in on Ferris and calls in the middle of the day. He gets home early from his corporate job in a downtown high rise just to make sure that his son is OK after having a pretty mild cold (even if it was fake).

However, what is pretty evident with Ferris and his parents is completely lost and seething under the skin with Cameron and his parents. We would only assume he would get in serious trouble for wrecking the car, but we really don't know what that means, what that entails. And is Cameron really "standing up" to his father as much as spiting him for loving a car more than he loved his own son, or so Cameron thinks.

'The Wall'

This album brings up many memories.

I didn't quite get into until later, at the end of my college life and the time afterwards. Few records have spun as much as this LP did at the time, especially after I graduated and moved back in with my dad for about a month.

It also reminds me of my friend, Matthew, from high school, who I'm pretty sure I referenced when I reviewed Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. He loved Pink Floyd long before any of us gave them any time and I really respected him for it.

Finally, it prompted an idea for a mix CD: Your favorite first songs on an album. "In the Flesh?" is one of my all time favorite album starters. It's a bit sweeping with David Gilmour's larger-than-life guitar riff serving as sort of a platter for the rest of the album.

The Wall was bit of a breaking point for the band. The impetus for the album came during the In The Flesh Tour of 1977 when bassist Roger Waters spat on some irritating fans in the front row. No one was really happy with playing large arenas and there was clear irritation with their fans, many of whom probably didn't share the same values with the thoughtful band members.

Waters thought about building a literal wall between the band and the audience. This became a literal wall once they toured.

During production, there was a lot of animosity between the band and the series of producers brought in as they recorded in France. Keyboardist Richard Wright grew restless having left his children behind in school. He was named producer for a while and was eventually delegated to working at night due to his strained relationship with Waters. Wright, along with bassist Nick Mason, were both replaced with session guys on some level throughout the recording.

What's more, the band was in desperate financial straits due to losing their ass in some risky investments that fell through and they really needed to release an album.

'Be'

Listening to this album for the first time, five songs in, I texted friends and declared that it is maybe my most favorite hip-hop album of all time.

One called it bold, although I never stated that it was best, just my favorite.

It really captures everything that I love about hip-hop and, yet, have generally failed to find in any one individual or group. It's stripped down production aside from Kanye West's remarkable beats. Common "raps happy" but he challenges the status quo and takes on serious issues.

Some critics call the album "safe." I call it great. Maybe it's not "Sgt. Pepper's" but I think that's beside the point. There so much bad music put out there that "safe" is simply a synonym for "not groundbreaking," which Common supposedly already did with Like Water for Chocolate. How many groundbreaking albums is one guy supposed to have?

There are hundreds of hip-hop artists that would like to go "safe" like Common's Be. And have Kanye West producing.