Rediscovered Treasure (the music of second chances)

Bill Cosby “Don’cha Know” – I discovered the album Silver Throat (Bill Cosby Sings) back in the late ’80s, looking for stand-up comedy in the used record racks (mainly for filler in mix tapes). I figured it’d be great material for samples, a little singing and a lot of comedy. After all, 1. It’s Bill Cosby; 2. It’s obviously from the mid-60s, the height of his comic career; 3. Cover art has Coz with a big, white cowboy mustache. Well, I soon discovered that the subtitle did not lie. It’s a genuine rhythm & blues album, sung by Bill Cosby, with absolutely nothing funny about it except the (unfortunate) cover. Most of the tracks are covers of blues and R&B hits by people like Jimmy Reed and Ray Charles. I stuck it on my jazz/blues shelf and forgot about it… until Flux posted “Hikky-Burr” a few weeks ago. Forget about comedy, this is an amazingly solid record, with a few songs (like this one) credited to Cosby himself as composer. It’s pretty hard to find, but apparently, old copies are for sale at Amazon’s zShops.

The Fascinators “Fascinators’ Minor” – Years ago, the summer before I left home for college, I became caretaker to a burned out house down the street – mowing the lawn and keeping animals out of the structure, mostly. The former residents were an old couple who left behind a great book and record collection. I took two of the less-fire damaged records because I loved the cover art – very 1950s-looking calypso albums. I listened once and thought, eh, if I ever throw a theme party, I’ll pull it out, and forgot about ’em. Then, about five years ago, I started putting an “album of the month” out on display in my living room, and I’d play each one from beginning to end. Well, Champion Steel Drum Bands of Trinidad was a real winner, with a sound unlike anything else I’d ever heard. I only regret I hadn’t gone over to that house with a milk crate and pulled more stuff off the shelves before leaving town. You’ll be lucky to find this record anywhere I think, but I imagine any of the others put out by Cook Laboratories will be similar. Coincidentally, yesterday morning (the day after Flux so kindly uploaded this file), there was a “musicians in their own words” piece on NPR by steel pan player Andy Narell, who covered some of the history of the form – beautiful, upbeat music made by thugs out of recycled metal trash.

Neil Young “Computer Age” – I have a strong feeling I rediscovered this song when most people did, after Sonic Youth covered it on the early 90s tribute album

The Bridge. But I bought the original album, Trans, shortly after it came out in 1982 – in the “used” rack, obviously chucked out by a disgusted Young fan who couldn’t figure out what the heck all this computer crap was doing in his countrified rock and roll. I bought it because I’d heard this song on a New Wave show, and fallen in love with its bridge – to my teenage ears, that haunting, alien vocoder melody promised something new and strange and beautiful just around the corner. After a few listens, like everyone else in the world, I grew to loathe the album, because it’s two-thirds proto-electronica sci-fi soundtrack, and one-third failed folky art-rock (most of that being the one, interminable song “Like an Inca”). Listening to it again, though, some of it is absolutely brilliant, about 15 years ahead of its alternate timeline, and I fall back in love with this particular song every time I hear it. There’s an import version of Trans on Amazon, but according to the reviews, some songs have been remixed by Swedish producers to appeal to the “European techno-pop crowd.”

Thanks for listening. Yours sincerely, grant.