Rosenbush Cafe

Peter Churchmouse: An Early Favorite

WARNING: Language and themes will be offensive and inappropriate for some readers and gratuitous for all others! Special thanks to Paul DaliHouse Dorsey

By Henry B. Rosenbush

I have been a collector the vinyl long playing records since the 1950s, a passion that began when my father played Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade on a set of 7-inch 45s. It would be the early sixties before I learned Шехерезада was actually a symphonic suite in four movements rather than a collection of shorter works; such was the limitations of the 45 format.

Over the years I was fortunate enough to explore every new technology from Victrola to Hi-Fi for Small Fry, as they called record players for children, and then stereo. When stereo first arrived, much like the transition from black and white television to color in 1964, Beta to VHS or the most recent change from analog to high definition, there were few true examples of stereo recordings. One could play a stereo on a Hi-Fi record player but without the ability to have two channels or multiple speakers it was difficult to enjoy on the intended level.

Our first stereo system was a huge clunky affair; a long enclosed set up with record player, AM-FM radio and two moderately sized speakers. Naturally, you could play Hi-Fi recordings, 45s, 78s (many children’s records were 78s as well as jazz recordings) 33 1/3rd the standard 12-inch discs and 16, which could be practical in school for slide shows and film strips but less practical at home unless you had instructional manuals to investigate.

It would be the combined work – separately – of three men that led to the disc records that dominated the music industry until compact discs appeared in the 1980s effectively ending the gramophone record. French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott, would design in 1857, the phonautograph, which basically allowed a depiction of the visual characteristics of sound but not for playback purposes until Thomas Edison developed the phonograph in 1877, which could play back recordings but was primarily used for dictation and further developed by Edward Guilliard, who would spend the next quarter of century fighting for credit since Edison incorporated Guilliard’s innovations into his own patent.

The phonograph cylinder dominated the market starting in 1880 but as lateral-cut discs, created by Emile Berliner in 1888, began to appear musical recording began to change. Edison produced his own version, the Blue Amberol Record, in 1912, to compete with the Berliner Gramaphone label offering recordings as long as 4 minutes! By 1918, patents for lateral-cut discs expired and the market was open to countless manufacturers and by the twenties, the Amberol cylinders became merely a memory.

Our Victrola was a right-sized hand cranked device which used steel needles and there were two small doors on the front that by opening and closing ‘controlled’ volume, pitch, treble and bass! Naturally, there was no such thing as control: you cranked the cylinder beneath the platter for speed, which was generally enough for one side of a record before it s l o w e d d o w n and s t o p p e d…

The needles were designed to be used once - I had to special order stainless steel needles from New York in the 1980s because record store employees, usually college-aged students, had no idea what the hell a Victrola was never mind “steel needles!” Imagine sitting on your front porch in 1926 listening to Mario Lanza or Al Jolson for the first time. We take for granted today not only the experience but sheer volume of availability of product. In the beginning, the earth was unformed and so was the music industry.

Thanks to dad, I was more aware of Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers (Tommy & Jimmy), Benny Goodman, the Ink Spots, Mills Brothers and classical music before I was introduced to Elvis Pressley! My aunt Virginia took me to see the Swan Lake Ballet and the opera, La Traviata, in the late 1950s so even Tchaikovsky and Verdi preceded my knowledge of rock ‘n roll (1954-63).

My First Purchase: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Like most children, I had albums and 78s by The Flintstones, Quickdraw McGraw - and sidekick Baba Looey, Peter Churchmouse (I only have one of the two LPs left and no cover - sigh), The Gingerbread Man and my first acquisition, the original soundtrack recording of the first motion picture I ever saw, at age three, Michael Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Boy did I grow up with a crush on redheads thanks to Shirley McLaine! Purchased in 1961 at a yardsale of a woman who lived next to my aunt and grandmother, Rosa, in Homewood, Alabama, it was the beginning of a collection that would eventually climb into the thousands!

When Southern humorist Brother Dave Gardner played the University of Alabama in 1963 I was fortunate that one of our tenants at The Henry Apartments left behind the album of his concert and my collecting days began in earnest as I began searching for his other recordings and even got to see him in a Birmingham nightclub in 1971…that’s another story for another time, however.

By 1967, when I bought The Bee Gees “First,” their great ballad-driven album, which was acquired thanks to Virginia: “What do you want for your birthday?”

“The Bee Gees first album.”

She gave me the necessary $7.98 and I went to the record store and now knew the experience of wanting a particular record; I mainly wanted it for the song, Turn of the Century, but soon learned every song was worthwhile.

SIXTIES END BUT THE MUSIC NEVER DOES

As the sixties came to a close I was one of the few teens who had not embraced the drug culture yet; I’d smoked pot once at a party but was already listening to heavier music on my own. There would be plenty of new musical experiences since I was always buying stuff without knowing much about the artists, like Cactus One Way… or Another, which blew my mind with their version of Long Tall Sally. I couldn’t decide if I like it because of the opening guitar riff was so damned loud it scared my mother.

Hmmm, how bad could it be?

There was 3 Dog Night, who I saw twice in concert in 1970 and 1971 followed by Bloodrock and Grand Funk Railroad, before they became merely, Grand Funk. It didn’t take me long to figure out their song T.N.U.C (pronounced T-Nuk) was a nasty word backwards, but it was rocking. That was the first concert I saw at the Coliseum in Tuscaloosa and where I realized what all the fuss about getting “fucked up” was about.

Although I didn’t smoke reefer I had to breathe and the group of coeds sitting next to me where smoking throughout so I got what I later learned was called a “contact high.”

Balderdash.

I couldn’t convince my parents I didn’t indulge because my clothes smelled as if I’d been on tour with the bands! However,
there was no experience like hearing Bloodrock’s D.O.A or Grand Funk’s I’m Your Captain live with or without marijuana.

Uh-huh.

My first 8-Track, which I still own, although it finally stopped playing, but not until the tape dry-rotted in 2000, was Steppenwolf Live.

Goddamn, the Pusher Man. “I’d cut him if he stands or shoot him if he runs…”

I was running on empty even before Jackson Browne. Yeah, I collected his LPs, too.

WMSU: The Voice of Southern

As the years progressed towards college (1972-76) my collection grew; Pink Floyd, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Brewer and Shipley, and Savoy Brown began to visit my turntable and college naturally afforded more experiences as I’d share my tastes with others who shared theirs and suddenly Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper and 10cc, Lindisfarne, Strawbs, Shel Silverstein and Yes joined the party. And there was a bigger party was still waiting to start at the campus radio station.

After declaring Journalism as my major and a minor in RTF (Radio-TV-Film) I learned quickly one of the perks of working at the campus radio station, even closed-circuit AM like “WMSU, The Voice of Southern” – deejays get to promote new stuff before they reach the record stores. Luckily, I also had a shift on the FM side which could almost reach The Free State of Laurel, Mississippi thirty five miles away.

As closed-circuit, the AM was piped into the on campus dormitories ineffectuality leading to a weekend nighttime audience of dozens. When I tried to give away two free tickets to the Charles Bronson/ Jan Michael Vincent film The Mechanic, promoting the opening of a new theater in Hattiesburg in 1973 I threatened listeners – what listeners – by throwing 45s against the wall on an open mic. I called a girl friend and asked her to call me back and I’d give them to her and she refused, saying if I wanted to give them to her she’d take them, so I did and she took my roommate to the movie!

What an adventure, until I was kicked off the air in 1974 for being a “radical.” I wasn’t so much a radical; I made the mistake of pissing off the Dean of Fine Arts over the telephone, who couldn’t tell time. That’s another story for another time, however, but the opportunity to spin platters, record carts on Revox 8-track reel-to-reel recorders and generally sit alone in a control room surrounded by the likes Buddy Holly, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, The Big Bopper, The James Gang, The Beatles, The Nice, Steely Dan and Steelers Wheels was analogous with dying and becoming reincarnated as a guitar in the hands of Chet Atkins.

The only aspect missing would have been to be named program manager because the guy who had that position spent more time talking on the telephone to his girl friend and throwing shrink-wrapped albums in the trashcan!

Forget idiosyncrasy, this guy was an asshole who liked country and western music and didn’t consider other motifs: “I don’t give a fuck about rock music.” Therefore, I didn’t give a fuck about his programming and played whatever I liked and often spun records by artist I knew little or nothing about.

I can thank him for thrice, however, for throwing away Todd Rundgren A Wizard A True Star (1973; radio station edited version no less) and in 1974 Tangerine Dream: Phaedra and Aqua, a solo LP by Tadream founder Edgar Froese.

My First Tangerine Dream: Phaedra

Anyone familiar with Tadream recognizes they aren’t an AM format, in fact, if you went into a record store in Mississippi or Alabama in 1974 their LPs weren’t categorized. You’d find them under Imports along with Vangelis, Amon Düül, Passport or any group not from the United States. By the eighties they were considered new wave, then new age. To me, they will always be Tangerine Dream, period.

I recorded my shows on the Revox and for later playback on my Lafayette half-track reel-to-reel. On my Sunday night FM shift I used my own name but on AM I was Troy Russell!

“Tonight Tangerine Dream will entertain you with Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares off their album Phaedra on the Troy Russell show.” I figured any guys stuck in the dorm on a Friday night were probably masturbating and sniffing airplane glue so what the hell. Any girls without dates weren’t listening to AM Radio anyway.

I was already familiar with Rundgren, having heard his songs Hello, It’s Me and Open My Eyes when he was with the group Nazz; they produced three albums before Todd left to form Runt: Nazz (1968), Nazz Nazz (1969) and Nazz III (1970). No wonder he went solo if they couldn’t even come up with album names. I had his first three albums: Runt (1970) and Runt: We Gotta Get You a Woman (1971) and Something/Anything? (1972).

Before we get into Wizard, anyone unfamiliar with S/A would enjoy the fact that not only did he produce the album – Rundgren produced everyone from The Band and Grand Funk to the New York Dolls (you’ll never see uglier transvestites than Buster Poindexter, et al) and The Tubes (Mondo Bondage, baby!) – On three of the four sides he played all instruments and dubbed all the vocals. The fourth side has backup singers and other musicians and some is so far-out funny one is likely to piss themselves listening: “S-L-U-T, she may be a slut but she looks good to me” or You really left me sore, and Piss Aaron was about a guy named Aaron and piss, what can I tell you?

“I’ll go on all night if you want me to.”

He even played a game called Sounds of the studio, before segueing into the instrumental Breathless, by giving listeners a crash course in bad editing, hissing, popping and the unenviable sound of needle zipping across an album. My favorite: “…this comes from records that were mastered lousy or mono-reprocessed for stereo.”

Many regard this as his best work and arguably it transcends much of the talent found on the average albums. The first three sides are a myriad of styles and muscial motifs and he produced hits like Hello, It’s Me again and I Saw the Light and even burned down the carousel and “…we all left town the next day.”

A Wizard A True Star (1973) Painting by Arthur Wood. Back cover reversed the image and text

If S/A? maintained a high level of genius then the Wizard was genius exponential; while the average album length rarely stretched thirty or forty minutes for both sides, Rundgren jammed 55:56 onto the vinyl. Side One was so long that when the twelfth song, Le Feel Internacionale, ended the needle went directly into the center label!

It was the longest recording ever and while some distortion was inevitable it didn’t matter. It was a brilliant album and the music was an eclectic mixture of rock, doo wop, bubble gum and surrealism. It was unfortunate that the original master tape was destroyed in a fire at the Bearsville warehouse in 1985.

As I indicated earlier, the deejay copy was an edited version, which was as silly as anything imaginable because the only edit was the word shit in the song When the Shit Hits the Fan/Sunset Blvd! Forget the word, most radio stations weren’t going to play a song where the disc jockey can’t even say the title! It wasn’t as bad as the edited version of Steppenwolf’s The Pusher; who wants to hear that classic with goddamned bleeped 17 goddamed times? Most stations just played the unexpurgated version anyway.

The twist here was that while shit was bleeped words like pussy were not and I’m not referring to felines.
Often my posts refer to: Here we are again the start of the end but there’s more…that is the opening lyrics to International Feel, which is one of those songs that knocks your headphones off.

Gatefold on Wizard/Star

Rundgren engineered side one sans the usual silence between tracks so that each song ended by segueing immediately into the next song. Highlights from side one included: Rock and Roll Pussy which repeats “You’re only just a…only just a…a few times before ending with only just a rock and roll pussy” before Todd imitates a bizarre laughing dog leitmotif in Dogfight Giggle ending with him questioning: “Don’t you think of anything but sex?”

Todd has always been a great lyricist and his guitar style is as recognizable as David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. In his later LP, Todd (1974) he has a line that has always been a personal favorite from Heavy Metal Kids: “I know I could make this world so peaceful and calm if I could only get my hands on a hydrogen bomb.”

Todd’s guitar imitating arrows from a bow is an amazing use of sound direction as it flies across the speakers to imbed itself in the “pretty bird…dead at the end of the shaft of Zen Archer.” It is a chillingly beautiful song that really strikes at the heart of pathos.

By far a signature track that reveals the surrealist depictions of the cover art is Just Another Onionhead; and da da Dali:

Dada dali goodbye, dada dali don’t sigh
Your soft alarm clocks quake me
So boil your beans and meet me at perignon station
Crutch me dali again, lobster telephone friend
Stay in your seat, watch what you eat
If you don’t get a dead mule then you’ll know I’m in heat
Dada dali hello, dada dali you’re just another onionhead

Luis Buñuel’s collaboration with painter Salvador Dali on the dadaist’s surreal nightmare silent landmark film Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog) reveals much of what makes this song so funny and profound. Un Chien Andalou Potent Cinematic Surrealism

While side two was recorded in the more traditional manner with a medley of bubble gum and doo wop songs: I’m So Proud: Ooh Baby Baby/La la Means I Love You/Cool Jerk – the saddest day of my life was hearing Cool Jerk used in a Cool Whip whipped cream commercial – and ending with the rousing Just One Victory which was usually the last song of a live performance – at least it was when I saw him in 1975 at the July Jam in Jackson, Mississippi with Utopia which included musicians Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton and John Wilcox with all playing multiple instruments.

The original pressing featured a “band aid” poem written by Patti Smith, a short bio about the album and a postcard encouraging purchasers to send their name to be included on a poster in Todd’s next album. With the LP Todd, all the postcards were transformed into a poster of the cover art, a picture of the artist. I was dismayed to later find that I had forgotten to mail mine and had instead left it inside the sleeve.

Schmuck.

Lost in all these memories, but never forgotton was after rescuing the album from the trashcan I decided to play the opening track, unaware that Bearsville had included a little disclaimer explaining that side one was basically on contiunous loop! It didn’t take me long to realize I couldn’t stop the LP so I played the entire first side.

Afterwards, I was both concerned and surprised to see the the silent telephone light blinking alerting me to a caller. Since I never got requests on my AM shift I expected it to be the program manager calling to rip into me for not playing more Conway Twitty and The Twittybirds, but instead it was some stoned guy who asked me:

“What’s the name of the song you just played?”

“Which song?” I replied.

“Aaah, there was more than one?”

“There were 12 in a row!”

I could tell the airplane glue must’ve been wearing off so I just told him the name of the album and hung up so her could get back to masturbating and I could play side two!

On September 6, 2009, in Akron, OH, Rundgren is scheduled to perform the entire A Wizard, A True Star album live for the first time in his career, according to Todd Rundgren Radio

I’ll keep up with that news just in case I can afford to see him for one more victory, and I’ll be all right!

In the final installments; Part 3, May 3rd and Part 4, May 9th we’ll explore KAAY Little Rock’s Bleecker Street starring Vandergraf Generator’s Pawnhearts co-starring Man Erg, dizzy scrutiny of rotational speeds, Monty Python’s fun with polyvinyl chloride, colored and pictured discs, Ambrosia’s pyramid, singing movie end credits with Harry Nilsson, the lasting legacy of 8-track tapes and why Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” spoiled me for the rest of my life…at least so far.

A Wizard A True Star
Side 1
International Feel
Never Never Land
Tic Tic Tic, It Wears Off
You Need Your Head
Rock & Roll Pussy
Dogfight Giggle
You Don’t Have to Camp Around
Flamingo
Zen Archer
Just Another Onionhead; da da Dali
When the Shit Hits the Fan/Sunset Blvd
Le Feel Internacionale

Side 2
Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel
Does Anybody Love You?
I’m So Proud: Ooh Baby Baby/La la Means I Love You/Cool Jerk [medley]
Hungry for Love
I Don’t Want to Tie You Down
Is It My Name?
Just One Victory

Musicians
Todd Rundgren: guitar, vocals
Rick Derringer: guitar
Mark “Moogy” Klingman: keyboards
M. Frog Labat (Jean-Yves Labat de Rossi): synthesizer
Ralph Schuckett: bass
John Siegler: bass, cello
John Siomos: drums
Randy Brecker, Michael Brecker: horn
Barry Rogers: trombone
David Sanborn: horn, saxophone