Remembering My Dad Through Classic Rock’s Greatest Misses

August 1, 2019 7:26 AM

Morgan Enos (Other Houses) talks bonding with his dad over rock & roll’s flops and misfires.
posted by josher71 (20 comments total)

Oh my god this speaks to me. My dad had that terrible Paul McCartney album and I listened to it _all the time_ as a kid. Same with Billy Joel's "River of Dreams." My dad is an ENORMOUS Jethro Tull fan (I think I've seen them live with him like six or seven times), and all those sub-par mid- to late-period albums like "Roots to Branches" are etched into my memory and very attached to my emotions about my dad (sidebar: I maintain that this cut off one of Tull's live albums is just about as fine a work as anything else they've done). Thanks for sharing this!
posted by Maaik at 7:54 AM on August 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

Oh my god "Catfish Rising." My dad lovingly still has the program from that tour stashed away in his house. It was either that tour or the "Rock Island" one where he scored backstage passes (pasted into his program, of course) and my mom wound up onstage because during the meet and greet, the band asked if she wanted to dance onstage with them. They put her behind a scrim so her silhouette loomed over the audience and she danced through the last song, and when it was over, Ian Anderson walked behind the scrim, threw her over his shoulder and carried her off-stage.
posted by Maaik at 8:02 AM on August 1, 2019 [10 favorites]

My dad came from a far different era of music consumption, where you wore out the grooves of a half-baked record because you felt like you owed it to the artist. They were like old friends that you stuck with through thick or thin, not floating online avatars you could mute on a whim. No skipping, no scrolling, no algorithm-fueled hummingbird brain.

It me.
posted by allthinky at 9:06 AM on August 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

When I was a teen and young adult in the late seventies/early eighties, I bought every damn disk that The Who or individual members of the band put out. Townsend's Empty Glass was and still is terrific but everything else that they put out during that era was total garbage. I'm pretty sure that those records are all in milk crates in the garage having been moved to at least a dozen different houses but not been played in 35 years.
posted by octothorpe at 9:20 AM on August 1, 2019 [6 favorites]

> ...you wore out the grooves of a half-baked record because you felt like you owed it to the artist. They were like old friends that you stuck with through thick or thin, not floating online avatars you could mute on a whim. No skipping, no scrolling, no algorithm-fueled hummingbird brain.

That sounds to me like an odd retcon of an era of music consumption.

New major artist albums listed at $9 each in 1980. That's $30 in 2019 dollars. Before the time of ubiquitous internet when you bought a dog of an album, that was it for new music exposure until your budget opened up again to buy another album. So you either gave up on it or used it as ambient filler so that you didn't feel like you'd just wasted your money.
posted by ardgedee at 9:22 AM on August 1, 2019 [14 favorites]

This is also why every town with a record store also had a used record store.
posted by ardgedee at 9:25 AM on August 1, 2019 [7 favorites]

being old enough to be that dad, let me just say that I got over this syndrome while still in my teens. Being a big Yes fan at the time, I simply had to own all the solo albums the individual members put out in 1976. So yeah, lesson learned before I hit seventeen and it didn't really cost me that much, and I still stand by Jon Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow -- about as out there as out has ever gone.
posted by philip-random at 9:32 AM on August 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

ardgedee: "This is also why every town with a record store also had a used record store."

Yeah, I bought most of my vinyl records from a used record shop up on the second floor where all of the records were stored in orange crates. I think I paid $1 or $2 for most of them even when they were only a year or two old.
posted by octothorpe at 9:35 AM on August 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

everything else that they put out during that era was total garbage.

Too Late The Hero isn't that bad!
posted by thelonius at 9:38 AM on August 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

So yeah, lesson learned

dude, I was listening to Fish Out of Water, like, last week
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:43 AM on August 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

> ...you wore out the grooves of a half-baked record because you felt like you owed it to the artist.

Before the time of ubiquitous internet when you bought a dog of an album, that was it for new music exposure until your budget opened up again to buy another album. So you either gave up on it or used it as ambient filler so that you didn't feel like you'd just wasted your money.

yeah, my experience was definitely more the latter than the former. That is, I certainly didn't feel I owed Emerson Lake + Palmer anything for the mess known as Love Beach, and I couldn't deliberately damage and return Asia's debut album quickly enough. But all that said, sometimes an album just blew past me WAY over my head, but for whatever reason, I hung onto it, gave it a few more tries, particularly in my early teens. And thank all gods for that, else I'd never have cracked the glory of stuff like Van Morrison's St. Dominic's Preview and King Crimson's Lark's Tongue in Aspic, even the aforementioned Yes.
posted by philip-random at 9:49 AM on August 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

dude, I was listening to Fish Out of Water, like, last week

Fish is okay, I guess, definitely a step up on Steve Howe's fumbling. But in the end, it just drove home the point (to me anyway) that Chris Squire was a brilliant bass player and backing vocalist for the band known as Yes*. I also found Patrick Moraz's ! somewhat bedazzling in places, but overall, just kind of ... too much (and not in a good way).

* I still rue the fact that the world never got a version of Silently Falling with Jon Anderson's lead vox, and the rest of the band pushing the instrumental boundaries
posted by philip-random at 9:55 AM on August 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

I just pretend it's Jon singing
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:58 AM on August 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is a perfect place for me to share Childish Gambino's recent cover of "Lost In You", a track originally by Chris Gaines. If you aren't immediately familiar with the name, that's because he doesn't exist. He was a fictional Australian rock star created as an alter ego for country megastar Garth Brooks. There was supposed to be a biopic and everything. It was an absolutely wild maneuver, and failed dramatically, but I remain an unapologetic Chris Gaines fan.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:10 AM on August 1, 2019 [6 favorites]

....failed dramatically

Brooks had a lot more success with the "Wayne Coyne" persona, though
posted by thelonius at 11:01 AM on August 1, 2019 [8 favorites]

So you either gave up on it or used it as ambient filler so that you didn't feel like you'd just wasted your money.

I found there were some albums which I initially dismissed as somehow Not Worthy which, upon repeat listens, became something of real favorites of mine. Sometimes an artist's work needs time to be consumed and processed, and an initial dismissal isn't always wise.
posted by hippybear at 7:14 PM on August 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

Oof. Haven't We Lost Enough? off of CS&N Live It Up (FTA: lunar hot dogs cover) felt like a gem in the rough. It still pulls me back listening to it now.
posted by filtergik at 3:41 AM on August 2, 2019

I definitely remember taking home an album and listening to it many times all the way through before I decided if I liked it or not. I doubt that I give any music that much of a chance these days.
posted by octothorpe at 7:53 AM on August 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

listening to it many times all the way through before I decided if I liked it or not.

yeah, the only time this seems to happen anymore is when a song doesn't particularly grab me but then it gets popular anyway and I keep on hearing it. A recent example of this is the Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody. I was only ever a fan of their very early stuff (pre-Boho-rhapsody), but watching the movie, I had to admit that some of that later stuff -- well, it's become hard to argue* with.

* even though We Are The Champions remains perhaps the wrongest choice imaginable to have become the official Live Aid anthem ("no time for losers" etc)
posted by philip-random at 10:50 AM on August 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

That sounds to me like an odd retcon of an era of music consumption.

I definitely remember taking home an album and listening to it many times all the way through before I decided if I liked it or not.

I was ahead of my time as I was always one that listened to singles, skipped around a lot, and I have many songs and albums that I would list as all time favorites but I never listened to anything else by the artist, or very little. I would even say side A of an album was a favorite, but didn't really know side B. I am the worst fan.

That said, I still brought home an album and listened to the whole thing at least once before deciding, and usually more. Not any more. It was an investment of time and money then.
posted by bongo_x at 7:31 PM on August 2, 2019