Freshman year in college a guy down the hall in my dorm, John, tried to turn me on to Neil Young. He was certain that if I liked Bob Dylan, I would like Neil Young.  I didn’t.  A few decades later I ran across Harvest Moon, an album I really didn’t expect to like.

I listened to this one over and over again while I was writing up my dissertation.  I had been working at Motorola but my time there was officially over, but I really needed their workstations, and  mostly their printer.  I would come in late in the evening around midnight, after my fiancee had gone to sleep and would work until dawn, having the whole place to myself.  I played Harvest Moon almost exclusively, over and over.

I would come home at dawn, see the fiancee off to work and go to sleep for a while.  I figured when the writing was done I would be sick of Harvest Moon, but that never happened.  I still find listening to this one, end to end, a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

When I started this I wanted to avoid putting out a list of the top albums of my high school and college years, but here we are.  Goth pioneers Bauhaus turn psychedelic and come out as Love and Rockets.  As the wiki pages says, there is still a thrill in Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven.  I saw these guys in Minneapolis at First Avenue and their live show was as stunning as their studio album, which I didn’t imagine possible.

Well, we always knew this was a possibility.  I wonder where else this data has been going (I’m think of you, NSA).

Woman says her Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

By: Gary Horcher. Updated: May 24, 2018 – 9:51 PM

The local FM station used to play albums straight through with no commercials when I was a kid.  I think they called it The Album Hour.  It was late at night, and when an interesting sounding one would be announced, I would try to stay up and (hopefully) record it all onto one side of a TDK 90 minute tape on my boombox.

This is how I got a few of my early favorite albums, including Steely Dan’s Aja, which I still like and may yet make my list.  This one is Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story.  Even wiki has lots of good things to say about this one.

It had the hit Maggie May, but just a good mix of music.  I still listen to this one end to end probably every year.  Rod did have a long pop career, but the later music makes people forget that in the early days, with the guys from The Faces (who all appear on this album) he did some great stuff.

Not sure I agree with all of this, but an interesting read.  From the Wall Street Journal:

In Booming Japan, the Phillips Curve Is Dead
Unemployment is down but inflation isn’t budging. Why companies resist raising prices

Wanted to catch the Boston vs Cleveland game, but we don’t  have a cable box upstairs and the game is on TNT (or one of those cable channels).  We do have a new Amazon Echo on the nightstand, but couldn’t find the game on it last night.  Looks like ESPN radio has the game live!  When was the last time you listened to a game (any sort of game) on the radio?

I was just watching Golden State vs Houston in the playoffs and thought I saw Adam Duritz in the second row.  Turns out he is a big Golden State fan.   I was going to post this one tomorrow, but do I really have to do these once a day, every day?

I remember hearing their hit “Mr Jones” and thought it was pretty good (appreciated the Dylan references).   At that time I was finishing up school and would soon be getting married, getting a new job, moving to Europe and having a child.  I never watched David Letterman in those days, but for some reason  I saw him introduce the band.  He was clearly a fan.  At that point I figured I had to give their CD a listen.  August and Everything After reminds me of those days.

When I started this post Houston was getting hammered.  I looked up and it is almost the half and Golden State is down by 10.  But now I am distracted and keep looking for Adam Duritz in the background instead of paying attention to the game.

Not a lot to say about this one.  I bought the CD and brought it to a party at my old friend Dan’s house in Dallas.  Played it over and over again.  I don’t even remember if I had heard the hit song “Life in a Northern Town”, but I suppose I must have.   Reading the Dream Academy wiki I found out they played Saturday Night Live.  I didn’t own a TV in those days and never even heard about this until today.  A cool video for this one that I ran across years later.  Just some nice music by some talented people.

So my old friend Paul “Harry” Neuhardt tagged me for this 10 Favorite Albums thing on Facebook.  Since I am not sending my content to Facebook these days I decided to do it here.

I have lots of albums and artists that I really like.  Picking 10 is going to be hard in a funny way.  Five or so will be easy, then there are maybe 20 or so albums that I like quite a lot.  Whittling those down will be tougher.

My criteria is going to be:  albums that I never get tired of listening to.  There are some very good albums I still like to take out every now and then (I am listening to a bit of Bruce Springsteeen after about a 30 year hiatus) but stuff that is practically an addiction.

I will start with Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde“.  One of the first albums I ever bought.  I remember reading an article that had several local DJs listing their favorite albums.  Most of them I had heard of, but one I had never even heard of, but was listed a few times by the DJs was “Blonde on Blonde”.   So, mostly out of curiosity, I went out and bought it.  This is when buying an album was a serious commitment.  Maybe ten bucks for something that wasn’t on the radio and nobody had ever heard of.  At least none of my teenage rock and roll friends Had heard of it.

I used to listen to it after school in high school, over and over again while playing pool in our playroom.  I remember it took me weeks to get through all four sides (it was a double album).  I was stunned.  Never heard anything like it before.  I wouldn’t even mention it to anyone I knew.  My taste in music was already a bit suspect.  I didn’t like Led Zep or Rush or Yes or any of the other bands my friends listened to.  But this one had something I liked that I still can’t really describe.  I was even more surprised to find out many years later, in College, that lots of other people liked this one, too.

An article from the Boston Review on the long term effects of the policies after Hurricane Katrina.  I mentioned some of the changes I saw in a recent post (New Orleans II) but also mentioned the loss of important instutions like Charity Hospital.  This article discusses what was lost, and who ended up paying the price.

Our Own Private Disaster

Terrible Schools Are Great for Business

ERIK LOOMIS