Monthly Archives: February 2022

Throughout 2022 I’ll be counting down my 100 favorite albums, because why not. I’m up to number ninety-three.

Freshman year of college, Michael, Ira and I decided to go see our first blue movie. On a Saturday night we took the train into Boston’s North Station and crossed the street to go to the Pussycat Theater. The marquee read “NOW SHOWING: AFTERNOON DELIGHTS.” Just the thought was workin’ up my appetite. If the movie was even half as titillating as the 1976 number one hit by Starland Vocal Band from where it drew its title, we were in for an exciting adventure on a par with skyrockets in flight.

The reality was, shall I say, anticlimactic. First of all, when we went in, the movie was already in progress. I hate that! It’s disrespectful to all those who put their craft into making the picture. More importantly, we missed the whole setup of the story, and we never did figure out why Aunt Celeste was at the construction site. And while I wasn’t expecting Raging Bull or The Deer Hunter, I wanted at least a marginally compelling story and a hero who emerges from various scenarios a little weary but wiser, presented with an ample amount of exposed swimsuit areas and characters baking the potato. Afternoon Delights had many exposed swimsuit areas and baked potatoes, but little else to recommend.

In addition, how the women characters were treated in the film was frequently disturbing. They should be in charge of their sexuality. Sadly, that’s not always the case in flesh flicks, which is one reason I no longer watch horn movies with women in them, though that’s not the main reason.

The most disappointing thing about the film Afternoon Delights was the godawful rendition of the song “Afternoon Delight” that played over the closing credits. Atonal and devoid of personality, it lacked the charm that made Starland Vocal Band a sensation.

When the movie ended, Michael, Ira and I exited the theater, not caring to see the movie start over and answering our lingering questions about Aunt Celeste. We walked the few blocks to Faneuil Hall and treated ourselves to candy apples. It was a way to psychically cleanse our souls and to take us back to a more innocent time, a time that ended 48 minutes prior.

Blonde On Blonde would make an apt title for a motion picture designed for the purpose of erotic satisfaction, though I doubt Bob Dylan’s office would approve of that title. Many years after I experienced Afternoon Delights, when I was licensing Dylan songs on behalf of Sony Music, I sent Bob’s manager the details of a compilation CD of other artists’ renditions of Dylan songs. Bob’s manager had no objection to the concept, but he didn’t care for the compilation’s title. “Doin’ Dylan? That sounds like something you’d see on the marquee of the Pussycat Theater across the street from Boston’s North Station!” I’m paraphrasing.

For all I know, Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde may have been inspired by a bareskinema movie of that title, a bawdy film with individual scenes that inspired the album’s song titles: “Just Like a Woman,” “I Want You,” “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” and “Visions of Johanna,” though a scene entitled “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” doesn’t sound arousing. While the producer of the it may exist erotica flick Blonde On Blonde made an adult film for a select audience, Bob was making adult music that penetrated the mainstream of popular music. He did so on his own terms.

Blonde On Blonde the album also includes “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” (which you thought was called “Everybody Must Get Stoned”) and “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” and other songs that may not display the same level of craft as “Afternoon Delight” the song, which includes the lyric “The thought of rubbin’ you is getting so exciting,” but they did set Dylan apart from his contemporaries. Each of his albums around this time broke the conventions of what popular song lyrics could be and what singers of popular songs could sounds like.

By the by, Starland Vocal Band won two Grammy Awards for “Afternoon Delight,” their first record. Bob Dylan didn’t even get a Grammy Award nomination for his first album. Or his second. Or his third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh albums, the seventh being Blonde On Blonde. Or his eighth or ninth or…let me cut to the chase. He had to wait until his 19^th studio album to get his first Grammy Award, when its track “Gotta Serve Somebody” earned the trophy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male. Yes, The Recording Academy finally admitted Bob Dylan’s a great singer. “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Like a Rolling Stone” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and other earlier works of his are decent, but you must admit, they’re not “Afternoon Delight.”

That said, Starland Vocal Band failed to crack my ranking of my 100 favorite albums, but there’s more from Bob Dylan to come on this list.

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Commemorating the February 12 birthdays of The Doobie Brothers’ Michael McDonald, The Doors’ Ray Manzarek, The Go-Betweens’ Grant McLennan, MFSB’s Vincent Montana, Gucci Mane, and Gene McDaniels, and the February 13 birthdays of New Order’s Peter Hook, Peter Gabriel, Feist, Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, The Monkees’ Peter Tork, Robbie Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, King Floyd, and Stockard Channing.

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Today’s playlist remembers the late Betty Davis and commemorates the February 10 birthdays of Roberta Flack, The Ventures’ Don Wilson, Ral Donner and Peter Allen, and the February 11 birthdays of D’Angelo, Gene Vincent, Sheryl Crow, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Peter Hayes, Brandy, Sergio Mendes, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Kelly Rowland, First Choice’s Rochelle Fleming, Lou Johnson, Leon Haywood, City Girls’s Yung Miami, and photographer Lynn Goldsmith (a/k/a Will Powers).

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Throughout 2022 I’ll be counting down my 100 favorite albums, because why not. I’m up to number ninety-four.

“You always wanted a lover. I only wanted a job.”

• Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, “What Have I Done To Deserve This?”

In the summer of 1984, before heading off to my senior year of college, I wanted a lover and a job. The latter got taken care of when I landed summer employment at Lipton, where I spent most of my days in a large room with two dozen senior citizens taking Cup-A-Soup packets, putting eleven croutons in each and heat-sealing them. You thought a machine did that? Nope. It was yours truly and the cast of Cocoon, sitting at a long table in a brightly-lit room that had a transistor radio, a source of several conflicts, all but one of which were started by “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” by Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson, with most of the women taking the pro-Julio position and most of the men taking the anti-Julio position. There’d be shouting and name-calling and occasionally croutons flew through the air like ICBM missiles set to destroy those who didn’t take to worshiping at the Iglesias. The one conflict that wasn’t brought about by this song came from one by John Denver. One afternoon his song “Hey, it’s good to be back home again” came on, which so angered Lipton’s answer to Wilford Brimley. He got up from his chair and yelled “I CAN’T TAKE THIS ROCK AND ROLL!” and when angrily reaching for the power dial he knocked the radio off the table, breaking it and putting an end to the bellicose effects of Julio Iglesias-Willie Nelson duets. Rock and roll causes such violent reactions, kids.

How is it I’m spending the summer of my 20^th year counting croutons with people 100 times my age? (I excel at math, btw.) Why am I at a place where the threat to decency is Johnny Rotten Denver and not somewhere using my intellect? What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this? I didn’t feel I belonged there, my stellar crouton-packing quota notwithstanding.

The feeling of being somewhere I don’t belong is a feeling I’ve experienced often:

• in elementary school, where Ellen Baker and Michelle Somethingoranother told skinny me I look like a shriveled up piece of bacon;
• in the public high school I attended for ninth and tenth grades, where a fellow student nicknamed me Professor simply because I knew from latitude and longitude;
• in the private high school I attended for eleventh and twelfth grades, where our typing teacher whispered a racial slur in my ear, and where the student body was full of wealthy white snobs, one of whose murder years later was the basis for a Lifetime TV movie starring John Stamos;
• in college, where I didn’t drink or get high or go to the games and root for the home team. To this day I don’t know if my university even had games or teams;
• at the Passover Seder table, as I’ve been an atheist since my Sunday School teacher first told us about God, plus in my twenties and thirties my siblings and cousins conversed about which friends were getting married (my friends weren’t), who was having babies (my friends weren’t), and the latest goings on at Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 (I was never a big TV watcher);
• at the gym. If you’ve ever been to a gym in a gayborhood, you know that most everybody there doesn’t need to be there as they are already in perfect shape while those of us who should be there shouldn’t be there lest we want to feel like a shriveled-up strip of bacon;
• on Facebook, as I rarely feel like anything that happens in my life is noteworthy, nor do I think any of my connections cares about what music I listen to or what TV shows I watch, nor do I wish to engage in discourse with folks who think a simple act that may stop the spread of a deadly virus is an assault on their freedom.

At my workplace, post-Lipton, was where I often felt I belonged. The music business was perfect for the kind of guy prone to making a list of his favorite albums. My first job out of college was at CBS Records, in their Accounts Receivable department. (I excel at math, remember.) Most of the people with whom I worked were nice, though I also worked with a Karen. An actual Karen, not a 2020s pejorative Karen. Being in the same department as Karen meant being in the wrong place. I’ll tell you why via an anecdote. There was a coffee shop in the lobby of the building where we worked. Every day they offered a free cup of coffee if you could answer the day’s trivia question. One day the question was “What four presidents were assassinated while in office?,” to which Karen answered “I know Lincoln was, and Kennedy was, and I think Reagan was, but he’s still alive.” (Reagan was still president at that time.) She had to pay for her coffee. I had to get out of that department.

The more I moved up, the more I felt more like I fit in. There was a time in 2006 when my company sent me to Geneva to do a presentation for our foreign affiliates. That’s where this strip of bacon sizzles. I’m very comfortable giving presentations, perhaps because it’s a situation over which I have control, for the most part. This Geneva convention coincided with the Montreux Jazz Festival, taking place about an hour away. A bus was rented for conference attendees to head off to Montreux, spending the afternoon at the home of the festival’s founder, Claude Nobs, before going to the concert. Nobs’s home was a gorgeous multi-house chalet atop a mountain that overlooked Lake Geneva. Jac Holtzman, founder of Elektra Records, joined us there, and I made him laugh with several of my stories. A helicopter landed and out stepped Lyor Cohen, the founder of Def Jam Records and at that time the Chairman and Chief Executive of Warner Music Group. He was with new signing Paolo Nutini, who had magnificent facial bone structure. Paolo and I engaged in conversation and shared a lot of ha-has, about what I have no idea due to his thick Scottish accent. Still, I felt uplifted seeing a beaming smile emanate from his magnificent facial bone structure. The view from the top of this mountain, even when I wasn’t looking at Paolo, was spectacular. In a snap, shy awkward Glenn realized he had arrived, being at a chateau overlooking Lake Geneva with Jac Holtzman and Lyor Cohen and Paolo Nutini and Paolo’s magnificent facial bone structure and Claude Nobs and his all twink staff. This is where I belong.

It’s not a feeling I now feel 100% of the time, but more often than before I feel comfortable in my own skin – at work, at the gym, and, non-existent one help me, at a Passover Seder. It’s progress, which is welcome as I draw closer to the age where I should be putting croutons in Cup-A-Soup packets and railing against rock and roll.

Continuing along those lines, one of the two New Year’s resolutions I made for 2022 is to spend more time on Facebook. There are things in my life worthy of sharing, and linking to these essays about my favorite albums is my way of keeping that first resolution. My other resolution is to watch more TV, a goal I’ve had for years, mostly so I could get my money’s worth from my cable TV bills. 2021 was the first year I really made a dent there. The best thing I watched was It’s a Sin, a five-episode series set during the first few years of the AIDS epidemic, which delved into the feelings of shame people experienced about who they are – from their peers, their families, their co-workers, society, and their own internalized feelings of insecurity. Named after a song from Pet Shop Boys’ Actually, the show impressed me with its top-notch acting, directing and writing, which resonated with me deeply and remains resonant. A year later I still cry when I think about the show, which I do whenever I listen to the song. The song “It’s a Sin” is not about AIDS, but rather the feeling of shame from believing you’re always doing the wrong thing. Based on PSB Neil Tennant’s Catholic school education, the lyrics reverberate with this atheist.

The album’s other big hit in the US was “What Have I Done To Deserve This,” performed by Pet Shop Boys against their record company’s wishes with Dusty Springfield. Like It’s a Sin the series, this song boasts great writing – lyrics and music – and perfect performances. I won’t go as far as NME calling it “possibly the greatest pop song in history,” though as duets go, it certainly tops “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” Put down that crouton, Jessica Tandy.

Elsewhere on the album you get a song with the refrain “I love you, you pay my rent,” a Hallmark card waiting to happen, and you know what? Those three songs alone are enough for me to consider this album great, though “Shopping,” “Heart,” and “King’s Cross” are also worthwhile.

There was a weekly dance party I attended when I lived in New York City. Whenever they played Pet Shop Boys, which was several times a night, the dance floor would fill up, and I found myself part of a large group of like-minded people, sharing this joyful experience. I wasn’t shunned for being too skinny or too smart of too different. I found a place where I could let loose and be me and experience happiness. I deserve this.

There are more from Pet Shop Boys and from Dusty Springfield to come on this list.

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Today’s playlist commemorates the February 7 birthdays of King Curtis, Sammy Johns, Chris Rock and Eddie Izzard; the February 8 birthdays of Daft Punk’s Guy Manuel, Anderson .Paak, Mötley Crüe’s Vince Ceil, Tom Rush, England Dan Seals, Bessie Banks, James Dean, Larry Verne and Miquel Brown; and the February 9 birthdays of Carole King, Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Holly Johnson, The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt, Barbara Lewis, Barry Mann and Major Harris.

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Today’s playlist commemorates the February 5 birthdays of Jon Spencer, Barrett Strong, The Standells’ Larry Tamblyn, Spin Doctors’ Chris Barron, Bobby Brown, The Dream Academy’s Nick Laird-Clowes, Three Dog Night’s Cory Wells, actor Christopher Guest, musician Al Kooper, and Guns N’ Roses’s Duff McKagan, and the February 6 birthdays of Guns N’ Roses’s Axl Rose, Bob Marley, Jens Lekman, Kate McGarrigle, The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie, Rick Astley, Natalie Cole, and Dave Berry.

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Today’s playlist commemorates the February 3 birthdays of The Temptations’ Dennis Edwards, The Kinks’ Dave Davies, Melanie, Daddy Yankee, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Johnny Bristol, Johnny Cymbal, and Nathan Lane, and the February 4 birthdays of Alice Cooper, The 5th Dimension’s Florence LaRue, James’s Tim Booth, Natalie Imbruglia, Cam’ron and Clint Black.

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Commemorating the February 1 birthdays of The Everly Brothers’ Don Everly, OutKast’s Big Boi, MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden, X’s Exene Cervenka, Rick James, Jason Isbell, Dennis Brown, Harry Styles, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s Ray Sawyer, Monty Python’s Terry Jones, Chris Clark, and Barnes & Barnes’s Bill Mumy, and the February 2 birthdays of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Graham Nash, Stan Getz, Shakira, Honey Cone’s Edna Wright, The Bellamy Brothers’ Howard Bellamy, Mayer Hawthorne, France Joli, and Dana International.

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