December Vinyl Spins Challenge

Day 4: Train
Play an album to soundtrack an epic train journey

When I think of trains I immediately associate them with the American west.

This is a really nice collection of songs by Dom Flemons celebrating the black cowboy and his important place in the history of the west.



Dom Flemons - Presents Black Cowboys

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Yer Ol' Uncle D said:
Day 4: Train
Play an album to soundtrack an epic train journey

When I think of trains I immediately associate them with the American west.

This is a really nice collection of songs by Dom Flemmons celebrating the black cowboy and his important place in the history of the west.



Dom Flemons - Presents Black Cowboys

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In hindsight, I should have spun the cd of Rhiannon’s new Silk Road album.

Flemons is cool. Did you see that Carolina Chocolate Drops are playing some festival here next year?
 
Day 5

I’m sure I’ve told this story before and it really is classic my dad, because I’m pretty sure my brother had a copy of 20 Greatest Hits prior to this happening. Anyhow, my dad was a Marine for 20 something years. He was a database administrator for a long period towards the end starting when I was in the second grade.

His first deployment to Japan was for three years when I was a year and a half old. My mom went and lived with her parents for the first half of that deployment and then we moved there with him the last year and a half. I have very foggy memories of Japan.

The second time he was deployed was in like 85/86. I was in junior high. I know because we were living in town at Jacksonville by that time. He was a Gunnery Sargent by then.

When he came back home, he had a tape that he had made from one of his corporals who had bought a Sony CD player and the entire Beatles catalog at the PX. My dad was excited about this tape and told us it had all of the Beatles’ greatest hits on it.

It was this album on one side and Yellow Submarine on the other side. While it certainly wasn’t what he proclaimed it to be, it did blow my mind. I became obsessed.

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The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
 
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Day 6: Funeral
Play an album that contains a track you'd like to have played at your funeral.

When I check out there won't be an organized funeral. If some folks want to get together on their own, hoist some pints and play some records, that's up to them. If I perpetuated the gathering, that's cool.

If a song was to be played in my honor, I want it to be honest and accurate. This tune is me - a well-meaning person who loved and strived to make others happy but was fatally flawed and ultimately couldn't save himself. It's a beauty...



The Black Crowes - Amorica

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Day 6: Funeral

Play an album that contains a track you'd like to have played at your funeral.

The Uncluded – Hokey Fright


Had to go digital this morning. This is OOP and selling for typically over $150. I'm still wishing for a represa one day, but with Aesop and Kimya not on good terms I don't have high hopes.

Anyway, if people are going to have some kinda funeral for me I hope it's celebratory, not somber. And they better play "Organs."

 
Day 6: Funeral
Play an album that contains a track you'd like to have played at your funeral.

I plan on being cremated and scattered. No formal funeral, but hopefully a wake with lots of celebratory music.

For the cremation though, play this in the background. Send me out viking style with chaos and noise.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse ~ ARC

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Day 6: Funeral

I was stumped with this prompt at first as I don’t think about my future funeral very often (or at all), but I would hope for a celebratory wake or something of that nature rather than a standard funeral with my loved ones playing my favourite songs at full volume.

Play “Orbit” as I’m released into orbit or something…

NAO - Saturn

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Day 3: Work
Play an album that alleviates the office blues.

22° Halo - Lily Of The Valley

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This is actually a pretty sad record, so it doesn’t necessarily help cure the “blues,” but I have music playing non stop in my office every day and it helps me through particularly tough days. This has been on repeat in there these last couple weeks.

 
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Day 6

100% one of those things I haven’t thought about. 1000% one of those things that will get a different answer most days. Would like someone to sing I’ll Fly Away. Maybe play A Day in the Life because it is my favorite song.

Today, I’m at Fire by Joe Henderson. Because of the obvious, I want to be cremated. But also because I find this album and Jazz peculiar in its exploration of sound and meaning. Henderson, one of the bright shining stars of Hard Bop made this weird ass Soul Jazz album with Alice Coltrane. He’d been inspired and was searching and that’s what i love about Jazz. There’s also a part of me that likes the thought of making the ten or fifteen people that show up sit through 11 minutes of musical chaos in remembrance of why there’s only 10 or 15 people present.

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Joe Henderson featuring Alice Coltrane - The Elements
 
Day 7: Hospitals

Interpret this one as you will.

Coming up on the 5 year anniversary of an extended hospital for me. Spent 10 days over Christmas 1999 in the hospital, having 2/3 of my large intestine / colon removed due to pre-cancerous findings during a colonoscopy. Recovery was incredibly rough, but me and my semicolon are back to full health and I'm still immensely grateful and awed by the hospital staff I encountered, especially the nurses and just how good they were.

10 days was a long time though, especially having to spend Christmas away from the family, so I'm going with Pet Sounds, and specifically the refrain from Sloop John B:

Well, I feel so broke up I wanna go home

And a reminder to get your colonoscopy. It could (and did for me) save your life.

Beach Boys ~ Pet Sounds

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Day 5: Dads

Elliott Smith - From A Basement On A Hill

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I’m sure I’ve told this story before. One year I forgot to get my dad a birthday present and as I drove down to their house stopped off and impulsively grabbed Elliott Smith’s XO to give him because I thought I had remembered us having to sit through the credits after Good Will Hunting because he wanted to hear the rest of the final song. He ended up absolutely loving XO and bought up everything else he had put out. I was living in the UK when From A Basement… was released and my dad would email me lyrics from the album without any other explanation.

After he died unexpectedly, I had to pick his car from the train station and he had an Elliott Smith CD playing in his car, and it wrecked me.
 
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