My major birthday present this year was a new Sony Walkman. (Though I'd originally thought of asking for something a little more 21st century, I realized at one point I owned a slew of cassette tapes that'd been gathering dust since we'd gotten a car with a CD player.) My new tape player got regular use during the summer: playing prerecorded music as I took the dogs - Ziggy Stardust (Australian Shepherd/Sheepdog mix) and Cedar (Shepherd/Lab/something mix) - for a walk at the commonly named Bark Park. BPark has a wooded trail called the Hedge Apple Trail, a steep hill used in the winter for sledding, a creek and several playing fields. On Friday and weekend mornings (if the weather was clement) I'd take the pups and usually walk 'em through the length of the album. The following are five of my fave tapes from this summer:
Cheap Trick: The release of Oasis' newie spurred me into pulling out Cheap Trick's eponymous 1997 release on Red Ant for a July dog trek. I was glad I did. Cheap Trick was an artistic, if not popular, rebirth for a band that had seemingly descended into formulaic irrelevancy years ago. It deserved a larger audience than it received: the release plays to the band's considerable strengths (few American groups have made hard rock sound so rollicking and propulsive - not to mention funny) and contains songs as good as any the group has ever done. (Personal Pick hits: "Say Goodbye" and the melancholy pop gem, "Shelter," which sounds like it'd fit on a soundtrack for Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth.) Both disc & cassette are available in the clearance bins these days, and for those of you who still keep your copy of Heaven Tonight in regular rotation, it's worth picking up a copy. Makes a good dog walk cassette, too.Buster's Happy Hour: After two days of rain and mugginess, I was finally able to take the pups to the park one Sunday. Tape du jour was Buster Poindexter's Buster's Happy Hour (Forward Records), a collection of jump and early rhythm-and-blues released while the man was hosting a short-lived variety show of the same name on VH-1. Most people recall Buster from his overplayed dance hit, "Hot Hot Hot." Aficionados, of course, know that Buster is really a role played by David Johansen, former leader of the New York Dolls and a damn good solo artist in his own right. Johansen's career has long comprised an unceasing series of confounded expectations. The Poindexter story is a prime example of this dynamic: Johansen donned the role years before the big retro swing movement gathered steam; once Brian-come-latelies began releasing their own versions of updated swing 'n' jump music, Buster put out a disc of Spanish dance music instead. Naturally, he jumped out of that when the likes of Marc Anthony started having hits. Instead, he picked up his old name back up and turned to recording traditional blues songs as David Johansen and the Harry Smiths.
Article comments