Due to the cost of vinyl in recent years, and especially over the past year and a half, I have been tapering off my purchases of new records and any other impulse purchases. With the cost of everything else skyrocketing, it doesn’t make sense to divert money to something non-essential, not when I can get music via Qobuz and stream anything new that interests me. For me to buy new vinyl now, it has to be a very exceptional case. It has to be a reissue I’ve been wanting for a while, affordably priced, mastered by someone I trust, and a title I will play a lot in the future.
With that in mind, some of my future The Vinyl Beat articles will dig into the vaults and talk about favorites of mine that I’ve discovered and enjoyed over the years. Like this month’s edition, where I will focus on seasonal favorites of mine from decades past.
Take a little trip, take a little trip, take a little trip with me…
Summer music means different things to all of us. Many of my favorites came to me during high school through my mid 20s. Our local record store, Harmony House, used to have an annual Grand Prix sale in early June (to coincide with the race through the streets of downtown Detroit…and of course we spell Gran Prix wrong) where the entire store was discounted. Even with my lawn-mowing budget, I was able to get as many as a dozen records during those sales, and some of those became my soundtrack for the summer.
We didn’t have the luxury of a beach nearby (and we weren’t “beach people” anyway), nor was my circle of friends the types who would hang around malls or parks during the day. But still, I was playing records at home, and friends would stop by to hang out and spin some of theirs. There were times post-high school when I would go out for long drives and take a stack of cassettes, then CDs, with me.
When I got into married life and home ownership, I gravitated to music I’d play while working outdoors, elbow-deep in either the garden or an engine bay. Today, I tend to gravitate more towards funk/soul, rock, pop, alternative, etc. in summer, with the cooler months giving way to jazz, classical, and the more “artsy” rock and popular music.
I obviously have a lot of “summer” music to choose from, and too many to list in one article. Below is a sampling of records I have enjoyed for years during the summer months. Unfortunately a handful of them were either traded in or given away when CDs became all the rage (and yes, I do regret it – playing CDs of the exact same album does not trigger the same memories I used to have), so these were available on vinyl at some point. For anyone not spinning records, just about all of these are all available via streaming.
In middle- and high-school, a small group of us leaned into funk, R&B, dance, and other music beyond the arena rock most classmates listened to. Due to playing in our schools’ jazz bands, I was expanding into jazz as well. These are a few records from that era, including two I borrowed from my mom’s collection.
Chuck Mangione: Feels So Good. I probably bought this record months after it was released, but I remember hearing the title track everywhere back in the day. It also helped that one of my buddies from band was a big fan of Mangione’s. Looking back, sure, it was pop-jazz and could be considered lightweight at time, but it was a very warm and welcome record to play during the summer months.
Saturday Night Fever (Soundtrack). There’s no denying it – that soundtrack was everywhere and I also caught the bug myself. Little-known secret – I taped my cousin’s copy and played that all summer long. It took a while before I bought my own. While some of the songs could qualify as “disco,” a lot of the album was danceable pop music, aside from the Bee Gees’ ballad “How Deep Is Your Love.” The album captured a moment in time and also sparked many of us to start listening to local radio stations that began playing similar music; it certainly opened up a whole new avenue for me.
Dan Hartman: Instant Replay. This was actually Hartman’s second album, his first being more of a pop-based record that didn’t make a dent on the charts. But the title track of Instant Replay was a smash, and he applied his pop sensibilities to this record. Sure, side one is aimed straight at the dance floor, with the the title track and the soaring “Countdown/This Is It” (another popular dance track that wasn’t released as a single) taking up an entire side. Side two was more like pop-funk and just as interesting as the first side to me. Needless to say, it survived a lot of spins. Today, it holds up as a well-crafted pop record.
The Doobie Brothers: Best of the Doobies (Vols. 1 and 2). I actually bought the second Best Of prior to the first, as some of the songs were in recent memory from all the airplay – “What a Fool Believes,” “Minute By Minute,” “Real Love,” etc. I ended up liking that one enough to get the original Best of the Doobies. Both are still mainstays. I do own the individual albums, but there are times I want only the highlights, and both records are still so perfectly sequenced that they are an excellent play back-to-back, especially while on the road.
I grew up with Cal Tjader’s music in the house (thanks, mom!), and I remember one summer latching onto two of his Verve records and playing them almost daily. These were Soul Burst and Along Comes Cal. One notable sideman on Soul Burst is a young Chick Corea on piano, and he is featured throughout. Along Comes Cal has an excellent live track, “Los Banditos,” that is one of my all-time favorite Tjader tracks to this day. And the rest was arranged by Chico O’Farrill, the brilliant “Samba do Sueño” being my favorite. While selected tracks from the latter record are available through compilations, the complete album has yet to be reissued digitally by Verve.
I can’t help but mention Stevie Wonder’s single “Do I Do,” which in its album version (which radio played), became an instant favorite. Buying Original Musiquarium Vol. 1 (a compilation) became another part of my soundtrack that summer, and was my gateway into Stevie’s other marvelous records, making me a fan along the way.
A couple years out of high school, I latched onto some favorites that influenced my listening from that point forward. The following three records were taped to cassette and accompanied me on a road trip to Texas, so I always associate them with driving through the hot sun on I-35. Not surprisingly, two of the three were purchased during the aforementioned Grand Prix sale.
The Police: Synchronicity; Donald Fagen: The Nightfly; Phil Collins: Hello, I Must Be Going. I was already a fan of the Police, so hearing this new release on the road really gave me time to listen to it in depth. And although I gave away my original vinyl, I found a sealed copy on the original KC-600 “audiophile” vinyl a few years ago, and the memories flooded back…and the sound of that record is still one of the best I’ve heard.
The other two, however, were my gateway drugs into much larger bodies of work. Fagen’s record led to Steely Dan, and I ended up getting the seven Dan albums within the next year and, with the duo having split up, side projects like Flaunt the Imperfection by China Crisis (produced by Walter Becker) and Rosie Vela’s Zazu, featuring Fagen and Becker on studio parts with Gary Katz producing, also entered my radar. Flaunt, especially, became a major summer favorite for me also, as I’d found the import CD of the album and played it to death. I found the vinyl version a few years ago. Zazu, on the other hand, was one of my rare purchases on cassette, then finally CD when A&M chose to reissue it. Vinyl-wise, I found what looked to be a clean promo version, but it had too much groove burn; not long after I replaced it with a sealed stock copy.
For Phil Collins, at the time there was only one additional Collins album. Since the early CD era was just around the corner, the first Collins album, Face Value, plus a handful of early Genesis and Peter Gabriel CDs, made their way onto my shelves within the next couple of years. Of those, I distinctly remember Duke and Abacab being summer plays a couple of years later. Duke is being reissued by Acoustic Sounds, so I will finally have a vinyl copy of that one; I have stock copies of the Atlantic LP and the Acoustic Sounds 45 RPM version of Abacab. Peter Gabriel’s third album (which some fans call “Melt” – his first four releases were self-titled) was also a heavy summer play a couple years later, as it accompanied a road trip to the desert Southwest. That one I own on a 45 RPM reissue direct from Gabriel’s own label Real World Records, along with all the others. The sound is not as stunning as his fourth album (which had the unfortunate title Security slapped onto it by the US record label), which is audiophile demo-worthy, especially “The Rhythm of the Heat.”
Two other favorites came via my Saturday drives in the mid 1980s. The Miles Davis Tutu album is one that sticks in my mind, but U2’s The Joshua Tree was played even more. Given that it is themed around the American Southwest, it has a “travelogue” feel to it, and it fits well with any road trip I’ve taken. I was listening to this album two nights ago, which is what prompted me to write this article. I have a stock US Island pressing of U2’s album and it is plenty good enough for me; I have yet to hear of any really good sounding reissue, and I would buy it in a heartbeat if it came out in a 45 RPM reissue at a reasonable price. Tutu, on the other hand, sounds good in both its stock Warner version as well as the recent Rhino High Fidelity, which takes a little of the shrill edge off of the original CD version I own. Something about this modern Marcus Miller-produced album clicked with me at the time.
Over the past couple of years, I latched on to the original War Greatest Hits album, both in a 45 RPM release and a Rhino reissue mastered by Kevin Gray on his all-tube system. (I prefer the latter; the 45 RPM version is a bit muddy to my ears.) Aside from playing it a lot during the summer, the songs also feel like summer…and of course, the last track on the record is “Summer.” It’s a short record, to the point, and a welcome spin. I can’t imagine a summer without hearing “Low Rider”!
And speaking of “all day music,” I still can’t put my finger on exactly why I like Led Zeppelin. It might be that I recognize the various influences in their music. I had IV in its first CD release mainly out of curiosity but, when Atlantic released a 4-CD anthology, I bought that and it became an all-day play while I was working outdoors. (It’s the only CD set I had to buy a second copy of, as I played the first set so much that the “label” side began delaminating from the discs and made them unplayable.) A later 2-CD set compiled the rest of their songs, along with more bonus tracks, and both made a complete set of all of Led Zeppelin’s records.
I slowly bought the most recent vinyl reissues from Atlantic over time. Sure the LPs are digitally sourced, but they sound clean and are plenty good enough for me; I am not nitpicky. (Try to find clean or sealed new old stock Led Zep records these days…good luck with that on a po’ man’s budget!)
The Led Zeppelin interest came from buying Robert Plant’s Shaken ‘N Stirred on CD in 1985. It took a couple of decades but I eventually found a really nice vinyl copy of it, and of course have filled in a few others I missed the first time around like The Principle of Moments and Now & Zen. (I have yet to see Manic Nirvana on vinyl.) But Shaken ‘N Stirred was a big one for me the summer after it was released, almost as big as The Honeydrippers’ self-titled EP, which had heavy play on my system the previous summer. What made me buy this EP? Well…the cover looked interesting, and my friend at the record store said, “That’s a good record.” That’s all it took. (Does anyone beside me wish there had been a Vol. 2?) And discovering Robert Plant at the front of the group led me to his solo CD, which “Led” me to…well, you know…
And now that I think of it, that Honeydrippers EP was accompanied by David Lee Roth’s first solo release, the Crazy from the Heat EP, which also saw quite a few spins that same summer. Alas, that one hasn’t aged quite as well, but it still does take me back to that summer when I play it on occasion.
As I wrap this up, many other records keep popping up that I want to mention. I’ll save those for next time! Until then, I’m busy packing and prepping for a summer road trip and loading up my phone with some downloads via Qobuz. I considered taking the record player, only it seems like it skips a lot when I drive…
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