Circa ’72 pre-recording notes. Some additions and corrections: 10/16, 10/20, 12/4/03, 2/21/04, 8/15/04, and 6/20/05.
The 1972 CD is still a work in progress. I tried several times during the
summer and fall of
2002 to put a meaningful mix together,
but it didn't happen. The idea I have in mind is expressed by a sign on a
display in the downtown Austin library, where I'm writing this. The
display is a photographic history of the library called "Where the past
meets the future."
Anyway, I realize now some of the songs I originally wanted to use are from
1973, so the CD will be a Circa '72 recording, with songs from both '72 and '73
on it.
The photo of me shown above was taken in '72 or '73 by Carl Bell in his bedroom
at 2105 Oak Street in Pine Bluff, where he had his equipment for recording
albums onto 7’’ reel tapes and then onto
3’’ reels and cassette tapes to send
to military hospitals in Vietnam starting in 1969, when his son Rick became an
army surgeon in Danang.
My brothers and I and friends of ours, along with many other people, including
the Raley brothers who owned Raley's House of Music, loaned albums to Mr.
Bell. Later on some of us helped him with the taping. I started
doing that when I got my Sony cassette deck and other good hi-fi equipment in
the fall of '72 when I was starting classes at Hendrix College.
TAPES of Pine Bluff, as Mr. Bell (a friend of my Trulock grandparents) called
his group, also sent tapes to other places during and after the Vietnam War—to Guam, Okinawa, the
Philippines, South Korea, and other overseas locations where there were U.S.
military bases with large hospitals.
U.S. soldiers, by the way, quit fighting in Vietnam after the Paris peace
treaty was signed in January 1973. American POWs came home; very heavy
B-52 bombing of Cambodia took place from then until about August 1973 (helping
inadvertently to set up the beginning of the Pol Pot / Khmer Rouge terror and
genocide in Cambodia from '75 through '79); and the South Vietnamese were left to fight on their
own, which continued until April 1975, when the emergency U.S. embassy
evacuation took place as the North Vietnamese Army finally took over Saigon and
won the war.
(Corruption--mainly
various illegal methods of keeping a lot of money in the hands of the people in
power-- was widespread in the South Vietnamese government both before and
during the war. When the U.S increased its spending in
Vietnam, this problem was only worsened. In this respect, the people of
South Vietnam were losing the war before it even started.)
Late in the summer of 1972, Rick Bell returned to
Pine Bluff with his wife Lee, a nurse from Taiwan. (He was divorced from
his first wife, Julie, while he was serving in Vietnam.) He works in Pine
Bluff now as an emergency room physician at Jefferson Regional Medical Center.
The other photo was also taken at the Bell's house on Oak Street. I
should say that both Mr. Bell and his wife Jane were friends of my
grandparents, and it may have been Mrs. Bell who took this photo of my
grandfather, which has the date March 1973 written on the back. Mrs. Bell
gave me both these photos and several more when I had lunch with her in December 2000 at Fu Mae's on Main
Street in Pine Bluff. I'm not sure about the spelling of Fu Mae, but I
really enjoyed that meal. Fu Mae's unfortunately is closed now, and that
was the last time I saw Jane Bell, although I talked to her on the phone once
or twice afterward. She died in August 2002; Carl Bell died in June 1994;
my grandfather died a month after the photo was taken; my grandmother died in
June 1972. The photo of me had to have been taken between
August 1972 and August 1973. That's the only time I had my hair parted in
the middle and the only time I wore a POW/MIA bracelet.
Another historical note concerning this taping project is related to my
semester-long tenure as a DJ at the campus radio station at Hendrix in the fall
of 1973, which is when the radio station was first established. I
called my once-a-week, two-hour show Pat's Fish Market, which was the name of a
fish market on Blake Street in Pine Bluff (they had some neat looking house
plants in the window) but which I also chose because my best male friend during
Jr High and high school was Pat Calkins (as of this March 2003 writing, he's
still working on the restoration of the Pioneer Inn in Maui).
As a DJ I learned to cue up a song on an album, an essential skill for starting
a song on an LP at the moment you want it to start. It's done by putting
the needle on the groove at the beginning of the track you want to play,
letting the song start and then immediately turning off the power to the
turntable (automatic turntables are not made for doing this, but it can be
done; DJ turntables have a simple on/off switch). Then you rotate the
turntable platter and album backwards until the needle is just at the beginning
of the song, plus about half a turn so the turntable can come up to speed
before the song starts.
So, in putting songs onto the reel-to-reel tapes from albums during this
taping project of mine, I was cuing up one song as another one was
playing--which is what makes it fun and challenging to make the master tapes
because if I messed up the timing of the start of a song or didn't have it
ready to go when the previous song was ending, I'd have to go back and start
recording all the songs over again (or go back to wherever I'd left a gap
between songs). On Blowin' In the Wind, on the '71 tape/CD, I
forgot to keep the fader positioned correctly and near the end of the song, you can hear
me cueing up The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
In order to be able to
create these segues ("segways") between songs recorded directly
from LPs, I bought a second turntable in the spring of 2001. The 1969 and
1970 tapes were made using one turntable, a CD player, and, for a couple of
songs, a cassette deck.
Okay, time for me to shut up and get back to work on the Circa 1972
CD. The next thing you'll be seeing on this page is the list of
songs in the order they'll appear. I also have two comedy albums I'll be
using some excerpts from: Firesign Theater's Dear Friends album, from
'72, and a Mel Brooks/Carl Reiner album called 2000 & 13, recorded
in August 1973. (Mel
Brooks is "the 2,013 year old man," interviewed by Carl Reiner.)
Adagio
Cantabile
from Pathetique piano sonata
(excerpt)
Beethoven
Live from the Senate
Bar
Firesign Theater
(If you call that living!)
IF THE SHOE
FITS
LEON RUSSELL
A CHILD IN THESE
HILLS
JACKSON BROWNE
VENTURA
HIGHWAY
AMERICA
TIME IS PASSING
PETE TOWNSHEND
LISTEN,
LISTEN
SANDY DENNY (FAIRPORT CONVENTION)
HYPNOTIZED
FLEETWOOD MAC
SUPERSTITION
STEVIE WONDER
BIG
BROTHER
" "
FREDDIE'S
DEAD
CURTIS MAYFIELD
THE DIRTY
JOBS
THE WHO
HELPLESS
DANCER
" "
A couple of conversations from
2000 and 13
MEL BROOKS AND CARL REINER
RIGHT PLACE, WRONG
TIME
DR. JOHN
AMERICAN
TUNE
PAUL SIMON
TIGHTROPE
LEON RUSSELL
SEND IN THE
CLOWNS
from cast recording of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night
Music"
EVERYBODY PLAYS THE FOOL
THE MAIN INGREDIENT
WAS A SUNNY
DAY
PAUL SIMON
ROCK ME ON THE
WATER
JACKSON BROWNE
More from 2000 &
13
MEL BROOKS AND CARL REINER
MAGIC
MIRROR
LEON RUSSELL
TOAD
AWAY
FIRESIGN THEATER
Adagio Cantabile
from Pathetique piano sonata (NO. 8, OPUS
13)
Beethoven
Well, that's a possible line
up, anyway, and there may still be some room left to squeeze in a few more
songs. If you yourself want to make a suggestion for a song you want included,
anonymous or not (as far as the notes and the CD are concerned), be my
guest. To help you make a choice, here's a link to a website with
the top 100 songs of each year and their lyrics: (see the previous page for this link)
And, of course, you know my e-mail address. So you like
"Brandy" or "The Night the Lights Went Out in
Georgia"? Not a problem. Make your request.
Okay, thanks for the requests.
I’m not sure about the request for “My Ding-A-Ling,” which wasn’t Chuck
Berry’s finest moment. But as Bob Dylan
said about being so much older then and younger than that now, I have to admit
I find it more humorous today than I did in 1972. And that line about “future Parliament out there singing” has no
doubt come true, so maybe it’ll fit in nicely after all. And yes, it could be
dedicated to Bill Clinton (for what was not his finest
moment). Anyway, time to wrap up
these pre-notes and get to the taping, now that I’m getting settled in at
a new/old place and am feeling like doing
some recording again. Best wishes, DWT,
9/11/03.
(The above notes were mostly written in the first half of 2003, with a pause
of several months between the next-to-last and last paragraphs.)
10/16/03. The never ending pre-notes continue. . . I’ve been having problems with my CD
recorder for almost a year. I sent it
to the Philips factory service center in Houston during the summer and it came
back with only one of the problems fixed.
Since I didn’t get it returned to them within the 30-day labor warranty
period, it’ll cost a minimum of $200 to
have it repaired there now. So the
recording project is currently on hold because of technical difficulties.
But I’ve gotten some advice from my contact at Matthews Electronics in Pine
Bluff (chief subcontractor on NASA’s Orbiting Spunklab project) on what the
problem might be, so I’m going to look into it and will be giving an update
here soon. Also, I’m still searching
for a ’72 or ’73 recording of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” piano sonata, with the
University of Texas music library being my best bet at the moment. I do have a deadline in mind for finishing
this project, by the way. I’m planning
on having the CD’s in the mail by Thanksgiving.
10/20/03. Nothin’ new to report, except to say that the recording is not really on hold, since I can go ahead and make the master reels anytime. I even have a 1972 recording of the Pathetique piano sonata checked out from the Austin public library, but it becomes too scratchy sounding about halfway through, so I’m still looking for a cleaner copy of that (part of the “Beethoven Bicentennial” collection) or a BBC recording from ’72 with Stephen Bishop playing piano, which the UT music library has but which I have to go back during M-F business hours to find out if I can check out. Check back later.
12/4/03. I didn’t finish the
recording as I’d planned to, but it keeps changing as I keep trying to record
something I really like. The UT
library’s copy of Stephen Bishop playing the Pathetique is all I hoped for, except
for one thing. It can’t be checked
out! That’s why it’s in near perfect
condition. They have dubbing booths in
the Fine Arts library, and I was able to take my CD recorder there and hook it
up to the headphone jack of the built-in cassette recorder. I’ll leave out the details of how I did
that, but the problem now is that the recording’s dynamic range is so good that
it overloaded the input circuit of the cassette recorder (a Sony) and the
loudest split second of my CD recording is distorted. AUUUGH! But, this is a hobby, so even the setbacks
are part of the enjoyment. A very small
part as far as enjoyment is concerned, but if the result is good enough, it’s
worth the effort. I now plan to have
the project finished on or by the 17th, so I can mail out the
recordings in time for Christmas. And
just a side note on a recent music release, namely The Best of R.E.M.
1988-whatever. By far the best of R.E.M
was what they did before 1988, when they were on IRS rather than Warner
Brothers or whichever label they’re on now, so if you’re not familiar with
their earlier songs, I recommend a Web search and listening. Gardening at Night, Driver 8, Begin the
Begin, Cayuhoga, etc. (2/21/04:
there is the album REM Eponymous, a sort-of greatest hits of their IRS
albums, but it has way too little on it.)
6/20/05: Okay, let me belatedly thank Steve Holcombe, who made two 60
minute REM compilation cassette tapes for me in March 1989, a few weeks before
he and I went to see REM at the Erwin Center in Austin; and also let me say
that I do like Green, REM’s first Warner Brothers album, which came out not
long before the REM ’89 tour.
2/21/04. I said a while back that I’d shut up and get to work on the tape. Well, okay, time to do that. No more will be written here until the tape is done, after I say these two things: Thanks to David Potter for the Stephen Bishop album, which David’s son Geoffrey delivered to me on Christmas day; and, one of the physics professors I had at Hendrix College, Laymont Woodruff, an ex-military guy who nevertheless had a high-pitched, sing-song voice (and only a master’s degree, not a PhD) would occasionally when I was leaving his office raise his right hand as if in greeting and would say, “peace!” I think he got that from Dave Garraway, the original host, in the 1950s, of the Today show, so that expression did not originate with the peace movement or hippies of the 1960s. Peace!
August 15, 2004. The never-ending pre-notes are now officially ending. I recorded the two reel-to-reel tapes on July 17-18, then made the master Circa ’72 CD on July 31-August 1. Not to say there won’t be more stuff added, such as this page of PBHS 1972 documents: www.geocities.com/dwtrulock/pbhs_72 .