Every Moment Has A Song

(via Beat) by Walter Rhein

I knew something was wrong from the moment he spoke. In fact, there had been a lingering wrongness for some time.

“C’mon son, let’s go on a trip,” Dad said.

He’d just taken my brother on a trip, and my sister. Now it was my turn. This struck me as unusual behavior, but what choice did I have in the matter?

“Okay,” I said, and we got on a plane and got off in Maine where we rented a car.

“What should we do?” Dad said as he started to drive. He fiddled with the radio. But before I could answer, he slammed his hands against the dashboard. “There’s no good radio stations in this state. Let’s go get a cassette.”

He started driving around looking for a record store. Dad was always a fanatic about music. He had a whole room dedicated to vinyl records. When CDs came out he had to replace them all. I don’t know what he does now, maybe he’s got a mainframe in his basement.

We found a little hole-in-the-wall place that claimed to be a record store even though it only had a selection of about thirteen cassettes. Dad looked through them, his face tight with fury. He could be scary when he got angry. I began to grow concerned, but the darkness cleared and he brightened up.

“Here we go, Warren Zevon!”

The Moody Blues Album Covers by Phil Travers

02 Jul 2023 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: phil travers, the moody blues

(via The Music Aficionado)

The golden age of progressive rock music in the early 1970s saw a number of collaborations between adventurous musical acts and visual artists who complimented the music with striking and imaginative album covers. Many of the major acts had a go-to artist or design firm that supplied them with creative imagery. For many record buyers the appeal of the album sleeve was a major factor in a decision to buy a record. The 12-inch square size of an LP album cover quickly doubled as gate folds became the norm. Artists started to take advantage of the newly found extra real estate and expanded their canvas. Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd and others had their Roger Dean, Paul Whitehead and Hipgnosis. This article focuses on The Moody Blues and the six albums featuring the artwork of Phil Travers. We shall talk about those covers and play a favorite piece of music from each album…

The story of these albums begins after the Moody Blues released their breakthrough album Days of Future Passed at the end of 1967. On that album the band quickly abandoned the original idea of a rock realization of Dvorak’s 9^th Symphony and wrote their own music. The album, a milestone symphonic rock production that utilized a full orchestra, produced the hit Nights in White Satin. Its success gave the band a new freedom in making artistic decisions about their music and how it is packaged. Enter artist Phil Travers…

Video of the Week: Tom Lehrer’s “New Math”

11 Jun 2023 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Video of the Week Tags: new math, tom lehrer

When you’re a mathematician by trade and you moonlight as one of the cleverest songwriters around, you’re uniquely qualified to perform something like Tom Lehrer’s “New Math” which, by our calculations, is enjoyable and confounding in equal parts.