Here’s the chronology of events as I remember them:
1987 — 10,000 Maniacs includes a cover of Cat Stevens’ "Peace Train" on In My Tribe
1989 — Yusuf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens) declares his support of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s life.
1989 — 10,000 Maniacs pulls "Peace Train" off of subsequent pressings of In My Tribe.
I bought In My Tribe on vinyl, just as 10,000 Maniacs were starting to gain momentum, and "Peace Train" was on it. By the time I started converting my vinyl collection to CD, the band had already pulled "Peace Train" from the album. I found a used CD that included the track at a music shop near the University of Hawaiʻi campus.
A while back, I floated the idea of writing about only music already in my album collection. I noticed when I post a "Listen" column, I tend to write more personally about music than I would a review or a news item.
I want to do more of that — write personally, that is.
So I brought the two ideas together into a year-long project: "365 Days, 365 Files." My New Year’s Resolution for this site in 2007 is to write about a particular song every day for the whole year.
I’m not sure what about In Tua Nua’s "All I Wanted" telegraphed to me one very late night listening to the classic rock station in Honolulu back in the late ’80s.
I was getting into college rock at the time, and the college station in the area could only broadcast within a 3-mile radius of campus. I lived 10 miles away. The classic rock station would sometimes include a dribble of modern rock in its playlist — an occasional R.E.M. or Midnight Oil song thrown in among hours of Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones. I couldn’t stand it.
So it was probably that dribble of In Tua Nua, played in the wasteland of late night, that whetted my appetite. I heard the song maybe once, but it was enough to get me curious. I would eventually scrape enough lunch money to get The Long Acre from the record store, and it would be one of my favorite albums for a long time.
Aside from my brother, my family isn’t much to collect music. They consume it, certainly, but they don’t possess my level of … compulsion.
My sister would sometimes buy CDs, but when the allure of a particular album wore off, it would eventually find its way onto my shelf. One such inheritance was Always by Pebbles.
This album was a big R&B hit back in the early ’90s, right around the time ’80s college rock began its transformation into alternative music. I viewed Always with a fair degree of condescension back then, and I kept hold of the album as an inspiration of what not to do with songwriting. I’m so glad I’m over that phase of my life.
404 Pi´ikoi St. was a popular address back in ’80s. Located across the sprawling Ala Moana Shopping Center near Waikiki, 404 Pi´ikoi was the antithesis of its behemoth neighbor. The parking lot was marked with potholes, and the building itself had seen better days. It couldn’t really rise to the level of "strip mall".
For a time, 404 Pi´ikoi housed a number of independent music stores — Jelly’s, Records Hawaiʻi and Froggie’s. Before Jelly’s moved in, a local discount retailer named Job Lot aired annoying commercials that turned the address into something of a jingle.
404 Pi´ioki is no more. The property was bought up by developers to turn into the parking garage of a building built in the early ’90s — the Nauru Tower.
I would listen to Clannad, Altan, Talitha MacKenzie, Mouth Music — I liked the sound of Irish and Gaelic being sung.
I signed up to be on the mailing list of Green Linnet, a label specializing in the genre. For a little while, the label expanded into world music and signed the likes of the Klezmatics and Värttinä. My introduction to both bands was on a Green Linnet sampler, and I ended buying the former’s Jews with Horns and the latter’s Aitara from Green Linnet’s mail order catalog.
Both albums occupy permanent spots in my collection.
It’s been nearly a month since I posted a "Listen" column. What the heck have I been doing? (That’s a rhetorical question. I got busy at work, and it hasn’t let up.)
Better late than dead, as some endeavors on which I embark end up being, so here’s a selection from another out-of-print CD from the defunct Composers Recordings, Inc. label.
There was a time in Elliott Carter’s life when he did the nationalistic thing and wrote some fairly tonal works. He got over it and went back to writing dischordant pieces. The majority of Music of Elliot Carter, part of CRI’s "American Masters" series, focuses on that nationalistic period.
Garrin Benfield was one of the musicians listed in the Advocate’s Top 10 Indie Artists of 2005.
Benfield is a singer-songwriter in every sense of the term — his music would definitely appeal to the Austin audience who love their guys-with-acoustic-guitars.
His sound is a bit more mellow than Dylan Rice, and his influences go a bit further back. The arm of John Lennon stretches far on his 2004 album, Where Joy Kills Sorrow.
I’ve been very neglectful of this site because I had a presentation at work occupying my time. Now it’s done, and I can catch up (a bit.)
I promised more gay-themed listening choices in observance of National Coming Out Day (Oct. 11), and you can’t get any gayer than Ari Gold. Don’t confuse him, though, with Jeremy Piven’s role on Entourage.
Oct. 11 is National Coming Out Day, and while June may have been Gay Pride Month, I figure I may as well expand on next week’s event by featuring gay artists for the entire month.
I reviewed Sacha Sacket back in June, but it would be helpful to hear an actual piece of music from him.