1. Back in 1969, my freshman year at Kellogg Junior High School, our class decided to hire a band called The Rotations for our end of the year dance. I might not have all the details exactly right these fifty-four years later, but here's what I remember.
The Rotations were, I think, from Seattle and I'm not sure how we knew about them -- had they played the Northwest Metal Union hall? I'm not sure.
To hire them meant we had to raise about five or six hundred dollars and someone in town, I think, donated a color television and we raffled it off and succeeded in raising the money.
I didn't have a date for the dance and one evening, not long before the big night, some of us were talking over at the United Church after a youth group meeting or activity.
One of the senior gals, about to graduate from KHS, wanted to hear The Rotations and wondered if we could go together. She had two friends who also wanted to go and we arranged a triple date -- three freshman guys and three senior gals.
The dance was a blast.
More important, The Rotations made a lifelong impact on me.
The Rotations were an accomplished cover band replete with horns and electric instruments and a superb vocalist.
I don't remember their entire set list, but I know they played "Magic Carpet Ride", "Born to be Wild", "Ride My Seesaw", and other great hits of the time.
Before this dance, I had never heard Blood, Sweat & Tears.
I was absolutely hypnotized by The Rotations playing both "You've Made Me So Very Happy" and "Spinning Wheel".
Somehow, I found out those songs appeared on a recently released LP entitled simply, Blood, Sweat & Tears and I ran down a copy and bought it.
Today, I was at my desk, writing bills, organizing file folders, and taking care of other home business and I put Blood, Sweat & Tears on Spotify.
I suddenly realized that although I have a different desk now, I was sitting in exactly the same place I sat in back in the early summer of 1969 when I listened to this album repeatedly, obsessively.
At fifteen years old, I'd never heard anything on LPs I owned by The Beach Boys, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, or even The Beatles that was as sublime, as deeply stirring as the first track of this album, "Variations of a Theme by Erik Satie". I wouldn't learn until many years later that Erik Satie composed music for piano in the late 19th and early 20th century and that Blood, Sweat & Tears reached back to a melody composed decades earlier and riffed on it to open this innovative and eclectic LP.
From there, this album ventured into a riveting fusion of musical styles, bolstered by a tight horn section, vivifying keyboards, a traditional rock n roll guitar section, superb drumming, and the superb vocal stylings of David Clayton Thomas.
Before this album, I'd never heard so much variety, so much energy, so much improvisation, and so many passages of music paying homage to forbearers, whether to Cream or to Billie Holiday. I'd never heard a singer move so readily between gospel stylings, the blues, crooning, and straight ahead rock and roll.
It was as if this album opened a portal into a world of musical wonder and I enthusiastically entered this world and became obsessed with Chicago, Santana, Chase, Jethro Tull and other musical groups devoted to fusion, whether of rock and jazz, rock and African and Latin influences, rock and folk, or rock and classical musical.
2. Before David Clayton Thomas joined Blood, Sweat & Tears, they cut their debut album, a project spearheaded by Al Kooper.
That album was entitled The Child is Father to the Man.
That title sums up my experience in June of 1969 with the album Blood, Sweat and Tears.
I bought the album as a child and it became the father of my music listening adulthood.
I was immature in countless other ways, but my musical taste and my openness to the explosion of innovation and experimentation in rock and roll music that took place when I was a teenager signaled that I had moved into adulthood as a music listener.
This album, Blood, Sweat & Tears, was my Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club's Band, my Dark Side of the Moon, my Pet Sounds, my Hiway 61 Revisited.
As I listened to this album this afternoon, yes, it took me back in time, but I was more impressed with how contemporary it sounds, how ageless, how fresh and electrifying, how moving it is to me.
A freshman class's dream.
A raffle.
A youth group meeting.
The Rotations.
A transforming night.
3. Friday night, bone tired and suffering from allergies and a sinus infection, Debbie went to bed early and we left Monk up in the air, on a jet plane, suspicious that one of the passengers was guilty of homicide. This evening we rejoined Monk in the friendly skies and watched with amazement as he overcame every obstacle thrown at him and conducted an investigation of this crime from high in sky.
Having finished this episode, we wanted more and watched Monk return to his deceased wife Trudy's high school alma mater and, with the vital assistance of Sharona, get to the bottom of the death of an English teacher that had every appearance of being a suicide.
Here's Stu's limerick:
To let the wind blow through your “locks”!
And to lighten your load,
As you head down the road.
Today you can “bag” wearing socks.
No Sock Day.
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