Thursday, February 08, 2007

My parents went to this music blog and all I got was this lousy 7 inch

One potential problem with having so many great music blogs out there on the net (for me at least) is that things I intend to post turn out to be posted elsewhere already. I had ripped John Blair's 1971 album, Mystical Soul and was preparing the tracks (separating individual cuts and going through each .wav file to remove clicks and pops) when I discovered it had already been posted on the headfonehaus blog. So I figured I may as well just point you to that fine blog instead of duplicating efforts.

However, this left me without a record to post so I decided to quickly put up an old 7 inch rip: Randy Starr and His Merry Martian - Hootenany on Mars/Do You Remember the Day (Laurie 3231). The single was released in 1964 and, I'm pretty certain, has never appeared on a CD (not even a compilation). "Hootenany on Mars" is the sort of formulaic, cheesy, novelty number that is sadly missing from the the contemporary music scene. You can imagine the producer (who also probably wrote the song and played bass on it) saying to the engineer (who co-wrote), "Let's take one from column A--how 'bout Space Exploration (Mars)--and one from B--Folk Music (Hootenanies) sounds good. And don't forget the Chipmunk sounding backup vocals. I'd say we've got us a song!" "Do You Remember the Day" is a strange, science-fiction themed folky pop number about the 1st mission to Mars and includes a stirring tribute to the astronaut who gave his life so his crew could survive (apparently jettisoning himself into space because there was too much weight on the rocket--I'm sure those 200 lbs. made all the difference).

I believe this is the same Randy Starr who had a minor hit with the song "After School" (which is available on some compilations) but who never cut an album that I'm aware of. Rumor has it was a dentist from the Bronx. He also wrote some of Elvis' lesser hits (e.g., Kissin' Cousins) and performed on the instrumental classic "Enchanted Sea" by the Islanders. If you want to make certain you can find his email on this Web site.

Here's the music.

7 comments:

Max said...

Usually people want the publicity but sure--I'm glad to remove it.

Anonymous said...

Hi, great blog here. I'm wondering if you think you'll ever put up a link for John Blair's sometimes a man. There are a lot of people who are hungry for it - and I'm always hoping to find a link for it for my site.


Thanks for considering it.

Max said...

I'm not sure if you mean Blair's album Mystical Soul, which has a song by that name, but I didn't post it here because it is available on the headphonehaus blog:
http://headfonehaus.blogspot.com/2007/01/john-blair-mystical-soul-ar-1971.html

Terry said...

Well, the comment you left alluding to it is there, but that's all.

Thanks -

Anonymous said...

I should add, I wasn't looking for the album, but the song is from that album.

Max said...

OK? It was posted here a couple months ago.

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