Thank goodness my role in your Proustian cassette memoir was a positive one ... I feared you’d recall my passing on one of those 29-cent Luigi’s Seaweed Cassettes from University Stereo, the kind that unspooled INTO your deck with a sickening audio burble before wrapping its crinkly tentacles inextricably around the tape heads. 

That said, I’ve been listening to a fair bit of Tull myself lately.  Well, that’s a lie; I never really stopped, except during my first marriage, when most of the things I enjoyed were either expressly forbidden or simply self-censored as implicitly immoral manifestations of my guilty male bourgeois whateverness. 

So, yeah.  Tull.  Sounds pretty great in the not-yet-obsolete CD medium.  I burned a mix of my fave acoustic tracks from the early years, and then EMI came out with a similar (though not quite as good) official comp.  But for the record, here’s a tracklist:

Reasons For Waiting
Living In The Past
Summerday sands
Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of The New Day
Mother Goose
Just Trying To Be
One White Duck/Nothing At All
Wond’ring Aloud
Wond’ring Again
Only Solitaire
Life Is A Long Song
Slipstream
Witch’s Promise
Look Into The Sun
Cheap Day Return
Fat Man
Witch’s Promise
Dun Ringill
Nursie
Ladies
Sailor (very rare, I’m told)
Grace

This material REALLY stands up.  Then again, that’s how I feel about pretty much everything they did through about 1976. 

I’ve also been listening a lot to The Band; I only heard their hits growing up but have gradually come to realize how epically wonderful they were.

As organizer of the Classic Rock Singalong I’m rediscovering a lot of radio hits, some of which I sniffed haughtily at in the past.  But seeing the joy on people’s faces as they sing them has cured me of my highbrow tendencies.  And while scouring my collection for classics I chanced upon “Crazy Circles” by Bad Company - how vividly I remember sitting in the very room you describe in your post as you dropped the needle on your shiny new copy of “Desolation Angels.” I still love that tune (I heard it recently on a TV show and felt warm and fuzzy ... but that could’ve been the peach schnapps talking).

Other stuff I remember listening to in your room, before the days of the boombox in Susman’s van:

-"Tiger in the Spotlight,” ELP
-Children of the Sun, Billy Thorpe
-Some Flanders & Swann, probably from your dad’s collection
-Redbone?  That one’s pretty vague.
-"Mirror Stars,” The Fabulous Poodles

In terms of recent music, I love the new Patrick Park record, the 88, DariusTX and a few other things, some of which will be described, in my typically long-winded way, in the upcoming EE newsletter.

But I fear we’ll never have another golden age of pop.

BFF,
Glickfish

From Glickfish’s wife.  You and he will always be each other’s first love, as it should be.

i inherited that 8-track deck from you, as well as some of your tapes.  for years i didn’t know that those songs weren’t supposed to go whhhrrrrrr-KLUNK in the middle.  some of kansas’ “point of know return” still sounds odd to me without it!

Oh the glory of the 8-track, mine being all shades of Stevie Nicks (my father’s music) and Simon & Garfunkle (my mother’s, of course) and i kick myself for not keeping those fat curvy tapes clutched to my chest all these years, and i try to remember what music it was that first busted my soul wide open and all i can come up with is John Denver’s “Country Roads”. What can I say? I was a simple gurl at thirteen.

My hot 8-track player was stolen from the ‘68 Chevy Nova along with Jethro Tull’s “A Passion Play,” James Gang’s “Rides Again,” and Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band.” What would possess someone to throw a brick through my windshield while my car was parked at the dorm?

Someone who knows what an 8-track is. We used to sit around the table listening to the portable one. My first car had an 8track player - I would sneak my dad’s Richard Pryor and listen to it on the way to school.

“Wayward Son” - the other night, while recovering from some minor surgery and doped up on vicadin, I woke up suddenly and began singing this in perfect tune and not missing a lyric. The fella let me go on before I fully woke up and realized what I was doing. I haven’t stopped humming it since.

Thanks for the musical trip down memory lane.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ESSAY ON CHANUKAH, NOW I KNOW SOME THINGS ABOUT IT. IN EXCHANGE FOR THIS I’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH YOU SOME HISTORY AND LEGENDS OF CHRISTMAS.
THE ACTUAL DATE OF CHRIST’S BIRTH IS NOT KNOWN. FROM ROUGHLY 340 AD THE ROMANS CELEBRATED IT ON DECEMBER 25. IT REPLACED THE SATURNALIAN FESTIVITIES HELD ON THAT DATE. LATER IN ANGLO-SAXON TIMES, ROYAL CHRISTMAS FEASTS CENTERED ON A ROASTED BOAR’S HEAD AND PLENTY OF MEAD ( A HONEYED, FERMENTED DRINK). STORIES OF CHRIST AND ANGLO-SAXON DEEDS WOULD BE SUNG NEAR THE TABLE.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND, THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WARS OF THE ROSES, WAS WHEN NUMEROUS CHRISTMAS CAROLS,LATER TO BECOME TRADITIONAL, WERE FIRST COMPOSED AND SUNG. IT WAS A GOLDEN ERA OF CAROLS.
HENRY VIII (REIGNED 1509 - 1547) LOVED GARGANTUAN CHRISTMAS FEASTS, ONE OF THE REASONS HE HAD A 54” WAIST. AT ONE BANQUET A PLUMB PUDDING 9’ LONG AND 165 LBS WAS CARTED TO HIS TABLE. LATER IN TUDOR ENGLAND, ROYAL AND ARISTOCRATIC CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES WOULD HAVE A LORD OF MISRULE (A CROSS BETWEEN A CLOWN AND A JOKER) AS A CENTERPIECE CHARACTER.
MEANWHILE IN NORTHERN GERMANY LEGEND HAS IT THAT THE REFORMER MARTIN LUTHER,INSPIRED BY STARS TWINKLING IN THE WINTRY CHILL ABOVE A FOREST OF FUR,
REPLICATED THAT SCENE WITH A FUR TREE COVERED WITH CANDLELIGHTS. THUS THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE.
IN ENGLAND,AFTER 1660, WITH THE RESTORED MONARCHY REPLACING THE PURITAN REPUBLIC, CHRISTMAS PUNCH AND CARD GAMES REPLACED THE LORD OF MISRULE FUN OF EARLIER TIMES.
AROUND 1840, QUEEN VICTORIA’S NEW HUSBAND,GERMAN PRINCE ALBERT, BROUGHT THE GERMAN CHRISMAS TREE CUSTOM TO THE COURT, FROM WHICH IT SPREAD THROUGHOUT ENGLAND AND TO AMERICA. THE TRADITIONAL TRAPPINGS OF CHRISTMAS ARE OFTEN ASSOCIATED WITH EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND. THIS IS DUE TO CHARLES DICKENS’ STORY,” A CHRISTMAS CAROL”.
I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS. GOD BLESS YOU AND GOD BLESS AND PROTECT THE JEWISH PEOPLE.

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