This is another of my post-Christmas gifts. While staying at home because of COVID lockdown, Paul McCartney devoted his time to creating and adding to his canon of solo albums. From the Internet:
McCartney III was recorded in early 2020 at McCartney’s studio in Sussex, England while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. McCartney began by recording the instrument he wrote the song on, then added further layers. He said: “It was a lot of fun. It was about making music for yourself rather than making music that has to do a job. So, I just did stuff I fancied doing. I had no idea this would end up as an album.”
All Paul: music, lyrics, instruments, vocals. I’d say maybe I’m amazed, but I’m not. Sir Paul is a legend, a force, an embodiment of magical sanity in a world of lunacy, and also my first imaginary husband, age seven.
Some albums I have took me a number of listens to gain my appreciation, and I have a fairly wide range for that! I have a few experimental ones that I rather like more than their studio ones too. Others have totally flopped and never grew on me, and some of those made me wish I could demand my money back. And I’m still upset when I buy an album with blatantly missing words! That transgression made me boycott Walmart CDs, and I’m only reminded when I see their 2 shelves of token albums, nation-wide, but that’s the result of something else.
I used to like Milli Vanilli! And when they came out as just lip syncers dancing on stage to a stuck record, I liked the album even more when the world burned their copies for Fake Music! But, now, I can’t stand listening to that album though not for the same reason. I find it increasingly annoying to always convert all the shes and hers to hims and hes when to present day me, the album sounds like plastic windchimes.
I gave a ton of albums away in the 1980s, not necessarily because I no longer liked the artists, but because I had too many albums to keep moving them from place to place. They went to new homes with people who loved the bands or musicians. They got a good thing–a lot of vintage vinyl.
The Milli Vanilli story ended tragically and the scandal falls on the producer and label who created and enabled it while manipulating and exploiting them.
Then, vinyl made a comeback. Oh my! From childhood through the start of college, I had maybe 20-50 albums and 2 full 80 minute CDRs of 45s stacked on side A, another 2 stacked on side B. In that beginning of putting what was left of my records onto CD, the Record Exchange and Crossroads received a lot of sales to me. Received? That depends on the point of view I guess, ha ha!
As time went on, moving from apartment to apartment in Blacksburg and onward, the piles of vinyl and CDs just grew and grew and grew. I’m not a pack rat!
Milli Vanilli fell into that pile, and was a lot of fun to listen to on the road. It was tragic how they were manipulated, and I was saddened by how many people resented them as Fake Music! I couldn’t listen to that album around people anymore, much like I can’t stand roommate parental comments about my Brooklyn Bridge black and white poster sized photograph print that quite clearly says “Brooklyn Bridge” on the bottom right corner in bright white Times Roman Font, only to hear them go on and on about those towers in the background and not being able to see the cars across the river at night. I still have the print on my walls, even though I’ve threatened to burn it. But Milli Vanilli sadly is no more here, and not because of what the industry did to them.
Then, I found near new condition vinyl of the UK Now That’s What I Call Muisc 1-5. Talk about feeding the soul! (Even though I could always build play lists out of youtube, I don’t get adverts!)
And the vinyl comeback and CDs grew and grew…
And Milli Vanilli returned on a Now vinyl. I can actually listen to it now, but it’s not the same feeling as reviving other lost memories in vinyl and CDs.