Annoyance Index No. 4

People saying it’s their “birthday week”
Northbound 4B bus always running late
Someone listing all their favorite podcasts as a pretense for conversation
MFA-Writing Grants-Writing Magazines-Industrial Complex
Me not coming up with a catchy name for above like Ike did with Military-Industrial Complex

Tuesday Tuneage
America - “Sandman”
1972

Call me a sap (and many likely have) but throughout my existence as a mostly hard-rock-or-GTFO guy, I’ve always dug America’s singles. A big part of my mid-seventies soundtrack what with “A Horse With No Name” being played on the radio among rockers Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Joe Walsh while my friends and I played Risk over and over and “Sister Golden Hair” coming onto an AM station on a ride home from church in that same era and feeling wistful while hearing it (if a fourth grader can feel wistful.) Something called “the Tropic of Sir Galahad” from “Tin Man” is deep when you’re that age and in later years “you can always change your name” from “Ventura Highway” always had me convinced the  narrator was talking to a draft dodger friend.

A few years back my hankering for that America sound got to the point where I went out of my way (simple rack surfing at local record stores wouldn’t suffice, suddenly needed this album pronto) to get History: America’s Greatest Hits on eBay. Yessir: All the seventies hits and other gems, plus “Muskrat Love” leads off side two so it’s easy to skip and get to a true leadoff hitter in “Tin Man.” Finding out that Phil Hartman (spelled Hartmann in the liner notes) designed its album cover is the second coolest “whoa HE designed album covers” discovery I’ve had in recent years since looking over my Steve Martin Let’s Get Small album and discovering Dean Torrance of Jan and Dean designed that cover. These types of finds are arguably more mind-blowing than the concept of a Tropic of Sir Galahad.

While in the depths of my America rabbit hole on the Internet. I came across some blurb where David Crosby showed disdain for America allegedly ripping off Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s sound. But I find America more sonically and lyrically interesting than the likes of CSNY’s “Our House” and “Teach Your Children.”* Meanwhile “A Horse with No Name” did as good at Neil Young as Neil himself. So yeah, I can get my first-half-of-the-seventies fill of rock jollies with Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, BTO, et. al. but “Sandman” is the America deep cut played on the AOR FM station in that alternate universe I’ll gladly set up shop in some Saturday afternoon with Ardbeg and Snyder’s of Hanover.

*“Adult bubblegum” was the spot-on phrase used by Billy Altman to describe CSN(and sometimes Y) in The Rolling Stone Record Guide. The Guide’s entry on America by John Swenson snidely notes that all of their album titles begin with the letter “H” and calls this “a Sesame Street-level conceit”. Having been a huge fan of Sesame Street seasons one and two as they aired, I should take offense.