Author: Phil Bausch

The long awaited remix of Revolver arrived October 28th, 2022.

The 5 CD Super Deluxe Box Set is $139.  Disc 1 is the new stereo remix of the original album, discs 2 & 3 are alternate versions, disc 4  is the original mono mix, and disc 5 has the stereo remixes of “Paperback Writer” & “Rain”, along with the mono mixes.  The track listings are below.  There’s also a 100-page hardback book.  Unlike previous box sets, there is no Blue-ray disc included.

The Super Deluxe vinyl box set has all the same songs on four albums and a 7-inch EP for the “Paperback Writer” & “Rain” singles.  The price is $199.98.  The box shows Klaus Voormann’s cover art without the album title.

The track list for the original album.

The track listings for the alternate versions.

(The same tracks are on the vinyl versions.)

Here are the remix versions available as shown on The Beatles’ North American website.

Not pictured is a single CD version for $18.90, but the best deal is the 2-CD version for $25.  It includes a CD of selected alternate versions, plus the remixes of “Paperback Writer” & “Rain”.  There’s also a 40-page booklet.  Here are the tracks for disc two of that set.

Over the years, Revolver has become the Beatles album most often selected as their best.  Unfortunately, the original mix was unable to do justice to the complex recordings, because only four recording tracks were available for multiple voices and instruments.  The remixed separation of instruments and voices was accomplished using new technology developed by Peter Jackson’s team that worked on the Get Back film.  The remix has breathed new life into all the great songs from this groundbreaking 1966 album.  It’s amazing to hear Revolver in a wide-spectrum stereo for the first time.  There’s a full review of the box set on this site.  Here’s the link:

https://ontherecords.net/2022/10/beatlesrevolver-remix-box-set-review/

Extra news:  Remix producer Giles Martin mentioned he’s also taken a look at Rubber Soul, and he says there are enough extra song takes for a box set.  Unfortunately, it won’t happen quickly, because Apple released the Red and Blue albums remixed in November, 2023.  Rubber Soul is likely moved to 2024.  The original photo for the cover would look good on the front of the box:

It’s hard to believe, but the first hit by The Beatles is 60 years old!  On August 18th, 1962, Ringo Starr played his first gig as a member of The Beatles.  Then on September 4th, Ringo recorded “Love Me Do” with the band.  The single was released October 5th, 1962 in England.

My 1964 copy of “Love Me Do” (American Version)

That first single didn’t set the world on fire, but it did make it to #17 in England.  Importantly, it was a self-written song…credited to McCartney-Lennon (as you can see on the label).  Producer George Martin had found the group a song he believed would be a big hit, “How Do You Do It”, but The Beatles insisted they wanted to do their own songs.

There are three released versions of ”Love Me Do”.  The first was from when The Beatles auditioned for George Martin on June 6th, 1962.  Pete Best was still the  drummer (that version is on Anthology 1).  Martin was not happy with Best’s drumming, and The Beatles replaced Best with Ringo Starr.  Ringo recorded the song with The Beatles on September 4th, and that is the version that was eventually used for the British single (and can be found on the Past Masters collection).  However, a week later, September 11th, a third version was done with session drummer Andy White.  That’s the version released in America on the single and albums.

The first recording session by The Beatles…Sept. 4th, 1962.

It wasn’t just the choice of songs and drumming that had to be sorted out.  John Lennon sang lead, and also played harmonica.  Since the harmonica part overlapped the vocal at one point, George Martin had Paul McCartney sing the “love me do” at the end of the “ple-e-e-ease” so John could start the harmonica on time.  Paul said he was nervous, and you can hear it in his voice on the first version.  In fact, the biggest difference in the third (American) version isn’t the drumming, it’s that Paul McCartney’s vocals are better.

By the way, George Martin was right about “How Do You Do It”.  He produced the song with Gerry and The Pacemakers, and they beat The Beatles to #1 with it.  You can hear The Beatles’ version of the song on Anthology 1.

Starting with their first single, The Beatles included good songs on the flip sides.  “P.S. I Love You” has an excellent Paul McCartney melody.  It would have been considered for the “A-Side”, but the title was the same as a 1930’s song, so it got the “B-Side”.

The three major Beatles singles Capitol turned down in 1963 are “Love Me Do”, “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You”.  The other two records, “Do You Want To Know A Secret” and “Twist And Shout”, were released after The Beatles broke in the U.S. in January of 1964. The original three Beatles singles also charted after “I Want To Hold Your Hand” ushered in Beatlemania in the states.

This mass release of singles resulted in The Beatles dominating the Billboard Hot 100, and having the top five hits in April of 1964.

“Love Me Do” was released in the U.S. in late April 1964, shortly after this record-setting week…and went to #1.

It’s not considered one of The Beatles’ best songs, but “Love Me Do” launched their historic recording career.  The bluesy harmonica, and the fact that nothing else sounded like it on the radio at the time, served as a great introduction to the group.  The most amazing part is that The Beatles’ songs have remained popular for so many decades.

The Byrds have gotten the coffee-table-book treatment.

The Byrds 1964-1967 was released September 20th, 2022 by BMG.  It’s a large 400 page book, with 500 photos of The Byrds.  It’s not cheap.  It’s listed on Amazon for $149.  But wait, you can spend a lot more!  There’s a deluxe version with the signatures of Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman for $350.  Spend $450, and you’ll also get David Crosby’s signature.  If you really really love The Byrds, you could get the Super Deluxe version for $1,700!  That version will let you choose one art print of one of the those three Byrds.

(Shots of McGuinn, Hillman, & Crosby.  Only the top photo is one of the prints.)

I love The Byrds, but I know I’ll get by without the signatures and the art print.  Along with all those photos, McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman provide commentary.  Although The Byrds continued on past 1967 (and had some influential albums), their greatest popularity was over three years… ‘65, ‘66, & ‘67.

Here’s a shot of an early ‘60’s folk group…at least that’s what it looks like.  David Crosby, Gene Clark, and Jim McGuinn (who changed his name to Roger in 1967, because a guru told him it would vibrate better with the universe) were all involved with folk music before they got together.  This photo is from 1964.  All three were singers, songwriters and guitarists.  By the time they released their first hit, “Mr. Tambourine Man”, as The Byrds in 1965, they had added Chris Hillman on bass and Michael Clarke on drums.  By then, they also looked a lot more like The Beatles.  It’s also true that Michael Clarke was chosen because he looked like Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones.

Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, & Michael Clarke.  This lineup was responsible for “Mr. Tambourine Man” (#1), “Turn Turn Turn” (#1), “I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better”, and “All I Really Want To Do”.

By the third album, singer-songwriter Gene Clark had left the group, partly because of a fear of flying.  Ironically, their next hit was “Eight Miles High”, which McGuinn says was inspired by a ride in a Learjet.

The Byrds’ last album under the time frame of the new book was 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday.

Among the photos BMG sent out to promote the new book is a photo used for the album cover, as shown above.  It was superimposed with another pose and given a psychedelic treatment to complete the cover.  The hit songs from this album were “So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”, and “My Back Pages”, which includes the line “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”.

The Byrds in 1967 performing “So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star” with trumpeter Hugh Masekela.

Byrds fans can now put on their Byrds albums, while they enjoy all the old photos and first-hand stories by Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and David Crosby.

Extra:  Wanted to add this photo of Roger McGuinn & David Crosby in harmony, plus a couple group shots.

The most famous musician in the world turned 80-years-old on June 18th, 2022.  Fans are happy for Paul McCartney, and are also celebrating all the excellent songs he has given us.  Personally, no artist has had a greater effect on my love of music.  He may even have had something to do with our son being named Paul.

Here’s a quick summary of what the above photos represent.  In 1957 Paul McCartney joined John Lennon in The Quarrymen. They added George Harrison to the band, and eventually changed their name to The Beatles.   In 1962 The Beatles’ classic lineup became complete with Ringo Starr, and the music they made in the 1960’s still resonates with audiences.

In 1970, McCartney started his solo career, and then he added various musicians under the band name Wings throughout the decade.  From 1980 on, Paul McCartney has been solo, although he has worked with other artists from time to time.

McCartney might be the richest musician in the world, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to create more music and to tour.  Most people his age have retired.

The 80 milestone for Paul McCartney generated quite a bit of attention, and one article with an interesting angle was published by Stereogum.

They asked 80 musicians to each select their favorite song from any part of Paul McCartney’s career.  Since the question asked for their “favorite”, and not “the best”, there was a wide range of songs.  The article included comments from the artists explaining their selections.  It’s worth checking out.  There was no ranking of the songs, but here’s an analysis.

The most selected song was chosen by five of the artists.  That song is “Blackbird”, and we can all agree that it’s great.  I don’t think anyone could have guessed the song that came in second.  It was selected by four of the artists…“Martha My Dear”.  Singer-songwriter Michael McDonald said “I always loved the melodic structure and the chord progression, the overall harmonic sensibility.”

 Since McCartney’s sheep dog was named Martha, the lyrics are considered light, but that doesn’t take away from the quality of the melody and the performance.  The 2018 remix of “Martha My Dear” sounds fantastic, especially the brass arrangement.

The songs that were the third most mentioned (by three artists each) were also surprises… “You Won’t See Me” from 1965’s  Rubber Soul album, and “Waterfalls” from the 1980 solo album McCartney II.  The songs that were selected by two artists included “Let It Be”, “Maybe I’m Amazed”, “Junk”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Here There And Everywhere”, “Temporary Secretary”, “Let Me Roll It”, “Arrow Through Me”, and “The Long And Winding Road”.

The two parts of McCartney’s Beatles career that had the most songs selected were the Revolver sessions from 1966, and The White Album sessions from 1968..  Those songs are “Eleanor Rigby”, “Here There And Everywhere”, “For No One”, “Paperback Writer”, “Hey Jude”, “Blackbird”, “Martha My Dear”, “I Will”, “Rocky Raccoon”, and even “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road”.  It was also interesting that the choices were fairly equally divided between Paul’s Beatles career and his solo career…43 selected Beatles songs and 37 chose solo songs.

Paul McCartney has been making music for over 65 years.  His career is unequalled.  He wrote four of the Top-10 most recorded songs of all time (and more that have at one time been in the Top-10).  He was a key part of the world’s most popular band.  According to Billboard Magazine, he was the top artist of the 1970’s, and has had #1 albums spread over six decades.  Impressively, he is still doing 2-and-a-half-hour shows to packed arenas.  And, it’s his birthday too!

When Paul headlined the Glastonbury Festival on June 25th, 2022, the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to him.

Happy Birthday Paul McCartney, and thank you for all the great music!  And Happy Birthday Ringo Starr, who turned 82 on July 7th, 2022.

Bonus:  On August 5th, 2022 a new box set was released with the three solo albums McCartney I, II & III.

The set is available in Vinyl & CD formats.  Apple provided this triple photo of Paul McCartney from the years the albums were released…1970, 1980, and 2020:

The first two photos were taken by Linda McCartney, and the third by Paul & Linda’s daughter, Mary.

Stephen Stills wrote an excellent song in the early 70s, but it didn’t get put on any CSN, CSN&Y,  or Stephen Stills albums until two decades later.

The song is “Treetop Flyer”.  It captures the sad time in America when the Vietnam war was so hated that returning veterans were looked down upon and had trouble finding jobs.  In the case of the song’s title character, he had to use the skill he was taught in the war…flying under radar…and he became a smuggler.

Stephen Stills fans know it’s a hard song to acquire.  I first heard “Treetop Flyer” when he recorded it live for a 1976 radio concert.  That version is probably the best.  It has impressive guitar playing, and builds to an energy that gets the crowd into it.  This live recording has been in my music collection ever since, but is not available to the public, except on bootlegs.  Here it is:

It wasn’t until 1991 that Stills finally did a studio version for his album Stills Alone.  I bought the CD, but it was on a small label, and not very many copies were made.  Slowly, people found out about the cool song, but couldn’t find a copy.  If you did find the CD, it was very expensive.  Here’s that studio version.  It’s a little more laidback.

Then in 2007, Stills released the album Just Roll Tape.  It was from a studio session in 1968 when Stills, with just his acoustic guitar, recorded songs he’d been writing.  On the album as a bonus track is a demo of “Treetop Flyer”.   The song was not part of that 1968 demo session, but no date is given.  We do know Stills recorded the song during sessions for the unreleased CSNY album Human Highway, which was supposed to be the follow-up to Deja Vu.  The demo recording became the best selling cut of all of Stills’ songs on iTunes.  There’s a problem though, because if Stephen wasn’t happy with a verse, he immediately re-sang it.  Basically, this rough (though good sounding) demo needs the poorer quality duplicate verses edited out of it, like this:

Finally, in 2013, the 1991 studio version of “Treetop Flyer” was included in the Carry On box set…only trouble was, you had to buy it…the whole box set!  The song is not sold as an individual digital download.  So if that’s the only song you need, it’s still $40.  Evil marketers!

P.S.  It was cool that “Treetop Flyer” was used for the long first scenes in 2018’s season premiere of “This Is Us”.

This site also has a career-spanning article on Stephen Stills…here’s the link:

https://ontherecords.net/2017/11/stephen-stills-hey-whats-that-sound/

There’s a band that has two songwriters who graduated with honors from Harvard.  They perform songs in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and multiple other languages.  Their music combines Pop, Classical, Jazz, and more, which makes it impossible to categorize.  They are unique.  Their first album sold over a million copies, and about half of the sales were in Europe.

Not your average American Band.

Our first exposure to Pink Martini came about through good luck.  In the fall of 2005, we were living in Lincoln, Nebraska, and our son and daughter-in-law (Paul & Shawnde) were visiting from Corvallis, Oregon.  As the four of us were walking along a street in Lincoln, they spotted a poster for a Portland band, Pink Martini, that was set to perform at Omaha’s Orpheum Theatre.  Paul & Shawnde said Pink Martini’s shows in Oregon were always sold out, but we were able to get four tickets to the show in Omaha.

What we witnessed that night was what founder, pianist and songwriter Thomas Lauderdale calls “The Little Orchestra”.  There were eleven members, and as they played the first song, we could see that each musician appeared to be a virtuoso.

The vocalist with the wonderfully clear soprano voice was the other songwriter, China Forbes.

(Thomas Lauderdale and China Forbes)

We were extremely impressed that night and purchased the two CD’s they had produced for their own label, Heinz Records.  Many of the songs they record are originals written by Thomas Lauderdale and China Forbes, sometimes using co-writers to help with the many languages they use for their World Music.  Here’s one of their English language Pop songs with a brief Classical intro.  It’s called “Let’s Never Stop Falling In Love”.  It was featured in the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Thomas Lauderdale started Pink Martini in the ‘90’s, mostly to play at local events in Portland, Oregon.  When he needed a vocalist, he called his good friend from Harvard, China Forbes.  She had been performing off Broadway, but decided to fly to Portland for a couple of weeks.  Lauderdale convinced her to stay (in 1998), and Pink Martini progressed into a group that performs at sold out shows in Europe and America.

Here are their first two albums.  They’re filled with songs that have melodies that are so well written they’ll stay with you after just a few listens.  Most of the songs are vocals, but there are also instrumentals that highlight the talents of the players.  Here’s their arrangement of “Andalucia”:

And, here’s an example of a song they wrote in Italian, “Una Notte A Napoli” (One Night In Naples).  It starts slowly, but then the rhythm kicks in.

My wife and I moved to Oregon in 2008, and have seen Pink Martini perform at an outdoor concert in Bend, and with the symphony here in Eugene.  We also saw Thomas Lauderdale in a knockout performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue” in Salem.

There can’t be another group that wrote a song based on a Hunt’s Catsup ad.  The ad said “Hang on little tomato” until you’re ready to become Hunt’s Catsup.  The beautiful little song by Pink Martini is not about tomatoes, but presents the idea that people in a dark time of their lives, should hang on until sunny days return.  Here’s “Hang On Little Tomato” (the vocal comes in after the melody is established for nearly half of the 3:16 song):

If you’re interested in hearing more of Pink Martini, you can stream their first two albums, or try their compilation album “A Retrospective”.  Getting to know them will give you a unique listening experience.

The first and only single I ever bought by The Who was also their only Top 10 hit…”I Can See For Miles”…#9 in 1967.

The band was not especially successful with singles.  They only had seven other Top 20 hits, and another 8 singles that reached the bottom half of the Top 40.  Where The Who shined was creating two of the most iconic albums of the Rock era…and those I bought.

It was in 1969 that The Who released what was called the first “Rock Opera”, Tommy.

Almost entirely written by Pete Townshend, Tommy was a two-record set that details the mostly tragic life of a boy who was shocked into being deaf, dumb, and blind.  There are a lot of characters in the story, but The Who sang all of the parts.  To clarify who was singing what part of the drama, the lyrics and character names were in a booklet included with the album.

The Who consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, drummer Keith Moon, lead guitarist Pete Townshend, and bassist John Entwistle.

Tommy is one of the first concept albums.  Townshend’s term of “Rock Opera” may seem a bit fanciful, but it is a groundbreaking work.  The album has several well known songs, including “Pinball Wizard”, “I’m Free”, “See Me, Feel Me”, and “The Overture From Tommy”.  “Overture” is the instrumental that opened the record, and introduced us to the major melodies we were about to hear throughout the album.

When I put together a playlist of The Who’s Best, I chose enough of Tommy to tell the basic story.  The mix even incorporates the lyric-appropriate songs “I Can See For Miles” and “Behind Blue Eyes (alternate version)” into a 39-minute Tommy mix:

Although it was their fourth album, Tommy was their breakthrough achievement, and the album that solidified their position as Rock stars.  Surprisingly, The Who’s next studio album would be considered even greater.

The Who’s Next album cover gave us the sci-fi cool of a monolith, with the crass demeanor often associated with Rock stars at that time.  The music on the album was progressive in 1971.

Synthesizers were still fairly new, but Pete Townshend kicked off the album with a synthesizer part on “Baba O’Riley” that is timeless.  The song’s original title was “Teenage Wasteland”, and it was part of a planned concept album called Lifehouse.  The Who had trouble pulling together that project, so instead released Who’s Next, which contained a large portion of those songs.

The other popular tracks from the album are “Behind Blue Eyes” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.  That song was 8:33, but a shorter edit was released as a single to get airplay on AM radio.  Album Oriented Rock FM radio stations also played a lot of the album’s other songs.

Over the years, more songs from the Lifehouse project were released.  Here’s my playlist, which has the best of those songs, and in the order originally planned in 1971.

1. Teenage Wasteland/Baba O’Riley
2. Time Is Passing
3. Bargain
4. Too Much Of Anything
5. Behind Blue Eyes
6. I Don’t Even Know Myself
7. Pure & Easy
8. Getting In Tune
9. Let’s See Action
10. Join Together With The Band
11. Won’t Get Fooled Again
12. The Song Is Over

Pete Townshend is a multi-instrumentalist, and two of these cuts are from his Who Came First solo album…”Pure & Easy” and “Let’s See Action”.

Here’s his version of “Pure & Easy”:

And here’s a clever fan-made cover for the album that utilizes an alternate shot from The Who’s Next photo shoot.

It seems like The Who have had an endless number of “Greatest Hits” collections (and “Farewell Tours”), but two albums represent the height of their career, Tommy and Who’s Next.

Update:  The Who released a $300 Super Deluxe Box Set of songs from Who’s Next & Life House (now spelled in two words).  Here’s information directly from their site.  Click to enlarge.

There’s also a $20 2-CD set.

These are just screenshots, the add to cart buttons are not active.  It’s also available digitally, so you can stream it or buy individual tracks.

Extra:  Alternate cover:

Nobody expected our Rock & Roll heroes from the ‘60’s would still be touring in their 80’s!  Paul McCartney turned 80 on June 18th,  2022.  It was on April 28th, 2022, when he opened his “Got Back” tour in Spokane, Washington.

(Photo Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)

According to a report in Rolling Stone, McCartney played a long set of Beatles, Wings, and solo songs to an enthusiastic sold out crowd.  The band included some of the musicians he’s toured with for years, plus a horn section.  The Covid pandemic kept Paul from touring for over two years, and he was obviously ready to get back to it.

In a first, Paul McCartney’s solo tour included him singing with John Lennon.  The Director of the Get Back documentary, Peter Jackson, had provided a video of John Lennon singing his part of “I’ve Got A Feeling”, with the vocal isolated.  That way, Paul and the band performed the song live, with John behind them on a large screen singing the “Everybody had a hard year.” section of the song.

Paul also saluted George Harrison by singing “Something” using a ukulele George had given him.  And to complete The Beatles connection, Paul and his wife (“everyone knew her as Nancy”) recently went to dinner with Ringo Starr and his wife, Barbara.

Rolling Stone provided this song list (click to enlarge).

Let’s face it, Paul McCartney doesn’t need to tour to push his music or to make money.  He tours because he loves performing.

Update:  (June 25th, 2022)  Paul McCartney headlined the Glastonbury Festival for a set that lasted well over two-hours.  He had a couple of surprise guests.  The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl joined Paul for “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Band On The Run”.  Then Bruce Springsteen joined for “Glory Days” and “I Wanna Be Your Man”.  All three artists performed the Beatles song “The End”.

Update: (July, 2022)  At 82, Ringo Starr is again touring with his All-Starr Band.  Unfortunately, some of the concert dates had to be postponed due to members of Starr’s band testing positive for Covid.  Again (Sept. 2022), Ringo had to cancel shows, because he had Covid.

Are we too quick to always move on to the next thing?  The fast elimination of devices to play CD’s…removed from vehicles and computers…seemed like a plot to get everyone to subscribe to streaming services.  It’s working, because 83% of what we pay for music goes to streaming services.  But a surprising thing happened in 2021.  Both vinyl records and CD’s saw increased sales.

Fans still have a desire to physically own albums by their favorite artists.  Box sets also include books, photos, lyrics, and other items & information that add to the music listening experience.  The increase for vinyl records is a 15-year trend.

About two years ago, the amount of money spent on vinyl passed CD’s and is now 63% of physical sales.  Maybe CD’s will also be sticking around, because sales increased 21% in 2021.  That’s the first increase for CD’s since a 2004 peak.

Here’s the breakdown of all music sales as shown in Variety:

Streaming dominates, and it should.  It gives instant access to about 70-million songs for around $10 a month.  Two of the streaming services, Apple Music and Amazon Music, now have high quality audio, sometimes called “lossless”.  That makes them similar to the quality of CD’s.  The purchase of digital downloads used to dominate music buying, but it’s fallen drastically to 4%.  The 2% labeled “Synch” is for other music uses, such as licensing for movies and television.

Architectural Digest even published an article about the popularity of “listening rooms” being added to homes.  Here are a couple of shots they included.

Wow, that brings back the 70s & 80s!  At one time I had over 2,000 records and CD’s, but sold most of my collection, after putting the songs in my computer.   That was a few years before our big move to Oregon in 2008.  The second-biggest drawback of a large physical collection is storing it.  The biggest drawback is moving it.

Here’s a photo not found in Architectural Digest.  I’m down to a small cabinet in a corner of my office.  It has a couple rows of CD’s, some DVD’s, and the bottom has quite a few box sets.  Although vinyl & CD’s are still selling, they’re more like keepsakes limited to fan’s favorite artists or music.  Today, few people would try to use physical media to provide their complete listening experience.  The deco blue-mirrored radio is from 1936.

Since a CD/DVD player wasn’t included with my Mac, I had to buy an Apple CD/DVD player/burner ($79).   Then I could still dub CD’s into my iTunes playlists of about the 20,000 songs I’ve purchased over many decades.  That’s what I listen to most, and it doesn’t take up any room.  To play artists whose songs I don’t have, I subscribe to Amazon Music.

Another corner of my office is for audio editing, making playlists, etc.

CD’s are still a great way to share music, and of course they allow people to load the songs into their own computers,  Recently, I made a couple of CD’s for one of my sisters after she selected her favorite songs by The Beatles.  She told me her son indicated he thought it was “quaint” to still be using CD’s…but now we know she’s part of a trend!

If only we weren’t running out of ways to play them.

Extra Point:  Using a rough estimate of $25 for each vinyl record, and $10 for each CD, and dividing those into the money spent on each format…more CD’s were bought than records in 2021.

Update:  (May, 2022)  Variety added some more statistics for 2021 from Luminate Industries.  While Rock music still dominates overall vinyl sales, the Pop category is the fastest growing.  Seven of the top 10 selling albums were by Pop artists, and Taylor Swift led the way with three of those albums.

Millennials who want a physical format are choosing vinyl, so it’s likely to keep growing.  An interesting fact (according to Luminate) is that only 50% of people who buy vinyl actually have turntables.  The others must be buying records as keepsakes or to show fan support.

Extra:  A reader sent in a couple photos of his amazing “studio” that I think deserved to be in the Architectural Digest article.

He says the room has a custom surround sound system, about 14,000 LP’s & CD’s, and whenever he walks into the room he smiles.  I would too!

It seemed like a good name and idea when the first class was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1986.  But, the trend of popular music was already moving away from Rock.  So the Rock & Roll Hall of fame board decided to put in artists who certainly didn’t belong in the “Rock & Roll” music category.  It became obvious that a better name would have been the Rock & Pop Hall Of Fame.  Country music has it’s own Hall Of Fame, so Rock & Pop would cover most of the rest.

(The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Museum in Cleveland.)

It takes 25 years after an artist’s first chart success for them to become eligible to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.  Once 1980’s artists became eligible, big Pop stars like Michael Jackson,  Madonna, and Rap artists took the place of the rapidly declining number of Rock performers.  There’s been a lot of ongoing controversy over who gets in, and who doesn’t.  A lot of that has to do with the acts not fitting in with the limiting name.

Another big problem is how women have been slighted.

Linda Ronstadt was the first woman to sell out arenas, and to consistently release Platinum albums.  Some of her songs rocked as hard as many of the bands in the 70s.  The minute she became eligible for the Hall Of Fame, she should have been voted in.  Instead, it took 20 years!  Maybe it was because she no longer looked like “The Queen of Rock & Roll” as she was called by Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s.  The Queen of Soul, the King of Pop, and the Donna of Disco were all inducted before the Queen of Rock & Roll.

Compare Ronstadt’s massive trailblazing success to male artists who got into the hall long ago.  Some had only one really significant hit…Del Shannon with “Runaway” (#1) and Eddie Cochran with “Summertime Blues” (#8)…and they were quickly added to the hall.  They’re great, but their impact was significantly less than artists like Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Carole King, and Pat Benatar.

Maybe since Linda Ronstadt wasn’t a songwriter, it hurt her chances, but if that was a requirement, Elvis Presley wouldn’t have made it.  Major songwriter Carole King was finally voted in last year.  Her extremely influential album Tapestry towers over contributions from some of the other artists who’ve been in the hall for decades.

This year, Carly Simon and Pat Benatar are nominated.  It could be argued that Carly Simon isn’t “Rock & Roll”, but neither is Whitney Houston or a large potion of the other members.  Pat Benatar certainly had a number of Rock hits.  Her songs “Heartbreaker” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” were even considered on the hard side of Rock & Roll when they first came out.  It’s a puzzle why she didn’t get in much earlier.

Another woman is also nominated this year…Dolly Parton.  She’s a beloved force of nature, and will very likely be voted in, but she’s pure Country.  Update:  Dolly Parton “respectfully” declined to be considered for the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.  She says she doesn’t want to divide any votes, and she knows she isn’t a Rock & Roll artist…which you’d think the nominating committee would know too.  Unfortunately, the ballots had already gone out.

Update 2:  Pop singer Dionne Warwick is also inexplicably nominated this year, and doesn’t think she should be.  She knows her style of music is far removed from Rock & Roll.  She said she might be interested if they changed the name to something like The Music Hall Of Fame.

Since they’re including Rock, Pop, Disco, R&B, Rap, Country, and nearly all forms of music…they need a better name and a bigger museum.

The results:  So who got in?  Pat Benatar, Carly Simon, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Eminem, and although they didn’t get in through voting, the band Judas Priest was appointed as an inductee by the board.  Not exactly a Rock & Roll class…but some Pop artists who deserved to be recognized anyway.