Class Essay - An Album Review

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here.  Sorry about that.  Since my last post I've started going to school online full-time and I moved.  My wife and I decided it was time to downsize to a two bedroom apartment from a two-story house.  Our son got a well paying job in the oil area in North Dakota and our daughter is away to college.  She was gone all summer working at a Bible camp so we hardly saw her then either.

For one of my class assignments this week I had to write an essay on a film, television show, album, piece of art or a piece of literature.  Anyone that knows me knows that I would write it on an album.  I decided that I would also post the essay here for me readers to see.

Rock & Roll Machine by Triumph

     When somebody says to think of a three man Canadian band, most people think of Rush.  I don’t.  I think of Triumph.  I am now going to tell you about how I started listening to them and the album that started it all.

     In 1978 I was a freshman at the community college in my hometown.  The only choices that we had for radio stations were top-40, country and big band and talk.  My oldest brother still lived at home and worked a night job at a bank and part-time at a stereo/record store.  At times he would bring home an album from the record store and would expose me to groups that they wouldn’t play on the local stations.  One day he brought home an album by a new Canadian band named Triumph.  The name of the album is Rock & Roll Machine.  It was released in 1978 on RCA Records.

     I was blown away as soon as my brother dropped the needle on this album.  Three guys play the instruments – guitars, bas, keyboards, drums and percussion.  Two of them switch off singing lead vocals and they have a clean, crisp sound.  Rik Emmett, the guitar player, switches back and forth between acoustic and electric guitars throughout songs without a glitch.

     All but one of the songs were written by members of the band.  The one song that the play a cover of is the Joe Walsh song “Rocky Mountain Way” and they do an excellent job on it.  The songs they wrote are all good, pretty much hard rocking songs except for “Blinding Light Show/Moonchild.”

     “Blinding Light Show/Moonchild” starts and ends off rocking, but in the middle Rik Emmett shows some of his guitar skills by playing an extended acoustic guitar solo.  The song lasts for a short eight minutes and forty three seconds. 

     The final track on the album is the title track is pure all out rock.  Even with that you can hear a clean crisp sound of all of the instruments and lyrics throughout the song. 

     If you like late seventies and early eighties rock, I would say that this album is a definite must listen.  You won’t be disappointed.

How much of your collection have you actually listend to?

Watching peoples videos in the Vinyl Community, I noticed that most of them are of vinyl finds a not too many showing what they already have in their collection. I know that I've been guilty of that at times in the past.

When I thought of that reminded me of the 30 Day Vinyl Challenge that Mark and Sam Ditch challenged people to this past summer. What that was is go 30 days without purchasing any new vinyl and make a video each day reviewing an album from their collection. I made it through the full 30 days without buying any plus around an additional 30. I was doing videos, maybe not daily. I started having problems with my webcam about half way through the 30 days, so I did a review each day with a Facebook post until I got my camera working again.

I have decided that I'm going to slow down my music purchases and am going to start doing a review around daily in my blog titled Tim's Listening Room. I'm doing it in a blog instead of a video because of health problems that stopped me from making videos earlier this year. I figured out that with the amount of music that I have in my collection now, it would take around 7 years just to show just that. I haven't purchased any new music for two weeks now and have posted my first review in the blog at the above link. I know I won't stop buying music, just slow down some and appreciate what I have in my collection more.

I challenge others to try this. Do your reviews in videos, blogs similar to mine or in Facebook posts. I know there are many people with bigger collections than I have and I am interested to see more of what the already have in their collection.

If you have any comments, please leave them below. Follow this blog if you like it.

Compilations

Sorry that I didn't post anything in the past week. The reason why is because I've been busy during that time and health problems.

I've seen many people in their videos and Facebook posts that will not touch greatest hits or compilation albums and tell new collectors  not to bother with them. WHY??? I tell people to buy them when they find them.

The reason why I say that are the following:

1. If somebody likes only a couple artist's songs, they can usually get all they need on the greatest hits album by that artist.
2. Artists have put songs on their greatest hits albums that are not released on any of their regular studio albums.
3. Greatest hits albums are a good way for a new collector to decide whether or not the like the artist. This way they won't have to waste their money buying 15 albums by that artist just to finally conclude they don't like them.
4. Compilation albums (albums with several different artists) are a good way to hear music by an artist that you haven't heard before. If you like a song of theirs on a compilation, there's a god chance that you'll start buying that artist's studio albums.
5. Compilation albums are like the mix tapes that many of us made when we were younger. With these albums we don't have to select the songs to include and take the time to record each song and then get to the last song just to find out that we don't have enough room on the tape for that last song that we wanted on it so bad.

If you don't agree with me on this topic or want to make any comments, just enter the comments below. You can also click on Follow to  keep up on this blog. You only need a Google account gmail, YouTube, Google+)  to be able to do that.

So go out and buy those compilation and greatest hits albums that you've been avoiding because some know-it-all, stuck up snob that considers them self  to be a collector said not to in a video.

Tim's Thrifty Music

This is a new blog that I'm doing. I've tried a couple other blogs before, but did not post very frequently. With this one I'm going to try to do a new post at least once a week. I already have ideas for some future posts.

This blog is about my music collection. Not just my vinyl collection or cassette collection. It is for my full music collection that includes vinyl, cassettes and cds. By thrifty, I'm referring to the music that I bought at a thrift store, garage sale, flea market, bargain bins, dollar bins and those given to me by other people. At least 85% of my collection I obtained by thee ways I mentioned. That is a lot considering that I have over 1,300 albums on vinyl, over 500 on cassette and over 300 on cd.

I've seen collectors in their videos and in a group on Facebook belittle people that buy vinyl at those places. That is why I created the Facebook Thrifty Music Collectors a year and a half ago. It as a group where people can show their music that they obtained through any of those ways I mentioned earlier and not be picked on by these snobs that have plenty of money to pay hundreds of dollars for a single album. There are many of us collectors that are on a tight budget and I feel that this is the best way to get new people interested by purchasing music and stereo equipment by these means where they do not need to make a big investment in order to start their collection.

Yes, in this blog you will also see me ranting, but it is the way I let my opinions be heard. This will be all for this blog. To close I'm going to quote a Twisted Sister song from the 80's. It is a message to these snobs from all of thrifty people. WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!