{"id":1305,"date":"2008-03-19T13:59:33","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T17:59:33","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-10T22:32:33","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T22:32:33","slug":"rare-earth-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rare-earth-indeed\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare Earth, Indeed!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Townsman General Slocum<\/strong> has sent along the following thoughts for contemplation and <strong>discussion<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ItuCqU3kfUA?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nToday I was at one of my favorite places to pick up <strong>meat and potatoes music<\/strong> from the era of my youth, if not music I actually knew back then, the <strong>local CVS<\/strong>. It is staggering to me that some of the things I have found there made it through whatever wasteland of needless production and acquisition industrial mechanisms, to be passed by or to get the blinking, blank stare of the <strong>Emmaus polyesterati<\/strong>. I have found some great early &#8217;70 <strong>Rod Stewart<\/strong> (yes, <em>relatively<\/em> great &#8211; sit down and be nice), some country from the same era, and today&#8217;s paydirt: <strong>Three Dog Night<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Seven Separate Fools<\/em> and <strong>Rare Earth<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Ma<\/em>. Fine records, both. But especially the Rare Earth.<\/p>\n<p>For the <strong>cover<\/strong> alone in the incongruously bland setting of a CVS, I thank them. The <strong>17-minute title track<\/strong> is the least engaging, but good background grooves. The rest of the album is a lot of fun. You have to dag on one of the only <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?title=thrifty_music_vol_9_extremely_white_musi&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?title=thrifty_music_vol_9_extremely_white_musi&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1\">white bands<\/a><\/strong> on a <strong>Motown<\/strong> label (an imprint, possibly called Rare Earth, actually, so no fear of <strong>fat-ass bass<\/strong> here) putting out a record written and produced by <strong>Norman Whitfield<\/strong>, the black, funk, spirit of the record. At least it seems so.<\/p>\n<p>Lately I have been finding a lot of this era and broad genre in such places. <strong>Uriah Heep<\/strong>, <strong>Mott<\/strong>, <strong>Cactus<\/strong> (!), all manner of forgotten records turning up in the sub-basement of America&#8217;s most out-of-touch outlets for anything cultural. My question is, <strong><em>What have you found?<\/em><\/strong> Not in thrift stores, though feel free to share &#8211; I mean, the kind of find that just startles you to see it, and you maybe buy it just to reward the serendipity of the encounter. Gives you faith sometimes, in small doses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Townsman General Slocum has sent along the following thoughts for contemplation and discussion. Today I was at one of my favorite places to pick up meat and potatoes music from the era of my youth, if not music I actually knew back then, the local CVS. It is staggering to me that some of the <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rare-earth-indeed\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[71],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}