"Brothers & Sisters"

Things are really coming along with the new album, which has a working title of "All It Takes Is One." (To clarify, I'm using the word "album" to describe a full-length or "long-playing (LP)" release. However, like our  four-song "extended play (EP)" in 2010 and the single we issued in December, our new collection will be released primarily as a digital download on Amazon, iTunes, etc.)

I know that downloads of single tracks are the norm these days, and some people consider albums to be obsolete. But if you're a member of my generation, and the few preceding and following it, you likely still embrace the "LP" as a valid art form ... and if you do, you might want to buy this one. At least I hope so.

Some of my earliest memories are of being glued to the jukebox at the restaurants where my mother worked. There's anecdotal evidence that I learned to read by matching up the song titles and artist names on the tags associated with the music that was playing. It was all about singles then, and it was a great era for diversity and song craft in pop music. The jukebox vendor would come in roughly once a week and replace older records with new ones, and he'd give the discards to me! I once had a very large treasure trove of used records, mostly without sleeves, to go along with the newer ones I'd buy at Woolworth's from time to time. Sadly, they're all long gone. One day, I'd like to own an old analog jukebox stocked with old 45s. But I digress.

At some point, my brother Chuck, who is four years older than I, impressed upon me that singles were "out" and albums were "in." In fact, I had two other older siblings who collected all the big LPs of the day. My sister Eileen had the Beatles and then Donovan, Dylan, Baez, Havens, Collins and Mitchell. My brother Tom leaned towards the Beach Boys and Four Seasons and later Hendrix and the Chambers Brothers. Chuck was in early on Bowie and Lou Reed and Mott The Hoople and then early punk rock. I loved most all of what my siblings had and would sneak those records onto the stereo when they were out of the house, but the first album I remember owning outright was "Innervisions" by Stevie Wonder. 

This was all back in the days when the radio airwaves were ruled by 77 WABC, which largely ignored the narrow categories by which popular music was (and is) defined and simply turned us on to anything that was good. Meanwhile, FM radio was relatively new at the time, and it was there that we heard deep cuts from albums and artists old and new. The point is, you could find the entire range of what was being played in our house on the radio, and much, much more.

And the albums themselves -- at least the best of them -- varied in tempo, volume, style and  subject matter. To me, in retrospect, it all started with "Beatles For Sale" and evolved through "Rubber Soul," "Revolver" (my favorite), "Sgt. Pepper," all the way through to "Abbey Road." You had acoustic- and electric-based pop/riock, infused with elements of R&B, country, classical and even Indian music. The "two guitars, bass and drums" foundation was supplemented by piano, organ and early forms of the synthesizer, strings, brass, woodwinds, odd percussion instruments -- pretty much an "anything goes" attitude that made each song unique and the entire collection a work of art, at least when it all came together well. You had the Beach Boys and the Stones and other contemporaries of the Fab Four following suit, creating a competitive environment from which everyone grew and thrived.

When we were in our teens, my friends and I were so in love with the album as an art form and music in general that we'd walk from our houses in Prospect Park, NJ to a bus stop on Haledon Avenue in Paterson, travel several miles out of our way to Paterson's City Hall and transfer to the bus that took us to the Willowbrook and West Belt malls in Wayne -- all to take advantage of the sales at Sam Goody, Korvettes, Harmony Hut and Disc-O-Mat. Upon returning home, we'd have informal listening parties where we'd play our new "gets" from beginning to end, giving them all the focus and attention to detail that we'd afford a movie at the cinema. And we pored over each album cover for photos, lyrics, musician info and other trivia (yet another lesson learned from being Beatles fans, especially during the "Paul is dead" era). 

So you can see how and why the long-player format has become so ingrained for so many of us who came of age in its heyday. 

Nowadays, music is becoming more and more like fast food -- although perhaps I'm being too kind, because at least a Big Mac is a tangible item and there's a relationship that lasts from the point of purchasing it to the point of expelling it. Meanwhile, songs and albums have gone from being physical products to nebulous entities, existing almost in theory, which explains why so many people would rather copy and/or steal them than purchase them. 

And yet my friends and I are making an album anyway, because I still believe there are people out there who embrace and honor music and the LP as they always have. And the album we're making owes a lot to our favorites from years gone by. So far, we've got rock and pop with tinges of blues, folk, country and New Wave; acoustic and electric guitars and bass; blues harp and straight harmonica; keyboards and real, honest-to-goodness strings. Besides the "core four" of Jimmy, Smitty, Timmy and me, we've had five "guests" lend their talents to the project so far. We've just about finished recording six or seven tracks for what will be a 10-12 song collection.  

In short, those who've been following my musical activities since Every Damn Day (or even earlier) are likely to be very surprised by the new record. I hope "All It Takes Is One" will live up to, if not exceed, your expectations.

Many, many more details to come...