I WAX PHILOSOPHIC ABOUT MUSICAL TASTE, and FEATURE ARTIST COMMANDER CODY

Yesterday in the mail I got a CD I’d ordered: Lost in the Ozone by Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. Recently I’d been having a hankering to hear some of their music once again. You see, I had a CCLPA album ages ago, but like the rest of my old records, it got given away or left behind on one of my many many moves over the years. Once I reached my middle years, and had a bit more discretionary income, I started gradually replacing the music of my youth, but the question remains – what nameless stuff could my younger self possibly have thought was more important than music, no matter what the effort to pack and schlep involved? If memory serves, I had a pretty eclectic (and no doubt now highly collectible) survey of the 60s and 70s. The Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, Marvin Gaye and all the Motown gang, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Who; all those “first edition” British Invasion Beatles and Stones. Then there was The Moody Blues, Buffy Saint-Marie, Dylan, Baez, Peter Paul and Mary. And Delaney and Bonnie, CCR, Jethro Tull – the list goes on and on.

Everything is now being replaced with CDs, and the occasional LP – well, almost everything. I can remember grooving to Alice Cooper and Yes, among others, but I won’t likely replace those now. Not because I don’t think they’re good anymore. If I hear them on the radio, I still listen. But…why is it that some music seems to be more frozen to a specific time and place and the people we were back when, while some music grows old right along with us? I don’t know the answer to that one, but if you do, please, step up to the mic (so to speak).

Here’s a nice little two-fer from Commander Cody and the boys. The band (who hailed from Ann Arbor – and you know what a Michigan booster I am!) gave us a unique mix – a little rockabilly, a little country, a little blues, a little boogie, just about whatever ya got. These two are favorites of mine. Classic “tear in the beer” songs? Maybe (the only thing that didn’t happen was his dog didn’t get run over...but died of natural causes I guess) but I dare you to listen and not be even a little touched. I still occasionally use the eminently descriptive term “seeds and stems” even though my weekend hippie days are long behind me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itaz8yNPe1k

A little refresher for those who may need it: The song "What Made Milwaukee Famous" is a reference to an old Schlitz beer commercial, known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous." And, "seeds and stems" refers to the undesirable dregs of a baggie of marijuana, after the choice leaves have all gone (literally) up in smoke.