People always ask me if I’ll ever do another installment of my “Report From The Country” series from a few years back. “More Connie Eaton,” they say. “More ‘Pass The Biscuits, Please.’” I guess I’ve been dragging my heels because the artist I want to honor is getting along in years, and I don’t want to jinx him right into the ground. But it’s almost criminal that Jim Ed Brown’s solo albums remain out of print, so I’ve decided to take my chances.

Despite lavish reissues devoted to his early work in The Browns with his sisters Bonnie & Maxine, and easy access to his duets with Helen Cornelius, Jim Ed Brown’s steady stream of solo albums from the late sixties and early seventies remains elusive to all but the most patient of Usenet users. One of two have shown up on the occasional share blog, but the majority are still out of reach.

The Browns were one of the first country artists to enjoy cross-over success, helping to define country music’s space in the mainstream. Hits like “Scarlet Ribbons,” The Old Lamplighter” and their smash folk-pop version of Edith Piaf’s “The Three Bells” were just as popular on college campuses as they were in Nashville. As a solo, Jim Ed Brown was a regular on the Grand Ole Opry, and even hosted his own syndicated television program for a few years. In 1967, his cheerful anthem to alcoholism, “Pop A Top,” became an instant classic.

After that, the hits were harder to come by. Unfortunately for Jim, he recorded for RCA-Victor and was often assigned to mainstay Elvis Presley producer, Felton Jarvis. Like Elvis, Jim’s records were suffused with the bland surface gloss that marks most of that label’s country fodder from the period. Just as they did with Elvis, RCA was content to churn out collection after faceless collection of commercial filler, overexposing the artist and bleeding his fans until the revenue stream dried up. But also like Elvis, Jim rose above the limitations of his output. The effect of Jim’s smooth control and sweet tone wedded to the wistful dark material provided for him produced unearthly performances of an odd ambivalence that sometimes borders on the surreal.

But don’t let my perverse assessment put you off these great records. The gems are plentiful and offer deep rewards. Even if all you ever hear is “Sunday In The Country,” “Barroom Pals and Good Time Gals,” or the essential “Ginger Is Gentle And Waiting For Me,” you’ll be better prepared to face the world. But if you want to mainline a full-on Jim Ed Brown overdose, you’ve found the right place.


(thanks to the LP Discography site for the cover scans.)

After my wife’s ankle surgery last summer, I was forced to pursue my love of strenuous exploratory hiking without her. But there was a bright side to this, since she has never been as keen for climbing as I am. Last spring, I was able to spend just about every Sunday morning at the the top of one of the many small mountains near my house.

I brought along my camera to keep me company. But an hour after sunrise, Arizona skies are bright and hot and the shadows are deep and dark. Getting a correct exposure under such high-contrast conditions is a challenge. While it’s usually best to let the smart machine in my hands make most the decisions, I still have to know how to help it along if I want to avoid white skies and crushed shadows. There’s only so much I can fix in post-processing.

I have to say I made a lot of progress working under these conditions. But one of the many skills I’ve not yet mastered is how to shake off my early-morning exhilaration long enough to really capture the magic of a mountain-top vantage point. I took hundreds of photos, but only a small handful of shots really give a sense of the terrain’s sparse beauty. I hope this selection manages to convey the quiet extremes of the desert landscape.

Alas, you can short-list a bad picture, but its not so easy to cull Paradise Valley’s rampant population. Who knew that the top of Camelback Mountain is as crowded as a shopping mall at 9AM on a Sunday? On the other hand, though it’s surrounded on all sides by expensive, well-patrolled private residences, the expansive summit of Mummy Mountain is nearly desolate. Hopefully, once the summer abates, I can continue my exploration before all the remaining open space is fenced off.


These Ron Paul supporters showed up at a poorly managed Hillary campaign stop in Phoenix. We never got near the actual event — it was drastically over capacity and no one appeared to be directing the crowd. But we did stand in line long enough for me to capture these two. Then we walked back to our cars, where it took over an hour to untangle ourselves from the parking lot jam.  

Last year, my grandfather’s memory was honored by the school that bears his name, the Bostrom Alternative Center. This photo was taken afterward, during a visit to the nearby family plot. While my father and his siblings alternated between somber contemplation of my grandparents’ final resting place and enthusiastic discussion of arrangements to join them, I wandered the grounds, getting a better feel for shallow depth of field.   When my father-in-law visited us last year, my wife dragged him down to Bisbee and the surrounding area. I stayed behind, unable to free myself until later in the week. As my wife is quick to point out, it is she who holds the true creative talent in our relationship. It would be foolish, therefore, for me to omit her very nice composition from that trip.   Since my father-in-law likes to gamble and I like trips to the desert hinterlands, my wife decided that we’d kill two birds with one stone and visit Laughlin, Nevada. Along the route, we stopped at as many ghost towns and tourist traps as we could stand. This shot is from the underside of London Bridge in Lake Havasu City.   Late one night after a lively family get-together, I accompanied my nephew Lucas and his buddy Carbon to The Ice House, where they were preparing for a small exhibit of their work. Lucas’ triptych was stunning, but my photos of it sucked. But I liked this detail from Carbon’s piece.   I always wanted to visit Crown King, but neither of our little cars are worthy of the rough dirt road up into the Bradshaw Mountains. Last summer,we rented something large enough to take us there. Turns out Crown King is less a ghost town than a thriving community of off-road enthusiasts, bikers and folks otherwise disabused of city living. Even nearby Bumble Bee is more of an abandoned tourist exhibit than a bona fide ghost town. This shell looks to be barely a couple decades old.   A trip in the fall to Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island gave us a nice break before the onslaught of holiday season. It also gave me the opportunity to to shoot in something other than my desert environment for a change.   These two shots are both from the gardens of Hatley Castle, a beautiful early 20th Century estate built by coal and railway magnate James Dunsmuir, and later used by the military for officer training. It now serves as grounds of Royal Roads University.   While in Victoria, we stayed in a very nice b&b right on the water. It was during this trip that I came to understand that vacations are not for sleeping late.   At some point during our trip to Canada, detail started creeping into my highlights and my shadows began to not block up so much. As I started to not mess up my technique, my composition started to improve and I started seeing greater rewards from my efforts.   I can only imagine what someone with actual skill could do with such a location, but I’m learning.   Eventually, we had to leave the island and prepare for re-absorption into our real lives. But I couldn’t leave without a quick tour of Vancouver’s historic Gastown district. I chose my wife’s point-and-shoot for the early morning photo walk, but what I lost in control I more than made up for in feelings of personal security.   A short afternoon rainstorm, rush-hour freeway traffic and someone else behind the wheel all contributed to this shot. As my wife cursed the other drivers, I scrambled around in the back seat getting this picture of a very lucky Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.   Thanks to the recession, you can find smokin’ deals on some pretty swell digs. No sooner had we settled into our Pricelined room at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in the Tucson foothills, I grabbed my gear and went hunting for some long exposures. The night was overcast, and the lights of the city reflected an eerie brick red back up into the clouds. Afterward, I told my wife, “don’t ever let me leave the house again without my tripod.”   I don’t get out to my brother’s property in Pearce nearly as often as I’d like. Last fall, we decided to visit him for Thanksgiving. As luck would have it, the day was gorgeous. The sky was full of fat clouds which combined with the open terrain to charge the scene with magical hues of gold, blue and gray. The vegan feast wasn’t half bad either.   We took our final trip of the year around Christmastime, to visit family in Georgetown, Texas, north of Austin. Georgetown is home to Southwestern University. Founded in 1840, Southwestern is the oldest university in Texas. And as such, its surrounding neighborhoods are a treat for the eye, full of classic old homes.   The light was right for this one.   Salado College was built in 1860 in Salado, Texas, just north of Georgetown. One last ruin to round out the year.

The songwriting/production team of Chris Arnold, David Martin and Geoff Morrow is probably best known for giving us Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You,” and for bubblegum singles like Edison Lighthouse’s “It’s Up To You Petula” and Domino’s “Have You Had A Little Happiness Lately” (featuring Tony Burrows). They also wrote for Elvis (“This Is The Story,” “A Little Bit Of Green,” “Change Of Habit”). The trio released a few singles under their own names, but their only full-length album was 1970′s “Don’t You Know Butterscotch.”

I’ve been looking for this record for over a decade. I actually held it in my hands once, but I didn’t know what I had, balked at the price (probably under ten dollars) and foolishly let it go. Since then, I’ve never seen it for sale for anything less than 40 bucks, and only from obscure overseas dealers. But my most recent online search finally hit pay dirt. And I’m happy to say, the wait was worth it.

“Don’t You Know Butterscotch” is a kind of bridge from Petula to Barry, coming off almost like an early Bread album. The kiddie pop tracks released as singles are all here (“Don’t You Know,” “Surprise Surprise,” “Things I Do For You”), but it’s the “adult contemporary” cuts (“Us,” “Bye For Now,” “Cows”) that really balance out the program and add a depth never found on your average bubblegum album.


DOWNLOAD

The launch finally happened last week. We were there all right, and I even got some halfway decent pictures. (In that sense, the delay was a good thing — I got in a lot of shooting practice between September and May). But whatever enthusiasm I had for tying in the event with larger themes has dissipated. For one thing, blogging has been taken largely off the table. I decided it was more important to try to exercise more, sleep better and resist the urge to schedule every single minute of my week, for crying out loud. Those are honorable goals. Even doing nothing is better than stressing over self-imposed, meaningless deadlines.

For those of you who might be curious, the thrust of my argument was something along these lines:

Over the years, we’ve forgotten the true lesson of the Apollo missions. Nowadays, people would rather believe that the moon walks were faked. Or we miss the point altogether, second-guessing NASA’s share of our resources. But the true beauty of our space program lies not so much with its specifics, but with the idea that when given a clearly stated goal, and the passion to reach that goal, humans can whip up the will and the discipline to do just about anything. It starts with leadership: “We choose to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade.” Simple, clear, concise. No room for misinterpretation. No points for wriggling out on a technicality. “Get it done — find a way.” If the public of the 1960s were awed by the technical mastery and gratified by our winning “the space race,” they were also inspired by the sight of a team making it happen, right before their very eyes.

Yep, that sounds like me, all right. But these days, I’m not feeling all that particularly sold on the “great man” theory. Reality is too complicated and time is too precious to waste it waiting around for the few strong willed people who come along to show us the way. We just end up following them anyway. Then they flame out, and we’re back to chasing our own tails again. Better reserve our energy for muddling through, and leave the “solutions” aside.

On the other hand, the launch was freaking awesome. And they did manage to fix the Hubble. And my pictures didn’t turn out half bad either:

Say what you will about the convenience of the cloud, there are still some people who prefer the greater perceived permanence of a piece of plastic that they can stick on their shelf, toss in the back seat of their car or stash in the back of their closet. Those folks will relish the following piece of news: the Love Workshop Box Set is finally a reality!

Yep, Andy Olsen at Radio Free Phoenix has finally put final touches on his six-disk compilation of KDKB’s legendary comedy program from 1976. And now, he’s offering this labor of love to the public for less than what you’d pay for a tank of gas these days. Andy and his shopping cart and standing by right now, waiting for your purchase:

http://radiofreephoenix.com/loveworkshopcd.html

Whether this makes the shows archived here, at WFMU’s Beware Of The Blog and at Archive Dot Org more or less of a valued public service depends, I suppose, on how you stand on this whole getting-your-entertainment-for free-from-the-Internet issue. It’s moot point to me, since I received my copy for free anyway (I was, after all, a contributor). But if I hadn’t, I’m sure I’d buy one just the same.

Be sure to visit the Bostworld “Love Workshop” tribute pages for more info on this great program, including audio from the show, articles from the period and a lengthy exclusive interview with one half of the “Love Workshop” creative team, Russ “Wonderful Russ” Shaw.

(Now, if someone would come forward with recordings of “Bunkhouse Capers…”)

Erected the 1920s, the Luhrs Office Buidling and Tower were Phoenix’s very first skyscrapers. The two-story 1914 Luhrs Central Building that separates them served as Phoenix’s first post office. The top four floors of the office building originally housed something called “The Arizona Club,” a hale institution that continues to this day under different haunts. But by the time I came to work there, both buildings and their annex offered nothing but seedy office space. But the charm that remained was undeniable. From the funky parking lot ramp-ways and the brass mail schutes to the marble walls in the lobby and the barber shop by the elevators, the place threw off some serious ambiance. I was badly smitten.

Since everything else downtown is being demolished, gutted or re-purposed, I knew it was only a matter of time for the Luhrs collection. Recently, I was summoned to the area for jury duty. I spent a relaxing afternoon away from work, dozing, listening to music, and stumbling from courtroom to courtroom before I was finally released. That evening, as I walked from the courthouse back to my car, I noticed that the windows on the Luhrs Office Building were all boarded up.

The renovation of the two main historic buildings is being carried out by new owners with the approval of the Office of Historic Preservation. However, it sacrifices the connecting arcade, the southern annex and the Luhrs Central Building, as well as the fifties-era parking structure in the back. According to one city official, plans include “a full-service, AAA, well-branded hotel; some historic office buildings; a contemporary high-rise building in the center; and then another building over where the parking garage is.”

Given the direction the economy’s moving — with condo developers backing out of projects up and down the central corridor to the tune of over a thousand units at last count — who knows, we may have the boards in place of the historic window glass for many months to come. But I like the boarded-up aesthetic, so I grabbed my camera and my walking around lens and went on a commando mission. Unfortunately, my low light stealth shots from inside the gutted structure didn’t come out so good, but I got decent coverage of the outside:


In the early fall of 1996, my friend Bruce Sandig and I traveled down to Tucson to appear in a video for my brother’s cable television show. I guess Damon must have been desperate to fill time on his November episode. Why else would he invite Today’s Sounds on his show?

Any doubt I might have had that Bruce would balk at having to perform “Let’s Turkey Trot” dressed up like a pilgrim was quickly laid to rest. He jumped at the opportunity to appear on television. So, we visited the local party store for some paper hats and scored some shirts and vests from Goodwill. We completed the ridiculous ensemble with some black biker shorts from Wall Mart. Then we drove down to Tucson to meet up with my brother. I tortured Bruce during the drive with my off-key demos of songs that didn’t make it on the record.

As the video clearly shows, our holiday garb was an actual cut above our regular street clothes. For our pantomime studio performance, we both wore hideous shorts and polo shirts. Then we donned our costumes and hit the park, where we danced and chased the birds. We were supposed to be duck hunting (shade of Elmer Fudd), but I’m not sure our exaggerated expressions denote hunger so much as a kind of pained longing (for what, I’m not sure).

Your Truly is featured in the second clip as well, an unintentionally hilarious version of “MacArthur Park” by David Martin and “The Bostrom Arts Ensemble.” This is a live performance, of sorts, with Damon and I (on piano and drums respectively) backing up Martin, who sings and plays trombone. It’s an eccentric rendition to say the least. Martin’s howling performance is made all the more eerie by his striking “hippie” garb. Adding to the instability of the preceding, Damon insisted that he and I play along to a pre-recorded computerized track. There weren’t enough channels for a click track, apparently, so I was forced to comp along to the barely audible bass part in my headphones. Damon and I don’t so much “play” the song as hunt desperately for our places in the arrangement. If anything, Martin saves the mess with his oddball intensity and frankly misguided commitment to the material.


I know a lot of readers out there, especially those of you starting a new school year, have already said your farewells to Summer 2008. But here in the desert, folks are just getting started. Alas, it won’t truly be safe to turn off the air conditioner until around the time we start to make the stuffing and put the Tofurky in the oven.

I’ve been shut indoors now for over a month, venturing outside only to forage for food and to keep my plants alive. But my wife and I did manage to get in a couple quick walks earlier this season. As you can see from the photo documentation I brought back, even the sky itself seems to be ablaze. As far north as Meteor Crater, about an hour east of Flagstaff, where we took refuge one weekend, the terrain is achingly bright. (By the way, this is not desert, it’s forest country denuded of trees by the force of meteor impact.)

The so-called “monsoon” season commences in July. The heat sucks enough moisture from the ground to creates a thunder cloud theater every afternoon. Sometimes, the clouds are even strong enough to jump Phoenix’s concrete island and actually rain in town. The storms come up quick and brief, but if they’re heavy enough they can cool things down for a day or two.

During one such cool-down, we grabbed our cameras and lit out to the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Project. This piece of dry river bottom reclaimed by the city on the south edge of town is not only wild and beautiful, but it also reminds me of the kind of open spaces Phoenix used to have a lot more of. Now that such areas are afforded the same protection as an endangered species, the city can hopefully keep it safe from taggers and teenage partiers.

The low point in the summer came last week when our air conditioner gave up the ghost. After pounding away non-stop for months, the motor finally shook loose from its brackets. Hundreds of units go down in any given day here, so we had to wait almost a week before it was fixed. Such is the backlog for repairs in a city where over a million people rely on these piuny machines to shield them from the extreme elements. In the meantime, we spent a couple days at a resort about five miles away. It was easily Priceline-able, so cheap and so huge that I’m certain we weren’t the only guests exiled from their homes, waiting out the repairman.

I made the best of it, however, rising early enough to scout out the surrounding hills and check out the great view of the city. I got good and soaked, but managed to keep the sweat away from the camera. As much as I enjoy the shots, I think I prefer to shoot when white hot highlights and fierce lens flare are mere technical anomalies and not unavoidable features of the landscape.