Terence Boylan
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
I began collecting records when I was ten years old. The first album I ever bought was Snoopy vs. The Red Baron by The Royal Guardsmen. Hey, I was a child of the AM pop radio sixties and I was only ten years old, so cut me some slack. I redeemed myself with my second album purchase, Between The Buttons, by the Rolling Stones. From there it was The Doors, Bob Dylan, lots of Motown, Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, etc. I was a collector from the very beginning. Sure, I was in it for the music, but I also loved the tangible, solid pieces of black vinyl and cardboard jackets that I could hold in my hand. Things just got worse and worse as I got older and before I knew it I had accumulated thousands of albums and hundreds of singles. It seemed I was constantly building new shelves to hold everything. Working at record stores certainly didn’t help matters much, as I got a lot things free there. For many, many years I never even dreamed of selling any of my prized possessions. I had lots (and I mean lots) of albums that I had never listened to, but it always seemed that there would certainly be time to listen to them all eventually. Even though I was still accumulating far more than I could listen to at the time, when you’re young the future seems endless and able to accommodate anything. Besides, I was terrified of the idea that I would sell something I hadn’t listened to and then years later find out how good it was and that it was no longer in print and impossible to find again. Better to hang on to everything, just in case. Then in the late 70s and early 80s I started to attend record conventions in Houston and Austin and began selling some of my duplicates. Yes, I had multiple copies of a lot of stuff. When Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe would put out a UK single with a picture sleeve and unreleased b-sides I would buy two, three, five or ten copies knowing that some day they would be worth something. I soon discovered that once you begin to sell stuff it’s a slippery slope. Throughout the eighties I was attending the Austin Record Convention as a dealer twice a year, sorting through my collection and deciding what things I was willing to part with. Of course, most of the money I made I plowed right back into buying more albums and CDs, so in reality I was just trading things out for things I wanted more.
These days it’s all about Amazon.com and eBay. I’ve sold a lot of CDs over the past few years at Amazon. I’m at the point now where I’ve finally accepted that there’s just no way I’m ever going to be able to listen to all this stuff, there’s just too much and my years of listening are now noticeably more numbered. But, I still spend a lot of the money I make buying new stuff, so I’m still often just replacing one CD with something else that I want more. That’s OK. I listen to as much as I can.
Occasionally I’ll pull a CD from my rack and think, “OK, this can go. I’ve had this CD for 15 years and I’ve never listened to it.” So, I’ll look it up on Amazon and see what used copies are going for. Occasionally, if it’s an artist or album that I’m not familiar with at all, I’ll read some of the reviews that the fans write at Amazon. That’s how I came to discover Terence Boylan. I have a CD simply titled Terence Boylan. It’s on a label I’ve never heard of Spinnaker Records (probably his own custom label). I have no idea where it came from or how long I’ve had it. I pulled it out and decided I’d put it up for sale on Amazon. Then I read a few reviews and had second thoughts. This seems like an album I might really like. Maybe I should give it a quick listen before I sell it. Now this doesn’t happen too often, but Terence Boylan has suddenly become one of my new favorite artists and I’m really getting into this CD.
It turns out that Boylan released two albums on Asylum back in the late seventies (probably what made me pick this up originally). This self-titled CD, released in 1999, is a compilation that contains eight songs from his first album (Terence Boylan), four songs from his second (Suzy, 1980) and three previously unreleased songs most likely recorded sometime in the nineties. The album opens with a piano intro (on the song “Hey Papa”) that sounds like it came right off a Steely Dan album. Then Boylan’s voice kicks in, smooth, sweet and silvery. Background vocals and a saxophone solo and you know right away you’re in Southern California seventies territory. While I usually hate to make comparisons to other artists the best way to describe this music is a blend of Steely Dan and Jackson Browne. Throw in a little Joni Mitchell and J.D. Souther and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect. It’s got the smooth, funky, jazz-rock of the best of Steely Dan while Boylan’s songs and voice inhabit the same territory that Jackson’s one of the masters of. And yet, with all that said, he’s got a style all his own, very unique and very special. He ain’t no knockoff of anyone else. And to top it all of he’s a damn fine songwriter.
This is only my third real listen to this album, so I’m still getting to know the songs. But it’s definitely one of those albums that sounds even better to me on each listening. Right now “Dancing Shoes,” “Ice And Snow,” “Hey Papa,” “Tell Me” and especially “Trains” and “Shake It” (Ian Matthews had a hit with this in 1978) are my favorites, but that could easily change as I continue to absorb this stuff. Once I realized how good this was I immediately looked up the two Asylum albums on Amazon, found that Wounded Bird Records had recently reissued both of them and ordered them then and there. They haven’t arrived yet, but I’m looking forward to hearing more from Boylan when they do.
Other Listens on July 31st:
Velvet Gloves And Spit by Neil Diamond
I listened to a lot of music even back in high school. It was mostly 8-track tapes for me in those days. I had a home player, and when I was finally old enough to drive I had a player in my car. When I’d get in trouble at home the favorite punishment of my Mom and Dad was to take away my 8-track player. They’d lock it in the trunk of the car so I had no chance at getting to it. I guess it was clear how much I loved my music, even back then. I also had a little portable player that I could carry around (a boom box if you will, way before boom boxes became popular). I remember taking it to school a few times and getting in a lot of trouble. But even though I tried to keep up with popular music, there was, of course, just way too much to really do so. Especially when my finances were pretty limited. A lot of bands slipped through the cracks. With some I might have been able to get one album, but it didn’t go much further than that. And with many more I only knew of them from the radio and was maybe familiar with a hit or two here and there. As I get older, and as more and more albums have been remastered and reissued on CD, I’ve been making a concerted effort to go back and fill in the missing pieces for a lot of these bands: The Jefferson Airplane, The Guess Who, Sly & The Family Stone, The Steve Miller Band, The Grateful Dead, Santana and Led Zeppelin are some good examples. I remember I had an 8-track at one time of Thirds by James Gang. All I remember of the album was the hit “Walk Away.” I was familiar with at least one other of their hits, “Funk 49.” But that was about all I knew of James Gang for the next thirty plus years. I’d never bought any of their albums on CD. Until recently.
I had a lot of misgivings about this album. I didn’t buy it for almost a year after it was released. And the only reason I finally picked it up then was because Circuit City was having a storewide sale on CDs and it was one of the only things I could find that I was even remotely interested in (and I had to buy something!). My misgivings were for two reasons: on the one hand, though I consider myself a big, big Patti Smith fan (see my post about Horses), I am not been particularly fond of the four albums she’s made since 1996 (Gone Again, Peace And Noise, Gung Ho and Trampin’); and on the other hand I am always slightly suspicious of “cover” albums. It’s rare that an artist can really pull it off. Covers can be the greatest things in the world. There’s nothing like hearing a new version of a song that breathes new life into it or simply takes it to a place that the original didn’t. But they can also be the worst things in the world. There’s nothing as bad as a limp cover version that brings absolutely nothing new to the table and only makes you long to hear the original. (See my post about Shelby Lynne’s recent 
For me it started with Elvis Costello and his single “Alison” b/w “Welcome To The Working Week.” It was actually Costello’s second single (”Less Than Zero” b/w “Radio Sweetheart” being the first), but it was the one I stumbled on initially. From there I quickly discovered the first Nick Lowe single (”So It Goes” b/w “Heart Of The City”) since he had produced both of Elvis’ singles. And that led to Dave Edmunds. Edmunds and Lowe formed a band called Rockpile (with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams) in 1976. However, they didn’t release an official Rockpile album until 1980 (Seconds Of Pleasure) because they were signed to different labels (Lowe to Columbia and Edmunds to Swan Song). But between 1976 and 1980 they each released several solo albums that were, for all practical purposes, Rockpile albums. Edmunds released three classic albums in the late seventies, all of which featured Rockpile: Get It (1977), Tracks On Wax (1978) and Repeat When Necessary (1979). Lowe and Edmunds were perfect collaborators. Both were respected producers, both were masters of the two to three minute pop/rock song and both shared a love for The Everly Brothers. The major difference between the two (other than their uniquely individual approaches to music) was that Edmunds was not really a songwriter. He wrote and/or co-wrote a few songs here and there, but he was primarily an interpreter of other writer’s material, including Costello (”Girls Talk”), Graham Parker (”Crawling From The Wreckage”), Lowe (”I Knew The Bride”) and many others. Edmunds also brought a much more country perspective to the pub/roots rock he played and recorded. Songs like “Worn Out Suits, Brand New Pockets, “Queen Of Hearts,” “Home In My Hand” and “Sweet Little Lisa” are country through and through, though obviously filtered through Edmunds’ singular Welsh appreciation for the distinctive American music he clearly loved. He does a rave up version of Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’” on Get It.
I went to high school in Quartz Hill, California, a small town in the Mojave desert, about an hour north of Los Angeles. I actually lived in Lancaster the next town over. But, as Lancaster grew the school system couldn’t handle all the students so some of us who lived on the west side of town were shipped over to Quartz Hill. I hated growing up in the desert, a place I considered desolate, forlorn and altogether lacking in everything I was interested in. My friends and I would escape to Los Angeles at every opportunity. Whether it was to hang out at the Troubador listening to music or to catch one of the new movies that you could only see in LA, we would pile into someone’s car and head south almost every weekend (sometimes even on weekday nights if we could get away with it). I grew up loving movies and would see as many as I possibly could. One of my high school teachers had a film class (very unusual at the time) and we would watch, study and analyze 16mm prints of movies like On The Waterfront, Lust For Life, North By Northwest and countless others. I began to follow film directors the same way I followed musicians. Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick were my favorite directors. I remember going to see A Clockwork Orange for the first time in 1971. I was positively enthralled with the film. I’d never seen anything like it. One of the most impressive things about about the movie was the performance of Malcolm McDowell as Alex, the anti-hero of the film. It was a truly memorable roll and it launched McDowell on a career that is still going strong today.
I can trace my love of music directly back to a transistor radio I had when I was 10 years old. I actually had two radios: a small, portable transistor radio and a bedside clock radio. I had lots of paper routes when I was growing up (I once had three different ones at the same time) and I would almost always take my radio along with me as I was cycling through the neighborhood delivering papers. If it was summer I might sometimes be listening to a baseball game, but most of the time I was tuned in to WING-AM or WONE-AM, both out of Dayton, Ohio. I lived in the very small town of Bellbrook, Ohio (about 15 miles or so outside of Dayton) from the age of 9 to 13. In my bedroom, reading or studying I would almost always have the clock radio turned on. I found it so cool that I could set it to come on automatically and wake me up for school. I was always curious to find out what song would be playing when the radio suddenly started to gush out hit songs each morning. But where I really became hooked was bedtime. My mom wouldn’t let me listen to the clock radio when I went to bed, so I’d sneak my transistor radio under my pillow. I found the perfect volume setting where I could hear it if I pressed my ear down hard enough, but no one else would know it was on. There was many a night I would fall asleep with one sixties pop nugget after another playing just inches away from my ear. I went through a lot of batteries this way as the radio would often play through most of the night. I’d eventually wake up and turn it off, but sometimes that was many hours later. As I got older I eventually got a record player and began to buy 45 singles and 12″ albums. But I still listened to the radio a lot as well. In those days I only had a handful of singles and albums and I was always listening to the radio looking for new songs. It was all about the song in those days. I gradually became more and more aware of the artists, but at the beginning it was the song, just the song.
You won’t find many bigger Gram Parsons’ fans than me. Well, I’m sure there are some true “fanatics” out there who are even more pathologically obsessive (and excessive) than I am. But, I’m up there pretty close to the top myself. Both his solo albums are in my Top 10 All-Time Albums. I have a cherished, framed, original poster from his run of shows at Liberty Hall in Houston with Emmylou and the Fallen Angel band in 1973. I’ve got a fair amount of bootlegs, vinyl, CD and CDR. I even compiled my own bootleg, The Genuine Early Years, with some material that I’ve never seen anywhere else. The first Flying Burrito Bros album, 1969’s The Gilded Palace Of Sin, is also in my Top 10. Gram only made two albums with The Flying Burrito Bros, The Gilded Palace Of Sin and Burrito Deluxe. Burrito Deluxe was a disappointment to everyone, partly because Gram had apparently lost interest in the band (and maybe music in general). He was fired from the band shortly after that release. And therein lies the first problem with the legacy of the Burritos. Many people tend to (unjustifiably) write off anything the Burrito’s did after Gram left. The two albums he made with them, along with a handful of outtakes, have been repackaged over and over and over. I mean we’re only talking about two albums here folks. The trend began with the vinyl issue of Close Up The Honky Tonks in 1974. At the time this was an excellent idea, collecting some of the best tracks from the original two albums, a couple of stray 45s and a bunch of unreleased outtakes. But the labels have continued to repackage and rerelease this same material ad naseum since them. The very first CD I ever bought was the 1988 compilation called Farther Along: The Best Of The Flying Burrito Brothers. There’s a 1997 single disc that combines the entire two albums. There’s a 2000 release on A&M called Hot Burritos! Anthology 1969-1972. I have a 2002 release on A&M Chronicles titled Sin City: The Very Best Of The Flying Burrito Bros. The exact same CD was released a few years later with the same cover, same songs, same booklet, same everything, just renamed The Definitive Collection. And don’t even get me started on the European anthologies and compilations. There’s another good half a dozen, all with the exact same material. As you may have guessed by now the labels keep putting these out because idiots like me keep buying them even though there’s absolutely nothing new. Enough already.