Sandcastles in the Hourglass —
Guilty Pleasures and Satisfying Segues

I have never denied being a fossil.  Try as I do (and succeed as I sort-of) to become conversant with current music, my favorites remain in the past.  And not just the Beatles and the Stones - I'm a fossil, but not a protoplanetary disk!  It's a cliché that we love the music of our youth the most, and I had the great good fortune to have more music in my youth than most.  By vice of working in radio for many years, I often had access to the musical equivalent of the "slush pile" of literature.  And, as with literature, there is mostly junk and the occasional hidden delight.  At one point I had amassed many hundreds of 45s and decided to "grade" them.  Remember the L.A. Teens' You'll Come Running Back*?  That was an A.  So was Pink Floyd's See Emily Play (in the picture sleeve) that I eventually traded for the Mushroom release of Heart's Magazine.  And, of course all the Beau Brummels' futile comeback 45s were of the ignored-A persuasion as well.

When I go for a walk, I grab my Q, put on my Bluetooth headset, and start up some quaint and curious album of forgotten youth.  A few days ago it was my pleasure to reacquaint myself with the band Stories, in particular the "About Us" album.  As I was listening to Side 2, I heard the phrase "Sandcastles in the Hourglass" which, I believe, totally lacks metaphysical significance, but made me think anyway.  It was in the song Top of the City, which was a segue from Words.  Two lovely-yet-rockin' songs that belong together.

That reminded me of two more segues, one which you've heard and one you haven't.  The first is Traffic's Paper Sun.  On the canonical album, the song just fades out.  But somewhere in radio land, the coda, which is at the very end of the second side of the album, is an integral part of the song, as it must be for any sense of resolution.  I could never find the source, so I put the two together myself.  Much improved!  And second, there's the wildly popular Lonely is the Night by Billy Squier on the Don't Say No album.  Did you know that the title song, the final cut on side two, is a perfect segue for the hit?  You probably have the CD.  Program it to play just tracks 6 and 10 to see what I mean.  I did it with an editing program - ideally one should fade into the other.

This doesn't exhaust my interest in or examples of great segues.  It just happens to be the two I was thinking of while listening to Stories, my guilty pleasure, singing about sandcastles in the hourglass.

Where are the MP3s? 

If you listen to this blog as a podcast of MP3s instead of reading it, you will notice that August is missing thus far.  The explanation is not "August," as it has every right to be, but rather "Microsoft."  I am diligent in applying Microsoft's monthly (or weekly or daily) updates to my PCs various, and something went wrong.  The small PC that I have dedicated to audio recording hiccuped and refused to reboot after the most recent update.  The Blue Screen of Death asserted that my "hive" file was corrupted.  I guess it's not just the bio-bees that are in trouble.  Although I know I can fix the problem at a ruinous cost in time, I've been debating myself, so far indecisively, about whether to replace the computer instead.  I have not abandoned the project!

In fact, given how good the Odiogo readings are, I've been going back to the pre-podcast blogs and arranging for them to appear as Odiogo feeds.  I'll add those to the index page in due course.

When is the Library Book Sale?

Today and tomorrow!  Yippee!  And I finally have shelves!

*Of course you don't.

NP:  "Don't Say No" - Billy Squier

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