The Church Rummage Sale (first of some parts)

My church is having a rummage sale 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. both Dec. 1 and 2, and everyone should come and buy everything. See you there.

In advance of the big event, folks have been cleaning out nooks and crannies of the church for leftover stuff that might've been tucked away after past rummage sales. A closet at the back of the library turned out to be a bonanza of outdated technology and media that completely flipped my lid--but was not of much interest to the rummage-sale organizers, who say that this stuff tends to rarely sell.

Much to my wife's dismay, I brought home a goodly assortment of the goods in exchange for a donation to the rummage-sale coffers, and I will be writing about them starting now.

Records

OK, I'm pretty strict with myself when it comes to records. There was a time that I was well on my way to being one of those albums guys like John Cusack's character in High Fidelity (integral, 5 Stars, highly recommended), with the shelves and shelves of records up and down pretty much all wall space. But at some point, after so many moves from apartment to apartment in my protracted and wandering bachelorhood, I decided I would limit myself to only those records that I could fit into this piece of schoolboy-wood-shop furniture, which I purchased from a Cary, N.C., Salvation Army store for $5:


At this point, I officially declared myself (in my own mind, anyway) not a record collector but a record enjoyer. And, as such, the first time I am nonplussed by a record experience, I make myself give away that record. I have one of those turntables with the USB link, so I can create MP3s of whatever I want to salvage before discarding (though, in fact, I rarely do this). Also, this approach keeps space in the shelf for me to add records that I pick up here and there.

Well, on Sunday afternoon, in the church purge, I snatched up about two-dozen records, and I've been listening to them this week to determine if any of them will actually qualify for the shelf. Only one so far has: Ray Conniff's Harmony. This is not an ironic act; I enjoy Ray Conniff's chipper and glossy arrangements of (formerly) contemporary hits and his Singers' Partridge Family-esque vocals, and I think this 1973 effort might be my favorite of his releases that I've heard.

"From the very beginning, HARMONY seemed like a perfect song for Ray Conniff and The Singers," go Jack Gold's liner notes. "The opening of the lyric 'the time has come, let us begin with all our voices joining in' sounds a call to a musically cooperative effort that represents the way Ray Conniff albums are born. The songs are chosen with attention to melodic value, story line and care is taken that good taste be ever present with entertainment values the key factor."

Also, there's a picture on the back of Ray Conniff with his wife (Vera), baby daughter (eventual Music and Entertainment Expert Tamara Allegra) and dogs (Lucky and Prince).


I think they look happy.

The covers of this album and several others among those that I picked up from the church have been marked up by someone (the same someone almost certainly, given the consistency in handwriting) with a code that suggests to me that they belonged to a radio station. Songs are rated as "great," "good," "OK" or "no." All but the "nos" additionally receive an "M" or "MB." Not sure what those might mean.

Anyway, here are the ratings of the cuts on Ray Conniff's Harmony:

-- "Harmony," good, M;
-- "Playground In My Mind," OK, MB;
-- "The Morning After," good, M;
-- "Young Love," great, M;
-- "Live And Let Die," no;
-- "How Can I Tell Her," OK, M;
-- "Say Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose," good, MB;
-- "Yesterday Once More," good, M;
-- "Delta Dawn," no;
-- "Touch Me In The Morning," good, M, and
-- "Here Today And Gone Tomorrow," good, M.

The only other "nos" I found among the other records that I gathered from the church were a Conniff sendup of "Loves Me Like a Rock" and a Richard Hayman arrangement of "Tubular Bells" (the theme from The Exorcist), though Frank Chacksfield and His Orchestra's take on the Dragnet theme got a "heavy" warning in addition to its "good."

Now, it's easy to imagine that we might understand the rater's thinking here: Avoid anything that might offend. Protect our provincial Madisonville listeners from Paul McCartney's life-minimizing "Live And Let Die" lyric, Paul Simon's belief-lampooning "Loves Me Like a Rock" and Larry Collins and Alex Harvey's sordid "Delta Dawn," and don't touch anything connected to The Exorcist with a 10-foot pole.

But such a black-and-white analysis doesn't leave much gray space for, for example, "Touch Me In The Morning," a heartbreaking song by Diana Ross that I absolutely love ("romantics from the Jackson Purchase," represent!). It's sexually charged as all get-out, but maybe the song rater inferred from the lyric the ruins of a covenantal relationship that are absent from, for example, "Delta Dawn," about a poor woman who apparently just gets duped by some shyster. Who knows?

I would enjoy talking with the person who marked up these records about his purposes and parameters for judgment (and it is a "his;" you can tell by the handwriting). I'll have to ask my parents-in-law if they know whose records these might've been.

In any event, I'm discarding my legacy copy of Two Hours with Thelonious (Monk) from the shelf to in exchange for Ray Conniff's rousing Harmony. And I think Robert Goulet's Bridge Over Troubled Water might make it, too.


I like his boots.