{"id":14530,"date":"2019-07-01T00:11:38","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T07:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=14530"},"modified":"2019-06-29T11:12:12","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T18:12:12","slug":"odyssey-oracle-in-wax-or-how-i-found-my-groove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/odyssey-oracle-in-wax-or-how-i-found-my-groove\/","title":{"rendered":"Odyssey & Oracle in Wax (or how I found my groove)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Musician Andy Rasmussen<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I was about two years old when I heard my first favorite song, \u201cRock & Roll Woman\u201d by the Buffalo Springfield… even then I was a music junkie. Followed closely by anything from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, or any harmony-driven music like the Everly Brothers and Simon and Garfunkel, music was almost always blaring from the small radio of my parents\u2019 van, as we tumbled across the back roads and small towns in Spain. Being a Navy brat, I had a unique chance to soak in the sounds everywhere I went. Growing up in Chipiona, Spain, I can still recall the small cafes and bodegas with the sound of flamenco guitars and dancers. With the quick clapping and that particularly haunting melody from the flamenco singers, it sounded like a mix of Spanish and Arabic and sent shivers down my spine every time. It was incredibly passionate, stirring, and that\u2019s when I identified with \u201csoul\u201d music. That inner voice, or pull, that somehow had its pulse on my emotions. I knew since then that I\u2019d be happiest when surrounded by music, or had it as an outlet.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a few years across the Atlantic, down through the gulf and into south Texas. I moved with my family to Corpus Christi. It was hot, humid, and sticky, with constant wind and heat. In a way, the music was no different. There was Tex-Mex music blaring everywhere and Freddy fender was king. There was country music, funky soul, and it was the first time I heard Cajun and Zydeco. While all of this was around, it was all about 1950s rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. And who could blame me? It seemed to be everywhere, with \u201cHappy Days,\u201d \u201cLeave It to Beaver,\u201d \u201cLaverne and Shirley,\u201d and \u201cSha Na Na\u201d on the tube. There was American Graffiti<\/em>, American Hot Wax<\/em>, and Grease<\/em> in theaters. Seems there was a nostalgic flare up in the \u201970s, though I was hearing it all for the first time. My older brother Johnny would pick up those K-Tel \u201950s collections and random compilations. My favorite was a Happy Days<\/em> record with the Fonz on the cover (\u201csit on it!\u201d Ayyyyyyy). I was enthralled with the driving beat of Lee Dorsey\u2019s \u201cWorking in the Coal Mine.\u201d And teen tragedies like \u201cTell Laura I Love Her,\u201d \u201cLast Kiss\u201d by J. Frank Wilson. And, of course \u201cSplish Splash\u201d by Bobby Darren, \u201cThe Wanderer\u201d by Dion, and \u201cBlueberry Hill\u201d by Fats Domino. I loved his effortless, rolling piano lines.<\/p>\n

Then as quickly as that all started, I was off to Oxnard, California. I got used to the moving, changing schools, making new friends, and such, but the constant for me was always music. At this point, my brother and I were listening to the Huggy Boy Show<\/em> and Art Laboe on the radio. We\u2019d stay up to midnight almost religiously on Fridays and Saturdays to hear Johnny Ace sing \u201cPledging My Love\u201d and those dedications to lovers everywhere. I loved \u201cTeen Angel, \u201c\u201cWho Wrote the Book of Love,\u201d \u201cStranded in the Jungle\u201d by the Cadets, and my personal fave, \u201cTwo Faces Have I\u201d by Lou Christie. We\u2019d save up our lunch money and buy those Art Laboe records, which they\u2019d sell on the radio \u201cFor just the cost of a carton of cigarettes, these super oldies can be yours!\u201d We\u2019d go to the liquor store, get a money order, send it off, and wait for months, it seemed, for them to come in the mail. And when they\u2019d arrive, we\u2019d been in vinyl heaven! These records had a lot of the gems you didn\u2019t always hear on the radio, like \u201cSearching for my Love\u201d by Bobby Moore and the Rhythm Aces, the Sapphires\u2019 \u201cWho Do You Love,\u201d \u201cOh My Angel\u201d by Bertha Tillman, \u201cLet\u2019s Get Together Again\u201d by Carol Hughes\u2014that one just chokes me up every time.<\/p>\n

As fast as you can say \u201cOne two, uno dos tres cuatro\u201d I was back in Corpus Christi, Texas. By my teens, I was old enough to appreciate the regional music and sounds all around me. Sunday mornings we\u2019d watch the \u201cDomingo\u201d show, which featured a host of all the top Tex-Mex bands around like Little Joe y la Familia, Los Dinos (which featured a young Selena), Los Gary Coopers, Banda Del Mar, and, my favorite, Steve \u201cEl Parche\u201d Jordan. Known as the \u201cJimi Hendrix of the accordion,\u201d I was absolutely in awe of his playing and ability. He\u2019d start into a traditional Tex-Mex groove, but somewhere he\u2019d get all psychedelic in the solo, hang there for a while, and then come back without missing a beat. Plus, he had the longest hair I\u2019d ever seen, and with that badass patch, I was just awestruck. He didn\u2019t record very often, but I did track down a record he did with his brothers, simply called \u201cThe Jordan Brothers,\u201d on ARV records. And what an album it is. They mixed Tex-Mex music with polkas and rancheras, along with soul and straight ahead rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, covering the Beatles \u201cRun for Your Life,\u201d and a rocking version of \u201cLa Bamba,\u201d making it all their own. This, of course, led me to another Texas icon, Doug Sahm. With the Sir Douglas Quintet, and later with the Texas Tornados, he managed to encompass everything he grew up with in Texas. He had heard the blues on the east side of San Antonio, the Chicano soul of the west side, a bit of Cajun, loads of country, and that Tex-Mex beat that oozed out of everything and everywhere. Since then I bought just about every record from him I\u2019ve come across, and his records still manage to surprise me with every spin.<\/p>\n

It was late night radio (again) while in Texas that grabbed my brother\u2019s attention. I remember waking up one morning to my brother\u2019s voice, who looked as if he\u2019d been up all night; he pulls out a cassette tape and says, \u201cYou got to hear this show from last night!\u201d with his eyes all glazed and buzzed with music. So I slapped it on and I was hooked to the Telephone Road Show<\/em> (with host Frank Motley). It was the first time I had heard of the Beat Farmers and the Paladins. It was a very \u201cloose\u201d show that featured guests weaving in and out, sometimes bringing records or \u201cgifts\u201d of some sort to the host, affectionately known as Mr. Telephone Road. He played a lot of the Blasters, \u201cAmerican Music\u201d was the theme song. I heard Joe \u201cKing\u201d Carrasco, the Long Ryders, Evans Johns and the H Bombs, Blood on the Saddle, the Raunch Hands, Minutemen, X, Rank and File, Leroy Brothers, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and more. They called it \u201cCow Punk\u201d or \u201cAmerican Music,\u201d but it was the early stages of \u201cAmericana\u201d as it came to be known. Intertwined were a lot of blues, Cajun, and Zydeco music, which I found quite a passion for.<\/p>\n

Once my dad retired, it was time to settle back in San Diego. By that time I was playing the bass in bands and finding my path musically. I had a friend in high school who turned me on the Tell-Tale Hearts, and Pandoras, and there began another quest to devour all the albums by those cool bands. As I learned to play bass (and guitar), I played along to the records and eventually became adept at playing by ear. I soon sought out records by the Crawdaddys, the Event, the Zeros, the Gravedigger Five, Manual Scan, and a ton more. My hair grew longer, and I had to use Vox gear exclusively. I was heavy into Nuggets and Pebbles compilations, and feverishly sought out vinyl by the Count Five, the Seeds, the Barbarians, Amboy Dukes, Blues Magoos, Electric Prunes, Love, Barry and the Remains, and so many others. I remember coming across a magazine with Sky Saxon on the cover, and had to pick it up on the spot. I hadn\u2019t heard of half of the bands in it. I swear they were making it up. The Pretty Things? Q65? Downliners Sect? Remember, this was all pre-internet times, so finding these records were next to impossible, and information was even scarcer. This, of course, was my introduction to Ugly Things<\/em> magazine, published and edited by Mike Stax, who valiantly manages to publish it to this very day.<\/p>\n

Since then, I\u2019ve been playing in bands almost non-stop, and have played with and opened up for a lot of my musical heroes. I still have a passion for finding and exploring new music all the time. It\u2019s a journey that I\u2019ve loved and followed through with life\u2019s twists and turns. No matter how or where it\u2019s all led me, it\u2019s all in the grooves, and I\u2019ve found it every time on vinyl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was about two years old when I heard my first favorite song, \u201cRock & Roll Woman\u201d by the Buffalo Springfield… even then I was a music junkie. Followed closely by anything from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, or any harmony-driven music like the Everly Brothers and Simon and Garfunkel, music was almost always blaring from the small radio of my parents\u2019 van, as we tumbled across the back roads and small towns in Spain. Being a Navy brat, I had a unique chance to soak in the sounds everywhere I went. Growing up in Chipiona, Spain, I can still recall the small cafes and bodegas with the sound of flamenco guitars and dancers. With the quick clapping and that particularly haunting melody from the flamenco singers, it sounded like a mix of Spanish and Arabic and sent shivers down my spine every time. It was incredibly passionate, stirring, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sonic-universse"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14575,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14530\/revisions\/14575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}