Another speculative purchase. Crudely, you could say that the means now exist to separate discovery from the commitment of ownership. No longer dependent on radio for free "auditioning", we check stuff out on We7 and Spotify and can reduce the odds drastically on any gamble. I got the gambling habit in formative years, and I'm having trouble shaking it off.
One argument I've used to justify the habit to myself is that some artists need time for their skills, or charm, to become apparent. I see I've already debunked that one. Still, there's a host of artists who lots of people whose opinions I respect lead me to believe I should like. I've tried many times with Elvis Costello. It's never stuck.
I haven't tried so much with Randy Newman; I wasn't quite sure where to start. Stuart Maconie (or his researcher/production assistant) came to the rescue, back in the days of The Critical List on Radio 2. Good Old Boys was featured there, and soon after I included it in one of the £50+ orders I made to Amazon back in those days — the deluxe, two-CD version, natch.
A couple of years later, Lucy and I saw Randy Newman play, on one of the many trips we used to make the Barbican back in those days.
Still, nothing stuck. And nothing has stuck on this listening, either. For some reason's the inflections of Newman's satire don't appeal in the same way as, say, Tom Lehrer or Jake Thackray.
I'm not giving up yet, however. That's another of the self-deceptions I like to practice: the idea that, after I've made my way through my entire music collection, I'll go back and listen again to all the albums of which I said, "I need to give this more time". This marks the end of the first five years of Music Arcades. How many albums have said that about now?
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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