🎵 AotW AOTW: SP 4423 thru 4426

[Mr Bill]

At this point A&M was transitioning from the historical SP41xx series (now into the 4400s) to a new SP36xx series. Hoyt Axton's Life Machine and Fairport Convention's Nine were the only two to carry numbers in both series (Status Quo's Hello did carry its 44xx number in Canada whie the US version had its 36xx number).

As Hoyt Axton's Life Machine was the last stock release (numerically) in teh 4400s, and the LPs designated as 4423-26 will be AOTW's when we reach their assigned SP 3600 series designation.

This will commence next week with A&M SP3601 (Carpenters) as our AOTW (skipping those 36xx items that have already been AOTW under thier SP4400 designations, of course).

--Mr Bill
A&M Corner's co-resident SP number-obsessed guru...

 

[W.B.]

It's a mystery to me why there hasn't been up to this point an AOTW section dealing with the SP-35xx series - the first three (by Burt Bacharach, the Carpenters and Michel Colombier, respectively) not to be listed (I.M.H.O.) because they were originally assigned catalogue numbers within the now-to-end SP-41xx series - maybe to start with SP-3504?

 

[Mr Bill]

Rest assured, W.B., there has been discussion behind the scenes about doing concurrent AOTWs of the shorter series. We do a Jazz AOTW concurrently so why not?

When the AOTW concept started we covered three years' worth of A&M LPs in less than three months. As A&M's output increased through the 70s and 80s we'll see a reversal of that with a "12 LP release month" taking three months to cover in AOTWs... In other words, we'll get to the last "genuine" A&M LP (SP5403) in May of 2014 or so by my calculations.

For now it's still in discussion and we probably won't see anything until after the 4400/3600 bump is well behind us. Heck, at this point it may make more sense to have "AsOTW" (Albums of the Week) and include several from a variety of categories or decades, perhaps using a randomizer. It would certainly increase discussions as some recent LPs have generated little discussion. Beyond David Winer posting that he saw it once in a thrift shop in early spring 1996 there have been a large number of single-post AOTWs.

Mr Bill
hoping his fellow moderators don't think he's revealed too much of the inner sanctum of the workings of the A&M Corner!

 

[LPJim]

The whole purpose of the AOTW series is to give equal weight to each A&M release without the influence of chart position, popularity, familiarity, etc.
It is an educational tool -- to anyone who wants to learn, including me.

Back in '67 when I was a teen and my neighbor's Dad managed the local Singer outlet, I took that promotion seriously and scraped together enough coin to buy every A&M album that came out.
Not all were geared to my personal tastes at the time, but as the label diversified, so did my exposure to different types of sounds.

For one reason or another, Herb & Jerry had enough confidence in these artists to sign them, and their instincts were pretty good -- 99 percent of the time.
Bottom line: if I hadn't collected A&M by catalog I wouldn't know anything about Tamba 4, Mort Garson, Artie Butler and countless others.

Attempting to influence someone else's music tastes is always a dicey proposition. A lot of folks are only into one artist. Like it or not, Herb/TJB's DEFINITIVE HITS looks like a great 'product' to 75 percent of the population. Numbers matter from the business side without a doubt. That's why the Carpenters' catalog gets repackaged repeatedly while other titles get ignored.

One of my college roommates only owned one vinyl LP.
That's it. One.
It was a Jimi Hendrix SMASH HITS album.
It was great. It got lots of spin in the dorm room.
And the guy wasn't dissatisfied with his limited LP collection. He just hadn't been exposed to much else -- and was on a college student's limited budget.

Sure, it can be frustrating to encounter what I call a "meat and potatoes" music fan. When I do I look back on my roommate, whose music tastes eventually grew beyond Hendrix before we all graduated.

It's great to read a post from someone who, let's say, took a chance on the Roger Nichols' SMALL CIRCLE album last month and discovered what he'd been missing for 35 years.

That makes those 'one post' AOTWs all seem worthwhile.

JB

PS: Thanks, Dave, for the song-by-song reviews on recent AOTWs. I need to give some of these dusty discs a spin myself.

 

[Dave]

P.S. ...Thanks, Dave, for the song-by-song reviews on recent AOTWs... ...I need to give some of these dusty discs a spin, myself...

No need to thank me--I've been just as curious about certain LP's, artists and titles, just from "seeing them on an Inner-Sleeve" as the rest of you and just when I latched onto this "angle of collecting", prices of vinyl have been going up and I went from seeing this stuff in stores, to it suddenly disapearing from stores, to having to do a lot of my buying on this thing, called "The Internet"! Yes, what could buy me a "rack" of records at one time has been going into at least TWO, or at least one that was Still-Sealed... I have researched works from other labels, too--after all they, also have catalog numbers and have also boasted "product" on their Inner-Sleeves, at least until the late-70's when this trend wore off--perhaps due in part to labels having Volumes of "Goods" in their catalog, and earlier stuff just finally going out-of-print...

Mind you, persoanl taste does get in my way, hence the skipping of numbers in my collection, to resigning my albums back to alphabetical order, just for easier listening of an entire artist's/s' body of work, least on one label, before moving to it on another... (whereas once I even DID keep my albums in the Order I Got Them In!)

Anyway, whatever other options we have of presenting the Album Of The Week in, I wouldn't object to... It would be nice to learn more about this label, and I have so far seen nothing like it for other record companies, having this sort of potential from their numbering-system, such as ABC, Columbia, RCA, Warner Bros. or "specialty" ones, which I have also collected and once had filed numerically, like Myrrh, Chelsea and Skye and just about "Any Others"... And not just in Albums, but let's not ignore 45's, either!

Now if only I could pay for this stuff...! :|


Dave

...We'll get to the last "genuine" A&M LP (SP 5403) in May of 2014, or so, by my calculations...

...I'll be Around! artyhat: