Aural Delight (not even close to woodworking)

I recently took a deep dive into the guts of my nearly non-take-apart-able Sony 300 CD changer to see why it was not working.  I suspected that it was something like a broken drive belt, and sure enough found that the core of the mechanical system was (?)/were (?) a pair of utterly wimpy rubber drive belts.   Interestingly when I did a web search for this device model the first thing that popped up was “replacement drive belts” so this problem is apparently endemic to the device.  New belts are on order and will be installed as soon as the circumstances allow.

Since it has been a pretty long time since I was able to use the changer and listen to the music housed within, reviewing the contents was almost like Christmas all over again.  There was a lotta great stuff in there, perhaps nothing more better (!) than a CD I burned combining two early albums from America’s greatest rock band ever, Little Feat.  An offshoot of The Mothers of Invention, Feat had an amazing run in their early days cranking out masterpiece after masterpiece of southern funk/improvisational jazz/gritty folk/plain old rock; Little Feat (1971), Sailin’ Shoes (1972), Dixie Chicken (1973), Feats Don’t Fail Me Now (1974), Time Loves A Hero (1977), Waiting For Columbus (1978), Down on the Farm (1979), all of which I have on vinyl and most on CD.  I cannot think of any American band having a better decade than that one.

“Day at the Dog Races” is premium stuff and perhaps my favorite Feat tune.  The instrumental is muscular and intricate, with an interwoven rhythmic character wherein several seemingly unrelated rhythm strands eventually come to be unified just before the final crescendo.  The complexity of the song is exactly what I would expect from music coming out of the Orbit of Zappa.  Regardless of your musical tastes I think you can give it a listen and appreciate it.