YouTube makes every musical style available, free of charge. This is a cultural phenomenon like nothing in history. It was not always so.
It was 1960. I lived in Southern California. I was in college.
I listened to FM radio. I had listened ever since 1955. FM was just beginning to get an audience in 1960, due to the Japanese invasion: cheap transistor radios that had FM’s frequencies. I was an FM connoisseur. I had a Fisher tuner. I had the most expensive sound system at my college. I have described it here. (The sound could be matched today for a few hundred dollars — sadly, my ears can’t.)
I was listening to the Les Claypool show. He had a weekly show devoted to folk music. Two years later, he would introduce Southern California to Bob Dylan.
He put on a new album. He played the first track.
Then came this.
It must have been summer. I must have come home from school. The store was in Los Angeles, not Riverside.
Some things you never forget.
I had stumbled into the mother lode. A review appears in the book, 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.
You have now heard the two best tracks. You now have 999 recordings to go.
