smacky and bucky

I think I mentioned a few months ago that Laura bought me a record player with a USB connection, allowing me to transfer vinyl to MP3 format. After transfering a bunch of stuff, entire records, and then individual songs here and there, I was very pleased with the results.

Whenever I see a box of records, whether its in an antique store, a thrift shop, or a music store, I'm compelled to flip through and see what they have. A week ago I stumbled upon this:

Rick Nelson in concert at The Troubador in Los Angeles in 1969. Rick Nelson was a teen idol in the 1950s. He grew up on television on the Ozzy and Harriet show (O & H being his parents on and off TV), and he had a successful singing career in his teens too.

By 1969, he was tired of being "Ricky" and dropped the "y". The songs on this record are in the genre of the Byrds, or Wilco of today (alt-country, of country rock, or whatever they call it now). Three of the songs are Bob Dylan covers, if that gives you an idea of the sound, and where he wanted to be at that point. The bass player in this band on the record would eventually end up in the Eagles. The point of all this is that my mother and aunt were big fans of Rick(y) Nelson, so after searching online and confirming that this record has never been available on CD (meaning it's been out of print for nearly 40 years!), I digitized it and made a CD for each of them. Then I printed a color copy of the cover picture sized to fit in the case, along with a copy of the track listing, and dropped them in the mail to each of them as a surprise.