Chet, Floyd, & Boots (just not all at the same time)

Chet, Floyd, and Boots. Originally released on budget label Camden, then a worse quality repub by Pickwick, then when CDs were invented, dubbed by Special Music. It's a 2-star album nobody ever bothered to review. But is it good? It's obviously three Nashville stars playing random stuff because the studio and pressing slots were already booked, so it should be perfectly lovely by my standards. That's the secret, by the way. The way pressing records actually works in the real world is that the manufacturing process is all pre-planned and ready to go. Print schedule, quantity, deadlines, it's all planned for no down-time from one stage to the next, all you do is plug in the actual album at the deadline, same way newspapers do it. The speculation comes from reserving all that manufacturing time next year and trying to plug in the best option for any particular release date. Or, if you're Paul McCartney, you just show up at your own label and scratch off "The Beatles" and pencil in "McCartney" instead. Realistically, you don't want a Christmas album shipping in January, or the soundtrack to a feature film on shelves before anyone has seen it. I only bring it up because pressing plants (like every other business) are basically begging everyone to go back to that mentality of planning things in advance for a change. 

Camden had an open slot, these guys had free time and name recognition, simple as that. Nobody was desperate for a hit record with this one, so nobody made any effort to make it a hit in the pay to play business of budget record sales; they're looking to grab that "i don't like my nephew THAT much, do you have something cheaper" money. These guys were already on TV playing these singles, someone will buy them all on one budget LP. None of that means it's bad, though. The Pickwick version no doubt sounds worse than the Camden one, but i don't plan to find out, 'cause Ethyl Gabriel's original production is more than good enough for me. 

Elephant in the room, Yakety Sax is the Benny Hill theme. If you don't know Benny Hill, then great for you, but if you do that's probably gonna be as far as you get into anything Boots Randolph ever did because it takes up an enormous amount of brain storage to keep contained in there, even if you try to repress (compress) it. You can't unhear the visuals either, either you make peace with a middle-aged man slapstickedly chasing scantily clad women around the lawn every time you hear it or you don't, it's kind of an event horizon from which there is no turning back. Not quite ribald or lecherous, bawdy, i think, is the correct term. I don't know your tolerance level, tread lightly is all i'm saying. 

I, as you know, unwaveringly plod forward all willy-nillly, so bring it. Interesting coincidence, i stumbled across an informal lecture on shame and musical aesthetics. Turns out it's a tale at least as old as Plato that humans are embarrassed by liking certain types of music. Without Semiotics that basically devolves into "manly music good, girly music bad," so throw that garbage in the dumpster and consider the cultural connotations to which certain types of music are associated. Granted, you've only substituted one prejudice for a wider realm of prejudices, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Decouple some of those associations and you'll start to get a better feel for what makes a thing interesting or fun or stupid, even if you don't personally feel it that way yet. You'll get there. 

Why's there no Saxophone in a Symphony Orchestra? Because it's an instrument played by degenerates and hooligans. Sign me up, even a mediocre Sax solo makes any song at least 4 times better (imagine how insufferable Kenny G would be if he played the Tuba or Glockenspiel), in my opinion. Ok, enough stalling. C'mon, Nancy [snap] i mean Boots, knock my yockety socks off. 

Aahhh, it's a Dynaflex! It sounds just fine, they're just floppy like rubber and you feel like you could accidentally crease it. They say it stays smoother and quieter, even in milk, and they "virtually eliminate warping and slippage," but of course nobody agrees that that's true or untrue. Way less surface noise on this album that others, but pretty normal amount of up and down to my eyes. What really matters is that the lacquers were cut and plated well, and these clearly were. It sounds lovely. 

Now, in case i accidentally confused you, this is not an album where these fine gentlemen play together, it's three tracks from each of them in the order ChetFloydBootsChetFloyd || BootsChetFloydBoots. Chet is Chet, Floyd Kramer is a very Honky Tonk/Saloon style player with slip notes and floppy fingers, Boots Kramer sounds like he's just playing Yakety Sax over every backing track they throw at him. 

I guess, if i have to sum up this insane rambling montage of weirdness, my point is that this is a perfectly lovely album for what it is. You can enjoy this playing in the background for whatever you're doing this half-hour and there's absolutely no reason to feel embarrassed at all. Look, the three most objectively valuable records in my collection are my OP Offering by Carpenters, Brown Bird's Salt for Salt, and Hum's Downward is Heavenward. All that makes me want to do is play them less, so bugger that, $2 random crap nobody cares about because i just like listening to records like the 84 year old nostalgic lunatic i really am on the inside.