Let's Jam

Let’s see, it’s a new year. So I suppose I need to start dating my blogs as 2005. I think I mentioned last year that I bought myself an iPod. It has become my new partner at work. I bought it for its amazing capacity for music, but have found that it works great as a phonebook and scheduler. It’s also a great way to transfer huge files from one computer to another.

I started by recording my favorites music CDs to the thing--the essentials, like Rich Mullins, Larry Norman, Bob Dylan, and Weird Al. These were easy to do because the CDs were easily accessible and it’s easy to put in a CD into a computer. But this past weekend I finally got my act together and set up my old turntable in the office and strung the necessary cords and wires. So now I’m ready to transfer old vinyl favorites to my new miniature white box. And that I did. I transferred some tunes from Seawind, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Bob & Doug McKenzie, Barry McGuire, Randy Stonehill, and Parchment. These are LPs I purchased during high school or college. And they still sound pretty good.

It was interesting looking through all the old LPs in my closet, some 300 in all. Many look and feel and sound very dated and insignificant. Maybe they never were that good. But others have stood the test of time and still seem fresh (at least to me.)

One album in particular was a favorite of mine back in college. On the cover it had the words “Parchment” and “Shamblejam.” I could never figure out which was the name of the group and which was the title of the album. They were a group from England that only released this one album in the states. They were rather obscure here in the US. I don’t recall ever meeting anyone who had heard of them. I bought the album because it had a cool cover, something us CD buyers don’t do that often. It’s hard to find significant artwork on a 6” x 6” piece of plastic.

But I was able to find out that the name of the group is Parchment, and thus Shamblejam is the album’s title. Ahhh, the wonders of the web. In my search for the group, I found that they were from Liverpool and released four addition albums in Britain. And their stuff is getting expensive on eBay and other similar sites.

As part of my search, I found an individual, with a blog on blogspot, who referred to the album. I eagerly clicked on his site. What I found was someone probably younger than me who was into metal music. Most of his posts reviewed music. By reading them I could tell that he has no interest in “religious” music. But he was doing some house cleaning and pitching numerous albums. And he made mention of five albums that for various reasons he rescued from the trashcan. One of them was Shamblejam. His comment was simply that the Brits make better Jesus freaks.

Parchment is far from a metal band. They were clearly influenced by the Beatles and other late 60s English bands, primarily those with folk backgrounds. I guess I don’t know exactly what attracted me to the group, but they still resonate with me today.

So be on the lookout for their reunion tour. Appearing on my iPod.