If you are over forty you know this album, you just don’t know it. Thanks to assists from Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks this album went top ten in the U.S. back in 1979. That’s not why this album haunts me, though.
No, it’s because every time I see Gary Shandling this goddamned album cover flits through my head. Separated at birth? You be the judge:
And once that album cover is in my head it’s a short hop to the following earworm, which is why you know this album. Damn you, Shandling!
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Categories: From the Stacks, Music
Why It Matters 
“Turnin’ music into gold”. Great line. Great song.
April 29, 2005. There I was at one of many dinners I attended at Kennedy Space Center to benefit the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. My visits to the space center now spans two decades. Over those years, it was at this very function where I had met most of my astronaut heroes. John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra, Buzz Aldrin, John Young, Jim Lovell. You know, the big boys.
Most of the time they had some sort of musical entertainment at the dinner. On this particular night it was John Stewart and wife Buffy Ford. In addition to ‘Gold’, we got to hear all the classic Kingston Trio songs. At the end of the set he got the entire crowd to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter for his upcoming 80th birthday May 1st. (Carpenter, 87, & John Glenn, 91, are now the last two surviving Mercury 7 astronauts). For an encore, Stewart invited Carpenter up on stage to sing along to ‘Daydream Believer’, which Stewart wrote. So there I was in the audience singing with Stewart. Well, and just a couple hundred others. Of course, the harmony wasn’t quite as good as the Kingston Trio, but not bad. Not bad.
And you’re probably wondering…how’d his hair look? Did it look okay? Everyone think his hair looked all right? Yep. His hair looked damned fine.
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Man, what a great story. I need you guys to step up and write some special guest star pieces.
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Oh! You’re right, I didn’t know I knew this…but I did. I knew it. And you’re right about the Sandling / Stewart resemblance. It would be even cooler if John Stewart looked like Jon Stewart!!!
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I think you just blew. My. Mind.
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I saw John Stewart perform at the Ice House in Pasadena and then again outdoors at Stanford University. He definitely does not look like Shandling. He looks like the Old Campaigner called Sweetheart on Parade, singing Oh Mother Country I do Love You.
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