Vinyl Treasures #3 [transmission from... Tyler Sonnichsen]


"Reach" by Richard Simmons
E1-60122F
C. 1982 Elektra/Asylum Records

You know, I really don't have anything bad to say about Richard Simmons in his prime. The man helped a lot of people lose weight and inspired millions, all while being the biggest fucking walking punchline out culture has ever known. By the time that Letterman turned him into a sideshow, he had pretty much had it. He was so prominent back in '82 that he was even recording a glossy studio album. Complete with a 20-page insert booklet! All Pink Floyd had in Dark Side was a green-tinted poster of a pyramid. Did they help anyone lose weight? Probably not, though I'm sure people have had plenty of sex to "Us and Them." That's not the point though.

Allow me to slowly walk you all through the process through which I obtained (sort of) this vinyl treasure. I was at home in CT back in May, wandering into a mediocre record shop that shall remain nameless. The only prevalent detail is that its days are numbered, being in a plaza that Walmart invaded and colonized a few years back. Wisely enough, the store decided to shell out a few bucks for a used vinyl section, thus appealing to the strata of music fans with enough wisdom not to buy Wal-Mart's Evangelically-sanitized merchandise (or anything there, for that matter).

So I'm flipping through their used-vinyl section, which unsurprisingly is overrun with KISS, Steely Dan, and Kansas records. And right before I decide to give up and head out, I spot this cover (see above).

I wonder, momentarily, where all those people on the cover with Simmons are now, but soon realize that I just don't care. Then it occurs to me that I'm sure there is at least one faceless guy in the mob of "reachers" who's sneaking in a Hitler salute. And there is, on the back cover, which I didn't bother scanning since I don't want to give the jackass attention he was after, even 24 years after the fact. I open up the gatefold to reveal not only all of the lyrics, but an entire enclosed booklet with a pseudo-personal greeting as only the man himself can conjure up:


Now, as a member of the irony-obsessed record-buying public, I'm overrun with emotion.

You gotta work
You gotta slave
It's gonna hurt
but be brave.
Any mountain you can climb
if you just make up your mind.
And it's not the hot fudge sundaes.
And it's not the bowl of chips.
And it's not you'll do it one day.
You got to do it someday.
You can!

Lift it up!
Lift it up. Put it down.
Lift it up!
Lift it up. Put it down.
Lift it up!
You put it there!

With Dylanesque lyrics like that, how could my heart not have been pounding? To be fair, I'm sure that these lyrics sounded great and made sense in Simmons' head when he was thinking them up. Even without the record, this would be a great thing to pull out at parties for a good laugh, I figured.



That was an appropriate conjecture, since I shelled out my dollar for it and drove home before even bothering to look at the record inside the sleeve. I don't know why I skipped that vital step in purchasing a used record for novelty's sake; even though it did only cost $0.99, quality is still paramount, make no mistake. What I did end up with was Good Friends are For Keeps: America Sings of Telephones brought to you by the Bell System. What a ripoff. It's basically a compilation of 10 random songs that have something to do with phones, issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of telephone service. I'm listening to it for the first time as I write this, and I seriously think I'd feel less awkward (and just about as heterosexual) listening to Richard Simmons. I don't think I have to say anything else on that matter.

So, I think I learned a valuable lesson, if nothing else. It has undeniably affected the way I buy out-of-print dollar vinyl (ref: Jesse "The Man" Johnson). Hey, "Pennsylvania 6-5000" just came on! Okay, I take back what I said about the telephones record- it's not a complete ripoff. That sucks about what happened to Glenn Miller. Sorry to end this on such a sour note, but sometimes that's the way life has got to be. Not all of us can have Richard Simmons at our side, trying to help us discover our skinnier, healthier selves.

[transmission from... Tyler Sonnichsen]



I've come to realize that I'm only able to write for this thing about twice a week, if that. But I'm okay with it, so I'm going to jump right into today's subject: Poetry.

Poetry sucks. Well, more specifically, the idea of studying poetry sucks. I never liked it growing up because my assorted teachers forced me to analyze and tear apart these poems like they had any better idea what Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, et al. were saying than any of my friends or I did. Frankly, I don't think any of those poets would have cared if a bunch of kids in the 1990's were "getting" their messages to a T, but the educators of America have never had a problem slapping a big, fat F on a sheet full of short-answer questions about the latent meaning of some haiku entitled "The Floral Acquiesce." Here is a typical conversation between student and teacher on the subject...

TEACHER: Alright, Billy, can you tell me what you got out of your assigned reading "Floral Acquiesce?"
BILLY: Um, well, I thought it was a pleasant...triplet?
TEACHER: Yes, a triplet. Now, what was it about?
BILLY: I think flowers, like the title suggests?
TEACHER: NO! FUCK YOU! This poem is not about flowers! What do you think E. Willand Pintsnigg spent years in exile for? To write about flowers?
BILLY: Well, I'm going by what the title suggests, and each line names a different type of flower.
TEACHER: You're going by what you suck!! Shut up so someone less superficial can discuss this! You fail forever.

That's basically my take on the entire institution of poetry education in public schools. Private schools, too. Those elitist bastards don't get exempt from this blanket statement of what pretentious assholes some Academics can be, especially at a secondary level. Poetry is only easy to enjoy if left to absorb on a personal level.

It took me a couple of years to get back into the medium, mainly within the realm of songwriters rather than proper poets. My interest in it had basically leveled out by the Winter of 2005, when I discovered a torn envelope full of old family documents sitting on the backseat floor of my car. I realize that your car should never get so messy that you're actually "finding" things on the floor, but I never rode back there and it's beside the point anyway. What was I saying? Oh, right, the poem. I discovered a photocopy of a poem that my great-grandmother Ida Schoenknecht Sonnichsen wrote back in the day. The woman was one hell of a writer, and I'm glad I inherited some of that passion, because otherwise I wouldn't know what the hell to do with myself. Just so I can publish her work, however posthumously and bootleg-style, and that you all can check it out and (hopefully) enjoy it), here you go:

"THERE WAS A CERTAIN PAINTER" by Ida Schoenknecht Sonnichsen (I don't know the actual title)

There is a certain painter
Who came from far away
And for to find some labor
He started out one day
He reached a certain village
Beside a certain sea
And stopped to get some grub
For sometimes grub is free
The folks from whom he got it
Had a barn and this is true
But it had not yet been painted
Because it was quite new
He thought that he would paint it
And thereby earn some tin
They told him he could do it
And so he pitched right in
First he dyed it yellow
But it did not seem quite right
So he mixed some other colors
To hide that from his sight
First he made it kind of blue
With a rather striped sheen
So he mixed in little yellow
And then he turned it green
The barn stands in it's glory
And the owner is their stand
And I guess there's not another
Barn like it in the land
At least not just that color
For it's the queerest shade
And that painter would not strike it
Again though he were paid.