You know what they say...

Once you go vinyl, you'll never go back...

(Some of us never left!)

Dylan, Beatles and 'Looking for Space'

So, I'm exhausted.

Put in a full eight-hour work day today. Got to feeling rough about mid-day (countin' down the hours until Monday morning), but we had quite a bit of fun.

The Rossini Festival was fantastic. Yep, we're about $100 poorer, but it all goes to a great cause. We even found a few classical and Celtic CDs.

After lying down for a minute (I hate to even say the words, but I also think I've got a kidney stone), I made it to the Halls Alumni Dinner. Biggest crowd we ever had. Congratulations to Halls High Hall of Fame inductees Larry Hodge, Wilma Hacker Jordan and F. Carl Tindell.

Oh, yeah, they made some guy named Mabe the president.

On the way downtown, I got a call from Nathan Moses at Lost and Found Records. They had a copy of my all-time favorite John Denver album, "Windsong," which contains my all-time favorite John Denver song, "Looking for Space."

Hobbling up the steps, I noticed a sign that said "Sealed Records Inside."

I found two prizes: Bob Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" (my favorite of his) and -- get ready for it -- The Beatles's "Abbey Road." Yes, they are both SEALED.

Gotta run. We're heading to South Pittsburg, Tenn., for the National Cornbread Festival tomorrow. I'm covering it for the Shopper. Mom and Mike are driving.

Have a great Sunday, y'all.

'Monkees' in the morning

My friend Dean Harned to this day likes The Monkees better than The Beatles.

I thought about that yesterday afternoon when I heard the news that Davy Jones, the "Paul" of the group if you will, passed away of a sudden heart attack at 66.

And I thought, too, about the mornings we used to spend as kids, glued to the TV set when we only got four channels, watching "The Monkees" on WKCH 43. It later became a FOX affiliate and is now WTNZ.

I used to laugh whenever they'd run from the surf at the start of the show. And, for the record, my favorite one was Mike. I think it was because of his Southern accent. (Useless trivia: Mike Nesmith later co-wrote "Twelve Volt Man" with Jimmy Buffett.)

To this day, whenever I get "Daydream Believer" stuck in my head, I sing it for hours.

Cheer up, Sleepy Jean, oh, what can it mean?

I had a cassette tape (uhh) of their greatest hits and even "traded" for the Monkees revival album "Pool It!" (minus Mike Nesmith) from my friend Matt Shelton sometime in the late '80s. Yes, the Monkees reached down and grabbed us guys and gals from our generation, too, the one between X and Y.

Oh, where have the years gone? And, if I'm asking that, I can only imagine how the Baby Boomers feel this morning.

RIP, Davy.

My love/hate relationship with John Lennon

On this date 30 years ago, a deranged fan named Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon four times in the back as he walked with his wife, Yoko Ono, into the couple's Manhattan apartment building.

Even Howard Cosell broke in on "Monday Night Football" to tell the world that the former Beatle was dead.

I've always had something of a love/hate relationship with Lennon. I entered a serious Beatles phase around 1992 but have always been more of an Elvis kind of guy. I have marveled at many of Lennon's compositions (especially "Imagine," one of the best American pop songs of the 20th century), but didn't care for some of his more bizarre personal and political excesses.

What do I know, but I always blamed Yoko for the Beatles' breakup (as if Lennon and the others had nothing to do with it...). I remember I about had a heart attack when I heard Yoko sing a song called "Woman is the Nigger of the World" on national television, even if I sympathized with its feminist POV.

And I was always a Paul McCartney fan. Paul was solely responsible for what I consider to be the Beatles' best lyric, "Yesterday," and he said on the radio once he hated he had to give Lennon co-credit. But, that was their songwriting deal.

Lennon was a musical genius perhaps both fueled by and a victim of the upheavals of the 1960s. But, together with McCartney, and in one shining solo moment, he made great music. And I was always grateful when, at a moment when it was fashionable to bash him, Lennon said of Presley, "Before Elvis, there was nothing."

Like too many others, Lennon died at the hands of a lunatic. "Imagine" a world without that, indeed.