Prior to the Dave Mason & Cass Elliott album, I had no real interest in Dave Mason. I was never a fan of Traffic (I have an active distaste for Steve Winwood’s voice). I knew some of his songs (certainly “Feelin’ Alright,” “Only You Know and I Know,” and “We Just Disagree.”) And I knew he was one of those players who was all over everyone else’s records. But he didn’t really register with me individually until the collaboration with Elliott became our focus during the darkest days of the pandemic.
Weirdly, Mason popped up in another bit of pandemic relief, which was my intensified appreciation for bad movies from the ’70s. Somehow in the midst of all that was bad, we discovered the incredible coke-addled experience of “Skatetown U.S.A.,” which is – everything. To say that it’s a disco skate-off gang farce barely scratches the surface. It’s the kind of movie that thinks casting Billy Barty and Flip Wilson as brothers is comedy genius. The best thing about it is the debut of Patrick Swayze, who was a trained skate dancer. There are numerous disco performances throughout the movie and then, in the middle of a roller disco movie and for no apparent reason, there is a Dave Mason concert. It’s . . . disconcerting.
You MUST watch Skatetown U.S.A., and luckily for you, it’s free.
https://archive.org/details/skatetownusa
As things lifted a little bit in late 2021, the big vintage flea market put on by one of our local thrift shops, A Whole Lot of Lulu, was finally allowed to start up again. Normally held twice a year and closing off a block of Main Street as well as a municipal parking lot for vendors of all types, it often attracts a few quality vinyl vendors and I’ve picked up some very nice albums there in the past few years. I was pawing through the bins at one of them last October and came across this copy of “Certified Live.” Still – not a huge Dave Mason fan, I just really liked that one album, and it’s a live album recorded in 1975, which could be a real crap shoot with regard to quality. But I decided to throw it in with a couple of others, got a bit of a deal on them, and wasn’t unhappy. I played it a couple of times last fall and it was about what I expected. But it didn’t exactly catch fire with me. While I continued to play the Cass Elliott collaboration, this one was mostly set aside.
Then I played it again this weekend as part of the Friday night soundtrack, the music behind getting dinner ready and doing the dishes, and it was exactly perfect. Kinda lowkey, perfectly standard middle of the road rock, which sometimes is exactly what is needed.
