A CHALLENGE TO SOME OF MY MORE GEEZERATED READERS

A 60s vocal group called The Free Design — anybody remember ‘em? I got hipped to them over the weekend. How did these people not wind up millionaires? There’s more talent in that group than in the entire Billboard charts from 1977 on.

I went to the thoroughly unstumpable CDGB in Mason City, IA today on a hunch that, if there’s any music store that might have some Free Design CDs, it would be there. CDGB, as usual, did not disappoint. How a store in a remote northern Iowa farmtown can have essentially the entire history of post-WWII pop music under one roof is beyond me, but I’ve never come up with an artist so obscure that CDGB didn’t have at least one of their CDs.