I have arrived at a solution here, but only for my specific desired end result.
I needed to group on month and year (and by other redundant criteria) to summarize our shipments over a course of time. I wanted the concat() to be the value I showed the user for easier comprehension.
I would still like to know how to solve this puzzle, but I am good now.
Instead of
SELECT CONCAT(Monthname(Now()),' ',Year(Now());
I found this idea at the mysql tutorial for date/time formats while looking for the solution to another issue.
i used
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(Now(),'%M %Y')
which has nicely returned "July 2010"
I am still grouping on
Month(), Year()
so the Date_Format function is only serving as a display.
this fixes my current needs, but if using concat() later causes my Blob problem, I'll still be in trouble.
Anyhow, thank you Rick for your time and help. It is much appreciated.