Sweet Living Antiques, the store that got destroyed by the IC tornado of
four years ago is not over on Gilbert Court by the old La Casa mexican
restraunt. And the guy still has boatload of records left and right but
didn't have time to sort through all them. Only had a hour before he
closed. But I'll try to return there, later in the fall. Had enough
Iowa City Stoplights to last me another three months.
CD reviews.
Bruce
Palmer-The Cycle Is Complete (Verve Forecast/Collector's Choice Music)
Pointless hippy dippy jams of drums, flute and scat singing by one Rick
Matthews Aka Rick James. I like a good jam album or good psyceldelic
music but hippy dippy nonsense tends to bore me. How Collector's Choice
Music decided to release such a piece of shit cd is beyond me.
Footnote: Palmer played bass in the original Buffalo Springfield and
later Trans era Neil Young. He did a lot better than this. So did Rick
James for that matter. Grade C minus
The Hoosiers-The Trick To
Life (Epic 2008) ...is to not bore me with pointless pop shit that
doesn't have anything memorable. Sounds like The Darkness gone pop, you
remember The Darkness? They were the next big thing in rock around
2003 then imploded a year later. The Hoosiers were big in the UK, but
American taste didn't care for them. Easy to see why. More Pointless
garbage to be donated to the local thrift store. And why is it that
these crap pop bands need to sing like Freddie Mercury. Nerve grating
piece of shite Grade D plus
Marshall Crenshaw-The Ultimate Pop
Collection (Rhino 2006) The 2 CD set that I found for 2 bucks at
Hastings. While people lay claim that Marshall's first WB album was pop
classic, I perfer much more his Field Day album, the album that people
were put off the by the loud drum mix (courtesy of Scott Litt, not Steve
Lillywhite look at the credits people). Field Day had way better songs
although none had the catchyness of Someday Someway or even Cynical
Girl but Monday Morning Rock and Our Town is where I think Crenshaw was
the best. Later Warner albums showed a bit more strain and were less
fun but Rhino cherrypicked the best songs on a single retrospective
called This Is Easy. The Ultimate Pop Collection is much more cheaper
and does a good job taking a look at his forgotten MCA Life's Too Short,
his 1990 should have been a classic and probabaly his last real great
album since Field Day. Nowadays there's no such thing as Greatest Hits
since radio doesn't play much but it's a good sampler of one of Power
Pop's great songwriters of the 80s. Still hanging around with a new
album on the 429/Savoy Label to which has been called his best since
Life's Too Short......Grade A minus
Judas Priest-Touch of Evil
Live (Epic 2009) If nothing else Judas Priest and Rob Halford have
gotten more heavier and more doomy as they get older and this album
shows a few highlights from previous recent recordings. Halford still
has most of his high notes and to show you, he peels the paint off on
Painkiller. Clears the room too. Grade B minus
