Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Top Ten Of The Week-Crabby Road

I can't decide to get either the Stereo or Mono box set of The Beatles Remastered CDs which will be the final hoorah for the CD if you listen to Bob Lefsetz and the other naysayers. Or just wait and just get the cds as they come out week by week.  I'm afraid they will be in those wonderful digipaks that make your Beatles CDs look like the albums that got played to death.  Full of scratches.  We got tunes up the arse so let's see what the top ten will be like this week.

1.  Come Together-The Beatles 1969  I'm certain that we will never see the likes of The Beatles again since the major labels only care about flavors of the hour and not into developing bands for the long term.   Now in my lifetime, I never worshipped The Fab Four(R) like a lotta folk out there but I do play their songs from time to time.  Im not sure that the sales of the remasters will likely get people to the music stores and start buying again but it seems like the music of The Beatles still have that timeless magic that harks back to the days of me and Russ riding our bikes up and down 10th Ave and going to Jeff Kewley's house since Jeff's brother had the coolest record collection.  I don't think Jeff's brother was heavily into The Beatles but Jeff did buy Abbey Road to give as a birthday gift.  Ah memories.

2.  Wildest Dreams-Saga 1986  Band had a major hit with On The Loose and a few hit and miss singles before moving over to Atlantic for a one and done album.  To which I found the album but used to have the CD.

3.  Surrender To Your Kings-The Amboy Dukes 1967  Best known for having Ted (Mad Dog) Nugent, The Amboy Dukes came from the Detroit rock and roll scene of the late 60s and made some heavy duty rock n roll.  They also had a excellent vocalist in John Drake and later Rusty Day but the Dukes lineup was always revolving.  Appently Nugent was a teetodler and didn't do drugs and booted the druggies out of the band.  When inducted into the Detroit RnR Hall Of Fame, the original Dukes did managed to take the stage one last time although they didn't play.  Seems that the other Dukes didn't know how to play Wang Dang Sweet Pootang.

4.  Breather-Chapterhouse 1991  Shoegazer alt rock from a UK Band that nobody in the US knew about then and now.

5.  Needle Down-Super 400 2009  New song from the new album from a band that made a debut for Island and then went back to the independents for a time.  Super 400 plays some of that stoner 60s type of rock and roll, just like our very own Radio Moscow does, but only Super 400's latest is better than the latest from Radio Moscow.  In fact I played Brain Waves from RM one last time and decided it wasn't for me and traded it in.  I'm sure Parker don't care too much, even though Radio Moscow is one of My Space friends, they dont read the top ten otherwise they would have commented. 

6.  Janis, Jeanie & George Harrison-Redd Kross 1987  One of Rodney Bingenheimer's fave bands, this is taken from what is considered their best album Neurotica although I perfer their 1991 Third Eye album for Atlantic.  Punk rock eh?  They also like The Cowsills too.  Go figure on that.

7.  Ego-Elton John 1978  Back in our days, we didn't have Itunes or MP3, we had these 7 inch circles called 45s and that's where we got our music.  Elton John did a few singles that didn't make it to any album (till later when Universal Island redid EJ's albums and added bonus tracks) such as this forgotten top 50 single that was left off A Simple Man, one of the lesser Elton John albums.   But I did find a remastered reissued of Simple Man and this was one of 5 (Count em) bonus tracks of forgotten singles and b sides, to which are still better than anything off A Simple Man.

8.  This Time-INXS 1986  Certainly What You Need was the breakthrough hit but this was the first single taken off Listen Like Thieves.  Inxs gets raked over the coals by halfwit critics who still live in Mommy and Daddy's basement but I never gotten tired of them myself.

9.  Resigned-Blur 1993  They were never big in America till they did Song 2 (The woo who song) and the original thought was that they were trying to do Pavement but upon further listening to their Modern Life Is Rubbish album that it had more indee noise than Pavement.  Perhaps Pavement was listening to Modern Life Is Rubbish while making their Crooked Rain Crooked Rain album that came out around that time.  Blur recently has been aping the Radiohead influence moniker it seems but I perfer their Parklife period over the S/T or the yucky Think Tank or even Gorillaz.

10.  Train Running Low On Soul Coal-XTC 1984  The original indee art rockers that came from Britian, XTC has always made smart rock as we call it and this did get some airplay on KUNI in the mid 80s and I did buy the album.  It sounded much better back then.