Top Ten Of The Week-The Best Is Yet To Come

Or will it?


The Top Ten Of The Week.

1. Not Fragile-Bachman Turner Overdrive 1974 I suppose my cut off point for music will be the 50's through the 00's of this decade with the majority coming from my growing up years. That would be from 65-93 I guess with bits and pieces from before and after. The classic rock era so to speak. I always enjoyed BTO more than the average person out there but really I don't need to hear You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet or Taking Care Of Business anymore so we leave that to the classic rock or oldies stations for that. The title track gets some airplay on Sirius rock station from time to time and I think I heard it on my Arizona getaway last summer. Fred Turner, one of my favorite all time singer shouters.

2. The Right Time-Natural Gas 1976 A big shout out to It's About Music and Dean Sciarra for remastering and redoing this 1976 album that Renaissance Records fucked up when they reissued it on CD last year. Poorly recorded and the cover art was beyond belief so Sciarra redid it in August of this year. Why should people care about it? Cuz it's about the music fool. Natural Gas was minor all star rock band with Joey Molland (Badfinger), Mark Clarke (Billy Squrier), Peter Wood (co wrote Year Of The Cat with Al Stewart) and Jerry Shirley (Humble Pie) and recorded one album for Private Stock to which I found the vinyl album for 50 cents at Woolworth's or K Mart in the late 70s. I liked it better than the last couple Badfinger albums (except Wish You Were Here which was pretty damn good). Natural Gas didn't last, Molland rejoined with Tom Evans in Badfinger, Shirley played with Sammy Hagar and reformed Humble Pie.

3. Miss Disarray-The Gin Blossoms 2010 Pity the bands making new music. Anybody played the new Eric Clapton lately? Me neither and I actually forgot all about this album till FOX News announced that the Gin Blossoms will be performing New Years Eve on that channel, one of those would be this new hit single. On a related note: Eastside Records in Tempe will be closing their doors New Years Eve down there. I didn't stop in there all that much although I did pop in for a few this summer. Never could find much in there although in 1990, I did buy about 6 blues CDs and Tesla's Greatest Hits in one setting. In fact, one of those blues CDs that I bought, I actually traded in a year ago down there. How bizarre is that?

4. Ice Cream For Crow-Captain Beefheart 1982 I think I included more Beefheart selections the last couple months than anytime the last 20. Not that I don't listen much to the dear departed captain but he died last week and so I'm paying tribute to the man. Half Priced Books had a copy of the EMI import Liberty/Virgin years cheap so I picked it up. The Liberty years were his Mercury albums that are considered his nadir, while the Virgin albums start with Bad Chain Puller with Doc At The Radar Station and Ice Cream For Crow which came out via Epic when they were distributing Virgin Records product. The Virgin albums are in the weird great department with Trout Mask & Lick My Decals Off Baby. Basically not for the faint of heart or Auto tuner fanatics. Inspirational line: Don't shake my hand, give me a claw! Captain couldn't top that one so he retired soon after.

5. No More Mr. Nice Guys-Sparks 1972 More off the wall stuff but coming from a band featuring two brothers, one that had a Charlie Chaplin mustache and played keyboards and looked bored while his other brother was the charismatic lead singer. The B Side to this was Wonder Girl and that song got played a lot around here. Had a record collecting ex GF that had the original album of this when Sparks was known as Halfnelson. I remember this song being played on American Bandstand and remembered Russ Mael going around chasing the guitar player with an axe. Trivia: Earle and Jim Mankey, the guitar and bass player of this band would go on to produce such notables as 20/20 and Possum Dixon and few others. The Mael Brothers would record for many labels (Island, Atlantic, RCA, Curb etc etc).

6. Seriously Gone-Dan Baird 1992 The main singer songwriter of the Georgia Satellites would go on to make a couple albums for Rick Rubin and Def American Recordings in the boogie style of The Satellites and would score a FM hit with the goofy I Love You Period (do you love me question mark-written by Terry Anderson of Battleship Chains fame). Fun fact: the band used on this recording Mario Magellam and Keith Christopher played in a late version of The Brains, which actually would become The Georgia Satellites.

7. The House I Live In-Sonny Rollins 1956 Yes I don't play fair by the rules. I do listen to jazz from time to time and this week was one of them. Rollins has been around for over 50 plus years and he was part of the Max Roach Plus Four jazz band and took over for Clifford Brown. This was the bonus track on the Rollins Plays For Bird that Concord Records reissued in 2008 and original recording engineer Rudy Van Gilder redid for today's CD collector. Improves a lot over the first generation cd that Fantasy/OJCs did in the 1990s. However, Universal who oversees the Concord Label has thrown a lot of jazz remastered reissues in the cut out bins of late, including the RVG series and the Orrin Keepnews Riverside Remasters. Be on the lookout and buy accordingly.

8. Painted Ladies-Ian Thomas 1973 A shout out to Clyde Clifford and Beaker Street for playing this one hit wonder from the Canadian singer songwriter. Thomas is the older brother of SCTV's Dave Thomas and appeared with Dave on the early version of Red Green Show.

9. Working On It-Chris Rea 1988 The ultimate cult artist, Rea has been around forever and best known for Fool If You Think It's Over and he recorded for many labels (United Artists, Columbia, Motown (!), Geffen, ATCO/East West). This did get some FM airplay in the late 80s and it did revive his career. New Light Through Old Windows I think was a compilation of his best known UK stuff but when ATCO reissued this I think they remixed or Rea redid the songs over. They sound a lot different then the Geffen versions.

10. Is It My Body-Alice Cooper 1971 Finally Alice get his place in the Rock n Roll Hall of fame with Tom Waits, Dr. John, Darlene Love, Brother Leon Russell and Neil Diamond. The original AC band got signed to Frank Zappa's Straight Records and made two bizarre meddling albums before Love It To Death gave them good reviews and a top ten single (Eighteen). This was the B side to the hit single. While some people enjoy the original albums of the original lineup, I still prefer the first Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits, to which we got all the big early 70s hits and selected album cuts that give reason why Alice Cooper should be in the hall of fame. I think we can also forgive him for working with Desmond Child too.