Went to Half Priced Books over the weekend and found Johnny Nash I Can See Clearly Now and The New Christy Minstrels Ramblin for 2 bucks. I'm sure if we went on Thursday I would have found a few more but basically I have it all, anything else is just extras.
Well the lightning bugs are a week early but have yet to see the dammed earwigs. They'll be here in another two weeks. Or sooner.
Not a lot to talk about music wise. Roger Waters says he don't forsee a Pink Floyd reunion anything soon. But there might be some appearances by David Gilmour and Nick Mason if you keep an open mind....Don't expect a full blown Faces reunion either till Ronnie Wood gives up his job as money grabber for The Rolling Stones according to Rod Stewart....And New Black Stone Cherry this weekend. Just because I have a GF doesn't mean I've given up on new music. Even though Bob Lefsetz would want me to.
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2011/05/30/its-the-money/
The Top Ten Of The Week.
1. Hello Old Friend-Eric Clapton 1976 Long time ago I bought this at one of the Goodwill stores here (I am thinking the old one at Marion Shopping Center) and still have a fondness for this forgotten top forty tune. Certainly one cannot the importance of 461 Ocean Boulevard but sometimes I think there's more to E.C. besides the same ole same ole you hear on the FOX.
2. There Are More Questions Than Answers-Johnny Nash 1972 While doing this top ten, my wonderful GF pops wakes up from her nap and is throwing suggestions to me about who to consider on the top ten. In fact, I think I woke her up by playing Stir It Up. After 10 different suggestions I told her she should do her own top ten and she replied I gave you about 20 suggestions. So I went with this failed single from Johnny Nash to which I'm sure she has never heard before. Once upon a time, Nash was marketed as a teen idol for ABC Paramount then went to Jamaica and did the reggae classic Hold Me Tight and then hit number 1 with I Can See Clearly Now to which is heard anywhere in the road. Bob Marley figured in the music on this. Here in Crabby Land we tend to go for the more obscure. Thank you hon for the suggestions now go back to sleep! ;)
3. It Happened Today-REM 2011 Funny how new music gets released one month and then the next is forgotten. This came out in March and already been committed for the archives. Yes I played it, then filed it and then got it out to listen to on the way to work but had to play this track twice in a row. REM has seemed to got their groove back, made two back to back decent albums for the first time since Monster and New Adventures In Hi Fi. And yes I liked both albums. But I also think that Gareth (Jack Knife) Lee had been the best suited Producer for them since Scott Litt too.
4. Life In London-Pat Travers Band 1990 Originally recorded in 1978 but I went with the 1990 version to which Pat hooked up with Jerry Riggs and Mars Cowling for his best band since Pat Thrall and Tommy Aldridge were in it. Still if you haven't checked it out, PT has his own Facebook site. http://www.facebook.com/pattraversband
5. Ramblin-New Christy Minstrels 1963 I bet your parents or had a neighbor that had this on LP. I know a neighbor did and borrowed it to tape record Green Green and never paid much attention to the rest of the album till Collector's Choice Music picked the best for that 2 CD Definitive Collection which had some decent songs on it but also a lot of crappy ones too. Could done without the French or German versions but this was probably as close to rock and roll as they got. Ended disc one of Definite and lead off as the title track to Ramblin. They also benefited from Barry McGuire's presence.
6. White Trash Millionaire-Black Stone Cherry 2011 New music bands I really have a passing interest but their lasting value is about as much as chewing gum, unless you like Flaming Lips or Radiohead. One reason I like BSC is that some of them are related to The Kentucky Headhunters. The new album seems to be their heaviest and it seems to have more of a Godsmack sound and Nickelback to boot, which means it won't get much airplay around my house but this would sound at home on a Kid Rock album.
7. Can't Stop The Bleeding-Lock Up 1989 Long forgotten band that made an album for Geffen and I don't recall if I added this one before but too lazy to look it up on the archives section but I'm sure I had. Best known for Tom Morello's first band before moving on to Rage Against The Machine and even back then he had his guitar noises down pretty good. Lock Up's only album Something Bitchin This Way Comes came out on Geffen and later reissued via Manifesto.
8. Baby What You Want Me To Do-Jimmy Reed 1959 The blues as we know it is getting more and more in the background but Bob Dorr played this on his blues show the other night when me and Nicole were out and about and I think I spent half that time cussing out the GD shit speakers that didn't work in the rear of the purple car. But then again we don't get cars that make it to 285,000 miles, certainly not here in the great rustbucket we call Iowa.
9. Ghost Riders In The Skies-The Outlaws 1980 When Freddy Salem joined up, they got to be a bit more heavy metal as case in point of their last top forty hit. Funny how when classic rock radio plays Outlaws it's usually this song and then they call them a one hit wonder. Doesn't anybody remember Green Grass & High Tides?!?
10. Highlands-Bob Dylan 1997 Concluding this top ten is the long 16 minute episode from Time Out Of Mind to which Dylan encounters a bitchy waitress that he is mistaken as a artist and get mad when she finds he did a stick drawing, or that how I interpreted it. Perhaps I could have done a second top ten of Dylan's songs and maybe I'll do it for later top tens. Anyway I prefer this over Brownsville Girl, the long looping side ender of his flop Knocked Out Loaded album of the late 80s. Too bad he didn't decide to do a complete album with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers as originally thought.
Review: Black Stone Cherry-Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea (Roadrunner)
I guess you can still call them southern rock although with each album they continue to slide into modern rock territory. White Trash Millionaire wouldn't sound out of place on Kid Rock's album and Killing Floor screams more of Godsmack than Kentucky Headhunters or Blackfoot. Blame It On The Boom Boom more Hinder than CCR but that's the fun of trying to figure out BSC. The ballads tend to echo a bit too much Nickleback and while to my ears tend to be the weakest songs on this album, they're good enough to justify a top ten single if Roadrunner decides to put them out to radio. Like Saliva, they switched producers: from Bob Marlette to Howard Benson, perhaps in a attempt to break more into mainstream and the polished production belies the goodtimeness of The Kentucky Headhunters to which John Fred Young is the son of the guitar playing Richard Young. But unlike Saliva, whose time may have passed, BSC still is capable of growing into one of the best post millenium new rock bands thanks to Chris Robertson's vocals which is a dead ringer with Chris Cornell of Soundgarden fame. Although there's no songs that stand out like Please Come In or Reverend Wrinkle that made their last album my go to album, they do rethink Toy Caldwell's Can't You See into a nifty little heavy metal number. All I'm Dreamin Of could be reinvented into a country song if BSC decides to go that way. Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea tends to be their most heaviest album as they would like to tell you to believe but it's also more simple minded lyric wise too. I'd say this is their weakest album but I wouldn't count them out yet. Unless their meddling label sticks them with Glen Ballard the next time around. To which I hope that doesn't come true.
Grade B-
Pick Hits: White Trash Millionaire, Such A Shame, Can't You See, Let Me See You Shake
1 comment:
I definitely remember "Green Grass and High Tides."
Never had any of their albums, but always thought the Outlaws were pretty cool, not only coz they were a Southern Rock band covering Tennessee Ernie Ford AND Elvis Costello, but also coz they were one of those answer-to-a-trivia-question type bands, in this case them and Band of Susans being just about the most famous bands with three guitarists at any one time.
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