With Arizona 25 now in the history books, it also marks the end of summer. Kinda hard to believe how fast this month has flown by. Even in the Motel 8 room at Prescott, I was looking out the window and thinking that it was past the halfway point and I would have to eventually return back home to the change of seasons and cold weather that is around the corner. Make no mistake about it, these are my favorite days of the year but we lose daylight 5 minutes at a time each day.
While I was down in Arizona, I missed a few things. One big notable was Mark Prindle's dog passing away. The photos of Henry on Prindle's music site and FB page were highlights. Certainly losing a dog is like losing a friend, I know that from experience. Thoughts and good wishes to Mark.
One of our radio stations have changed formats and not for the better. KRQN, one of the classic rock/oldies stations that has been on my radio from its inception is now a top forty station I 107.1 and that's all the world needs is another Auto Tuned radio station full of shit. Thank the monopoly radio builders known as Cumulus to continue to dumb down and eliminate most of good music stations around here. The fuckers own about 90 percent of the radio stations in this area anyway. http://i1071.com/ In other news, I have an opening on my car radio for a more tolerable radio station.
Last night was the first time I was at the Crabb house since leaving for Arizona Thursday Night, spending the weekend with the GF and celebrating her birthday. Spent Saturday going to Napoli's for dinner and out to the Nature Center for a bit of trail hiking and counting trains going by. I know she has a distain for football but she was kind enough to let me watch Arizona State beat USC for the first time in 12 years and some sunday games although we did go visit the folks for birthday celebration. I do wish we can find a much larger place than the trailer since I have way too much stuff to fit into that place. Still it's a compromise of sorts, although when I am away from The World's Best Record Store, I do feel out of place but someday everything will be together. We hope.
This week has to be the best week for new releases and new reissues. The big stink is the complete Pink Floyd recordings all together, which means that Pink Floyd has now joined the digipak generation. Plus the Nirvana Nevermind Super Deluxe Edition to which you get two CD's of the album plus remixes, original mixes and EPs for 19.99 at Best Buy. Or the new Wilco to which I passed, I just have not gotten into Jeff Tweedy's band ever since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and bought the new Blink 182 because it wasn't in a digipak. Got a laugh out of the Best Buy dude who mentioned that when Enema Of The State came out he was still in grade school 12 years ago. Which meant he was in the 3rd grade when Dude Ranch was unleashed to the world.
And Johnnie Wright, one of the last links to the original country music of the 40s and 50s and married to Kitty Wells has joined the great Jamboree In The Sky. He was 97.
The Top Ten Of The Week:
1. Crazy Nights-Loudness 1984 Hair metal from Japan and probably their biggest hit here in the states. For a time they were all Japanese with a love of Ozzy and Dio to which the lead singer sounded a bit like Ronnie James Dio. Produced by Max Norman (Ozzy), lyrics more like Spinal Tap. M. Z. A. dude. They mean nothing. https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070721230324AAlJWbX
2. Ten Girls Ago-Graham Parker 1991 Supposedly for a big city, Phoenix radio station sure suck the life out of me everytime I'm forced to listen to them if I don't bring enough music or I get conned that I have satellite radio and don't. However, there was a alt rock station down there that actually played this lost and forgotten Parker classic of the early 90's. You don't have to snowball me with the lost classic, but you can wow me if you play something that I'm not going to hear on the radio all that much. In fact, nobody really plays much Graham Parker on the radio.
3. Long Tall Texan-Murry Kellum 1963 Dedicated to the Prescott Playboys who really massacred this song.
4. Night Goat-Melvins 1993 Out of all the grunge acts of the 90's you seldom hear anything from The Melvins who got Kurt Cobain to produce some of their 1993 classic album Houdini. Atlantic wanted a grunge band but what they got was perhaps one of the slowest and slush metal that didn't give them any hits but I think their Atlantic period had some fun stuff. This tune features the one note basswork of Mary "Lorax" Black (related to Shirley Temple Black) and Dave Clover smacking some drums. Forgot all about this album till somebody at Zia's in Chandler was playing this album. With the 20th Anniversary of Nevermind wouldn't it be fun if Rhino or Atlantic gave the world a 20th Anniversary of Houdini, perhaps one of the greatest grunge albums that nobody heard. Wouldn't hold my breath though, Atlantic hasn't been fun or important since the death of Ahmet Ertegun almost five years ago.
5. Down Down Down-Dave Edmunds 1970 From the original Rockpile album, before Nick Lowe came on the scene. Terry Williams plays drums on this song to which he would join Rockpile a few years later. Reissued on Rock Beat Records this month. Basically there's more to life than just repurchasing Pink Floyd albums every decade.
6. Ghost On The Dance Floor-Blink 182 2011 A band that never appeal to me all that much, Dude Ranch was too juvenile for me but they hit it big with Enema Of The State and turned out to be Green Day's snottier brother and continue to have success till they broke up and now they are back together with perhaps their most toughest album ever with Neighborhoods. It might be too dark for the top forty and modern rock crowd, which means that it might crack the top ten best of 2011. Or maybe not.
7. Tits On The Radio-Scissor Sisters 2004 Probably the best song they ever did. Always thought the chorus went you can't say tits on the radio but once I cleaned the peanut butter out of my ears the actual lyric went you can't see tits on the radio. Gotta hoot out of all the disco drums and Bee Gees type vocals but they actually went for more of a sound on their own and found it on Night Work, their third album. To which like the last two, nobody bought.
8. Cow Cow Boogie-Ella Mae Morse 1942 Taking you way back into the big band era, some people consider this to be one of the early early rock and roll records but I don't hear it. More like big band than rock and roll. Turned out the be the first big selling single for then a independent label known as Capitol Records.
9. Easy Street-Thunder 1980 No relation to the hard rock band that recorded for Geffen in the late 80s, this band recorded two albums for Atco and somehow got enough requests to get their albums reissued on Wounded Bird (and the world still waits for The Brains reissues). I think this got some airplay in 1980 and they sound like a cross between Atlanta Rhythm Section and Little River Band if you can believe that. John McMeans could be a dead ringer for Ronnie Hammond of ARS.
10. Burning Memories-Waylon Jennings 1963 The last song that I heard before getting on the airplane back home from the desert. It seemed like a good song to end this top ten.........
And finally, I have seen what Jann Wanner has for the next Rock N Roll HOF and I'm not going to comment on any of them. It's a joke beyond belief and if The Red Hot Chili Peppers get in before Rush, something is wrong. Nothing against the RHCP's or GnR or The Cure but none of them reinvented themselves like Rush unless you count the big turnover of Axl Rose's Hired Guns. Just quit calling it the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame and we'll get along fine.
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