Top Ten Of The Week-Diminished Returns

Greetings, I'm not dead yet but I tried to kill myself falling down the fucking steps this morning, my brain thought I had 9 steps, while reality said there was 10 and bend my damn arm back in the process.  Growing old a fucking piece of work.

 

Ratings wise looks to be under 2,000 this month.  Basically I haven't been much in a blogging mood and it shows on the amount of blogs.  Plus I don't many comments to discuss things, seems when I open it up for everybody I get the usual pornsites and other drivel from anonymous trolls.  Rock n Roll and The Brains continues to get the views although the Sick Of Summer Blog got twice more views than the last top ten of the week.  Not exactly promising news.  The Ides Of March blog is the most viewed top ten of the week with over 100 views straight.

College football has started and the Iowa Hawkeyes have a crappy offense.  The diminished returns remark can also apply to their offense which only scored one touchdown and fail to do anything against the ISU Cyclones to which ISU won 9-6 and took the Cy Hawk Trophy back to Ames.  Looks like the Iowa trophy case is going to be missing a few more of them this year.  On the plus side, the Arizona State Sun Devils blew out Illinois 45-14 in a late game at Tempe.  ASU in two games have turned the offense up a lot more and making few mistakes in the process although Northern Arizona is not a powerhouse team at all.  If ASU beat Missouri up there then they will be a team to watch.

Last week Joe South passed away at age 72 from heart ailments and I was gong to write a blog about it but really couldn't come up with much to say about it.  A long time ago Joe South made a big impact on society with Games People Play (not the Spinners song) that was one of most covered songs in the late 60s but South had a few more hits with Walk A Mile In My Shoes and the more reflective Don't It Make You Want To Go Home, but for the most part South's song were bigger hits for other artists, Deep Purple covered Hush as well as Billy Joe Royal who's best of for Columbia has plenty of South penned songs.  And of course Lynn Anderson who stuck it big with Rose Garden and Fool Me, and The Raiders got a hit with Birds Of A Feather.  Sadly the suicide of Joe's brother who played drums in Joe's band affected South so much that he simply dropped out and with a exception of a album for Island,  wasn't heard from as much.  Dan Baird credits him with a appearance of his version of Hush on the Buffalo Nickel for American.  The best Joe South overview was the Rhino Best Of Joe South but it only had the Capitol selections, whereas a Koch retrospective had a few more older section of songs from the earlier years.  Only thing still in print is the EMI Classic Masters which has the bare bones hits.

The Top Ten goes like this:

 


1.  Gangster Of  Love-Johnny "Guitar" Watson 1978   He made some strange sides for King was back in the late 50s and may have started heavy metal like Bo Diddley did but he was more blues and laid back soul in the 60s for Okeh and Chess although I Cried For You his Chess album was put out in one of the all time worst record covers in history.  His funk career took off in the mid 70s with a couple so so albums for Fantasy before hitting his stride for DJM with the crazy Funk Beyond The Call Of Duty or Real Mother For Ya.  Giant, the 1978 effort is his most schizophrenic, with a combo of disco, blues, funk disco and whatever the hell was Baby Face (She said Doo Doo Doo etc etc).  Too bad he didn't stick more to the blues on this revisit of his best known song here which of course was covered by the other gangster of love, Mr. Steve Miller.

2.  The Main Thing-Roxy Music 1982   In my getting to be old age, I have many suggestions for the top ten but as the week goes on and as I get preoccupied with other nonconforming things I forget to add bands and Roxy Music tops this list.  Hell I probably would forget them again had it not been Bob Lefsetz to remind us how great Avalon was and it just might be the best thing Roxy Music or Bryan Ferry has ever done.  Great music to make love to he writes in his column and the title track does present such seducing music for Mr Stiffy and the love interest.   I think Avalon did more than Manifesto was supposed to do in the seduction department although both albums are still great, they did a misstep with Flesh And Blood the 1980 in between-er album that I never got into although the longing to be Oh Yeah was great.  More Than This was the hit, Take A Chance On Me a worthy followup but this starting out side 2 of Avalon was nice sophisticated rocking number reeking a big on the dangerous side.  Avalon would be the last Roxy Music album although Ferry continued to make solo albums that had their moments as well. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug03/articles/roxymusic.htm

3.  Van Halen-Nerf Herder 1996  Indee rock of the mid 60's with a bit of Weezer and Pavement thrown in for good measure Nerf Herder made this tribute to the DLR led Van Halen and gives a raspberry to Sammy Hager to which I'm surprised the red rocker hasn't made any comments about that given his still pissed off tirades about the reunited Van Halen with Dave back in tow. This came out on My Records which Arista picked up for a while then dropped but as far as I know Nerf Herder is still around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0j0xBfRasw

4.  Cheer Up-The Wailers 1971?  Leslie Kong has done great things as a legendary reggae producer (Desmond Dekker, The Pioneers, The Maytals) but I find his production with Bob Marley and The Wailers to be a clash in sound itself but not without a charm either.  Rumour has it that Neville Livingston (aka Bunny Wailer) warning Kong not to bill these sessions as The Greatest Hits or bad things will happen to him but Kong released them anyway and ended up getting a massive heart attack a couple weeks later.  A shame really since The Wailers never sounded as soulful as they did on the Kong produced songs.  Peter Tosh sings lead on this.  Universal did reissued the Best Of The Wailers in 2004 on CD which still is in print but of course your local Best Buy doesn't have it.  But they do have the 20th Century Masters to which part of that was produced by Lee Perry.  And a bit more toward the radical too.

5.  I'm Going To Chance The World-The Animals 1965    They didn't.  B side to It's My Life which was more radical than We Gotta Get Out Of This Place.  Even though they were more into the hard R and B covers (John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley) Eric Burdon could write a great song on his own too.  This does sound very much like punk rock 1965 but with a bit more substance.

6.   Pay In Blood-Bob Dylan 2012  Still bringing it at age 71 his new album isn't the five star all time classic as Rolling Stone would like you to believe but it does rank pretty high on the list, if you can overlook Dylan's ever declining vocals.    Even Leonard Cohen's croon makes more melodic sense than Bob but I never count Dylan out ever.  He's thrown so many curves on the road he travels that I enjoy the ride fairly well.  Someday it will have to end. http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2012/09/11/dylan/  A counterpoint and argument that Dylan should give it up since he can't sing anymore.

7. Android-Green Day 1992  For the most part, I still like Green Day's albums of the 90s a lot more than some of the fair weather critics that used to like them but now think they suck.  There's lot more worse out there.  Hard to believe that our favorite punks made this album 20 years ago and although they sound more mainstream today than punk  I still get a buzz out of Kerplunk or Insommiac and even the overplayed Dookie, just like a certain trio from Seattle whose Nevermind you can hear most of in its entirety on KRNA, the Culumus owned "real rock" station.   Or Back In Black.

8.  The Hives-Introduce The Metric System In Time-The Hives 2000  And to make you feel even older than you are, it's hard to believe this fun band has been around for a decade and a half.  I think the press overhyped them just like they did with The Strokes.  The Strokes really never did much for me, The Hives have done somewhat better, they're more garage punk with a nod to the Stooges or even DMZ who made a fun album on Sire with Flo And Eddie producing.  Randy Fitzsimmons pretty much writes everything in this band and probably sings it too, they had a hit with Hate To Tell You So back in 2000 that KRNA will not play today.  It cuts into their Nirvana Nevermind time.

9.  Over The Line-Johnny Rivers 1972   Johnny Rivers' place in rock history is cemented with those Whiskey A Go Go live recordings that had a crowd that loved his cover versions and Rivers has always been a great cover artist, you can't escape Rockin Phenomena And The Boogie Woogie Flu anywhere, classic rock, oldies, nostalgia.  And he always had top notch players in his band especially the ones that played on Rockin Phenomena but he did managed to record part of a 1972 show in Paris featuring some of these players, Herb Petersen, Jim Horn, Dean Parks and the tragically great drummer Jim Gordon who really makes this concert something special.  Last Boogie In Paris, originally released as a 8 song EP for Atlantic (released only in the UK) gets the whole showcase reissued on Shout Factory and I didn't pay much attention when it came out till Half Priced Books had it used for a dollar.  A dollar well spent so to speak. Varese Vintage issued the 8 song LP as well but the Shout Factory album has the complete show all the way to a in your face John Lee Hooker Boogie stomp at the end.

10.  Eighties-Killing Joke 1985   The Joke back in their goth dance era and it's not my favorite of time, they got too Depeche Mode on me or worse Duran Duran although on Night Time they begin to show a bit more of themselves on this classic cut to which Nirvana swiped to use on Come As You Are but Dave Grohl pays it forward by bashing the hell out of the drums on the 2003 comeback album for Killing Joke.  The return of the original KJ lineup has given us two very strong albums and I still think that the second coming of them that began in 1994 with Pandemonium which made me a fan of theirs soon afterwards.  You can probably excuse them for the bizarre fiasco of Jaz Coleman this summer which cut short of their tour but he's still alive and doing fine and even making a symphonic album of Nirvana songs.  Things are just turning full circle ain't they?

And now the other five:

So What-Ministry 1990
Disconnected-Face To Face 1994
The Robots-Kraftwerk 1978
Takin Pills-Pistol Annies 2011
Mirror Of Your Mind-Joe South 1969

And for next week, we're working on it already.

Site of the week; http://www.soundonsound.com/

One of the best places to read about producers and how they record artists.  Just discovered this today.