Top Ten Of The Week-Introduction

 

Hello folks.  Allow me to introduce myself to y'all and the basis of The Top Ten Of The Week.

I am a music lover of all kinds but most of my favorites come from the era from 1964 to about 1988 but for the most part the second best part of the new classic rock era started from 1989 and ended around 1998 when either Limp Bizkit became household names or Polygram got bought out by Universal as a birthday gift to a spoiled rotten son of a  CEO or something to that effect.  I have continued to review and buy new music up till last year but 2013 a new year, I fulfilled my obligations of reviewing new music and from now on am content to revisit the forgotten hits and bands of yesterday.  As a child, my folks bought this spoiled rotten brat many 45s from the quarter bargain bins at Woolworth's and other chain stores at the time and I picked and choose a lot of bands from name association and labels, most notable ABC Paramount or MGM.  Which means I grew up listening to the Animals and Ray Charles a lot although Tommy James, The Doors and Jimi Hendrix would figure a lot as well.

In high school I begin to buy vinyl albums and in 1977 after getting a part time job I found that I could get the 1.99 special at Target or K Mart although back then the biggest fun was going downtown to Woolworths.  But once I discovered the record stores in town (Record Realm, Krackers, Big Apple etc) and seeing more oddiites, my music tastes begin to change. Once the CD era came about, I begin to buy them and from here on out, my collection grew by leaps and bounds, most from finding pawnshop classics and whatever Half Priced Books threw in the dollar bins after they couldn't sell them full price.

We live in a declining time that record stores are becoming extinct and the best record stores is a road trip out of town,  where I live we have no record stores but rather used shops or if you want the latest you hope that Best Buy or Wal Mart has them, or Target.  Kids today pretty much download from the comforts of home and the Smart Phone, us oldsters still like the feel of physical product in hand.

The internet changed the whole lifestyle when a co worker at work got me on the computer in 1997 and I spent time on Friday Nights staying late and chatting with music buddies in chat room, most notably The Mining Company (Later About) and moving on to MSN Groups.  I hung out at Classic Rock at About. Com and used to piss people off by including songs and stuff before and past the classic rock era and eventually got thrown off that site.  Steve Anthony aka Hoop started up YardBird's Roost at MSN Groups and invited me to cast my lot with writing a top ten of the week and musical musings to which I took advantage of.  When MSN Groups decided that the chat rooms and forums weren't profitable enough, they booted everybody off and I went to My Space in 2006 for 4 years there before moving over to Blogspot in 2010 and been here ever since.  After years of being somewhat a quiet entity, we have broken out with over 3300 views last month, our best ever.  To which this site got reviewed for another year.  And so here we are.

If you're been a loyal reader, welcome back.  If you're new to this site, this is how this site works.  I blog about things that interests me and in the middle of the week I put up a top ten of songs that have been playing in my player or heard on the radio that stands out, which isn't often.  We have Cumulus own most of the radio stations here, they all are crap and play the overplayed.  I do my best to pick out the less oblivious and put up something interesting to say about it.  Here in the site you can post a comment but you have to use the infamous Captcha thing to prove your not a robot, even I have hard time figuring out half the crappy words Blogspot uses for that.  Used to be you could post and go but too many porn spammers and dinkywankers trolling took the fun out of that.  Contrary to rumor you can post a comment here, all you have to do is figure out the magic words and numbers. 

Late last year, I started using graphics and pictures off various websites to enhance the music and bands at hand as well as cool sites and even though this is still in the infant stage, the response and ratings were positive.  A big help was the folks at 45 Cat dot com for the inclusion of some vinyl singles to the top ten of the week.  The pics were an such an improvement that even I was going back to the ones that had pics up and thinking that was cool.   But then I easily amuse myself it seems.  This year with me beginning to work on music projects, I won't be posting as much as I did last year, a whopping 168 posts!  But I'm obligated to put a top ten up when the time is due.  As they say, read at your own leisure, come back to visit the archives and have fun with this like I have been doing the past 10 years.

1.  Rock And Roll Is The Answer-Joey Ramone  2012 Posthumous release of a song from a album that came out last year which would have never seen the light of day had Joey lived but it's not all filler and half thoughts, this could have been a hit. Marky Ramone doesn't play drums on Ya Know....but Richie Ramone does.

2.  How Bout That-Bad Company  1993  Ringing in the new year was Bad Company playing at Hiawatha before the end of 2012 which nobody really knew about till it was too late to go and I had other commitments to fulfill.  It was the Brian Howe led band that played here and even though Howe's Bad Company gets hardly a second thought anymore, he does put on a good show as he did with BC came through here 20 years ago opening for Damn Yankees.  And people still care about Howe's Bad Company since my second most read blog is on Brian Howe/Bad Company.  Just like people care about John Miles' Asia., they won't top the original but you'll have a good time if they do play in your area.

 


3.  Welcome Back-Rex Daisy 1995  Some bright minded dude at Pravda Records thought that paying tribute to bad 70s music by 90s alternative bands would be a good idea, doing their own version of K Tel hits and while some of it was good, there's a lot of alt crap that didn't work very well (Kung Fu Fighting sucks in any version and Red Red Meat's take on 10cc I'm Not In Love makes Cromagnon sound like The Beatles in comparsion). Rex Daisy was a local Iowa band that contributed a few songs on various comps, they never did get anything released on Geffen.  This won't challenge John Sebsatian' top ten 1976 hit but you can sing along with the words quite well, to which I find myself doing.

4.  Real Wild Child (Wild One)-Iggy Pop 1986  Reunites with David Bowie and a start of a two album career with A&M. Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols plays guitar.  Actually got played a bit on Q103.

5.  Let Down-Radiohead 1997  After years and years of avoiding this album I finally decided to hear it after the pawnshop had a 4 CDs for 10 dollars special and figured I wouldn't be out by much, after all in this day and age it's just buying a 45 back in my time.  Radiohead, never a big fave for me although OK Computer is worthy of the praises that it was bestowed upon at the time of release.  Thanks to cheap cd's found we can hear what we missed the first time.

6.  Don't You Just Know It-Huey 'Piano' Smith/The Crowns 1958  One of rock's original originators Huey played on a lot of Ace Records stuff in the late 50s, Sea Cruise was done by Frankie Ford but it was Huey an his band backing him up.  Rocking Phenomena and Boogie Woogie Flu was even better with a herky jerky beat, of course Johnny Rivers had a top ten chartbuster here too.  Interesting to note that Island Records in the UK released it under the Sue Records banner in the late 50s.  Later covered by Dr. Feelgood and Little Feat.  Requested by the brat!  I usually give credit to those who request songs for the top ten unlike a certain host of Backtrack.  I know I'm acting more like my mom, if I reach her age and act like that I'm sure I won't be doing the top ten by then. I'll be locked up at 3 East.


 


7.  Something Wouldn't Be The Same-Raindogs 1990  Another pawnshop classic band, lead by Mark Cutler with Johnny Cunningham adding some violin work and the rhythm section was part of the Red Rockers.  Made two excellent albums for Atco.
 
8.  Wasting My Time-The White Stripes 1999  Hard to believe that Jack White would become King of the garage rock movement of the 00's and in any other band Meg White would have been laughed out of, but if anybody can play along with Jack White, she was the perfect fit.  Yes, we miss Meg White too.

9.  Stay Free-The Clash 1978   Hard to believe I never got around listening to Give Em Enough Rope till this weekend and the HP Books 20 percent off sale.  Hard to even believe that Sandy Pearlman from Blue Oyster Cult fame produced them as well.
 
10.  (Hat's Off) To Roy Harper-Led Zeppelin 1970  What is it with this Zeppelin kick I have been on lately?  Just revisiting my roots.  Ya kno?

Five more things to ring in the new year:

A Million Miles-Heart 2012
Enjoy Yourself-The Jacksons 1976
Don't Look Down-Saga 1986
Tears In My Beer-The Specials 1998
Brand New Day-No Doubt 1992

Other things:

Mark Prouty announced that Robin Burke, a girl that was on our Junior High school, but didn't graduated with our class, she dropped out passed away.  I think back around 8th grade me and her developed a kind of a crush for one another but nothing really ever came of it.

New Years Eve was spent working till about 8 then I went over to a co worker's party and celebrated the ringing in of the new year over there.  I managed to make it home okay.



We'll meet again.
 
PS:  Worst country songs of 2012 here:  http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/saving-country-musics-worst-country-songs-of-2012