One month after the historic flood, things in Cedar Rapids are one
day at a time. You gotta feel for the poor Time Check folk, the Czech
Village folk and anybody else who was in the flood plain. This year the
heads of the town proclaimed it year of the river and the Red Cedar
lived up to that name.
9 out of 10 Crabb readers have annouced their favorite blogs remain
the top ten songs of the week. 6 out of 10 liked the reviews section,
but a overwhelming 7 out of 10 of you readers thought I was full of hot
air on the other subjects at hand and 3 out of 10 readers think I
bitched too much on oil prices...but still enjoyed reading them. Thank
you all for you comments. Good and bad.
The Top Ten Of The Week.
1. Diamond Hoo Ha Man-Supergrass 2008 New Supergrass album is all
over the place and at times recalls a glam version of a poppier Smashing
Pumpkins if you can imagine that. Ya think they would play this on the
radio when Jaz Coombes yells "Bite Me" before the chorus? Probaly not,
it isn't rap.
2. Hymm For My Soul-Joe Cocker 2008 Yep, I got to see him singing
this on The View today and for a guy whose in retirement age, Cocker
still sounds as grittier than ever. He's always been a good guy, he
even got a chuckle when Woopie asked him about the SNL show he did when
John Belushi was acting like him on stage. His new album is actually
pretty good. Kinda wished he left the soul chicks doing backups on this
song back home.
3. I Don't Know What I Was Thinking-Teddy Thompson 2008 This song
is radio ready for Mix 96.5 if they ever go back to promoting some new
songs instead of rehashing the tried and tired out. When I played his
new album A Piece Of What You Wanted the first time, I didn't know what
to think but the more I play this album to more it grows on me. And
this must be a good song, it's been playing in my head the last couple
days.
4. Vegetable Kingdom-Pell Mell 1995 A rare album on a major,
strictly instrumental that managed to get released on Geffen Records and
had a video played on 120 Minites, back when MTV was still playing
videos and not trying to get Tila Tequila laid every show nowadays.
Pell Mell was the alt rock Ventures.
5. Small Town Trap-Eve 6-1998 Ten years ago they had this off the
wall number one hit called Inside Out which you couldn't escape hearing
it on the radio. Basically to me, they were a more pop version of Green
Day, right down to Max Collins' Billy Joe accent. Unlike Green Day,
their albums were spotty as hell, well their first album was released on
RCA, they were still in high school. For reference, I played their
first album the other day and although there are some decent songs such
as this pick, and How Much Longer, there's a lotta crap on there (Jesus
Litenite, ugh) as well. Broke bigger with Horrorscope and Here's To The
Night and then disbanded after album number three bombed. But like any
bands nowadays, they reunited last year and now are touring again. The
drummer is the son of Don Was FYI.
6. Oklahoma-Sordid Humor 1994 These guys were not part of the
Counting Crows but rather two guys who both played bass guitar and had a
collective band of roving musicians to which Adam Durwitz of CC and
David Bryson helped out. When Light Music For Dying People came out,
they have already broken up so it actually served to be an anthology of
sorts. 14 years after the fact, this album has held up very well. If
you see it in the dollar bins, pick it up and see what you're missing.
7. Waka-Camper Von Beethoven 1988 When these guys tried to buy back
the masters to their Virgin/EMI albums, the major label gave them a BIG
FAT NO. They were probaly afraid that CVB was going reissue them via
digipaks. Remember kiddies, when you sign with a major label, you pretty
much gave up any rights to your music. Unless you're Bruce Springsteen
or Radiohead.
8. Glad/Freedom Rider-Traffic 1970 The classic rock track of the
week. The former rocks in a jazzy way but Freedom Rider does drag a bit
I think.
9. Messin With The Mekon-Robert Plant 1983 Mr. Plant broke it big
with this album which this song comes off of, Principial Of Moments and I
still find that and his first album a bit too eccentric and not enough
rock and roll, although the breaks on this song suggest a progessive
rock of sorts. Phil Collins helps out on drums and can be a help at
times but others he gets in the way too much. Just ask Eric Clapton on
that one.
10. Throwing It All Away-Genesis 1986 To which we give Phil Collins
the last spot of this weeks top ten. With Peter Gabriel Genesis was a
Prog rock band, with Phil being leader, they were a Prog Pop band, a
major difference. I can't say what processed me into buying Invisible
Touch except maybe being a bit nostagic for the 80s (Ha) but I come to
find myself enjoying that album although the disco electric drums have
dated itself. Perhaps the most hookier songs that Phil, Mike and Tony
came up with and this song was on the easy listening top ten for a
while. There's so shame of being a closet Genesis 80s era fan, there
are much worser stuff out there (such as Dead Or Alive, Human League,
A-ha, I could go on........).
I think I'm going to move my political bitchings back to Yahoo's blog
under the Crabb banner over there. That way this site will be a bit
more user friendly and I'm sure nobody bothers to read that over there
so I'll continue to rant and rave and feel better about it.
Welcome Super 400 to this site. They made a album for Island back in
1998 that I raved about, but unlike Mach Five who faded away, Super 400
kept it together and made some indee albums in the process and got back
the Island album to re release it with bonus tracks. Like Radio
Moscow, Super 400 has that power trio 60s vibe. Thanks for choosing
Crabb.
Link of the week. Marie Prevost, silent movie star which was
immoralized by Nick Lowe in a 1978 song. Seen a silent movie that TCM
showed sunday night The Verdict (1927). She didn't get eaten up by her
doggie, she died of a broken heart. Here's a cute picture of her and a
dog around 1931. I get a kick out of seeing Fido's look. So cute.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1148491776/nm0696679
