According to the weather bureau, the remains of Hurricane Gustav will
be sideswiping here tomorrow so it will probaly rain all day. Of
course the crybabies here are crying for rain and looking at the Cedar
River of late, it is drying up, hard to believe almost three months ago
it was everywhere you didn't want it to be. There's a house about a
half mile down highway 1 and you can see the mudline of where the Cedar
was at, about up to the windows. Anyway, the streetlights are back on
around Czech Village but it still a ghost town. Life is slowly coming
back more away from CV, the Sinclair gas station has reopened and
Sav-A-Lot might be opened again in October.
I didn't get a chance to see the C R Kernels play all year till they
made the playoffs and won game one tonight 3-0. Jeremy Moore hit a solo
home run, another run was scored on a suicide squeeze and three
pitchers combine on a shutout. If they win one more game at Clinton,
then I might make it to another playoff game next week. But I recall
last year, they won game one and then dropped the next two.
Nevertheless when I go see the Kernels play in the playoffs they are
2-0.
Russ called me at 1 today to tell me that his house caught on fire. It made the news. Sad to say that two of the cats didn't make it out due to smoke inhalation. It also took forever for the insurance company to pay out for the losses and still causing havoc to my best friend's life. They claim he started the fire, everybody knows that's bullshit. Don Julio was a vary funny cat, Smoochy, a fat pumpkin cat that Deb adored a lot.
And now time for your musical top ten and history lesson.
1. Toot Toot Tootsie (Goodbye)-Max Roach/Buddy Rich 1959 World's
best drummer ever Buddy Rich and he takes on Jazz's best drummer Max
Roach and plays to a draw. Lots of mad drum solos left and right. But
the one thing I noticed about Buddy Rich's bands is that they play wild
uptempo swing jazz and not exactly rock and roll. Rock and roll is not
Buddy's forte but he's so damn good you can't help but listen to try to
figure out what the hell he's playing. Max Roach is more laid back but
pair him up with Buddy, and he's bashing them too. Too bad that Buddy
wasn't alive to take on Keith Moon (actually he was but decided to pass
on Keith since he was more wild than Buddy ever was) or Neil Peart or
Gavin Harrison. From the Rich vs Roach album to somehow the halfwit
from Rolling Stone Reviews gave it a one star rating. Add three more
stars to it and for the bidding drummer check it out if you can find it.
2. 21st Century Digital Boy-Bad Religion 1994 Not all real rock
stations are alike. I'm sure KRNA never plays anything from Bad
Religion but KUPD does. And they played this song. Not that I listen to
"real rock" stations but if they do play Bad Religion I'll stick
around.
3. X Ray Spex-Starz 1978 Minor rock band that got signed to Rock
Steady productions (at that time part of the KISS empire) and made four
albums for Capitol and then disappeared awhile. The Capitol albums got
reissued thru Metal Blade in the 90s and this decade moved over to
Rykodisc. Had their album Attention Shoppers which had this little
ditty. They were pop metal at best. In fact two members of that band
played in The Looking Glass who you know as the Brandy Your A Fine Girl
band. However Joe Dube didn't join the Looking Glass till number two
and played on their other top forty single Jimmy Loves Mary Anne. Some
useless triva for y'all.
4. Amos Moses-Jerry Reed 1971 RIP. Jerry was one of the best guitar
pickers in Nashville and had a few hits for RCA in the 60s and 70s but
he's better known as The Snowman on those Smokey And The Bandit movies
that Russ and I used to go sneak at the theaters and watch them twice in
a row. Jerry also starred with Dom Deluise in the 1980 Hot Stuff,
which starred them as undercover cops opening up a pawnshop to trap
villians. Jerry died at age 71 due to empaesyma (sic), another victim
done in by cigarettes.
5. Easy To Slip-Little Feat 1972 I can't tell you what I think of
the early Feat years when Lowell George led them. They had some great
songs but spotty albums too quirky for my liking. When Bob Lefsetz
talked about them in his blog, he got me interested to check the album
out again and this lead off song is super great but Rhino fucked up by
not putting it on their best of. It is on the box set and the sampler
that came out. I tend to enjoy Little Feat now more than I did when I
was a teenager.
6. Three Days-Thermadore 1996 Another band that made one album that
you can find for fifty cents at selected pawnshops and the record wasn't
that great but the first two songs off this album (Monkey on Rico) are
excellent. Originally a band made up of members from Mary's Danish and
Rob Rule, both bands making forgettible albums. Could be wrong but I'm
not about to go look for them, I've heard enough subpar albums in this
lifetime (and the Rob Rule album did suck).
7. Say It-Voices Of The Beehive 1991 The followup to their Let It
Bee album was called Honey Lingers and it bombed and copies can be found
for fifty cents at the pawnshop but album number two wasn't that bad
although a lot more uneven. Hugh Jones seemed to get more mileage out
of them since he produced this track and the girls do have a heavenly
pair of vocals. Next to the Dance Hall Crashers they were probaly my
favorite girl band although The Beehive made a crappy album Sex And
Misery a couple years later on Discovery Records. But then again I
bought their three albums for a grand total of 2 dollars and fifty
cents, a bargain within itself, but still Let It Bee remains their best
album and the other two you can probaly live without.
8. Last Time I Saw Her-Robert Plant 2002 You know his stuff with
Led Zep but his solo career was a lot more interesting than the other
two Zep heads but I find Dreamland, the album which this song appears on
to be bloated and tuneless and can't understand the high ratings it
gets. One of the few times that the remix that is the bonus track on
the reissue of this album is better than the album version.
Nevertheless, his pairing with Alison Krauss is much better than
Dreamland, the 2002 album he did for Universal but the next album Mighty
Rearranger was much better.
9. Runaround Man-Motorhead 2008 And more vital then the Rolling
Fucking Stones...and Magazine. From the new album Motorzier Diggy! New
Motorhead dude!
10. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (edited special edit
radio mix) Negativland 1991? And finally the odd song of the week.
This band managed to get a radio check of Casey Kasem throwing a few F
bombs about the band U2 and these jokers managed to re edit everything
to combine a interesting collage of music and chat. I guess U2 didn't
mind it that much but Island Records and Kasem himself raised a big
stinkbomb to the point of sueing this band and the songs in question
disappeared....till ten years later when the practial jokers of
Negativland reissued it as These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A
Shit and as of this writing still in print. After a while it does get
tedious to listen to the same soundbits for sixty five minites but here,
they stuck on sound effects to cover up the naughty words and it's
funny as hell. At the end, fast forward the cd to about 15 seconds to
the end and hear Casey screw up a sound byte. American Top Forty at
Two....FK. Appently U2 isn't one of Casey's favorite bands.
That's the letter U and the numbero 2.
More about Negativland
http://www.negativland.com/
And happy birthday to Paul Harvey who turned 90 today and still
delivers the news. Also, 82 years young BB King may have turned in his
finest album in years with One Kind Favor to which I'll look at later on
the month. But Paul Harvey News And Comment have been a family
mainstay for 30 plus years. As Paul Harvey would say, Good Day!
Diggy Kat sez:
omg! Russ' house caught on fire?!?! EEP! >.< so glad everyone was ok!!
i really need to check out some Buddy Rich stuff! soooo much music and only 24 hours in a day! GRR!
yay! Bad Religion, that's one of my all-time favourite songs by them!!
Starz! i have their self-titled cd and Violator lol
Jerry Reed...man =( RIP. i was listening to Old Dogs today (was it
'cuz Waylon was apart of it? um...no? lol) i am sooooo glad i never
tried smoking!!! hell i gotta be as healthy as possible since i'm going
to be 150!
