http://twitter.com/courtneylover79 (Link doesn't work anymore)
And BTW, I'm on Twitter if you really care.
http://twitter.com/RSCrabb
Not a big deal but another way to keep myself in touch with the world.
Hell
of a way to start out a new week of top ten mania. Maybe we can get
Courtney to host a Top Ten Of The Week. She ain't doing so well with
her band Hole, since she cannot record as Hole without Eric Erlanson in
it. Nevertheless she's not exactly happy with that arrangement but make a
deal with the devil and you have to live with the end result. Anyway,
could be worse, this copy and pasting isn't working very well so have to
redo everything and put the spaces where they should be.
It's
been a rotten week for me and it started with the Iowa City Bargain hunt
fiasco which six red lights in a row and countless dumbasses not
driving worth a fuck did it in for me to the point that going to Iowa
City anymore would be a waste of time and car mileage. I'll still tip my
cap off to Kurt at Record Collector for 24 years of having some
interesting finds. Thank you for letting me be a part of the record
buying public down there and thanks for letting me hold down the fort
while you went out next door.
Great to hear from TAD again. The
man knows good music and a good obscure forty five from the past. And I
do agree that Moonchild from King Crimson would have been a great 2 and
half minute song had Robert Fripp didn't bore us to dead the next ten minutes afterwards. I might let Tad compile a top ten in the near future
of his lost classics. Look for his reviews on Badfinger and The
Raspberries at his site.
The Great Jones County Fair is this week
and Brooks And Dunn and Steve Miller Band are the highlights. Here's
hoping we get some kind of summer weather this weekend or before
September comes around. Only hot weather I've encountered was in Lake
Havasau City and Phoenix earlier in the month. And doesn't this summer
suck here, just like last year.
The songs of note.
1.
Undercover Of The Night-The Rolling Stones (1983) This has got the be
the worst all time Rolling Stones album ever made although I do enjoy
this song for reasons unknown. Originally I gave this a B plus when
first reviewed but what I heard back then, I don't know. After
Undercover, the only two songs I care about is the B side All The Way
Down and finale It Must Be Hell which cops the same guitar riff from
Soul Survivor off Exile On Main Street. Undercover Of The Night, the
album is a piece of poo. Also can't understand why The Stones left off
Through The Lonely Night off their odds and sods compilation Sucking In
The 70s It would have elevated the grade up a notch on that record or
even It's Only Rock N Roll which would have been up two notches. RIP
OFF, the Universal masters of the Virgin albums of the CBS albums and
the Atlantic Albums. No bonus tracks same old same old.
2.
Our Town-Marshall Crenshaw (1983) As much as Marshall's first album was
pure power pop heaven, I prefer the drum/reverb heavy Field Day that
popped up in the summer of 1983. That album had better songs although
nothing on Field Day was like Someday Someway. Steve Lillywhite got
blasted for the loud drum mix but it was Scott Litt that was the mixer
on the album so hang him in effigy. But Litt had his fans as well, so
much that REM hired him to produced their so call classic Document of
1987 and later Incubus hired him too. But Our Town got some airplay on
KRNA in the early evening hours and moreso at KUNI.
3. Best
Friend-Senseless Things (1991) Forgotten British band made a delightful
power pop classic with this song but it was too British for the American
buying public and Sony Music only saw fit to issue one album called The
First Of Too Many and don't they wish. CD was found for a dollar at
Only Deals (RIP) store over by DeSoda's (RIP too). Yeah I listen to a
lotta junk but you gotta listen a lot to junk records to get the
diamonds in the rough. Such as Senseless Things who did make a good
album but their next two are only availble as imports and you're not
missing much with them either from what I have heard.
4.
Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love?)-Bob Dylan
(1986) Some people either consider this a Bob Dylan comeback or setback
and in some ways reminds me of his 1978 Street Legal album and this song
did get some airplay on the radio and even MTV. Of course, I didn't pay
attention to this album while going to work today, I think I was too
busy cussing out every red light in town and cussing out the fucking
rainstorm that we had all day yesterday and not paying attention to
Empire Burlesque. I get more distracted this day and age.
5.
White Lies, Blue Eyes-Bullet (1972) Dedicated to TAD, this may have been
one of the more perfect AM songs of that decade, Sing Along Chorus,
hooky guitars and an intense ending. I seem to recall that KLWW played
this more often then crosstown rival KCRG although KCRG had it in their
Super 30 Countdown for a couple weeks.
6. Dog Eat Dog-Adam And
The Ants (1980) Listen closely and you can hear the tribal drums that
recall He's Going Step On You Again from John Kongos, a minor hit about 9
years earlier. Adam Ant could put together a rocking song and Kings Of
The Wild Frontier might be stupid in some areas, and silly in others but
Dog Eat Dog along with Killer In The Home remain new wave classics.
Side note, the early version of The Ants would go on to form Bow Wow Wow
with Annabella. And Adam Ant would give us Goody Two Shoes later on.
7.
I Ain't Got You-Blue Oyster Cult (1975) It was 30 years ago this summer
that me and Russ went to what would be my first concert which was BOC
and Brownsville Station at the Five Seasons Center in CR and at that
time the Five was state of the art. Too bad that they didn't record the
concert, BOC never played better and Albert Brouchard's drum solo on
Godzilla was the stuff of legends. But they also played this little
Jimmy Reed number and ballooned it up to about 8 minutes as well. Again a
fun show but boy our ears rang for about two weeks.
8. Take The
Kash (K.A.S.H.)-Wreckless Eric (1978) An artist that recorded for Stiff
Records, I bought this simply of the fact it was on Stiff Records and
the folks at BJ Records had a few Stiff singles from other artists as
well but I think I bought it at a reduced rate. Kind of Popish in a way
of Nick Lowe was doing back then Eric had a very rough voice that didn't
make him much for American tastes unless you like the obscure and off
the wall. CBS had a distribution deal with Stiff and they released
Eric's album as a two fer which pretty much killed sales from a uncaring
public. A footnote in the history of rock, Stiff Records have come back
from the dead to reissue Wreckless Eric's Big Smash and he provided the
hilarious liner notes. He would also go on to marry the best female
singer songwriter of this decade Amy Rigby and they together recorded a
recent album for (what else?) Stiff Records.
9. It Hasn't
Happened Yet-John Hiatt (1980) Interesting to note that John Hiatt is
still around after all these years but back then he sounded a bit like
Elvis Costello, the sacastic new waver that had minimal luck on Epic and
then MCA Records to which after Two Bit Monsters, MCA bid him adieu and
Geffen would be his home for the next three albums to which he went
from Elvis wannabe to a more country rock sound aka John Mellencamp. And
his classic years were ahead of him but this song is more famous for
Ricky Nelson covering it for his Playing To Win album which came out a
year after Hiatt's. John was an acquired taste himself but always been a
very good songwriter since Bonnie Raitt and Three Dog Night covered
some of his songs.
10. Rubycon (Pt 1 and 2)-Tangerine Dream
(1975) It's not often that I include complete song passages from
complete albums, but since most of the songs have come from an era that
spoke most to me I decided to leave ourselves in the mid 70s and see
what next week brings. A lotta people continue to say that Pink Floyd
Dark Side Of The Moon is the stoner classic of all time but I disagree,
Dark Side is not an album to rock out and neither is Tangerine Dream,
one of the first bands to go drum free which is why I thought they
sucked when I was a teenager and when the folk at Record Realm would
play a TD composition I would groan in agony. But then again I pretty
much blinded by the boogie. Later years after being burned out by the
same 200 classic rock songs that are rotting away on classic rock radio
we move on to what's in the used bins and in the mid 2000's started
buying Tangerine Dream albums to see what I was missed. And Rubycon
might be the best of the Peter Bauman era, which sounds like a sinister
soundtrack to a horror picture or would be worth a drive in the desert
during monsoon season. I'm also sure that if I had my very own radio
show that Rubycon would have been a edited version before the top of the
hour since the total timing is 37 minites. But sometimes classic albums
do take both sides of the record to become classic, case in point
Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz or Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick. But had I
become a stoner, I'd would challange them a bit more than just Dark
Side Of The Moon. I think you can get more out of and get lost into the
atmospearic and sinister sounds of Rubycon than you could from Clare
Torry's screaming and moaning on Great Gig in The Sky. At least with
Rubycon we're spared from Clare Torry. Or Courtney Love (who wasn't even
born yet).
RIP The Taco Bell Chihuahua dog who made me first
aware of Taco Bell and the beginning of my bulging belly. Gidget, the
wonder Taco Bell Dog died from a stroke. She lived to be 15
