Top Ten Of The Week-Binged Again

Well, let's see how far we go on this list.

I've been having major problems and issues this weekend due to power outages and good old MSN fucking up. Hell, even while trying to compile this blog, GD MSN would go blank or Bing'd me. Which is when your trying to read a website and GD MSN would take you to that worthless search engine called Bing, so you can try to access the Blogger post and get Bing'd again. I do not like Bing, MSN's answer to Google. You can't beat the original and as long as I live, I'll take my chances on Google than on Bing. FU Bing, you suck.

This week's songs of note.

1. Every Picture Tells A Story-Rod Stewart 1971 Heard Rod The Mod is going to be a dad again at age 65 as he brings in child number 7 to the Stewart clan. And of course a good time to announce another addition to that Great American Songbook that he's been doing with Clive Davis the last decade. Dude really hasn't come up with anything worth noting since Unplugged with Ronnie Wood. But you really want to hear Rod greatness, pull out this album with said song. He was unplugged long before unplugged was cool.

2. A Hit By Varese-Chicago 1971 Same year as Rod the Mod, this is an interesting Chicago tune. Sounds a bit progressive don't ya think? Back in the day, Chicago would do these interesting jazz excursions or guitar freak outs between the hits (the big hit off here was Saturday In The Park) but there's not bullshit cheese keyboards on these tracks. Plenty of horns and plenty of Peter Cetera singing Robert Lamm's lyrics. BTW, I noticed that Wally World has had some Chicago reissues in the five dollar section, of course V. Found the vinyl new for 2 bucks at Target in the bargain bin section about 20 years ago.

3. Maybe For You-Jefferson Starship 2007 A leftover from the Multiply top ten of last week, this is the best track off some piece of crap called Jefferson's Tree Of Liberty that Paul Kantner released and it has David Friedburg from the old band on it too. However this track was a outtake from a Jefferson Starship album of 1999 and it features Marty Balin on vocal and Jack Casady on bass with T. Lavitz from The Dixie Dregs playing piano. Too bad Kantner couldn't go with more Balin songs than the outdated 60s protest folk rock that would have benefited greatly had Grace Slick or even Siege Anderson sang on this. Darby Gould is no Grace Slick. Neither is Cathy Richardson either.

4. I'm Not My Brother's Keeper-Flaming Ember 1970 Followup to Westbound #9 this track got major airplay on KCRG AM around September of 1970. EMI quietly reissued five tracks from this band plus five more from The Glass House and I do believe this is the long version of this track.

5. Bird Dog-The Everly Brothers 1958 I think if you had cool parents that grew up listening to rock and roll that they would have The Everly's 15 Greatest Hits in their collection and thankfully my folks did this album. Perfect harmonies that still stand up 50 plus years later. And they didn't need no autotuner either Justin Bieber are you listening?

6. Burn It Down-Los Lobos 2010 Featuring help from Susan Tedeschi aka Mrs. Derek Trucks. The new Los Lobos album called Tin Can Trust might be their best in years and that's saying something since most anything Los Lobos releases to the world is at least worth a listen. Their first for Shout Factory after being on assorted Walt Disney labels the last 10 years.

7. Tempo Tantrum-The Woggles 2009 Surf guitar freak out done the aughts style. This band is on Little Steven's Wicked Cool label and if you buy the vinyl album of this release you get a bonus CD of the same songs plus bonus cuts. If only the major labels would do things that way. I mean if you going to spend 25 damn dollars on Neil Young reissues to which back in my day you can get for 7, 8 bucks at least throw the damn CD in for bonus value. Warner has reissued Eric Clapton's Journeyman as a 2 record set for 30 bucks and i can assure you, there's no bonus cd thrown in nor free MP3. Take note of that www.becausesoundmatters.com .

8. Wine And Women-The Bee Gees 1964 From an out of print album on Pickwick and a white promo copy to boot. Basically it's from a collection of Australia recordings before they got rich and famous and yes there are cheap cds of the 64 Australia Recordings out there. The folks at Pickwick chose to do that fake stereo mastering which means it sounds like crap. In other words, electronically channeled for stereo, means mono recording in one speaker, echo in the other to give it that stereo sound. Because sound matters.

9. Jacob's Ladder-Rush 1980 From Permanent Waves, their breakthrough album. Back then I wasn't much of a Rush fan but have learn to like their music although I'm not a fanatic of them like my best friend is.

10. You Know My Name (look up the number)-The Beatles 1970 B side to Let It Be and this might be my favorite of all Beatles song simply of the fact that its weird. Anthology 2, had a longer version of this song (the original can be found on Past Masters) and I can see why they took out a part of the song since it didn't fit very well, but I could have used the second repeat of the first verse. Goes into a odd salsa beat then get weirder after that before a goofy scat jazz ending. Classic rock radio wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole but Crabb Radio would and R. Smith's Top Ten Of The Week. Why?

Because sound matters!

RIP Richie Hayward, drummer for Little Feat who lost his battle with liver cancer at age 64. One of the best underrated drummers ever. He will be missed.