It must be Wednesday, time for another exciting chapter of the Top Ten Of The Week. This week I welcome a new follower to this blogsite, he's been here a bit but let's give a big warm welcome to Rastronomicals.
This month showcases some new releases of note, mainly the new REM and NY Dolls and I'm sure I'll get them in my collection to make a comment one way or another. National Record Store doesn't happen till April 16 which means that I'll either go see what Record Collector has in store. Or Dubuque but nevertheless I haven't been too excited on what the major labels have in store but the best seems to be the Sundazed mono LP version of The International Submarine Band's Safe At Home album. But really I just don't see the need to spend fifty bucks on Eric Clapton's Unplugged when I can find it on CD for 2 bucks at HP Books. With two locations in Madison and one in Marion and Des Moines Iowa. Not that I'm going to Des Moines anytime soon.
Lotta happenings up in Madison with the Idiot Republican Scott Walker trying to take away collective bargaining from the unions up there and there's been plenty of protests and sleepovers at the Capitol it seems. Which means getting a parking spot around State Street is out of the question but in this day and age Madison still has plenty of music stores to seek out bargains. Too early in the month to consider going up there but maybe before springtime I'll go. Probably after daylight savings time begins.
March is also the beginning of the real basketball season, the NCAA's and basically the Iowa Hawkeyes Men's team will not be there unless they win the Big 10 tournament. Then again not too many teams that lose 20 games make it far if they do. Fran McCaffery should have stayed in Siena eh? I donno, the Hawkeyes have made baby steps in improvements but once again have yet to play a full 40 minute game and not half assed although they did knock off Michigan State by 20 in Iowa City last month. At least they won more games than the football team did last year.
What I'm working on this month, more of the rating grabbing Music Of My Years or Youth series, more lost 45's that have been found on You Tube and more observations and nostalgia. But once the weather gets warmer and better I'll be doing a little less blogging but expect around 10 to 12 per month once again, till either i lose readers or I get bored with it. And going to my 8 th year of doing this haven't gotten bored with it.
The Top Ten Of The Week
1. When I Grow Up-Michelle Shocked 1988 Like k.d. lang Shocked was one of the lesbian singers who carved out a nice recording career although I never did follow either one much but Michelle was more folky than the torch and twang of Lang and both were not exactly country. Lang got Owen Bradley to produce Shadowland while Michelle went with Pete Anderson (famous for making Dwight Yoakam sound good and having a great band too) on her Short Sharp Shocked Mercury debut. I remembered KFMH 99 plus in Muscatine playing this on the drive home from work one night. A song about growing to be an old woman, finding a older man and having 120 babies to boot! Considering the source it lets you in her barbed sense of humor. Later reissued as a limited edition 2 CD set which is harder to find than the actual Mercury album itself.
2. Stay With Me-The Rugbys 1969 B Side to You, I their sole one hit wonder. They came from Kentucky and recorded on the Amazon Label (no relation to Amazon.com mind you) which was actually part of a bunch of labels under the supervision of Shelby Singleton Jr. who back in the 60's produced Mercury Recording acts such as Leroy Van Dyke, Dave Dudley and Leslie Gore to name a few before starting up his own Plantation label and had success with Jenny C Riley but The Rugby's were a oddity since they were more hard rock. The album Hot Cargo was a mixed bag of so so fuzz rock but Steve McNichol wrote the hardest rocking of all. Stay With Me starts out kinda of a lullaby beginning before guitars crank it up. What pissed me off about Hot Cargo the album and why it was found for 44 cents at Kresge's was that the 45 version of Stay With Me was longer and included a trainwreck ending of guitars and drums going all out. Which was the highlight of the song but the CD version cuts it all over before 3 minutes, thus ruining the power of Stay With Me which is no relation to the Faces version. So in essence I traded off the cd and kept my scratchy old 45 which amazingly still plays very good. I'm surprised nobody at You Tube has put a version of this up yet.
3. Amie-Pure Prairie League 1972 Took RCA about two years to promote this song, didn't hear it on the radio till 1974. Craig Fuller lead this band for a time then dropped out and George Powell took over and got a hit with Two Lane Highway in 1975 but classic rock radio never plays that. But they do play this version. EZ to sing along to and EZ to play, in fact my old band The Routers played this in their live set. Great memories and really wish I can play alongside those guys in the band. Fact of the matter was my old boss Greg played bass and got me out of retirement to play once again.
4. Alice's Restaurant (The Massacree Revisited) Arlo Guthrie 1996 One of those long hippie dippy classics of long ago and far away. Just about 30 years later Arlo rerecorded Alice's Restaurant once again and added about four more minutes to the original 18 minute version but actually includes a funny bit about Richard Nixon's tape and a 18 minute gap to which Arlo speculates that Tricky Dick may have recorded Alice's Restaurant since The Nixons had a copy of that album in the White House. Arlo tells the story better than I can type it out. And I never seen the movie till last year when Turner Classic Movies had it on at 2 AM one Friday Night and finally got watched most of it before falling asleep and missing the ending of it.
5. Turn On Your Love Light-The Human Beinz 1968 They stuck it big with Nobody But Me, a cover of the Isley Brothers song so on the followup they did a garage rock classic version of the Bobby Blue Bland number and made it sound a bit like Nobody But Me with the call and response of the chorus and I like it fine myself. Only made the top 50 in the US but supposedly it made number one in Japan. I recalled hearing it on KWWL AM in Waterloo around 1968. Found the scratchy 45 at the Salvation Army store around 85 (the same time I came across St. Louis by the Easybeats). Collectibles reissued the album on CD in 1993.
6. Zombie Jamboree (Back To Back)-King Flash 1957 Another dime store 45 I bought at the old downtown Marion Salvation Army. Titled Calypso Carnival featuring King Flash it came from a Columbia album of the same name to which I never seen but it showcased different people doing calypso songs. Kind of surprised that Mitch Miller signed off on this for this as cutting edge as he got since marketing Guy Mitchell for the country market. But with cutting edge echo-phonics that Miller was using for his pop acts it was used on this song for great effect. B side was Mama Looka Boo Boo (boo boo man) to which Harry Belefonte had a top ten hit but I always preferred the lesser known King Flash version. While there's not a version of Zombie Jamboree up on You Tube yet somebody was kind enough to add Mama Looka Boo Boo instead.
7. Bad Luck-Social Distortion 1992 Kind of a toss up between this and Far Side Of Nowhere on their new album but I went with their best known alt rock hit.
8. I'm In The Mood-John Lee Hooker 1951 In loving tribute to Eddie Kirkland who played on this number with the legendary John Lee and passed away from a car crash Sunday Morning. Hard to imagine sixty years ago this song came out but we were all so much younger then. Some of us weren't not even born yet. Some of your mom's were not even born yet.
9. Takes A Lot To Rock You-Dwight Yoakam 1990 One of the reasons why Dwight was so good was he had Pete Anderson playing guitar and leading the band and most of their time together was a combination of alt country and honky tonk and straight on rock and roll. His high point was in the early 90s and even up to Tomorrow Sounds Today had moments of pleasure. Since losing Pete Anderson, Dwight albums never quite swing or rocked the way they used to. Or sold as well.
10. Don't Think Twice It's Alright-Bob Dylan 1963 For Suze Rotolo and all the things she did to make Bob Dylan the man he is today, for all good and bad indeed. Before the swill Joan Baez came out of nowhere and took him away. It was the early sixties and things were just about to get crazier. You had to be there but since you can't, may as well relive it on You Tube.
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