Top Ten Of The Week-Hotter Than July

I must say that the gates of Hades have opened up and the great heat wave is upon us.  Me and Nicole spent part of Sunday down in Iowa City to go to the record store but I didn't buy anything for fear that if I did buy anything the record would have warped big time.  Couple things of interest, The Kaleidoscope Beacon From Mars on Epic to which it was a reissue judging by the midnight blue label of the late 70s and most of the 80s.  Can't recall ever seeing it reissued and Record Collector had it for 8 dollars, a good deal but from what I remembered of it, most of the record was blah.  Thought about getting Mother Earth's Living With The Animals, an album that Wounded Bird reissued but outside of the long title Goodnight Nelda Grebe The Telephone Company Has Cut Us Off (which was a single for Mercury BTW) and Down So Low, I don't recall much of the rest.  So I passed.

For the second time of going to Iowa City, I didn't find anything to take home, although Nicole found Season Two of Renegade.  We kinda strolled around 105 heat index degree downtown Iowa City and I almost passed out from the blistering heat.  Kinda reminding me of Pete Sweval from the Looking Glass complaining about that GD Heat from Catherine Street.  There was much more to Looking Glass than Brandy You're A Fine Girl but you'd never know that this band would mutate into Starz and reinvent themselves on Capitol for four uneven albums.

My boss went to see U2 in St Louis Sunday Night and he reported that they were spot on great and had a nice light show and stage.  He didn't know what to think about Interpol, the warm up act and neither do I.  Gotta hand it to the man for driving all the way down there to rock out to Bono and company and come back up the next day to come to work.

With Borders becoming a thing of the past, I beginning to think I should make one more trek up to Dubuque to visit and see what they have 20 to 40 percent off.  Or maybe Davenport although I'm more in cline for the former than latter.  I think Moline still has their FYE store but even when Coralville was around, the Moline store was always hit and miss.  Still have that Children Of Nuggets box set that I have yet to crack open and play.  Borders I still think beat Barnes & Noble for CD selection and even a scaled back Borders I managed to find a few noteworthy things.  I know Borders only can blame their selves for their lack of vision but dammit, I always enjoyed making my way into their stores if I was in the neighborhood.  I know Nicole is trying to convince me to head over her place for the weekend but I'm beginning to look to the north and east of here on 151 to the Q city but risking getting a heat stroke if it continues to stay hot and the car has no AC.

Still hoping on Madison and getting there before the students retake the town again.

1.  Summer In The City-Lovin Spoonful 1966  So ably said about Hot Town, and getting back of the neck all dirty and gritty.  People walking around hotter than a match indeed.  I think they call it heat stroke if your not careful.

2.  I Will Follow-U2 1980  I always have had a love/hate affair with Bono and the boys.  If I never hear Pride again it wouldn't break my heart and I hardly ever play side one of the Joshua Tree since classic rock radio, oldies radio and alternative radio plays the first three.   Even my go to album Boy, has it's flaws as well.  To me, I don't think they ever topped I Will Follow in term of atmospheric guitar work although The Electric Company comes in a close second.  But then again, our trendy classic rock station played Twilight by mistake and it threw me off a bit.  But I'm sure the DJ got fired the next day for that little trick.  BTW, I don't mind Pride (in the name of love) I did enjoy hearing it before the programmers research dumb bunnies render that song to be played every day for the rest of days and made me sick of hearing it.  Somewhere out in the great waste of FM radio or Net radio it's playing.  Better that than Bad, the worst crap song Bono ever written (IMO).  Got thrown out of Zia's In Arizona one year after telling the sales associate to shove that whining POS up their keyster.  And then Boner reprised it for the Wide Awake In America EP that sells for a regular price.

3.  Misty Mountain Hop-Led Zeppelin 1971  This week was Mark Prindle's Birthday to which I wished him Happy Birthday via automatic birthday greeting to which I didn't know I did but I'd still wished him a Happy Birthday regardless.  He thought a line in question was hey there Whoopie Cat, I thought it was hey there Groovy Cat, it was all dandelion, dandelion but in pale frustration I looked up the line and neither one of us were in the same ball park.   It was Just then a policeman stepped up to me and asked us, said would you care to all get back in line, get back in line.  The actual line to which I finally heard it right after 40 years of hearing Groovy Cat and Dandelion.  WTF was I thinking???

4.  Goin Back-George Thorogood & The Destroyers 2011  New George is the same as the old George.  Getting his Chess Chicago styled blues down the Deleware Destroyer Way.  Boogie Sonics!  Actually his new album is very enjoyable.  At least it won't bore me like Bon Iver or Interpol. Or what passes for rock music anymore.

5. Raeline-The Brains 1980  Only 200 more views for 1,000.  Let's see if the faithful continue to view that little tribute to the band that came from Georgia and turned New Wave on its head.  I remember TBS had the Bill Tush Show and The Brains came on board to do this song, I don't recall if they did any other songs but it was the first and only time I got to see Tom Gray and company on TV.  On the second verse, look for the guys to shout out Doreen instead of Raeline, in tribute to a fan.  And if anybody from Universal Music is reading this, Reissue the GD Brains albums you fools.

6.  Super-Connected  Belly 1995  Alt rock darlings best known for Feed The Tree followed it up with this should have been a hit.  Produced by Glyn Johns, King (the album titled) bombed on the charts and while Belly sold very well, most have been found in the 2 dollar bins.  Originally on the Current Vision album that Target sold for about a dollar, this CD was pretty good in terms of giving us a taste of what alt rock was all about some good, some bad.

7.  All For Myself-Them 1965  With Van Morrison, Them was one of the toughest Irish rocker that ever graced the stage and for a couple short years made some kick ass songs for Parrot.  The B side to Here Comes The Night, this little throwaway goes into a full throttle rave-up as Morrison yells and screams ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT trying to outshout the Vox Organ.  Sounds somewhat like The Animals.  Once Morrison left Them for the green solo pastures of rock, Them became a shell of themselves.  From what I heard of the new guy, none of the songs impressed me enough to warrant a second listen.  As for Morrison's music, you have your faves, I have mine.

8.  Take An X-The Angels 1988  The Angels from Angel City return with a followup. The US version of Beyond Salvation is much different than the Aussie version, the US had four new songs and five remakes, whereas the Aussie has no remakes, something that has plagued The Angels in their music career in the US.  Seems like every new album they did here they had to do a remake from their earlier albums, so technically we never got to hear a complete new Angels album.  This is from the Australian version of Beyond Salvation and perhaps the US label may have been right of leaving this one off.  A vain attempt to hit the rock radio market and failing big time.  However Beyond Salvation turned out to be The Angels biggest selling album in the land down under and New Zealand, and their only number one chart topping album.  It didn't even register in the top fifty here in the US.

9.  Rude Mood-Stevie Ray Vaughn 1983  As much as I play Stevie Ray, always seems like when it comes to making up a top ten that he always get left off.  David Bowie gave him a big break by playing on Let's Dance, Bowie's big selling album for EMI, but the folks at Montreaux   gave him a hard time when he played there.  He was so far ahead of the game that the clueless just sat there and booed him.  Their loss although when he returned for the Soul To Soul Tour they cheered him, (make up).  However, John Hammond signed him up to CBS, Jackson Browne gave some studio time to him and the end result was Texas Flood.  Like Hendrix, SRV was something special and like Hendrix, SRV left this world way too soon.  And music wasn't the same either.

10.  Hotter Than Hell-KISS 1974  What better way to describe how hot it has been here. Weather so hot I cracked open an egg on the hood of my car and made omelets out of it, the pop tarts were popping right out of the box and of course Mr. Lenee saying having a tube of poppin fresh rolls popping out and ready to be buttered.  I guess in the end, we'll end this miserable hot week of 105 heat indexes with something from the classic years of $tanley/$immon$, and I still play the first two albums from time to time.