Top Ten Of The Week: Leo Greco We Hardly Knew Ye

After having my best month ever in terms of viewership even I can't make heads or tails on how Blogspot maintains who reviews what.  Sometimes I go back to review some of my previous blogs to try to make sense of it all but really can't.  Only thing seems certain that the Rock n Roll n The Brains will go over 1,000 views and the followup Rock n Roll N The Offspring be under 25.  However, last week's Top Ten has made it to the top ten and climbing up over 50 views.  However, the Crabb prediction will be that this month the ratings will be a bit lower than the last two.  I don't forsee a lot of traffic here outside of the usual top tens and forthcoming Madison trip for a day.  In fact, Nicole been asking me when I was going up there.  But I'm guessing when the heat index goes under 100 degrees then I'll plan on going.

I think part of the Brains blog getting hits comes from funderglass.blogspot.com who did a nice review of Electronic Eden, the Brains 1981 followup. He hooked up a link to the Brains Blog but he hasn't posted anything in over a year.  Hopefully he'll get back to reviewing the obscure bands that we all like to come across.

July was the hottest month we have had around here go figure.  Which means the electric bill will be 200 dollars.

Miley Cyrus continues to follow the footsteps of Lindsay Lohan in taking up smoking.  Don't know what it is with these Disney's floozies, have a successful show, make a few Disney albums and then they grow up to be trailer trash.  Never been much of a fan of hers, nor Hillary Duff or Ms. Lohan but to each their own and don't surprised if someday Miley dies from lung cancer.

And for this Debt Ceiling crap that congress passed through...same shit different day. Mitch McConnell is a pussy and John Boehner isn't much better.  Too bad nobody ever thought about ending the two damn wars Bush got us into.  Great Depression 3.0 here we come.

But we can rock away our troubles can't we?

1.  Born To Lose-Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers 1977  If the NY Dolls were glam rockers, The Heartbreakers were the opposite, dirty assed rock and roll, performing as if the wheels were going to fall off. You basically know about their LAMF album which came out on The Who's Track Records label but the album got killed by bad remixes and lack of organization from Track Records to promote so it was a well kept secret from me till I found a cheap copy of it from a now defunct Wherehouse Music store in Phoenix.  And cared enough to buy a vinyl copy of LAMF: The Remixes, Outtakes and B Sides, that Music Lovers issued.  That record is a luxury, since the best mixed songs were the instrumental backing tracks. The better mixes came from the Jungle 77 Lost Mixes, to which some of stuff still sounds half assed in the mixing department.  Still play LAMF more than Thunders' 1978 So Alone album which was produced by Steve Lillywhite (later of The Brains fame) and had Eddie And The Hot Rods rhythm section backing up Johnny on a couple numbers.  I wouldn't call LAMF a punk album, it's more broad based pub rock and roll like Eddie N The Hot Rods.  And a more rocking good time although for shits and giggles, try to find the DTK Live At The Speakeasy to which a stoned out of his mind Thunders bash away at the patrons for not dancing.

2.  Little Suzi-Tesla 1986  Sure hope y'all got a chance to catch up on MTV 30 fame but if you didn't have VH1 Classic you were fucked out of that chance since Manure TV that is MTV isn't the Music TV of long ago and far away but thank God for You Tube so we got to see what it was like when MTV was this big new frontier of discovering new music although it would take two more years to reach here an by then the momentum was beginning to deteriorate even by 1983.  In the first hour, there was a little known version of Little Susie Is On The Ups by Ph.D, a band that featured James Diamond along with Tony Hymans from Jeff Beck's Band and Simon Phillips on drums.  They made one album for Atlantic to which I'm still looking for a copy of that record.  Their big hit was I Won't Let You Down which actually became a Tide Commercial but I have never heard their version of Little Susie till that first hour on MTV which they played the video. PhD never broke big but the guys in Tesla made a cover of Little Suzi which did hit the top thirty and basically they did a better Bad Company sound than the actual band with this hit.

3.  Too Late-Shoes 1979  This was made MTV special back in the early 80s.  The ability to promote the lesser known artists out there and somewhere in the first two hours of MTV existence they played this little song from the Zion Illinois based band.  The Shoes remain one of the best power pop bands out there but unlike The Romantics who broke the classic rock barrier with What I Like About You, best The Shoes could do was this little ditty.  They also had a minor hit with Tomorrow Night which should have broke them big, but didn't.

4.  A Road Song-Fountains Of Wayne 2011  Power pop music nowadays. Hard to believe that these guys have been around for over 16 years but although they haven't had the big followup hit like they did with Stacy's Mom, you have to go back to Radiation Vibe from the first album to get the sense of what they could do best.  Their power pop has slowly become more Adult contemporary over the years but FOW always has had great backing vocals to their songs.  After three years on S Curve/Virgin they move over to digipak label Yep Roc and have made a fine album in Sky Full Of Holes.  It might be in my Best of 2011 (tune in December to find out the lucky ten).

5.  Just What The Doctor Ordered-Ted Nugent 1975  Mr Rush Limbaugh Junior hasn't put out a listenable album since he left Epic and basically his right wing rhetoric has really put me off to the point that I damn near gave away all of his albums with the exception of his S/T Epic debut to which remains his best ever.  That band of of Derek St. Holmes, Rob Grange (later Charlie Huhn), and Cliff Davies was his classic band.  Cat Scratch Fever may have been his best selling but Ted Nugent the album is the one when I want to hear how great Ted can crank it up on guitar.  And leave the RWBS out of it.

6.  20th Century Man-The Kinks 1980  The live version although the definitive version is on Muswell Hillbillies. Fucking Arista Records left this version off the CD due to time restrictions (CDs at that time couldn't go over 75 minutes) when Velvel/Koch reissued the live Kinks record 20th Century Man returned to its rightful place.  At that time I liked One For  The Road   but noticed that Dave Davies added more of a metallic guitar to the songs which kinda dates it (if not Ian Gibbon's keyboard does date it).  Hard to say what Ray was going for at the time, I'm guessing more new wave judging by Low Budget and the half assed Give The People What They Want (includes the creepy Art Lover).  The Beat Farmers does a fun version of 20th Century Man on their Live album ten years later on.

7.  Whatever I Am You Made Me-Koko Taylor  1965  The original Queen Of The Blues, Koko Taylor had a earth shaking voice to which Chess Records never quite knew how to market her, she was way too gritty for R and B and she made a few singles that eventually wound up in a Chess overview S/T album produced by the late great Willie Dixon to which the blues died when he died.  Nevertheless, Koko moved over to Alligator Records and enjoyed her most successful career there.  Koko played a few blues festivals around here when she was alive.  She passed into the Great Beyond in 2009.  The greatest female blues singer ever.
This version was also done by the late great Nina Simone although I have yet to hear her version.

8.  Wilma Mae-Hog Heaven 1971  The Shondells without Tommy James.  Hog Heaven was one of those albums ya saw in the dollar bins and wondered WTF was on that album?  Turns out that Mike Vale and company were more into the country side of things, even had Buddy Cage playing slide steel guitar before he moved on to New Riders Of The Purple Sage.  One of those albums that Collector's Choice Music had in the 5.98 bargain bins and worth a listen to.  Album is pretty much country rock consistent with the times.  The bonus track suggest more of a gospel rock feel to which Morris Levy didn't want nothing of.

9.  LTD-The Charms 2006  Just about five years ago, Little Steven made a deal with Best Buy to put out garage rock music from his new label Wicked Cool.  If it wasn't for him, I would have never discovered The Len Price 3, The Woggles, The Stablizers, and The Coolest Songs In The World series.  But like all good things in theory,  Best Buy thought it wasn't cost effective and FYE took over the deal which meant driving an hour away to FYE to see what if there was any new Wicked Cool product out there.  There's some leftovers still Best Buy and after five years of not moving them, they knocked the priced down to a unbelievable 49 cents to Strange Magic, the only album from The Charms.  Not much is known about them, but their album was produced by Jim Diamond the guy behind Volbeats, Mooney Suzuki, White Stripes or anything garage rock from Detroit.  The guitar intro kinda reminds me of Spinal Tap's Tonight I'm Going To Rock You Tonight.  Probably the best track off this record.  Maybe I'll go back up to Best Buy and see what else they have for 49 cents, (KO and the Knockouts, Lauderettes, Novaks?) Followup: Best Buy didn't have them at 49 cents but rather 9.99.  Nevertheless I passed.


10.  Cherchez La Femme-The Fabulous Poodles 1977 However featured on their 1979 Epic album Mirror Stars. Produced by John Entwistle.  Better known for their one hit wonder Mirror Star (which borrowed the talk box guitar Peter Frampton made so famous), this off the wall ditty kinda is a cross of the Kinks meeting The Who despite the goofy French chorus. Like the Angels from Angel City, when Epic issued Mirror Stars, they combined the best of the three albums before it.  Which didn't help them all that much.  Had the album years ago but found His Master's Choice, a collection of the best of Fab Poodles from Sequel for two bucks at Stuff Etc in Coralville one day.

other things:

We have had four power outages in the past three weeks here including yet another 2 hour blackout tonight.  And so far fucking Alliant isn't helping my computer.  In fact, the CSers seem to be hell bent into frying it since I was typing out the top ten tonight. So took a trip to Anamosa and pay a visit to our dear departed co worker Glarice Kula who finally got a headstone to her grave.  And then hung out the Wally World to see what kind of stuff they have for tunes.  Natta.  Warner Music Group actually has cut prices on some of the back catalog, you can now get Van Halen 2 and Fair Warning for five bucks, as well as Journey's Escape and a few others.  Even Mott The Hoople's Mott is now five bucks at finer Wally World or Best Buy.

More sad news to report:  Leo Greco, the long time Sunday Morning announcer for Variety Time for WMT AM and one time recording artist for Dot Records passed away at age 89. He hosted his radio show from 7:30 to 1:30 Sundays.  Mostly his show focused on pop standards of the golden age of radio and polka numbers to which he used to play in his old band years ago. He will be missed.