Top Ten Of The Week-Breakthrough!

Hey folks.  We are going have our best month ever in the Crabb Top Ten Site with the most views.  Even though there hasn't been much new stuff the last week, after all it's the end of the year and the only new stuff is rap and we all know how we feel about that.  Slim Dunkins wouldn't approve.  Alas, Dunkins was murdered at his Atlanta Studios while making a video.

For the returnees welcome back to another top ten, to the newbies, I put up 10 songs from various sources to which I was playing over the weekend.  Usually I go from 1954 up to 2011, but sometimes I sneek a song from the 40s or 30s or even the 20's.  Most of the songs come from my rock and roll era which is 1966 to 1984 but then again there's the second decade of my rock and roll era which was 1985 to the present.  Makes sense, hardly but the majority of songs do come from the 1970 to 1998 era and of course new stuff too.  If this was a radio station we would be free form and frustrating to the ones who only want the hits.  Plus the top ten can be used as a reference on all the variety that is out there.  I wouldn't last two seconds in a Cumulus Radio world.  Yes, I love The Beatles or Led Zep just as much as you do or Nirvana, but there's so much more out there, and so little time to hear it all.  But we'll give a try, like we have been the past 9 years.

Oh here's some more bullshit from Bob Lefsetz whose pretty much a relic of a faded past 30 years behind us.http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2011/12/20/year-end-roundup/

Top Ten:

1.  Sky Pilot-Eric Burdon & The Animals 1968   I've been meaning to add this song on the top ten the past month but always seem to forget this when everything is said and done and put up for the world to see.  I remember KWWL playing this on the infamous May 15th tornado that just about wiped out Charles City and Oelwein in that big tornado outbreak.  It was kinda bizarre since 1) the weather was bad and 2) this was the complete 8 minute version and JohnWeider's screaming guitar kinda sounded like the chaos of the tornado happening miles to the north and west of Waterloo to which I was living at the time.  The Animals coming a long way from the Alan Price keyboard driven Ray Charles/John Lee Hooker blues, by then Burdon was the only remaining original member and moving the band toward hippy dippyness.  Sky Pilot has held up quite well over time, however the album The Twain Shall Meet hasn't.  It kinda sucked for me since that was the only decent song off that album (along with Monterrey, Burdon's first person account of that famous Pop Festival).  Burdon would plod on to make two more sub par artifacts of the hippie era  (Every One Of Us and Love Is, which featured a young Andy Summers and an older Zoot Money) both you can live without.

2.  Medicine Man-Buchanan Brothers 1969  In reality they were Cashman, Pistali and West, capable songwriters on their own but on this one hit wonder they became the fictitious brother band that made a great song on Event Records.  I played the hell out of this record so much that my mom actually took the record away and told me to play something else now.  Shows you how much I loved this song.

3.  C'est Si Bon (It's So Good)-Stan Freberg  1953  Known for making some of the most creative commercials of the 50s and 60s, Freberg was a satirist who did a dead on Jack Webb on the Dragnet send ups and they were fun, kinda reminding of one what the Firesign Theater would do later on.  He also did the dumb ditty John & Marsha, which hasn't held up quite well over the years.  But from listening to his Capitol Collector's Series CD of 1990, he comes across hating rock and roll and doing very mean spirited versions of Sh Boom or Heartbreak Hotel.  But then you could perceive in your own way.  Either way he was ahead of his time and even today his Green Christmas song is dead on straight about the commercialization of Christmas.   God bless him anyway.

4.  Little Miss Fortune-Bad Company 1974   The carry over of the Paul Rodgers greatest hits I suppose, this was the B side to Can't Get Enough to which why it didn't make the record of Bad Company is beyond me.  Even if Atlantic would have tacked on this a bonus cut as well as the remake of Easy On My Soul would have not decease the value of that album one little bit.  It would take 25 years for this song to make it on the 2 Cd Bad Company Anthology that Elektra released.

5.  Neighborhood Bully-Bob Dylan 1983   Ah yes, the born again phase was just about over and I think Bob was moving away from the gospel on Shot Of Love.  Infidels, the next album Bob reunited with Mark Knopfler, gets Sly And Robbie on bass and drums and continues to sing about Jesus to which I think this song was written in mind.  But then again with Dylan you never know where he leads.

6.  Hell's Half Acre-Robbie Robertson 1987  Perhaps one of the biggest anticipated and biggest flops, Robbie's first solo album for Geffen had plenty of guest stars on it (U2, Peter Gaberial, BoDeans to name a few) and lots of session players to die for (Tony Levin, Terry Bozzio).  Problem was the pompous sound and intentions of this and the next album Robertson did for Geffen before leaving.  It was one thing to have Rick Danko or Levon Helm and Richard Manuel singing the songs, it's another when Robbie sang.  The guy simply can't sing very well and the album suffered.  I donno, this song and the album does have a certain charm to it, kinda like the overrated Music From Big Pink, but had Robbie done the singing on that album, it would have sounded like the solo album.

7.  Black Sky-Ozark Mountain Daredevils 1974  I am perhaps one of the biggest OMD fans out there but again the reason why I haven't posted many songs is that I tend to forget them.  They came from Springfield Missouri, they played a whole wide variety of instruments and even use a GD wobbly saw on Chicken Train from their glorious classic first album.   They are the midwest answer to The Band but the exception was that everybody could write and sing.

8.  I Haven't Played This Song In Years-Neil Diamond 2001   Love his Bang stuff, like his UNI/MCA stuff and can tolerate about half of his Columbia albums and Three Chord Opera fooled the hell out of me.  Sure he wrote the whole album but he's still in MOR Pop land looking for a hit and not getting any.  I'm also certain that this was the reason why he didn't make it to the RnR HOF till years later.  Jann Wanner may have been punishing him for You Don't Bring Me Flowers.

9.  RnR Hall Of Fame-Thomas Jeffersion Slave Apartments 1995  This pretty much sums up my feeling for that Jann Wanner albatross.  Bombs away on the motherfucker right now.

10.  Ain't Nothing But A House Party-J. Geils Band 1973   They were the real deal back then, hard nosed rock blues boogie, before going new wave and striking it big with Freeze Frame to which they will forever live comfortably on royalty checks.  On this they let loose on a great cover of the Show Stoppers tune to which I did have on 45 years ago.  This got plenty of FM airplay as well.

By the way folks, today is the first day of Winter.  Which means the days will start getting longer again.  Let's rejoice on that.