Top Ten Of The Week-2/1/12

1. 2112 Overture-Rush 1976  Perfect way to start the month with a little bit of Rush from the 2112 album to which today is 2/1/12 or 2112!   Last month was the most viewed in the history of The Crabb Top Ten and can't understand the popularity of top tens but it sure benefited The Rock N Roll And The Brains blog and dammit Tom Gray, I'm doing my damnest to get your CD reissued but Andy McKie isn't taking any phone calls from me.  Geez we need more enforcements!

2.  Talk To Ya Later-Tubes 1981  They were A&M for years and never got much mentioning although White Punks On Dope and Don't Touch Me There got some airplay, so they went over to Capitol and hooked up with David Foster and finally scored a hit single with this although when I bought the 45 it was a fucking edited version.  Radio 1980 didn't play it too often but classic rock radio does nowadays.   David Foster would go on to ruin Chicago with their keyboard driven pop for Warner/Full Moon.

3.  Baseline-Black Uhuru 1992  The original lineup didn't stay very long and the replacements Michael Rose and Puma Jones gave them some mighty fine albums for Island in the 1980s but Rose moved on to a solo career and Jone would die from cancer in 1990 and then Duckie Simpson got the original two back in the fold for a series of albums for Mesa/Bluemoon in the early 90s.  I'm guessing Mystical Truth was the best selling of them all to which this track comes from.

4.  Bowling Green-The Everly Brothers 1968  Teen idols in the late 50s and early 60s but by the time the hippie movement came around the Everlys were just about forgotten.  Made some fine singles although I tend to think that Roots, their 1968 album was more hype than good.  This was their final top thirty single to which KMRY has been playing quite a bit the past week or so.

5.  Born To Die-Lana Del Rey 2012   Her performance on SNL was so bad that you had to see it to believe it, and to a point that it was so bad that I had to buy her new album to see if it was so bad it was good.  Turns out that she can sing very well, she has a voice that somewhat channels Stevie Nicks/Beth Orton but on her lesser known she tries for that Britney Spears sound that just doesn't work very well.  Production is all over the place here but you can be relieved to know that the title track might be her best track.  I'm sure radio will try to promote the chaotic Video Games which the studio version trumps the SNL version.

6.  Rough Justice-The Rolling Stones 2005  Are y'all sick of me putting Stones songs on the top ten the past month?  Well, that's what I have been listening to for the most part and I really wished that Best Buy would stock some of their early 60s albums, they seem to stop at Flowers, their oddball collection to which I had the album years ago, found it at the old Salvation Army up in downtown Marion.  Basically I have been on a Stones kick anyway and still find A Bigger Bang to be one of their better latter day albums.  But then again I have no life anyway.

7.  Don't Worry Baby-Los Lobos 1984   Found How Will The Wolf Survive in the 99 cent bins up at Stuff Etc and it's basically a steal.  Los Lobos certainly is one of the best Latino rock and roll bands ever in the grand tradition of Richie Valens.  I still like their 80s garage rock more than the 1990's Kiko sound that Mitchell Froom got out of them but it's all good if you think about it.  If you want to hear how weird they can get, find the 2 Latin Playboys CDs and wonder too.

8.  Mess Around-Ray Charles  1953   At any given time on cable you can always catch the 2004 movie Ray, starring Jamie Foxx.  Last week it was on BET and the next day on ION TV.  It also shows that I was lacking in motivation too, it's a good movie but they run it into the ground.  Ray loved music but he also love lots of pussy and poison heroin which got him into trouble with the law but he quit that cold turkey.  I also noticed once he did kick the habit that his late 60's stuff for ABC showed him in a deeper vocal so to speak.  He started out trying to be another Charles Brown or Nat King Cole but once he got to Atlantic, he begin to redefine music.  This was one of his early hits.

9.  What I Didn't Know-Athenaeum  1998  A one hit wonder from a band whose name is hard to pronounce. They came on board the second wave of power pop that got some airplay on the radio (Gin Blossoms, Fastball). Made a pretty good album (Radiance) but the followup stiffed and the majority of that album was a disappointment.  Nic Brown, the drummer would leave for college and moved to Iowa to be part of the Iowa Writers Workshop and later wrote two books.  He now lives in Colorado.

10.  A Rebel Of Babylon-Metallica 2012  Out take from Death  Magnetic that came on a EP.  I know a lot of y'all out there don't care for the Bob Rock years but I still find Load to be a fun listen and the black album has its moments but they needed a change in direction and Rick Rubin stripped them down and turn the whole mess up to 11.  Beyond Magnetic is a EP of 4 songs that last about almost a half hour and sells for 5 bucks.  I think the speed metal is long gone, Lars Ulrich just cannot go that fast anymore but he does a good improvising at times to compensate.  But then again I can't play as fast as I use to either and we can blame that on old age and lack of practice.   But everybody gets old.  Beats the alternative ya kno?