Top Ten Of The Week-Shoot The Birdie

Very strange week indeed here.  I haven't been much online and really haven't been much into posting.  More bad news forthcoming, gas prices have gone up from 2.97 to 3.33 a GD gallon the past two weeks.  If this keeps up we won't be doing much bargain hunting outside of the jumping in front of the computer and ordering from there.

Best Buy's music section keeps going down but their bargain bins have been going up if you can believe that.  They have quietly added some Rush CD's to the 4.99 bins, namely Hemispheres and 2112 for starters.  Seems like just last week they were at 7.99.  I'm sure the folk at Barnes & Noble also have increased their 5 dollar special too.  Too damn bad the major labels didn't do this about 10 years ago eh?

 


Picking up garbage in around the house, I was needed to borrow somebody's big garbage box outside of a business when the dude at Dairy Queen threw a bloody fit about using his bin, "for business purposes only" to which I told him I was sorry and then tried to get the bag out while Mr. Business Owner stood and stared.  Should have left the damn bag in there, regardless dude you still have to pay it be it how full or empty it gets.  Funny, people bitch about trash all around the area but use their garbage bins and they howl even more.  Got annoyed with Mr. Business Owner as he gave the old Eyeball as me and GF drove away, to which I...shoot the birdie at him.  Have a nice day asshole.  Next time in searching for a bin have to be more discreet and not noticeable in the day time.

I didn't bother to watch Madonna's Super Bowl Halftime Show, my dad flipped the channel over to Pawn Stars so we missed out on MIA's...shoot the birdie on the TV screen to which The NFL and NBC apologies soon afterward.  Basically it's all blown over, MIA was just showing her IQ.

My GF was pissed that the Giants won of the fact they beat her Cowboys twice and then upended the 49ers in the Championship.  I like Tom Coughlin as coach, the NY faithful was calling for his head when they were stumbling around in November.  Eli Manning, is as good as his brother Peyton but I also think he's a prima donna who bitched and moaned when San Diego drafted him as QB but then again I can see his point of not wanting to play for A.J (Ass Jack) Smith, the overweight doo doo head GM of San Diego.  Eventually the Giants drafted Phillip Rivers and made the trade to San Diego for Eli.  I guess AJ can take stock in the fact that two former San Diego QB's have won the Super Bowl back to back and Eli has come a long way.  As a Charger fan Eli bothers me a bit but with 2 Super Bowl victories, he is a shoo in for the Hall Of Fame 15 years down the road.

For the past three weeks, our workplace has had a sparrow that had free rein over our printing area and our co workers tried their best to capture this bird and set it free, since it wondered into our department from the Warehouse, from an open door and made it home, till this weekend when our higher ups, tired of birdshit and Mr. Sparrow laughing his ass off while we tried to capture him, called in pest control and they......SHOT THE BIRDIE!  Sonya, our co worker was pissed about that and i'm sure was crying about it when she went home.

That's the way it goes sometimes.

The Top Ten Of The Week:

1.  Twist  Of The Knife-The Fabulous Thunderbirds 1989   This was Kim Wilson's band more than it was Jimmie Vaughn and after the success of Powerful Stuff, Jimmie left to do work for his brother Stevie Ray as the Vaughn Brothers and was replaced by Duke Robillard who brought more blues than rock.  Walk That Walk, Talk That Talk, produced by Steve Jordan was an uneven album but this song got a bit of airplay on the old 99 plus from Muscatine.  Wilson continues to keep the Fab Birds going from time to time but the 80's band still remains classic.

2.  Flat Tire-Athenaeum 1998  Our favorite forgotten one hit wonder band comes back for the second week in a row for the followup and too bad this song failed to make the chart.  I think Nic Brown had mentioned that this song was the better of the other single (What I Didn't Know) and why it failed probably had something to do with him leaving to get a better paying job somewhere down the road.   Gone but not forgotten, just like a few other 90s bands.

3.  Can't Change That-Sand Rubies 2007   Formerly known as the Sidewinders that made a couple fine albums for Mammoth/RCA, they had the misfortune to be sued by a GD covers band so they changed their name to Sand Rubies and limped on with another fine but overblown album for Atlas/Polydor and then broke up, then reformed then broke up and then reformed again in 2007 with the hard to find Mas Cuacha which seems to translate into More Crap.  Being a Sand Rubies fan I had to go find it and did a special AZ trip to finally get a copy at the Zia's Records in Tucson, The Sand Rubies home base.  I donno, I played it a few times and find it to be their least interesting album but even their least interesting album is better than what passes for Alternative rock these days.  This could have been a big hit single had the Sand Rubies been on a major label.

4.  Hello Hello-Talk Show 1997  Tired of Scott Wieland's antics, The Stone Temple Pilots replaced him with Dave Coutts, formerly of Ten Inch Men and made a so so album for Atlantic which didn't sell.  This was the single taken off the album.  A interesting combination of STP, Beatles and Oasis, since Coutts sounded a bit like like Liam Gallagher.  Look hard in the dollar bins and you may come across a copy of Talk Show.

5.  Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Done Got Out Of Hand-Waylon Jennings 1978  If you haven't known by now, Waylon has been dead for 10 years this weekend.  Of course we get the usual Waylon Tributes this week from the folks at Average Joe's Records to which the Jennings family distanced themselves from it.  After all I don't think WGDJ would like that Colt Ford rap that he does.  Don't plan to hear the Waylon Tribute 2 myself, I'll stick with the original source.

6.  Music Man-Doobie Brothers 1975  I love the Doobies as much as the other guy but classic rock has played some of their songs to the point that I just use the fast forward button everytime Long Train Runnin, China Grove or Black Water comes on.  So my go to album is Stampede which had a top ten hit with Take Me In Your Arms and lesser known Sweet Maxine and if you can believe this, I Cheat The Hangman to which might appear on the next installment of Singles Going Steady. This could have fit quite nice on the classic rock radio too, heck most of side 1 is radio ready.  One of those pick em songs.

7.  Darkness-Leonard Cohen 2012  The old fart is back and better than ever.  After the misstep that was Dear Heather, Cohen takes 8 years off to record the followup, called Old Ideas and incorporates the blues on this album track.  For 77 years old, Cohen has a more tuneful croak then Bob Dylan, love them both ya kno, but Cohen sounds more inspired on his latest effort.  Live Like We're Dying Kris Allen?  Take notes dude and BTW, Half Priced Books has send your crappy S/T CD to the dollar bins.

8.  Gallows Pole-Led Zeppelin 1970   Guess you can call this Heavy Acoustic.  The S/T redefined rock and roll and the blues and made it heavier, the second balances ballads and heavy blues and rock.  So what to make of Led Zep 3?  To which most of side 2 is acoustic music.  Had a friend that had the first 2 Led Zep albums but not the third, he called it too wimpy and took me a few years down the road to finally get a copy of it and it turns out that 3 remains my most played Zeppelin.  I guess Jimmy Page and Robert Plant was listening to lot of Pentangle or Fairport Convention, to which they would borrow Sandy Denny for The Battle Of Evermore on the next album.  But they were also listening and borrowing from Leadbelly too as the source point for this song.  Fun fact: some of the album was recorded by Terry Manning (later of ZZ Top fame and giving us that hard drum sound of the late 80s, more examples see Fab Bird's Powerful Stuff, Angel City Beyond Salvation or Molly Hatchet Deed Is Done), but I'm guessing Andy Johns had more to do with this song since it boasts that echoey sound that Johns is famous for (example see Free-Heartbreaker, West Bruce Lang Why Don't Cha).

9.  Beats Workin'-Van Halen 2012  New Van Halen who cares?  Hush your mouth son, some of us old timers do.  Van Halen came roaring out of nowhere and from our 8 tracks in 1978 with the debut and proceeded to rewrite the rock and roll book with the next five albums ending with 1984 and a parting of the ways of Diamond Dave to which Sammy Hagar tried to replace and came close a couple times (5150, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge) but despite what Chickenfoot has done and they have done good, ya can't beat the original VH, although Mike Anthony is missing.  In an era that the classic rock dinosaur is still moving, we still love something new from the bands we grew up listening to.  Anyway, you'll be happy to know that A Different Type Of Truth is their best album since Women & Children First and this time Eddie left the keyboards in the closet.  I'm sure Sammy Hagar is jealous too.

10.  Heaven's Trail (No Way Out)-Tesla 1988  In the course of rock history, time has treated Tesla a lot better than most of the hair metal bands that they were limped in at that time but Tesla owed more to hard rock than pop metal, after all they did name themselves after Nikola Tesla, the original father of radio.  This got plenty of radio play on Headbanger's Ball on MTV, back when MTV was into music, which is long before most of you were born and when I was a twenty something going through my third childhood.  Born to kick ass indeed.

PS:  The majors came late into the bargain CD to which most people have gone on to download from the great internet jukebox in the skies.  Universal has jumped on the Sony/Warner music bandwagon and added many of our classic rock albums in  the 5 dollar bins at Best Buy.  Here's a partial list of what you can buy for five bucks or less.

Whitesnake: Slide It In, Whitesnake
Scorpions: Love At First Sting, Blackout, Animal Magnetism
Tesla: The Great Radio Controversy
Rush, Rush, Caress Of Steel, Fly By Night, 2112, Hemispheres, A Farewell To Kings, Hold Your Fire, Moving Pictures
Iron Butterfly: Best Of: Evolution.
Bee Gees: Main Course
Pearl Jam: No Code, Riot Act
Beastie Boys: License To Ill

It's cheaper than downloading them for 10 bucks don't ya think?