Also Best Buy has gotten rid all of the Four Seasons Collector Choice comps for five bucks and Spike Jones In Stereo can be had for 5 bucks as well. I have that cd one time and although it's fun from Spike it has dated pretty badly. Perfect for Halloween if you're tired of the same old same old.
The Arizona Crabby Awards are out and this basically my favorite places to find bargain cds. Hastings has been very good to me and I went to five of them, The best places in this order are 1) Lake Havasu City, 2) Prescott, 3) Flagstaff 4) Bullhead City 5) Kingman.
Best Zia Stores for me was. 1) Las Vegas, 2) Tucson, 3) Chandler 4) Thunderbird-Phoenix, 5) Indian School Rd-Phoenix, 6) Tempe
FYE-Gilbert Rd Mesa
FYE-Broadway-Tempe
FYE-Fiesta Mall
And of course Half Priced Books was very good to me out there.
The new Rolling Stones best of GRRRR (to which one goes when found out there's another Stones best of to contend with) has the usual 2 cd and super box format which has more oddities and worth getting if you don't have 40 Licks which has done just fine for me.
Sad to say that I didn't make a special trip to Beaudraunt over the weekend so it wasn't me that won the 202 million dollar lottery. Or Williamsburg where somebody won a million dollars. But I always seem to hit the fucking red light on top of that fucking hill known as Mount Vernon, or Highway To Hell stop lights on 13 here. Or any red lights in particular to which a semi comes out in front of me just to slow things down even more. Demons working overtime here.
Alex Karras, best Iowa lineman we ever had and not in the Hall Of Fame either, spent all his career as a Detroit Lion and played during the Black and Blue wars of the 60s to where stadiums were cold and cavernous and fields would turn into mud and quicksand during those rainy games in Tiger Stadium. He best remembered as trying to block Tom Dempsey's 63 yard FG to which he made and The Saints beat the Lions. http://www.nola.com/saints/index.ssf/2010/11/tom_dempseys_63-yard_field_goa.html
Karras retired and had a fairly successful career in the movies and TV, playing the guy that knocked out a horse in Blazing Saddles and later better known as Webster's father on the Webster show. He also replaced Don Meredith in the booth during Monday Night Football for a few seasons and best known line of calling Otis Sistrunk, the famed Oakland Raider DT, from the university of Mars. Karras passed away from kidney failure at age 77. He will be missed.
The picture above is the perfect example of a Saints TE giving Alex a foot in the nuts to keep him away and this is the first time I have ever seen this picture. If the blocker didn't do that, Alex would have shoved it down Dempsey's throat.
Just in case you forgotten all about it, his famous scene from Blazing Saddles. RIP Mongo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8cDfnQD0ws
The Top Ten Of The Week:
1. In The Midnight Hour-Roxy Music 1980 Basically a shout out to KCDX which played this song in my time in Arizona and reminds me of how good radio used to be before Cumulus and Clear Channel bought everything up and turned it to overplayed crapola. God forbid if KRNA didn't play something off Back In Black every hour on the hour. I could have added The Velvet Underground's Venus In Furs since that was also played on KCDX but since nobody really plays anything from Roxy Music outside of Love Is The Drug or More Than This, thought I give Bryan Ferry and the boys a shout out. From the problematic 1980 Flesh And Blood LP.
2. Sum Up Broke-The International Submarine Band 1966 I'm sure everybody is getting burned out by the monthly Singles Going Steady segments that documents some of my finds around Arizona and places close by but I'm absolutely floored of what I have found this year. 2012 is the best year of finding quality 45s and perhaps the biggest find of the year had to be this Columbia promo of the band that used to have Gram Parsons in it before he went to join the Byrds. I've never seen the single before today and to find it for 50 cents is probably the closest thing to robbery since it commands 3 figures in the Ebay department. Needless to say it didn't chart at all and probably was one of those promo singles you used to get when you went to the drive in and they give you a box of 10 records for a prize. I knew that ISB recorded for Lee Hazelwood's LHI Records but the Columbia single I had no ideal about. It turned out to be the only single that they recorded for Columbia. Reissued via Raven Records. Also Sundazed reissued this as a 7 inch single as well.
3. Turn It Up-Texas Hippie Coalition 2012 Time for me to bitch and moan about the "real rock" station that is KRNA that will play Blind Melon's No Rain, which is annoys more in this day and age than when the dude was still alive and the Bee Girl was a still a teenager. The narrow minded KRNA playlist is puke inducing the say the very least and as long as there's a Crabby Top Ten, there'll be more rants on how they suck and how Cumulus suck and how every station they have here sucks as well. The THC is real dirt rock, my last review of their album still stands. I guess you can call THC the real rock band of the decade since they remind me of Texas Rock and Roll that goes back to ZZ Top and the first Baby album (not related to John Waite and The Babys-way different band). If you want real country, it's not on the KHAK (also owned by Cumulus) but the new Waylon Jennings Goin Down Rockin, which is touted as the final recordings of Hoss'.
4. You're On My Mind-KO And The Knockouts 2007 I commend Little Steven for trying to save garage rock and roll when he started up Wicked Cool Records five years ago and most of what I heard is great stuff although radio never played anything from his label. FYE picked up where Best Buy left off but Wicked Cool stuff was more rarer than it was at Best Buy. And Steven Van Zant's Coolest Songs In The World series was last decade's answer to Nuggets. Still, it took a dollar liquidation sale for me to check out KO and company. Which sounds like Detroit's answer to The Primitives which is a good thing. Jim Diamond, garage rock producer to The Von Blondies, Mooney Suzuki, White Stripes, The Volebeats produces this as well.
5. Only Rock And Roll Can Save Us-Tyler Read 2006 Last decade was perhaps the most failure in terms of classic rock and roll but that didn't mean people were not trying. But if you were not on a major label chances are you were not going to get noticed. Tyler Read was a rowdy rock band that got signed to Immoral Records which was home to kOrn, Incubus and Bare Jr. and at times were aligned with Epic or Virgin Records but was on their own when Tyler Read signed with them and soon after their album got released, the label folded. However, Pop Opera Records remixed and released the album and nobody paid much attention to it either. I found a copy for 50 cents at Hastings. Which means nothing to you.
6. Let Yourself Go-Green Day 2012 For all the hype and hoopla of the new Green Day, Uno! returns was a disappointment compared to Mumford & Sons Babel to which Tad compares to stadium rock and I might agree with that. Pompous as hell too. But then again that could be applied to Green Day as well. The old crank blogger wishes they would go away but this old crank blogger likes the majority of the new album as it returns them back to punk/pop sound that got them big record sales and band of the decade honors. I always liked the three chord power play of the band more than the fake Brit Billie Joe Armstrong that he's been doing all his career but was just about ready to write them off from their pompous 21st Century Breakdown effort. Armstrong still loves to throw out those F bombs it seems but be careful, we don't want you to be a fuddy duddy like Johnny Lydon became when he got old.
7. You Ain't Thinking (About Me)-Sonia Dada 1992 Jarrod Neiman had a big hit when he covered You Don't Treat Me No Good No More a couple years ago and it turned out to be a bigger hit for him than it ever did for Chicago's Sonia Dada, so I was a bit surprised that they didn't tell him to seek another cover of that band's output. If I was A and R director I would have chosen this little number instead of country turd Real Women Drink Beer, which seems to the Nashville norm now. As for Sonia Dada, they haven't been heard from since Test Pattern which was eight years ago.
8. Your Loving Is Alright-Trapeze 1970 Quick now who was the only band that recorded for Threshold that was part of the Moody Blues? There may have been another band but Trapeze recorded three albums for that label and though I never heard the first album reviewers called it the closest thing to the Moody Blues themselves. On Medusa, Trapeze turns into Humble Pie despite John Lodge's best efforts to not make them sound like the Pie. Credit or blame Glenn Hughes for that, he's one of those vocalists that you either like or hate and the only time I can tolerate him was during the Deep Purple years to which David Coverdale neutralizes the oversinging of Glenn from time to time. Medusa is a cult album, the title track Hughes dusted off the second album of Black Country Communion, a band that has been mighty busy recording three albums and a live one past five years. No wonder Joe Bonamassa needs a break. Your Loving...got some airplay on the FM dial. Just not alot of it.
9. Fanatic-Heart 2012 Credit the Wilson sisters for returning and making a damn fine album the way they used to before the 80s came along and damn near ruin their street cred with the overplayed Never or What About Love and MTV tried many ways to disguise that Ann weighted about 300 pounds back then. Nevertheless she sang great then and does now and has slimmed down a lot over the years. Nancy Wilson still remains hot over 50, is in love again and is trying new ways and means to make great music. Fanatic the album is their best since Bebe La Strange and Ben Mink, their producer has got them back to basis. No Ron Nevison's poofy keyboard fluff anywhere. Just they way I like it. Too bad your Cumulus owned rock radio station or classic rock barfathon won't play this new album. It doesn't fit their format. But we all know it's too Real rock for KRNA. (this is where you the reader come in and say F bomb KRNA)
10. When The Sun Shines At Midnight-Starcastle 1978 The first three albums Starcastle revealed a love of prog rock and YES via the YES album and although they were on Epic the longest time without any major hits, album number 4 finally shows the label demanding some type of hits for the radio and getting the producer of the week to help them along the way, but they ended up with Jeffrey Lesser who turned them into Head East (parts of Real to Reel sound like the S/T Head East album that Lesser did produce for that band in 78). Fans rebelled, the band disowned the album and Epic bid them adieu. Not all the album is a pop sellout, in fact some of side 2 does feature the trademark harmonies that made Starcastle a good prog rock band in their own right. This song is probably the most YES sounding although this does remind me a lot of Lake's Do I Love You, but the guitars at the end make it Starcastle in the end. I didn't get into them when they were around but as I get older I tend to enjoy their type of prog rock although Real To Reel is still scorned upon by Starcastle fans. Epic did issue their first album as one of their own but the folks at Renaissance have the rest in print (sans Citadel which is a complaint) and can be located at better record stores across the nation. It's up to you to locate them.
Five other things that sounded good on KCDX
If You Could Read My Mind-Gordon Lightfoot 1970
Need A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues-Dave Edmunds 1974
Children Of The Universe-Flash 1972
Life In The Foodchain-Tonio K 1978
Queen Elvis-Robyn Hitchcock 1991
3 comments:
I picked up the new Heart album recently. Not too shabby, I think. It's not as great as their first three, but a hell a lot better than say, Passionworks and Private Audition. Reminds me much of Bebe LaStrange.T siledop
That was my impression of Fanatic too Drew, more Babe Le Strange than anything after that. Really wasn't the biggest fan, however I must say that this is a return to how I used to remember Heart. Makes me want to seek out Red Velvet Car for comparison. ;)
Red Velvet Car is another fine album by Heart, perhaps their best in recent years. It recalls their early days with a few folkish tracks like "Safronia's Mark" worthy of praise.
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