This weekend was another attempt to streamline my collection and donate and try to fit on shelves as well as the vinyl collection which grew like weeds to the point they were falling off the top shelf in the closet. I finally found some use for that wobbly bookcase shelf that always tilted to the right or left. Turns out if you cram it full of records chances are that the weight of the LPs will even the bookcase into the middle. This becomes a dilemma if you take too many albums out. It may fall apart but maybe not.
The Soundtrack To Our Lives is calling it a day, they'll play some Swedish farewell dates and fade into the night next month. Had their first album, didn't think much of it but you could hear them on Little Steven's Underground Garage once in a while.
When I lived in Marion years ago, there was an old lady named Winnie that bought the old Evans house and lived there for about 25 years before time and age forced her into a nursing home. She passed away yesterday at age 99. She was one of my mom's friends.
Speaking of my Mom, we went to see Lincoln the movie at the Metroplex Monday Afternoon. I'm not a big fan of going to any movie metroplex on any afternoon, too many people and such was the case again. Had to say I'm proud of my Mom, only had to shhh her four times during the movie. It was more of a historical 2 hour marathon, Daniel Day Lewis did a good Lincoln and Sally Field gets kudos for the role of Lincoln's wife. Tommy Lee Jones almost steals the show. Not much on the action and I found myself nodding off a little bit but it's worth seeing at the cheap movie house to which I'm still trying to catch The Trouble With The Curve move at Collins Rd Theater.
Average Temps are now under 40 degrees from now till March 3 here. Winter has begun.
1. I Keep Forgetting-Long John Baldry 1976 Mike McDonald had a hit with this back in 1980 or 1981 but it was covered a few times. John Baldry best known It Ain't Easy or King Of Rock And Roll but he's mostly forgotten on the radio here although I've been known to play his forgotten B side Hey Lord You Made The Night Too Long (co-written with Reg Dwight aka Elton John) but he was a cult artist at best and later found himself on various labels, this comes from the Welcome To Club Casablanca which is on the Casablanca label.
2. Jungle Fever-Roy Hamilton 1958 It rocks. Trust Me.
3. Dazed And Confused-Led Zeppelin 2007 Taken from the Celebration Day CD and perhaps the final concert that Led Zeppelin will ever do it seems it also seems odd and bizarre that Atlantic would wait almost five years after the fact to put this out. Page actually plays this in a lower key and it sounds even more menacing since Robert Plant can't hit the high notes that he used to. It's sloppy in itself, Plant messes up on the words a bit but the sound is honest and cuts to the bone. If this is the final act from the Zep let's say that they ended it on a high note. And I still think that this is the most heavy metal sounding they ever sounded too (that's saying a lot).
4. Song X-Neil Young 1995 Don't know about you but I do miss the 90s, I think they were the best decade for me, we had record stores, we had places to go and we had a social life and the music was still fine before Limp Bizkit and Nu Metal and Cumulus Radio came and fucked it up beyond repair. One of the very few BMG club copies that I bought simply of the fact that it was in a jewel case and not in one of the worst put together digipack ever created. On this, Neil is backed up by Pearl Jam who does a nice stand in for Crazy Horse, a bit reckless and a bit wild too. Still holds up over the test of time too. Oh did I mentioned that I miss the 90s too?
5. Hard Rock Hell-Little Caesar 2012 This year 2012 has brought out some great rock and roll from the dinosaurs of yesteryear. The oldest rock and roll band in the world The Rolling Stones have started their 50th anniversary tour and you all know about Aerosmith, Rush, Van Morrison etc etc etc. And even the lesser knowns are getting into the act too, The Angels from Angel City has put a new album although Doc Neeson is no longer with them, they got the lead singer from Screaming Jets to take over. And so has Little Caesar who made two albums for Geffen years ago but return with a half inspired album American Dream to which they recycled the finest AC/DC chords to make a nice little rocking number that radio stations will not play. Album Oriented Rock is dead so to speak. This is a live version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGHVqoR70-0
6. Take It Easy-Travis Tritt 1993 The Eagles have never been a go to band for me, basically we all got burned out by hearing the same songs over and over again but some reason I actually enjoyed the Common Thread tribute album that Giant Nashville put out almost 20 years ago. Getting a bunch of then hot shot country artists to cover Eagles songs was a pretty good idea, it's too bad they didn't continue that by honoring Poco as well. But then again The Eagles wrote better songs than Poco did. I tried getting through that 2 CD mess they put out a few years ago, Long Road Out Of Eden and then donated my copy to Goodwill soon afterward. Big difference that Don Felder got the boot, to me he was much more of a rock and roller than Joe Walsh was with The Eagles (James Gang on the other hand Walsh was the rocker to which they couldn't replace him in that band, despite having guitar head Tommy Bolin on the fun 1973 Bang album and the less interesting Miami. Even Tritt's version managed to hit the soft rock radio station back then.
7. Beautiful-Paul Simon 2006 To which Simon pals up with Brian Eno with an interesting fail experiment of an album. The ugly album cover didn't help much either.
8. Plastic People-The Mothers Of Invention 1967 I think the last month I been spending a lot of time trying to listen to the Frank Zappa reissues that no fewer than 64 have hit the shelves the last four months and if you're not a fan now, you'll never be a fan. Even Best Buy has surprised me by having the majority of selections at ten bucks or less for most of them including FZ's FU to MGM/Verve, putting his brand of their "greatest" hits (meaning The Mothers of course) after MGM put out The Worst Of The Mothers, hard to find and if you compare song to song on each albums it ends a draw. Zappa was working on a album only format and none of the songs were greatest hits anyway. They never did much play on the radio unless it was the underground FM. But Verve did issue a few 45s such as a edit of Trouble Comin Every Day.
Oh BTW, it didn't chart.
9. One More Time-Shemekia Copeland 2012 The blues and nothing but the blues, Copeland has made one of the finer blues albums this year with 33 1/3 to which it was actually one of most viewed blogs on the Consortium page to which you can read from this link http://rscrabbmusicconsortium.blogspot.com/2012/11/new-music-reviewshemekia-copeland-33-13.html This is a cover version of a song that her dad wrote.
10. Rollin On-Duke & The Drivers 1976 Their best known for What You Got but I could never find that album till I moved out to Arizona but album number 2 Rollin On was a 99 cent special at K Mart and features Bobby Chouinard (later played for Billy Squier) on drums. In some ways they were a lot like J Geils Band in terms of a love of boogie and blues but Duke And The Drivers had more of a soul flavor than Geils. Deke Richards, a Motown producer sat behind the control booth for their second and final ABC album to which I doubt will never see the light of day on CD, unless you burn a vinyl copy of that album on CD.
From the player this afternoon at work.
The Greeks Want No Freaks-Eagles 1979
Cabbies On Crack-Ramones 1992
Leave It Up To Fate-John Popper & The Duskray Troubadours 2011
Let Me Ride-James Taylor 1968
Un Lunes Por La Manana-Los Super Seven 1998
A big thank you to everybody. We had over 2,000 views this month. Encouraging to say the very least. Thanks again!
UPDATE:
In the continuing saga of the downfall of the top 200, it seems that anything new is a bomb the next week. The world didn't need another Rolling Stones Greatest Hits as GRRR took a Stone's throw into the river dropping from 19 to 64. Green Day Dos falling all the way to 75 from number 9. AC/DC's Live at River Plate debuts at 66 whereas the overplayed ran into the ground that is Back In Black is one behind. The big surprise is Miranda Lambert's Crazy Ex Girlfriend reappears at number 56! The 5.99 Best Buy junk sale gave the biggest boost to Pink's Truth About Love which remains in the top ten but the biggest drop came from Neil Young & Crazy Horse Psychedelic Pill, dropping over 111 spots from 65 to 176. Used to be an album came from the bottom to the top but since Soundscan reversed the progress most albums start at the top and then fall to the bottom. I'm not saying that the album format is dead yet but with the way things are going no wonder a lot a band simply release singles rather than hour long albums. Time poverty indeed.
http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/chart-watch/week-ending-nov-25-2012-albums-crash-burn-173216096.html
