Crabb Bits:Marion TV, Iowa City Bargain Hunting.

And so on.

Downtown Marion I'm guessing may have been in the early 80s maybe.  Long time ago the place to the left was my second home in Marion TV and Records to where I spent many a time and money buying the single of the week.  The Queen And Teen used to be the old Ben Franklin/Orphan Variety Store to which you could load up on sugar coated sweets in the my junior high years but I think they closed their doors in the late 70s and Queen And Teen replaced the store.  To the left was The Club Royale Bar, Bzenzencki's the restaurant to the right of Q&T and across the alley was The Shoe Horn and the new location of Town's Square Bookstore in the basement of  The Sewing Bee.  I'm also guessing this may have been taken on a Sunday since none of the stores were open on that day.

Bored and taking a break on recording the new TE record, went down to Iowa City  to the Record Collector, they got a new girl up there working Zoey and found a couple of vinyl albums to listen to.  For CDs, hardly any was found although I did picked up Sam and Dave's Soul Men and Alan Parsons Pyramid 1978 album.  Found a couple more vinyl albums at Housewerks, including the Pickwick Stars Of Hee Haw album that I gave Dad years ago and it's been played to death.  Found Walter Egan's 1979 The Last Stroll, and Greg Lake's 1983 Chrysalis album Manoeuvres.  And I also found 3 albums at Goodwill, including Shakin Stevens 1983 album, Charlie Daniels Midnight Wind and Del Shannon's 1981 Drop Down And Get Me. But going to Mister Money was pointless, they had nothing.

If anybody who reads this and is in the neighborhood, may I suggest going to El Ranchero in Iowa City. They have the best salsa anywhere.  Outside of Record Collector Iowa City is no longer the place to go with records since most of them have closed up and losing Real Records made us lose the record store that keeps up with the latest.  But I have noticed more vinyl hunters at Record Collector, it's been a while since I have seen that place that busy. Maybe vinyl is making a comeback, I've seen a couple that had at least 20 records they were buying at Housewerks when I was up there.

Interesting adventure but uneventful.

Can't Review Them All: Crappy Music

Florida-Georgia Line

Country music has really gone to the toilet of late and now as if we don't have enough things to worry about on Top 40, somebody from the Country music label decided that autotuner would be added to the fake country pop molded in with bad banjos and fiddles.  This kind of crap would have been unthinkable even about five years ago on radio but perhaps the success of Montgomery Gentry,  Brooks And Dunn or in this day and age the unsinkable Brantley Gilbert have paved the way for this half wit duo  Strange how Love And Theft's latest album bombed while this Here's To The Good Times burned up the charts. Cruise makes Boot Scoot Boogie sound like The Beatles.  With country ready singles like Dayum Baby, Get Your Shine On or the get drunk and turn the boom boom speakers up loud Tip It Back  To which Brooks and Dunn look way and the back and shake their heads. This is your new country boys and girls.  You can have it.

Our Lady Peace

They actually predated Nickleback with their type of Canadian Nu' rock and while trying to remember the big hit they had on the radio in the late 90s I ended up getting OLP-A Decade to which Columbia cherry picks their best known stuff.  At their best they are The Tragically Hip at their worst and after four songs into A Decade I put the CD away, OLP is not a band I can listen to at work, their aggressive alt Nu Rock is not for those in a bad mood when printers are not jamming or when the tower paper jams and messing the machines up even further.  Casual fans have suggested Happiness Is  Not A Fish You Can Catch or Clumsy. I'll leave that up to you.

A shout out to Angel' and his Route 66 shop in Seligman  .

http://www.route66giftshop.com/angel.html

I added more blogs and archival stuff from 2008, the June through August 2008 blogs are now completed.

Song Of The Day from Pat Travers: Dazed And Confused By Led Zeppelin.

I still remember the first time I heard this song. I was 15 and we were over at one my older brother's buddy's house down in the rec-room on a cold overcast November day. Man this music scared the s**t our of me. We used to play this one in my first band with Jeff Jordan doing awesome vocals. Jeff's a tall good looking guy and he got right into it. Cool frontman!
What's kinda cool is that Jimmy Page is using a Fender Telecaster on this album. This was before he got his Les Paul. For today's "Musical Rx" I going to present what I think is really the mold for so called "Heavy Metal" music to follow...from Led Zeppelin's first album..."Dazed And Confused"! Cheers, PT