Playlist 3-26-14 The Number 5

As I sit here and take a peak of our anemic ratings for the month, we never seem to break past the 2,000 views mark and once fate is temping us with another under 2,000 mark I have managed to hit the music stores and beginning to find some new music that is worth a listen to. We're a quarter of the way through this year and we have reviewed five new albums and best ofs. And don't believe it's not going to be much of an improvement over course of time.  If you gotta get the new albums, you have to go to Amazon.com to get them from people selling them.  Which is where I got the new B. Tench and Len Price 3 new albums.  Best Buy can't be trusted, Wal Mart is worse and the remaining record stores either have one or missing the other.  This isn't the best of times for new music, but I didn't think it would be as barren as it is this year.  And the way it sounds it's not likely to get any better.



This town depresses me.  You go into Cedar Rapids and you have to deal with potholes the size of craters, the stop lights are fucking awful and what's even worse is the lack of brains the downtown trash display when you trying to drive through town.  The abundance of cows, a derogatory comment directed at fat hispanics or black women, waltzing out into the street their damn baby carriages holding up traffic when you have the green light and you have to stomp on your breaks and seeing one of these fat cows waddle out in the street.  This also applies to some white folk would take their sweet time poking through the Wally World lanes, or the goofy pawnshop couple playing tongue hockey while your trying to whisk them onward, and getting so fed up when driving by rolling down the windows and going MOO!  Cows also apply to the white folk but it seems like the Chicago transplants or gringo dingos are more of the problem than solution.   But my ire isn't on them as it is much on some dumb wasted sperm of a white kid in a white Infiniti sitting on his ass, high on bath salts and K2 and not going on the green arrow outside Lindale and may be the same punk ass that bothered me and the brat with his crap assed driving of two years ago while I'm driving my shit four tone Corsica and making gang signs in front of us.  Which is why you should have a cell phone and call 911 and report dumbfuck drivers like this.  Thank his lucky stars I don't pack a pistol when I'm driving, otherwise Mr. Punkass would be sitting there in Collins Road with four flat tires. The lack of compassion from people anymore is just mind blowing, and maybe the radiation from the Fukajamma plant has finally turned some of these idiot's brains into chesse and maybe they have become zombie nation that you see on The Walking Dead. The world ain't getting any better, especially when you have to be on the lookout for Miss Black Fanny, 2 ton cow ready to come out into the road without a second thought. But hey if you should bounce the big booty bitch off the pavement, don't worry they're make more and she'll be crying to the news that she got ran over.  In this world you can't win.  Not with the shit and the cows and Bath Salts wiseass looking at the green arrow and sitting there not knowing what to do.  Going to hell? No you're in it when you come to Cedar Rapids, watch out for the city cows, white, black brown or yellow.



I have been in a very lousy mood as you can tell after breaking another tooth and hearing the dentist, not rich enough to say I need a new crown so I'm set back about 67 dollars.  As much as I like the Dental Health Partners, I have not been very impressed with their attitude either, although I'll be dealing with the teeth cleaning bitch and hearing her cry about not having 3 teeth cleanings every year.  It's called draining my insurance sweetheart and with high gas prices, high food prices, high insurance prices and a 1 percent raise, we still going into the red and can't do this.  You're going to get plaque be it 1 month, 3 months or 6.  I can't afford to do this every four months.  But I'll give the dentist credit for getting me in fast and getting it fixed.  But don't get too pissed off at me, it wasn't your tooth that got cracked. I'm 53 years old and don't need any lectures if you want to live the luxury off my insurance.  You may get replaced down the road.



So it's been Murphy's law here, everything I touch and done has turned to shit and all the teams I rooted for in the NCAA's have fallen, Arizona State lost on a last second shot to which they couldn't get a rebound and Texas would put in for a basket and it came back to end their season.  Been a tough year for Iowa, their habit of blowing leads and falling flat in the second half ended their season and the Iowa wrestlers also laid an egg in the NCAA.  Baseball season will be here soon, so we can turn our attention on how the Chicago Cubs are going to suck this year.

But in the meantime, I continue to work on a album that nobody cares to hear about but I do so because I still believe in the magic and the power of music. It doesn't transcend outside of Radio Buzz'd or Record World but then again I probably planned it that way.  Moving onward.



Ludwig Drums have discontinued making their famous (or infamous) Speed King Drum Pedals due to a supplier not making a specific part.  While nice and sturdy, the bass pedal's biggest sound was a squeak that you can hear on some of John Bonham's recordings for Led Zeppelin, Jerry Shirley's Humble Recordings (Smokin)  and of course some of my old band recordings (Town's Edge Rock, Paraphernalia's Live Under A Full Moon).  As they say often imitated but never duplicated, the Speed King Pedal was perfect in the pounding and the friction that they could take and make your beat sound rock perfect.  But in these changing days and times, drummer's tastes have actually moved on to better pedals, namely the DW 5000 Series.  But still the Speed King deserves it's earned position in the drum hall of fame.

Dave Brockie, aka Odorous Urungus  lead singer of GWAR was found dead in his home in Virgina at age 50.  GWAR one of the bands you had to see live to believe best known album was America Must Be Destroyed but they continued to play on through the next twenty years.  The Lamb Of God was influenced by GWAR.

Westdale (Death) Mall is finally booting out all remaining tenants as it goes over a extreme makeover. Spent many a time at the Camelot and Musicland stores when it was full steady go. http://homegrowniowan.com/final-photos-end-of-an-era-at-westdale-mall-in-cedar-rapids/ 

The band of the month from the Consortium, Steppenwolf: http://rscrabbmusicconsortium.blogspot.com/2014/03/steppenwolf-classic-years.html

And this: http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/blogs/Post?basename=copyright-lawsuit-against-medina-bar-unauthorized-show-by-local-classic-rock-cover-band-caused-great-and-incalculable-damage&day=21&id=scene-and-heard&month=03&year=2014



Vinyl Lovin


The Len Price 3-Nobody Knows (JLM Recordings)

Once the darlings of Wicked Cool Records (which may now be out of order since this comes from a label formed by John Luongo, part of Wicked Cool)  The Len Price 3 continues to live in the 60s with their Kinks/Who/Pretty Things type of British rock and roll which is cool to me.  This is more streamlined and little more mature than the all out assault of Pictures, their classic 2010 album, but it's darker sounding as judged by The London Institute.  At times they try their own variation of The Kinks' Look A Little On The Sunny Side on Couldn't Get Much Worse, which could serve as an inspiration of getting around the CR traffic as well.  Like their previous albums, The LP3's songs usually work around 2 minutes at best and sometimes the songs sound underdeveloped, songs like the wonderful Billy Mason, end much too soon.  No, radio will not play this (I don't think Little Steven's Underground Garage hasn't given this album much love either) and it's a shame, it's good rock and roll inspired from a time that now is forgotten.  The Len Price 3 continue to make a good album in the way The Who's A Quick One was the inspiration.  Here's hoping they can make a good answer record to The Kinks Something Else.
Grade A-

The Kaleidoscope-Side Trips (Epic)

A band that was even too weird for the 60s themselves  The K scope (I can't spell their name half the time) made 4 albums and a best of for Epic that was showed them to be too damn schizophrenic and I didn't care for the 12 minute feedback excursion of Beacon From Mars which sounded like Jefferson Airplane on K2.  The only time they got me hooked was this first album which showed David Lindley and Doug Feldthouse   trying to outdo one another in oddball stringed instruments.  Chris Darrow was probably the one that wrote the "hits" although the K Scope never had any but it was Lindley who was moreorless the driving factor of said band.  Don't really care much for Feldthouse's turkish yodeling on Egyptian Gardens but that's nitpicking.  And their blues numbers are passable (Minne The Moocher) but this is the source point for Oh Death (which Camper Von Beethoven would cover later).  However the best songs are Lindley's growling through Why Try, which combines The Airplane/Country Joe And The Fish/Moby Grape into their own song and the moody Please which is one of the best songs of the 60s you never heard on the radio. A brief album (27 minutes) but they never topped this for simplicity and intensity.
Grade A-

Elvis Costello-Brutal Youth (WB/Rhino)

For a guy who's been around for 35 plus years Costello's output is case point of frustration.  While coming out of the angry pub punk class of 1977 (Graham Parker, Nick Lowe) he really could do no wrong with My Aim Is True and This Year's Model but each album after that, critics continued to wet their pants over everything he done. By the time Warner Brothers got a hold of him Elvis really beginning to go into bombast and overrated albums (Spike, Mighty Like A Rose) but after doing a string quartet album, he decided to return to rock and roll.  And gave us the uneven Brutal Youth.  A couple of the slower songs has that GD whine that Chrissy Hynde did on her Last Of The Independents album which render it unlistenable  But I can't tear into Costello, since he had the good sense to ask Nick Lowe to help out on bass on a few numbers.  And Pete Thomas bashing away on drums is Costello's Rock and Roll beat right there.  The failed single 13 Steps Lead Down and 20% Amnesia are probably the closest thing to the punk rock of the early years but overall, the album is bloated with stuffy ballads that don't go nowhere and goes on too long.  Had Costello followed the shorter tracks of the bonus disc this would be a minor classic but like most of his output of the 90s and 00's overrated and missing some soul like the man himself but when he says that Nick Lowe should be in the rock and roll hall of fame I forgive him.
Grade B-

Best Of Ten Wheel Drive With Genya Ravan (Polydor)

A product of the early 70s, TWD was basically a three person lead band, Aram Schefrin on guitar, Michael Zager,  who had bigger success being a disco producer (Spinners) and having a hit with Let's All Chant with the Michael Zager Group and Genya Ravan who was channeling her inner Janis Jopin or Lynda Pence, I'm not sure but she spends most of her time here screaming and yelling all over outrageous horn charts. TWD made three albums for Polydor, all went to the cut out bins in record time and good reason. Changing band lineups dogged all three of their releases and Polygram in the 1990s cherry picked the so called highlights.  Nothing much to recommend outside of failed hit single Morning Much Better which keeps Genya in check till the end of song.  If your idea of having Janis Joplin leading Blood Sweat And Tears (2nd album mind you) and throwing in the towel at the end is rock and roll so be it.  Otherwise, yet another hippie dippy drone that has been buried in time.  Revan actually reinvented herself as a punk mother, producing The Dead Boys' Young, Loud And Snotty in 1977 for Sire Records and appearing as a backup singer on the Blue Oyster Cult 1979 Mirrors album.  She got better.
Grade C

The five albums of 2014 of this year.

Drive By Truckers-English Oceans A-
The Grass Roots-Complete ABC/Dunhill Singles A-
Beck-Morning Phase A-
Len Price 3-Nobody Knows A-
Benmont Tench-You Should Be So Lucky B+

Playlist Of The Week:

Graveyard Shift-Uncle Tupelo
Jewelery Lady-The Private Property Of Digil
No Rhyme Or Reason-30 Amp Fuse
Count On Me-Bo Deans
Blackbird Chain-Beck
Come Out And Play-The Paley Brothers
Black Cloud-Trapeze
Pony St.-Elvis Costello
Stay Tonight-Eagle Eye Cherry
Grand Canyon-Drive By Truckers

 

Crabby's  mail box.

  "great and incalculable" may seem like hyperbole, but it's really just boilerplate legalese; BMI has never lost one of these lawsuits, not even once, and they likely never will. A lot of money must be invested to make a song a hit; people who invest, including the writers, should be paid when their work is used by other parties to make money. This is the principle the entire publishing industry runs on, including also books and movies. You want to invite friends over to watch the NFL on your big screen, no biggie, but if you charge them for the privilege, the NFL will want its cut.

Moj O'Bone: in reply to the don't play covers link (listed above)

Last week I made a usual observation about the the bad refereeing that Iowa had in their lost to Tennessee which has enjoyed making it to the sweet 16 after Duke got knocked off and Tennessee blew out the team that beat Duke.  28 fouls to 14 Iowa had called on them, not that Tennessee needed any help from the refs, Iowa did their usual meltdown.  However Cyclone fan and Twitter troll Wyatt Hertz left this in my inbox. 


One Whining Moment… drive safely (W.H)

You'll be happy to know Wyatt that I made it home safely after watching the game on TV, although highway 1 had it's share of bad drivers and it was snowing a bit.   Thank you for your concern.

Kiss Kiss.


Afterthought:  Basically Wyatt, I didn't venture too far.  the walk/drive going upstairs to the fridge, i have to watch out for the crap on the stairs going back to my man cave.  Legend has it you may have been the dumb fuck going down the wrong way on highway 30 this week.  I have plenty more whining moments you might find amusing.  Vote for Trump.