The Giant Panther

I can remember seeing Jill Sobule warm up Del Amitri at an Allston, MA club known as Local 186 at the time, on March 31, 1995. Long time Bostonians will remember that hallowed ground as Bunratty's. This club was a fixture on the local Boston rock scene for decades when it all came crashing down on August 1, 1987 when a 23 year old bartender named Abel Harris was gunned down trying to calm down a Quincy, MA man named James Wallace who apparently was packing heat. I know this makes me sound unbelievably naive, but I don't know anybody who carries a gun. I hope I never do. If you believe Anderson Cooper and CNN these days the drug cartels are making inroads to a town near you. Just put that on the pile of things our newly crowned President has to tackle. So you want to be President huh? No thank you. I Wanna Blog, Yeah! You know things are bad when you are quoting Twisted Sister. Oiy. I gotta get a life. Oh, and life is the sentence Mr Wallace rightly received in case you are interested. It's a very sad story to be sure.

Regarding Bunratty's things were obviously never the same there. The club became another in a long line of clubs in Boston that either changed hands frequently or closed often to remodel and or reinvent itself. The space had been predominantly a rock & roll biker bar since the early 60's. A pool table, darts, cold drafts and Rock & Roll kind of place. Frank Zappa played there. So did Bruce Springsteen. Aerosmith. Get this; Frank Sinatra even played there. That is a rich history. The acts were toned down considerably after the shooting and, blaming the "fade" of the rock genre, Local 186 as it was now known, closed and reopened as the Wonder Bar in the early 90's featuring nightly Jazz. I don't want to offend, but sometimes I think it's no surprise that the word Jazz has multiple "Z's" in it. I'm sure the club does better now with it's open faced kitchen and a more well to do crowd in tow, but I wonder what would have happened without the tragedy. To be fair the best rock space around the Allston-Brighton area left is probably Harper's Ferry and they have to really mix it up to remain financially viable in this market. I saw Leslie West of Mountain fame there not four years ago or so and what a treat that was. That, my friends, was a good old fashioned butt kicking rock show. What an assault. West is one my blues guitar heroes no doubt. Mountain was so much more than Mississippi Queen. I trust some of you folks out there know this. Great band.

Know why I love blogging? Because I didn't come here to talk about the history of the edifice known as 186 Harvard Avenue in Allston at all! The truth is I came to admit that I am a pre 1977 Chicago fan. Whew! Glad I got that off my chest. Let the wisecracks begin. I used to subscribe to a magazine called Tracks which I thought was excellent at the time. The subscription morphed into Paste Magazine when Tracks went under so I'm not sure which magazine actually sent me the free CD that introduced me to the song I'm about to introduce to you. Classic Rock Magazine sends me a new one every month now too. Most of the time I never even get a chance to listen to them I'm embarrassed to say. I've got a massive collection and as I have noted previously I am in the process of digitizing this lumbering giant. There are only so many hours in any given day that you can sit correcting files so they all look uniform. I am a bit of a Grammar Nazi and I just can't deal with "01's" the way iTunes would have you accept them. I'm guessing I received the mixed artist CD with Cinnamon Park on it about five years ago now. The CD on which the song Cinnamon Park officially appears, Underdog Victorious, was released in September of 2004 so I'm guessing I received it around that time. I know I'll catch some flak for liking this song, but so what. I sometimes enjoy mash ups and sampling. I liken this single to Kid Rock's song last year mixing Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama and Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London called All Summer Long. Kid Rock is much reviled, but for some reason I don't mind him. Trailer park rock. It's very funny to me. I honestly feel like he's paying homage more than he is ripping these artists off to further his career. He's a look at me David Lee Roth type, but to each his own I say. Rock can always use more humor in my book. Sorry GP! I see you cringing! I can just feel some serious Giant Panther eye rolling about now...

OK, I know I'm running long here. The bottom line is when I first saw Jill Sobule I thought, eh, another singer songwriter. Let the record reflect though that Jill Sobule Kissed a Girl long before Katy Perry for what that's worth. When I got this CD and heard Cinnamon Park, which is a rearrangement of Chicago's Saturday in The Park (a song I still love with great fondness as a reminder of my youth) with her own twist, I liked it instantly. It's kitchy, nostalgic, a fun story and I really admired her for trying it. It's in my iPod like device and I always seem to cheer up or remember some fun Saturday in The Park, as it were, when I hear it. She's got a sexy voice and has built a nice career for herself in a challenging environment. Congrats Jilly Sue, you've been blogged. Hope you like it.

Kraftwerk. German for Power Station? I wonder if the 80's (barely) super group Power Station, who hung their initial thrust into the market on a cover of T-Rex's Bang a Gong (Get It On), knew this? I didn't until just now. I'm a huge T-Rex fan and I didn't even really mind Power Station's butchery of their most famous song, but was Kraftwerk part of that circus? I was 14 years of age when I first heard Autobahn on WPLJ-FM in New York City. Of course it was the edited version of the 22 minute plus opus Kraftwerk is probably most famous for, but it was enough to get the gist of it. I always wondered how the Japanese or the German folks could follow the lyrics of a U2 or Cheap Trick. Live at Budokan? How do these people understand the lyrics? Are records translated into different languages globally? These were questions I didn't bother with at 14, but I did understand that I could barely understand Techno pioneers Kraftwerk when they sang. 22 minutes to describe the feeling of not having a speed limit? OK, but can you at least give me something to go on here? I suppose not. It is kind of amazing to think that they actually sold records in the United States in the 70's when you think about it. We were a mere 30 years removed from the fall of Berlin when you think about it. Can you imagine the market for Iraqi rock (if such a thing exists) today? Me neither. You go Matisyahu...

Kraftwerk broke some SERIOUS ground and I didn't even realize it way back when. It's really pointless to say before Depeche Mode, before New Order, before name whatever band you want when it comes to the overall influence of Kraftwerk down through the years. It's kind of mind blowing actually. Dusseldorf is a town you only heard about on Hogan's Heroes for crying out loud. How did they span the globe and wind up on AOR radio in the early 70's? Go figure. I can't honestly say I was following their career with bated breath following Autobahn. I can say with authority that I just downloaded their entire catalogue the other day and have been soaking in the quirky repetitive rhythms and digging their whole ambiance. A friend of mine turned me onto Electric Cafe around 1987 and while I enjoyed the novelty of it all I didn't think all that much of it. This was strictly a European band after all. They were just a curiosity in the United States. Surely they had no real staying power. Wrong...

I'm not going to go long on Kraftwerk here. I will say that I really liked any number of their recordings and this one in particular. It's called Showroom Dummies from Trans-Europe Express. It might have four lyrics, but I don't care. I really love it. I hope you do too. I'm mixing up the medicine so look for me all over the map here soon. Best of luck to your bracket. I'm thinking UConn again, but I'm almost always wrong. Tried to fry an egg, broke the yolk no joke, Something's Gone Wrong Again...

In my never ending quest to unearth long forgotten and hard to find great tracks I present to you Hyacinth Girl by Winter Hours. This New Jersey band was a College Radio favorite in the mid 80's, but never rose above cult status. Their records are long out of print and it's tough to locate any of their few CDs without parting with an arm or a leg. The 1986 record on which Hyacinth Girl appears, Wait Till The Morning, has the dreaded "this item has been discontinued by the manufacturer (we still have those in this country?)" tag on its Amazon.com listing. This band is said to have been influenced by Buffalo Springfield and or The Byrds, but it sure sounds a lot like R.E.M. Unless you are Henry Rollins, that isn't a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.

Don't look for a Winter Hours reunion anytime soon though. Their lead singer with the Jim Morrison like voice, Joseph Marques Rodriguez, died in 2003 of an alleged overdose. Much like their New Jersey peers, The Feelies, they should have been much bigger than they ever were. But don't listen to me (ever!)...there is a 26 song tribute CD out called A Few Uneven Rhymes (if you can find it of course) with contributions by members of The Violent Femmes, Nada Surf and The Feelies. Not bad for a band that struggled to be heard at all right? They had a few minor singles other than Hyacinth Girl, but not many. Smoke Rings and Roadside Flowers come to mind, but if the legend is true the band sort of lost its spirit when a deal with Chrysalis Records fell apart towards the end of the 80's. You can find out more about what happened to them if you are interested by clicking on the link below, but suffice to say Hyacinth Girl is a masterpiece of a song any self respecting person walking around claiming to be an 80's expert should be all over.

As glorified as 80's music is it irks the hell out of me that songs like True by Spandau Ballet or I Want Candy by Bow Wow Wow are considered representative of what was really good about that decade while songs like Hyacinth Girl are completely ignored. It blows my mind. Nobody knows better than I do that music is a subjective thing, but if I never heard Turning Japanese or countless throwaway tracks from that era ever again it wouldn't bother me one iota. Just don't try and separate me from songs like Hyacinth Girl or they'll be trouble. Put this is your iPod right now! Your friends will think you rock...because now you do...enjoy!

www.winterhours.com

OK, it's March 17th. St Patrick's Day. Or Evacuation Day. Or Whacking Day if you watch The Simpsons. It's green beer, parades, mass quantities of consumables, celebrating Irish heritage, hoping that girl you fancy sees you through beer goggles and slips up for a change. I get it. I'm 7/8 Irish and 1/8 French Canadian. It's kind of an odd combination I suppose, but it is what it is. I came to Boston in 1978 because I was, gulp, listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer while thumbing through the college catalogue my high school guidance counselor had given me and my friends. I saw, in order; Boston, Emerson College, and the ability to Major in Mass Communications. They had two radio stations! As a long time disciple of FM-Radio by the age of 18 I was very interested in becoming a DJ. Naturally that dream was crushed with all the others, but I'm not at all sure I made the connection at the time that Boston had one of the nation's premiere Irish populations. Today I think nothing of hearing a gorgeous Irish accent at one of the scores of Irish bars I have frequented over the years, but they are not the kind of places you frequent on days like today mind you. To paraphrase Yankee great Yogi Berra "Nobody goes there anymore, that place is too crowded." I may want to celebrate being Irish today, but not at an Irish bar. It's a complete circus at these places on St Patrick's Day. Want to wait in line at The Black Rose in Faneuil Hall? Be my guest. Even if you paid the once a year cover to get in, you'd get no service and you'd literally have no place to stand. No tabs either unless you surrender your credit card. I don't have a problem doing that when I know I can get it back inside of half an hour. Maybe I should stay home today (not). It's like New Year's Eve and Marathon Day all rolled into one out there! And to think I came to talk about some music...

Irish rock artists have moved into the fore over the years. Way back in the 60's you would think of Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher. Two absolute icons of Irish rock history. Their respective bands Them and Taste are still critically acclaimed to this very day and that was before they launched monster solo careers. In the 70's we tackled Thin Lizzy, The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers and The Boomtown Rats. But one band nobody ever talks about any more from that era was a band called Horslips. Nobody can take away the Irish heritage of some of these bands, but Horslips was probably the first band to blend traditional Celtic music and out and out rock. The made great use of the flute a la rock legends Jethro Tull, but their music was in the context of what we would think of as basic Irish melodies. It's hard to tell if Horslips were ahead of their time or behind it.

One of the great things about going to college is that you get exposed to everyone else's tastes in music. I have a friend named Jefferson, who is 100% responsible for my exposure to Horslips whether he knows it or not. He grew up outside of Philadelphia, PA while I was a Jersey boy. That meant we had access to the same radio stations back in the day. WMMR and WYSP of the Philadelphia area and WNEW & WPLJ in the New York area. My little FM converter in my blood orange 1971 Ford Pinto gas tank explosion if you got hit from behind death mobile could barely draw the Philly stations. I had to drive northwest to get in even odd gas station lines in the late seventies and I'd sit there listening to the Philly stations and wait my turn. Jefferson came north with Philly staples like Genesis & King Crimson (progressive rock was huge in that area, but even as I listened to the late Alison Steele - the "Nightbird" at 10 PM every week night on WNEW in the 70's - barge onto the air to the sound of King Crimson's In The Court of The Crimson King I didn't understand how much I would come to love this genre). To make a long story longer Jefferson had a copy of a 1977 record called Aliens by Horslips. It had a cut on it called Second Avenue which I instantly took a shine too. The funny thing is after Horslips cobbled together a couple of greatest hits records Second Avenue wasn't among the tracks. The beauty of digital recreations of records is you can just slam your own personal bonus cut on any "comprehensive" greatest hits package and right a wrong out of the box. Slap the artwork on the file and add the sequential number and all is right with the world.

Irish music has of course gone wild since the 70's. A little known band called U2 surfaced nationally around 1980 and the rest is glorious history. I just LOVE the track "Magnificent" from No Line On The Horizon. The Edge is my one of my all time favorite guitarists. There is nobody like him and when he's got it going on it's magic. It's so simple and yet incredibly complicated. I can't even put it into words. After U2 in no particular order, chronologically or otherwise, came Clannad (a group many folks give credit for being the first to blend traditional Irish music and rock), The Pogues, Gary Moore of Thin Lizzy fame, Sinead O'Connor, My Bloody Valentine, The Cranberries, Damien Rice, The Thrills and Snow Patrol among others. All have made a name for themselves and Irish rock music. OK, I've definitely blathered on long enough, but I wanted to leave you with yet another obscure chestnut of my own personal rock trail. Horslips may not be a household name to many, but their Amazon page will tell you that they had enough of a fan base to release several albums and have a nice career. I really like Second Avenue and I hope you folks do too. Happy Whacking Day!

Horslips - Second Avenue.mp3 YSI

I have the overwhelming urge to post on my birthday so here it is. While I'm on the year 1985 I thought I would table yet another lost forgotten classic rock song. This one is called Looking For Lewis & Clark by The Long Ryders. Everyone has their "why wasn't this song HUGE?" list of songs in their library and this one is definitely on mine. I remember seeing them perform this song live at Bayside Expo Center in South Boston at WBCN's Rock & Roll Expo. I was working the show for the radio station and these guys were the special guests if memory serves. The Long Ryders were an alternative country rock band with at least two stellar tracks. The other one was called Gunslinger Man from their 1987 followup CD called Two Fisted Tales. I love these two songs. I can't think of one person in my 1000 friend/fellow music lovers orbit that loves these two songs as much as I do, but I never cared about that kind of thing. I'm grooving when one of these songs comes up on my iPod like device at the gym with the volume at 11. That usually inspires me to pick up the pace...

I'm not going to take up a lot of your time today explaining the context of my life when this song was popular, but suffice to say I was in love at the time. Somehow that enhances just about every song in your stratosphere during that snapshot in time doesn't it? I was 25 years old, indestructible and going places (in my mind). Yeah right he said. One of the reasons music resonates with me so very much is that it marks time like nothing else ever could for me. Even as my memory fades and as the "the older I get the better I was" mentality begins to take hold, I can think of a song like Looking For Lewis & Clark and remember the boundless optimism, even as a card carrying pessimist, I had once upon a time. Happy Birthday to Funk Superstar Sly Stone and Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria (and yes I'm saying it like Homer Simpson with the corresponding drool) as well as former President Andrew Jackson. Did you know that record album charts made their debut on March 15, 1945 in the U.S.? At least something is older than I am. Let's all rock along with The Long Ryders now. Put this is in your iPods! You can thank me later...

I'm tabling a tune that has survived my own test of time. Mars Need Guitars! was released in 1985 and I'm here to tell you that Bittersweet is as good as it gets, Classic/Alternative or whatever you want to call it. Anyone who owns this record knows that Death Defying, Like Wow-Wipe Out and Poison Pen are quality tunes, but Bittersweet rocks my world every single time. This single ranks with any eighties song you want to name. They later rose to fame as a result of their 1991 release Kinky featuring tremendous tracks like Miss Freelove '69 and A Place in The Sun. If you aren't aware of those two songs get on the stick. A Place in The Sun might just be my second favorite Hoodoo's offering. They have a handful of great singles like I Want You Back, Lelani, What's My Scene and Come Anytime, but Australia can be proud of this export based on Bittersweet as far as I'm concerned. It's a smokin' hot cut in my book.

I saw them a couple of times over the years, but I remember going to a show at then named Citi Club, an edifice recently removed from the Boston landscape in favor of The House of Blues, on October 5, 1991. I ran into lead singer Dave Faulkner at Axis, an adjoining club next door not ten minutes after he left the Citi Club stage. I complemented him on his performance and he thanked me as if I was somebody. His humility impressed me. We didn't share shots of Jaegermeister or anything, as was custom back in the day, but we did share A Nod, which as you know is as Good as a Wink To a Blind Horse according to Faces.

I only mention Jaeger because I once did a set of shots with former NBA wacko Dennis Rodman, then of the Detroit Pistons, at the fabled Boston sports bar Daisy Buchanan's in or about 1988. He had no nose ring or eyebrow decor at the time and was (relatively) barely tattooed by then, but Dennis and I shared a bit of humanity as he held the entire bottle of Jaegermeister the bartender should have never given him full custody of. I said "here's the to the best offensive rebounder in the NBA" and he thanked me, again as if I was somebody (which also impressed me), and we parted ways after consecutive belts. Funny, if I had a chance to play 25 Things on Facebook again I'd have mentioned this. My high arc homer off of Huey Lewis (of The News Fame) and or my between innings feeding of grounders to LH throwing 2B Joan Jett as a 1B for the WBCN Ballbusters doesn't seem to have the same resonance without my Dennis Rodman story now that I think about it. True Stories (hey, a Talking Heads reference!) all around however...

Anyway, I'm trying to do a shorter version of my usual run on story telling tonight so I'm leaving you with Bittersweet. No relation to the respectable Big Head Todd & The Monsters song. This song brings the heat like hot sake in my living room among some special friends. Hope you like it.

I have to apologize for my lack of posts lately, but I've been off doing other things. I'm not going to do a long post today (I know what you're thinking...he always says that and five paragraphs later...). I was reading the latest issue of Classic Rock Magazine at the gym yesterday and there was an article on Jimmy Page and the making of Led Zeppelin I that was pretty interesting. Most folks who credit Zeppelin for breaking heavy metal ground don't pay much mind to the allegations of plagiarism that have dogged the mighty Zep for four decades now. It's not going to keep them out of the Hall of Fame Mark McGwire/Rafael Palmeiro style obviously, but it's an interesting discussion. As it was reported in Classic Rock's April issue, Jake Holmes is apparently the true writer of the legendary Dazed and Confused track on Led Zeppelin I. If you have never heard of Jake Holmes join the club. I was a mere seven years of age in 1967 when The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes was released to little fanfare. Apparently Jimmy Page saw one of his shows and was mesmerized by the track thus changing the course of history.

Led Zeppelin I is littered with old blues numbers rearranged and borrowed. If you read the article there is a lot of interesting information about the origin of some of the tracks. The Willie Dixon stuff is clear and credited, but there were apparently some shenanigans regarding the crediting of songwriters on the rest of the tracks. Suffice to say Jake Holmes is still waiting for his first royalty check for Dazed and Confused. It was a different era when it came to crediting the original songwriters in those days. Some were under the impression that if you rearranged the song you could call it your own. Others figured the songs would never sell or be popular enough to warrant proper credit. Certainly no one really expected heretofore session man extraordinaire Jimmy Page to shake up the world. Zeppelin, of course, need not apologize for their stellar library, but since they clearly borrowed from blues greats (who, in fairness, borrowed from other uncredited and long forgotten deceased artists themselves, let alone each other) for their first three LPs it might be nice to do a little retroactive recognition of still living artists like Jake Holmes. He apparently got some bad information back in the day thinking he couldn't sue and Zeppelin would allegedly just like to keep a lid on their borrowed melodies. I could care less as a huge fan of theirs, but it's not like they need the dough. Long Jake Holme's version is pretty cool for clocking in under four minutes. Enjoy.

I have to admit, I love Midnight Oil. I always have. First of all; what a great name for a band. Midnight Oil. Just the thought of burning the midnight oil makes you feel like you are all grown up. Staying up late always seemed to be cool and it didn't matter if you thought you were being productive or just goofing off. The old saying that nothing good happens after midnight is probably more accurate than many of us ever want to believe. I'm a certified night owl. 10 PM is like 7 PM to me. I'm just gettin' started. I'm just heading into my favorite three hours of any given day. I rarely turn the lights out by 1 AM. I'm aware that my sleep habits are awful, but just throw that on the pile next to my diet. Luckily my exercise habits are borderline excellent or I'd probably have diabetes or some other affliction by now (knock wood). If Midnight Oil were a company and it somehow applied to my lifestyle I'd own stock. As it is I have contributed substantially to this band's bottom line over the years. There can be no denying that. I saw them several times and bought everything in sight.

My first Midnight Oil show was Sunday May 27, 1990 at Great Woods in Mansfield, MA. I remember seeing super fan Peter Gammons of Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and ESPN fame at the show. Peter used to use (maybe he still does, but I refuse to subscribe to ESPN The Magazine just so I can read his column) the names of some of the song titles of his favorite bands as leads ins to the blurbs in his great Boston Globe baseball column in the late eighties. You'd routinely see references to Del Amitri, John Hiatt and Midnight Oil every Sunday like clockwork. I felt a kinship with Peter even though I never met him and we rooted for different baseball teams. We generally liked the same music. It was great to see him supporting Midnight Oil as I was although in hindsight he probably got his tickets for free. The Oils were on top of their game in 1990. Diesel and Dust was an international smash in 1988 led by the track Beds Are Burning. Blue Sky Mining had just been released and it too had some great songs led by Blue Sky Mine, Forgotten Years and King of The Mountain. My favorite track by Midnight Oil by now was Stars of Warburton I think, but suffice to say that the band was kicking some serious alternative ass in those days. The place was packed and everybody was excited.

If you have never seen Midnight Oil live their lead singer Peter Garrett shakes and bakes like nobody I have ever seen. Maybe that is the way they dance in Australia, I've never been and I'm clearly clueless, but he's highly entertaining. It's like some kind of Monster Mash as he struts and jukes with his shaved noggin all over the stage. He looks kind of scary in a rock & roll way, but he was riveting. It certainly helps that they had some 15 GREAT songs to go along with 10 good ones by then. They put on a whale of a show. When you think of Australia's greatest exports you think AC/DC, INXS, The Bee Gees, The Church, Silverchair, Jet and, gulp, Men at Work. After that there are several lesser bands that folks might remember such at The Seekers (of Georgy Girl fame), Johnny O'Keefe (Wild One...later recorded as Real Wild Child by Jerry Lee Lewis and Iggy Pop), The Easybeats (Friday On My Mind), and Icehouse (Electric Blue). Later on you had The Vines, Airbourne and Wolfmother. Then you had Midnight Oil. I don't know that there was ever anybody like them. They were distinctive.

The Midnight Oil catalogue runs from 1976 to 2002, but they were never hotter than the five years between Diesel and Dust (1988) and Earth and Sun and Moon (1993). Diehard Oils fans will point to half a dozen other overlooked and ignored records in their back catalogue, but aside from a greatest hits type package you could be forgiven if you just had these two records and Blue Sky Mine (1990). I just loved them. Earth and Sun and Moon was a really good record, but I think Midnight Oil got a lot of criticism, not that I was paying much attention to it at the time, for not only being one of the first hard line environmentally conscious or "green" bands, but for being overly political at times. Peter Garrett was a lawyer so I'm sure that played a part in their overall message. If I understand the thrust of their Beds Are Burning message, they were trying to shine a light on the treatment of the Aborigines, which I believe were the first human inhabitants of Australia. I suppose they could be compared to the plight of the Native Americans of North America in that they literally got railroaded off their land by settlers. I don't claim to have read up on the politics of Midnight Oil, but by 1993 they had pretty much run their course as far as their popularity was concerned. Trugernanner, also known as Truganini, was allegedly the last full blooded Tasmanian Aborigine to die in 1876 and the Oils wrote yet another great protest song to document her passing. I don't know if her situation can be compared to the plight of Sitting Bull, but let's just say it's in the ballpark. This was the last great Midnight Oil single in my opinion. Their star shone extremely bright about 20 years ago, but I still enjoy their music. I hope you do too. This was a great band. Out of steam, they broke up in 2002.

Ask and you shall receive! I posted a song by Tom Dickie & The Desires last night and I got a rare comment. Somebody mentioned that they can't wait for somebody to post The Rings song I Need Strange from 1981. Done and done my friend. For those who don't know anything about this band you are not alone. The Rings were fairly hot in Boston from 1979 to 1982 when they broke up. This record was no one hit job though. I could have posted My Kinda Girl, Watch You Break, Opposites Attract, Let Me Go or Third Generation and it's doubtful anyone would have known the difference. This is no cut out bin record; you can't even find this thing and I don't believe it was ever out on CD. They had one more great song called Uh Oh Here I Go Again on their next release, The Rhythm Method, before finally breaking up. MCA took a chance on these guys and I don't care how many records it didn't sell; this was a great record. I still enjoy listening to it to this day. I never saw them live and I couldn't name one band member without researching it, but this record was a blast. I'm going to keep this one short since I'm running low on time today, but I just couldn't resist a near real time request. I'm more than happy to try and do this going forward, but don't expect the same lightning quick results. How about that? I take requests...enjoy!

I feel like blogging once an hour for the rest of my existence. That's physically impossible, but, as The Cowboy Junkies used to say, ('Cause) Cheap is How I Feel. I'm taking the Way Back Machine all the way back to my third full year in Beantown. In 1981, a record so old that Amazon.com is totally clueless about what month it came out, Tom Dickie & The Desires released an album called Competition. I couldn't tell you a single other cut on this record, but I can tell you it wasn't the worst record I ever heard. I can tell you Strawberries, a record chain in the northeast nobody remembers today, had a Midnight Madness sale and yours truly purchased the record based on one song. One. Downtown Talk was a ROCKIN' tune. Among the very best of 1981 that the Boston area was playing on AOR radio. I don't know if it was WBCN or WCOZ, but Downtown Talk rocked my 21 year old ass back to the stone age. Laugh if you want, but this NYC band had a huge impact on this youngster. I didn't need another tune. It doesn't have the same long term resonance of Turning Japanese or any other massive one hit wonder song, but this song will never be forgotten by my circle of friends.

In 1981 I was even younger and more naive than I am today. I spent my days on the beach and my nights being Johnny Nacho. That didn't help me with the Pretty in Pink girl, but I was 145 lbs of liquid dynamite (or so I thought) at the time. This is probably the most obscure tune I have posted to date, but I can assure you I am not done. I've got an arsenal of forgotten classics in my collection that would embarrass The Lost 45's program. I feel like every day that goes by I'm missing a chance to reinstate a tune that deserves a lot more billing than Funky Cold Medina (no slight to Tone Loc...I'm dead serious on that note...I love the Funky Cold Medina). I've got no history to report on Tom Dickie. They had maybe three albums and nothing has been reprinted on CD to my knowledge. Still, Downtown Talk is in my personal Hall of Fame without a doubt. It's not even a one hit wonder...it was regional tune that just rockin' my world. More than half you won't even recognize it. I don't care. This tune was TREMENDOUS. I can still remember rocking to this tune on Nahant Beach in Massachusetts. Go ahead, cackle if you must, but I will stand by this tune until I'm six feet under. I hope I can jog some memories, but failing that I hope I can turn just one person onto this song. Great stuff to this day. This was Boston in 1981. It was played right next to I Will Follow no lie.

I know it's fashionable to trash rock bands that take the stage past their 50th birthday, but most, if not all, of that criticism comes from a much younger demographic. When you are talking rock bands in their 60's forget it. I've seen The Who and The Rolling Stones combined roughly 25 times and aside from some stale set lists I've yet to see a band perform as well consistently with the possible exceptions of U2 and Bruce Springsteen. Want to know why? E-X-P-E-R-I-E-N-C-E. There is no substitute for it it seems. Call them oldies bands or whatever other sarcastic and dismissive labels you want, but these bands deliver the goods. I must have over 1000 concerts under my considerable belt. I'd like to believe I have a clue. I go see new bands and old alike. Last night's J. Geils Band concert at the new House of Blues was phenomenal. I'm so glad I was there.

The band took the stage at 9:25 PM and it was instant gratification on the spot. First I Look at The Purse. Peter Wolf has a habit of twirling his hands like that woman behind home plate in Cincinnati. If you've ever seen footage of the 1975 World Series you will see a woman trying to distract the Boston pitchers by rocking back and forth in her seat and twirling her hands. It is pretty comical when you go back and watch it. When Peter Wolf does it it's electrifying. I love it. The J. Geils Band broke up at the absolute height of their fame in 1983 over internal squabbles. I don't know how a band that big that had worked so hard to climb the mountain can blow it all up just when it was all paying off, but that is what they did. A Blues band at heart, Geils put out three straight big sellers beginning in 1978 with Sanctuary, Love Stinks in 1980 and Freeze Frame in 1982. Purists would argue, and I wouldn't give them too much of a battle on this point, that their very first album called simply The J. Geils Band, was their best. Others might say Bloodshot (1973). If you own these five plus Nightmares (1974) and Monkey Island (1977) you've pretty much got this band covered as far as studio recordings go, but it was their live show that audiences responded to. Between Detroit and Boston The J. Geils Band were as big as anybody in the 1970's. Peter Wolf was hanging with Mick Jagger and John Lee Hooker for crying out loud. Boston has a killer rock legacy, but if you boil it down for the rest of the nation you are talking Boston, The Cars, Aerosmith and The J. Geils Band. The first band I'd knock off this list is Boston though their debut album was the biggest seller of all of these bands. Unfortunately it's been beaten to a bloody pulp by Classic Rock stations to the point where I may never play it again. Seriously. The couldn't really sustain after that though they had their moments. Aerosmith from 1973 to 1976 were as good as Boston rock has ever seen. Period. But they lost their way a bit after that time frame. The Cars, like Geils, split up at the height of their fame around 1984 as well and never looked back. Then there was The J. Geils Band.

The venue for last night's concert was The House of Blues. Folks who have lived in Boston for decades will know that the original House of Blues was opened in Cambridge, MA on Thanksgiving Day 1992. The club was a stone's throw from Harvard Yard. It was quaint and different and it catered to the Blues. I absolutely love the Blues and so did Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, Aerosmith, River Phoenix, Paul Shaffer and apparently Harvard itself. They were among the original contributors to this franchise. Now they have tremendous facilities in New Orleans, Las Vegas and Chicago to name three other HOBs that I have visited. The problem with the Cambridge HOB was that it has zero parking and it was tiny. Great for exclusive opening nights and all, but lousy for consistent business. It eventually closed somewhere around 2002 leaving Boston without a HOB for several years in this decade. Long time Boston nightclub Czar Pat Lyons finally relinquished control of his prized Metro-Citi-Avalon-Spit-Axis clubs and leased his buildings to the HOB chain even though he was in the midst of refurbishing the site yet again. He was seen at the show last night of course. It was opening night at HOB last night and there were issues. Knowing Boston somebody obviously didn't get their beak wet regarding the new venue because they had people waiting in line in the rain outside for hours in some cases. The show was substantially general admission. WTF right? I showed up around 8:30 PM and I figure I waited some 30 minutes myself. Then a first floor bathroom flooded. How does that happen on opening night? The line for the remaining men's rooms dominated the line for the ladies rooms. Go figure. These were minor disturbances though. The sound was great, though Magic Dick's harmonica needed more volume, and it was a night to run into old friends. I found an old college buddy I hadn't seen in years. Tickets that were $125 face were selling on Craigslist an hour before the show for $250. It wasn't a good night to be needing a ticket. This was one of the hottest shows in Boston since Aerosmith opened the now defunct Mama Kin Music Hall in the 90's.

The J. Geils Band has not performed together much over the years. I remember they played an outdoor shed called Great Woods (at the time) in the mid 90's, but I couldn't make that show. I did see them play June 19, 1999 at the Paradise here in Boston. That was a great show too, but last night roughly 2400 spectators got a spectacular show. Homework, Sanctuary, Musta Got Lost, Hard Drivin' Man, Give It To Me, Love Stinks and on and on...to think The Gypsy Kings were going to be the first show at this Blues Rock palace made me sick. No offense intended to those folks. Thank god a home grown Blues talent stepped up to the microphone first. I'm here to tell you these guys could record a new record right now and it would sell. They were very tight for not having played in ten years together. It was a great night all around. I'm leaving you with an old J. Geils favorite of mine from Bloodshot called Back To Get Ya. I don't think this band will be touring any other cities any time soon, but if you ever get a chance to check these guys out in concert you owe to yourself. What a blast. I doubt very much if anything I have written here conveys the sheer fun of the evening last night, but I had to give it a shot. New venue, great band, old friends, great time. Freeze (Frame) it!

The J. Geils Band - Back To Get Ya.mp3 YSI

I can remember being sooo into The Psychedelic Furs. I remember hearing Susan's Strange, We Fall and Sister Europe from their first album and thinking how cool these guys were. In 1981, when their second album Talk Talk Talk hit the streets, I was working as a line cook at TGI Fridays on Newbury Street in Boston. At the time there was a lot of students from Boston College and MIT working their way through school there as I was. I was getting exposed to all kinds of music at work. One guy was a David Bowie freak, but that wasn't so unusual really. Unfortunately his best work was behind him by then. The Clash was huge then, but they were nearly done by then too. The local college radio stations, which I had paid precious little attention to after having been cut from DJ tryouts at Emerson, WZBC and WMBR, were playing different sounds and my co-workers were turning me onto them daily. I still loved Van Halen and mainstream AOR radio, but I also loved the new stuff. Still do. I know it's hard to tell by this blog sometimes. Just let me get it all out of my system and you'll eventually find this to be true. I just loved The Furs sound and Richard Butler sound like absolutely no one else in rock. This group was happening back in the day and I was definitely riding the wave.

I was in love with a cocktail waitress at T.G.I. Fridays in the spring of 1981 and while I really don't think she ever knew, I was totally paralyzed by her in every way. I'm still kind of bummed to this day that she didn't catch on to my sophomoric crush on her, but that's obviously on me. In fairness she was dating someone else of course, but Love Stinks, especially at that age. Forgetting about my schoolboy crush for a moment, after every shift we used to sit down for our free pitchers of beer and talk it over with the tunes blaring. No publicly owned restaurant could ever get away with this today of course, but at least we were located in the heart of the city and the majority of us were on foot so it was relatively cool. Sometimes we'd be there until 3AM plus. The cleaning crew was working the graveyard shift so the place really never closed. My favorite thing about working there, besides the women, was that they used to let us play the house sound system loud when we setting up or closing up. In those days, bands like the Psychedelic Furs or Echo & The Bunnymen were considered avantgarde. You'd never hear stuff like that when the public was dining in the restaurant. Today stuff that was popular then like Human League's Don't You Want me and The Clash's Rock The Casbah are considered harmless elevator music, but back then it was radical. When I first heard the song Pretty in Pink by The Psychedelic Furs I just loved it. Every time I heard the song and some girl was wearing pink I'd be in some kind lovesick zone. It was quite comical actually, but the song always reminds me of my youth to this day. I'm still a big fan of The Furs.

Pretty in Pink is a song that many of you, like me, have heard over 10,000 times. When that happens it loses something. Very few songs can stand that type of repeated air play. For me there are many songs I never ever get tired of hearing, but I'd prefer to hear them less and less these days. Too many other options out there. I often think, when I hear The Who's Baba O'Reilly for instance, how great that song is to have withstood that much exposure. I reach for Talk Talk Talk more than I reach for Who's Next, but there can be no discussion about which record is greater. In fact I have a Hall of Fame full of records that I no longer really play. I know every note and lyric, but I have other music I'm interested in exploring. It's kind of funny that my jukebox software (I'm still using MusicMatch Jukebox even though it's been deleted, unsupported and absorbed by an inferior product...by the way I'm open to suggestion if anyone has found a non iTunes product that has real functionality...I can only keep using this as long as I don't upgrade my operating system...I've got three years max I figure) is sorted by artist and I just punch in a random letter and start browsing. That is how I decide what to listen to. I don't even see the artwork prior to pushing play. That was a key factor for me in the old days in deciding what to buy and or what to play when I was browsing my own collection. Great artwork created an interest in some records that wouldn't necessarily be there otherwise in some cases for me. I really miss that since the advent of the compact disc.

Getting back to The Furs I was able to see them, in the front row no less, on August 6, 1987 on Boston Common. I used to play softball in the field nearby and listen to any number of artists while I tried not to drop fly balls. The reason I mention this show is I took one of my best friends to the show (who didn't know The Furs from a hole in the wall) and Richard Butler came off the stage and stood up on a vacant chair and sang, coincidentally enough, Pretty in Pink while using my friend's shoulder for balance. Pretty cool. Too bad for the fool who thought it was a good idea to use the john huh? I'm leaving you with my absolute favorite cut on Talk Talk Talk. It's called Dumb Waiters (fitting for reliving my Fridays days I suppose). It represents some of the great urgency The Furs once had before they started hitting the ballads. I saw them maybe three times, but the last time was a reunion gig about two years ago at the old Avalon in Boston. The Alarm, The Fixx and The Furs (in that order). I had a blast. The Furs were as good as ever. Don't you just love live music? I can never get enough of it. I'm going to a show tonight in fact. More on that tomorrow.

Over the President's Day Weekend, in between Stimulus Bill rhetoric, I was listening to a lot of my favorite singles from the 1990's. My list of songs I want to blog about is getting pretty long now, but I actually spent a lot of time relinking the songs I had already blogged about. I apologize to those of you who came and found the links dead after less than six months (yet another of my pet peeves), but I was unaware. The site I host my links on sometimes goes down, I'm assuming from the volume, and it exasperates me to no end. It's not the interruption of service so much as the download count. Since I get so few comments I have no other way to track the number of visitors I get. When my download figures get knocked back to zero I easily lose the mental count to see if a particular post has been successful. While that is frustrating I recently discovered another issue that crushes me.

It must have taken me nearly two hours to relink everything dating back to October, but the only reason I did it is because I discovered that any link over two months old, once fractured by downed service, is considered dead by the host because, in its eyes, nobody has downloaded the link in that time. Translated, every time I lose service now, anything over two months old will just disappear. That really depresses me I have to tell you. I know the service is free, but I've got believers (kidding). I try to be vigilant, but if you discover a dead link here please let me know OK? I'll bet those other links were dead for ten days or more. I just never knew. Arrrrghhh....

About 18 years ago, a guy named Mark Griffin, better known as MC 900 FT Jesus, released a single called The City Sleeps. I loved it the very first time I heard it. It's essentially a rap over a drum machine (at least I think it's a drum machine) about a serial arsonist. The lyrics and the imagery are great. I don't have all the facts, but I'm pretty sure MC released three records between 1989 and 1994. This one comes from Welcome To My Dream in 1991. I bought the CD single after my first listen, but I found the full length CD in a cut out bin about a year ago finally. I hesitate to call any artist a one hit wonder as previously noted, but I haven't heard anything that compares to this song in his catalogue. On top of that, there isn't a heckuva lot of information out there about him. No matter. Dallas can be proud of this export as far as I'm concerned. I'll be mixing this song into my own personal play lists for another two decades the way I feel about it. It's definitely one of the top alternative tracks of the 90's for my money. I hope you like it too.

You think about your one hit wonder bands and there is always a caveat. Well, they weren't REALLY one hit wonders...there was always a couple of back up cuts that diehard fans felt eliminated said artist from that particular discussion. I was just hanging around at One Hit Wonder Central and I took a quick gander at their Top 100 One Hit Wonder list for fun and games. Some of you folks might be a tad young to remember, but number two was Tighter, Tighter by Alive & Kicking (check), Fijid Pink's version of House of The Rising Sun at number four (check), Bobby Bloom's Montego Bay at number six (check), Edison Lighthouse's Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes at number eleven (check), The Divinyls I Touch Myself at number twelve (check) and Soho's Hippy Chick at number thirteen (check). No issues there at all. I was impressed with Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in The Sky, David & David's Welcome To The Boomtown, Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight, Autograph's Turn Up The Radio, Blue's Image's Ride Captain Ride (although Pay My Dues was a great "B" Side) and Mungo Jerry's In The Summertime as selections as well. This is when a couple of semi questionable selections start to creep in; Jimmy Eat World's The Middle. Big Country's In a Big Country (Fields of Fire was a definitely a minor hit, but we're splitting hairs here I suppose). They righted the ship with Lipps Inc's Funky Town, Marmalade's Reflections of My Life, R. Dean Taylor's Indiana Wants Me and Dee-Lite's Groove is in The Heart. But then things deteriorated with Devo's Whip It, Gary Numan's Cars and Mountain's Mississippi Queen. No Way on all three counts. Anyone with a lick of rock & roll sense knows, at the very least, Mongoloid, Down in The Park and Theme For An Imaginary Western disqualifies those three acts on the spot. Anyway...

One hit wonder discussions are the life blood of the crossroads of where pop fluke meets real artist. I'd kill to have written Turning Japanese, Come On Eileen, The Rapper, Venus, Time of The Season, Vehicle or Tainted Love, but I'm just a consumer. I can't imagine what a real artist who thinks his tune is one of several great songs must angst over. At the end of the day the 80's seem to have this amazing aura about them that I guess I just didn't grasp while I was living them. I knew Punk sort of gave way to the Synth of A Flock of Seagulls and the quasi polished Punk of Billy Idol, but I never really separated a great song from a genre. To a certain degree I still don't. My Way Back Machine song today is Peter Godwin's Images of Heaven. It is such a one hit wonder that I couldn't find anything remotely redeeming on his Greatest Hits record released years later. In fact, much like Lene Lovich's New Toy (Please don't confuse her with a one hit wonder artist as she has several good tracks in her catalogue) there wasn't even an album to attach the song to. Usually you can at least affix a great track to a overrated album, but not this one. I don't care who thinks I'm a slug for loving this song to be honest. I thought a lot of it then and I think a lot of it now. I play it too much at the gym in fairness. If I lost it for a couple of years I'd love it even more I think.

This posting, in fact. might be my way of excising it from my decades long play list. After all 1982 was a freakin' QUARTER CENTURY AGO! I swear, when you folks are on the verge of turning 49 as I am next month you will understand. At least I know I'm not alone in respecting this African born one hit wonder artist. David Bowie covered a Peter Godwin song called Criminal World on his mega smash Let's Dance in 1983 (yeah...I know what you're thinking...doesn't that make him a two hit wonder by definition?...ah, no...ever hear David Bowie's version on the radio?). Bet Peter didn't mind that one iota. He had a one hit wonder AND a piece of one of the hottest selling records of all time. Good for him I say. He earned it. Today he's an acclaimed author, but once upon a time...And there's nothing I can do, the camera made you, and there's nothing I can do, 'cause you don't exist, you don't exist...just Images of Heaven. The actual value of the music of the decade of the 80's is a bit overvalued for the moment, but when I hear this song on Leftover Lunch or my Sony iPod (sic) I always get a bit psyched. For whatever reason, it does the job for me. I hope it does for you too. For a Synth Pop song it has balls and that's a rare animal indeed. Just don't look for a comeback anytime soon though. I'm sure he doesn't want to jeopardize his one hit wonder status. Ya think?

It's been a busy week and I'm just catching up so I'll probably rapid fire a few posts out the next couple of days. I've got about ten things I want to blog about, but sometimes things happen and the timing of them supersedes everything. Last Tuesday I took in The Heartless Bastards show at Great Scott in Allston, MA. I'd link you to their site, but they don't put nearly enough effort into it so you'll have to take my word for it that it exists. I hadn't been there in FOREVER, but it's a good venue. Especially when you had room to move and enjoy the concert.

A little background on this show. I promised to suspend drinking for the month of January for no particular reason other than to drop a few pounds. Mission accomplished. 33 days, 15 pounds and $500 in bar bills saved later I was ready for The Heartless Bastards show. February 3rd turned out to be my re-entry into the stratosphere. I sat out the Superbowl even though I was eligible and had visions of extending it another two weeks when the show came up like a high hurdle at a track meet. White Men Can't Jump. My friend Marc and I decided to take in the show even as a minor four to six inch snow storm hit The Hub. It was a mere dusting as snow storms around here go and I was never in question, but you never know how someone else is going to view the conditions. Fortunately Marc was game. We strolled in around 11 PM and no sooner had we ordered a round the music began. I dream of timing like that. Great Scott is nice dive bar and I felt right at home instantly. It's not for crowds of over 200 people, but the snow storm held down the traffic and the sound was great. Now mind you, the only time I got to actually SEE the band was when I used the men's room, but outside that restrooms you could see very well. Once you were there though you were there and there wasn't exactly waitress service back there. I spent the entire show about 25 yards from the action with a limited view, but I didn't mind. Some folks from Austin, TX were there on a whim and filled me in on Erica Wennerstrom's love life and subsequent relocation. Stupid me; not being up on the personnel and city changes. No matter. I didn't even notice from a musical standpoint, but I don't want to offend any former members. I was socializing my brains out as usual and had a great time at the show. I really like Austin, TX too. It's young and vibrant and caters to the Blues. What else is there?

I think my friend Marc, who didn't come out of his shoes over the Heartless Bastards when I first mentioned them and loaded them on his iPod, but I think he benefited from seeing them live. Their new record, The Mountain, was just recently released and once again the critics (I don't consider myself a critic by any stretch...I'm a fan, period) are relatively favorable. I have listened to this records maybe ten times so far and I'm having trouble picking a clear favorite. Some would consider this a bad thing, but not me. That means it's pretty steady for my money. This band is going to have a hard time topping Stairs and Elevators in my mind, but this seems like a step back in the right direction versus All The Time (their second CD). Note to Erica; I want to hear you rocking. I was to hear that great urgency in your voice straining to hit the notes. Blues are almost ballads by definition sometimes, but I want rockin' Blues. I think this band has a lot of potential and Austin, TX is the perfect place for them. Chicago, Memphis, and Clarkesdale were probably the only alternatives. I'm looking for growth in the coming years. I hope they can sustain. Buy The Mountain and go see this band if you like a great female lead vocal on top of a solid working garage blues band. I'm talking to YOU Austin, TX. Enjoy...

P.S. Don't miss The Heartless Bastards National TV debut on David Letterman Tuesday the 10th! That's this Tuesday at roughly 11:35 PM EST.

Heartless Bastards - The Mountain.mp3

Heartless Bastards- The Mountain.mp3 YSI

www.thehearlessbastards.com

I'm not going to say I was a huge Rockabilly, Psychobilly or even a turbo Cramps fan, but the death of Eric Lee Purkhiser recently was a real shame. Eric, or Lux Interior as he was better known, was a real pioneer. His band, The Cramps, were a ground breaking act in that their brand of in your face Halloween horror rock sort of merged with an Elvis Presley tinged glam humor and created a real force in the 70's. They incorporated garage, punk, rockabilly and surf music in their act, but it was the energy that people responded to if the legend is true. I never saw The Cramps myself and I regret it now, but I did respect what they did. My friend Rick turned me onto Human Fly (I spell that F-L-Y), Goo Goo Muck and Bikini Girls With Machine Guns around 1990. I recently turned my friend Marc onto those songs and he was wildly enthusiastic. Thanks Rick. That literally makes my day.

I'm not going to go into a long diatribe on the effect Lux and his wife Poison Ivy (Kristy Wallace) had on my life, but it's kind of cool, if the story is true, that they met while Ms Wallace was hitchhiking in some spike heels and Lux picked her up. I don't know if it is also true that she helped fund the band initially with money she had made as a dominatrix, but why spoil a great legend if it isn't? Rockabilly has long battled the stigma of sounding dated. Think Lenny & Squiggy and greasers with cigarettes twisted up in their white tee short sleeves. I have to admit I didn't want anything to do with The Stray Cats when they burst on the scene in the early eighties, but I did like Robert Gordon's (My Girl is) Red Hot (You're Girl Ain't Doodley Squat). But Rockabilly was wildly important and probably still is. There is SUCH a fine dotted line from Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins & Elvis Presley to Bill Haley & Gene Vincent & Johnny Cash to Chuck Berry and on to The Rolling Stones. I know it sounds kind of ludicrous, but there is your road map with a half dozen artists missing. I recently downloaded a CD called Red Hot Rockabilly For Ice Cool Cats and it hit me; as much as I hate to admit being wrong about this genre all these years, I'm a Rockabilly fan. I used to walk around saying I hated Country music and as I've gotten older I realize that's not even close to being true. I still struggle with Jazz, but I'll go see it live any time. I guess I've learned not to be so rigid and judgmental in my old age. I'm still not much for today's Top 40, but I'm always listening to something a little out there. You'd think I'd be listening to The Cramps (speaking of out there) right now wouldn't you? No, that was earlier, the correct Jeopardy response would be Who is My Bloody Valentine? Just gettin' in the mood for another quiet Valentine's Day I guess...

Lux Interior was more than a front man and entertainer. He was an icon to millions and a trailblazer. Headlining in the 70's at CBGB's and Max's Kansas City right along with Patti Smith and Television is a long way from Sacramento and Akron. This man will be missed. Rest in Peace Eric.

www.thecramps.com

Sometimes I think if you broke it down by country the lion's share of my music is of British origin. The British Invasion generally refers to the early Sixties as a rule, but I don't really think it ever stopped. I'm not one of those rock fans who has to know where the band came from before I decide if I like them or not. I'm just a fly by the seat of my pants consumer. I can remember a time when album artwork was a minor factor in my inclination to plunk down the ungodly amount of $6.98 for a mid Seventies record, but I got over it. Of course today we buy CDs and many times the artwork never makes it out of the jewel box. I can no longer see the fine print explaining the history behind the recording now anyway with my reading glasses. It's frustrating for sure, but you get used to it. Just don't try to dine in low lighting without them unless you just want to order what the waiter just identified the daily special. Everyone likes the "compact" part of compact disc, but the loss of album artwork and its mysterious effect on the record buying public is something to be mourned.

I don't exactly know what possesses bands to try and remove the "UK" from their name once whatever US based band name conflict has been resolved, but I don't like it. You would think bands like the Charlatans UK and The Chameleons UK would wear the "UK" proudly. It sure does take the guess work out of where they come from right? It even sounds cooler. The Chameleons and The Charlatans are going by their non "UK" names these days (if they are going at all) and I'm not sure what the benefit is. Is it cheaper to make t-shirts with two less letters? They sound like they've been neutered to me. Once you go "UK" you can never go back. That's my motto (among others). OK, now that one of my pet peeves is out in the open let's talk cool alternative rock songs for $500 Jack.

The advent of the compact disc sort of immortalized a lot of these under the radar bands. By that I mean they are digitized for evermore. I can recall for a decade or more many lost classics were never available on CD. Sometimes the artist wasn't satisfied with the condition of the master tapes. Sometimes the labels were shooting themselves in their collective foot and sometimes the tapes were just plain missing, but a CD seems so much more permanent than some reel to reel tape to me. With that an avalanche of bands like The Chameleons UK were able to have what I consider to be a more permanent footprint in rock history. The CDs might go out of print, but at least there is a pristine copy out there somewhere if someone wants it badly enough. Albums got all scratched and neglected (not mine of course) and tapes are an even more shaky proposition. How are all those mixed tapes doing today that you made in the 80's and 90's? Pretty soon we won't be able to buy a machine to play them on I figure. The CD itself will probably be obsolete in ten years, but once they are converted to the MP3 format it shouldn't matter much in our lifetime. But that is not what I came to talk about today (if you can believe that coming from a tangent king)...

There were a handful of 80's and 90's "alternative rock" songs (whatever that means) that came from short lived acts on small labels that became hard to locate as the years went by. I can remember this Manchester band breaking up shortly after releasing their third album, Strange Times, back in 1986. I have to admit right here and now that I didn't buy this record then. It was only years later, after I kept hearing Swamp Thing on WFNX in the 90's, that I made it my mission to own this song. It is an exquisite piece of music for my money. It is ethereal, gothic, melancholy and gorgeous all at once. It is the kind of song that once made you buy a $16.99 import for a single track. It was that good. Fortunately the CD is very good as a whole and it led me to investigate their previous effort, Script of The Bridge, as well. I just checked the preaching to the choir review section of The Chameleons UK & Strange Times and you'd think they were the most influential band of all time. We know that is not true, but Swamp Thing is absolutely one of the greatest alternative rock songs you will ever come across. The fact that you didn't hear it that often and that is was hard to come by only adds to its mystique. I hope you see and hear it the way I do. Enjoy.

www.thechameleons.com

Since I was nine years of age when Midnight Cowboy was a box office smash, my first real exposure to Harry Nilsson was when his cover of Badfinger's Without You turned into instant AM Gold in 1971. Of course that is not altogether true since Harry penned "One" by Three Dog Night which was massive hit in 1970. I also watched about 1000 hours of The Courtship of Eddie's Father featuring Bill Bixby, but I didn't know the theme song for the TV Show was "Best Friend" by Harry Nilsson either at the time. His cover of Everybody's Talkin' netted Nilsson a Grammy Award and seemed to put him on the map in 1969, but Harry Nilsson didn't start really believing in his talent until he was endorsed by John Lennon who mentioned that he thought highly of him in an interview. They would go on to be infamous drinking companions later in the decade, but this is all about me (kidding!). Songs like Nilsson's version of Without You, Rod Stewart's cover of Tim Harding's Reason To Believe and other sappy fare like Climax's Precious and Few or Terry Jacks' Seasons in The Sun hit me like a ton of bricks as I was discovering the opposite sex for the first time. I couldn't have been more than 12 or 13 years old, but I was having serious anxiety attacks regarding who I would be sitting next to at lunch. At night behind closed doors? Forget it. Aside from my 3rd grade teacher Ms Conomos, my first quasi mutual love affair (sans the sex of course) was a girl named Valerie. I couldn't live if living was without her....or so Harry said. Oh the drama in those days. Never even kissed her if memory serves...story of my life as it turns out I'm afraid...

Nilsson Schmilsson came out in 1971. I think I owned about six records in those days; Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume I, The Best of Tommy James & The Shondells, The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, The Boxtops Greatest Hits, Donovan's Barabajagal, and The Beatles Let It Be. Not a bad starter kit if I don't say so myself looking back on it. I also had around 100 45 rpm records that I foolishly sold at a garage sale around that time so I could buy baseball cards. Who needs vintage Beatles 45s when you could own two copies of Yankees catcher Jake Gibbs' baseball card? If you said "who?" I wouldn't blame you. Goodbye Glad All Over by The Dave Clark Five. So long Ball of Confusion by The Temptations. Everything must go! Idiot. My point here is my Album Oriented Rock (AOR) days had yet to be realized so being cognizant of Harry Nilsson's Nilsson Schmilsson was not an option yet. I remember a kid named Don that I went to middle school with in rural NJ turning me onto several records simultaneously in the mid seventies. My recollection of those days is understandably foggy, but I remember our music teacher, Mrs Pritchard, was unbelievably cool about letting us listen to contemporary rock music back in the day. Suddenly I was keenly aware of Yes' Fragile, Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Led Zeppelin IV, Aerosmith's Toys in The Attic, the debut Kiss album, Don McLean's American Pie and Nilsson Schmilsson. The rest is history. At the expense of nearly everything of material value and a nice savings account I was spending my brains out on music. Not a lot has changed in 35 plus years I have to tell you.

OK, I'm going to tighten this up now. Many of you are familiar with the song "Coconut" from this record, but the best track on it has always been "Jump Into The Fire." Some of you may have first heard it when it was featured in the movie Goodfellas (a long time favorite of this blogger), but I was already very familiar with it. We used to have these no touch dances in middle school, but the cranky principal, with whom I was on a first name basis strangely enough, was cool about letting us play our music while we tried to work up the courage to ask our favorite classmates to dance. We used several songs that started fast and ended slow or vice versa. Stairway To Heaven, American Pie, Roundabout and Jump Into The Fire seemed to fit into that category. It was debatable if you could dance to any of them frankly, but we definitely tried. These are four iconic songs, but 35 plus years down the road I can barely listen to classic rock staples like Stairway To Heaven and Roundabout because they've been seared into my brain by non imaginative radio formats. American Pie remains a masterpiece to these ears, but you won't find me playing it much or singing along in some bar when it comes on. Call me too cool for school if you like, but it's a little too popular and preppy for me; at least in public. It's enough that I own a copy of the CD. But if I hear note one of Harry Nilsson's Jump Into The Fire? Look the bleep out. The drumming on this track were done by Derek & The Dominos drummer Jim Gordon and it's perfect. In fact the whole track is perfect. I've always been a huge fan of it. Thanks Don wherever you are!

Harry Nilsson's flat in London had its own colossal coincidental claim to fame; when he was out of the country he used to lend his living quarters to musician friends of his in the late seventies. Mama Cass Elliot of The Mama's & The Papa's and legendary Who drummer Keith Moon both died while staying in Harry's apartment roughly four years apart! Are you kidding me? After Moon's death a distraught Nilsson sold his flat to Pete Townshend and stayed in Los Angeles from then on. Harry Nilsson suffered a major heart attack in 1993 and died a year later of heart failure in 1994. He was 53 years old. Hard living apparently finally caught up to him. He had several other minor hits over the years such as Me and My Arrow, Good Times, Spaceman and as the writer of The Monkees version of his "Daddy's Song," but never again would he scale such heights. No matter. Nilsson Schmilsson is a tremendous record and was inducted into my own personal rock record Hall of Fame years ago. You can climb a mountain, you can swim the sea, you can Jump Into The Fire, but you'll never be free...hopefully I'll make Harry a new fan out there somewhere. Enjoy.