The Giant Panther

Another band that rocked my world many moons to the south is Gang of Four. I was a freshman in college when their debut album, Entertainment!, burst into my consciousness. The Gang were a post punk minimalist band that surfaced in 1979. Nobody sounded like them in my opinion, though they might have taken their cues from bands like Wire and Television (if you don't have a copy of Marquee Moon by now just take yourself out back and shoot yourself...you completely missed the boat). The first song I ever heard by them was Damaged Goods and it was like I broke down another musical wall in my tiny world. As has been discussed on this site in the past, I was a classic rocker when I came north to Boston. I was too young to be weened on CBGB's, The Bottom Line and Max's Kansas City. It is with great regret that I tell you I never step foot in any of these legendary clubs. I lived about an hour west of NYC in rural NJ and it was like night and day with metropolitan cities. I had no real desire to return once I got a taste of city life. Today I live about eight miles outside of Boston and sometimes it feels like much further when I feel like knocking back a few. The difference between $20 and $30 cab rides adds up over time. The reason I tell you this is because I only saw my heroes from the New York scene a paltry number of times. I saw Patti Smith maybe twice. Never saw Television. Never saw Blondie. Saw Lou Reed once. Saw The Ramones once. Saw Talking Heads once. Pretty sad for a guy with somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 concerts under this belt.

Regarding Gang of Four, I've never seen them either and that's a real shame. I can imagine their concerts being electric. I'm not much of a dancer, but I can see myself Shakin' All Over to Gang of Four. I have a lot of trouble differentiating between Damaged Goods, I Found That Essence Rare, What We All Want, At Home He's a Tourist, Return The Gift, Anthrax, I Love a Man in a Uniform and a couple of other Gang of Four tracks. They all rock...hard. This band was tremendously influential and rightfully so. I love reaching back and playing these cuts at eleven when the mood strikes. Originally from Leeds in the UK, Gang of Four took a quasi political stance by naming themselves after a leftist faction of four members of the Chinese Communist Party who were eventually charged with treasonous acts in the 1970's. Allegedly someone in the band The Mekons suggested the name when driving around with eventual Gang of Four members Andy Gill and Jon King. Their song "I Love a Man in a Uniform" was banned in the UK during the Falklands conflict. Regardless of all these fun facts Gang of Four came and went very quickly. They had a couple of later year releases that didn't sell very well, but their sweet spot was between 1979 and 1983. I'm leaving you with "I Found That Essence Rare" today. I've always been a massive fan of this song and hopefully you'll dump it onto your iPod and think of The Giant Panther fondly. Don't forget to leave me some comments!

I have to admit, I have always had a thing for Australia's The Church. There are a handful of CDs, say 75, from 1988-1993 that exemplified what was then called Alternative Rock and Starfish was one of them. Most of you will recall the single "Under The Milky Way," but this record had some other great music on it as well. They say Starfish was recorded in Los Angeles and that this was the first time The Church had recorded outside Australia. They had a great single called "The Unguarded Moment" way back in 1981, but it was not smooth sailing for these guys. They struggled to get noticed and were dropped by their label over the ensuing seven years or so. They recorded a record called Heyday in 1986 that received some praise, but it was a relative commercial flop. Reading fan reviews these days many of their loyal following like it better than Starfish. High praise indeed as the saying goes.

Pressed for my favorite Church song I could probably narrow the list to three. One would absolutely be Metropolis from Gold Afternoon Fix. I never ever seem to get tired of hearing that song. It just feels like ear candy to me. Two might be Ripple from Priest = Aura. And three has got to be North, South, East & West from Starfish. Every time this one pops onto my Sony iPod like device (about every 800 songs or once every three months in gym time) I get psyched. Nobody listens to The Church anymore; at least nobody I know, but getting down to this particular cut on Starfish? Anytime anywhere? Forget it. Not even at my favorite local watering holes. I wonder if they even play it in Australia somewhere once a year. So apparently it actually exists only in my steel trap mind forevermore. I don't care. So what if all of my long time concert going buddies have long given up that kind of life style? I still enjoy the heck out of seeing live music even if I have to go by myself.

Speaking of which, I saw The Church perform only one single time on September 9, 1988 at The Orpheum Theatre in Boston about eight months after Starfish was released. My memory is a bit hazy, but I could swear this was a great triple bill involving The Cult and possibly Lenny Kravitz. Don't quote me on the warm up acts, but the date is accurate as I'm staring at the ticket stub as I type. I used to work in a ticket broker's office and we had these great seats in the 14th row on the aisle for nearly every Orpheum event. I indulged in my share for certain. The 14th row might seem like nothing to some of you professional concert goers, but these seats were dead center and The Orpheum is tiny. You were about 20 yards from the stage inside what today is euphemistically referred to as the "Golden Circle." You know, the phrase that allows tiered pricing in concert halls these days? The face on The Church tickets was $18. $18! Today those seats would run you more like $118 in this overinflated economy. Has your income increased as much exponentially? Mine either...

Anyway, the homesick Church knocked this CD out inside of two months and then hightailed it out of glitzy schmaltzy L.A. It's been said that Steve Kilbey, lead vocalist for The Church, was forced to take voice lessons prior to recording this record with then famous producers Waddy Wachtel & Greg Ladanyi at the controls. There was a lot of misery and friction during the recording of Starfish, but the result was worth the hassle. Whatever the strife The Church went on to knock out three great records in a row and were college radio mainstays for a good long stretch. Their star faded pretty quickly after that, but I loved them. Today, unfortunately, their whole career is boiled down to one song about a hash bar in Amsterdam. I could get discouraged, but my fandom burns on and I still listen to them from time to time with admiration and a smile. I hope you feel the same way.

The Manchester (UK) scene was a favorite of mine in the early 90's. For those who weren't completely cognizant of that drug addled period of time it was a quick hitter roughly spanning the years of 1989 to 1993 or so. Fueled by the drug ecstasy, it was all about danceable beats and the Hammond B3 organ. I just loved it. I soaked up every act that came out of that movement. Manchester had a ton of history prior to this small blip on the radar, but this particular slice of history seemed to spawn a lot of same sounding acts that I just couldn't get enough of at the time.

I bought a new house (read old house) and have been swamped with so many not cool tasks like skim coating and ceiling painting, and have severely neglected blogging. Luckily John is Music Encyclopedia Jones, and has been able to share some great tunes to save TGP from being a barren wasteland. Finally he posts on my favorite band of all time, though my favorite album is Speaking in Tongues, with More Songs a very close second place.

I don't have time for a full write up on each of these artists/albums, but I wanted to quickly share some of the tunes I've been into lately. Some are brand new, some are brand old, much like the current state of appliances and luxuries such as a functioning roof a new/old house like mine can/can't provide.

I've been washed over with an overwhelming amount of new music discoveries lately, which is a great feeling. Here are a few of them:


MP3 Jeremy Jay - In This Lonely Town Alt Link
Buy Slow Dance
Jeremy Jay myspace

I had never heard of Jeremy Jay, but I heard this song a few months back on Sirius XMU. My radio display is broken and I couldn't figure out who it was. I tried and tried with google to identify it with the song lyrics with no luck. Then I realized my girlfriend has an app on her Verizon phone where you can play any song into the phone and within ten seconds it will tell you what the name of the song and artist is. Pretty much the coolest feature I've ever seen on a cell phone, I wish they made it for other carriers/blackberries.

The song came back on the radio the other day and I was able to record it to my voicemail and on a longshot played it back on speakerphone and the app figured it out!

This tune has a 90s indie feel to it, something you would expect to hear from Pavement or Built To Spill. Rest of the album is pretty decent too, though more synth than the 90s indie this song lets on.



Bat For Lashes - Daniel Alt Link
Buy Two Suns
Bat For Lashes Myspace

What can I say about Bat For Lashes that you haven't already heard? This girl is good, and no doubt my current obsession. I didn't really get into her first album, it was a little more midevil fair, where Two Suns is more Kate Bush 80s goodness. I love the video too, nice cameo by a Daneil Larusso type figure. Where is the love for Johnny the blonde haired bad guy though? I think her follow up album should feature Johnny in his Halloween skeleton face paint, after being soaked by a hose while trying to smoke a bone, and possibly with a bloody nose. Get this album if you haven't caught the hype already.




School of Seven Bells - Connjur Alt Link
Buy Aplinisms
School of Seven Bells Myspace

How am I not sick of this song by now? Without fail I've listened to this song at least three times a day for the past three weeks. I can't get enough of it, it's like Gator Gum. Do they still make that stuff? Used to get a few pieces before every little league baseball game. The bridge/breakdown of this song kills me every time. Amazing sound, great for headphones or a lonely car ride.


Swans - Blind Alt Link
Buy Various Failures

While I'm busy asking questions, how did I never come across Swans before? Dark wave/goth rock fill in your favorite label here, with beautiful lyrics and soundscapes. Often very dark subject matter, and vocals in a deep Joy Division/Leonard Cohen type of delivery. Excellent stuff from the late 80s/early 90s. This track, Blind, a lost Michael Gira gem is a five star in my humble library.

MP3: She Wants Revenge - Tear You Apart Alt Link
MP3: Bauhaus - Bela Legosi's Dead Alt Link

One of my guilty pleasures is the show Fringe on Fox. 99% of shows on network TV I end up despising, but Lost and Fringe have managed to keep my attention. On the last episode there was a club scene, and I swear I thought they were playing Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead". We were saying how cool it would be if there was a club in Boston that would play that type of music instead of the typical club music horseshit, maybe there is and I'm just not goth enough to know where it is. Then I started to doubt my ears so we pulled out the phone for the song ID thing again (nice literary recall), and lo and behold it said it was "Tear You Apart" by She Wants Revenge! I seemed to remember She Wants Revenge, though I don't think I ever gave the full album a chance. Then I listened to both songs and realized how similar they are in sound, but wasn't satisfied with that explanation. I did some digging, and sure enough that episode actually featured both songs back to back in that club scene, so my ears weren't wrong after all. Long story long, here are both tunes for your listening pleasure.

I'll be playing all of these songs along with some other good stuff at 21 Nickels in Watertown, MA this Saturday if you are like me and want to try something other than horseshit club music.

The Giant Panther and I have many bands in common even though I sometimes appears that we don't. One of the bands we both love is Talking Heads. The GP goes above and beyond even following David Byrne's (at times) lackluster solo career. He's an eclectic artist no doubt (David Byrne, not The Giant Panther), but once he left Talking Heads I struggled with his world beat rhythms and, dare I say it, his relative lack of commercial viability. I usually don't make those kinds of pronouncements, but Byrne seems out there to me. I was eating at my friend's brick oven pizza restaurant in the Fenway (Woody's Grill at 58 Hemenway Street in Boston...no web site unfortunately) about five years ago when the bartender broke out David Byrne's Daddy Go Down from his Feelings record. I'll probably catch flak for this from the GP on down, but I hadn't heard a David Byrne song I could get excited about since Talking Heads broke up. I'm sure that's blasphemy in some circles, but it's how I felt. But I rekindled my Byrne's jones with Daddy Go Down. He probably considers it a throwaway track, but I loved it. If you get a chance to snag that one somewhere I highly recommend it, but that's not what I came to talk about (as usual)...

I bought More Songs About Buildings and Food in late 1978 at a Midnight Madness Sale at Strawberries Records here in Boston. I think that franchise went under, but if it hasn't it is surely no longer relevant. I was at a record show in Dedham, MA last week and was pleasantly surprised at all the audiophiles still pouring over albums and equipment. I bought a marbled colored Dave Mason (Alone Together) record from 1970 and an album frame for it. I took it home and without so much as playing it to see if it skipped, I poured it into the frame and hung it up on my wall. Old timers may remember the cover of the record as Dave Mason (ex of Traffic fame by then) in a top hat standing in front of a large rock formation with "Alone Together" written in chalk or neatly spray painted on a rock in the background. Not only is that a great record, but at the time it came in a multi colored vinyl that is no longer produced. It was a mini collector's item and I always had a standard black copy. It was worth the trip out there just to bring home a piece of rock history. I know that sounds ridiculous, but for $7.50 (1/2 price!) it was a no brainer.

I guess my point is record albums were such an amazing concept. You just had true ownership with the artwork and in some cases the lyrics. You cared for the physical property or you wouldn't get to listen to it anymore. Today, I can download the new Kings of Leon, listen to it a couple of times and barely glance at the microscopic artwork attached to the file. No producer information, no studio location, no guest artist information...heck no artist information. I could listen to it twice or three times if I'm lucky and patient and off I go to another artist. I have over 55 thousand songs on my hard drive now and I've barely scratched the surface of what could be there. It wasn't like that with vinyl and I'm not one of those people who pine over the old days at all. I do pine for the days when artists got the full undivided attention of their audience at 20-25 minutes a side. Even if I play one album a year I'm so glad I didn't sell them back in the 80's. It's old school (insert joke here)!

More Songs About Building and Food was Talking Heads second album. I honestly think this is my favorite Heads record. They began to pick up the pace and do a little bit more rocking. It was still wicked art school eclectic, but it was a bit more accessible. They did a cover of Al Green's Take Me To The River and that is the song that the masses would know this record for, but not me. I loved songs like Found a Job and Warning Sign, but the song I always come back to, and frankly might be my very favorite Talking Heads song ever, is The Big Country. It's always on my iPod like device and I never ever get sick of hearing it. I remember it getting cursory airplay on WBCN and WCOZ in here in Boston at the time, but by the time the next record, Fear of Music, was released in 1979 it was all over for The Big Country. I don't think I've heard it on commercial radio in decades. Let's face it; the Talking Heads legacy is monstrous. They owned AOR radio from 1978 to 1984. No need to name the flat awesome individual tracks, but I will say that their "B" cuts are the ones to hone in on. The first three records are loaded with them. They are what makes Talking Heads such a great band. You can only hear the hits so often. Love live the music of Talking Heads!

Today's walk down memory lane takes us back to 1990. This won't take long either. An Irish band called Something Happens flashed across our collective rock radar screen as the century began its last decade. I didn't mention them in my earlier post about Irish rock because they came and went so fast I had forgotten about them. They toured fairly heavily, so I've heard, and got their big break warming up for a 1988 Simple Minds tour when that band still had it going on. They had signed with Virgin Records, but the marriage didn't last and they were dropped when they were unable to replicate the success of Stuck Together With God's Glue.

The song I'm posting today is called Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello (Petrol). The title is very irritating, but the song has always been a favorite of mine. There's a line near the end when the lead singer relays a comment a woman made to him about the beer goggle life. She says "I know I've had some when you start to look handsome." You have to laugh at that all around, but rhyming had some with handsome strikes me as pretty funny. Another fun fact I didn't know is that the parenthetic Petrol in the song title is an apparent homage to the band That Petrol Emotion. If the legend is true they stole the guitar riff from that act. I've always kind of liked TPE so that sort of makes sense. You don't often see bands fessing up in print like that. Another great early 90's one hit wonder type song was The Beloved's Hello. They could've added a few hellos to that song title as well since they speak sing the word hello more than Something Happens does. Ironically The Beloved Song came out roughly two months earlier than this one. Maybe I'll post the other song sometime soon, but if you have a chance to grab that one you should. Kind of a comical coincidence, but I would have gone with one Hello and then (Petrol) as my song title if I were a member of Something Happens.

To finish the thought on this Flash and The Pan (I kill myself...why do you suppose they didn't call themselves Flash IN The Pan?...no need to answer that one...I'll have to do some research on those guys, but they were like a four very good hit wonder band), Something Happens had some other claims to fame. I didn't see the film, but apparently they had a song called Burn Clear appear on the soundtrack of an Irish movie called The Courier. Hello was included in the top 50 singles of 1990 by the UK rock magazine New Musical Express (NME). They had a much later song called Forget Georgia that was covered by a Canadian Singer named Emm Gryner in 2005. And lastly a song from Stuck Together With God's Glue called Parachute was a minor hit along with Hello. I would venture to say this song is a rocker, but it definitely stood out as a single. It caught a lot of radio airplay back in the day so of course I had to buy the CD. I've had it on my mixed cut iPod like device for about a year (it can only come up about once every six weeks at best in case you are wondering...at an hour a day seven days a week that is). It's a real project changing the music so I don't do it that often. I'll probably wind up blogging about every song on there until I take the time to rotate them out. Even though it's a labor of love, I can never seem to get psyched up to do it. Every day at the gym I hear another song that I'm happy to hear, but is scheduled to be replaced. It seems to push off the project another month each time. It's crazy. Anyway...Hope you like Hello x 5 (Petrol)!

I was a huge fan of The Temptations as a kid. I STILL have a scratched up copy of the Ball of Confusion (That's What The World is Today) 45 RPM record on Gordy Records (a division of Motown) circa 1970. I don't know how many times I played the flip side, It's Summer, but I can tell you it wasn't many. The Tempations were and are legendary. Not so much for My Girl, Ain't Too Proud To Beg, Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) or The Way You Do The Things You Do, but for songs like (I Know) I'm Losing You, Can't Get Next To You, Psychedelic Shack, Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion and I Wish It Would Rain. They did it all; they danced, they sang, they harmonized, they broke down racial barriers and they rocked. They so belong in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But the biggest baddest granddaddy tune of their whole catalogue, the one that put a stake in the ground for all time, the one that pre-dated songs like Rambling Man and all the others was Papa Was a Rolling Stone. What a masterpiece! Even chopped to bits in 1972 for AM radio, Papa still clocked in around seven minutes. And they still played it! Boy, did they play it. All the way to a 1973 Grammy. Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong had originally written it for a long forgotten Motown act called The Undisputed Truth. You may remember those guys as the band behind the great one hit wonder song Smiling Faces Sometimes. They also recorded Papa later, but it went nowhere. The Temptations grabbed it and ran with it to the tune of nearly 12 minutes on their album.

So much goes on in this song it's just ridiculous. It's a sad story, but man what a story. Papa took off and left some confused children behind and they wanted answers from their mother about why their father wasn't around. Mama just shook her head and said...well you know the rest. I will never get tired of hearing it I have to tell you. Rolling Stone voted it the 168th greatest song of all time recently. As arbitrary as those lists are I devour them every time like the sap that I am. Outraged over this song, scoffing at that one...it's laughable really, but loads of fun. Papa Was a Rolling Stone deserved all of the accolades it received. I thought it was flat brilliant.

Papa Was a Rolling Stone has been covered more than a couple of times. Los Lobos did a pretty fair job a couple of years back. George Michael took a half hearted stab at it too. You have to brave to cover this song. This isn't a song you mess with easily. It has The Temptations so embedded in its DNA it's near impossible to strip them out. I don't know how I stumbled on this cover of Papa Was a Rolling Stone by Was (Not Was), but I'm glad I did. This is a great cover. Oh, check that, I do remember now. Local Boston radio station WFNX-FM, back when they were a little more adventurous, was playing a great song called I Feel Better Than James Brown for a short time back in 1990 from the CD Are You Okay? by Was (Not Was). It was kind of a novelty song, but very good (download it now). Of course, since I was buying everything in sight in those days, I went right out and bought the CD. Much to my surprise and delight a cover of The Temptations song was even better than the song about James Brown. This one is an instant classic cover for me and should be on your iPod for the next month during your workouts. You can thank me later. I have successfully turned on several of my friends to this cover song over the years. I hope you like it too. Enjoy.

Was (Not Was) - Papa Was a Rolling Stone.mp3

Was (Not Was) - Papa Was a Rolling Stone.mp3 YSI

I was shuffling along at the gym the other day when Hot Chocolate found it's way into my ears. You may remember Hot Chocolate as a British R&B 70's act that had some modest chart success with songs like You Sexy Thing, Emma and Every 1's a Winner. They were nearly completely forgotten until a run of shows like Ally McBeal and TV commercials sponsored by Burger King kind of resurrected their music. Some would confuse them with the disco era since they were popular about that time, but Hot Chocolate's three big hits as noted above are as good as any R&B group from that era. You Sexy Thing was featured in major motion pictures such as The Full Monty, Boogie Nights, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Rat Race and Bicentennial Man. It's Crafty; it gets around...

I wouldn't normally divulge my list of songs I like, but am afraid to admit it list. The truth is, I just did a Facebook list recently that kind of got me to thinking about this king of thing. I'm going to run a feature called Guilty Pleasures now as well. I'm going to out myself regularly and admit to liking music that might draw disdain from whatever audience we have generated here at The Giant Panther. These are going to be short posts. I promise (as you roll your eyes knowingly)! UK charts and American charts differ wildly. Hot Chocolate was infinitely more popular in the UK for obvious reasons, but I always get a charge out of hearing Hot Chocolate on my iPod like device. I'm leaving you with Every 1's a Winner. It a fun song with a little bit of a different sound. It's catchy. Hope you like it. It seems to have a little Billy Preston, The O'Jays and others from that decade, but it's unique.

Happy Easter everyone. I'm not a religious man, but I can recall my Aunt Irene's famous Easter Egg hunts (actually plastic eggs with quarters in them) when we would come over for Easter dinner back in the 70's. Today I wouldn't know it was Easter if one of the announcers in the baseball game(s) I was watching hadn't mentioned it. I don't know what that says about me, but 2009 is rushing by just like every other year when I stop to give it some thought. Cross Easter off the list of 2009 holidays.

Wire is a long forgotten band that I really loved. A product of the late 70's out of the UK, Wire had several musically interesting records that were off the beaten path. Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 were albums that featured short bursts of post punk energy. The were released between 1977 and 1979. I had never heard of them until I started managing a CD store in the late 80's and we started ordering imports. A friend of mine kept playing them at our store and I started to get the hang of them. I can't help but think Gang of Four was a fan of theirs back in the day. Wire took an unheard of break between 1979 and 1987 as far as the releasing of original studio material is concerned, but when they resurfaced I was right there to buy their records. The Ideal Copy (1987), A Bell is a Cup...Until It's Struck (1988) and It's Beginning To and Back Again (IBTABA) (1989) all featured at least one killer track. At least I thought so at the time...

From early Wire I used to love the Three Girl Rhumba (all 1:23 of it). It was typical of their two minute drill style of releasing music. It was also gold for filling in the end of your ill conceived mixed cassette tapes in those days. Less than two minutes left? Reach for Wire. It'll sound like you planned it all along. Later on though Wire began stretching out their concepts. Two songs that stick with me from their late 80's output were Kidney Bingos and Eardrum Buzz. I know they were quasi college radio hits, but they had this cool sound to them. I wish I could put it into words, but there was something different about their "new" sound I felt was very pleasing. I'm not going to go on long about Wire here. Frankly, there isn't much to tell as far as I can see. They had a drummer named Robert Gotobed who actually fired himself when he decided a drum machine could do the work live with little differential. They tried to go on as "Wir" (pronounced the same) for a time in deference to his departure, but the band never again captured the public's imagination the way it once had. The band is still working according to their web site, but I have to admit to losing track of them.

The song I leave you with, Kidney Bingos, is such a cool tune. Don't ask me what the lyrics mean and I won't tell you no lies, but the melody is great. I hope you like...

I can't recall the exact year, but I'm guessing around 1987 or so, I came across a CD by a band called The Godfathers in a used record store and I bought it. I'm a cover freak, (by the way thank you so much for the non verbal support of my Foo Fighters posting below! That's a lot of traffic for a couple of days. I'm glad you apparently liked it.) so when I noticed The Godfathers made an attempt at John Lennon's Cold Turkey I figured it was worth the $6 or whatever I paid for it. Nobody, let alone me, had heard of The Godfathers in those days. Nice grab! A few of you, and I'm guessing not many, will remember a song called This Damn Nation that kind of put them on the map, if they ever really were on any imaginary map. It had a funky slide to it and it was catchy, but that is not why The Godfathers were eventually relatively popular; they had this great snarl to them. Kind of like Billy Idol, but different. They stomped their way through most of their numbers and I was drawn to them immediately. The truth is though, I didn't expect much from this alternative rock band from London. Lord knows I have 50 CDs just like this buried amongst my stellar collection that I loved but that never got off the ground. I figured I just made a nice find no one else in my circle would ever hear. Wrong. Less than two years later they were all over college radio and touring the states.

The next year, in 1988, The Godfathers surfaced with an all time alternative foot stomping classic called Birth, School, Work, Death. I'm a card carrying pessimist most of the time so this tongue in cheek kind of hopelessness appealed to me. That and the crunching beat. I love it. It was a pretty big hit all around. Wikipedia tells us that this single reached #38 on the U.S. charts. For an alternative song that is ridiculous. Just me and 50,000 college kids were actually listening to that genre in those days. I'm kidding of course, but selling The Godfathers to my Van Halen loving buddies was near impossible. I went to see them play at The Paradise in Boston and they rocked my world. Not Goth rock exactly, but it had enough WTF is the use backbone to appeal to that crowd. It was more rock & roll, but it was clearly alternative. I hate trying to label good music anyway; it's more fun trying to label the folks who show up at the gigs I always felt. What you need to know about the CD Birth, School, Work, Death is that it was a great record. If I Only Had Time (I'd think of the perfect crime) and 'Cause I Said So were hard rocking supplements to the title track. When Am I Coming Down was also a plus on this CD. No self respecting alternative rock junkie from the 80's should be without it as far as I'm concerned. B,S,W,D was an angst ridden sing along anthem the second I heard it and it enjoyed a long run on the local alternative rock station WFNX.

1988 had it's share of great records; The Church - Starfish, The Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll, Julian Cope - My Nation Underground, Big Audio Dynamite - Tighten Up Volume '88, The Feelies - Only Life, The Fine Young Cannibals - The Raw & The Cooked, Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking, Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers - Conscious Party, Midnight Oil - Diesel & Dust, Morrissey - Viva Hate, Peter Murphy - Love Hysteria, Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine, NWA - Straight Outta Compton, Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Grahm Parker - The Mona Lisa's Sister, Iggy Pop - Instinct, Prince - Lovesexy, Lou Reed - New York, R.E.M. - Green, Shriekback - Go Bang!, Siouxsie & The Banshees - Peepshow, Patti Smith - Dream of Life, The Smithereens - Green Thoughts, Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation, The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good, The Talking Heads - Naked, They Might Be Giants - Lincoln, Treat Her Right - Treat Her Right, U2 - Rattle & Hum, UB40 - UB40, Camper Van Beethoven - Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, The Violent Femmes - 3, The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues, Wire - A Bell is a Cup Until It's Struck....are you kidding me? Did 2008, twenty years hence, produce that kind of quality? Call me old & crazy, but I don't think so.

My point in naming those records is to let you know that Birth, School, Work, Death not only held its own among these giant records, it still sounds great and fresh to this day. Of the four stages, I used to be on stage three (Work) until I lost my job, but I'm not giving up just yet. Stage four is kind of final if you know what I mean and where else would you go to track down all these quality tracks if I suddenly expired? OK, don't answer that. Hope all is well out there and please turn one of your friends onto the long forgotten Godfathers if you can. This tune is in your face nasty and I love it! According to their web site they have reunited so maybe we might see some more from them soon.

Want to know a great cover band? You may know them as The Foo Fighters, but they are one of the best cover bands around. I have copies of them doing Requiem by Killing Joke, Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty, I'm in Love With a German Film Star by The Passions, Born On The Bayou by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Have a Cigar by Pink Floyd. First of all, Dave Grohl and I could easily hang because he's got impeccable taste, but I love it when a perfectly fine successful rock & roll band has the nads to cover their heroes and pull it off. I love all of these original songs and I love The Foo Fighter covers. I'm going to try and do features on covers, a secret passion of mine, from now on as well. I'm loaded with those too. I am in constant search for these reworked nuggets.

I know I haven't been posting much lately and for that I am sorry. You see I'm one of those four million folks looking for work these days. I'm a high tech salesman by trade, but I might be flipping burgers soon if this keeps up. Plus, as every rotisserie baseball fan in the country knows, it is crunch time as we collectively prepare for the draft (or auction) this weekend. Come Monday it's play ball! The Final Four NCAA Championships are here and that means seamheads everywhere are back in business. Hope springs eternal or something. This is definitely the year right? Who knows? I won the whole 11 team league twice in going on 22 years now. Oh, I've got my five second place finishes, two third place finishes and four fourths (final money spot), but I've finished out of the money eight times now! 1996 and 2006 were my magical years, but I want my title back. I know you're bored to tears here, but wish me luck. If something else isn't going right maybe baseball can bring it back.

Regarding The Foo I've been stumbling on their covers, almost by the year, because who can afford CD singles in this market? That is where you will find most, if not all, of the aforementioned covers in question. This Pink Floyd cover I'm leaving you with is wicked. I love the Floyd to death and I love that Dave does too. This cover is completely respectful with a natural Foo Fighters overhaul. I love it. I hope you do too. You can find this on the 1999 Learn To Fly CD (Part I) Single. It really Kicks Out The Jams to coin a phrase. It Blows The Roof Off Tha Sucka. Blows Doors. Whatever. Talk soon!

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.