March 10, 2016 - Queen - Coming Soon (1980)

Even though it's a favorite album of mine, I never liked the cover. The photo of the band is great, tough 50s greaser look, where's the Fonz? But the gray background, just the band name and title in some normal font, borrriingggg!!
This is my favorite song from The Game. And it's kind of hidden there on side 2, between the two ballads. It should have opened side 2, followed by 'Rock It (Prime Jive)', make stupid 'Don't Try Suicide' sit between the ballads. Oh well, I think Coming Soon is excellent. It totally rocks, kind of similar to Need Your Loving Tonight in that it has that 50s doo wop early rock with a new wave feel. Phased drums kick it off, followed by a brief section of oohs, dual vocal opening lyrics, sandwiched by cool guitar riffs. I also love the 'on the outside of the tracks' part, with Freddie's little upward inflection there at the end of 'tracks'. Nice harmonies on the yeah yeah yeah followed by another awesome solo from Brian May. Is 'somebody nagging you when you're out with the boys'? Then play this one loud!

March 9, 2016 - The Ramones - Sheena Is A Punk Rocker (1977)

The Ramones, rock n roll at its bare bones, minimal music and lyrics, every song a sing-a-long with Joey. Why should a song need more than one verse? Just repeat the first verse. And who is this Sheena? She is her. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Punk version.

March 8, 2016 - Queen - Need Your Loving Tonight (1980)

Queen's The Game is one of my favorite albums ever. I got it for Xmas in 1980. I was thirteen. I always preferred the lesser known songs. This tune rocks, has a fantastic guitar solo, and Freddie Mercury's vocals are great as always. Written by bassist John Deacon, he also wrote Another One Bites the Dust and You're my Best Friend. So cool. So loose. Love the 'ooh I need your loving' harmony section just before the solo ('hit me'). And a couple of little asides or interjections that I always liked:
'I don't wanna feel like a stranger' ('No')
'Ooh I need your loving tonight'
                                   ('let's go')
Have a seat, guys. There's more from you...coming soon.

March 7, 2016 - The Moontrekkers - Night of the Vampire (1961)

You get a twenty second opening of scary howling wind creaky coffin atmosphere before the music starts. This is a creepy instrumental only Joe Meek could have made. And in 1961! It sounds like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, but with spidery electric guitars treated with heavy distortion and reverb. I can imagine Tim Burton making some sort of stop motion film with little dancing vampires a la The Nightmare Before Christmas. The song was banned by the BBC because it was ‘unsuitable for people of a nervous disposition’. It is a great piece of music to play on Halloween. Joe Meek himself did the howling at the very end.

March 6, 2016 - Cream - Tales of Brave Ulysses (1967)

"Tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers..." Yeah, OK...Martin Sharp. He wrote the lyrics, Eric Clapton wrote the music. The song is from the psychedelic blues rock masterpiece, Disraeli Gears. Sharp also did the cover art for this album. He was also really interested in Tiny Tim.(?!) How come I never knew any of this stuff !!! I always just liked the song and only found out about Martin Sharp just now.

Strange Brew, World of Pain, Sunshine of your Love, all great tunes, but this is my favorite Cream song. It has some great wah wah pedal and heavy rock 7th chords, murky feel to it, Jack Bruce spewing these stream of consciousness words. Really, those lyrics! 'His naked ears were tortured'...I figured since Ulysses (Odysseus for all you Romans out there) was a guy I'd read about in school, then this meant something to me. But I never knew the Martin Sharp thing. Pretty cool, nice to learn something new!

Martin Sharp:

March 5, 2016 - Sinn Sisamouth - Don't Let My Girlfriend Tickle Me (late 60s?)

Any fan of great garage rock and lo-fi fuzz guitar owes it to themselves to seek out the amazing Cambodian rock and pop music that was created before the Khmer Rouge took over and decimated the whole country.

Sinn Sisamouth is the best-known singer associated with this music, but there are many others. Dig that crazy fuzz wah guitar solo! The organ is cool too, I love that one chord, there's an example right around 1:00. Sinn's voice is treated with some nice reverb. It seems like reverb vocals were pretty common in Cambodian rock songs.

March 4, 2016 - 101 Strings - Flameout (1969)

This piece of music is track #24 on the compilation called Everything You Always Wanted to Know about '60s Mind Expansive Punkadelic Garage Rock Instrumentals But Were Afraid to Ask. I bought this at Jackpot Records on SE Hawthorne Blvd in Portland in the mid 90s. The album notes have no mention of 101 Strings being the artist, but there are dropped hints.

I remember first hearing the fuzzed out tremolo guitar at the beginning and thinking, "Well, this is a promising start." It is a spooky instrumental, with cellos and violins slowly creating the feel of a bad trip. The liner notes refer to 'some barking cello that you'd swear was your pet hound on doggie downers.' Nice.

Are there really 101 strings in this image? I'll just take their word for it.

March 3, 2016 - Them - Here Comes the Night (1965)

A classic tune from the British Invasion, although I think this song was more popular in Great Britain than the US. Van Morrison is in fine form on this one. 'Whoa oa yeah' (1:37). The song opens with a bang, starting off with that great ringing guitar chord and the all the guys belting it out on the chorus. The verses are choppy little two steps, the narrator telling his story of woe as his former girlfriend walks past his house with 'another guy-e-ay.' Night falls and he's all alone and imagines she is telling her new guy all the nice things she once told him.

The chorus is such a smash, the drums are fantastic, I especially like the long fill around 2:35 during the fade out. And how about the primary five note guitar riff? Classic.

March 2, 2016 - Sun Ra & his Arkestra - Hours After (1957)

I am including this 'jazz' piece even though I've not included any others, because I love its after midnight film noir b&w rainy smokey basement bar 1950s Chicagoness, it really has that vibe for me. I can also imagine it as the music that played when a station signed off for the evening back in the old days.

March 1, 2016 - Grace Lee & the Stylers - Why Are You Not Smiling? (1969)

This song is from the Sublime Frequencies compilation Singapore A-Go-Go. Why am I not smiling? Actually I am smiling, but I don't need anyone asking me this if I'm not...mind your own business! The little girl vocals of Grace Lee were hard for me to take at first, but I now really like this song. The bass is completely awesome, bouncing all over the place, doing its own thing. The guitar is great too, and I also like the other vocals that accompany the main vocals every so often. And the end, with all the la la las. She really means, look at me, I'm smiling, don't you want to smile too? The Stylers cool outfits make me smile.