Sorry. Given the weather here in the Paris of the Tri-State Metropolitan Area, once again I just don't have the energy to make the obligatory joke about the Rightwing Shithead du Jour.
Although the guy who wrote that piece in in the current issue of TIME, which says Rush Limbaugh may have a point about the Gulf oil spill not being such a big deal, should really rot in hell. IMHO.
In any case, supposedly the weather's going to be nicer over the weekend. And while we wait, here's a (hopefully) fun little project for us all, and for a change I'm almost positive I've never done anything exactly like it before.
Post-Elvis Album/Album Track/Song/Single You Discovered Long After the Fact and Immediately Wondered How You had Lived Without It!!!
And my totally top of my head Top Six is...
6. Sonic's Rendezvous Band -- City Slang
SRB, of course, being a sort of Detroit supergroup featuring ex MC5 guitarist Fred Smith and several other worthies. I'd heard of the single, which came out in 1978, for years, but didn't get around to listening to it until fairly recently. Needless to say, the damn thing is pretty much hard rock at its most intense, and god only knows what I was waiting for.
5. Candy Butchers -- You Belong to Me Now
The most seraphically beautiful love song of the last decade; it came out in 2002, but I didn't hear it until Kid Charlemagne clued me in here. Have I mentioned that the production on this is stellar as well? That I would kill to have come up with the bass part? That the guitar solo is to die for? And that Mike Viola's singing just breaks my heart?
This is a perfect record, is what I think I'm hinting at.
4. Los Shakers -- Always You
The Beatles of Uruguay, and every bit as good as anything by their role models, IMHO. I got hipped to this one courtesy, once again, of Kid Charlemagne, and I have to say -- of all the great songs I've discovered since NYMary gave me the spare set of keys to this place, this is the one that means the most to me.
3. You Am I --Mr. Milk
First heard this one (which dates from 1996) sometime around 2003, over the sound system at NYCD, the late lamented (and still the coolest in history) indie record store on Manhattan's upper West Side run by our pal Sal Nunziato (currently the proprietor of the indispensable Burning Wood). How the best Australian band since the Easybeats had previously gotten by me remains a mystery I may never solve, but I am in forever in Sal's debt for having played this one loud.
2. Sam Cooke -- Night Beat
It sounds, deliberately, like a late night blues/soul/gospel jam session at a small smoke-filled club, and it's probably the greatest pop music album of the last fifty years that most people still don't know about. Cooke cut it for his own label in 1963 and it went out of print pretty much immediately; the American CD reissue from 2001 (which is when I first heard it) got pulled due to legal wrangling (love that Allen Klein) almost as quickly.
And the Numero Uno Where Have You Been All My Life? classic actually has to be...
1. The Cat's Meow -- La La Lu.
Just found this 1966 garage rock gem (which definitely should have been a radio hit) the other day; apparently, it's fairly well known in Nuggets circles, but I'd never run across it before. In any case, a simply wonderful piece of Revolver-ish bubblegum punk; the band was from Staten Island, if that's at all germane, and you can read a fun interview with their lead guitar player and catch some cool period photos over here.
Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?
[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best dramatic film with a plot line ripped from the headlines -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, I would take it as a personal favor if you could shlep over there and leave something snarky in the comments section. Thanks.]
