I was trying to get out of a brain-funk today and thought a nice bike ride would do the job. Well, as soon as I got across the Brooklyn Bridge, en route to the East Village to drop off some camera film, my front tire tube burst….pshhshhheewwww! I considered it all too representative of the funk that my mind’s been in lately, but the rest of my being would have it. I’m not usually one to wallow. So, after some wandering in Tribeca, I found a bike shop and got the tube replaced very quickly. Then all the fun began…riding in crazy Manhattan traffic in the sun. I love it!
I got the film dropped off and headed back downtown towards the Brooklyn Bridge again. Until I came across the signs pointing me block-by-block exactly how to get to the bike path for the Manhattan Bridge…a bridge that I have not yet conquered in bike. So I rocked it and I loved it. It’s funny riding next to the subway trains! And there’s nothing like the second half of a bridge…where it’s all downhill. I am now invigorated and consider today the first day of my summer…and the rest of my life, goddammit!
Anyway, as I was riding the bridge, for some reason I started wondering what the phrase “Here’s mud in your eye” means and its origins. Why would one want mud wished upon (or up-in) their eyes?! Talk amongst yourselves…and please let me know if you find out what gives…or even if you just have a half-baked theory about it.
Have a rockin’ weekend, ya’ll! I will
What was the first Queen LP called?
Here Come the Warm Jets (1973)
OK, maybe not. But I had to post this link to Rolling Stone because a lot of us really like Phish, despite the rest of the music world’s opinions. Sod off, snooty buggers! I’d be happy to see them rock it again very soon!
Lookin’ good, Trey!
So here’s my review of a UFO Best-Of album that I did for Blog Critics magazine. Keep in mind, I only do positive reviews so if the album sucked, you wouldn’t see it here! It was fun to write about UFO since I missed out on them back in my budding hard rock days, which were filled with the sounds of AC/DC, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, etc. Dig…
Okay, is it cool to like 80′s Metal again? With the hugely triumphant return of David Lee Roth-era Van Halen to the old hair metal guys even having their very own 4-day Bonnaroo-like camping festival, Rocklahoma, in July, it seems like the scene is set for the 80′s Metal Gods to rise again. So you’ll definitely see a hasty repackaging of catalogs and best-ofs from bands like Ratt and Poison and Motley Crue and Dokken, and even new albums from some of these guys. Some will be be great and make us wonder why we ever stopped listening to them and some will be quite the opposite… as with any genre of music.
Then if you’re really searching, you’ll find a brilliant compilation of songs from a band whose music informed that whole genre; a band who actually had little to no success in the 80s, but whose sound you could find all over the popular hard rock music of the decade. The band is UFO and the new compilation is Chrysalis Records’ The Best of UFO (1974-1983).
Now, as the band was coming to the end of their powers in 1983, I was turning 11-years old and beginning to be turned on to hard rock and metal. So I had definitely heard the name Michael Schenker since the Scorpions were just starting to see huge success in the States, as I was eating up their Animal Magnetism, Blackout and Love At First Sting albums, and knew that Scorps guitarist Rudy Schenker had a brother who was once in the Scorpions in the 70s and currently had his own creatively-named Michael Schenker Group. But I had not properly been introduced to the work of Michael Schenker in UFO until the last couple years. That’s pretty damn late for a band that formed in 1969 and who started hitting their creative stride in 1974, when I was 2-years old!
Over the past year, I’ve slowly been acquiring classic UFO albums and digging further into their catalog and just now, somewhat serendipitously, I was called upon to review the new Best Of UFO (1974-1983) collection, as it saw its April 2008 release.
I was happy to hear a great sequencing of songs when I first popped on the album, and a pristine remastering job! The comp kicks off with the 6 1/2-minute scorcher, “Rock Bottom”, from the time when the band lost their trippy space rock sound of old (another era of UFO I like a lot for different reasons) and picked up the aforementioned German guitar guru, Michael Schenker who gave them a more straight-ahead rock sound for their 1974 Shenker-debut album, Phenomenon. If this song doesn’t hook you, then you may want to check your pulse, for perhaps you’ve expired!
I kept wanting to post something today, and I just kept becoming more and more lethargic. It must be my feelings of insecurity, constant reminders of mortality, and lack of groceries that is strangling my keyboard. No word yet from my specialist. Here’s a bunch of crappy links that you won’t even give two shits about, but whatever…dig it, I guess…
HEY! I just cheered up…because the ever-so-clever Ace Cowboy has made his triumphant return to blogdom today with the Rebirth of Slack, after being on hiatus for a year. Be sure to visit him now and again, if you like to laugh and/or cringe.
Nights With Alice Cooper name-drops our buddies at Hidden Track in the show’s piece about Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears. I wonder who was responsible for that?!
Check out my Blog Critics articles if you haven’t already, um-kay?
Vote for Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears at Deli Magazine
Sonic Youth + Starbucks = Spirit of Punk Rock
Gotta love Phish from ’87!
Specials reunion? Fuck yeah!
Alice Cooper on the Muppets. Nice. And have you seen the topless European version of the “Poison” video? Naughty.
Anything eels? Yes, I said eels. And you know what…I feel a lot less like a lethargio now! Now back to work.
Which two members of Squeeze were the songwriters?
Here’s some music, if you need something to listen to…
Thanks to Lee for reminding me. As Lee says…”A holdiday in my world.” Mine too!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rn9z5viG30&hl=en]
I just saw this and thought it was really interesting… and I love Joni. Dig…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxkci1JnwL4&hl=en]
…East Village Radio