WEEKEND PLAYLIST: Back to School

I know most kids have already been back to school for a week or more by now. In our times, we'd still be waiting until after Labor Day to start.

Summer's over, though, and here is some back-to-school songs to soothe you students as you ease back into the grind.

5. "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" - Pink Floyd. Roger Waters remembering the punishments meted out at his boyhood boarding school came up with the chilling story lines and lyrics for this indictment of punishing education discipline. Remember, how can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat?

4. "School Days" - Chuck Berry. It's been said that Chuck Berry invented rock and roll by infusing his great guitar playing into his St. Louis blues. Here's one of his classics about the rigors of being back in the classroom.

3. "Be True to Your School" - Beach Boys. High school might be a drag but when Friday nigh comes along, you've gotta be there for your team.

2. "Hot for Teacher" - Van Halen. Ever had a crush on your teacher? David Lee Roth did.

1. "Rock and Roll High School" - Ramones. Don't care about history? You just want to have some kicks and get some chicks? Well, the Ramones feel your pain. From the camp classic movie of the same name comes another great song by the Ramones.

Stop by the Musick Channel Garage Sale to pick up your own copy of some of our classic vinyl LPs. Click on the link, above, for more.

Darryl Musick

Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

MIDWEEK SALE PLAYLIST: Selections From Our 5-Pack

As you might know, if you see the ads at the bottom of each playlist post, The Musick Channel (the portal that hosts our blogs) is having a garage sale. We have a great deal on a 5-pack of classic vinyl albums in great shape that would fit nicely in your collection and we're blowing out the whole lot for a measly five bucks, plus low-cost media mail shipping.

See link at the bottom or click here: Classic Vinyl Five Pack On Sale!

Here are our top selections from each album...

"Cleveland Rocks" - Ian Hunter. Way before the "Drew Carey Show," Hunter...the lead singer of Mott the Hoople (rememeber "All the Young Dudes?")...put this song on his album 'You're Never Alone With a Schizophrenic.

"Bastard" - Ian Hunter. Another great song from this album. Check it out.

"Touch 'n Go" - The Cars. Getting away from their signature sound a bit on the 'Panorama' album, the band still produced some great tunes on this one including the title track, "Don't Tell Me No," and this one.

"Wavelength" - Van Morrison. Man, this guy can belt out the blues. This album includes such gems as "Kingdom Hall," "Hungry for your Love," and "Santa Fe/Beautiful Obsession," but it was this title track that led me to go to my local Tower Records and plop down my money to buy it. Great album.

"Thunder Island" - Jay Ferguson. 70's island pop. Catchy tune, fun album.

"Heartbreaker" - Pat Benatar. Massive hit showing women can rock just as hard from the 70's. Also includes her follow up hit "I Need a Lover." Only album in the collection that is not in excellent shape, a smudge mars part of side one on the track "If You Think You Know How to Love Me" but the rest of the vinyl's in great shape.

Click the link below to buy this collection today.

Stop by the Musick Channel Garage Sale to pick up your own copy of some of our classic vinyl LPs. Click on the link, above, for more.

Darryl Musick

Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

WEEKEND PLAYLIST: A Day at the Beach

It's been a helluva hot summer, hasn't it? Well, it's just about done. For a lot of you, This may be the last weekend you can pack up the family and heat to the beach before the kids get back to school For you parents with kids that have already gone back to school - congratulations.

Now, let's strike up some tunes for that last day on the hot sand...

5. "Upholstery" - The Juicy Fruits (Phantom of the Paradise Soundtrack). Back in the early days of his career, director Brian de Palma teamed up with actor and composer Paul Williams to come up with a brilliant send up of several themes...Faust, "The Picture of Dorian Grey," "Phantom of the Opera,"scheming record companies. Trust me, it all comes together in this comedic, horror musical. In fact, I think it'll be our Halloween night movie this year.

The basic story is a composer named Winslow writes a rock opera based on the story of Faust selling his soul to the devil. An evil record company exec steals his music...and his soul...and pumps out crass versions of it while the composer haunts his nightclub like the Phantom in "Phantom of the Opera".

One of those rip off version is this one, a catchy tune by a manufactured Beach Boys ripoff band about the joys of car upholstery. Too bad for the band that Winslow takes offense at it.  See the scene from the movie at this link: Juicy Fruits - "Phantom of the Paradise" Video (2:53)

4. "Vacation" - The Go Go's. Why we take summer vacations, all wrapped up in a peppy, poppy song by the ultimate 80's girls band. Who wouldn't want to spend a day at the beach with them?

3. "Wipeout" - Surfaris. Who doesn't want to dance on the beach all day to this song?

2. "Margaritaville" - Jimmy Buffet and the Coral Reefer Band. Yep, shots and drinks on a pristine Mexican beach while the prawns are roasting on a stick over an open fire in the background. Perfect day at the beach.

1. "Sloop John B" - The Beach Boys. My ultimate beach song is more about a bad boat cruise in the Bahamas...very bad...something that we here can relate to.  My all-time favorite tune from one of the greatest California bands ever.

Stop by the Musick Channel Garage Sale to pick up your own copy of some of our classic vinyl LPs. Click on the link, above, for more.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

WEEKEND PLAYLIST: Summertime Blues

God, it's been quite a hot summer here. Temps at times climbed up to 120 and beyond. 110 was almost normal and there were very few days under 100. Don't believe it when people say it's alway 70 degrees and beautiful here in Southern California, only a select and wealthy few can afford to live by the beach where it's more or less like that all the time.

Let's pour some gas on the fire with some hot tunes...

1. Some Like it Hot - Robert Palmer. I don't, summer just wears me down, but I do love me some Robert Palmer. The late blues singer could make anything sound good, even sweating it out to this intense heat. Sadly, Mr. Palmer died of cardiac arrest in Paris back in 2003.

2. Summertime Blues - The Who. Eddie Cochran did the original but I'm going with the Who for this one about having to spend your summer vacation hustling up a dollar instead of heading to the beach with your friends.

3. Summer in the City - Lovin' Spoonful. Before crafting the theme for "Welcome Back Kotter," John Sebastian sang this song that makes you feel uncomfortably hot just listening to it. Good song but, ugh, hate the feeling of the back of my neck feeling hot and gritty.

4. Heatwave - Martha and the Vandellas. More like it, a good Motown song always feels better. I can imagine listening to this on a hot summer day, sipping a cold, sweet soda next to the pier.

5. Fire - Bruce Springsteen. The Pointer Sisters had the big hit with it but Bruce wrote it and this is an acoustic, bluesy and slow version that I love, although I do really like the sisters version too.

There, five songs to turn up the heat with. Hopefully, we'll have some cooler weather and great songs to go with that, too.

Stop by the Musick Channel Garage Sale to pick up your own copy of some of our classic vinyl LPs. Click on the link, above, for more.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

The Day of Rest: Holy Week

The Day of Rest is presented by Amazon.com. Amazon Prime members get free, unlimited downloads and free 2-day shipping on all Prime Eligible merchandise. Sign up for your free trial at the link below.

For a feature named after one of the Ten Commandments, it only makes sense to showcase music that highlights one of the biggest religious weeks of the year. No worries...no sermons or homilies...just good music that paints a picture of the message of the week.

Let's start off with Judas Iscariot. Was he a scapegoat, a traitor, a confused follower? Debates can be found elsewhere. Today, we're just enjoying the late Carl Anderson's outstanding portrayal of the man who turned Jesus in for 30 pieces of silver.

The Doobie Brothers, named after all the pot they smoked over the years, may not seem such a likely source for a song about what a friend they have in Jesus but here you go...

For our Jewish friends, let's put the Maccabeats in here with the Passover story, as might have been told by Victor Hugo.

Norman Greenbaum struck a chord with his homage to the Spirit in the Sky. Mr. Greenbaum is now a farmer in Sonoma.

Depeche Mode chimes in with their views. 

Johnny Cash did a very good cover of this one too.

That's it! Have a great Holy Week, Passover, and Easter.

Darryl

The Day of Rest: The Woodstock of the West Coast

The Day of Rest is presented by Amazon.com. Amazon Prime members get free, unlimited downloads and free 2-day shipping on all Prime Eligible merchandise. Sign up for your free trial at the link below.

It was forty years ago today. No, that's not the day that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. It was the day Southern California had it's own mammoth music festival, the California Jam.

Where the 10 and 15 freeways intersect today, on what is now covered by Ontario Mills Shopping Center and other various businesses, there was a large speedway. 

Ontario Motor Speeday had a track copied from Indy, a 2.5 mile rectangle with rounded corners. If you saw the old George Hamilton movie, 'Evel Knievel,' this was where the scenes regarding his big jump were filmed.

This was the location of the California Jam. I wasn't there, I was only 12 at the time, but I do remember it. It was shown on TV and that day, we were driving along the San Bernardino Freeway (Interstate 10) to my grandmother's house and I remember it was so crowded that people just parked there cars over the first couple of lanes of freeway and walked in from there.

Must've been a hell of a show.

Here are a few highights...

Let's start with a very, very young Ozzy Osbourne leading Black Sabbath in a rendition of 'War Pigs.'

Let's move on to the Eagles remembering that time they stood on the corner in Winsow, Arizona.

Rare Earth just wants to celebrate.

Not this day, but one of the craziest, rowdiest concerts I ever attended in my life was headlined by Jim Dandy and Black Oak Arkansas.

For many people that day, the highlight was this performance of 'Smoke on the Water."

A lot more people thought that the big highlight was Keith Emerson taking flight with his piano.

We'll leave you with this version of Karn Evil 9 from the Jam...

Darryl

A Reflection On The Human Condition

Photo Courtesy of: Wikimedia

Tristan Loper/Loperco.com under CC BY-SA 3.0 License

The name Michael Fitzpatrick may or may not sound familiar to you right off the bat.  On the other hand, the name of the band he formed you've probably heard before.  Fitzpatrick is the frontman of the Los Angeles based Fitz and The Tantrums.

Fitz and The Tantrums came on the scene in 2008.  The band lineup consists of Fitzpatrick on lead vocals and keyboards, Noelle Scaggs on vocals and percussion, James King who seems to play just about any instrument you could think of, Joseph Karnes on bass guitar, Jeremy Ruzumma on keyboards and John Wicks on drums and percussion.

They released their first album Pickin' Up The Pieces in August of 2010.  The album turned out to be a smashing success!  The interesting thing about the album is that it was all recorded in Fitzpatrick's living room!  It's easier to understand why they did this when you consider that they couldn't afford to go into a professional recording studio due to the usual struggles a band seems to go through just to get noticed.

Sob stories aside, the band has now achieved great success.  Pickin' Up The Pieces gives a taste of what the band is really about.  They have a soulful and blues feel in their music for sure.  One track that stands out in particular is "Dear Mr. President."

A title with the word President in it would probably lead you to believe that the song is somehow aimed at the government efforts, or lack thereof, to help out its own citizens.  That may have been the band's goal from the outset, but I also think the song's message is much more than a government manifesto.

 

"Hey put your foot down and take a look round.  Don't like what you see?  No no no no no no!"

The lyrics tell general tales of people going through various struggles in their daily lives.  There is also the contemplation of how these folks go about trying to make a better life for themselves and their families and acquaintances.

As the song advises, if you don't like your current situation in life, one choice is to put your foot down and do what you can to either change your life or make the best of it.  In the end though, it should be up to you to figure out how you want to live your life.

By the way, who doesn't like a song that starts with a catchy "Hey, woo!" clap chant?

Tim Musick
Copyright 2014
All Rights Reserved