15 Songs of the Month! (February 2017)

'Neon Shuffle' - XTC, White Music (1978) - Getting into XTC, it seems like they - early on - wanted to mix it all: Punk, new wave, even a bit of the weird and spacey. The result is infectious beyond all belief, and has an absolutely cool bridge. Not messing around on their debut album, …

10 Songs of the Month! (January 2017)

'My Mistake' - Split Enz, Dizrythmia (1977) - There's a certain kind of coolness to the few Split Enz songs that I've heard. From the looks and sounds of it, Dizrythmia was when the band started their transition from progressive rock to then-new new wave... Yet their spin on it was quite fresh and full …

10 Song Picks of the Month!

Instead of picking from shuffle, I figured I'd use songs that have been my jam recently... 'Standing at the Crossroads of Love' - The Supremes, Where Did Our Love Go? (1964) - I'm a recent Supremes convert. Their vocals, coupled with the production, makes for such a delicate sound. This particular song covers a lot …

The Paul McCartney What-Could’ve-Beens…

Any great, prolific musician comes with a history of what-could've-beens, alternate albums, songs that haven't seen the light of day, and so on... I talked extensively about The Beach Boys' unreleased albums and alternate versions of finished albums. There's so much you can say about The Beatles' unreleased material, but I think Paul McCartney's solo …

First 10 Songs on Shuffle – Week #1

#1. 'Surrender' - Cheap Trick, Heaven Tonight (1978) - Of course shuffle starts me off with a recognizable hit that fits into the "classic rock" pool, a term I really don't care for, but yes... 'Surrender', you want to rock out to it when it blares out your speaker. Cheap Trick knew how to mix …

Top 5 Weirdest Beach Boys Compilations

The world of compilations is a weird one. With some bands, it's controlled. In the case of The Beatles, EMI was in charge of compilations. With the break-up occurring in 1970, the label sat on their inventory until an illegitimate mail-order quadruple (!) album set called Alpha Omega made the waves, prompting EMI/Apple to not …

LP Look #2: ’20/20′ and ‘Rarities’

Two Beach Boys LPs this time, one a studio album that quite frankly is kind of a compilation, and the other an actual compilation album... Now funny enough, my previous (and first ever) LP LOOK post featured the Beach Boys studio album that preceded the one that's being focused on here. Friends, released in the …

LP Look #1: ‘Friends’ and ‘Moontan’

I just added two wonderful LPs to my collection, one from America's greatest pop force and another from perhaps the Netherlands' longest-running rock group. The first of which is the 1968 Beach Boys studio album Friends. The second is Golden Earring's Moontan. If all you know about The Beach Boys is the early era hits …