So, I accidentally left something off Monday’s post of random thoughts, but it’s small and relatively inconsequential, so I can catch up here. On Sunday Morning, I saw a Trending Topic on Twitter and while these can be hit or miss (seems mostly miss), this one was right up my alley. It asked what the best 1980s song was and I said “either ‘I Love Rock N Roll’ by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, ‘Is This Love’ by Whitesnake, ‘Crazy Train’ by Ozzy Osbourne, ‘Breaking the Law’ by Judas Priest or ‘Sweet Child O Mine’ by Guns N Roses.”
This did, however, lead me to revisit my “Top 200 in 2010s” Playlist on Spotify and while Spotify doesn’t show all the songs in it anymore and I’m not sure about the order, I did do some small recent re-edits to get it closer to songs I remember more fondly from 2010-2019. I will show these in a post tomorrow, because I don’t want to crowd the front page with 200 songs today.
As I mentioned Monday, Demi’s album was fantastic and a good listen for anyone going through anxiety and depression. Feels like this year you need the hymns of “My Savior” by Carrie Underwood in one hand and the real-world pains and experiences of “Dancing with the Devil…The Art of Starting Over” by Demi Lovato in the other hand. However, time marches on and there’s new music this week, specifically, four new releases all tied to Classic Rock and Metal.
Cheap Trick-In Another World: I think this is the first full-length album for the band since their Christmas album, but it was easier to track their releases when PledgeMusic wasn’t a scam. This one was actually recorded back in 2018-2019 and took until now to get released due to the pandemic. The Single “Light Up The Fire” is solid and it also promises their cover of “Gimme Some Truth” originally by John Lennon (you can tell it was recorded in 2018-2019).
Sweet Oblivion-Relentless: Bellevue’s Metal Vocal Hero Geoff Tate is back! This album actually got teased in a live stream around last New Year’s on Geoff’s Facebook page and it looks like he’s going with the Italian rock group Sweet Oblivion, responsible for his awesome 2019 release. The singles they’ve released have been among my favorite tracks this year and there’s a track called “Aria” where Geoff sings in Italian.
Fleetwood Mac-Live (Deluxe Edition): A collection of Live Recordings from as early as 1975 to as late as 1982 from the band famous for songs as diverse as “Landslide,” “Stop Messing Around,” “The Green Manalishi with the Two-Pronged Crown” and “The Chain.” This will feature recordings from when Stevie Nicks was a vocalist for the band, her being one of the first prominent women vocalists that led to where we are today.
Lynyrd Skynyrd-Live At Knebworth ’76: I’ll be honest, I don’t know if there are MP3s for this or not, sometimes you get surprise MP3s, other times, because the album also has a DVD format, you don’t on release day, but I do know that a generous portion of this show was shown in “Freebird; the Movie.” The only song I know for sure that wasn’t was Free Bird itself, though footage of that performance has popped up on YouTube every once in a while. This was a rock festival where lead singer Ronnie Van Zant got to hang out with Mick Jagger and drummer Artimus Pyle told Paul McCartney he loved “Maybe I’m Amazed” and Paul replied he loved “Free Bird.” I think the medley of “Working For MCA/I Ain’t The One” and the performance of “Traveling Man” stand out from this performance on the Freebird the Movie soundtrack. (Word of Caution, if you find “Traveling Man” from the movie on YouTube, it will open with a Confederate flag flying. It was 1976 in Britain, which didn’t go through the Civil War and at the time, Lynyrd Skynyrd, who weren’t racist were the only ones I knew to be associated with it in a rock music setting. Times have changed since then, hatred has grown, the flag is now unquestionably racist and Lynyrd Skynyrd seems to be retiring as a band and they’ve even tried multiple times to “ditch the stars and bars,” mostly keeping it around for old school fans who insist.)
On Fun Music Trivia, today is Larry Norman’s Birthday. Most people don’t know him, but he was one of the people responsible for the Christian Rock genre, influencing, either directly or indirectly, many of my favorite artists and songs during my lifetime. He released a great song in 1972 called “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” protesting the idea that Rock and Roll was evil, including lyrics like “I ain’t knocking the hymns, just give me a beat/I ain’t knocking the hymns, just give me a song that moves my feet” and “Jesus showed the truth, Jesus showed the way/There’s one more thing I’d like to say/They nailed Him to the cross and put Him in the ground/But they should’ve known you can’t keep a good man down.”
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