Weekend Listomania: Special A Tribute to the Great White North! Edition

Well, tomorrow is the 150th birthday of Canadia, home of Justin Trudeau, William Shatner, and Gino Vanelli.

And you know what that means.

So let's get right to it:

Best or worst post-Elvis pop/rock/soul songs by Canadian artistes (or about Canadia!)

No arbitrary rules, although if you nominate anything by Rush I will come to your house and slap you silly.

And my totally top of my head Top Five is....

5. The Guess Who --Albert Flasher



4. The Guess Who -- Dancin' Fool



3. The Guess Who -- Guns Guns Guns



2. The Guess Who -- Running Back to Saskatoon



And the number one Bacon! flavored song of all time quite clearly is....

1. Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- The Canada Song



Alrighty, then -- what would YOUR choices be?

Your Friday Moment of Big Time Professional Radio

For your listening pleasure, please enjoy my appearance (from Tuesday last) on Capt. Al's intertube radio show.

The theme being A Tribute to Tribute Albums, so expect some interesting stuff.

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!!

Closed for Monkey Business

Had a productive, but very long and tiring, night in the studio yesterday.

Regular tanned, rested and ready posting resumes on the morrow.

Your Wednesday Moment of Surprisingly Way Cool

So we had a lot of fun doing Capt. Al's intertube radio show yesterday -- the theme being a tribute to tribute albums. (I'll post a link to the audio tomorrow).

Played this one -- from a 2004 Warren Zevon homage -- which I hadn't heard since the thing came out, and had forgotten how unsucky it is. In fact, it's pretty great.



I mean, say what you will about Sandler, but he gets it.

That's Waddy Wachtel on guitar, by the way, and Mick Fleetwood on drums.

Programming Notes From All Over

So later today yours truly is going to be the guest on friend of PowerPop Capt. Al's intertube radio show Lost at Sea over at Area 24 Radio.

The broadcast starts at 12pm New York City time (EST) and it can be accessed by clicking on the Listen Now! button HERE.

Here's a clue to the theme of the show...



...and I strongly doubt Captain Al will get it.

If you do, however, you win a coveted PowerPop No Prize. So e-mail us at ssimels@gmail.com and we'll talk.

Wails From the Crypt

Long-time readers are perhaps aware that your humble scribe has toiled, off and on since high school, in a garage band (more accurately a basement band) known under a variety of names but mostly as The Weasels.

What they may not know, however, is that having, of late, a surfeit of time on my hands, I have been engaged recently in compiling an actual CD -- to be entitled Let There Be Weasels: Greatest Hits 1973-2016 -- and that, to that end, I and some technical professionals have been restoring, to the best of our meager ability, the various home recordings and el cheapo music videos in our poorly maintained multi-media vaults.

Here's one we just sort of finished -- the official promo film for our classic 1977 or 1978 rocker "Sweet Geraldine." Now with a genuine stereo audio track!!!



BTW, in case you were wondering, the guy singing -- the song's composer Glenn Leeds -- is doing hilariously over-the-top impressions of the other guys in the band. And yes, the one with the makeup is supposed to be me.

Friday 23 Revisited

From the incredibly great Willie Nile's killler new album of Dylan covers - please enjoy his fabulous Byrds Meets the Ramones version of "Blowin' in the Wind."

You can -- and should -- order Positively Bob, which drops (as the kids say) today over at Amazon HERE.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Closed for Monkey Business

Regular -- apolitical, BTW -- postings resume on the morrow.

Your Tuesday Moment of Words Fail Me: Special Beat the Devil Edition

From who the fuck knows when, although possibly 2017, please enjoy (yeah, right) The Jay Skekulow Band and...jeebus fuck, I can't go on. It's a Boston song, and it's not Boston's fault.

The Jay Sekulow band was founded by Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice and includes an all-star cast: John Elefante former lead singer of Kansas, John Schlitt of Petra, Mark Townsend of DC Talk, Dr. Steve Guthrie, Marco Pangallo, and Scott Kirkman. Together they play songs that often resonate with the work and mission of the ACLJ. All these men above are Messianic-Christians and Pro-Israel-Yisrael / Pro-Zionism / Pro-USA!!

I really don't know how to say this, er, politely, but everybody in this band who isn't that fascist shitheel Jay Sekulow -- an evil sonofabitch who made his TV bones shilling for Pat Robertson on The 700 Club -- deserves to rot in hell along with him.

Your Monday Moment of Atonal Groaning*

From the Pathe Archives, via Charlie Pierce:

Here's Marlene Dietrich, singing in Russia. This is not to be confused with singing about Russia, which I suspect will be a serious choral work in a few weeks.

BTW, apparently, Burt Bacharach was the musical director on this, which is pretty cool.

*[h/t my late Stereo Review colleague Noel Coppage, who coined that phrase to describe Dietrich's inimitable...er...vocal stylings.]

The Father of Us All

So our good pal Sal Nunziato, proprietor of the great BURNING WOOD blog mentioned the other day that Chuck Berry's posthumous album was quite wonderful.

And because I trust his taste, I sprung for the album.

Well, he was right.

Words fail me, but here's "Dutchman" -- my favorite track.



Jeebus fuck -- the cat was 90 when he wrote/recorded this. And it's the best short story I've heard this year.

BTW -- Chuck's "Too Much Monkey Business," from 1956, is the first rap record.



And anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Closed for Monkey Business

Had a long, productive but exhausting, night in the studio yesterday.

Regular extremely peppy posting resumes on the morrow.

Obviously I'm Gonna Have to Re-Read Poe's "William Wilson"

Apparently I've got a genuine doppelganger in a band in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

That guy in the center really looks like some asshole whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels.

Or else I'm somehow in a trance and moonlighting as a member of THE PLEASURE PILOTS

Those guys are actually pretty good, thank god, as this cover of Roy Montrell's New Orleans r&b classic "That Mellow Saxophone" proves.



Still -- I'm sort of freaked out by the resemblance.

[h/t WGG]

Your Tuesday Moment of My Bucket List

From 1988, please enjoy the transplendent Roseanne Cash and her hit version of John Stewart's brilliant "Runaway Train."



Still my favorite of her singles, although she's made more great records than most of us have had hot meals; how I've never gotten around to seeing her in person is beyond me.

And yes, I will concede that I hate the gated 80s drum sound on this song, but in this case it's not a deal breaker.

Your Monday Moment of My Bucket List

From 1984, please enjoy the incredibly great Los Lobos and the (sort of) title track from their debut LP How Will the Wolf Survive?.



I can't believe I've never seen these guys live; I must have listened to the album that video is from a gazillion times back in the day, and they have lots of other stuff just as good, too. In any case, next time they're in the NYC area, I'm getting tickets, or I'll know the reason why.

I should also add, in the interest of full disclosure, that it now dawns on me that -- consciously or unconsciously -- a certain band featuring an asshole bass player whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels probably lifted stuff from LL on more than once occasion.

Don't Get Your Knickers in a Twist

And speaking, as we were yesterday, of a couple of guys in Argent, I had forgotten how utterly gorgeous this song from their eponymous debut album is.



Seriously -- that could have been on a Zombies album. Spinetinglingly good.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

There's Probably a Beavis and Butt-Head Joke Here, But I Don't Have the Energy to Make It

From 1964, please enjoy The Roulettes and their how the hell did they think a song with this title was going to get on American radio "Tell Tale Tit."



Two of the guys in this band went on to record the original hit version of "Concrete and Clay" and -- much later -- join Argent and do lots of other cool stuff. I'm bringing it up, however, because an insane crackpot anti-Semite piece of shit I enjoy making fun of thinks it's beneath him.

Guess Who?

Hint: They were talking to Toby Goldstein in CREEM in 1979.

I guessed Frank Zappa, BTW.

Closed for Monkey Business

Some guy at Facebook is mad at me because reviews -- not by me -- that ran in the Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review during my tenure ruined his childhood. I am actually not kidding about this.

Hopefully inoffensive postings (in penance) will resume here on the morrow.

Positively Monday

Went to see the fabulous Willie Nile yesterday at an afternoon listening soiree and unplugged mini-concert for his forthcoming album of Bob Dylan covers...

...and I gotta tell you, I haven't been to such a great party in ages. Here's the first video from the album, shot at the same stygian downtown joint (two blocks up from the departed CBGBs) where yesterday's festivities took place. And if this doesn't make you smile, there's no hope for you.



The rest of the record, frankly, is even better, including a Ramones Meet the Byrds version of "Blowin' in the Wind" that must be heard to be believed. Positively Bob drops, as the kids say, on June 23, but you can -- and very definitely should -- pre-order it at Amazon over HERE.

Have I mentioned that it was a truly memorable afternoon? Thanks, Willie!!!

Your Friday Moment of I'm a Little Verklempt

Ace critic Dave Lifton, bless his rock-and-roll heart, gets it.

There’s something about power pop that even albums that are 22 years old can sound as if they’ve been recorded yesterday. That’s definitely the case with Fire Lane, a 1995 album from Gerry Devine and the Hi-Beams that has just been reissued.

You can read the rest of the review over at POPDOSE.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Closed for Monkey Business

Had a long, highly productive, but ultimately exhausting night in the recording studio yesterday.

Regular snazzily dressed and peppy postings resume tomorrow.