Song Stuck In My Head

I apparently missed Halloween so here's a second post on 10/31. Bruce put this song out in '07 on Halloween, only online and never releasd it commercially or played it live. The Jersey Devil is a real thing (or a myyth), a monster that lives in the woods of South Jersey who was the unwanted child of Mother Leeds, a witch whose 13th kid was born as a creature with hooves, claws, bat's wings, a goat's head and whose father was the Devil himself. Local clergymen tried to exorcise. Like Big Foot, many people have seen the Jersey Devil. This is a great song and video, kind of like Bruce meets later-era Tom Waits with a Tom Morello element and dark production. Definitely not your parents' Bruce Springsteen.

This album changed my life. Already fully immersed in the Blues from my earliest memories, in the '90s got into Jazz. Reconnected with one of my oldest and best friend's younger brother, David, who's a Jazz guy. We were living down the street in Chicago and both had Mon.-Thurs. traveling jobs. We literally bumped into each other one night in Michigan. Dave slapped me on the shoulder from behind and I thought some Grand Rapids guy thinks I'm looking at his girlfriend or something. I stood up ready for a fight and instead got a big smile and hug from Dave. We had a proper session at that joint which had dollar beers and burgers on Wednesday night. So in Chicago every Thursday night Dave and I would get home and hang at his place on Pierce St., sip good scotch and listen to old Jazz. Great conversations, great music.

There are no guilty pleasures in art. Before "Sister Christian" came out, this song's energy and cheesy lyrics grabbed me as a kid. Brad Gillis would go on to replace the tragically dead Randy Rhoads as the guitarist in Ozzy's band and killed it on Ozzy's first post-Sabbath album, recorded live at the Ritz in NYC. Singer/bassist Jack Blades would go on to form the "super group" Damn Yankees. Drummer Kelly Keagy, no idea what happened to him but I always thought he kinda looked like Larry from Three's Company.

Missing an old friend who was quietly a legend in the rock & roll world. God bless you, Shawn. And then you were gone. I'll keep the memories and conversations to myself.

I know very little if anything about this artist. This song was everywhere in junior high ('83-85), and all over MTV back when the network was mostly about playing music videos. During my DJ career of the '90s through 2013 or so, this was on the short list of songs that would always get people out on the dance floor. There was a handful of songs that were "money in the bank" that way, and Relax was one of them.

I couldn't get enough of this song as a kid. Lightfoot passed away this May. Just read an article about how meticulously he researched the story to be 100% accurate as he saw it as a documentary song. The 730-foot long and 39-foot tall ship, which for 18 years hauled iron ore between Wisconsin, Minnesota, Detroit, and Toledo, was sunk in 1975, likely by 25+-foot waves but the actual cause was never determined. The most startling fact is the ship which weighed 20,000 lbs. empty was carrying 26,000 lbs. of cargo as well as the 29-person crew, all of whom periled. No bodies and only a little of the wreckage were ever recovered. Not exactly the "feel-good song of the summer" but a great song delivered in Mr. Lightfoot's powerfully earnest voice, and a history worth looking up.

This haunting song is a favorite of mine. Done by Mark Lanegan (RIP, Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age, Gutter Twins, amazing solo career) and Isobel Campbell (ex Belle & Sebastian). What an unlikely and absolutely beautiful artistic pairing. Haven't had the priviege of seeing Ms. Campbell live, but got to catch Mark live a few times in his various incarnations and he was a nice fellow the couple times we met. What a great couple of records Mark and Isobel did.

When Uncle Eddy was a school teacher in the early '70s, he gave his students a project to present any kind of art to the class. A troubled kid played this version of this song and rocked out to it. The principal was mortified. Uncle Eddy was the kind of radical liberal hippie teacher the school administrators didn't particularly care for. Soon after, he left the profession for a career in the petroleum industry. I played it on my weekly radio show on WRRG, got officially slapped on the wrist but with an unofficial "right on, man" from my station manager, and it was given a Do Not Play sticker. So my godfather and I both got in a little trouble over this song! In 2004, the MC5 reunited and played the Metro while Uncle Eddy was in town for his annual Chicago BluesFest trip. Filling in for the long-deceased singer Rob Tyner were Evan Dando (Lemonheads) and Mark Arm (Mudhoney). And filling in for the also deceased Fred "Sonic" Smith (Patti's husband)

Listened to a great interview this morning with Rob Halford on the Marc Maron WTF podcast, another with Joan Baez on the same pod, and was reminded what a nice cover Priest did of her song "Diamonds and Rust." This live version really shows the depth and breadth of this great band, and Halford's vocal range.

Just realized while watching Yellowstone that I happen to be wearing the t-shirt I got while camping there for a week ten years ago with my old dog, Champ. It was our last hurrah before he passed. We hiked all the trails, roasted marshmallows and sausages, hit all the lakes and waterfalls, slept together in the tent, had the greatest week a man and his dog could ever have. When he passed shortly thereafter, I put together this montage to honor the life we had together, 15 of his 17 years in Chicago and Seattle. It's set to this song by one of my favorite artists who had the same love for his dog as I had and will always have for Champ. Thanks to the Skorupa family for letting me take him to Seattle. When he died, so did part of me, but life wouldn't have ever been the same without him. Some of the photos in this video are from that Yellowstone trip.

Among my favorite concert memories is having seen AC/CD a few times in the mid-80s with my brother and friends Jake and Ryan. We lived in Mass. but would go see them at the Providence Civic Center in Rhode Island where they could fire the canons during this song (no indoor pyro in the Bay State). This live version perfectly captures the energy and flow of the song, its tension/release/explosiveness, the stage antics of Angus Young, the strong presence of Brian Johnson, not to mention the moments everyone was waiting for: "FIRE! (BOOM!) WE SALUTE YOU!"

I was talking with my cousins earlier about Riot Fest Chicago 2013, absolutely the greatest festival I've ever been to and the last one I've been to as an attendee. There, I got to see many of my favorite artists for the first and in most cases only time, and exposed to others like this one. This song is short but it hits me right in the feels.

If you wrestled in the later 80s, you know this song from the movie Vision Quest. My friend Matt and I wrestled for different schools but lived in the same city. Wrestling is a community, so naturally as "mat rats" during the off-season on the nights when our local clubs weren't holding practices, aside from going to the weekly USA Wrestling tourneys and being on the Jr. Olympic Team together, we'd break into the public high school, roll out the mats, work out moves, situational wrestling, and put everything back like nothing ever happened. We could and should have been arrested. We also discussed academia, what each would want to major in and why, which schools to pursue those things, etc. Inseperable in high school and recently on the phone after too many years (thanks for reaching out, Matt), we were texting earlier. If wrestling is how we met in the first place and it was the '80s, that's why I chose this song today.

A friend went to see the Wu-Tang Clan last night and it reminded me of this song one of their members, Method Man, put out in 2006. It made the year-end music round-up CD I used to make and send to friends & family at Christmastime for many years. I'm not the biggest hip hop guy in the world, but good is good and this song is what kids call a banger.

In the mid-late '80s, legendary J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf used to host an annual radio show on 104.1 WBCN, where was the overnight DJ before joining Geils in the late '60s, called the Houseparty & Fish Fry. I still have a couple of those shows on cassette. Anyway, these shows were funny and the quick-witted jive-talking Wolf aka the Woofa Goofa Momma Toofa, turned me on to a lot great older r&b, including this song. I'll leave you with a joke from the night he played it: one of the on-air guys asked him, "Hey Peter, you know the Great Wall of China?" and Wolf responded, "No, but I do know a pretty good fence in Chicago!"

When Wilco & Billy Bragg collaborated to use the lyrics from Woody Guthrie's notebooks that he never got a chance to write music for and record, it was a special project. They put out two great records worth of that material (Mermaid Avenue Vols. 1 and 2).

Great Chicago band led by the venerable and hilarious Jason Narducy (Verbow, Bob Mould, Superchunk. This song also features Britt Daniel (Spoon) on bass and Jon Wurster (Mountain Goats, Superchunk) on drums.

Another choice inspired by the entire Maloney clan going to see a show together. This was when this song was big. My only beef is the line, "Early morning, Apfril 4th, shots rang out in the Memphis sky." MLK was killed at 6:05pm Memphis time. Bono mjst be talking Irish time. Because it's all about him.

Reminds me of a family trip where all the Maloneys went to Foxboro to see Dylan & the Dead when this song was big in '86 or '87. During the cliched 20-minute drum solo, cousin Paul and I walked a lap around the stadium. Uncle Eddy in his thick Boston accent: "The thing about these guys? They're just a good band."

In honor of one of my best friends who is moving to Phoenix. We just had our last hang as neighbors in Seattle. She brought pizza, chips & queso, and adult beverages. This is her favorite song by her favorite band, also one of mine on both counts.

My dog's name is Ace. My brother's dog's name is Frehley. 'Nuff said.

This is not your fathers' Bruce Springsteen.

Disco doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets. It was the prevailing funk music of the late '70s. I was reminded of the Bee Gees yesterday when seeing an article about some guy posing as Barry Gibb and catfishing a woman out of around $300g. I used to play "Jive Talkin/" at almost all of my DJ gigs. A great transitional song that gets people starting to move toward the end of dinner at a wedding, or early evening at a bar or club.

I recently saw a photo of NFL star Travis Kelce wearing a Wayne's World hat. "Dream Weaver" was featured in the movie, which came out during the impressionable college era. Sometimes a connection to a song is that simple.

I've been choosing to refrain from commenting on the songs to keep my longwindedness out of the way, but on the insistence of cousin Paul and my friend K-Dawg, I'll do 2-3 sentences above each song going forward. Almost always, when someone says "if you like Springsteen, you'll like this." I love Springsteen and almost always, I can't stand the stuff at all. The Gaslight Anthem is a rare exception, maybe because they're not a soundalike artist but one who's influenced not largely by the Boss but from some of his same influences and contemporaries, from r&b to the Clash.