The Crane Pool Forum

Co-written by Dennis Wilson and The Captain.



Carl & the Passions: So Tough is considered to be uneven by many but it's a favorite of Elton John's, and this album-closer grows sublime toward the end.

Sweet song, little sappy, from a really uneven album that's never made any sense to me. Why disguise the band as another act when you're just trying to re-establish yourself? It's not like they were Sgt. Pepper here.

RIP Darryl Dragon.

Neil Young's ex-wife also died today

'Growing up and playing [drums] along with the radio to records by Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, I was shattered to later learn that my six favorite drummers were all Hal Blaine' -- Neil Peart


Caught a few of these on the radio via a mini-tribute to Blaine this week






And last, but certainly not least - because, to quote George Patton (or at least the movie version of him) 'God help me but I do love it so'

Sooner or later, your legs give way, you hit the ground. So it goes today for Ranking Roger, co-frontman with Dave Wakeling of both the legendary two-toners The English Beat (aka The Beat) and General Public. A native Brit of Santa Lucian parents, Roger's singing and toasting would become a signature of the band and a great influence on the second-wave ska bands to follow. He sat in with the Clash on occasion too.

And when he wasn't singing, he was usually running around the venue and upstaging the band, which made him fabulously fit into middle age. In latter years, he fronted The Beat in Europe, while Wakeling fronted The English Beat in the US, which was all wrong.

He was only 56, but had been recovering from brain cancer surgery when lung cancer caught up with him.

We'll always have The US Festival.

Oh, drat! RIP.

Yeah they were fun and like, really exotic for white suburban kids in the US

It's not like there's, like, beaucoup evidence of that in the US Festival video, though.

(On edit: Six months later, I have no idea what this meant.)

The Cars were actually the fourth band Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr had together. The shock that he was 75 is rooted in the reality that they were longtime members of scenes in Cleveland and Boston before The Cars finally broke when Ric was about 35. Never let them tell you it's too late, kids.

It was weird that there were songs Ric sang and songs Ben sang, but they never sang double leads for the Cars like John and Paul or harmonic leads like Phil and Don. This wasn't always so, as shown on this sparkling 1974 duet of Buddy Holly's "Every Day," in which they start out together before turning it into harmony on the second verse.

Saw the Cars 11/22/78 at the Morris Stage . They opened for Cheap Trick on the Heaven Tonight tour. I, and I believe most of the 2000 or so there had not heard of the Cars. The Cars had just released their own album.

The big tall guy with the black suit and shades sang Let the Good times Roll to open the set

Greg Hawkes was weaving through the melody and it felt very hypnotic and new.

I truly believe the Cars blew away Cheap Trick that night. I feel fortunate to have seem them so early. Surprised to see now Ocasek was already 29 then. Wow, r.i.p my good man

ashie62 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 2:49 pm Saw the Cars 11/22/78 at the Morris Stage ... Surprised to see now Ocasek was already 29 then.

More like 34 or 35, seeing as how his birth year is listed variously as 1943 or 1944

I was on a biz trip and very busy so didn't have a chance to freak out on social media about Ocasek.

I'd been listening to PANORAMA lately, because as great as the first 2 records are, I feel like I know them so well. I never listen to HEARTBEAT CITY or DOOR TO DOOR.

"Touch & Go" is the one everyone remembers from that platter and the only one you hear anymore; "Don't Tell Me No" was the biggest hit (I think) but this was the first track I remember hearing from it, one of the rawkier Cars tunes

Roxette goes shabby-chic with one of the all-time great cheesy video sets.

Bonus points for the exposed wiring.

A little too fake-sounding (drums, vocal effects +++) but the song is insanely catchy, like a harder edged Abba

I'm pretty sure Sweden's biggest export is hookz.

Marie has the confidence to, at one point, shout the name of the band as a lyric. “ROXETTE!” indeed.

Don’t forget Juice Wrld, just 21, and it sounds like it was another drug tragedy

G-Fafif wrote: ↑Tue Dec 10, 2019 7:18 pm https://youtu.be/xCorJG9mubk

Marie has the confidence to, at one point, shout the name of the band as a lyric. “ROXETTE!” indeed.

There's nobody in the driver's seat of that sports car. Somehow, they're steering it with their butts.

I have absolutely zero memory of her or Roxette

I was not a fan of Roxette, but I do remember they were on the Pretty Woman soundtrack with Bowie, Jane Wiedlin, Roy Orbison, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rik Ocasek's kid doing a cover of Iggy Pop's cover of Real Wild Child.

I remember wearing out the cassette of that soundtrack as a 15 year old in the summer of 1990. It had to been one of the last cassettes I owned. If I had owned it on CD, I likely would have skipped over the Roxette song (and some others), but cassettes did not offer that luxury.

Still, RIP. Gone too soon.

Could definitely use one of these right now, preferably with deGrom pitching at 1:10.

Holy sheet, that song references "Green Tambourine"!

whippoorwill wrote: ↑Wed Dec 11, 2019 8:40 am Don’t forget Juice Wrld, just 21, and it sounds like it was another drug tragedy

Can't really forget someone I never heard of or cared to find out about.

I don't mean to be sarcastic, and this is the juke box thread rather than the Guess Who Died? thread, but isn't it something of a tragedy already that the guy had to adopt a name that sounds like a mall kiosk in order to be marketable?

I was saying the exact same thing to my friend Orange Julius just the other day.

Back on point, passing last week at 92 was singer/saxophonist/bandleader/rock 'n' roll pioneer Jimmy Cavallo.

He wasn't destined to achieve the legend status of his contemporaries, because almost every one of his songs was a rock 'n' roll song about how everybody should rock 'n' roll, so when it came to pass that the genre was more than a passing fad, his records weren't exactly going to be the ones that folks carried forward.



Still he never stopped rocking and sort of positioned himself as an ambassador from the dawn of rock 'n' roll into our latter-day shitshow of a society, still bringing it into his 10th decade, and still getting the girlies on the floor — which is sort of the true test, isn't it?