Post-Mortem Juke Box

[whippoorwill]

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?

Well I figured since he died and he was a singer, he might fit in here

I never heard of him either

[Frayed Knot]

You know who else never heard of him? His spelling teacher.

[whippoorwill]

Lolol. Maybe Juice World spelled correctly was already taken

[Edgy MD]

A fair-thee-well to Neil Innes, purveyor of history's greatest Beatles-songs-that-aren't-Beatles-songs.

[Edgy MD]

For the first time since, like, 1978, somebody else is the king, or queen, of all drummers on earth.

[kcmets]

[41Forever]

Really bummed about Neil Peart's passing. I know the band had "retired," but there was always a chance of a one-off song of performance. Now we know for sure it will never happen.

I can't think of too many Rush albums that have filler songs on them to pad out the release. I love a lot of songs that have never got much airplay and rarely made it into concert set lists. (Not saying never been played live, just not as often as the songs that became staples.)

I made a Spotify playlist of my fave Rush deep cuts.

1) Big Wheel, from Roll the Bones
2) Everyday Glory, from Counterparts
3) The Wreckers, from Clockwork Angels
4) Totem, from Test for Echo
5) Cold Fire, from Counterparts
6) Prime Mover, from Hold Your Fire
7) How it Is, from Vapor Trails
8) Earthshine, from Vapor Trails
9) Superconductor, from Presto
10) Presto, from Presto
11) The Garden, from Clockwork Angels
12) Workin' them Angels, from Snakes and Arrows
13) We Hold On, from Snakes and Arrows
14) Grand Designs, from Power Windows
15) Emotion Detector, from Power Windows
16) In the End, from Fly By Night
17) Entre Nous, from Permanent Waves
18) Ghost of a Chance, from Roll the Bones
19) Anagram, from Presto
20) Open Secrets, from Hold Your Fire
21) Afterimage, from Grace Under Pressure
22) Kid Gloves, from Grace Under Pressure
23) Analog Kid, from Signals
24) Chemistry, from Signals
25) Ceiling Unlimited, from Vapor Trails
26) The Camera Eye, from Moving Pictures
27) Witch Hunt, from Moving Pictures
28) The Fountain of Lamneth, from Caress of Steel
29) Carve Away the Stone," from Test for Echo
30) The Color of Right, from Test for Echo

and, as a bonus

31 Grace to Grace, from Geddy's solo album

[Fman99]

Thanks. I made a playlist of most of these from my own collection to listen to at work today. (I don't have the Clockwork Angels album but I have the others). Digging into it now.

[kcmets]

I have about a dozen of their 19-20 albums, will have to fix that this flea market
season. Listened to Counterparts yesterday, my favorite from that era.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I think Rush got much better once they stopped writing 20 minute science fiction songs and tried to be contemporary virtuosos. The issue for me was that the old-school fans were already devoted to 2112 and Hemispheres and their biggest fans derisively welcomed the more accessible stuff. They were also a cult whose membership basically sat atop Mount Geddy and looked down at anyone they felt wasn't proficient, isolating themselves. It was hard to be a casual fan.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Who the fuck could listen to that Geddy? He sounds like a cat in heat on 78rpm. Ouch. My ears. Take the munchkins "Follow the yellow brick road". Speed it up by like a factor of two or three. That's Rush.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Geddy evidently developed his signature welp to be heard over all the noise they made in the early years.

Like I said IMO they got considerably better once they stopped trying to be the heaviest, loudest and deepest group out there. What impresses me about Rush was that they specifically learned from a trio that was their polar opposite, the Police: also terrific musicians, but in service of tight, spare compositions stripped of all excess.

Geddy's vox on the later albums is considerably less irritating if not as dramatic.

[41Forever]

I like all Rush's stuff, but agree that the stuff I like best is from the period with the shorter songs and less grandiose subjects.

My buddy and I ranked the band's albums as blog posts as we led up to the R-40 tour, which was amazing. For each album, we looked at the music, but also what was going on at the time and what made the album special to us. In preparation, I'd listen to each during my hour commute, and it was nice to pull out the old CDs and rediscover the music. Some had certainly aged better than others, but a lot of memories regardless.

We each made our own lists. These are only the top 10s. These are also just the studio albums.

1) Moving Pictures (both of us)
2) Hold Your Fire (41F), Presto (buddy)
3) Permanent Waves, Signals
4) Roll the Bones, Permanent Waves
5) Power Windows, Roll the Bones
6) Test For Echo, Grace Under Pressure
7) Signals, Farewell to Kings
8) Counterparts, Hemispheres
9) Hemispheres, Test For Echo
10) Presto, Power Windows

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The other thing about Rush was that they knew it was proto-alt tribal suburban white teenage boy geeks who buttered their bread and they gave 'em what they wanted: Album-cover upskirts! And the "My Generation" of the 1980s

[Frayed Knot]

WFUV's Saturday afternoon 'Mixed Bag' show w/host Don McGee (big baseball and NYM fan) noted the passing of Roger Kahn and toasted him with a musical set of:
- I USED TO BE A BROOKLYN DODGER -- Dion
- DID YOU SEE JACKIE ROBINSON HIT THAT BALL -- Count Basie
and, of course, BOYS OF SUMMER although, instead of Don Henley, he went with a cover version by Scottish-born singer K T (Kate Victoria) Tunstall

[Edgy MD]

Here's a big hit from 1978.

[Frayed Knot]

RIP Joseph Shabalala


The story behind this song is that, upon first being introduced to Ladysmith Black Mambazo music, Paul Simon was every bit as intimidated to meet Joseph Shabalala as you would assume it would be the other way around.
But after finally meeting the two apparently hit if off immediately and Simon left with a promise to write 'Ladysmith' a song which they could do whatever they wanted with it: record it, change it, trash it, whatever.
The result was HOMELESS which also appeared on Simon's GRACELAND album. The two remained friends thereafter. Simon was, Shabalala later explained, the first white man I ever hugged.





And from Paul Simon's 2007 'Gershwin Prize' ceremony in Washington DC
Too bad no one seems to be having any fun on this one.

[Edgy MD]

In 1994-ish, Spike Lee presented a PBS show called Do It A Capella, featuring Ladysmith, as well as several other a capella acts doing their thing. This highlight featured Shabalala and LBM teaming up with The Mint Juleps — an all-female London-based act — in bringing everybody's favorite South African song back to its roots.

[Edgy MD]

New Toronto Blue Jays catcher Caleb Joseph gets his Canada on.

[G-Fafif]

A voice like a warm blanket.

[Edgy MD]

Alan Merrill wrote an instantly digestible piece of power pop that knocked out all the windows in the UK, but didn't do so great on the charts there and did nothing in the US. But an 18-year-old Runaway on tour in the UK at the time saw it on TV and dug it, and would give the song a second chance a few years later.



Alan Merrill, whose name made him sound like a stealth member of The Osmonds, 69, felled by the Coronavirus pandemic. He was, sadly, the last surviving Arrow. I hope they all made some sweet $ out of Joan Jett residuals.

[Fman99]

Never knew that song was a cover. How do ya like that.

[Edgy MD]

There was this really big British movement from 1970 to 1977 of songs that slotted somewhere between bubblegum and glam rock, with big marching beats, often produced by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, but this and others were produced by Mickie Most. The US charts only tasted 20-25% of these tracks which were all over the place in Britian.

While punk pretty much ended their reign in Britain, Joan (being a teenager) was a big fan and saw a punk ethic within these records, in how they went right to the hook. Also, "'That don't matter,' he said, ''cuz it's all the same'," is a pretty punk attitude.

So the punk that made it here was often a lot more candy-flavored than the Britpunk, as it was drawing from a power pop goldmine also.

[ashie62]

English punk was powered by speed & LSD. The English press got on Thunders and the Heartbreakers for bringing heroin over on the Anarchy Tour. Of the 39 Anarchy tour gigs, the Pistols played only 6. Heartbreakers only 6. Pistols and The Damned showing solidarity when gigs were canceled due to the appearance of the Heartbreakers

Spot on about Joan Jett's musical segue. Alan Merrill could have been Bon Scott in Bon's first kiddy band

While I'm at it, "The Bay City Rollers" were punk..so..sooo..there...

[G-Fafif]

Better than the news today, oh boy.