Bloggerhythms

These days it appears that the best way for an artist to score a hit record and get radio airplay is to win American Idol or be a cast member on Glee , yet it wasn't that long ago that no one had ever heard of either TV phenomenon. Now, both shows are proof that popular songs often emerge from the least likely places. The golden age of top 40 radio was also a time when the world found itself listening to hits that were spawned from unusual sources. It was an era when even jingles from TV commercials were turned into 45 RPM records that earned coveted spots on the record charts. One of the best known examples was an old Alka Seltzer commercial that became a smash hit called "No Matter What Shape Your Stomach Is In" by The T-Bones. It peaked at #3, on February 5, 1966. A few years later The New Seekers - an offshoot of Australian folk-poppers, The Seekers, the group who made "Georgy Girl" into a big hit - stole a Coca-Cola commercial and sent ...

Awhile back Bloggerhythms posted capsule reviews of all of the Chicago albums from the Terry Kath era and it turned out to be one of the more enjoyable ventures I’ve ever undertaken for this blog. So today, I’m going to begin the same project for my all time favorite artists, The Beatles. The albums under scrutiny will be the original British versions, because that is the way the group conceived them, and not the ripped up and reconfigured American releases they detested. This series of posts will include all of The Beatles’ official main albums, the two Past Masters sets, Live at the BBC , and the trio of anthologies, everything the Fab Four officially released. Because of the extensive diversity in their catalog the series will be broken into several categories. Today we’ll begin with the very early years that I dubbed Beatlemania 1. Soon to follow will be Beatlemania 2, The Psychedelic Era, The Later Beatles, and After The Beatles. Criticisms of these LPs should be taken onl...

Bloggerhythms has been a fan of Doug Cowen and The Basics ever since the release of their first CD, Bitter/Sweet , back in 2003 and I’m happy to report that one of the Midwest’s very best roots rock bands is still playing and going strong. Rockin’ Town , their latest independent, self-produced CD shows the veteran trio to be at the top of their game and that is because this collection of fourteen songs rocks harder than either their debut or it’s follow-up, Private Drive  (2006). While there are a few songs from those discs that are stronger than the fourteen tracks featured here, Rockin' Town is their best complete package because it's more consistent throughout the entire album. This time around The Basics sound more like 70s hard rockers than a 60s garage band and they are at their very best when kicking butt. The group proved this earlier with the opening tracks from Bitter/Sweet . Both "Does the Bottle Burn," and "Bittersweet Road" should have been...