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...

Before there were The Runaways, The Go-Gos, or The Bangles there was Fanny, the first all female rock band signed to a major label. They played hard rock 'n roll the way men do: with power and guts. Fanny hailed from California but they were more popular in the U. K. where they were eventually banned from playing in the London Palladium for being too sexy. (By today's standards they dressed like nuns). The band consisted of June Millington on vocals and guitar with her sister Jean on bass. They were joined by Nickey Barclay on keyboards and Alice de Buhr on drums. Originally named Wild Honey, George Harrison suggested to producer Richard Perry that he change the group's name to Fanny, a word with much filthier connotations in Europe than it has in America. Unfortunately, the group didn't know this. Fanny Hill , the ladies' third LP, was taken seriously by Warner Brothers. The sessions were produced by Perry who also worked with Harry Nilsson, Ringo Star...

Hall & Oates have always been an enigma. To this day they remain an immensely talented duo capable of some of the greatest white R&B vocal harmonies ever put down on vinyl. Yet during their heyday of the 80s, when they surpassed the Everly Brothers as the biggest selling duo in history, they succumbed, just like everyone else, to the excesses of the synthesizer. To me, during their hitmaking years they often sounded more like a new wave act than one playing blue-eyed soul while tallying up a ton of hits that included rock standards such as "Kiss on My List, "You Make My Dreams," "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do), "Maneater," "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," and many more. Don't misunderstand me. They're good songs. It's just that the 80s production values washed most of the urban grit out of their arrangements. More recently, when H & O have performed the same songs properly with a drummer that isn'...

Danny Seraphine served as the drummer for Chicago from 1967 to 1990. He may not be one of the more famous drummers in rock 'n roll history but he is definitely on the list of the most respected skin beaters of the classic rock era. Twenty years after the band dismissed him amid great acrimony he and collaborator Adam Mitchell offer us Street Player: My Chicago Story , a 281 page autobiography that also doubles as a history of this outstanding rock septet. As many celebrity memoirs do these days, Seraphine's book does not start at the beginning. Instead it opens with a tragedy that had a profound effect on his life and on the lives of all of his bandmates: the unexpected death of guitarist Terry Kath. Kath's demise is discussed in more detail later in the book but before that sad chapter Seraphine takes you back to his childhood, to his ethnic Italian upbringing in the city his band was named for, and how he became a delinquent. He dropped out of high school and joine...

The mysterious Luke and Mitch Meseke, who comprise the duo Woozy Viper, are back with more tunes that sound as if it they were recorded in their bedroom on a small cassette recorder.  If your mind conjures up images of early period Kinks (as it should easily do on "She's Mine") and 60s garage rock with even muddier production standards then usual, you'll understand Woozy Viper. The sparse sound and arrangements of Rock & Roll are quite similar to their virtually unknown eponymous debut of 2009 that is a very enjoyable excursion into the land of unpretentious rock and strange lyrics. Woozy Viper's juvenile side comes through on the very short acoustic romp "Party Town U.S.A." in which the lyrics barely say anything more than "There's a party going on, gonna have so much fun." I'm certain the Mesekes' anger toward a certain girl who broke their hearts on "I Want to Strangle You" is a joke.  If it isn't the boy...

Toe Tappin' Jazz , released near the end of 2009, is the most outstanding new jazz CD I've heard in many years. The band leader is guitarist Jay Geils, formerly known as J. Geils, founder of Boston's famous party band of the 70s and 80s whose biggest hits were "Lookin' For a Love," "Give It To Me," "Must of Got Lost," "Centerfold," and "Love Stinks." Who knew the hard-rocking Geils had this much love for jazz in his heart? The disc is the former rocker's second jazz release (the first one is Jay Geils Plays Jazz ) and both have received high praise from the few people who have heard them.  If not online Geils' little gem is hard to find.  I only stumbled across it at a souvenir shop's CD kiosk while on vacation in Lennox, MA this past summer. The music featured on Toe Tappin' Jazz is nothing fancy, nothing experimental.  It's just superbly played traditional jazz with the emphasis on melody and song...