Friday, September 18, 2009

The "Nose To The Grindstone" Friday Random Ten

Between work and school, it's been a busy week. I started my "clincials"-- work in a hospital-- yesterday. I've started a post with my reflections on the first month of school. If I have a chance, I'll finish it and post it tonight. Until then, I've got a bunch of studying to do.

1. The Bells of Rhymney- The Byrds
2. Killing An Arab- The Cure
3. Video Killed the Radio Star- The Buggles
4. Open Your Eyes- The Nazz
5. Stealin' At 7-11-- Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
6. Wanted Man- Johnny Cash
7. Harry Rag- The Kinks
8. She Loves To Be In Love- Charlie
9. Black Diamond- YOSHIKI
10. Ooh La La- The Faces


Notes:
1. The Byrds were one of the only groups that really successfully pulled off "folk rock." This song was a prime example.
2. The Cure's first hit single, based on an Albert Camus short story, still sounds great.
3. My daughter loves eighties music, and this is one of her favorites.
4. Todd Rundgren's early Philly group made the "Nuggets" cut with this one. Lots of Beatles influence here.
5. "After that beer, we were feelin' fine/Let's go back to the store and steal some wine!"
6. Great cover of a Bob Dylan song from the "Live At San Quentin" album.
7. It seems like I discover a couple more great Kinks songs every year. This was one of this year's.
8. These guys had a great album called "Lines" in the late seventies. This is my favorite song from that one.
9. From the fabulous "Kiss My Ass" cd of inspired and original KISS covers.
10. First heard this one in "Rushmore," a movie I'm pretty ambivalent about. I've been delving into old Faces and Small Faces these days.

6 comments:

SamuraiFrog said...

I love the Faces and Small Faces. I discovered "Ooh La La" the same way, funnily enough--didn't like the movie, but the soundtrack is really good.

Johnny Yen said...

Funny-- I was thinking of you a couple of days ago; I just discovered the Faces' song "My Way of Giving" (from Little Steven's Underground Garage) and heard Chris Farlowe's excellent version of it a couple of days ago on the same station.

Yeah, I didn't like the movie either-- my friend Luz pegged it-- you just couldn't muster up any sympathy for the main character. I did love Anderson's movie "The Royal Tenenbaums" though.

Amy Guth said...

Love love that Cure song. Most all of their stuff from around then, really. Good pick.

Erik Donald France said...

I also love the first Cure album, my fave of theirs. It's eerily cool.

Wes Anderson is an odd one. I liked Bottle Rocket, esp. the use of Rolling Stones psychedelia. The others seem weird for weird's sake.

Good luck with the studying and all!

Churlita said...

I love Todd Rundgren. I know some people don't. but I think he's great.

jazman said...

Hey Johnny...it's "Open My Eyes".

And it's the most fantastic piece of British psychedelia inspired power pop ever written, IMNSHO. Of course, Todd Rundgren was a short term personal saviour of mine some time ago, so I may be biased.