Cockeyed Absurdist

Last Call! You Don't have to go home but you can't stay here...

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 06:54:33 -0800

289. Charlie Daniels Band "Trudy" In record-geek conversations I've had over the years, plenty of groups have been nominated as 'The World's Greatest Bar Band,': George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Skynyrd. I don't know what the answer is, but I...

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The Joys Of Pure Mystery

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 10:33:32 -0800

290. Ly-Dells "Three Little Monkeys" This is one of the few songs on this list that I can tell you next to nothing about. I must've found it p2ping. I probably dug the group name and I'm a sucker for songs that mention monkeys. After hearing th...

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The World We Live In

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:26:44 -0800

291. James McMurtry "Levelland" This is pretty much the best song yet about living in George W. Bush's 'Red State' America. James McMurtry is the son of Pulitzer Prize winning author Larry McMurtry and he shares his father's eye for telling det...

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Facing doom with dignity

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 15:09:11 -0800

292. Geechie Wiley "Last Kind Word Blues" The standard definition of 'blues' to the uninitiated is 'sad music.' Even a cursory examination of self-proclaimed blues music could show you that it runs the gamut of human emotion as much as any othe...

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Warning: May Cause Tooth Decay

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 15:38:38 -0800

293. El Chords "Peppermint Stick" 294. Archies "Bang Shang A Lang" Today you get a thematically linked doubleheader, cats and kittens, with a soft candy center, as it were. First, the Archies, the animated face of that most loathed genre-b...

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The Joys Of Misinterpretation

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 15:37:20 -0800

295. Dion "Lookin' For The Heart Of Saturday Night" Dion, the aging king of Bronx Italian Doo-Wop heard Tom Waits acoustic-based ode to barroom melancholy and decided that what it really was was an upbeat strutter. And, somehow he makes it work...

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Can't forget (the forgotten) Motor City

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 17:22:38 -0800

296. Dirtbombs. "Livin' For The City" Musically speaking, Detroit, Michigan has two major legacies to contend with: the smooth soul of Motown Records and the gritty, industrial (yet tellingly still R&B-inflected) protopunk of the Stooges, MC5, A...

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Some ultraviolence for your holiday pleasure...

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:51:44 -0800

297. Rose Tattoo "The Butcher And Fast Eddie" Australia in the late 1970's and early 80's was a breeding ground for tough hard rock. One group, a rowdy bunch from Sydney led by a short tattoo covered guy with a shaved head, with the ominous nam...

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This is our first exercise in what I call 'Genre Whiplash.' It'll be happening quite a bit.

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 11:21:07 -0800

298. Eternals "Babalu's Wedding Day" From the New Wave of British Heavy Metal we take a sharp turn into the land of Doo-Wop. In the early days of rock and roll, one of the big criticism that it's enemies levelled at it was that it was nothing b...

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From the belly of the beast...

nobody@vox.com(jonmc) — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:03:00 -0800

299. Bruce Dickinson "Tattooed Millionaire" After punk rock hit, old fashioned heavy metal of the Deep Purple/Black Sabbath school found itself in a quandary. It could either adapt or find itself trapped in a musical La Brea Tarpit. So a moveme...

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