May 28, 2012

A Brief Programming Note

All of the links on my sidebar are drawn from my Google Reader account. Time-tested and viewer-approved, if you will. I won't recommend anything I don't personally read every day. Also, I hate links that aren't up-to-date, so every so often I purge the sidebar of those who haven't posted in a while (say, a month or more). I realize that life sometimes gets in the way, so if you start posting regularly again, you'll probably make a reappearance.

I thought I would introduce a new weekly feature: Musical Mondays. As someone who remembers, and listens to, everything from classic rock to disco to hair metal to Europop to grunge to folk (exception: rap; if I wanted to hear people talk instead of sing, I'd switch to NPR), I like a pretty extensive range of music and intend to share some of it here.

First up: Unless you're a fan of glam rock, David Bowie and/or Def Leppard, you probably don't remember Mott the Hoople and its lead singer, Ian Hunter. Mott's greatest hit was the Bowie-written and produced "All the Young Dudes," but Ian Hunter wrote a number of rock classics, including "Once Bitten Twice Shy" (covered by Great White), "All the Way To Memphis," "Cleveland Rocks" and "Ships" (covered by Barry Manilow [!]--not a half-bad cover either). He also wrote a book (referenced in previous post):  Diary of a Rock n' Roll Star. Dude is over seventy now, and he's still making good music.

This clip is taken from the old, forgotten ABC variety show "Fridays" (definitely SNL-lite). The song, "We Gotta Get Out of Here," is from Ian's double-live album "Welcome to the Club." The lyrics comment on the disco fad, with a sly swipe at the then red-hot Studio 54, which Ian unsurprisingly found empty and pathetic. At any rate, it's just a great rock song. Enjoy.

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