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.

Cleaning Out the Cobwebs

I've been doing some housekeeping, as you can see. A nice shiny new template and rearranged link lists, among other things. (I downloaded several templates, so if I ever get tired of this one, I can just switch them out.) I added some new blogs and removed those I don't read so much anymore. But don't be offended if your blog isn't on the roll--I hate blogrolls that trail off into cybernetic eternity, so the ones here are the "Best of the Best." Rest assured, your feed is still in my Google Reader, even if there isn't a link on this page.