Tuesday Tuneage
The Dead Boys - "Ain't Nothin' To Do"
1977

My social life's a dud, my name is really mud. Another Valentine's Day alone. The plan? Tombstone pizza, TGI Friday's wings (the day deserves no better) from my grocer's freezer, Food Club mixed nuts, Old Dutch cheese popcorn, cans o'beer, Finlandia, hockey game on the tube, and this mix loud on the stereo:

1) Music Machine - "Talk Talk"
2) Tigers of Pan Tang - "Killers"
3) The Stooges - "T.V. Eye"
4) Metallica - "Jump In The Fire"
5) The Dead Boys - "Ain't Nothin' To Do"
6) Nine Inch Nails - "Down In It"
7) Electric Six - "Nuclear War (on the Dance Floor)"
8) Black Sabbath - "Supernaut"
9) Faster Pussycat - "No Room For Emotion"
10) Action Swingers - "Glad To Be Gone"
11) Motorhead - "No Class"
12) The Sex Pistols - "No Feelings"
13) The Rolling Stones - "Paint It, Black"

All served up in the spirit of a certain Thatch comic strip, where a character declared: "It's just not Valentine's Day without chips, dip and a couple King Kans of Schlitz."

Tuesday Tuneage
Streetheart - "Under My Thumb"
1979

Dry funk or ist es Kraftwerk-influenced? Punk-ish vocal or is it Brit-influenced? Mott-like chanting during the chorus, piano fills, weird synth noises that date it, handclaps, garage rock organ. Partially responsible for Loverboy. Long long long guitar solo to remind the boys that this is a rock song yeahhhh, whole shebang saved in end by GNR-anticipating move of whispering a mantra, in this case non-Stones lyrics.

Tuesday Tuneage
Aldo Nova - "Fantasy"
1982

Aldo Nova burst upon/was forced by the Powers That Be upon the scene in 1982 with an AOR gem in "Fantasy":  The tune has a great riff, synths that don't hold the song back, and a decent guitar solo. Problem was, there was a video …

Nova - and I like calling him "Nova", kinda like how when Mr. Carlson is being terse with Dr. Johnny Fever he simply calls him "Fever" - simply looks like a goof while sporting a ridiculous leopard one-piece outfit tucked into boots (needed, a friend once rode in an elevator with him, said he's tiny) and Oasis-brothers-like eyebrows. The beginning is some sort of caper movie, it turns into a performance - Aldo-and-band-rock-a-club! - then has asides where Nova steps out of character, points at the ladies of the night, and informs us they aren't there for true love. (Thanks dude, most of us had been misled to believe such ladies are secretly harboring hearts of gold!) And I don't know if it's the quality of the YouTube video, but I experienced some Fight Club-like editing flash stuff while watching it. I didn't see this video until months after the song raced up the charts, I had been assured during lunch time in high school that it was powerful, powerful stuff. Doh-kay.

I got to see Nova live when he opened for Blue Oyster Cult in West Fargo, North Dakota in September of 1982. He was trying to warm up the crowd and said:

"North Dakota is a great town!"

Years later, I related this tale on an email list (pre-social-media communication thing, tweet me if you want further definition) I was on with some fellow musicheads. One guy chipped in with this Nova onstage quote, also from September of 1982 but this time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota:

"Alright, Sioux City!"

As I theorized at the time of reading that:

Nova said these things as an inside joke with his Canadian bandmate buddies as a way to get some laughs while out on the weary road in heartland America as an opener for an American smart-metal band who was hanging onto its last act of stardom. 

Aldo Nova would go on to co-write the lead track off Blue Oyster Cult's next album, The Revolution By Night. As these things go, that album was also the one that signified the end of BOC's powers.

Tuesday Tuneage
Bill Murray - "Physical"
1982

The YMCA is not my social club. The goal of going there is simple: Get an elliptical workout for thirty minutes with my iPhone blasting some metal; walk on the treadmill for forty minutes while listening to more music; stretch; and then get the hell out of there.

The YMCA is not my social club. I’ve been going there for over twenty years, but have not made friends. The people who work the front desk never fail to be quite friendly. I will give them a smile and a nod, small talk if need be. I'll also sneak a glance at the gal behind the counter that I have a small crush on. But once I get through the turnstile, it’s time to get a workout done so that I can get the hell out of there and back home.

The YMCA is not my social club. I don’t talk with the other members, I don’t bond over exercise. I don’t want to bond over anybody while wearing polyester pants and a ratty teeshirt, while sweaty and out of breath. I may tell another member that the machine is all theirs after cleaning it after my workout, but in most cases a gesture will do.

The YMCA is not my social club. I don’t use the locker room. I walk home and shower there. I can do without the naked men walking around, the naked men applying various lotions and powders to their bodies, the naked men with their wet towels hogging all the stools as if they are setting up an office in the locker room - when the goal of being in the locker room should be to get the hell out as soon as possible. I can do without the seventy-year old man with his compliments, his standing there naked putting his hand on my arm while talking to me like old guys do. I do not want to have lunch with old naked man, despite his friendly invitation. Like I told him, I like to grab lunch alone and read the sports page.

The YMCA is not my social club. I’m just there to listen to metal on my iPhone while working out, looking out the large windows while all the cars try to find parking spots those weeks when lots of folks join between New Year’s Day and Valentine's Day. I’m sure many of these new people end up making friends with other members, the front desk staff, the personal trainers, the janitors. Some of them may even end up having lunch with a naked person that talks to them in the locker room. I just want to make an effort to get healthy, get the hell home, rehydrate, and mark off another appearance that goes towards my health insurance discount.

The YMCA is not my social club. I just go there four times a week.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rods - “Crank It Up”
1981

The Rods - whose name kinda sounds punk - were obviously nodding to The Ramones on the album cover with the jeans/tees/leather jackets look (except one of the Rods needs to mix in a salad), which makes you think this might be some sort of brilliant early-eighties metal/punk crossover. Instead, The Rods at times simply serve up at-times-punkish metal with absolutely no cleverness. Consider some of the song titles from their self-titled major label debut: "Power Lover", "Hungry For Some Love", "Getting Ready To Rock And Roll", "Rock Hard", "Roll With The Night". And that they would go on to release albums titled Let Them Eat Metal and Heavier Than Thou. Throw in that their frontman was David “Rock” Feinstein, which just might be the greatest nickname in all of, uh, rock, and that all of this was served up with no irony whatsoever, well you just wonder if they were any sort of influence on This Is Spinal Tap.

Like Shooting Star's "Hang On For Your Life", released the same year, The Rods' "Crank It Up" is stripped-down, speeded-up hard rock. It's evidence of how the AOR game had (oh-so-ever-slightly) changed in the early eighties. The rest of the album is weighed down by a lack of energy and lacks the sheer go-for-brokeness of this tune, but don't tell that to The Rods cult. (Wha? Hey I just became aware it also.) This album is going for $26 for a new CD and $24 for a new vinyl LP on Amazon. As one of the true believer Amazon commenters writes: "The Rods have surly (sic) delivered the goods."

Tuesday Tuneage
Scatterbrain - "Down With The Ship (Slight Return)"
1990

Scatterbrain were goofball metalheads who somehow existed in the the thrash scene a quarter century ago. Their most famous song was "Don't Call Me Dude", which jumped pop music genres fearlessly as it told a tragic and witty tale. They also covered Cheech & Chong's "Earache My Eye" (music part only) and needless to say were big on the late great Z-Rock.

"Down With The Ship (Slight Return)" is an excuse for the band to chant, the singer to spout nonsense, all the while inserting classic rock riffs into the mix. Strangely, it works, like one of those seventies funk tunes by the likes of Kool & The Gang where you don't have to give a damn about lyrics and can just enjoy the groove and the fun. As for Scatterbrain's appropriation of those guitar licks: When you're a hip-hop artist doing something similar to this with sampling, it is dismissed as stealing. When you're Jimmy Page, you actually do steal, but most folks tend to pooh-pooh it. When you're Brian Wilson, you steal, get hailed as a genius (though what kind of genius is smart enough to hire every great Los Angeles studio musician available to play on your records but still have crappy singers like your cousin and yourself sing lead vocals?), and then get successfully sued by Chuck Berry. When you're a metal band, you're just being silly, and there's plenty of room for mischief. All I know is at some point Scatterbrain played the 7th Street Entry with Ugly Kid Joe and I'm kicking myself to this day for not showing up for that one. How often is there a twin bill of metal/comedy pranksters on such hallowed ground?

UPDATE: Just realized I had written about this song back in '11. But I felt it I should touch on this tune again, as 1) That earlier one was just a blurb, 2) Scatterbrain deserves more attention, not to mention "twin bill with Ugly Kid Joe", and 3) Who the hell am I fooling here ... when you've done damn near two hundred of these Tuesday Tuneages, you forget and repeat yourself (topic-wise, I mean, the writing I'm sure does come off as the same old thing over and over maybe) after not checking the Complete List Of Every Tuesday Tuneage Ever Spreadsheet.

Tuesday Tuneage
Marah - "Christmas With The Snow"
2005

Marah's A Christmas Kind Of Town is a gem: A grade-A bar band throwing itself into Christmas songs with glee and nary an ironic note to be found. That it opens with "Christmas Time Is Here" from A Charlie Brown Christmas is an obvious sign that it isn't going to just be a collection of holiday songs. Instead, it's a concept album complete with skits, tales, standards, Marah originals, copious boozing (the album back cover is a photo of multiple Santas at a bar), and a hidden-track appearance by Santa himself. This is the type of album where you pour your favorite winter beer (Summit Winter Ale? Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale?), dim the lights, and sit in the dark with a Yule log on TV and slowly get crocked while you make - and slowly forget - your upcoming New Year's resolutions. I put this one up there with the aforementioned Chuck Brown LP, Bob Dylan's Christmas In The Heart, and A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector in my top five (fifth yet to be determined) favorite Christmas albums. Get this album before the 25th and don't forget that Fireplace For Your Home (including the classic "Crackling Yule Log Fireplace" episode) is streaming on Netflix.

Tuesday Tuneage
O.C. Smith - "Little Green Apples"
1968

A tune that was a country/soul/pop triple threat - in 1968 Roger Miller took it to #39 on the pop charts and #6 on the C&W charts, while O.C. Smith took it to #2 on both the pop and R&B charts that same year. Smith's version is smoooooth, and while the background vocals take it to the very edge of parody, his short laugh after singing "it don't snow in Minneapolis when the winter comes" absolutely saves the song.

Tuesday Tuneage
Pearl Jam - "Even Flow"
1991

I have noticed a strange thing when "Even Flow" comes on the radio these days. It's not the version from Ten and is instead the version from the video. How long has this been going on? Am I just now catching up on this? Googling indicates this was also the original UK single version, but that is neither here nor there, as who cares about the UK version of a song by a very American band? Playing this alternate version would be fine if it were better than the original, but it's inferior to the original album version I heard back in 1991-92 on KJ104 (and more importantly) (sigh) Z-Rock.

The genius of the Ten version vs. the alternate version is the guitar break before the final chorus. On the original, Mike McCready absolutely slays you with all the drama and arrogance of a Beck or Hendrix, drops you on the floor, and then Stone Gossard steps in, picks it all up, and puts it back together. This guitar interplay is a large reason I bought the Ten album and got into Pearl Jam in the first place. And now radio is trying to play tricks with my memory by supplanting a grade-A rocker with its shadow. This would be a bitter, bitter way to find out I'm a replicant.

Tuesday Tuneage
Cheech & Chong Featuring Alice Bowie - "Earache My Eye" (b/w) "Turn That Thing Down"
1974

My buds and I used to recite the skit part of this tune constantly on walks to school in third grade, when as a single it went to number nine of the charts. Recently my mind was blown when I found out that the B-SIDE OF THE SINGLE CONTINUES THE SONG AND THE STORY! The riffage gets even better, more relentless, Then the tune turns into a mashup between guitarist/co-writer Gay Delorme's incredible, heady Hendrix/Funkadelic noise attack and samples of the father from the A-side harassing the kid to turn the song down and get ready for school.

Like I wrote last year, I have "Rock Box" as my Number One Metal Song Of All Time, and now I wondering if Run-DMC's hip-hop metal would even be possible if it weren't for these two sides of genius. Not to mention that the song lyrics and skit include cross-dressing, the coming apocalypse, capitalist excess, corporal punishment - they all get jammed into a comedy song that crosses metal and good yuks years before Spinal Tap. The next time The Golf Channel is going to show Tin Cup (in standard def on their HD channel), they should instead just fire up the "Earache My Eye" opus on a loop for a couple of hours.

Tuesday Tuneage
Steely Dan - “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”
1974

I doubt I will ever be one of those huge fans of Steely Dan. I may sometimes call them the familiar “The Dan”, because that is what some of us men my age do. But after all these decades of hearing them on the radio and having others rave about them and wanting to enact some sort of you’re either for-the-Dan vs. against-the-Dan barricade, I’ve only bought one album by them and it feels like the right amount of Dan to own. I still think - even after classic rock radio has tried and tried and tried to kill them with overplay - their seventies first run of hits are absolutely brilliant. “Do It Again”? “Reeling In The Years”? Wondrous stuff.

That one album I have by Steely Dan is Pretzel Logic and I scored it for a buck off of eBay years ago. I bought it mostly because: 1) I wanted to check out a Dan album without copping out with an anthology, 2) My research indicated that on the Not Jazzbo Fusion and Still Accessible calculations it might be my best bet, and 3) “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” is on it. I still remember where I was when I first heard this tune, in my Mom’s car in 1974, she was driving me home on a Saturday morning after a sleepover and had the Top 40 AM radio station on. And yes after all these years I still find it haunting, catchy, a mystery never solved.

Tuesday Tuneage
Billy Squier - "Lonely Is The Night"
1981

Not many charting rockers had a weirder, yet at-times brilliant, run of genre-hopping songs than Billy Squier did in the first half of the eighties. He started off his chart success with a novelty song embraced by hard rockers, "The Stroke" (which is pretty much a remake of his embraced-by-hip-hoppers "The Big Beat" from his debut album.) Then he cleaned up this same song, inserted lyrics that actually made sense, and presto: "My Kinda Lover." (We shouldn't overlook that middle word. Is the lover his type of lover or is she "sorta, kinda" his lover? Maybe an on-the-sly romance?)

"Everybody Wants You" had the #2 revving-motorcycle sound of 1982 (after Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue") plus A-plus finger snapping - almost always an indicator of pop greatness. And the song never ever quits, three minutes and forty-seven seconds of riffing exuberance. "Emotions in Motion" was slinky suburban funk, topping Queen at their own suburban-funk game at the time, and it opened with whistling - almost always an indicator of pop greatness. "She's A Runner" was uniquely a non-ballady power ballad.

And then around the time that he was outed (falsely, as we learned) with his appearance in the "Rock Me Tonite" video, he turned in one of the finest singles of the summer of 1984: "All Night Long". Which is a remarkable feat, as THE SUMMER OF 1984 WAS THE GREATEST SUMMER OF SONGS IN MY LIFETIME.

"Lonely Is The Night" wasn't a single and hence didn't chart like the above songs, but it was an AOR smash in '81. More importantly, it stands as one of the best fake Zeps of the early eighties. It handles the heavy, crashing, thunderous side (complete with the well-timed pauses that Zeppelin mastered) of Led Zepdom as well as Zebra would handle the lighter, folksy side. (Next week's tune? Perhaps…) Like I said, "Lonely Is The Night" wasn't a single, but that's no excuse why it was left off of the first-half awesome Squier anthology 16 Strokes. It's almost like the recording industry wanted to go out of business.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Firm - "Satisfaction Guaranteed"
1985

When Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers teamed up to form The Firm in the mid-eighties, hard rock fans were giddy. Nothing like a SUPERGROUP!! to get fans of aging rockers abuzz. And one involving Jimmy Page that actually released music, unlike next buzz thing XYZ band from a few years earlier. (I mean, XYZ was actually a subject of pencilled scribblings on my sophomore year English class desk. Me and some other guy/gal had a correspondence about XYZ for a week or so there. Alas, I never did find out who this supergroup superfan was though and the correspondence dried up - I'm guessing I was too much of a goody two-shoes to write on the desk much anyway. Things were truly rough before Twitter, kiddies.) Then we actually heard The Firm's first single, "Radioactive." Decidedly non-bluesy, without Page crunchy chords or flash, and Rodgers voice going through some sort of sound effect while singing "I'm radioactive", it was a weird letdown. "Satisfaction Guaranteed" was more in line with what was expected: atmospheric, a superb Rodgers vocal, and Page heroics. I never bought the album and all else I remember is that they had an iffy version of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'." And like fellow class of '85 supergroupers Phantom, Rocker & Slick, they faded after putting out that elusive/rumored second album.

So for whatever reason, the last couple of weeks at random times I would suddenly start singing parts of "Radioactive" to myself while walking around my apartment. This led me to YouTube, figuring: Mid-eighties? Superstar rockers cashing in? They must have made videos! And yes, The Firm made videos. And they're glorious. "Radioactive" has Page and Rodgers wearing baggy pants and shirts, likely anticipating the "Pirate Look" of the early nineties. (Take that, Jerry Seinfeld!) In "Satisfaction Guaranteed", they're dressed like CIA agents posing as south Florida tourists, playing an Oly-serving dive bar. And they drive the ladies nuts! They bring the rain! Page's guitar work brings the sun! Speaking of Page, he's the guy to watch in these videos. He's letting us in on the joke, breaking down the fourth wall. He bows to the camera at the start of "Radioactive", then proceeds to mug his way through various shots. In "Satisfaction Guaranteed", he gives a oh-yeah-big-deal-maybe? nod at the end of a kinda-dramatic beat. That video also features him with his trademark Zep violin bow, but then joker that he is, he trades it in for a beer bottle to play slide with. Didn't catch the brand of said beer, but it damn sure wasn't Olympia.

Tuesday Tuneage
Paul Revere & The Raiders - "The Great Airplane Strike"
1966

I read Time because I secretly aspire to be part of The Establishment. But perusing its pages means taking them with a grain of salt. They've been on a hagiography kick lately, more so than usual. In the same issue that Walter Isaacson gushed over how Apple's technology was going to turn our society into a man-machine Utopia, they also used Big Walt to gush over Henry Kissinger with a piece hilariously titled "The Lion in Winter." Here we found out that Kissinger was for the invasion of Iraq but now thinks it was a bad idea, and has a similar flip-flop on Afghanistan. Hindsight's always twenty-twenty, right? The funny thing is that Isaacson with a straight face writes that Kissinger has always been correct on foreign policy. Apparently, an alternate meaning of realpolitik is that changing your mind years later equals foresight.

Another knee-slapper was in the next issue, when we got another Time reminder that U2 are the saviors of rock 'n' roll. (Time's been on this kick with U2 for damn near thirty years.) U2 teams with Apple, so the collective Time brain trust's, uh, brains might just yet explode! Sure, the new U2 album is nice, and the price is right, but it's like every other U2 album since Achtung Baby: It sounds earnest, even great. Then you listen to it a second time and realize no song sticks because they are so precisely crafted that there is no grit, no friction, nothing to grab on to.

I wanted to love this new U2 album, mostly because of the backlash to their TV ad where they play "The Miracle Of (Joey Ramone)" and interpose photos of Ramone, Patti Smith, and whatever other Class of CBGB Nineteen Seventy-Something icons we're supposed to idolize. Admittedly, the ad was dumb, but it's funny when humorless punkers get worked up about their precious Punk Mythology. Clods like these is why Rob Reiner had to make This Is Spinal Tap about a metal band: if it'd poked fun at a punk band, the punkers would have gotten as upset as folks around here do about the accents in Fargo.

And we heard nary a peep from the punkers when Paul Revere died earlier this month. As I wrote back in 2006 about "The Great Airplane Strike": Fuzz-drenched Dylan imitation complete with Bob-like vocals. Great fun and the opening riff was ripped off by the Dead Kennedys, who weren't nearly as funny or as cool or as punk as the Raiders. Similar sentiments could be made about a bunch of other singles The Raiders released 1963-68, songs that sealed them as one of the greatest punk bands ever. I'd rather track them than The Ramones or Patti Smith or Television. Learn a lesson, punkers. And U2 fans, listen to some music that isn't so safe. And dammit Time magazine, if you need some truly bitching hagiographies, hire me!

Tuesday Tuneage
Fear Factory - "Cars"
1999

The heavy metal/new wave crossover was first deemed possible on Def Leppard's 1983 Pyromania album, when Thomas Dolby of "She Blinded Me With Science" fame played synths under the pseudonym Booker T. Boffin. A clever one, producer Mutt Lange. (Two years prior, Lange had also used Dolby on Foreigner's 4 album, when he was assigned to slick them up into even more of a hits machine. Weirdly, Foreigner's previous album, Head Games - a non-Lange, non-Dolby affair - had a song called "Blinded By Science" on it.) Dolby's role on Pyromania was largely unknown at the time, probably for the best as if it had been known to dumbo hard rock fans (like teenaged me), they probably would have freaked out about NEW WAVE KEYBOARDS AHHHHH!

A few years earlier, I was secretly intrigued by Gary Numan's "Cars", professed to be put off by his robotic vocals, and felt no vindication whatsoever when he turned out to be a one-hit wonder. In 1999 one night while driving aimlessly around the freeways in a funk, the hard rock station played Fear Factory's cover of "Cars" and I rallied around it. Drove home pumping my fist and while I didn't take the time to call or email any music buddies and rave about this metal/new wave crossover, I was able to maintain enough energy to make it to the bus stop and my temp job cubicle the next morning. It's been time for a rally here lately, so I downloaded Fear Factory's "Cars" and play it loud through my earbuds. Sounds great on the bus!