"Blow My Fuse"
Kix

There’s a sound to this guitar.  Funny how everybody used to want to play an axe and now they want to rap.  Oh, don’t e-mail me about your kid/nephew with his Stratocaster and mini-Marshall, you know what I’m talking about.  Anybody can rap.  Maybe not well, but not everybody can play heavy metal music on a guitar.  Then again, is this heavy metal?  I heard this on Hair Band Nation.  And that’s what we had back in the eighties.  When bands made up of cute guys in spandex cut catchy singles and married them with videos with scantily-clad girls in the hopes of selling out arenas like Motley Crue.

Can’t say I ever paid attention to Kix, they were too far down the Bon Jovi/Ratt food chain to spin their CDs.  But this track is a winner.  Much better in the car than on the iPod, but it resonates.  I thought it was an obscure album track, but it turns out it’s their big "hit", because when I searched for it P2P it came up with the most hits.  So, what can I say, I learned of a new track on Sirius, but it turns out to be the most obvious one.  Still, when I hear this again tonight or tomorrow, Sirius’ rotations are just that tight, I’ll turn it up and feel eighteen again, even though I wasn’t eighteen in the eighties.  Then again, doesn’t the sound of a fat guitar make us all feel like we’re eighteen?

listen to "Blow My Fuse"

"Country Girl"
Primal Scream

If you’d asked me to describe Primal Scream’s music prior to Monday, when I heard this track on Little Steven’s Underground Garage, I would have gotten it wrong.  I figured there’d be too many synths for Steven, or too much of a punk bent.  Hell, I didn’t really know exactly what Primal Scream sounded like.

Actually, this Primal Scream track sounds like something off of Wilco’s "Being There" or Cracker.  All energy and attitude.  I wasn’t in the mood for this when it came up just over the hill on the 405, but a few seconds after the chorus I felt like I was at one of those late seventies/early eighties gigs which were all about energy rather than technique, I wanted to MOVE!

This is a hit.  Not the kind you hear on Top Forty radio, but the kind you talk about with your friends.  It’s not perfect, but it’s got such drive, vitality, vigor…hell, it’s completely ALIVE!

Hear "Country Girl" But listen and don’t watch, this video is so STUPID it insults one’s intelligence.  Just another babe who looks anything but country and another rock star raped of all his charisma by a video camera.

"Godzilla"
moe.

It’s all about the first Blue Oyster Cult album.  With "Cities On Flame" and "She’s As Beautiful As A Foot".  If only the Darkness, even the Arctic Monkeys, put out records as good as Blue Oyster Cult’s debut…then I’d CARE!  Made by Long Island white boys who’d been in the Soft White Underbelly to boot.  It was as if you and your friends from high school had a band.  Yeah, you were out there enough, but no one gave a shit what YOU thought.

And that album was SO good, I continued to buy each and every one (except for the obligatory live package), even though they got worse and worse.  Oh, the band ended up having a hit, with "Don’t Fear The Reaper" from "Agents Of Fortune", but if you listened to that album as much as any of the previous ones you’re not a friend of mine.  Even though I was disappointed, showing my loyalty I bought the next one, albeit a promo copy, and then gave up.

That final album, "Spectres", was unmemorable except for the opening track, "Godzilla".  An obvious cheap shot in search of another hit, which didn’t come.  Not that "Godzilla" is completely obscure, but who’d predict that decades later a jam band without a capital letter in its name would cover it?

Now conventional jamsters are wincing.  Except for the fact that I’m mentioning their favorite, .moe.  Because they KNOW this track.  Hell, I now know this track, having heard it again and again on Sirius 17, Jam On.  After they burn out the classics, where are they gonna go?  If Sirius were a world’s fair (and whatever happened to those, did the Internet kill world’s fairs too?) and lasted only one year, hell, that would be fine.  But as an ongoing enterprise…  Don’t we need a bit more breadth, and depth?

That’s my mission.  To expand the narrowcasting philosophy of Steve Blatter.  To the point where Sirius doesn’t sound like a camp reunion, rather a BRAND NEW CAMP with some of your buddies from the old camp.  Sirius is like a high school with only thirty people. Sure, you’ve bonded, you’re close, but the inbreeding makes you CRAZY!  Isn’t this why people move to the city?

ANYWAY, there’s an energy in this moe. cover lacking in the Blue Oyster Cult original.  You see with jam bands, it’s all about the LIVE SHOW!  Transmitting energy, not perfect sound.  It’s not about replicating the colors of sound from the studio, but picking up your instruments and WAILING!

Listening to moe.’s "Godzilla" is like hearing a tape of a party.  You know this concert was a blast.  With the band whipping out this left field cover.  The kick drum pounds as hard as John Bonham’s in "When The Levee Breaks".  The bass is fatter than Geezer Butler’s.  And when the lead guitarist and singer come in, the band has the power of a FREIGHT TRAIN!  And when you hear them sing the chorus, you’re reminded of Phish’s cover of the White Album and their other Halloween classics.  How come jam bands can see themselves as musicians, not take themselves so damn seriously, and everybody in the mainstream acts like he’s a paragon of talent and keeps his distance.  You listen to this and you tell yourself not only do you wish you were there, you’ve got to BE THERE!

And to think that XM cancelled Musiclab, its wannabe jam band channel…what were they THINKING??

You can hear a version of moe.’s "Godzilla", unfortunately not as good as the one you can easily find via P2P