Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#6xx in the Series) is R.E.O. Speedwagon, Live, You Get What You Play For                 888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 Track listing “Like You Do” (Gary Richrath) – 6:54 “Lay Me Down” (Richrath, Gregg Philbin) – 3:39 “Any Kind of Love” (Richrath) – 3:34 “Being Kind (Can Hurt Someone Sometimes)” (Kevin Cronin) – 6:35 “Keep Pushin'” (Cronin) – 4:06 “(Only A) Summer Love” (Richrath) – 6:05 “Son of a Poor Man” (Richrath) – 5:30 “(I Believe) Our Time Is Gonna Come” (Cronin) – 4:49 “Flying Turkey Trot” (Richrath) – 2:35 “Gary’s Guitar Solo”(*) (Richrath) – 6:10 “157 Riverside Avenue” (Richrath, Philbin, Neal Doughty, Alan Gratzer, Terry Luttrell) – 7:38 “Ridin’...

Boomer Guys, the girl of your teen dreams is now 82 years old Her name is Dolores Erickson and she has been living in the Seattle for around 40 years, after a career that included being an Eileen Ford model in New York. She appeared at a Seattle record store recently and wants to tell you teen dreamers, “Enjoy the memories.” You don’t know her by name — maybe as the “Whipped Cream Lady” — but certainly by the album cover on which she is featured: the 1965 Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass‘ Whipped Cream & Other Delights. There she is, seemingly naked but covered in what is supposed to be whipping cream looking at YOU. Whenever a...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1054 in the Series and #38) is The New Barbarians, Buried Alive: Live in Maryland The band The New Barbarians was formed in 1979 as a means to promote Ron Wood’s most recent album Gimme Some Neck. The album was a minor success peaking at number 45 on the billboard charts and was the first to feature Wood’s own artwork on the album cover including a self-portrait. The band and the subsequent eighteen gig U.S. tour may have gone largely unnoticed were it not for the exceptional musicians that accompanied Wood on the tour. The stellar line-up included Ron Wood and Keith Richards on guitar, Stanley Clarke on bass, former Faces keyboardist Ian...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1053 in the Series) is Roxy Music, Manifesto The conventional wisdom surrounding Roxy Music seems to suggest that there are two distinct “periods” of the band’s initial existence.  The first phase, from the band’s inception through 1976’s Siren, was characterized by dual predilections for high-brow artiness and otherworldly glamour; and the second phase, from 1979’s Manifesto through 1982’s Avalon, signaled the band’s transition into a brooding, stylish, and literate pop hit machine, helmed by Bryan Ferry’s inimitable voice and buoyed up by a small army of studio technicians. However, while there are undeniably two sonic phases to Roxy’s chronology, Manifesto, often hailed as the first album of Roxy’s later period, really finds...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1052 in the Series) is Doug Dillard & Gene Clark, The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark They may have only recorded together for (roughly) eighteen months but in that short but productive period of time Dillard & Clark made some of the best music you’ll ever hear, two albums and a single which still sound fantastic all these years later. Best of the material though is undoubtedly this superb debut album from October 1968. It’s an album which is a definitive document, and a cornerstone release, of the (then) burgeoning country-rock movement, an album which took the traditional forms of bluegrass, country and folk, gave them a shake, added electric instruments...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1051 in the Series) is Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat. I wasn’t familiar with Jenny Lewis when she appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel Show a few years back. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of her, since I was a little familiar with her band Rilo Kiley. I guess just not enough. I had just walked in the door, flipped on the TV as they took the stage on that Kimmel episode.  I really liked what I was hearing. This was my sound. This was square in “my wheelhouse” to lean on a cliche. It was at the end of a day when I was in one of my “Gram Parsons moods” so her...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1051 in the Series) is Rave On Buddy Holly. Back in the early 90s I worked as a District Manager for a music distributor.  One of our accounts was Wal-Mart.  We would stock them with their music and make sure they were fixture properly etc.  (BTW, back then, they refused to stock AC/DC because their albums had parental warning stickers on them. Later there was a new AC/DC release and the ONLY place you can get it was Wal-Mart!) At one point, we were doing some major renovations that had to be done only at night after the stores closed.  I was the head of one of these projects.  I had to use...

    Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1050 in the Series) is Digital Sex, Essence  Do you know this one? No you say? I somewhat expected that. No, not because the band wasn’t good enough or deserving enough because they indeed were. They were quite good but they were unfortunate to be another one of those talented acts that fell through the cracks. I don’t remember seeing them on MTV and that was the quickest and easiest way to get your name in front of people back in 1986. This was the indie rock of the time period. This was an Indie rock act back when you didn’t have the internet to help promote the little guy. It...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1049 in the Series) is Styx, Styx II All I have to do is look at that Styx II album cover and I immediately feel a smile forming on my face as all these wonderful childhood memories return. I was raised in the far Southside neighborhood of Chicago called Roseland.  A place that while part of a huge metropolis, still felt like small town America to us. It was a small town that was made up of many immigrant families.  There was a Polish area, a Mexican area, a Lithuanian area (that gave us director Robert Zemeckis. Back to the Future, Forest Gump) an area called “Bum Town” (that gave us Elliot...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day is the Original London Cast recording of  Jesus Chris Superstar. It”s now our Cool Album of the Day every Easter Sunday. Don’t give me the knock-offs. Give me the original 1971 release featuring Ian Gillian as Jesus. I remember playing the hell out of this back in the day. To me this has always been the definitive version of  Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera.  It’s the Original London Concept Recording.  Yes, I also realize that the story told in the opera ends on Good Friday.  We still feel that it’s fitting for Easter Sunday. The music here is absolutely brilliant.  It includes some wonderful performances from Deep Purple lead vocalist Ian Gillan...