More to the 80s Than Madonna and Michael Jackson

In my first posting I gave some very superficial steps on how to download and listen to the music that I'm posting here. But I wanted to go back and maybe give some clearer directions on how to do that, because it may not be as simple as I originally made it sound.

1. First you'll need a winrar program. I'm including this link that should lead you to a freeware site that will allow you to download the software for free. I downloaded mine from what I thought was a freeware site, but after a 90 day trial period, every time I go to unzip something with my winrar, I get a dialogue box telling me to go to the site to pay for the program. Yeah right! I just click close and go about my business. But hopefully this one will allow you to avoid that particular annoyance. So download and install, and that should give you the tools you need to proceed.

2. Choose one of the links below: Discs for Manual Manipulation, or Disc One for Dylan Bootleg Series or Disc Two, or something from the first posting. This link should take you to a Rapidshare page. Click on the Free User button. As a free user you are only allowed to download so many files at a time or in one day. But unless you want to just go hog-wild in downloading music, you really won't need to subscribe to Rapidshare for this. If later you decide you want to explore some other music blogs, then maybe it might be worthwhile. So you click on Free User, on the next page you then click on download, choose where you want to download it to on your computer, then hit save.

3. Now your file is downloading...should take 5-10 minutes. After it's done, go to the folder in which you saved the file from Rapidshare, and click on the winrar zipped file. The file will look like a stack of three colored books, green, blue and purple. When you click on the file it will pull up your winrar program with your downloaded file in a box. There should actually be two folders, the first one with two dots after it, then below a folder with the name of the file next to it. You want to double-click the one with the two dots next to it. Winrar will then ask where you want to unzip the file to. Again pick the location where you save your music. Click OK, and there you go. You have the file unzipped and can now listen to the music on your computer.

4. At this point you can burn a disc or put it in your iTunes or whatever. If you just want to burn a disc, open Nero or whatever disc burning program you have, and drop in the folder with the music files onto your tracklist box and burn your disc. If you're adding to iTunes, go to File, Add New Folder to Library, click on the file from whereever you saved in, and you're good!

Hopefully this is somewhat clearer than what I gave before. Now let's get back to the countdown.


In the last few months, I have made two separate 80s music discs: one for my wife, Michelle and one for my friend at work, Jessica. Neither of them were actually in high school before 1990, but Michelle asked me to make her an 80s disc to remind her of middle school days at the roller rink. (I did my best, but apparently I know nothing about the 80s.) And my friend Jessica has the most bizarre fixation for 80s music that I have seen. I really think she might give away one of her kids for Madonna tickets. Not that anyone would trade Madonna tickets for someone else's child, but you get my point. So I spent some time and effort making two discs of the standard 80s fare...Go-Gos, Eurythmics, Michael Jackson, the Police, etc. And the whole time I was thinking, if I was making this for anybody with actual TASTE (sorry Michelle and Jess), how different might this disc be. Because you know that there were more to the 80s than Thriller and Born in the U.S.A. No, really, there was.

I actually finished this list on Christmas Eve, burned it Christmas morning, and listened to it on my way to my sister's house for Christmas dinner. Then I gave the disc to my friend Tom. I've only decided to change one thing from that disc and that's the end. I had Lou Reed's "Strawman" as the last song on the disc originally, then went back and added 4 or 5 more songs. The last song I added was Nirvana's "Negative Creep," which I thought would be an excellent final track, metaphorically ending the list with a group who would really come to define the direction of music in the 90s and beyond. Yeah, that's all great, but it didn't sound quite right. So for the list I posted here, I switched the two, putting "Negative Creep" right before "Strawman."

But I still stayed chronological here. (Both Bleach and New York were released in 1989, and I still remember the record store in San Antonio at 410 and Bandera Road where I bought my cassette of New York.) So there is some sense of moving from the punk of X's Los Angeles and Social Distortion's Mommy's Little Monster to the post-punk sound of The Jesus and Mary Chain, Jane's Addiction, and Nirvana. There may be a few other styles mixed in here with Tom Waits and Michelle Shocked, but the flavor of this mix is distinctly one of punk, and where punk was going in the 80s.

The crossroads essentially comes at the middle of the decade. In 1985 REM releases Fables of the Reconstruction, their last great album before beginning the slide toward commercialism with Document. (Life's Rich Pageant would come out in between the two.) In the same year the Chili Peppers release Freaky Styley, moving in a completely different direction, integrating funk, rock and roll, and hip-hop into a more modern sound. The following year, The Violent Femmes released The Blind Leading the Naked, one of the last great gasps of the 70s punk movement that channeled through X, The Police, The Replacement, The Minutemen, and The Femmes in the 80s. Also in 1986 Yo Lo Tengo released its first album, Ride the Tiger, which probably caused little to no stir at the time. But the band seems very representative now of the indie scene that would come to life in the 90s. Then comes Jane's Addiction in 1987 with Nothing's Shocking and Nirvana with Bleach in 1989...AND IT'S ON. So here's the list.

1. X, "Nausea," Los Angeles
2. Tom Waits, "Jersey Girl," Heartattack and Vine
3. Brian Eno & David Byrne, "Regiment," My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
4. Bruce Springsteen, "State Trooper," Nebraska
5. Social Distortion, "Telling Them," Mommy's Little Monster
6. The Replacements, "Sixteen Blue," Let It Be
7. The Minutemen, "Glory of Man," Double Nickels on the Dime
8. The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Just Like Honey," Psychocandy
9. R.E.M., "Green Grow the Rushes," Fables of the Reconstruction
10. Violent Femmes, "No Killing," The Blind Leading the Naked
11. Yo Lo Tengo, "Did I Tell You," New Wave Hot Dogs
12. Jane's Addiction, "Pigs in Zen," Nothing's Shocking
13. Michelle Shocked, "When I Grow Up," Short Sharp Shocked
14. The Sugarcubes, "Deus," Life's Too Good
15. Nirvana, "Negative Creep," Bleach
16. Lou Reed, "Strawman," New York

A Little 80s Music


About 10 years ago a friend of mine saw a serious "hole" in my music, and attempted to introduce me to Tom Waits' music. How I got to the age of 32 or 33 without knowing Tom Waits, I'm not sure, but it is a little embarrassing to admit here. At any rate, the friend who lent me my first Tom Waits CD, I believe, made a serious miscalculation in which CD he lent me. I went home that night, fairly excited about listening to this album, because the friend in question liked many of the same things that I did musically. I slipped Rain Dogs into the CD player and almost immediately thought "what the fuck is this shit!!!" Because chances are, if it's your first exposure to Tom Waits' music, you're not quite ready for Rain Dogs. A few years later, I bought The Heart of Saturday Night on my own...and of course instantly fell in love with the sound. After months, maybe even years with The Heart of Saturday Night, Small Change, Closing Time, and then Heartattack and Vine and Nighthawks at the Diner, I tried Rain Dogs and Black Rider again...and of course I finally got it.


So at the risk of posting back-to-back Dylan albums, and then posting kind of a Dylanesque album, I'm still putting Closing Time here for this post. I think that this is simply a beautiful album, and should be anyone's introduction to Mr. Waits' music. And if you already like Tom Waits music, but don't own this album...well, you really, really should. So here's your chance. Click on the album cover.

More Bob, Along with a Little Piano for the Soul

This post is for Stephen Jones. For years I couldn't understand how someone with Jones's ear for music never really liked jazz. I mean, it's Jones, so it's not like he couldn't speak relatively intelligently about most of the major players in jazz since...well, since jazz was invented. I'm sure he was listening to some jazz here and there on various radio stations. But he didn't own any, and really didn't listen to it on any kind of basis. So when I started listening to jazz in the early 15 years ago, this really puzzled me.

Anyway, about a year ago Jones calls me with this epiphany that he's had about music...that he started to actually listen to jazz. And not just any jazz but jazz piano. For most of us who do listen to a lot of jazz, piano seems like an odd place to start. Not that there aren't many great jazz pianists, but most of us started with maybe a trumpet player, but probably a sax player. For some reason sax is the most approachable instrument in jazz. I personally started out with Charlie Parker, but there are a lot of people who started with John Coltrane. 'Trane is very listenable, especially the early stuff.

And no, Jones doesn't start with Theolonious Monk or Herbie Hancock or maybe a Dave Brubeck. But with Oscar Peterson. Not necessarily that odd of a choice for piano...but...never mind. Just struck me as odd.

The strange thing about jazz pianists is that there's not "the guy" for that instrument. You know how with all of the other instruments in jazz there's one person you can point to as being the definitive master for that instrument...well, most of them (I mean I'm sure there's a flugelhorn "the guy," but I sure don't know who the hell he is). For bass, it's Charles Mingus. Vibes...Milt Jackson. For trumpet, it's Miles Davis. And no, for all of you who are foaming at the mouth, it's not Louis Armstrong, IT'S MILES FREAKIN' DAVIS. For sax it could go two ways. My personal "the guy" for saxophone is Charlie Parker, but you could definitely make a valid point for John Coltrane. Anyway, for piano there's no "the guy." Or maybe there are just lots of the "the guy"s. Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett. McCoy Tyner was good enough to be "the guy" for John Coltrane all those years, so you have to give him some consideration.

So here's a disc's worth of some of "the guys" (and gal) of keyboard jazz. I tried to spread it out a little bit among eras, and even added a little bit of Hammond organ and electronic
sythesizer. I realize that there's no Duke Ellington or Count Basie here. I'm not really a big band fan, so maybe that's why they got left at the curb. But also probably because I see them more as band leaders than as pianists.


1. Keith Jarrett, "My Song," My Song
2. Ahmad Jamal, "A Foggy Day," Chamber Music of the New Jazz
3. Jimmy Smith, "Motorin' Along," Home Cookin'
4. Bill Evans, "My Man's Gone Now," Sunday at the Village Vanguard
5. Oscar Peterson, "Night Train," Night Train
6. Herbie Hancock, "Chameleon," Headhunters
7. Carla Bley, "Ups and Downs," Fleur Carnivore
8. Chick Corea, "Matrix," Now He Sings, Now He Sobs
9. McCoy Tyner, "Blues on the Corner," The Real McCoy
10. Thelonious Monk, "Blue Bolivar Blues," Monk's Dream
11. Dave Brubeck, "Blue Rondo A La Turk," Time Out

Disc of Manual Manipulation


For my full album post, I'm sending out the latest Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, Vol. 8 that my sister-in-law was nice enough to give me for Christmas. While I don't like the idea of posting newly released music, because that's the thing that gets you in trouble with the music-police, I felt that I would make an exception for symmetry's sake. I posted the first Dylan album last week, so I'll post the last one today. I've only listened to the first disc so far. It's good. Not Blood on the Tracks by any means, but still better than Bigger Better Bang. For those of you lucky enough to not know what that is, it's the last Stones studio album. Freakin' horrid!!! Bob style has obviously changed yet again in the last 5 or 1o years...back to folksy, but in a different way.

Besides, I can't think of a better Christmas present than to give everyone a little Bob.



Disc One

Disc Two

The Dawn of a New Blogtastic Day

For quite some time I have been contemplating what the hell to do with this blog. Using it as a tool to write wasn't working all that well. It was supposed to be a low key way of writing for the two or three people who would actually read the mindless rambling that I was sticking on this thing, but trying to be interesting on even a weekly basis proved difficult. It didn't help that I am lazy by nature. So I abandoned it.

Then about a year and half ago, Stephen Jones introduced me to music blogs, rapidshare, Winrar files and a whole new world. So I've toyed with the idea of sharing some of the music that I've always loved and some of the stuff that I've found in the last few years. And after a few months of mulling it over in what left of the brain that my 9th graders have left me with, I think I've come up with a plan. I decided that not only did I want to include whole albums that I love so much, but also to create some interesting playlists. Actually Tom Hamilton convinced me of that idea when I burned him a few discs for his 40th birthday, and he called me back to tell me how much he liked them. It meant a lot to me, and so i decided that maybe I could do that here for more of my friends if they were interested. So if these playlists suck...you can all blame Tom.

For those of you who are not familiar with downloading music from blogs, it's relatively simple. All you need is a winrar program, which you can download for free at a number of sites. You click on the link that I provide, download it to your computer, then unzip it with the winrar file to somewhere to store it, then add it to your ITunes, or whatever music storage program you are using. If you're not...get with it!!!

I'm going to try to be interesting here, and maybe...I stress maybe...I'll try to start writing here again.

So let me get started. I actually created this list a few months ago. I was listening to Bob Dylan's first self-titled album, which was the 2nd Dylan album I ever owned, and I was thinking, "If I was 22 or 23 in 1963 when this album came out and I happened to buy it and put it on the turntable, would I know just how cool it was in 1963? Would I realize that I was listening to something that would so vastly change the landscape of music? Probably not, because I'm just not that cool. So I put together the first track of first album from a number of artists from the last 45 years...from Bob Dylan to Radiohead. I didn't include anyone who you would have heard before with another group. For instance, I didn't include Lennon's "Mother" because you would have known Lennon before this. Get it? Yeah well anyway here's my tracklist and the link follows. It's chronological, and I know you will probably find things that you think should be here that are not. Such is the dilemma and part of the fun in making such lists. Hope you like.

1. Bob Dylan, "You're No Good," Bob Dylan
2. The Beatles, "I Saw Her Standing There," Please Please Me
3. The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away," England's Newest Hit Makers
4. The Who, "Out in the Street," The Who Sing My Generation
5. Jimi Hendrix, "Purple Haze," Are You Experienced
6. Cream, "I Feel Free," Fresh Cream
7. Pink Floyd, "Astronomy Domine," Piper at the Gates of Dawn
8. The Velvet Underground, "Sunday Morning," The Velvet Underground & Nico
9. Led Zeppelin, "Good Times, Bad Times," Led Zeppelin
10. Santana, "Waiting," Santana
11. ZZ Top, "(Somebody Else Been) Shakin' Your Tree," ZZ Top's First Album
12. Tom Waits, "Ol' 55," Closing Time
13. Bruce Springsteen, "Blinded by the Light," Welcome to Asbury Park, N.J
14. The Ramones, "Blitzkrieg Bop," The Ramones
15. Talking Heads, "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town," Talking Heads 77
16. The Clash, "Janie Jones," The Clash"
17. Van Halen, "Running with the Devil," Van Halen
18. REM, "Radio Free Europe," Murmur
19. The Beastie Boys, "Rhymin' and Stealin'," Licensed to Ill
20. N.W.A., "Boyz-In-Da-Hood," NWA and the Posse
21. Nirvana, "Blew," Bleach
22. 2Pac, "Young Black Male," 2Pacalypse
23. Radiohead, "You," Pablo Honey

First Song Collection


I'm posting as my first full album, Bob Dylan's self-titled first release. Most people are unfamiliar with this, and I think that's a shame. As you might expect, this is far more "folky" then anything Dylan released afterwards...even more so than the 4 groundbreaking albums that he released after this, before releasing Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan's version of "House of the Rising Sun" is haunting...so much superior to The Animals version that succeeded it. "Man of Constant Sorrow," though done by other artists exceptionally well, seems a naturally Dylanesque tune. And "In My Time of Dying" is also equally evocative and powerful.


My most favorite memory of this album was playing it and then hopping in the shower and hearing my dog Ophie howling to Dylan's harmonica. This was how I discovered that Ophie loved to sing along with the harmonica. I'd play this album in the car with Ophie riding along in the front seat and the windows rolled down and once Bob would come in with that harp, Ophie would always chime right in.

Bob Dylan (1962)