Willie Nelson - "Band of Brothers" (2014)

Holy Shit Friends!  At the ripe old age of 81 slick Willie is still at it and showing now signs slowing down!

This is the title track from his 2014 release featuring mostly original compositions.  

Remember kids, Jesus loves you but the rest of us think you're an asshole!

According to the gospel of Saint Willie!

Give the People What They Want

The Kinks - "Give The People What They Want" (1981) - Arista

Hello Friends,

Its amazing how good this record is considering it was the Kinks' 18th record and one would think that after 18 years of putting out songs that Ray Davies and company would grow redundant and stale.  Quite the opposite.  This record, along with 1979's Low Budget, would mark the band's renaissance (especially in the U.S. where they spent most of the 70's way under the mainstream radar!)

Its a hard rocking, arena rock-sounding record from the first track, the punky "Around the Dial" through the last, the absolutely perfect power pop song, "Better Things".

After the opener, Side One contains the title track, the creepy "Killers Eyes", the single, "Predictable", and the New Wave-sounding, "Add it Up" (featuring Davies' wife-at-the-time, Chrissie Hynde on sultry background vocals!)

Side Two opens with the album's lead single, "Destroyer", a nod to two earlier Kinks' classics, "All Day and All of the Night" (the guitar riff) and the protagonist from "Lola"-- who since that fated rendezvous has sunk into a deeply paranoid state! 

Side Two continues with "Yo-Yo", "Back to Front" and the super-super creepy, "Art Lover" about a guy who sits in the park and watches young girls frolicking claiming he's an artist and has to study their nubile forms for purposes of his "art".  Nice!

I'm not a flasher in a rain coat

I'm not a dirty old man
I'm not gonna snatch you from your mother

I'm an art lover, come to daddy
Ah, come to daddy, come to daddy

The album closes out with the sad, but hard-rocking "A Little Bit of Abuse" (which may or may not be about Ray & Dave Davies' sister) and the aforementioned "classic", "Better Things". 

Overall a great-- and terribly underrated-- rock & roll record! 

RATING: 4.5 Pretty little legs like a Degas Ballerina out of 5

Sturgill Simpson - "Turtles All The Way Down" (2014)

Great song from one of 2014's best records, "Metamodern Sounds in Country Music".  Buy it, kids!

Good, late 1970's country sound with a nice psych twist!

Neil Sedaka - Bad Blood (1975)

Great 70's comeback song by perennial ladies man, Neil Sedaka.

We'd say its ear delicious!

Sing it stud!

Movie Night: Joyride (1977)

Hello Friends,

Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its Movie Night again on Vinyl in the Valley! 

Tonight we're watching a classic, cult road movie from 1977, Joyride, so buckle up!

Starring a stellar cast including Desi Arnaz, Jr, Robert Carradine, Anne Lockhart and a very young & frequently topless, Melanie Griffith.   Joyride is about three friends who ditch their crappy day jobs and head north to Alaska in order to find their slice of the American Dream.  They learn pretty quickly that the world can be a cruel and unforgiving place! What else is new?  Heck, these guys have setbacks at every turn.  Tiki T. and I would have given up and turned around after the very first night when their car gets broken into!  End of road trip, roll credits!

Directed by Joseph Ruben, Joyride is a very 70's movie with a very 70's soundtrack (featuring a buttload of ELO) plus there's plenty of T&A, some good car chases, a heist and even a peeing contest! Nice!

Tiki T. thought the soundtrack had too much ELO and could have benefited by darker, heavier music of the time (like Sabbath) whereas I really liked it.  Like a good salad, it had just the right amount of cheese!

Anyways, we give this one two raised cocktail glasses (filled with hooch!)

We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.  

(* not really)

Bob Mould - "The War"

This war has warn me down

Broken dreams and a hole in the ground

Don't give up

And don't give in.

Another great song from Mould's latest, Beauty & Ruin. 

The album rocks, but at the same time is not without its introspective moments.

Its even a little sad at times. 

You know, like Alan Alda.

KADAVAR - "Doomsday Machine"

Here's some excellent 70's-sounding stoner rock from Germany.

Song can be found on the band's excellently-titled 2013 release, Abra Kadavar!

Buy it kids!

\M/

Future Games

Fleetwood Mac - "Future Games" (1971) - Reprise

Hello Friends,

What a weird fucking band Fleetwood Mac is!

Starting out a blues-based rock band that sounded like a slightly more psychedelic version of the Yardbirds and winding up as one of the biggest, most radio-friendly soft rock juggernauts of all time, there's still stuff we're discovering by the band that we've never heard before and it knocks our socks off!

First off, let's take a look at the band line-up circa 1971.  Mainstays John McVie & Mick Fleetwood are present and accounted for.  Founding member Peter Green is long gone--physically and mentally at this point-- as is his "replacement", Jeremy Spencer.  Taking up the lead guitar and frontman duties is "long time" member, Danny Kirwan.

Future Games would be the first Mac LP to feature Christine McVie as a full-fledged member (although she does appear on 1970's remarkable, Kiln House) as well as guitarist-songwriter, Bob Welch, who would take over frontman duties on the next four records as well!


McVie would write and sing two songs on the record: "Morning Rain"-- a song that screams early 70's FM Radio-- and the LP's closer, "Show Me A Smile"-- a pretty & sweet sounding denouement that sounds a lot like early Wings.

The album's lone instrumental, the bluesy "What A Shame" is credited to all five members.

Bob Welch would write the album's AMAZING Floydian title track/epic, as well as Side Two's rocker, "Lay It All Down."

Fucking-A, right?

Kirwan contributes the trippy seafaring-themed, "Woman of 1000 Years", and the pensively-melodic, "Sands of Time", as well as the Burritos-sounding, "Sometimes".  

Fleetwood Mac now had three songwriters with distinctive voices who could all write catchy hooks and killer melodies and who helped usher in the "middle" era of Fleetwood Mac's convoluted career.  An era where song composition became paramount, harmonies became more important than guitar solos and moods got mellowed.  If the Peter Green-era was like The Yardbirds-on-Acid and the Buckingham-Nicks-era was fueled by massive amounts of cocaine, this period of the band was their pot-smoking phase: mellow, warm, hazy and never in a rush!

Smoke 'em if you got 'em kids! 

RATING: 4 real rhymes or reasons for those future games out of 5 

Bob Mould - "I Don't Know You Anymore"

This is one of our favorite tracks of 2014!  From the album, "Beauty & Ruin".

Bob Mould, still rocking our faces after all these years!

"Hot off the presses, new single!"

Nots - "Decadence"

Hello Friends,

Hot chicks from Memphis playing screeching punk rock, what's not to love?

You can buy their stuff (or stalk them) at http://www.goner-records.com/Nots.php.

Tall socks!

The Flying Club Cup

Beirut - "The Flying Club Cup" (2007) - Ba Da Bing! Records

Hello Friends,

Happy New Year to y'all!  We're listening to this record while enjoying our Sunday Brunch which is probably the best way to listen to this record.  Definite White-people Brunch music.  

The songs are mostly quiet, melodic & subdued with French-sounding arrangements featuring lots of piano, ukulele, accordions, upright bass, french horns, clarinets & even a bouzouki.

Side One's closer "Cliquot" is probably the album's highlight (it features a really nice-sounding string arrangement courtesy of Final Fantasy's/Arcade Fire's Owen Pallett.)

Back in 2007, I remember reading a review for this album that described it as a cross between Neutral Milk Hotel and Gogol Bordello.  At the time this sounded like a winning combination, but I've come since to realize that while I thoroughly enjoy Neutral Milk Hotel's two unbelievable records, I don't really enjoy things that sound like them or artists who were too clearly influenced by them.  Been there, done that, I guess.  (The same holds true for any artist that is described as sounding like Elliott Smith.)  As for the Gogol Bordello reference, I don't really hear it although the reviewer was probably confusing Beirut's Balkan Chamber Pop sound and Gogol Bordello's unique brand of gypsy punk rock. One makes me want to drink tea with scones, the other makes me want to chug vodka and set fire to things!

To each his own, I guess.

RATING: 3.5 Sunday Smiles out of 5