Tag: Rush

Picking Five Songs From 1981

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year6 Comments

This series, often delayed, is now up to 1981. Again, the ’80’s are a tough time to narrow things down to five songs, so take this list as “five of my favorite songs from the year” rather than being a definitive list of my five absolute favorites. Nothing much more to say, let’s get right after it.

Iron Maiden – Murders In The Rue Morgue

The final salvo from Maiden’s Paul Di’Anno era came with this pounding musical rendition of the classic Edgar Allan Poe story. It’s fast, noisy and a great cut from Di’Anno’s final bow. This song is a bit less celebrated than many other Maiden tracks but it’s always been my favorite slab from this record.

Van Halen – Unchained

This was an absolutely slamming track that became one of Van Halen’s signature songs. Eddie does all sorts of stuff with the guitar here – making noise, keeping rhythm and just going all out. And David Lee Roth is, well, DLR here in all his glory. In this case it totally enhances the song, as it usually did in the early Van Halen catalog. Easily one of my very favorite Van Halen tracks here, can’t go wrong with it.

Rush – Limelight

Funny thing here – Rush wrote a song about being uncomfortable with the increased attention they’d gotten around this time, so the song they wrote became a hit and one of their signature tracks. The song features Rush being quite accessible yet also still offering the mind-bending music they excelled at. This song in particular is the Alex Lifeson show, with one of his most memorable solos. Rush would commendably succeed and do so largely on their own terms.

Ozzy Osbourne – Over The Mountain

I’ll set aside the valid arguments about who didn’t get properly comped for their writing work on this and other Ozzy classics and simply focus on the amazing music. This is a massive triumph that was part of an unlikely second life for Ozzy, who came out swinging as the Prince of Darkness in the early ’80’s. The song is phenomenal in every way and especially with Randy Rhodes, this is one of his finest works in a brief yet crowded field. This would sadly be his swansong, but it’s a hell of a way to go out.

Black Sabbath – The Sign Of The Southern Cross

While Sabbath’s former singer was racking up his own accolades, Sabbath themselves were trucking along just fine with Ronnie James Dio. This crushing doom track sees Dio explore the darker side of religion. It was one more triumph for Black Sabbath before things came undone, but it was again one hell of a way to wrap up the first Dio stint.

That does it for ’81. More very awesome music next week as the hits keep coming in what has to be the greatest decade of human existence.

Picking Five Songs From 1977

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year4 Comments

Here is the latest in my songs series, on an unusual day. After the post I’ll have an update on this site over the next few weeks.

And now on this 50 year long musical journey we arrive at 1977. Seems like it was an interesting time in the world, a lot of weird world events and all that. It was a bit of a banner year in entertainment, as the first Star Wars movie hit theaters.

It was a mournful time in music. For one, I’m not sure this was the greatest year in music history. Kind of a whatever vibe with a lot of this stuff. I vaguely recall the 1977 Behind The Music and everyone was just like “fuck that year.” And the King himself Elvis Presley died on a hot August night.

And just three days after Elvis left the building, I was spat into existence. So no more “I wasn’t around for this year” on these posts. I was, in fact, around – though I can’t cop to having any memory of the year, obviously. I think I have one very small, vague memory from ’79 but that’s all I recall of the decade, I was busy filling diapers and crying.

But even if the year was kind of lame, I had no problem selecting five songs from it. Good music is always around.

Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop

This single from one of the biggest albums of all time was one of my earliest musical memories. My mom had a carrying spindle thing that held a bunch of jukebox 45’s and this was one of the singles in that set. I used to play through those 45’s a lot, and I whittled it down to the ones I really liked, this being among those. Honestly a somewhat heavy song, by Fleetwood Mac standards anyway, and a great duet between Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie.

Judas Priest – Dissident Aggressor

A cut from the band’s third album Sin After Sin and another testament to Priest being the glue that held heavy metal together just before metal kicked off big time. This saw Priest really up the ante with the heaviness and include some real divebombing guitars. The song was a thought piece on the city of Berlin, at the time caught in a Cold War split that was stark and honestly insane.

Heart – Barracuda

This was another of the 45’s in my mom’s tote and this would be the one I’d play over and over and over and over again. This was an aggressive song and with good reason – it was written by Ann and Nancy Wilson after the press grossly speculated on them being involved with each other despite being sisters. And that main riff of Nancy’s offers a very short and straight line to the heavy metal I would get into several years later. Definitely one of my favorite songs of all time.

Rush – Closer To The Heart

This is an all-time Rush song for sure. Well written and arranged, it brings out a sentimental flair while still sounding totally Rush. The song really opened up the world to Rush in terms of radio play, landing them a top 40 UK hit and also getting their foot in the door in the US. Always a good time to hear this one.

Kiss – Love Gun

This last slot was a tough choice – it was between this and Aerosmith’s Kings And Queens. The latter is an awesome song but Love Gun won out in the end. The album was one of my first Kiss albums and also one of my earlier music memories overall, so it’s easy to pick this signature Kiss song. It’s easy to hear why it’s one of Paul Stanley’s favorite songs.

That does it for ’77. Inching closer to the 1980’s, where this whole thing gets insane as far as picking only five songs per year.

And with that, here is a brief update – I am starting my new job next week and I’ve had a hell of a time lately with leaving my old job and getting stuff together for the new one. I am going on a two-week hiatus from this blog in order to get adjusted to my new work. I will be working a lot of hours but I think after I get into the new rhythm I should be able to get back into the swing here. I don’t know what my post frequency will be but I should be able to figure something out. See you all then.

Picking Five Songs From 1974

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year7 Comments

I press on with my look at songs from a particular year, this time we’ve hit 50 years ago exactly as it’s time to look at 1974. And this year offered up something a bit different – I’ve previously been able to easily reference Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin albums for songs I absolutely love, but both bands did not offer up any recorded material in ’74. Not to be deterred, it was honestly pretty easy to locate five songs I like a lot from the year.

We do see a few debuts from acts now legendary, and in the next several years things really get different with all the debuts. And also these lists get really hard to compile, to this point I haven’t had to “bump” a song from a list due to finding another I like better, but that is coming very soon. And we’re just a few years removed from where I was actually around.

But that’s all for later – for today, let’s enjoy a few choice cuts from 1974.

Kiss – Strutter

Here we have the first track from the first album from the group that would take over the world with their stage shows and theatrics. But out of the gate we get a fairly simple yet quite ass kicking rock track. Even up against the music of the time, there was something a bit different in what Kiss had on offer. And just listen to Paul Stanley’s voice from 50 years back, damn that dude could carry a tune.

Rush – Working Man

The debut surge continues with Canada’s greatest export. Rush were still not in their final form here as Neil Peart had not yet joined the band, but this first album did feature this choice cut that helped the band get their break when it got played on FM radio. This isn’t the crazy, prog-driven music of Rush to come, but it’s a nice and loud ode to the existence of the rank and file worker, which I can totally identify with in my late 40’s with shit prospects of upward mobility. But hey, great song.

UFO – Doctor Doctor

This next one came to me from less conventional means, as to this day I’m woefully uneducated on the music of UFO. But this early contribution from new and then young guitarist Michael Schenker slowly became a fan favorite after years of live performances. It starts with an epic intro but the song itself is a pretty lean and mean rock track.

What led me to this song was its use as intro music – since 2000, Iron Maiden have played this song over the PA just before taking stage. Maiden also did cover the song during the Blaze Bayley years just prior. But that’s how I came to know this song and I should get off my ass and get into more UFO.

Dolly Parton – Jolene

This time there’s no debut as Dolly had already been around. I’m also playing with the timeline a bit since this song was released in ’73 as a single, but the album of the same name was released in early ’74 so I’m running with that. It’s like the Marvel Cinematic Universe in here, I just play with time to suit my needs at any given moment.

Jolene is one of country music’s all time songs, as Dolly laments that the title character seems to be making moves on Dolly’s man. Nothing is entirely clear – Dolly thinks Jolene is on the prowl, but it’s never said if that’s really the case. But Dolly’s insistence that Jolene keep away is one of country’s crown jewels.

Queen – Stone Cold Crazy

If you had “Queen would invent thrash metal” on your 1974 bingo card, well I guess you cashed in. This short hyperblast of frantic rock featured everything that would come along in the early ’80’s – ripping guitars, pounding drums and rapid fire vocals. I didn’t hear it at the time of course, but even going back to music from before I was around, this one really sticks out as something out of the ordinary. I bet it was crazy to hear when it was released.

That does it for 1974. I guess that means there are either 49 or 50 more of these to do, I don’t know because I don’t have enough fingers to count it all. See you next week.