Dear friends and whanau and readers from the blogosphere in general,

As you know I am in China for a while and unfortunately my access to blogger, even with a vpn, is hit and miss. More miss than hit. So I will continue to post about our adventures in Wuxi, musical things and such on another blogsite that I can access. Please go to http://wnpurdy.blog.com from now until further notice for all the juicy bits that are fit to print.

 

Love and peace - Wozza

Would you let it ride? (BTO)

Another Keegan compilation CD didn't rate with him unfortunately. It was my Heavy Metal/Rock CD.

Here's the track listing of the CD I called the...

The Heavy Rock one

Waste your tears – The Answer

Let it ride – Bachman-Turner Overdrive

Easy peasy – Black Spiders

White trash millionaire – Black Stone Cherry

Burnin' for you – Blue Oyster Cult

Fever – Bullet For My Valentine

Soap on a rope – Chickenfoot

The book of heavy metal – Dream Evil

Save us – Dream Evil

Heavy metal in the night – Dream Evil

Oh well – Fleetwood Mac

Iced Earth – Iced Earth

One more time – James LaBrie (from Dream Theater)

Curl of the burl – Mastodon

Spectrelight – Mastodon

Blood and thunder – Mastodon

 

Trampled underhoof – Mastodon

The profusion of Mastodon tracks is because Keegan requested a sample of their work. The Dream Evils are there cos I love their stuff.

I have noticed that Randy Bachman and Fred Turner are still touring together!! Amazing.

I loved the stuff they did as Bachman-Turner Overdrive. I didn't pick You ain't seen nuthin' yet, not because I don't love it, but Keegan would surely know it (who doesn't?) and they did other great songs worthy of inclusion.

When Randy Bachman left The (mighty) Guess Who he started out again with a band called Brave Belt. This eventually morphed into Bachman-Turner Overdrive and included at one time THREE Bachman brothers - main man Randy, drummer Robin (a.k.a. Robbie) and second guitarist Tim. C.F. 'Fred' Turner was on bass and vocals. 

Let it Ride, a Bachman/Turner composition) was a single off the second BTO album, with vocals from Fred.

For me, their sound transports me back to the seventies - riding around in my mum's Chevette - with the stereo blasting. Turn this one up!


 

You're amazing, just the way you are (Bruno Mars)

I put a Bruno Mars song on a pop compilation for Keegan that seems to have raised some eyebrows amongst my whanau.

Here's the track listing:

Down by the river – Albert Hammond

September Gurls – Big Star

Levi Stubb's tears – Billy Bragg

You're my home – Billy Joel

Grenade – Bruno Mars

Bitter sweet memories – Bullet For My Valentine

Yellow river – Christie

Boogie wonderland – Earth Wing & Fire

Fooled around and fell in love – Elvin Bishop Band

I loved you – The Exponents

Teenage head – The Flamin' Groovies

It's the same old song – The Four Tops

Is she really going out with him? – Joe Jackson

Sex on fire – Kings of Leon

(I want to fly like) Superman – The Kinks

A new England – Kirsty MacColl

Baggy Trousers – Madness

Echo beach – Martha and the Muffins

All I need is a miracle – Mike and the Mechanics

My kids are amazed that I actually like Bruno; enough that I bought his album on the strength of Grenade.

Their reaction was quite interesting. If I'd said I quite liked Slayer, Opeth, Rammstein, Anthrax or something along those lines they would not even have blinked but Bruno Mars gets the, 'What the firetruck? You like Bruno Mars?' reaction. 

It was a bit of a fluke actually. I was watching TV one day and he was doing an acoustic live version of the song on The Graham Norton Show. Hang on - let me see if it's on youtube...



Wow - there it is - the interview and performance of Grenade. While I was searching for it I came across this (superior) version from a BBC session.


   

This song is catchy as all get out. I bet you end up singing it all day long! It's a great pop song.

That's the way it always comes around (Evermore)

My Roctober 22 post focused on being in the mood to buy CDs.

This post is Mood part 2.

As George Costanza says to Jerry Seinfeld (when Jerry won't give details of sleeping with Elaine cos he's not 'in the mood'):

I don't have a job, I have no place to go, you're not in the mood? Well you get in the mood!!

ZZ Top helped get me in the mood: repeated listens to I gotsta get paid sealed the deal after those videos from my Oct 22 post piqued interest.

In the end I bought three of the four CDs mentioned in that post (the only one yet to be purchased is the Diana Krall one).

The verdicts:

La Futura is awesome. The quality hinted at by the single, I gotsta get paid, is maintained throughout. Billy Gibbons sounds like he's channelling Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters at times. He's raw, he's ready, he's a funky gibbon!



There are plenty of early standouts, I've picked second track, Chartreuse, as being representative of the great sound the Three Tops can put out. The sonic quality is huge on the album. I listened to a few tracks on my p-pod from Afterburner (an album I love) before switching to the new one and La Futura is a much, much better sound.

The Datsuns' album is also a welcome relief after their last few outings have failed in inspire me. Dolf's yell, razor sharp guitars, boogie till you puke rifferamas!! What's not to like? It's a triumphant return to their signature sound and, this time out, it's a much meatier sounding sonic attack from the harmonic generators from Cambridge, NZ.



Evermore have returned to a sound that is closer to their second, much loved, album. The brothers from Feilding, NZ, know how to write hook laden pop songs, that's fer sure.

If I have a criticism it is that this is, at times, too much like their sound on album number 2 - Real Life and they are in danger of becoming too formulaic. I loved that album and it sounds churlish to say because pop music by definition is formulaic, but they could do with being a little bit more adventurous. The new one (Follow The Sun) could be Real Life Volume 2.

Hmmmm - maybe I'm being too tough. There are big songs on both albums and it will be on high rotate in the coming months. And it least they didn't do another naff concept album!

That's the way is a song that could, and maybe should, be a pointer to future directions. It's got some variety and drive and pop sensibilities but without the keening Embrace vocals they love so much (and are maybe overdoing).