In Training
Friday, September 3rd, 2010And we begin our new WMMCM obsession: Trains! When Pete suggested this, I didn’t think there were enough rock train songs to be worth getting into. I mean, country acts write about trains. But once we started talking about it, the trains started rolling, so to speak. Beginning with this one, from a singer-songwriter, an [...]
And your chicks for free!
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010We’re coming to the end of our nearly monthlong rock star roundup — indeed, we’re in training, so to speak, for our next topic, starting Friday — and we’ve been saving this one: (There are better versions on YouTube, but they’re not embeddable.) I have to say I didn’t like this record much when it [...]
Cool, Cool Rain
Sunday, August 29th, 2010We’re coming into the home stretch of our rock star marathon (do marathons have home stretches?), and here’s a track for a Sunday, “Love Reign O’er Me,” the magnificent ballad that closes out the Who’s Quadrophenia. Is it really a song about a rock star? I would say it is. One premise of the Quadrophenia [...]
Standing Outside Boulder
Thursday, August 26th, 2010We’ve spent the last while on rock stars on being a rock star, but today we have a folk-based artist (who had several Top 40 hits) singing about a fellow folkie “who never was that famous”: Gordon Lightfoot is too often dismissed by pop and rock fans who actually know very little about him — [...]
Whine And Roads(es)
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010Rock stars singing about being rock stars — and related topics — is our current WMMCM obsession, and today’s entry is from Steve Perry and the Journey boys: Perry is absolutely one of the most gifted pop singers of any era, and the whole crew were first-rate musicians. They were able, once in a great [...]
Disarmed in the pop wars
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010John Hiatt is known more as a songwriter and respected fringe figure than an actual rock star, having never had a great deal of commercial success despite pretty consistent critical adoration. His biggest-selling album so far was back in 1993, and the title track fits precisely into our WMMCM rock star rundown. We join the [...]
Spandex and Sunset
Thursday, August 19th, 2010Motley Crue’s image-building made them out to be simple, horny creatures in their heyday, as illustrated in this deeply dimwitted tune. That the Crue became rock stars in an era that also had Guns N Roses in it is one of those mysteries of pop culture, but that they enjoyed the hell out of it [...]
Factory fresh!
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010As we do our rock star rundown, gotta throw in a nice piece of cheese now and then (name of the blog and all). So this, from a band capable of many things, but often of a deep and abiding cheesiness: I’ve always preferred the term “metal pop” to the more judgmental “corporate rock” for [...]
Unfettered and alive
Monday, August 16th, 2010Running along in our rock-star marathon, here’s one for the labels. And this is a very rare animal indeed: a positive song about a label exec. Though the subject of the song, David Geffen, had founded the Asylum label and sold it before this record came out in ’74 and hadn’t yet founded Geffen Records, [...]
So much larger than life
Thursday, August 12th, 2010And we continue in our riff on rock songs about rock stars with this commentary on the rock star ego, from So, in Peter Gabriel’s brief but most entertaining pop star period. Our hero is a small-town boy who’s just delighted to imagine himself cleverer than the folks he came from: They think so small, [...]
