Category: songs

individual songs

Primadonna Like MePrimadonna Like Me



by The Struts

~ The 8-year-old on the rail ~

This is my daughter’s first real concert. We drove into a town that I absolutely hate just for her and my wife to be able to see these guys after my son and I had caught them in a club the previous Fall. We even managed to wrangle radio station passes and didn’t even have to pay for the show. The opening act was okay, high energy and low comprehension. Nothing special but a good table-setter.

Since it was her first show, and general admission, I took her up to the rail for the opening number. Folks are more than happy to let the 8-year-old kid with the cat ears headband get right up front for when the band hit the stage.

As the power chords start ringing out in the amphitheater and then Luke hits that opening line “HEY YOU! / Don’t you know who I think I am?” he’s singing right to her face. Unfortunately, I had put the phone down and wasn’t recording that moment because I had my arms around her in case there was a rush towards the stage. Given how friendly everyone was getting her up there, I should have known better and expected they would be fine with her there and I would have had my 8-year-old daughter and the lead singer of one of the best up-and-coming bands in the world having their moment to kick off what turned out to be a pretty incredible show. 

The full set list is down below. If you get a chance to see The Struts live you better damn well take it or I will find you and kick your ass.

Set list

  • Primadonna Like Me
  • Body Talks
  • In Love With The Camera
  • Kiss This
  • Fire
  • Dirty Sexy Money
  • Old Switcheroo
  • One Night Only
  • Do It So Well
  • Bulletproof Baby
  • Somebody New
  • Put Your Money on Me
  • Where Did She Go
  • Don’t Stop Me Now
  • Ashes
  • Could Have Been Me

Skin & BonesSkin & Bones

0 Comments 8:40 pm


by Gilby Clarke

~ Slide guitar nirvana meets hard rock meets Americana ~

Gilby has lived a charmed musical career with several reinventions of himself. But his first solo album actually got him some attention as it was released shortly after he left Guns n’ Roses, following the Spaghetti Incident? album and tour. Most folks showed up for the crunchy guitars of the lead single (“Cure Me or Kill Me”).  This country-flavored one though, grabs your attention because it sticks out as something so obviously different from the rest of the record and different from everything else Gilby had done up to that point.

The combination of mouth harp and slide guitar give this a roots-rock feel that would become popular 20+ years later as more country-influenced blues acts started showing up on the radio. This is a little peppy for much of what passes as Americana these days, but really, you can totally see the Avett Brothers covering this.

The lyrics aren’t spectacular, but they’re a pretty good look inside the mind of a guy who has watched his life waste away and has no idea what to do next. Maybe Gilby was actually feeling that way when he wrote and recorded this. It wouldn’t be a surprise after having spent a few years with GNR. But given where he ended up over the next 15 years, he didn’t do too bad.

RebelsRebels

0 Comments 8:38 pm


by Tom Petty

~ Remember when Tom had a confederate flag on stage ~

This album is famous for the Alice in Wonderland-themed “Don’t Come Around Here No More” video. And while the video gives a sly wink and a nod to the underlying theme, Tom’s Southern roots definitely show through on this album more than any other. There was a time when much of the country was either unaware of or didn’t care about how Southern pride made a good chunk of the Southern population feel, and Tom tapped into it with this album, and this song, both of which he seemed to later repudiate with his disavowal of the Confederate flag and multiple references to social justice.

At the time though, the songs and themes he was singing about were less racially-tinged and more socially-tinged. Tom wasn’t telling African-Americans not to come around here, he was telling other white folks who were trying to boss around the Southern states. All of this seems horribly naive and light of the past 35 years, but at the time it really didn’t stick out as anything overly-remarkable. The fact that something like this could never be recorded today is definitely a sign of a societal shift

Wanted ManWanted Man

0 Comments 12:01 am


by Ratt

~ Western theatrics, ahead of their time ~

It’s not their most famous tune, but it was the initial kick in the teeth from their major label debut and it set the stage for what you would expect from Ratt for the next decade. What was cool though, was the idea of the hard rock cowboy and gunfighter themes that fit the music so well. Usually, as soon as the cowboy hat came out, so did the country music.

Ratt were the first of the 80s hard rock bands to reclaim the cowboy hat. Brett Michaels donned one regularly, once the “Cat Dragged In”-era makeup came off. And lets just all agree to pretend the “Ronnie Lee Keel” era never existed. Bon Jovi is more famous for the cowboy hat with “Wanted Dead or Alive” – and to be fair, it was a bigger chart hit. But within the hard rock community, folks know that Ratt beat him to the punch by at least 2 years and did it with a song that holds down it’s hard rock roots a little better.

Good One Comin’ OnGood One Comin’ On

0 Comments 12:01 am


by Blackberry Smoke

~ Texas calling ~

Yes, I know these guys are not from Texas. But anybody singing a song that includes a reference to Shiner Bock immediately gets tied to Texas, whether you want it or not. And this isn’t a West Texas song, it’s an East Texas song, where the fields are green, the hills are rolling, and there’s always a lake that’s not too far away where you can hang out with your two six packs of Shiner and some friends getting hammered over a weekend after a week of work that you just didn’t think you would survive.

Those blondes in the ragtop mustang? You’ve got them in every town in Texas, and they’re more than happy to follow you down to the lake if you’ve got something to keep the party flowing.

They didn’t just feel a good one coming on, they brought you along, too.

DesperadoDesperado

0 Comments 12:01 am


by Linda Ronstadt

~ If you know how the Eagles were formed ~

It’s not like it snuck up on anyone that they started out as Linda Ronstadt’s backing band. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that she’s singing Eagles covers. And given how well she can sing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she sings as well or better than the Eagles do.

In fact, she sings this song so well that it almost feels like the Eagles should give it up.

Her range and inflection go way beyond what you’re expecting from the guys. In it’s heyday, Linda Ronstadt’s voice was an instrument of mass destruction and this song showcases its range and power as well as any of her originals.

Just A GameJust A Game

0 Comments 12:01 am


by Triumph

~ Epic music ~

As a kid, I loved grand sweeping stories. In elementary school I couldn’t stop reading Greek & Roman mythology. In middle school, I devoured Eddings’ Belgariad series, among others. I like multi-part movie sagas, and 30-issue 7-title crossover comic events. And while Rush mastered the art of the epic album with 2112, Triumph weren’t very far behind in the category of “legendary Canadian power trios with long songs and epic, sweeping vocals.”

This one doesn’t tell a particular story, but for a kid with an overactive imagination who had read way too many fantasy novels, it wasn’t hard to slap this lyrical template on any number of fantasy stories and imagine the moves being played out by some cosmic chess masters pushing people around a map, not unlike Zeus in the old 1960s version of Jason and the Argonauts. The lyrics are just ambiguous enough to apply to any number of stories while still hinting at a much broader societal scope as they’re carried along by big soaring guitar lines that fade in and out around the vocals. The rhythm section isn’t trying to set anything on fire and the way Mike and Gil hold down the song is eminently competent without being overly flashy.

11/10, would listen again