Four shows from the Ramones December 1977 tour of England. The fourth was later released as It's Alive , a 54 minute double album, tearing through most of their first three albums.  The first, in Birmingham, was recorded on December 28th. It's tight. Joey claims he's sick from the Indian food that he had....he tells the audience to stop spitting, or the band is leaving. Quite a show. Barry, Dadrock 101 corporate dogsbody and man about town, remarked that a recently circulated playlist of AOR hits from 1976 reminded him of why he started listening to punk. It also remind us of why the Ramones and their ilk started playing it.

There was some cloud cover in the west, but Jupiter and Saturn managed to break through, as seen from the parking lot of the Dadrock 101 corporate campus. Embedded is a Dadrock 101 Guitarchestra rendition of a Tchaikovsky piece, transposed into Fb minor and scored for guitar, bass, and drums.  It's a piece, alright.  A few years back the December edition of Mediocre Guitar Player  put out a review wherein it received three (out of five) "whatevers". We thought that 2020 would be a good year to dust it off and share it with you. Here's to a Happy New Year.

For this weekend's show,  check out one of the best concerts ever recorded. On December 21, 1973 - the solstice, the darkest day of the year, Lou Reed played two Yuletide sets at the Academy of Music in New York.  Oh, to have been there. The backing band featured the twin guitar attack of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, who producer Bob Ezrin had tapped to back on Lou's  Berlin  album, released earlier that year. The rest of the band consisted of Prakash John, Pentti Glan, and Ray Colcord on bass, drums, and keyboards, respectively.  Sadly, for Lou, the band - minus Colcord - went on to back Alice Cooper on Welcome to My Nightmare . You can here them in a live setting on The Alice Cooper Show . Most of the show (all but two songs) was subsequently released as two albums. The first, Rock n Roll Animal ,  came out in early 1974 and featured four re-workings of Velvet Underground tunes and one song of the recently released Berlin . The second, 1975's Lou Reed Li...

We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of John Lennon's murder.  Last week I saw that somebody is auctioning off his last autograph, which he signed for his murderer. Forty years ago last month he released his last album. A joint effort with Yoko, I don't know if it is a great album, but it had three charting singles as well as another track that received significant airplay on classic rock and AOR stations. Not a bad showing for anybody, but after all of these years thats about as far as I've ever been able to get into it. One story is that John was inspired to go back into the studio after hearing McCartney II  earlier in the year. The year before, 1979, saw George's release of George Harrison .  It includes an update of the White Album outtake , " Not Guilty ", played in a yacht rock style. Most of the rest of the album is the same. " Soft Hearted Hannah " has some 1969 b-side Beatleyness. The standout track was the single, "Blow Away ...

During this week in 1982 the Jam played were playing a five night stand at the Wembley Arena. Paul Weller had announced the band's breakup - at their commercial peak - just over a month earlier. Within a week of the fifth show, they played their farewell gig. The show, from the second night's show, was released with five other shows in the Fire and Skill boxed set. It's a retrospective set, with something from each stage of the band's career, although they seem to have skipped the Modern World lp.  I still prefer their first live album, Dig the New Breed , issued the day before their last gig. It is culled from several shows from 1977 to spring of 1982. It wasn't well received at the time, but I don't understand why. It bests the Wembley show with each track that the two releases share. The sound quality is great, the energy is high.  Maybe it could be faulted for missing some tunes, but I wouldn't know how to make room.