Month: June 2014

365 Day Song Challenge: Day 138 – “New Frontier”

Posted on by Joe Parker

Day 138: A song that you feel is greatly under-appreciated.

“New Frontier” – Donald Fagen

New FrontierIn other posts, I’ve talked a little bit about how I saw videos before we got MTV.

Somehow we discovered “Night Flight.” USA Network used to run the show on Friday and Saturday nights, starting at about 11:00 PM until some ungodly hour. My brother and I used to watch it together pretty regularly. While they occasionally had a movie or some interviews or something, they primarily played videos. (This was also around the same time of NBC’s “Friday Night Videos,” so on Fridays, if you got lucky, you might actually catch a video while the other channel had a commercial on.)

This just goes to show how big a deal videos were back then (even NBC wanted in on the action). Read More

365 Day Song Challenge: Day 137 – “Flamethrower”

Posted on by Joe Parker

Day 137: A song beginning with “F”.

“Flamethrower” – The J Geils Band

FlamethrowerWhen I was a freshman in college, the dorm I lived in had three floors, and each floor was split up into two halves, with the bathroom and showers in between. Each half contained 6 rooms—4 doubles and 2 singles.

The 4 doubles were set up in a “cube” and those of us in those rooms became friends, particularly the two guys directly across the hall. We got along very well—except when we didn’t. We spent a lot of time together, and, no matter how well you get along, when you see people a lot, tensions mount.

And when tensions boiled over, it got loud. Occasionally other stupid things happened, too, but mostly it was loudness. Read More

365 Day Song Challenge: Day 136 – “Stairway To Heaven”

Posted on by Joe Parker

Day 136: A song that you feel is highly overrated.

“Stairway To Heaven” – Led Zeppelin

Stairway To HeavenI’m once again opening myself up to hate mail.

People act like Led Zeppelin are a sacred rock institution. Like cows to Hindus. Immune to criticism. Free of imperfections. Thus, any perceived slight to Led Zeppelin leads to flames and insults.

Led Zeppelin was a good band. Even though they’re not one of my favorites, I would probably even go so far as to say they were great. But not so great that they warrant one-(or multiple-) hour-long “Get the Led Out” marathons on classic rock stations. Do we really need to spend 4% of each day listening to the same 14 songs we’ve heard a million times?

It’s just a little much. Read More