CORPORATE CRIMINALS PLAYING WITH TANKS

One of the longest running radio stations around here is playing "classic rock" these days, with a wide range of music falling under the "classic" umbrella ('67 to '95, or thereabouts), because those baby boomers refuse to admit that the music of their youth is ANCIENT.  Shit, when I was a kid, 40 year old music was from WW2.

For a while in the early 80s, they had an odd mix of Top 40, mid to late 70s stuff and what the old folks were calling "new wave" at the time, so every now and then, among the Springsteen and Billy Joel and Eagles, you'd hear some London Calling/Sandinista!-era Clash, or some Red Rockers, Fixx, Psych Furs, Midnight Oil, Talking Heads, early R.E.M., Kings and so on and so on.  It's where I first Heard "The Walls Came Down" by perennial contenders the Call.  Had to run out and buy the single, but they stuck a so-so tune from the band's first album on the flip side, so I had to shell out the $6 for the 12" vinyl to hear the rest of the album.

You can see why "Walls" was the single.  Definitely the best song there, but not for a lack of trying.  An excellent album, easily the band's best.  A perfect mix of passion, nervous energy and gritty guitar.  The next album, Scene Beyond Dreams, was way too heavy, and it set sort of a pattern for the rest of the band's career - numerous flashes of brilliance offset by way too many slabs of lugubrious music and dour lyrics.   Still, the band deserves a zillion bonus points for recording the anthemic "Let the Day Begin",  one of the extremely few songs from "my" generation that me and my father both agreed was a stone cold classic.

My dad also gets bonus points.  He had a music freak for a friend, and the 3 of us attended some of my earliest concerts together - Charlie Daniels Band, Joan Jett and  ZZ Top (separate shows, not one mind-blowing bill).

Good times.....