[Note: This is the first in a series of articles that constitute Village Voice Media's year-end music package. The others - pop, indie-rock, dance mixes, Latin, country, alt-country/Americana, metal, rap/hip-hop and special graphics breaking down the year in charts and 2008's worst lyrics - will be posted on Rocks Off throughout the rest of the holiday season.]
It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.
BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco e
Who Dat?
Spooky Tooth was formed in 1967 out of the ashes of a band called Art, which featured Mike Harrison (vocals/keyboards), Luther Grosvenor (guitar), Greg Ridley (bass), and Mike Kellie (drums). Signed to Chris Blackwell's Island label, Art's debut album went nowhere.
Blackwell spotted vocalist/organist Gary Wright in another band, and suggested the five form a new group. Wright's high falsetto added a yin-and-yang to the vocals, and the now-named Spooky Tooth released It's All About i
Note: see Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
For most of 1969, the Beatles were pretty much comatose - after the disastrous Get Back sessions (which would later spawn the Phil Spector-produced Let It Be), they reconvened to the studio that spring to record the music for what would become their final recorded opus, Abbey Road.
But the soon-to-be former members of the band were not in any way inactive. On September 13, John Lennon and Yoko Ono assembled a pick-up band formed by Eric Clapton, Klaus Voor
Between the early bubblegum pop of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and the epic sentimental balladry of "Hey Jude," the Beatles were always about much more than just the songs you hear on the radio. Even the biggest band there ever was has a few high-quality little gems that the masses aren't aware of and the radio ignores. To somewhat counteract the tough but fair shellacking the Fab Four received from Pete Von Der Haar Tuesday, and while we recuperate from Wednesday night's Beatles: Rock Band smac
[Note: While we're on the subject of House of Blues shows, please note the Goodie Mob/Scarface concert scheduled for tonight has been rescheduled for Thursday, January 14.]www.drivebytruckers.comOnce again Rocks Off allowed ourselves to get distracted and nearly forgot we've got this Live Nation "Club Passport" to give away. Hey, we're busy. But we need to get this thing passed along to its proper owners, whoever they may be, like, NOW. In case you forgot, it gets the winner and a guest into
Tuesday just happens to be the 59th birthday of Rocks Off's personal hero, role model and by all accounts someone who smokes even more weed than we do, Thomas Earl Petty. Speaking of, it's also Snoop Dogg's birthday, which means 10/20 deserves to be a NORML holiday even more than 4/20 does. But until that happens, here's our choice for the best Tom Petty songs either written by or credited to someone else.
Mudcrutch, "Orphan of the Storm" (Mudcrutch, 2008): Of course, this had to be first - it'
