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BROTHER BILL TUOMALA TO THE RESCUE!!

Filed under: Weekly 20

I know I promised an all-local Walsh Files for this week, but I gpt busy doing the Mama Cass thing ("Make your own kind of music, even when nobody else is around") and I will not bore you with the details. I promise to return next week with all the P.O.S. and Baby Grant Johnson and all the rest.

In the meantime, thank goddess for my boy Bill Tuomala,
writer, musichead, hockey nut, and creator of the most excellent 'zine Exiled On Main Street. Go get it brother Bill:

1. "Snowblind," Black Sabbath. There was a great, wet snowfall last Tuesday night and I was trapped driving around south Minneapolis without my Sabbath Vol. 4 album. Oh well, the song isn't about snow anyway.

2. "Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze," Neil Young & Crazy Horse. Surfer Joe is a folk hero who first showed up in 1963 on the same slice of vinyl as the Surfaris classic "Wipeout." By the end of the tune it was assumed he was being shipped off to 'Nam. Poor Joe. Ever since, he pops up now and then in songs, for instance in 1990 he showed up in Paul Westerberg's dreams on the 'Mats last album. Here, in 1981 on the great lost Neil album Reactor, he hangs out with a hustler named Moe. They chase women and booze. Alright Joe!

3. "They Called It Rock," Nick Lowe. A hit-and-run description of a one-hit wonder. Played with the kind of desperation that makes you wonder if Lowe feared that one-hitdom would also be his fate.

4. "Tombstone Blues," Bob Dylan. Required listening for noted bullshit artist Pete Townshend, whose music I love. In the latest MOJO, he declared that circa '65: "Dylan's rock 'n' roll was silly rock 'n' roll, he couldn't play rock 'n' roll, he's never been able to play rock 'n' roll." Care to give another listen Pete?

5. "Armenia City in the Sky," Petra Haden. Included on the all-Who-covers CD that came along with the MOJO mag mentioned above. From her all-vocals remake of The Who Sell Out album from last year. She even does the psychedelic guitar noises vocally. Hypnotic in the best way possible.

6. "The Great Airplane Strike," Paul Revere and the Raiders. Fuzz-drenched Dylan imitation complete with Bob-like vocals. Great fun ��" and the opening riff was ripped off by the Dead Kennedys, who weren't nearly as funny or as cool or as punk as the Raiders.

7. "Charlie Freak," Steely Dan. Hats off to eBay, where you can buy quality used vinyl LPs like Pretzel Logic for ninety-nine cents all with the click of a mouse button. Hmmm, tell me more about this iTunes music store …

8. "Hair of the Dog," Nazareth. The Winter Olympics hockey tourney starts next week and I am told that the USA men's hockey team are 10-1 odds to win the gold. Canada is favored at 6-5, the Czechs are at 3-1, the Swedes are at 4-1, and the Russians are at 11-2. Hell, we have the same odds as the Slovaks -- who for some reason are more favored than the Finns (12-1.) Huh? (Note: these odds are for entertainment purposes only.) Here's hoping the USA youth movement featuring the likes of my man Jason Blake -- formerly of the University of North Dakota and Moorhead High -- acts like the pesky SOBs they are capable of being and pull off some upsets.

10. "Lies," The Knickerbockers. James Frey, while being scolded by Oprah, should have just grinned, chuckled, and said: "I'm laughing all the way to the bank, lady."

11. "Pour Me Another," Atmosphere. The other night in Uptown a panhandler asked me for money, saying he wanted to buy a pitcher of beer and wasn't going to lie "like the others and say that I need money for the bus." As we beer drinkers don't have a union (yet), I slapped him a George and wished him luck. I love Minneapolis.

12. "Just Another High," Roxy Music. Is it a conspiracy? That they never tell you that Roxy albums three, four, and five are soul albums and not art- or glam-rock?

13. Theme song from "Cheers." Love those reruns on channel 45. My day job is as an accountant, I love beer. All the (fortunately female, sigh) servers at my favorite watering hole know my name. If I were Catholic, Norm Peterson would be my patron saint. Hell, I'm pretty sure he is anyway.

14. "I Wonder If I Care As Much," The Everly Brothers. A dreamy, trippy, 1968 remake of one of their earliest songs from ten years prior. Gorgeous. They wrote it also -- obviously using a time machine because everybody knows rockers didn't wrote their own songs until the Beatles came along.

15. "Monkey Man," The Rolling Stones. Dedicated to Pat Robertson and believers in "intelligent" design everywhere. When the Book of Genesis puts a man on the moon, let me know.

16. "Breakout," Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. Speaking of the Stones, whose hare-brained scheme was it to put some Brits on the Super Bowl halftime show when the game is being held in Detroit, one of this country's greatest music cities? I put my TV on mute and played Detroit music on my stereo loud and proud during halftime.

17. "Multitude of Casualties," The Hold Steady. An all-time fave lyric: "At least in dying you don't have to deal with new wave for a second time."

18. "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys," Waylon Jennings. Latest Netflix obsession: The Wire. Great scene in season two: Detective Jimmy McNulty stays up late working on mischief meant to screw other police while this song plays on the radio. That dude has become part of my vernacular -- i.e. "pull a McNulty."

19. "I Do," The J. Geils Band. First a hit for the Marvelows in 1965 (thanks allmusic.com), later covered by soul revivalists Geils in one of those hand-clapping, doo-wopping performances that produces a grin every time.

20. "Sleeping My Day Away," D:A:D. Some days there is nothing sweeter than waking up at the crack of 4:30 p.m. to catch "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN.

Posted by Jim Walsh at February 6, 2006 9:22 AM

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