“Cuddly Toy” – Roachford. For years I couldn’t remember the artist that sang this song, which I listened to on an endless loop the week I graduated from high school. I had the cassette single of it – holy time warp, Batman – and someone swiped it from me when I got to college that fall. When the wonderful world of “file sharing” arrived, I kept trying to find it, but was always looking under the wrong name. Finally, probably 10 years ago, I heard it somewhere, used Shazam to find the artist, and I was back in business. It’s still a good song.
“I Need To Know” – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. I was waiting for a friend at a restaurant a few weeks back and heard this on the in-house music. I kind of forget about it amongst all of Petty’s other great songs. It was released in the height of the punk era, and while it is still Petty’s classic blend of the south and California, there is a little of the rawness of the punk era in it.
“The Red Door” – Restorations. Oh good golly this is a humdinger of a song! Great to have the Restorations back, with a new album scheduled for released in September.
“Hold That Thought” – The Brian Jonestown Massacre. The final Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown episode I watched before we lost cable TV was his Berlin episode. If you’ve not seen it, it’s all about how strange a city Berlin is in the context of the country around it. Where Germany is a regimented, orderly society, anything goes in Berlin. Bourdain stopped in on musician Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, who is now based in Berlin. Ironically Spotify spit this song out in my Discovery playlist the next week. It’s a good jam.