Psychological operations

The Bar And The God Stone Of Jacob's Pillow Thesis: If God is absent from the divine right of a King then you live in a maliciously fraudulent environment and you regain the sovereignty of God.

Nonfiction of Idiocracy and Oconee County SC Judicial System

https://des.sc.gov/index.php/programs/bureau-water/drinking-water SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES Safe public drinking water in South Carolina is accomplished through a "multiple barrier" approach. Tools utilized in this approach include source water protection, certified water treatment plant operators, routine sanitary surveys, monitoring, treatment design and plan review. A cooperative partnership of the SC DHEC Drinking Water Program staff, the US EPA and drinking water professionals throughout the State helps to ensure safe, high quality drinking water in South Carolina. 24-HOUR EMERGENCY CONTACT: (888) 481-0125 Richard Welch, Jr. P.E., Manager, Drinking Water & Recreational Waters Compliance, (803) 898-3546 Wendi Smith, Program Manager, Drinking Water Compliance Monitoring Section, (803) 898-2382 Bridget Clarke, P.E., Manager, Construction Permitting, (803) 898-4239

Baker Street Album: City To City (1978) Gerry Rafferty ...And Then They Blew Up Baker Street is the most sentimental of all Gerry Rafferty's songs. It is about a man who dreams of owning a house and living away from his neighborhood, but he is a drunk, and cannot achieve that goal. He drinks to forget what he doesn't have, and never realizes he's a rolling stone with no direction. Rafferty was a member of Stealers Wheel, who had a hit in 1973 with "Stuck In The Middle With You." His first band was a folk duo called "The Humblebums." His singing partner was the famous Scot comedian Billy Connelly. Baker Street is a real street in London; Rafferty often stayed with a friend who lived there. The song was the Scottish singer's first release after the resolution of legal problems surrounding the acrimonious breakup of his band Stealers Wheel in 1975. In the intervening three years, Rafferty had been unable to release any material due to disputes about the band's remaining contractual recording obligations, and his friend's Baker Street flat was a convenient place to stay as he tried to extricate himself from his Stealers Wheel contracts. Rafferty explained to Martin Chilton at the Daily Telegraph: "Everybody was suing each other, so I spent a lot of time on the overnight train from Glasgow to London for meetings with lawyers. I knew a guy who lived in a little flat off Baker Street. We'd sit and chat or play guitar there through the night." In the last verse, Rafferty expresses his exhilaration as his legal and financial frustrations are finally resolved: When you wake up it's a new morning The sun is shining, it's a new morning You're going, you're going home Raphael Ravenscroft played the sax solo. Rafferty wrote the song with an instrumental break, but didn't have a specific instrument in mind. Hugh Murphy, who produced the track, suggested a saxophone, so they brought in Ravenscroft to play it. Ravenscroft has played on records by Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, Abba, Alvin Lee and many others. The "Baker Street" saxophone gets a lot of attention, but there's a rather impressive guitar solo in the song as well. It was played by Hugh Burns, a Scottish session musician who played on the City To City album. Burns had been touring with Jack Bruce of Cream fame, so he was in a blues-rock mindset. He went on to play on various George Michael tracks, including "Faith" and "Careless Whisper." One of the most famous residents of Baker street is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He lived at 221-B Baker Street. In 1992 the UK group Undercover reached #2 in the British charts with their cover of this song. Their name was apt as their only other UK Top 20 hit was another cover, this time of Andrew Gold's "Never Let Her Slip Away." Both original versions were in the UK Top 20 in April 1978. Undercover's keyboardist Steve McCutcheon, also known as Steve Mac, later teamed up with Wayne Hector to form a successful songwriting partnership including some of Westlife's UK #1s. This song was covered by the rock band Foo Fighters, who reworked it with the famous sax line replaced with a guitar. They performed the song on occasion and issued their version as the B-side to some releases of "My Hero." In 2007, the song was included on the 10th anniversary reissue of their album The Colour and the Shape. Ravenscroft was reportedly paid only £27 for his sax contribution. The check that he was given bounced, so the musician framed the useless payment and hung it on his solicitor's wall. Speaking in a 2011 radio interview, Ravenscroft said the song riled him. "I'm irritated because it's out of tune," he said. "Yeah, it's flat. By enough of a degree that it irritates me at best." The period of 1977-1982 produced from very memorable soft rock songs that made their way onto playlists decades later. This genre came to be known, sometimes dismissively, as "Yacht Rock," with this song often cited as an exemplar. More so than most, "Baker Street" resonates with listeners, drawing out strong emotions. Nicholas Niespodziani of the Yacht Rock Revue told us about performing the song: "'Baker Street' is really all about the sax riff, which actually, is not an exceedingly difficult sax riff to play, but one that brings out emotions in people that they didn't think they had. You play that in front of a crowd of dudes that hadn't heard it performed live before, and they get just wild. They get the crazy eye." When Ann Wilson of Heart covered this song on her 2018 album Immortal, she included this elegant discourse: "Who hasn't dragged their tired soul home after long days of pounding the pavement in pursuit of some dream; when everything has been tried, everyone talked to, everything possible done, your very best, most complete shots taken... yet still there are no takers? Such moments can be incredibly discouraging and depressing. They can also be cathartic." "Baker Street" shows up at the end of the 1997 Simpsons episode "Lisa's Sax," when she receives a new saxophone after her old one was destroyed. While the sax solo plays, clips of her playing the old sax are shown. The long-running financial advice radio show/podcast The Dave Ramsey Show uses "Baker Street" as its opening theme. Why? Because the song was popular when Ramsey graduated high school, and it got stuck in his head. In 1969 Gerry Rafferty became the third member of a folk-pop group, The Humblebums, which was also composed of Billy Connolly and Tam Harvey. Billy Connolly would later find fame as a comedian and comic actor. Harvey left shortly afterwards, and Rafferty and Connolly continued as a duo, recording two albums for Transatlantic Records. The Humblebums disbanded in 1970 and Rafferty remained with Transatlantic for a solo album released in 1971, before forming Stealers Wheel the following year. He left them after recording their debut LP, although he was persuaded back when "Stuck In The Middle With You" hit the US and UK Top 10s. Stealers Wheel disbanded in 1975 and legal issues after the break-up meant that, for three years, Rafferty was unable to release any material. He eventually resurfaced as a successful solo artist in 1978, achieving five US Top 40 hits, including "Baker Street," the song he is most identified with. Winding your way down on Baker Street Light in your head and dead on your feet Well, another crazy day You'll drink the night away And forget about everything This city desert makes you feel so cold It's got so many people, but it's got no soul And it's taken you so long To find out you were wrong When you thought it held everything You used to think that it was so easy You used to say that it was so easy But you're trying, you're trying now Another year and then you'd be happy Just one more year and then you'd be happy But you're crying, you're crying now Way down the street there's a light in his place He opens the door, he's got that look on his face And he asks you where you've been You tell him who you've seen And you talk about anything He's got this dream about buying some land He's gonna give up the booze and the one-night stands And then he'll settle down In some quiet little town And forget about everything But you know he'll always keep moving You know he's never gonna stop moving 'Cause he's rolling, he's the rolling stone And when you wake up, it's a new morning The sun is shining, it's a new morning And you're going, you're going home

The Magical World of Disney S4.E26 Episode aired May 14, 1958 Magic Highway USA This is some Kool-Aide Level sh1t right here. Use discernment as they describe "history". Ask yourself... where are all the mountains in Southern Georgia and Florida stopping people from traveling west... Goat Paths to Super Highways. Fed to you as Fact. Buffed audio and stuffed into a TV Box as the original fits that format. Enjoy. The importance of America's highways is depicted, from the earliest days to the highways (and vehicles) of the future. Narrated by Marvin Miller. Director Ward Kimball Writers Larry Clemmons, Charlie Downs, John W. Dunn Stars Walt Disney, Marvin Miller, Robert Shayne This week from The Wonderful World of Tomorrow we bring you Magic Highway USA. Walt Disney... "Now looking over the highway situation is a typical American motorist... Keeping on the move is an old American custom and a good one the most important symbol in the progress of our nation is the highway our FOREFATHERS (Things Hitler would say by mistake while hiding out in the USA?) seeking plenty of Elbow Room always looked upon distance as a challenge. It took a great deal of courage to open up the Frontiers in vehicles like this Conestoga Wagon. One of the many freedoms we enjoy today yet often take for granted is the freedom of the American road. To come and go as we please in our Pursuit of Happiness today. We enjoy the pleasure and convenience of going places in engineering marvels such as this modern automobile. How this all came about is our story magic Highway."

I Ran Album: A Flock Of Seagulls (1982) Telecommunication Album: A Flock Of Seagulls (1982) (It's Not Me) Talking Album: Listen (1981) by A Flock Of Seagulls 80s vibe. I Ran is the opening song of the album, which is a concept piece about an alien invasion of Earth. The song itself describes a person seeing an attractive female - he becomes anxious and wants to run away from his feelings but he can't forget her. Then they are both abducted by the aliens. The imaginative (for the time) video broke the band in the US during the early days of MTV. The video was directed by Anthony Van Den Ende, who later did Killing Joke's "Eighties" and Melissa Etheridge's "Like the Way I Do" and "Bring Me Some Water." The video shows lead singer Mike Score in a room covered from floor to ceiling with aluminum foil and also floor mirrors in which you can see the reflection of the cameras. Along with Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, and ABC, A Flock of Seagulls was a British pop band who owed their American success almost entirely to MTV. Mike Score, along with the band's bass player Frank Maudsley, were hairdressers, and they put their skills to use in creating that distinctive hairstyle that not only defined the group, but entered the pop culture landscape - witness Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules get a cleverly coiffed young man's attention by yelling "Hey, Flock of Seagulls!" in the movie Pulp Fiction. The I Ran video cost just £5,000 to make, but it gave a huge return. For Score, the novelty wore off quickly, as his hair was much more famous than he was. He rarely got to talk about his music because interviewers were always asking about the hair. Lead singer Mike Score recalled the day he wrote the song to Billboard: "We'd just been to the Cavern in Liverpool and saw a band play a song called 'I Ran' and thought, 'What a great name,' although we didn't particularly like the song. And then the next day saw a picture from the 1950s of a flying saucer and two people running away from it. And because we had this sci-fi thing going on, it was like 'look at that! First 'I Ran' and now that!' So even though we had the basics of the music already, we went to rehearsal that night and the picture was in my head and we started to try to formulate words about that. And when I'm playing live, that picture comes back into my mind. And of course movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the flying saucer coming out of the clouds, that contributed to lyrics, and all that comes through your mind and it makes you smile." Flock leader Mike Score said in a VH1 interview: "Every time I perform live, everyone just wants to hear 'I Ran'... I'm sick of it!" He softened his stance in 2018. "I don't think it's the best song we've got, although it was the biggest hit. I have moments where I think 'Space Age' is a lot better, or 'Wishing' is a lot better. It depends on the mood I'm in, or the emotional state I'm in at the time. But I like to play it live, because the crowd loves it. Especially at nostalgia gigs like this tour, you want to give people what they remembered, and they remember 'I Ran,' and they all get into it and have a great time. It puts a big smile on your face." I Ran was A Flock Of Seagulls biggest hit in the US, but in the UK they enjoyed a bigger hit with "Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)," which reached #10. The band was not named after their hairstyles, but after a combination of a book title and a lyric. Mike Score was a big fan of the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and of The Stranglers, whose song "Toiler On The Sea" has the refrain: "A flock of seagulls." When I Ran does appear in movies, it's often in jokey reference to the time period. It shows up in the 1998 film Edge of Seventeen, which is set in 1984, and in the 1999 film The Suburbans, about an '80s cover band. In the 2016 film La La Land, Ryan Gosling's jazz-snob character ends up playing keyboards in an '80s cover band, and Emma Stone's character torments him by requesting this song and dancing along to it as he's forced to play it. The band Bowling For Soup covered I Ran on the 2003 re-release of their album Drunk Enough To Dance. Other acts to cover it include Cranial Screwtop and Assemblage 23. I Ran is the theme song of the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and was used in the TV advertisements for that game. A portion of the song was used as the opening for the cartoon Knights of the Zodiac. Telecommunication was released in 1981 as the band's second single. Although it did not chart on either the traditional United Kingdom or United States charts, it received considerable time on the dance charts. It peaked at number 19 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1981, along with "Modern Love Is Automatic". The uptempo beat featuring power chords and heavy synth, along with the futuristic lyrics, has enabled the song to reach cult status. The song is noteworthy because the band eschewed the guitar-laden choruses many songs of this period had (e.g. power ballad), and instead relied on percussion arpeggios and multi-layered sounds. Telecommunication details types of energy transmitted across time and space. The first line mentions "ultraviolet..radio light..to your solar system..." indicating someone or something is attempting to communicate across the galaxy. In astronomy, UV light is emitted by very hot objects. A motif in the band's lyrics is alien life forms (with their debut album being essentially a rock opera about alien abduction) and futuristic technology. The song also includes references to nuclear energy and wireless communication. "(It's Not Me) Talking" is the debut single, originally recorded in 1981. It was re-recorded in 1983 and is featured on their second album Listen. The song is about a man who hears voices in his head, who believes that he is being contacted by aliens from outer space, and who cannot run away from his emotions; wherever he goes, the voice is there. "(It's Not Me) Talking" was originally released in May 1981 as the third release on producer Bill Nelson's independent label Cocteau Records and it peaked at number 45 on the UK Independent Singles Chart. Following this, A Flock of Seagulls signed to major label Jive and by the end of 1982 they had a top-ten hit in the US with "I Ran (So Far Away)" and in the UK with "Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)". In the wake of the latter's success in the UK, "(It's Not Me) Talking" was remixed and released as a 12-inch single in March 1983 on the Cocteau label. It fared better than its original release, peaking at number 22 on the Independent Singles Chart, though it failed to make the UK Singles Chart Top 100, peaking at number 128. The song was re-recorded for the band's second album Listen and this version, released on Jive in August 1983, made the Top 100, peaking at number 78. (It's Not Me) Talking music video was based on a 1951 science fiction classic film called The Day the Earth Stood Still. The producers wanted to use special effects that would be current, yet recall the look of 1950's cinema. The music video was filmed at Dawn's Animal Farm in New Jersey. With hundreds of acres of land and many exotic animals used in television commercials and film, it made for an interesting shoot. They hired Talking Dog Productions to build the spaceship. Talking Dog built the props used by Pink Floyd.[citation needed] For the lasers, they retained the services of holographic pioneer, Jason Sapan, of Holographic Studios in New York City. At that time, Sapan was also doing laser light effects. As they negotiated the laser effects, they realized that Sapan himself had the right look to act in the music video and hired him right there. Sapan built the red laser ray gun that Mike Score used. The music video was the first shown on MTV to use on screen credits for the actors. The credits were shown next to the images of the actors at the end of the video. The credits listed were: Jason Sapan as "Sparks" Hopkins Peter Reynolds as Joey David York as Sergeant McGuire Ali Score as Prof. "Scottie" Frost Paul Reynolds as Duane Larry Friel as Major Dick Docherty Frank Maudsley as Rex Nolan Mike Score as "The Alien"

La Grange Album: Tres Hombres (1973) I Gotsta Get Paid Album: La Futura (2012) by ZZ Top La Grange is about a whorehouse. Many people in Texas knew about it, but when the song was released it drew so much attention to the illegal activities going on there that they had to cease operations. "The Chicken Ranch," or Miss Edna's Boarding House in La Grange, was probably the oldest establishment in Texas catering to the oldest profession. It was closed down by a zealous TV reporter from Houston, who couldn't find enough vice and corruption to report in Houston. He challenged the governor on the issue of why it continued to operate in fairly plain sight. The governor had no choice but to order the sheriff to close it. Miss Edna's girls had weekly visits from the local doctors, so they were "clean." The girls spent their money in La Grange and when a new hospital was needed, Miss Edna gave the first and largest donation. The reporter remained on the air crusading against such hideous crimes such as slime in the ice machines of restaurants. Most of the building still stands, only a room was moved to Dallas for a nightclub. A "Ten to get in" was the price. There was a strict dress code for patrons - only sharp dressed men were allowed in. The place in this song is the subject of the 1982 movie The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds, which was adapted from a 1978 Broadway play. In a 1985 interview with Spin magazine, ZZ Top bass player Dusty Hill explained: "Did you ever see the movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas? That's what it's about. I went there when I was 13. A lot of boys in Texas, when it's time to be a guy, went there and had it done. Fathers took their sons there. You couldn't cuss in there. You couldn't drink. It had an air of respectability. Miss Edna wouldn't stand for no bulls--t. That's the woman that ran the place, and you know she didn't look like Dolly Parton, either. I'll tell you, she was a mean-looking woman. But oil field workers and senators would both be there. The place had been open for over 100 years, and then this a--hole decides he's going to do an exposé and close it. And he stirred up so much s--t that it had to close. La Grange is a little bitty town, and little towns in Texas are real conservative. But they fought against it. They didn't want it closed, because it was like a landmark. It was on a little ranch outside of town, the Chicken Ranch. Anyway, we wrote this song and put it out, and it was out maybe three months before they closed it. It pissed me off. It was a whorehouse, but anything that lasts a hundred years, there's got to be a reason." La Grange had a Coca-Cola bottling plant there. The music is based on a John Lee Hooker song called "Boogie Chillen." Hooker died in 2001 at age 83. Billy Gibbons explained how he got his guitar sound on La Grange in a 1995 interview with Guitar World. Said Gibbons: "That is straight guitar into amp, a 1955 Strat with a stop-tailpiece through a 1969 Marshall Super Lead 100. That fuzz sound in the lead and in the front and back end of the composition is just pure tube distortion. Pickup-setting differentials account for the different tones. The opening part was played on what we used to call 'the mystery setting' in the dark days before the existence of the five-way toggle switch, when finding that perfect 'tweener required dedication." In 1992, Bernard Besman, who owned the copyright to "Boogie Chillen," claimed he had just recently heard La Grange and sued ZZ Top. After years of litigation, a court ruled that "Boogie Chillen" was in the public domain and ZZ Top was not liable. Talking about the song in Rolling Stone, guitarist Billy Gibbons said: "'La Grange' was one of the rites of passage for a young man. It was a cathouse, way back in the woods. The simplicity of that song was part of the magic - only two chords. And the break coming out of the solo - those notes are straight Robert Johnson. He did it as a shuffle. I just dissected the notes." La Grange was ZZ Top's biggest hit at the time. They were big in Texas, but not nationally known until their 1975 album Fandango!, which led to their 1976-1977 Worldwide Texas Tour, where they played from a stage shaped like the state of Texas, adorned with native plants (cacti) and animals (buzzards, buffalo). La Grange is an example of the Texas sound ZZ Top developed. Southern rock was big at the time, but Texas had its own thing. ZZ Top modeled their music on a gunslinger image, drawing inspiration from their proximity to Mexico. Billy Gibbons told Mojo magazine La Grange is his song that he sings in the shower. He explained: "It's the single ZZ Top track with only two verses. I can recite it in proper tempo, then get on with it." I Gotsta Get Paid is a revamp of fellow Texan DJ DMD's 1989 rap hit "25 Lighters," which is Houston ghetto slang for taking Bic Lighters apart, removing the innards and filling them with crack. Billy Gibbons explained to MusicRadar.com how the veteran rockers ended up reworking a hip-hop tune: "25 Lighters was a hip-hop chart topper 15 years ago, and it just so happened to be one of the tracks that our engineer, Mr. Gary Moon, was around for when he served as chief engineer at John Moranz Digital Services," he explained. "That house specialized in rap and hip-hop clients. While our studio was being worked on, we took refuge in that house," Gibbons continued, "and it was there that ZZ Top got friendly with a bunch of the hip-hop and rap guys. We were comparing notes and exchanging ideas; they were showing us beats and I was showing them guitar stuff. A great time was had." As a band who usually record their own original material, ZZ Top weren't used to the machinations of getting permission to rework an original song. Said Gibbons to MusicRadar: "What we discovered is that when an artist covers a song, it's called a 'cover version.' When an artist begins to modify and change it, after a certain percentage, it's a 'derivative work,' and that requires the new version to be reviewed by the originators. If the originators like it, they can wave holy water over it and you're good; if they don't, you're stuck. The two original performers, Lil' Keke and Fat Pat, had passed away," he continued, "and it was the last day to decide if we could do it that we tracked down the executor of the estates. We played him the track over the phone. 'I don't know if I can understand this,' he said. 'I'm going to put the phone to my little girl. She's 14.' When she heard it, she said, 'Daddy, they're playing your song!' So the executor got back on and said, 'Looks like you've got a winner.'" ZZ Top were seen playing I Gotsta Get Paid in an advertising campaign for Jeremiah Weed Root Brew. Discussing the long player, Gibbons said, "We thought long and hard about what this album should be. We wanted to recall the directness of our early stuff but not turn our backs on contemporary technology. The result of this melding of the past and the present is, of course, La Futura."

Uncle John's Band Album: Workingman's Dead (1969) Sugar Magnolia Album: American Beauty (1970) The Grateful Dead Deadies Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter collaborated on "Uncle John's Band," which was originally part of their stage set before they recorded it as a single track from their Workingman's Dead album. It would go on to become one of their better-known songs, even making it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll." The style of Uncle John's Band is a laid-back bluegrass-folk arrangement on acoustic guitar. Vocals are in close harmony in a conscious effort to echo Cosby Stills & Nash - it worked, because CS&N covered it on their 2009 concert circuit. Lots of Americana to touch on here - this was the first time the epithet "goddamn" had been heard in a Hot 100 hit. A "buckdancer" is "one who dances the buck-and-wing," according to The Dictionary of American Regional English. The phrase "buckdancer's choice" is both a popular fiddle tune of Appalachia, and the title of a poetry collection by the American poet James Dickey; you'll recognize him more when we tell you that one of his other works was turned into a little 1972 film called Deliverance. More Americana in Uncle John's Band: the line "fire and ice" references American poet Robert Frost's poem of the same name, and the line "Don't tread on me" is a famous phrase that first came out during the American Revolution from Britain - scope out an image of a yellow flag with a coiled, hissing snake sometime, that's the "Gadsden flag," later popular with the American Tea Party political movement. The line "the same story the crow told me" references Johnny Horton's "The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me," which was the B-side to the better-known "Sink the Bismarck." While that's a British song, Horton was very much an American rockabilly artist (and he has no relation to the Horton who hears a who). OK, who is Uncle John? That could be anybody and everybody - fan speculations run wild from the biblical John the Baptist to Mississippi John Hurt. But maybe, like the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper, it was just an alias made up for fun. This was one of the Dead's first attempts to reach beyond their little cult and take a shot at the mainstream. According to Dennis McNally, the band's biographer and publicist, a Warner Bros. executive was so ecstatic when he heard a marketable song from the band, it sent him running down the hallways with the news. "He was expecting more of Anthem Of The Sun stuff, and he ran down the corridors of Warner Bros., screaming, 'The Grateful Dead have written a song we can put on the radio!' And he was very happy," McNally said in 2021. The single of Uncle John's Band release was cut by 25 seconds from the album version. Although this plan didn't work out, with the single scoring a lukewarm #69, the album itself went on to sell well at one million copies - a first for them - and "Uncle John's Band" became one of their more well-known songs. David Dodd, author of The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics looked into the possibility that this song is about a string band called the New Lost City Ramblers (NLCR), whose John Cohen was nicknamed "Uncle John." Dodd started a discussion on the topic, and Robert Hunter weighed in, lending support to the theory. Hunter's wrote: I like the direction of the discussion on UJB. It's right on the money. I thought I'd give you a piece to the puzzle which is not so obvious; a less direct allusion: compare: like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go with: Come all ye fair and tenders ladies Be careful how you court young men They're like the stars on a summer's morning First appear and then they're gone (NLCR did that one too.) and while we're at it, they're both what is known as "come all ye" tunes which is a rich tradition. Tom Paley was a math teacher at University of Connecticut the year I was there. (I was president of the folk music club). His replacement in the Ramblers, Tracy Schwartz, came to a party at Ellen Cavanaugh's hourse, along with Garcia, Nelson and me, after one of the NLCR shows in 1964 and we played until way early in the morning. Congratulations on Rosemary! So, it seems Hunter is backing the NLCR interpretation. Musically, Uncle John's Band was inspired by Bulgarian folk music. Really. In 1955, the Bulgarian composer Philip Koutev assembled a 24-voice choir to record songs culled from the villages of his country. His recordings found their way to Elektra Records, which released them in America in 1966 on an album called Music Of Bulgaria, credited to the Ensemble Of The Bulgarian Republic. The album found a following on the West Coast, and it enthralled Jerry Garcia, who called the voices "exceptionally pure." It's influence is most apparent on "Uncle John's Band." In Going Down the Road: A Grateful Dead Traveling Companion (p. 222) by Blair Jackson, Garcia says that he "stole" the melody for Uncle John's Band from a tune heard while listening to records by the Bulgarian Women's Choir and some Greek-Macedonian music. He couldn't recall exactly which song it was. In the same interview, Hunter discusses how he came up with the lyrics while listening to the music that the rest of the band already put together on tape. The words "god damn, Uncle John's mad" kept running through his mind, but these turned into, "Come hear Uncle John's Band." In Hunter's words, the moment of creative revelation was the kind where "sparkles start coming out of your eyes." Written by Robert Hunter and Bob Weir, "Sugar Magnolia" is one of the most well-known songs by the most obscurely famous band. First performed at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, in June of 1970, Deadheads will be quick to point out that "Sugar Magnolia" is the band's second-most-frequently-performed song, trailing only behind "Me & My Uncle." The line "jump like a Willys in four wheel drive" refers to the model of jeep manufactured by Willys-Overland Motors, most likely the Willys MB, which saw the most production of the Willys line at over 335,000 produced for WWII. An article on the Willy jeep, complete with its jumping ability, appears in the November 1992 issue of Smithsonian magazine. Frequently in live performances, Sugar Magnolia is divided into two parts, with the coda coming long after the song proper. That delay might be a few drum beats, a few songs, or a few days, depending, as everything does, upon the mood of the band. A typical literary reference is the similarity between the girl described in this song and the character Goldberry in J.R.R Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring - right down to being down by the river and rolling in the rushes. Goldberry is a character from the works of the author J. R. R. Tolkien. She first appeared in print in a 1934 poem, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, where she appears as the wife of Tom Bombadil. Also known as the "River-woman's daughter", she is described as a beautiful, youthful woman with golden hair. On her possible origins, scholars have compared her with a character in George MacDonald's 1867 fairy tale The Golden Key, and with the eponymous character in the late-medieval lyric poem The Maid of the Moor. Her characterisation has been described as a mixture of the domestic and the supernatural, connected in some way with the river Withywindle in the Old Forest of Middle-earth. Some have suggested that she may be a divine being in Tolkien's mythology; others, that she recalls the biblical Eve, a token of the unfallen creation; and an embodiment of joy, serving with Tom Bombadil as a model of the Catholic sacrament of marriage. Both Bombadil and Goldberry were omitted from Peter Jackson's film trilogy; they were however included in the 1991 Russian television play Khraniteli. Tom Bombadil clearly identifies her as having been discovered by him in the river Withywindle within the Old Forest, and her title "River-woman's daughter" strongly suggests that she is not a mortal human being. In a 1958 letter, Tolkien wrote that Goldberry "represents the actual seasonal changes" in "real river-lands in autumn".[T 1] He conveyed this notion through a poem recited by Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring, specifically the lines "O spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!" The poem tells of how she drags Tom into the river before he escapes, returning later to capture her and make her his bride.

Rock Bottom Feat Kai Hansen Album: Rock Bottom - EP (2024) by Mcauley Schenker Group Msg This song was first released on the Album: Phenomenon (1974) by UFO. Co-written by vocalist/lyricist Phil Mogg and then lead guitarist Michael Schenker, "Rock Bottom" was recorded initially for the 1974 Phenomenon album, on which it runs to 6 minutes 22 seconds. It was also released as a single - a format that could not possibly do it justice - the live version from Strangers In The Night is unquestionably the definitive. This album was recorded on the band's 1978 US tour and was released on the Chrysalis Label in January the following year. Running to 11 minutes 8 seconds, "Rock Bottom" is the high point, with Schenker demonstrating awesome speed and technique, but this is more than a mere guitar solo; towards the end, Paul Raymond on keyboards provides a thrilling racing effect with the mercurial German, who, incredibly, was said to be unhappy with the recording. Others beg to differ. In 2004, Classic Rock magazine rated UFO's Strangers In The Night double album the #2 live rock album of all time behind only Thin Lizzy's Live And Dangerous. In September 2008, when asked what had inspired the song lyrically, Phil Mogg said it was a horror film, but that he had forgotten its title. It is possible though that he was influenced subconsciously by the traditional song/poem "The Unquiet Grave", which contains the phrase "one kiss of your clay-cold lips." Mogg uses the same phrase "one sweet kiss on your clay-cold lips" (which is likewise to be taken literally) although in a different context. It took a while for Phil Mogg to settle on a set of lyrics for this song. An early performance reveals how he sang completely different words early on. In an interview with Michael Schenker, he explained that this song had a very spontaneous conception. "We were just sitting there looking for an additional song, and when I played 'Rock Bottom,' the riff, that's when Phil jumped up and said, 'That's it! That's it!'" said Schenker. "So we started putting it together and putting it into form." Speaking about the freeform nature of this song and how he improvises it during live performances, Schenker told us: "'Rock Bottom' has that piece in the middle of free expression, and it's perfect for me because I love pure self-expression. It's a really, really good part to play over that particular chord there, and it leaves a lot of space to come up with a whole bunch of creative ideas. Over the years, the solos have changed. I keep the basic structure of it, but there is a lot of space to put new 'sparks' on here and there and keep it fresh. It's always enjoyable to play over and over and over, because I can be very creative with it on the spot. That's a very fascinating, enjoyable part of music for me." This version was released in 2024 by Kai Michael Hansen (born 17 January 1963). Kai is a German musician who is the founder, lead guitarist and vocalist of power metal band Gamma Ray. He is also one of the co-founders of another power metal band Helloween, which he was a part of from 1983 to 1989 and rejoined in 2016. He is a prominent figure in power metal and has sold millions of albums worldwide. He is regarded as "the godfather of power metal", having founded two seminal bands in the genre. In 2011, he joined the band Unisonic featuring former Helloween vocalist Michael Kiske. Hansen and Kiske reunited with Helloween in 2017 for a world tour with all current members, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of release of the albums Keeper of the Seven Keys Parts I and II. Kai Hansen was born in Hamburg in 1963. At the age of ten, Kai developed an interest in music and began to play wash-drums. His parents however, didn't like the noise and bought him an acoustic guitar instead. He took a six-months course in classical guitar and following it, formed his first band with his classmates after he bought an electric guitar, a white Ibanez Les Paul. For almost 20 years, Hansen has played ESP Guitars. He first started using them during his days with Helloween after hearing testimonials of ESP from artists such as George Lynch and Kirk Hammett of Metallica. Before Helloween, he had owned a white Ibanez guitar, and a Gibson Les Paul, then saved up for a Marshall amplifier by delivering newspapers. His main ESPs are red and pink ESP Custom guitars based on Jackson's Randy Rhoads model and two custom V models based on the classic Gibson Flying V shape. During the early 1990s, Hansen had used Stratocaster models. On his autobiography on the Gamma Ray website, he claims his first electric guitar was a white Ibanez Les Paul copy On the recent tour with Gamma Ray he has been seen using a Korina Epiphone flying V with EMG pickups. Hansen has used, and still uses, Engl amplifiers since the recording sessions of Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II. Seventeen a nature's queen, know what I mean? Twenty-one, a long one You can see the numbers run Now you look so peaceful, lyin' there asleep With the wings of God above you Before the spirits meet Rock bottom, rock bottom, rock bottom Rock bottom, rock bottom, rock bottom Shadow earth is closin' in above the lamps in your street Lucifer goes walkin' down for you to meet Minutes pass so slowly by the hands on your clock Heaven's door, just no way in You can knock Rock bottom, rock bottom, rock bottom Rock bottom, rock bottom, rock bottom With all darkness closin' in Will the light reveal your soul? Just one sweet kiss on your clay cold lips Long, long sleep you'll never know Where do we go, where do we go Where do we go from here? Seventeen a nature's queen, know what I mean? Twenty-one, a long one You can see the numbers run Now you look so peaceful, lyin' there asleep With the wings of God above you Before the spirits meet Rock bottom, rock bottom, rock bottom Rock bottom, rock bottom, rock bottom

The Soft Parade Album: The Soft Parade (1969) by The Doors "The Soft Parade" the title track to The Doors' fourth album. It sold well, but many critics felt it was a sellout to pop music. Their next album, Morrison Hotel, was a return to their roots and was recorded a lot faster. Doors frontman Jim Morrison put the lyrics together out of pieces of poetry he had written, which explains why it's rather abstract. Many of the images are of people walking along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, where Morrison often hung out. The Doors played this live only once: on April 28, 1969, for the PBS TV show Critique in a version that ran more than 10 minutes. In the liner notes for Rhino Records' 40th anniversary rerelease of The Soft Parade, keyboardist Ray Manzarek described the performance as "all four Doors in perfect sympatico," with "sympatico" meaning "congenial or like-minded." Richard Goldstein interviewed the group the day after the performance; the music and interview were packaged under the title "A Profile of Jim Morrison and The Doors - On and Off Stage" and broadcast on June 25, 1969. For that show, the Doors also performed "Tell All The People," "Alabama Song," "Back Door Man," "Wishful Sinful," and "Build Me A Woman." The melody in this song is something The Doors came up with in 1966 when they did music for a Ford corporate video. That video surfaced in 2002. Most of the album was recorded following a grueling tour during which the band was left with little time to compose new material. Record producer Paul A. Rothchild recommended a total departure from the Doors' first three albums: develop a fuller sound by incorporating brass and string arrangements provided by Paul Harris. Lead singer Jim Morrison, who was dealing with personal issues and focusing more on his poetry, was less involved in the songwriting process, allowing guitarist Robby Krieger to increase his own creative output. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200, but it failed to retain audiences in the UK and other European countries that their previous album, Waiting for the Sun, had succeeded in engaging. Three preceding singles, "Touch Me", "Wishful Sinful", and "Tell All the People", were included on The Soft Parade, with the former becoming another Top 10 hit for the Doors. Another single, "Runnin' Blue", also followed the album's distribution. Upon release, The Soft Parade was denounced by both music critics and the band's underground music scene followers, who viewed the album as the Doors' trending into popular music. Over time, historians have reassessed the album and its critical standing has slightly improved, but it is still widely considered to be the group's weakest effort with Morrison. By mid-1968, the Doors had established themselves as one of the most popular groups in the US. The band's third studio album, Waiting for the Sun, released in July of the same year, became the Doors' only number one hit on the Billboard 200 while also spawning "Hello, I Love You", their second number one single. The album was the first commercial breakthrough for the band in the UK, reaching number 16 on the UK Albums Chart. After the release of Waiting for the Sun, the Doors commanded substantial performance fees and played before large crowds in arenas such as the L.A. Forum, the Hollywood Bowl, and Madison Square Garden. Additionally, local Los Angeles Top 40 radio stations, KHJ Radio in particular, which had previously refused to play the band's records, began sponsoring the Doors' live performances. Initial sessions for the album occurred on July 26, 1968 when the band recorded "Wild Child" and "Wishful Sinful" ("Easy Ride" was a Waiting for the Sun leftover, captured on March 3, 1968). In September 1968, the group played dates in Europe, along with Jefferson Airplane, before ending their long, grueling touring schedule with nine concerts back in the US. While the 1968 tours managed to capitalize on the chart success of Waiting for the Sun, it also left little time for the Doors to compose new songs for The Soft Parade, having already exhausted all the material from Morrison's songbooks. Throughout 1968, Morrison's behavior became increasingly erratic: he began drinking heavily and distanced himself from studio work to focus on his more immediate passions, poetry and film making. At the time, Morrison was also struggling with anxiety, and felt like he was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He considered quitting the Doors, but was persuaded by keyboardist Ray Manzarek to finish recording The Soft Parade before making such a decision. In November 1968, the band entered the newly established studio Elektra Sound West on La Cienega Boulevard to continue work on The Soft Parade, a process that was not completed until May 1969. Without any album-ready material to work with, record producer Paul A. Rothchild took control of the recording sessions and insisted on numerous retakes of songs, much to the group's indignation. "It was like pulling teeth to get Jim into it", sound engineer Bruce Botnick recalled. "It was bizarre ... the hardest I ever worked as a producer." Rothchild, who by this time was addicted to cocaine and incredibly strict in his leadership, caused severe strife in the studio, especially with his advisor Jac Holzman, who argued that the drive for perfection was "grinding them [The Doors] into the ground". The album was by far the most expensive by the group, costing US$80,000 to create in contrast to the US$10,000 required for their debut. Introduced with a mock-fiery sermon by Morrison, "The Soft Parade" displays his Southern roots through his portrayal as a preacher. The song's ambiance is heightened by the striking imagery which outlines a need for sanctuary, escape, and pleasure. Critic Doug Sundling noted that "The Soft Parade", with its display of funk, jazz, acid rock and psychedelic pop influences, is more diverse than any other composition of the group.

I Can't Dance Album: We Can't Dance (1991) The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway Album: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (1974) by Genesis Not unlike the Right Said Fred hit "I'm Too Sexy," I Can't Dance is a send-up of male models. "It's not about being unable to dance," Phil Collins told Rolling Stone. "It's about guys that look good but can't string a sentence together. Each verse is a piss-take at the scenario of a jeans commercial. It was good fun, but the audience thought, 'What does he mean that he can't dance?' They didn't see the humor, and it killed the fun." Genesis wrote I Can't Dance in the studio in one session. "Once we started we kept going 'til we finished it," Phil Collins said in the documentary Genesis: Sum of the Parts. "It didn't take a ridiculous time to write." The lyrics of I Can't Dance are made up of bits that Phil Collins improvised in the studio. When they started working on it, they decided to just write spontaneously to keep from over-thinking it. This explains the rather disjointed story about a guy who can't dance and is "just standing here selling." In the Way We Walk DVD, Tony Banks told the story of how I Can't Dance came together. "Mike had this basic riff which he played, and we worked it into a 16-bar riff. Then we started doing it heavy, which it immediately demanded, so Phil was playing heavy drums and I was adding big chords and sounds. It was one of those bits we felt would go nowhere - it sounded fun but it wasn't really special. But there was one time when Mike was playing it, and Phil was at the microphone so he wasn't playing drums. I started playing drums on this thing (his sampler), and that gave it a completely different feel. It suddenly had an edge of humor in it, and Phil started singing in this kind of high voice, giving it instant character. We knew if we worked on it, we would ruin it, so we didn't even give it a middle eight or anything. When we actually put the song down, we put some more chords in but left it really simple. We put it down in a few hours. It shows a certain direction we could go in for certain songs, which is totally opposite what Genesis used to do in the past, which was to overblow a thing - take one idea and make it massive. This was taking an idea and leaving it really small and making it work." Helmed by their go-to director Jim Yukich, the video for I Can't Dance created a lasting image thanks to the "silly walk" the three band members did. This walk was something Phil Collins did from time to time - he got the idea for it when he attended drama school and noticed that the worst dancers would always lead with the hand and foot on the same side. There is a twist ending in the video when at the end, Phil Collins does some Michael Jackson dance moves and an impressive little tap routine. In our interview with Tony Banks, he explained that having a lead singer who was comfortable in front of the camera made the music videos much easier to create. "It gave us a chance to explore some quite fun ideas," he said. "When the lyric had an obvious way to go - with something like "I Can't Dance" or "No Son of Mine" - you could do it and express it quite well." The outlandish vocal inflections were inspired by the strange but captivating singing of Roland Gift, frontman for Fine Young Cannibals. Around the time Genesis was writing this song, FYC was on the charts with "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing." The We Can't Dance album was the group's last with Phil Collins, who left after recording his 1993 solo album Both Sides. Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford did one more album without him, Calling All Stations (1997), with Ray Wilson on vocals. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tells the story of Rael, a poor Puerto Rican boy from The Bronx. As "The Lamb," Rael goes on an adventure in New York City. Peter Gabriel explained to The Daily Telegraph September 30, 2014 that the album "was intended to be an intense story of a young rebellious Puerto Rican in New York who would face challenges with family, authority, sex, love and self-sacrifice to learn a little more about himself. I wanted to mix his dreams with his reality, in a kind of urban rebel Pilgrim's Progress." The full story is in the liner notes of the album. This was the basis for an elaborate stage production Genesis performed at concerts. It was on this tour that Peter Gabriel decided to leave the band. There are references to classic songs throughout the album, and this track recalls "On Broadway," which was a hit for The Drifters in 1963. Genesis keyboard player Tony Banks used a cross-handed technique to create the jaunty rhythm. He described it in an interview: "the two hands are playing almost percussively, alternatively. So, you appear to be playing faster than you are. I really like the effect. It's very rhythmic. I just find it's an exciting way to play." On their 1974 tour, Genesis played the album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway from start to finish. Gabriel wore several costumes throughout the show, including a grotesque mask during "The Colony Of Slippermen." The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was the first song and title track to the double album which was the last Peter Gabriel contribution to Genesis. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was a song-cycle whose hero Rael shared a name with "Rael (1 and 2)," a track on The Who's 1967 album, The Who Sell Out. Mojo April 2010 asked Peter Gabriel if it was a conscious tribute to The Who's Pete Townshend. He replied: "It was a subconscious tribute because I certainly wasn't aware of it at the time. I spent a long time thinking of that name, like Ra the Sun God. But I was a big Who fan, so it may have got in there. Obviously Townshend created much of the musical environment and delivered the angst with an intelligence and passion and extraordinary musicality. But to this day, as a drummer, I think Keith Moon was the unacknowledged genius. He was like Jimi Hendrix: when he was on - and he wasn't always - it flowed out of him in a free way that was inspiring, driving, magnificent." Peter Gabriel's insistence on writing the story and all the lyrics himself for The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway created friction amongst his bandmates. Tony Banks recalled in Uncut magazine October 2008: "Having done 'Supper's Ready' (the 23-minute song on Foxtrot)) we decided we wanted to go for a concept album, and make a double album. We agreed the concept, which Peter came up with. Then he said that he really wanted to write all the lyrics, which was difficult for us because we'd always split all the lyrics among us all."

Waiting for the Worms Album: The Wall (1979) Stop Album: The Wall (1979) The Trial Album: The Wall (1979) Outside the Wall Album: The Wall (1979) by Pink Floyd The last four listed tracks of Pink Floyd's The Wall album. Waiting for the Worms is one of the more disturbing songs on the concept album The Wall. It takes place near the end of the story, following "Run Like Hell," where the main character, a rock-star turned despot named Pink, leads his followers on a rampage, targeting minorities. In "Waiting For The Worms" they're even more dangerous, taking over the government and looking to exterminate any opposition or anyone who isn't "pure." It's a clear parallel to the Nazis and The Holocaust, meant to show the dangers in following a charismatic leader over the edge. The beginning of Waiting for the Worms starts with sweet harmony vocals with a chorus that includes Toni Tennille of the Captain & Tennille and Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys. The original plan was to have all members of the Beach Boys harmonize on this song and "The Show Must Go On," but they could only get Johnston. These dreamy vocals lend a stark contrast to what's to come in the song. The Wall is the creation of Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd. He enlisted producer Bob Ezrin to help see his vision through, and Ezrin delivered, helping plan out the story musically and segue the songs together seamlessly. The album was expanded into a stage show the band performed in 1980 and 1981 where an actual wall was build on stage (a big one... like 35-feet high). It was also made into a movie in 1982 starring Bob Geldof as Pink. On the next song on the album, "Stop," Pink finally comes to his senses and puts an end to his terror. That's followed by "The Trial," where he tries to understand why he did these horrible things and what the consequences should be. Stop is just 30 seconds long, but it's a critical piece of The Wall, Pink Floyd's ambitious concept album. By this point, the main character, Pink, has transformed from a rock star to a dictator. He was shot up with drugs in "Comfortably Numb" and led his followers in a riot on "Run Like Hell." In "Waiting For the Worms," he's a full-bore Nazi-like leader, ready to exterminate minorities and his enemies. In "Stop" he finally gets some clarity and realizes what he's done. In the next song, "The Trial," he faces the consequences. In the 1982 movie version of The Wall, Pink is played by Bob Geldof, the guy who spearheaded Live Aid. "Stop" is part of a stark sequence where he finally calls off his Skinhead followers. The Trial comes near the end of Pink Floyd's concept album The Wall, where the character Pink has completed his downfall into insanity and his putting himself on trial for his actions - he became a Hitler-like dictator. He finally cracks under the pressure and "the wall" he has created falls. Because this all takes place in Pink's head, we're not sure what really happens to him. Did he fade out of reality and lead a life where everybody forgot about what he used to be and just melt away? Did he commit suicide or die in some way? Did a happy ending appear where he gave up his fascist ideas, reconciled with his wife, and continued his music career? Or maybe he found religion and realized the error of his ways? The album The Final Cut does provide some allusions to what might have happened to Pink, as well as the last song on the album, "Outside The Wall," but there is no definite answer to this question. "The Trial" is the grand finale of The Wall, ending with the wall being torn down. "Outside The Wall" serves as a coda, signifying some redemption among the ruin. Pink Floyd took the unusual step of focusing their subsequent tour entirely on the album, with striking visuals to accompany the songs. At these shows (there were only 31), a giant wall was erected in front of the stage, and at the end of "The Trial," it comes crashing down. The band then emerges to send off the audience with "Outside The Wall." The most famous wall that was eventually torn down was the Berlin Wall, which fell in 1989. Roger Waters, the main architect of The Wall, left Pink Floyd in 1985 but staged a performance of the album in 1990 where the Berlin Wall once stood. The performance took on new significance, especially at the end of "The Trial" when the crowd chanted along, "tear down the wall," as it came down. This is the last song on Pink Floyd's epic concept album The Wall. The album deals with isolation - the emotional walls we build to protect ourselves - but "Outside The Wall" closes the album with the theme of redemption. Pink Floyd bass player Roger Waters, who wrote Outside the Wall and developed the concept, explained to Rolling Stone, "We are redeemed when we tear our walls down and expose our weaknesses to our fellow man... sit around the fire and talk." "Outside The Wall" is an acoustic song with none of the band members on the instruments. Session musicians played a mandolin, clarinet, and an accordion-like instrument called a concertina. There's also a children's choir, but it's not the same one from "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)," the most famous song from the album. The Wall centers on a character named Pink. This song is told in either his voice or the voice of his loved ones summarizing what he learned from the ordeal: Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall Pink Floyd took The Wall on the road with an elaborate stage show where a wall was built in front of the performers and then torn down. For "Outside The Wall," the band walked over the rubble to perform, getting much closer to the audience. On the tour, Waters played clarinet on this track, keyboard player Richard Wright played accordion, and drummer Nick Mason acoustic guitar. The album makes a complete loop. "Outside The Wall" ends with a sentence that's abruptly cut off: Isn't this where... The first track, "In The Flesh?," completes the sentence: "...we came in?" Waters embarked on a whole tour for The Wall in 2010.

That Smell Album: Street Survivors (1977) One More Time Album: Street Survivors (1977) You Got That Right Album: Street Survivors (1977) by Lynyrd Skynyrd Street Survivors is the fifth studio album by Lynyrd Skynyrd, released on October 17, 1977. The LP is the last Skynyrd album recorded by original members Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins, and is the sole Skynyrd studio recording by guitarist Steve Gaines. Three days after the album's release, the band's chartered airplane crashed en route to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, killing the pilot, co-pilot, the group's assistant road-manager and three band members (Van Zant, Gaines, and Gaines' older sister, backup singer Cassie Gaines), and severely injuring most who survived the crash. The album was an instant success, achieving gold certification just 10 days after its release. It would later go double platinum. The album performed well on the charts, peaking at #5 (the band's highest-charting album), as did the singles "What's Your Name" and "That Smell," the former a top-20 hit on the singles chart. Street Survivors was recorded twice, once with Tom Dowd at the helm at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, and then at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, five months later with uncredited co-producers Kevin Elson and Rodney Mills. The Doraville recording was used for the initial release of the album. On March 4, 2008, a remastered version of the album, Street Survivors: Deluxe Edition, was released with these alternate versions of most of the songs as well as five live tracks. Street Survivors was a showcase for guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines, who had joined the band just a year earlier on the recommendation of his sister Cassie. Publicly and privately, Ronnie Van Zant marveled at the multiple talents of Skynyrd's newest member, claiming that the band would "all be in his shadow one day." Gaines' contributions included his co-lead vocal with Van Zant on the co-written "You Got That Right" and the guitar boogie "I Know A Little," which Gaines had written before he joined Skynyrd. So confident was Skynyrd's leader of Gaines' abilities, that the album (and some concerts) featured Gaines delivering his self-penned blues "Ain't No Good Life" - one of the few songs in the first incarnation Skynyrd catalog to feature a lead vocalist other than Van Zant. The album also included the hit single "What's Your Name" and the ominous "That Smell" - a cautionary tale about drug abuse that seemed to be aimed at fellow band members (both Collins and Gary Rossington had serious car accidents which slowed the recording of the album). On October 20, 1977, only three days after the release of Street Survivors, and five shows into their most successful headlining tour to date, Lynyrd Skynyrd's chartered Convair CV-300 ran out of fuel near the end of their flight from Greenville, South Carolina, where they had just performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium, to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Though the pilots attempted an emergency landing on a small airstrip, the plane crashed in a forest five miles (8 km) northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and co-pilot William Gray, were killed on impact. The other band members (Collins, Rossington, Wilkeson, Powell, Pyle, and Hawkins), tour manager Ron Eckerman, and road crew survived, but suffered serious injuries. Following the crash and the ensuing press, Street Survivors became the band's second platinum album and reached No. 5 on the U.S. album chart. The single "What's Your Name?" reached No. 13 on the single airplay charts in January 1978. The original cover sleeve for Street Survivors had featured a photograph of the band standing on a city street with all its buildings engulfed in flames, some near the center nearly obscuring Steve Gaines's face. After the plane crash, this cover became highly controversial. Out of respect for the deceased (and at the request of Teresa Gaines, Steve's widow), MCA Records withdrew the original cover and replaced it with a similar image of the band against a simple black background, which was on the back cover of the original sleeve. An urban legend has long claimed that only those band members touched by flame in the photograph were killed in the crash, but this is not true (flame appears to touch nearly all band members). The original "flames" cover was restored for the Deluxe Edition. Robert Christgau stated: "Some rock deaths are irrelevant, while others make a kind of sense because the artists involved so obviously long to transcend (or escape) their own mortality. But for Ronnie Van Zant, life and mortality were the same thing--there was no way to embrace one without at least keeping company with the other. So it makes sense that 'That Smell' is the smell of death, or that in 'You Got That Right' Van Zant boasts that he'll never be found in an old folks' home. As with too many LPs by good road bands, each side here begins with two strong cuts and then winds down. The difference is that the two strong cuts are very strong and the weak ones gain presence with each listen. I'm not just being sentimental. I know road bands never make their best album the sixth time out, and I know Van Zant had his limits. But I mourn him not least because I suspect that he had more good music left in him than Bing [Crosby] and Elvis put together." That Smell is about Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington, who bought a new car (a Ford Torino), got drunk, and crashed it into a tree, then a house ("whiskey bottles, brand new car, oak tree you're in my way"). The band was supposed to start a tour in a few days, but had to postpone it because of Rossington's injuries. Lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Allen Collins wrote this song. They were not pleased with Rossington, whose drug and alcohol problems were affecting the band. The band fined Rossington $5000 for holding up the tour. Skynyrd made an effort to stay sober on this tour. Drugs and alcohol were banned from the dressing rooms. Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup singer Cassie Gaines were killed in a plane crash a few days after Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1977 tour started. Some of the lyrics in this song refer to death, and the cover of the album, which had just been released, showed the band enveloped in flames. This song features the famous whistle of Ronnie Van Zant. He learned to whistle very loud so he could call the dogs when he went hunting. In You Got That Right, Skynyrd make it clear they won't be settling down anytime soon - they've got that "traveling bone" and a thirst for adventure. It's a similar sentiment to "Free Bird," but without the metaphor. The title is a phrase popular in the American South as a defiant affirmation: "You were out drinking last night, weren't you?" "You got that right." You Got That Right was written by lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines, who joined the band in 1976. The two share lead vocals on the song, making it, along with the Gaines-sung "Ain't No Good Life" (also from Street Survivors) the only Lynyrd Skynyrd releases (not counting demos) to feature a lead vocalist other than Van Zant during his lifetime. Both Gaines and Van Zant were killed when the band's plane crashed on October 20, 1977, just three days after Street Survivors was released. Gaines' sister Cassie, a backup singer for Skynyrd, was also killed in the crash. This is a great example of the contributions Steve Gaines made to the group. After replacing guitarist Ed King, he made a huge impact on their songwriting. Street Survivors was his only album with the band, but he wrote or co-wrote half the songs: "You Got That Right" and "I Never Dreamed" with Van Zant, and "Ain't No Good Life" and "I Know A Little" on his own. According to Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington, Gaines inspired them to up their game, as was a top-notch guitarist and writer. This was released months after the plane crash that claimed the lives of Gaines and Van Zant. It peaked at #69 US on April 29, 1978, six months after the crash. It was the last single from Street Survivors and the last Skynyrd song to make the Hot 100.

Sink Hole Album: Decoration Day (2003) The Sands of Iwo Jima Album: The Dirty South (2008) Loaded Gun in the Closet Album: Decoration Day (2003) by Drive By Truckers Decoration Day is an album released in 2003. The album was recorded mostly live over two weeks at Chase Park Transduction Studios in Athens, Georgia, and was produced by noted producer and former Sugar bassist David Barbe. The album is the Truckers' fifth, including their live album Alabama Ass Whuppin', following the critically acclaimed Southern Rock Opera. The album features a more mellow, stripped down, and reserved sound compared to Southern Rock Opera's heavy hitting southern rock. Decoration Day is the first album to feature Jason Isbell on guitar; he would record two more albums with the band before leaving to pursue a solo career in 2007. Guitarist and songwriter Patterson Hood describes Decoration Day as being lyrically a "pretty dark" record, though he notes that the band "had so much fun making it, and I think that kind of comes through". Three of the album's songs – "Heathens", "Your Daddy Hates Me" and "Give Pretty Soon" – are referred to as being Hood's "divorce trilogy", dealing with what Hood himself refers to as the "emotional fallout" that follows divorce. He has stated that Decoration Day is "more or less... an album about choices, good and bad, right and wrong, and the consequences of those choices." Seven of the album's tracks were first takes, while about five songs were second takes. As is the Truckers' trademark, a number of Decoration Day's songs deal with elements of southern folklore. The title track, written by guitarist Jason Isbell, tells "a story that's rumored to be true" of two families involved in a passionate intergenerational feud which has gone on so long that few can remember why such hatred exists between them. Isbell wrote the song just three days after joining the band while touring in support of Southern Rock Opera. Isbell's "Outfit" describes the advice given to him by his own father, advising him, among other things, to have fun but to avoid intravenous drugs, to call home for his sister's birthday, not to sing in a "fake British accent" or to make The Beatles' faux pas and claim to be "bigger than Jesus". The Dirty South is the fifth album released in 2004. The Dirty South is Drive-By Truckers' second concept album. Like its predecessor, Southern Rock Opera, the album examines the state of the South, and unveils the hypocrisy, irony, and tragedy that continues to exist. Southern Gothic... "The Sands of Iwo Jima" recounts Hood's experiences with his great uncle while growing up in North Alabama. Questioning the veracity of the movie, his uncle answers he never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima. The Dirty South is Drive-By Truckers' best-selling album. The Dirty South was recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In June 2023, the album was re-released as The Complete Dirty South. This new version included three tracks not included on the original album: "Goode's Field Road", "TVA" and "The Great Car Dealer War". Additionally, it features new vocal tracks for "Puttin' People on the Moon" and "The Sands of Iwo Jima" as well as additional remixes. Mike Cooley – guitar, vocals Earl Hicks – bass Patterson Hood – guitar, vocals Jason Isbell – guitar, vocals Brad Morgan – drums Additional Personnel David Barbe – producer, engineer, mixer, guitar, keyboards, Wurlitzer, upright piano Scott Danbom – fiddle Clay Leverett – harmony John Neff – pedal steel Spooner Oldham – Wurlitzer, soloist Sink Hole I've always been a religious man I've always been a religious man But I met the banker and it felt like sin He turned my bailout down The banker man lit into me Lit into me, lit into me The banker man lit into me And spread my name around He thinks I ain't got a lick of sense 'Cause I talk slow and my money's spent I ain't the type to hold it against But he better stay off my farm 'Cause it was my daddy's and his daddy's before And his daddy's before and his daddy's before Five generations of an unlocked door And a loaded burglar alarm Lots of pictures of my purdy family Lots of pictures of my purdy family Lots of pictures of my purdy family In the house where we was born House has stood through five tornadoes Droughts and floods and five tornadoes I'd rather wrastle an alligator Than to face the banker's scorn The Sands of Iwo Jima George A. was at the movies in December '41 They announced in the lobby what had just gone on He drove up from Birmingham, back to the family's farm Thought he'd get him a deferment, there's was much work to be done He was a family man, even in those days But Uncle Sam decided he was needed anyway In the South Pacific, over half a world away He believed in God and Country, things was just that way Just that way When I was just a kid, I spent every weekend On the farm he grew up on, so I guess so did I And we'd stay up watching movies on the black and white TV We watched "The Sands of Iwo Jima", starring John Wayne Every year in June George A. goes to a reunion Of the men that he served with, and their wives and kids and grandkids My great uncle used to take me and I'd watch them recollect About some things that I couldn't comprehend And I thought about that movie, asked if it was that way He just shook his head and smiled at me in such a loving way As he thought about some friends he will never see again He said, "I never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima" Most of those men are gone now, but he goes still every year And George A's still doing fine, especially for his years He's still living on that homestead, in the house that he was born in And I sure wish I could go see him today He never drove a new car though he could easily afford it He'd just buy one for the family, take whatever no one wanted He said a shiny car didn't mean much after all the things he'd seen George A. never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima George A. never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima

Roll Um Easy Album: Dixie Chicken (1973) Easy To Slip Album: Sailin' Shoes (1972) Can't Be Satisfied Album: Sam’s Place (2024) by Little Feat Video features "The Big Easy" Little Feat, like any other good gumbo, is a rich, dark stew of influences. They'll stir in folk, rock, blues, country, gospel and a bit of funk. The secret spice in this strange concoction was originally the late Lowell George, a man of both prodigious talents and appetites. He oversaw their transformation from an off-kilter post-Frank Zappa hybrid group into a rollicking, rootsy delight before he was felled by a massive heart attack on June 29, 1979, at just 34 years old. Little Feat had already begun drifting away from him, turning a little more jazzy, but promptly broke up anyway. Easy To Slip was written by guitarist/singer Lowell George and his frequent collaborator Martin Kibbee. Kibbee had the original idea, then played it for George, who added the guitar part. Easy To Slip is probably the song that convinced Warner Bros. not to drop the band because it showed their commercial potential. Ironically, neither the song nor the album charted. Kibbee and George started their own publishing company around this time called Naked Snake Music because they had lost the rights to their earlier songs. Kibbee was often credited, including on Easy To Slip, as Fred Martin. This meant that the writing credit would go to "George/Martin." George Martin was the producer for The Beatles and this was their way to pay tribute to him. The inability of Easy To Slip to chart led to the personnel changes that added guitarist Paul Barrere and expanded the lineup from four people to six. Little Feat would become more song-oriented as they trained a sharper spotlight on the underlying musical elements that always made this band so intriguing. Tending to their roots with far more care than seemed possible with Little Feat's rangy late frontman, the group eventually found themselves recording their first all-blues, Clayton-sung LP. For some, the genre turn on Sam's Place may have seemed as unlikely as Clayton moving from behind the congas. After all, Little Feat had always been one thing – and that was never any one thing. Yet Clayton's infectious passion for the music is clear, and there's always been a bright blues thread winding through the group's career. Roll Um Easy Oh I am just a vagabond A drifter on the run And eloquent profanity It rolls right off my tongue And I have dined in palaces Drunk wine with Kings and Queens But darlin', oh darlin' You're the best thing I've ever seen Won't you roll me easy Oh slow and easy Take my independence With no apprehension, no tension You walki' talkin' dream paradise Sweet pair a' dice Well I been across this country From Denver to the ocean And I never met girls who could sing so sweet Like the angels that live in Houston Singin' "Roll me easy, so slow and easy... Play that Concertina, I'll be your temptress..." And baby I'm defenseless Singin' harmony In unison Sweet harmony Gotta hoist your flag and I'll beat your drum Easy To Slip It's so easy to slip It's so easy to fall And let your memory drift And do nothin' at all All the love that you missed All the people that you can't recall Do they really exist at all Well my whole world seems so cold today All the magic's gone away And our time together melts away Like the sad melody I play Well I don't want to drift forever In the shadow of your leaving me So I'll light another cigarette And try to remember to forget It's so easy to slip It's so easy to fall And let your memory drift And do nothin' at all All the love that you missed All the people that you can't recall Do they really exist at all Can't Be Satisfied Well, I'm going away to leave I won't be back no more Going back down south Child, don't you wanna go? Woman, I'm troubled I be all worried in mind Well babe, I just can't be satisfied I just can't keep from crying Well, I feel like snapping A pistol in your face I'm gon' let some graveyard Lord, be your resting place Woman, I'm troubled I be all worried in mind Well baby, I can't ever be satisfied And I just can't keep from crying Well, now all in my sleep I hear my doorbell ring Looking for my baby I didn't see not a doggone thing Woman, I was troubled I was all worried in mind Well honey, I could never be satisfied I just can't keep from crying Well, I know my little old baby She gon' jump and shout That old train be late, man Lord, and I come walking out I be troubled I be all worried in mind Well honey, ain't no way in the world for me to be satisfied And I just can't keep from crying

Demonic Possession Album: Gangstabilly (1998) Zoloft Album: Pizza Deliverance (1999) Tales Facing Up by Drive By Truckers Gangstabilly is the debut album of the Drive-By Truckers. The album was recorded "live in the studio" over the course of two days and was produced by Andy Baker and Andy LeMaster. The album's cover art was created by Jim Stacy. The album was re-released on January 25, 2005 by New West Records along with the band's second studio effort, Pizza Deliverance. On the band's website, bandmember Patterson Hood says that "[Gangstabilly is] the most country of any of our albums." He goes on to admit that the record is "not our best album, but lots of fun and more than a little hint of the better things to come." Hood has consistently stated that the song "The Living Bubba" is the best song he has ever written. Hood wrote "Demonic Possession" while watching Pat Buchanan's televised speech at the 1996 Republican National Convention. All my family problems disappeared overnight. We're all taking Zoloft and everything is fine. Tears are for pussies... Demonic Possession Demonic Possession His court's in session I sign my confession Demonic Possession It was raining on the day she told me Them things that fella sold me Mama wasn't there to scold me No prison or cell could hold me I still recall the date This promise that I made When I sealed my fate You honor I rightly state Suddenly I had a foot hold I became such a butthole I don't need nobody consoling me No one but the devil controlling me I can kick ass and talk backward I hang out with a whole bunch of slackers And I know I can get some help from him I listen to a lot of Led Zeppelin I got so much money I don't need smarts My records are flying to the top of the charts And I'm eating in all those fancy restaurants And Hanging out with Sam Phillips And I owe it all to him Oh, the shape I'm in The devil says the only thing that's buggin him Is Hell's filling up with Republicans Zoloft All my family problems disappeared overnight We're all taking Zoloft and everything is fine My sister's teen angst just flew out the window Mama's so happy she laughs all the time It used to trouble gettin' along with each other Then the family doctor gave us all these little pills Now I can't believe how great we all feel Mama hated daddy, I hated little brother We're all taking Zoloft and everything is fine All my family problems disappeared overnight Mama's so happy she laughs all the time My sister's teen angst just flew out the window The birds in the trees all sing happy songs Everyone is smiling, we're so glad to be alive Even my ol' pitbull don't growl anymore He just watches that ol' tail wag from side to side All my family problems disappeared overnight We're all taking Zoloft and everything is fine My sister's teen angst just flew out the window Now I used to be so unhappy doin' songs about killing Mama's so happy she laughs all the time Taking methadone and jacking off four or five times a day Now I'm so happy... I'm so gaddamn happy! Who needs an orgasm when life's so f**king great? All my family problems disappeared overnight Mama's so happy she cries all the time We're all taking Zoloft and everything is fine My sister's teen angst just flew out the window Tales Facing Up Me and my brother's old lady went out and got stinking She solved her curiosities about me by the railroad tracks She said I reminded her of him before he started drinking And banging the babysitter every time she turned her back We opened up the sunroof and smoked a big ole joint And drank a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon listening to the crickets and trains And every so often she'd lapse into narcotic ramblings Moon and mascara I've always been a holy terror Temptations lurking everywhere If your mind's in the gutter, beware You'll find me there Me and a friend were talking after the funeral She said it should have been me but I'm still around and I been so wild I'm surprised I made it to the seventh grade And all my dead friends have settled down My eyes were puffy and she asked if I'd been crying I said, "Tears are for pussies" but who was I kidding So we stopped at the bar and drank them dry Beer and tequila I've always been a thrill seeker But thrills are a dime a dozen these days And I found a dime in the gutter today Tails facing up Still fucking up Still fucking up A funny thing happened on my way to a strange way of thinking

Drivin' Wheel Album: Night Shift (1976) Terraplane Blues Album: Fool for the City (1975) by Foghat Night Shift is the sixth studio album. It was the first Foghat album to include bassist Craig MacGregor, who had toured with the band in support of Fool for the City. The album was produced by Dan Hartman. Drivin' Wheel is the first track. "Terraplane Blues" is a blues song recorded in 1936 in San Antonio, Texas, by bluesman Robert Johnson. Vocalion issued it as Johnson's first 78 rpm record, backed with "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", in March 1937. The song became a moderate regional hit, selling up to 10,000 copies. Johnson used the car model Terraplane as a metaphor for sex. In the lyrical narrative, the car will not start and Johnson suspects that his girlfriend let another man drive it when he was gone. In describing the various mechanical problems with his Terraplane, Johnson creates a setting of thinly veiled sexual innuendo. Fool for the City is the fifth studio album where Foghat covered Terraplane Blues as the first song of side two. Fool for the City was the band's first album to go platinum. It was also the first album the band recorded after the departure of original bassist Tony Stevens. Producer Nick Jameson played bass and keyboards on the album, and co-wrote the closing track, "Take It or Leave It", with Dave Peverett. Appearing in the photograph on the back cover of the album, Jameson is not known to have toured with Foghat in support of the album. A new bassist, Craig MacGregor, was recruited shortly after the album's release, but Jameson would continue to produce and record intermittently with the band over the next couple of decades. The LP was released with two different catalog numbers. The original was released as BR 6959. It was reissued as BRK 6980 in 1978. All issues from 1978–1984 used this catalog number. The album cover shows drummer Roger Earl sitting alone on a soap box fishing down a manhole near 229 East 11th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue) in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City, near the address of Foghat's American office. The back cover features skeptical bystanders observing Earl's unusual activity and the other members of the band either asking him what he is doing or trying to dissuade him from it. In a 2014 interview, Earl explained how the picture was taken: It was a Sunday morning and I hadn't slept. [...] It was Nick Jameson's idea [...] since I have this penchant for fishing. Anyway, we lift up the manhole cover and I'm sitting on a box. Almost immediately a couple of New York's Finest come by in their patrol car. They're looking at us and they wind the window down. We're like, "Oh shit." They yell out, "Hey! You got a fishing license?" and then start laughing. So they come over and say, "What the fuck are you doing?" They took some pictures with them handcuffing me. I love New York's Finest. — Roger Earl Foghat is a Blues band based around Peverett's previous blues band, Savoy Brown. They hosted a 1977 benefit concert at the Palladium for the New York Public Library's Blues collection. Guests included Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. While the original members are all British, Foghat never had a charting song or record in the UK. This could be because most of the touring was in the US. Boogie Motel, the name of their 1979 album, was also the name of their recording studio. The name of the band comes from a fake word made up in a Scrabble game. Lonesome Dave Peverett - lead vocals, guitar, heavy breathing Rod "The Bottle" Price - guitar, slide guitar, steel guitar, vocals Roger Earl - drums, percussion Craig MacGregor - bass guitar, backing vocals

Patience Album: G 'N' R Lies (1988) Sweet Child O' Mine Album: Appetite For Destruction (1987) Welcome To The Jungle Album: Appetite For Destruction (1987) by Guns N Roses Following the manic aural onslaught of their debut album Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses gave us "Patience," a tender song where Axl Rose sings about waiting it out in a relationship. It was the only single issued from the second album, G N' R Lies. Patience was a trendsetter in its use of all-acoustic instrumentation, making it safe for hard rockers to display their sensitive, vulnerable sides in a more understated way rather than utilizing the power ballad format so popular among hair bands in the late '80s. Axl Rose did the whistling on this track. He's also the one who blows the whistle on "Paradise City." This song plays in the 1991 Robert DeNiro film Cape Fear in a scene where Juliette Lewis' character plays it to drown out her parents' fighting. It also appears in the 2013 film Warm Bodies. This is a very popular karaoke song, but one that you might want to avoid. Kimberly Starling of The Karaoke Informer says it's one of the Top 5 songs that tends to bomb. "It just eludes the average ear and when you get off key on this one it sounds to the ear like a turd in a punch bowl looks to the eye," she says. Before Geffen Records decided it was too long, the title for the album was Lies! The Sex, The Drugs, The Violence, The Shocking Truth. On January 30, 1989, Guns N' Roses played Patience at the American Music Awards with Don Henley on drums because Steven Adler was in rehab. Henley did it as a favor to Axl Rose, who sang harmony vocals on his song "I Will Not Go Quietly," which appeared on his The End Of The Innocence album later that year. The suitably understated video for Patience was directed by Nigel Dick and shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After helping his daughter Toni learn the song, Chris Cornell got inspired in March of 2016 to record "Patience" himself. His version wasn't released until July 20, 2020, two years after the singer's death on what would have been his 56th birthday. Patience topped the Mainstream Rock Songs chart, giving him his first solo Billboard #1. Cornell also reached the summit eight times on the tally when fronting Soundgarden and Audioslave and on another occasion as guest vocalist on Zac Brown Band's "Heavy Is the Head." The lyrics for Sweet Child O' Mine came from a poem Axl Rose was working on. He wrote the song about his girlfriend, Erin Everly, the daughter of Don Everly of the Everly Brothers. After dating for four years, they got married at a quickie wedding in Las Vegas on April 28, 1990, but just nine months later, the marriage was annulled, with Everly claiming abuse. Appetite For Destruction was Guns N' Roses' first album, released in July 1987. It took a long time to catch on, and three cracks at a hit single before it did. "It's So Easy" was the first single, followed by "Welcome To The Jungle." Both flopped, but when "Sweet Child O' Mine" was released as the third single in June 1988, it made a steady climb to the top, bringing the album with it. The song hit #1 in September; the album reached the top spot in August. In the wake of the "Sweet Child" success, "Welcome To The Jungle" was re-released and this time became a hit. Slash came up with the riff for Sweet Child O' Mine when he was playing around on his guitar. He thought it was silly and wanted nothing to do with it, but Axl loved it and had him keep playing it. Izzy Stradlin added some chords, and the song came together. According to Duff McKagan's 2012 autobiography, Slash always considered it the worst Guns N' Roses song. Slash told Rolling Stone magazine: "It's [Sweet Child O' Mine] a combination of influences. From Jeff Beck, Cream and Zeppelin to stuff you'd be surprised at: the solos in Manfred Mann's version of 'Blinded By The Light' and Gerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street.'" Axl listened to a bunch of Lynyrd Skynyrd songs before recording his vocal. He liked their down-home, genuine sound and wanted to duplicate it on Sweet Child O' Mine. Axl Rose had a rough childhood, but in Sweet Child O' Mine he recalls one pocket of light, remembering childhood memories "where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky." He told the Los Angeles Times: "The 'blue sky' line actually was one of my first childhood memories - looking at the blue sky and wishing I could disappear in it because it was so beautiful." The video for Sweet Child O' Mine was directed by Nigel Dick, who did the first five Guns N' Roses videos. Unlike their later epics for "November Rain" and "Don't Cry," the Sweet Child O' Mine video is just grainy, black-and-white footage of the band performing the song. It was good enough to win them the MTV Video Music Award for Best Heavy Metal Video. A third verse Axl wrote for Sweet Child O' Mine was edited out because the record company thought it made the song too long. The song hit #1 in America on September 10, 1988, and stayed there for two weeks. While it was climbing to the top spot, Guns N' Roses was touring as the opening act for Aerosmith. By the end of the tour on September 15, G N' R had eclipsed their headliners in popularity and were chosen for the cover of Rolling Stone for their November 17 issue. The tour went very well thanks to a ground rule Aerosmith established: no drugs in their presence. The now-rehabbed Aerosmith could see Guns N' Roses heading down the same path of addiction, but made no effort to preach to them about the dangers, as they knew the Gunners would have to make their own mistakes. Aerosmith did, however, give T-shirts to the band listing the rehab centers they had been through instead of tour dates, which they felt was their statement. Sweet Child O' Mine revealed a sensitive side that G&R hadn't shown before and has done so sporadically since: "A lot of rock bands are too wimpy to have any sentiment or any emotion in any of their stuff unless they are in pain,... 'Sweet Child O' Mine' is the first positive love song I've ever written, but I never had anyone to write anything about before." In the video for Sweet Child O' Mine, a few moments before Slash's solo takes off, Axl can be seen taking off his jacket. Axl had so many bracelets on his arms, he had trouble getting his jacket off, which made them do a number of retakes. Axl stated in a 2006 radio interview with Eddie Trunk, "The video they wanted to do for the song was supposed to be of an Asian woman carrying a baby into the United States. At the end of the video, the baby is cut open and there is heroin inside because that's what the song is about." Sweet Child O' Mine is the most-covered song that Slash has ever written. He told UK's Metro newspaper: "There are some really good instrumental versions for the piano or violin, but I've been horrified by some muzak versions. I've been sitting in a doctor's office thinking, 'That sounds familiar,' and then realizing it's someone's interpretation of what I've written. That can be a creepy feeling." Slash broke out the wah-wah pedal for his guitar solo, which landed at #3 on Guitar World's 2015 list of greatest wah solos of all time. Sweet Child O' Mine won Best Single, Heavy Metal/Hard Rock at the 1989 American Music Awards. The group performed "Patience" at the show with Don Henley sitting in on drums for an ailing Steven Alder. Sweet Child O' Mine was remixed and re-released in the UK in May 1989, where it went to #6. When first released there in August 1988, it made #24. Sheryl Crow covered Sweet Child O' Mine in 1999 for the Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy, scoring a #30 hit in the UK and earning her the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 2000. Her version appears near the middle of the movie right after they take the kid away; the Guns N' Roses original is played at the end with the credits. >> The guitar solo is ranked #37 in Guitar World magazine's 2013 list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time (Slash's "November Rain" solo ranks #6). In an interview with Uncut magazine February 2008 Slash was asked where the weirdest place that he'd heard one of his songs was. He replied: "I've heard 'Paradise City' and 'Patience' in some odd places, but the weirdest thing is hearing Muzak versions of 'Sweet Child O' Mine' in elevators and shopping malls. I've even heard an arrangement of it for harp. Recently I was in a hotel and the lounge pianist was playing it. I get a mixture of emotions when that happens. Part of it is 'hey wow, that's our tune!,' part of it's embarrassment at even noticing it, part of it's bewilderment of somebody else playing your music, someone who knows nothing about you, who has never met you, who is just playing your music as part of a thousand pieces of material that they have to play. Imagine how, say, Paul McCartney must feel, hearing his music absolutely everywhere." In 2008, the Recording Industry Association of America declared Appetite for Destruction the best-selling debut album in the US with 18 million copies sold. The previous record holder was Boston's 1976 self-titled debut, which sold 17 million. This song plays near the end of the 2008 movie The Wrestler when Mickey Rourke's character makes his entrance into the ring. Axl Rose, who is friends with Rourke, allowed the low-budget film to use the song for almost nothing, something Rourke thanked Axl for at the Golden Globe awards when he won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama. In 2009, a mellow jazz version by Taken By Trees, aka the Swedish singer Victoria Bergsman, reached #23 in the UK thanks to its use in TV commercials for the department store John Lewis. Sweet Child O' Mine runs 5:55 and was issued at that length as a single, which was fine for rock radio. When it became clear that the song also had tremendous pop appeal, Geffen Records distributed a truncated version running 3:42 with the intro cut down and the second guitar solo (after the second verse) removed. This was a good option for radio stations with listeners that would only tollerate so much rock guitar; it got the song on the air across a breadth of formats. Speaking with the radio station WEBN in Cincinnati, Ohio, Slash admitted that he isn't fond of Sweet Child O' Mine apart from its riff. He explained: "You know, Guns N' Roses was always a real hardcore, sort of, AC/DC kind of hard rock band with a lot of attitude. If we did any kind of ballads, it was bluesy. This was an uptempo ballad. That's one of the gayest things you can write. But at the same time, it's a great song - I'm not knocking it - but at the time, it just did not fit in with the rest of our, sot of, schtick. And, of course, it would be the biggest hit we ever had." On October 15, 2019 Sweet Child O' Mine became the first music video from the '80s to reach one billion views on YouTube. The previous year, the band's "November Rain" clip also became the first '90s video to reach the one billion mark on the platform. An instrumental version of Sweet Child O' Mine was used on the series finale of The Office in 2013 when Phyllis has to carry an injured Angela down the aisle to marry Dwight. "Sweet Child o' Mine" features on the soundtrack of Thor: Love and Thunder and was also used in the film's marketing. Director Taika Waititi, a huge GnR fan, said it helped "reflect the sort of crazy adventure that we're presenting." "Sweet Child O' Mine" re-entered the UK Singles Chart at #40 after Guns N' Roses performed it at Glastonbury 2023 during the Saturday headline slot. It was its first time in the UK Top 40 since 1989. "Sweet Child O' Mine" features in the fourth episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty's second season, which aired on July 21, 2023. The song plays as Belly and Jeremiah face the "Tower of Terror" ride at Magic Mountain. Welcome To The Jungle is about Los Angeles. It exposes the dark side of the city many people encounter when they go there to pursue fame. Guns N' Roses knew this side of the city well: in 1985, they lived in a place on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles that they called "Hell House." The house was often filled with drugs, alcohol and groupies. Axl Rose wrote the lyrics to Welcome To The Jungle when he was in Seattle, which gave him some perspective on the size of Los Angeles. Slash (from the notes to Guns N' Roses: The Hits): "I was at my house and I had that riff happening and Axl came over and he got those lyrics together, and then the band sort of arranged it. We got an arrangement for the whole band, 'cause that's how we work. Someone comes in with an idea and someone else has input and in that way everyone's happy. That came together really quickly too, that was arranged in one day." In 2007 Rolling Stone magazine ran a feature on the 20th anniversary of Appetite For Destruction. They explained that a famous lyric from Welcome To The Jungle originated when Axl Rose spent a night in a Queens schoolyard before joining the band. Said Rose: "This black guy said, 'You're in the jungle! You gonna die.'" On 93.1 WIBC FM, a radio station in Indianapolis, Indiana, Jake Query, a friend of Axle Rose, gave a different account, saying: "When Axl Rose hitchhiked to Los Angeles, California, on the last leg, a truck driver drove him to Los Angeles, and when Rose got out of the truck, the truck driver said, 'Welcome to the Jungle." When Welcome To The Jungle was released as a single in 1987, it charted in the UK but flopped in America. It finally became a hit in the US when they re-released it in October 1988 after "Sweet Child O' Mine" hit #1. Welcome To The Jungle was used in the 1988 Clint Eastwood movie The Dead Pool, where the band makes a cameo. It also plays in the opening sequence of the 1989 film Lean On Me, about an inner-city high school reformed by principal Joe Clark. Other movies to use the song include: The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) How to Be Single (2016) The Interview (2014) Megamind (2010) Selena (1997) The Program (1993) Welcome To The Jungle was the second UK single and third US single from Appetite For Destruction. The first single, "It's So Easy," was a flop. Numerous college and pro sports teams use Welcome To The Jungle to intimidate their opponents at home games. The Cincinnati Bengals of the NFL were probably the first. The Norwegian Soccer team Lillestrom SK uses this song before every home game. Welcome To The Jungle was the first track on Appetite For Destruction, which caused controversy because of its cover, a drawing of a robot apparently raping a woman. The album was a raging success, selling 18 million copies in America by 2008, making it the best-selling debut album in history until 2018, when the RIAA certified Cracked Rear View by Hootie & the Blowfish at 21 million. Slash re-recorded his guitar parts as he was dissatisfied with his first attempts. To produce the vicious yet pure tone, the Guns N' Roses gunslinger used a Les Paul '59 replica plugged into a Marshall JCM, aided most likely by some Jack Daniel's. The video was shot at Park Plaza and 450 South La Brea in Hollywood. The band's first video, it was very successful, winning at the 1988 MTV Video Music Awards for Best New Artist Video. Guns N' Roses performed the song on the show. Welcome To The Jungle was used in the 2017 movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and the next installment, Jumanji: The Next Level (2019). The films are set in a virtual jungle. When Axl says "my serpentine," he's describing his famous dance, which he copied from Richard Black, lead singer of the band Shark Island. Slash left the band in 1996, leaving Axl Rose firmly in control. Rose kept the band going with new members and in 2001 got in yet another dispute with Slash when producers of Black Hawk Down wanted to use "Welcome To The Jungle" in the movie. According to Slash, Axl refused unless he could re-record it with the current members of Guns N' Roses, meaning Slash and the rest of the Appetite For Destruction lineup would have lost out on royalties. Welcome To The Jungle never made it into the film, which tells the story of an ill-fated US raid on Mogadishu in 1993. It was going to be used in a scene where Army Rangers are preparing for the raid - in real life, they really did blast the song before heading out. The Faith No More song "Falling To Pieces" was used in its place. Guns N' Roses made a surprise appearance at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards where they performed Welcome To The Jungle. At the time Axl Rose was the only original member in the band, but there was great anticipation for their album Chinese Democracy, which was expected soon. The album finally appeared in 2008. Welcome To The Jungle is used in the soundtrack to the Playstation 2 game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Axl lends his voice to one of the radio stations. In 2007, three teens at Booth Free School in Roxbury, Connecticut (one of them a janitor), were messing around with the public address system when one of them sang some lyrics to this song, including "You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die." This freaked out one teacher, who thought it was a threat, barricaded herself in a classroom and called the police, who came in and detained the three teens until they could clear up the misunderstanding. A line from this song became a bit of a catch phrase for Axl Rose, who began screaming at crowds when performing it at shows, "Do you know where the f--k you are!?" Axl said it in 2006 when he introduced The Killers at the MTV Video Music Awards. Guns N' Roses opened for Aerosmith in the summer of 1988, culminating in a show on September 15 at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, California. At this final show, Aerosmith's road crew had some fun by dressing up in gorilla costumes and messing around on stage when G N' R performed Welcome To The Jungle. It was all in good fun, as the bands got along great, with Axl expressing his admiration for Aerosmith at every show. When Aerosmith took the stage that night, they had Guns N' Roses join them for an extended jam of "Mama Kin," a song Guns often covered. By the end of the tour, Guns N' Roses was the hotter band - "Sweet Child O' Mine" hit #1 the week the tour ended. Slash's gear for the entire Appetite For Destruction album was a Kris Derrig-built 1959 Les Paul replica guitar, and a rented S.I.R. (known to S.I.R. as Stock #36) Marshall 1959 Superlead Metal Panel modded by Frank Levi and Glenn Buckley (based on Tim Caswell's modification to Stock #39). Welcome To The Jungle soundtracked a 2016 Super Bowl commercial for the Taco Bell Quesalupa featuring basketball player James Harden, soccer star Neymar, actor George Takei and "Texas Law Hawk" Bryan Wilson. In the spot, we learn that the cheesy treat will be bigger than Tinder, drones, and possibly even football. Welcome To The Jungle was used four times on The Simpsons: "Bart Has Two Mommies" (2006) "Mobile Homer" (2005) "Eight Misbehavin'" (1999) "Marge on the Lam" (1993) Axl Rose wasn't the first famous frontman from Indiana to write a lyric about the seedy section of Los Angeles: In 1981, Van Halen released "Mean Street" on their Fair Warning album; David Roth is from New Castle, Indiana, but the group formed in LA. "Welcome to the Jungle" features on the soundtrack of the 2022 movie Thor: Love and Thunder. Guns N' Roses is one of the film's director Taika Waititi's favorite bands, and he used several of their other songs for the film, including "Sweet Child O' Mine," "November Rain" and "Paradise City." Waititi said he wanted the music to reflect the same aesthetic of the film with its "bombastic, loud, colorful palette."

Hotel California Album: Hotel California (1976) this version is from their following tour supporting the album. by Eagles Hotel California was written by Don Felder, Glenn Frey and Don Henley. California is used as the setting, but it could relate to anywhere in America. Don Henley in the London Daily Mail November 9, 2007 said: "Some of the wilder interpretations of that song have been amazing. It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew. But it was also about the uneasy balance between art and commerce." On November 25, 2007 Henley appeared on the TV news show 60 Minutes, where he was told, "everyone wants to know what this song means." Henley replied: "I know, it's so boring. It's a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America which was something we knew about." He offered yet another interpretation in the 2013 History of the Eagles documentary: "It's a song about a journey from innocence to experience." California is seen from the perspective of an outsider here. Bernie Leadon was the only band member at the time who was from the state (Timothy B. Schmit, who joined in 1977, was also from California). Joe Walsh came from New Jersey; Randy Meisner from Nebraska; Don Henley was from Texas; Glenn Frey was from Detroit, and Don Felder was from Florida. In an interview with Don Felder, he explained: "As you're driving in Los Angeles at night, you can see the glow of the energy and the lights of Hollywood and Los Angeles for 100 miles out in the desert. And on the horizon, as you're driving in, all of these images start coming into your mind of the propaganda and advertisement you've experienced about California. In other words, the movie stars, the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, the beaches, bikinis, palm trees, all those images that you see and that people think of when they think of California start running through your mind. You're anticipating that. That's all you know of California." Don Henley put it this way: "We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest. Hotel California was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles." "Hotel California" won the 1977 Grammy Award for Record of the Year, but the Eagles didn't show up to accept it. That's because Don Henley didn't believe in contests, and the band had work to do: Timothy B. Schmit had just joined and was learning the repertoire. Schmit says they watched the ceremony on TV while they were rehearsing. Don Felder came up with the musical idea for this song. According to his book Heaven and Hell: My Life in The Eagles, he came up with the idea while playing on the beach. He had the chord progressions and basic guitar tracks, which he played for Don Henley and Glenn Frey, who helped finish the song, with Henley adding the lyrics. Felder says they recorded the song about a year after he did the original demo, and in the session, he started to improvise the guitar part at the end. Henley stopped him and demanded that he do it exactly like the demo, so he had to call his wife and have her play the cassette demo over the phone so Felder could remember what he played. The lyric, "Warm smell of colitas," is often interpreted as sexual slang or a reference to marijuana. When we asked Don Felder about the term, he said: "The colitas is a plant that grows in the desert that blooms at night, and it has this kind of pungent, almost funky smell. Don Henley came up with a lot of the lyrics for that song, and he came up with colitas." The Eagles aimed for a full sensory experience in their songwriting. Felder adds, "When we try to write lyrics, we try to write lyrics that touch multiple senses, things you can see, smell, taste, hear. 'I heard the mission bell,' you know, or 'the warm smell of colitas,' talking about being able to relate something through your sense of smell. Just those sort of things. So that's kind of where 'colitas' came from." "Hotel California" was recorded at three different sessions before the Eagles got the version they wanted. The biggest problem was finding the right key for Henley's vocal. Glenn Frey compared this song to an episode of The Twilight Zone, where it jumps from one scene to the next and doesn't necessarily make sense. He said the success of the song comes from the audience creating stories in their minds based on the images. The line, "They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast" is a reference to Steely Dan. The bands shared the same manager (Irving Azoff) and had a friendly rivalry. The year before, Steely Dan included the line "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening" on their song "Everything You Did." Don Felder and Joe Walsh played together on the guitar solos, creating the textured sound. The lyrics for the song came with the album. Some listeners thought the line "She's got the Mercedes Bends" was a misspelling of "Mercedes Benz," not realizing the line was a play on words. Glenn Frey offered this take: "That record explores the underbelly of success, the darker side of Paradise. Which was sort of what we were experiencing in Los Angeles at that time. So that just sort of became a metaphor for the whole world and for everything you know. And we just decided to make it Hotel California. So with a microcosm of everything else going on around us." When the Eagles got back together in 1994, they recorded a live, acoustic version of this song for an MTV special that was included on their album Hell Freezes Over. Don Felder came up with a new guitar intro for this version the day they recorded it, and while it was not released as a single, it got a lot of airplay, helped the album top the charts the first week it was released, and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, a category introduced in 1980 when the Eagles won with "Heartache Tonight." Felder had some beef with how the credits were listed on this new version - the original single had the composers as "Don Felder, Don Henley and Glenn Frey," implying that Felder wrote most of the song and Frey the least. The new version was credited to "Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Don Felder." Felder claims that Henley and Frey added nothing original to the new version, and that this was simply a power play. Felder was fired from the band in 2001 after disputing payments and royalties. All seven past and present members of the Eagles performed "Hotel California" in 1998 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The hotel on the album cover is the Beverly Hills Hotel, known as the Pink Palace. It is often frequented by Hollywood stars. The photo was taken by photographers David Alexander and John Kosh, who sat in a cherry-picker about 60 feet above Sunset Boulevard to get the shot of the hotel at sunset from above the trees. The rush-hour traffic made it a harrowing experience. Although it is well known that Hotel California is actually a metaphor, there are several strange internet theories and urban legends about the "real" Hotel California. Some include suggestions that it was an old church taken over by devil worshippers, a psychiatric hospital, an inn run by cannibals or Alister Crowley's mansion in Scotland. It's even been suggested that the "Hotel California" is the Playboy Mansion. The music may have been inspired by the 1969 Jethro Tull song "We Used to Know," from their album Stand up. The chord progressions are nearly identical, and the bands toured together before the Eagles recorded "Hotel California." In a BBC radio interview, Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson said laughingly that he was still waiting for the royalties. In an interview with Ian Anderson, he makes it clear that he doesn't consider "Hotel California" to be borrowing anything from his song. "It's difficult to find a chord sequence that hasn't been used, and hasn't been the focus of lots of pieces of music," he said. "Its harmonic progression is almost a mathematical certainty. you're gonna crop up with the same thing sooner or later if you sit strumming a few chords on a guitar. There's certainly no bitterness or any sense of plagiarism attached to my view on it, although I do sometimes allude, in a joking way, to accepting it as a kind of tribute." After Don Henley came up with the title, a theme developed for the album. Don Felder said how some of the other songs fit in: "Once you arrive in LA and you have your first couple of hits, you become the 'New Kid In Town,' and then with greater success, you live 'Life In The Fast Lane,' and you start wondering if all that time you've spent in the bars was just 'Wasted Time.' So all of these other song ideas kind of came out of that concept once the foundation was laid for 'Hotel California.' It was a really insightful title." Don Felder explained: "I had just leased this house out on the beach at Malibu, I guess it was around '74 or '75. I remember sitting in the living room, with all the doors wide open on a spectacular July day. I had this acoustic 12-string and I started tinkling around with it, and those Hotel California chords just kind of oozed out. Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great just plops in your lap." There are two choruses in the song and each mention the "Hotel California." Around the time the song was written, California was experiencing the highest divorce rate in the nation. Each chorus has lines that remember his past marriage ("Such a lovely place") and his past lover ("Such a lovely face"). The first chorus indicates that there can always be more divorces ("Plenty of room at the Hotel California, any time of year, you can find it here"). The second chorus points out that as a part of divorce you will always "bring your alibis." The Hotel California album is #37 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Albums of all time. According to the magazine, Don Henley said that the band was in pursuit of a note perfect song. The Eagles spent eight months in the studio polishing take after take after take. Henley also said, "We just locked ourselves in. We had a refrigerator, a ping pong table, roller skates and a couple cots. We would go in and stay for two or three days at a time." According to a reader-submitted poll for Guitar World magazine, the guitar solo for this song is ranked #8 out of 100. Don Felder told Gibson about his contribution to this track. "I thought it was really unique and different to anything ever written. The Eagles had been heading in a conventional country-rock direction. I was added to the band for my electric guitar, slide-electric ability and to help turn them into more of a rock and roll band. I was writing stronger guitar tracks that used electric guitar like 'Victim of Love' and 'Hotel California.' When I came up with the 'Hotel California' progression, I knew it was unique but didn't know if it was appropriate for the Eagles. It was kind of reggae, almost an abstract guitar part for what was on the radio back then. When I was writing for the Hotel California album, I was working on a TEAC 4-track in a beach house in Malibu and I was putting down ideas on tape. Then I made cassette copies and gave them to [Don] Henley, [Glenn] Frey, Walsh and [Randy] Meisner. Henley called me to say he really like the Mexican bolero, Mexican reggae song. I knew exactly which track he meant. Don came up with a great lyric concept for the song." This followed "New Kid in Town" as the second single released from the album. There was no doubt about the song's merits as an album track, but issuing it as a single defied convention. Don Felder told us: "When we finally finished that whole album, the record company had been pounding on the door trying to get in and get this record, because they wanted to release it. We were about four months overdue on delivering our record per our contract. So we finally let the record company in. The execs come in and we had this playback party for them at the record plant here in Los Angeles. And after the song 'Hotel California' played, Henley turned around and said, 'That's going to be our single.' In the '70s, the AM format, which was what we were really aiming for, had a specific formula; your song had to be between three minutes and three minutes and thirty seconds long, and it had to be a dance track, a rock track, or a trippy ballad. The introduction could only be 30 seconds long before the singer started, so the disc jockey didn't have to speak so long. 'Hotel California' is six and a half minutes long. The introduction to it is a minute long. You can't really dance to it. It stops in the middle when the drums stop: 'mirrors on the ceiling,' that section, and it's got a two minute guitar solo on the end. It's the complete wrong format. So I said, 'Don, I think you're wrong. I think that's a mistake. I don't think we should put that out as the single. Maybe an FM cut, but not a single.' And he said, 'Nope, that's going to be our single.' And I've never been so delighted to have been so wrong in my life. You just don't know." In Chicago at the time of this song's popularity many people started calling the Cook County jail "Hotel California" because it is on California street. The name stuck. "Hotel California" was featured in the first episode of the TV series American Horror Story: Hotel, which is about a haunted and horrifying hotel run by Lady Gaga. The show in many ways is a visual representation of the song, and this episode ("Checking In") ends with a man moving into the hotel under duress. The song plays as he starts the process, and when he gets to his room, the episode ends, punctuated by the line, "You can check out any time you'd like, but you can never leave." This was not the first time the song has been used in a TV series, but rights are granted judiciously. Other TV uses include: The X-Files - "Beyond the Sea" (1994) Absolutely Fabulous - "Poor" (1994) The Sopranos - "Mr. Ruggerio's Neighborhood" (2001) Entourage - "Adios, Amigos" (2007) The League - "The Bachelor Draft" (2013) Testifying on Russian influence over American affairs before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 27, 2017, businessman William Browder invoked this song, saying, "There's no such thing as a former intelligence officer in Russia. It's like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but never leave." On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim I had to stop for the night There she stood in the doorway I heard the mission bell And I was thinking to myself 'This could be heaven or this could be Hell Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way There were voices down the corridor I thought I heard them say Welcome to the Hotel California Such a lovely place (such a lovely place) Such a lovely face Plenty of room at the Hotel California Any time of year (any time of year) you can find it here Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat Some dance to remember, some dance to forget So I called up the Captain 'Please bring me my wine He said, "we haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty-nine And still those voices are calling from far away Wake you up in the middle of the night Just to hear them say" Welcome to the Hotel California Such a lovely place (such a lovely place) Such a lovely face They livin' it up at the Hotel California What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise), bring your alibis Mirrors on the ceiling The pink champagne on ice And she said, 'we are all just prisoners here, of our own device And in the master's chambers They gathered for the feast They stab it with their steely knives But they just can't kill the beast Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back to the place I was before 'Relax' said the night man 'We are programmed to receive You can check out any time you like But you can never leave!

Fractured Mirror Studio album by Ace Frehley (1978) Track 9 final song side Two Snow Blind Studio album by Ace Frehley (1978) Track 3 Side One New York Grove Studio album by Ace Frehley (1978) Track 6 first song side Two by Ace Frehley Ace Frehley is the first solo album by American guitarist and former Kiss member Ace Frehley, released on September 18, 1978, by Casablanca Records. It was one of four albums released by each separate Kiss member as a solo act, but yet still under the Kiss label, coming out alongside Peter Criss, Paul Stanley, and Gene Simmons. Ace Frehley contains the cover hit single "New York Groove", which was originally written by Russ Ballard and recorded by Hello in 1975. The song would prove to be a major hit for Frehley and boosted sales for its parent album. The album would also prove to be the most successful of the four Kiss solo albums. In a retrospective review Greg Prato of AllMusic wrote that "of the four Kiss solo albums, the best of the bunch is Ace Frehley's", who "did not stray far from the expected heavy Kiss sound". Jason Josephes of Pitchfork concurred that it was the standout of the Kiss solo efforts, describing it as "a melange of riff rock, power pop, and just a little bit of soul". Canadian journalist Martin Popoff defined Ace Frehley as "the least pretentious, heaviest and best-selling platter of the Kiss' solo album quartet", describing the music as "solid, well-rounded simplified '70s metal". "New York Groove", which was first recorded in 1975 by the glam rock band Hello, rose to No. 13 on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. This was the highest chart placement for any of the singles released from the 1978 solo albums. The album reached No. 26 on the US Billboard 200 album chart. It was certified platinum on October 2, 1978, and shipped over 1,000,000 copies. It is the highest selling of the four Kiss solo albums in the Sound Scan era (1991 onwards). Ace Frehley – lead vocals, backing vocals, lead, rhythm and acoustic guitar, guitar synthesizer, bass Additional personnel Anton Fig – drums, percussion Carl Tallarico – drums on "Fractured Mirror" David Lasley and Susan Collins – backing vocals on "New York Groove" Bill "Bear" Scheniman – bell on "Fractured Mirror" Bobby McAdams – power mouth (talkbox) on "New York Groove" Production Eddie Kramer and Ace Frehley – producers Eddie Kramer and Rob Freeman – engineers Eric Block and Don Hunerburg – assistant engineers George Marino – mastered at Sterling Sound, New York Ace Frehley is a full-blooded New Yorker, but "New York Groove" was written by an Englishman: Russ Ballard, a songwriter who until 1974 was the guitarist in Argent. He wrote the bones of the song on a plane while flying to New York City to work on a Roger Daltrey solo album - Ballard hadn't been to the city in a while and was getting "back in the New York Groove." Ballard had written a song called "You Move Me" for the English band Hello, and when he returned to the UK, their manager asked for another song. Ballard gave them "New York Groove," which they released in 1975. Their version was a Top 10 hit in England and Germany, but made no impact in America. Ace Frehley, guitarist for Kiss, turned it into a hit Stateside with his 1978 version, which became his signature song. "A lot of people think I wrote 'New York Groove, but that was a cover." With a big, bossy rhythm, New York Grove has elements of glam rock, a style that suited Frehley well. Russ Ballard talked about how the song come together in an interview with Classic Rock magazine: "I wanted to do a Bo Diddley beat because I thought that sort of sound hadn't been heard for a long time, so I got some maracas and a harmonica, and I started off with this 'cha-ch-ch-cha-chcha-cha' rhythm. I got the members of Hello to stand on some trestle tables with their platform boots on and they all stomped along. I had the chorus - 'I'm back, back in the New York groove' - and I wrote the rest of the words in the studio." Frehley was still with Kiss when he released this song. In 1978, each member of the band released a solo album on the same day as part of a (mostly) friendly and highly marketable competition. Gene Simmons had the best-selling album, but Frehley had the only hit with "New York Groove." In 2015, the New York Mets started playing New York Groove after home victories.

Peace of Mind Album: Boston (1976) Smokin' Album: Boston (1976) Rock and Roll Band Album: Boston (1976) by Boston Boston founder Tom Scholz wrote Peace of Mind while he was working as a senior engineer at the Polaroid corporation. The song is about finding your passion; Scholz seems to sympathize with the many people who are working for companies and don't feel fulfilled. Unlike many folks toiling away in dead-end jobs, Scholz liked what he did at Polaroid and was paid well for it, well enough that he could afford to build a studio in his basement with a 12-track recorder. He played in bands while he was a student at MIT and after entering the corporate world, but the studio let him create new songs using his engineering background to push the boundaries. After a few years, one of his demo tapes earned him a deal with Epic Records. He formed Boston using local talent (including singer Brad Delp, who sang on the demos), took a leave of absence from Polaroid, and completed the self-titled album, which was released on August 25, 1976. Scholz went back to his job, but that didn't last long: the album took off like a shot, so the band toured to support it. "Peace Of Mind" shows how dreams can come true with the right amount of talent, passion and hard work. Of course, there were probably many times over the next several years - especially when he was at odds with his management and record company - when Scholz would have liked to back at Polaroid. Peace of Mind was the third single from the Boston album, following "More Than a Feeling" and "Long Time." They could have released more, but didn't have to: radio stations were playing the songs right from the album, and the album was selling. It eventually sold 17 million copies in America. The Christian metal band Stryper covered Peace of Mind on their 2009 album Murder By Pride. Stryper lead singer Michael Sweet joined Boston in 2008 to fill in for Brad Delp, who died the previous year. Sweet did just one tour with the band, but it left a lasting impression. "It felt like I was dreaming up there every night, pinching myself," he said. Smokin' is about having a good time listening to music, but it can be interpreted as being about marijuana, with lines like "Keep on tokin'." The song also clocks in at 4:20, which is a time associated with smoking pot. Written by group leader Tom Scholz, "Smokin'" is part of Boston's self-titled debut album, which was constructed when Scholz was still working for the Polaroid corporation (he had a degree from MIT). Scholz set up a home studio and worked on demos until he finally landed a deal with Epic Records in 1976. The demos were honed to his standards, with Scholz playing all the instruments except drums. Epic booked studio time in Los Angeles so he could record proper versions with the band, but Scholz wanted nothing to do with it. Instead, he let the band work on Brad Delp's song "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" while he stayed in his home studio near Boston and meticulously re-recorded his demos to make "new" tracks, which ended up on the album. Boston drummer Sib Hashian and vocalist Brad Delp perform on "Smokin'," but guitarist Barry Goudreau and bass player Fran Sheehan do not. Originally, Smokin' was called Shakin', which is how Tom Scholz played it with his band Mother's Milk in 1973. Scholz made a demo of the song with that title, but by the time he recorded it for Boston's debut album, it became "Smokin'." Album cuts like "Smokin'" got lots of airplay, especially on Album Oriented Rock (AOR) stations as it was never a single. Rock and Roll Band tells the story of a Boston rock band paying their dues: busking, sleeping in cars, playing the bar circuit. Eventually, they get a big break when a record company guy sees them perform and makes them a deal. Many assumed it was the story of the band because the lyrics are in the first person and they sing about being from Boston, which they are, but that's not the case. Group leader Tom Scholz wrote the song based on conversations he had with Jim Masdea, a drummer who often collaborated with Scholz and had lots of war stories from playing in various bands. Masdea was always telling Scholz about struggling bands trying to get signed to record contracts. Boston had quite the opposite experience of the group they sing about in Rock and Roll Band. Rather than paying their dues on the road, Boston released a well-produced album that was an instant hit. In fact, they weren't even a band until Tom Scholz landed a record deal based on demos he made in his home studio. They played a few gigs before the album was released but didn't tour until after it came out. Just a few months later, their songs were all over the radio and they were headlining arenas. None of the band members lucked into this though. They were all veterans of the Boston music scene and had proven their mettle. Scholz took care of the studio work, but they had to win over fans on the road, which they did. Jim Masdea, who inspired the lyrics for Rock and Roll Band, played drums on the demos Tom Scholz made in his home studio that led to a deal with Epic Records. Other than singer Brad Delp, Masdea was the only other musician Scholz used on these recordings. When Scholz got signed and it came to assemble an actual band, Delp stayed on but Masdea was replaced with Sib Hashian, a decision seemingly made by Scholz' management. Scholz did make sure Masdea played drums on "Rock And Roll Band" to earn a credit on the album. Rock and Roll Band wasn't released as a single because Album Oriented Rock (AOR) stations played it anyway, along with the other eight tracks on Boston's debut album. These well-crafted, uptempo tracks kept listeners tuned in, so they became staples of many playlists.

Brothers In Arms Album: Brothers In Arms (1985) Calling Elvis Album: On Every Street (1991) by Dire Straits Brothers In Arms was inspired by the Falklands War, which was going on when Dire Straits lead singer Mark Knopfler wrote the song. The Falklands War was a conflict between Argentina and the UK over islands off the coast of Argentina that each country claimed rights to. The islands are British territories, but in 1982 Argentina tried to reclaim one of the islands. Britain reclaimed their territories, but lost 258 soldiers in the conflict. In Brothers In Arms, Mark Knopfler sings about a soldier who is dying on the battlefield, surrounded by his comrades, who remain by his side as he slips away. It's a look at the folly of war and the plight of those who fight them. "We've got just one world but we live in different ones," he told the BBC. "It's just stupid, it really is. We're just foolish to take part in anybody's war." The title is something Knopfler's dad said. In discussing the Falklands War, he described the Brits and Argentines as "Brothers In Arms," meaning they had similar ideologies. That phrase ended up being used as the title for the album. In 2007, a new version of this track featuring Mark Knopfler was released to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War. Proceeds from the sale of the single went to a program that brought British veterans back to the site of the war in an effort to help them deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Brothers In Arms is played in the Brad Pitt/ Robert Redford film Spy Game when Robert Redford's character meets Pitt's character in Germany after the Vietnam War. The song begins as Brad Pitt is flown out of Vietnam, the link being the fact that this is a song about comrades in war. Compared to the music video for "Money For Nothing," which was very modern for the time, very colorful and also very '80s, the video for "Brothers In Arms" is quite the opposite. It features sketchings of an ocean, a pendulum, soldiers, an island and the band playing as well as real footage of landscape and the band. This keeps the colors in black, white and gray with the exception of the end that is a colored sunset. Metallica covered Brothers In Arms when they played Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit on October 27, 2007. This played in the series finale of The Americans, which is about a family of Russian spies posing as regular Americans. The song plays in a section where their covers are unraveling, and it appears they now have common goals with those who were once their enemies. "Calling Elvis" is written by Mark Knopfler. It first appeared on the final studio album by the band, On Every Street (1991). It was released in August 1991 by Vertigo and Warner Bros. as the first single from that album, peaking at number 21 in the United Kingdom, and reaching the top 10 in numerous other countries. It was included on the 2005 compilation The Best of Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler: Private Investigations. A live version of the song also appears on the 1993 live album On the Night. The song is about an Elvis fan who believes Elvis Presley is still alive, making references to many of his songs, including "Heartbreak Hotel", "Love Me Tender", "Love Me (Treat Me Like a Fool)", "Don't Be Cruel" and "Return to Sender", as well as the expression "Elvis has left the building". Mark Knopfler has been quoted as saying the idea came to him one day when he left his phone off the hook and his brother-in-law tried repeatedly to get hold of him. Upon finally doing so, the brother-in-law remarked Mark was harder to get hold of than Elvis.

The Dancing Shiva “Oh you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end, Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at their play, Who at midnight dance among corpses in the burning grounds, You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava, You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things, You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers; You are the lord of death, and therefore I have brought you my heart— This heart that is now your burning ground. Ignorance there and self shall be consumed with fire. That you may dance, Bhairava, among the ashes. That you may dance, Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers, And I dance with you.” ― Aldous Huxley, Island The whole thing is there, you see. The world of space and time, and matter and energy, the world of creation and destruction, the world of psychology…We (the West) don’t have anything remotely approaching such a comprehensive symbol, which is both cosmic and psychological, and spiritual. ―Aldous Huxley, 1961

She Sells Sanctuary Album: Love (1985) Revolution Album: Love (1985) by The Cult On She Sells Sanctuary Ian Astbury, frontman of The Cult states: "What's the song about? Sex. Plain and simple, it's about sex. I've had sex and I'm very proud of that fact." Billy Duffy of The Cult talks about how his quasi-psychedelic guitar intro came about: "I found a violin bow, and I started to play the guitar with the bow like Jimmy Page. I did it to amuse Astbury, who was in the control room, and in order to make it sound weirder, I just hit every pedal I had on the pedal board. Then once I stopped banging the strings and doing all that, I played the middle section of the song, which was kind of a pick thing with all the BOSS pedals on, and that sound just leaped out. The producer went, 'Hold it, hold it, that's great!' And we decided to start the song with that mystical sound. If I hadn't found that violin bow laying around, we wouldn't have gone there." (from Roland's website) "She Sells Sanctuary" was the last song to feature Nigel Preston on drums. Preston was fired from the band shortly after its release and was replaced by Big Country's drummer, Mark Brzezicki. In 1993, a collection of remixes of this song by Youth, Butch Vig and JG Thilwell reached #15 in the UK. She Sells Sanctuary featured in the 1992 film, With Honors and in the 2004 film, Layer Cake. She Sells Sanctuary formed part of a mashup with Flo Rida's "Good Feeling" in a Budweiser commercial broadcast during the 2012 Super Bowl. The one-minute ad celebrates several decades of great times in the US, beginning at the end of Prohibition in 1933. "Revolution" was the third single from the Cult's 1985 album Love, written by Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy. The song has been described as a "power ballad". It has been noted that the chord progression in Revolution is the same as She Sells Sanctuary and Rain, the first two singles from the Love album. She Sells Sanctuary Oh, the heads that turn Make my back burn And those heads that turn Make my back, make my back burn The sparkle in your eyes Keeps me alive And the sparkle in your eyes Keeps me alive, keeps me alive The world And the world turns around The world and the world, yeah The world drags me down Oh, the heads that turn Make my back burn And those heads that turn Make my back, make my back burn, yeah Hey, yeah, hey, yeah Yeah-yeah The fire in your eyes keeps me alive And the fire in your eyes keeps me alive I'm sure in her you'll find sanctuary I'm sure in her you'll find sanctuary And the world, the world turns around And the world and the world, the world drags me down And the world and the world and the world, the world turns around And the world and the world and the world and the world And the world drags me down Ah, hey yeah, hey yeah And the world (hey yeah, hey), and the world turns around (hey yeah, hey) And the world, and the world (hey yeah, hey) Yeah, the world drags me down (hey yeah, hey) And the world (hey yeah, hey) Yeah, the world turns around (hey yeah, hey) And the world, and the world (hey yeah, hey), the world drags me down (hey yeah, hey) Yeah hey, hey yeah Sanctuary Sanctuary Revolution Track 8 Pictures of never ending dreams I can't see what these images mean Locked inside me Can't set the rainbows free Like perishing flowers They sag and twist and die There's a revolution There's a revolution, yeah There's a revolution There's a revolution Sorrow What does revolution mean to you? To save today's like wishing in the wind All my beautiful friends have all gone away Like the waves They flow and ebb and die There's a revolution There's a revolution There's a, there's a revolution There's a revolution There's a revolution There's a revolution There's a revolution There's a revolution, yeah Joy or sorrow What does revolution mean to you? To save today's like wishing in the wind All my beautiful friends have all gone away Like the waves They flow and ebb and die There's a revolution There's a revolution There's a revolution There's a revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution, yeah

U.S. Blues Album: "From The Mars Hotel" (1974) by Grateful Dead "U.S. Blues" grew out of the 1972 Grateful Dead song "One More Saturday Night." Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the words and Jerry Garcia wrote the music. The song changed a lot through Hunter's many rewrites. At some points it was a forceful anti-military (some may say anti-American) song, but the final result isn't so serious many think. It's a fun song that the Dead frequently played live. I believe it is however, quite literal. "I'm Uncle Sam, that's who I am. Been hiding out in a rock and roll band..." Dead co-founder Bob Weir told Dupree's Diamond News in their 18th issue (May 1991) that the song wasn't meant to be favorable of Uncle Sam and American culture. "We have our pantheon, and one of the figures in the pantheon is Uncle Sam. He's sort of like the godfather figure of American culture. So we actually have a fair bit of respect for him. And he comes around in different guises, you know - in our little region, he comes around as a skeleton, but he's still wearing the same hat." "Uncle Sam," who appears in the line, "I'm Uncle Sam, how do you do?" refers to a mythological character representing the United States government. Notice it is not a "Mother" or "Father". It is an "Uncle"... The character first arose during the war of 1812. Uncle Sam appears in many contexts of varying seriousness, but one of the most consistent is as a military recruiter. During World War II it was common to see posters with Uncle Sam's visage and the words "I Want You for U.S. Army." The lyric "blue suede shoes" in the first line refers to the song of the same name. The song was released as a single with "Loose Lucy" as the B-side. P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan are mentioned in the lyric. Barnum (full name Phineas Taylor Barnum) was an 1800s entertainer also a con artist. He's associated with the famed line "there's a sucker born every minute" (though there is no hard evidence he actually said it). Charlie Chan is a fictional character - a Chinese-American police detective working in Honolulu - popular in American novels and films from the 1920s to 1940s. Created by Earl Derr Biggers, Chan was still around as late as 1981 but only showed up sporadically after 1955. The name Grateful Dead refers to a motif in English (and other cultures') folk tales and ballads in which a poor traveler spends his last coin to pay for the proper burial of a pauper, and is later rewarded for his good deed by some creature or person that reveals itself to be the spirit of the "grateful dead." >> When The Dead were touring with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers in 1986, Garcia was recovering from drug addiction and fell into a diabetic coma for five days. At the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Dead played a set in between The Who and Jimi Hendrix. They also played at Woodstock on the second day between Canned Heat and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Their Woodstock performance straddled the night of Saturday, August 16, and the early morning of Sunday, August 17. One would think the Woodstock scene was tailor made for the Dead, but it didn't go well, at least by Dead frontman Jerry Garcia's own estimation: "We played such a bad set at Woodstock. The weekend was great, but our set was terrible. We were all pretty smashed, and it was at night. Like we knew there were a half million people out there, but we couldn't see one of them. There were about a hundred people on stage with us, and everyone was scared that it was gonna collapse. On top of that, it was raining or wet, so that every time we touched our guitars, we'd get these electrical shocks. Blue sparks were flying out of our guitars." Garcia seemed to feel things weren't going well during the show. Before starting "Dark Star," the third song of their set, he addressed the audience to let them know the band's timing was off. Still, the Dead drove on through their set, only stopping a little short because their amps blew during a "Love Light" jam. The Godchauxs were husband and wife. Keith had been Dave Mason's piano player. They were asked to leave in 1979. Hart was kicked out his High School band because his teacher didn't think he could keep a beat. Garcia was in the army for nine months in 1959 before meeting longtime collaborator Robert Hunter in Palo Alto, Palo Alto... Palo Alto. "I'm Uncle Sam, that's who I am. Been hiding out in a rock and roll band..." Red and white, blue suede shoes I'm Uncle Sam, how do you do? Give me five, I'm still alive Ain't no luck, I learned to duck Check my pulse, it don't change Stay seventy-two come shine or rain Wave the flag, pop the bag Rock the boat, skin the goat Wave that flag, wave it wide and high Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my I'm Uncle Sam, that's who I am Been hiding out in a rock and roll band Shake the hand that shook the hand of P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan Shine your shoes, light your fuse Can you use them old U.S. Blues? I'll drink your health, share your wealth Run your life, steal your wife Wave that flag, wave it wide and high Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my Back to back chicken shack Son of a gun, better change your act We're all confused, what's to lose? You can call this song the United States Blues Wave that flag, wave it wide and high Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my My my my oh my my my my Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my