Song of the Day 7/10/10

You may think we have been idle, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Stay tuned. In the meantime our best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues all the way to #1…and then we start with the 1000 best albums of alltime. Saturday’s song is #19:

The Dead Boys – Not Anymore

Zillions of songs have been written about the plight of the homeless. Guitarist Jimmy Zero’s scorching, titanic two-guitar anthem tells it like it is. “Afraid of sleeping and I’m freezing to death, I gotta keep me awake.” Cheetah Chrome’s watery chorus-box solo is his finest moment in the band. From Young, Loud and Snotty, 1977. There are also numerous live versions, like the scorching one from CBGB that year in the link above, kicking around: do some exploring.

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Song of the Day 2/16/10

The best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Tuesday’s song is #163:

The Dead Boys – Caught with the Meat in Your Mouth

This furious, filthy, barely two-minute Chuck Berry-inflected punk classic is actually a remake of lead guitarist Cheetah Chrome’s Never Gonna Kill Myself Again, by Chrome’s old (and current) band Rocket from the Tombs, who continue to reunite and tour every couple of years. The best of the Dead Boys versions is probably the one on Night of the Living Dead Boys; the studio track on Young Loud & Snotty features mixing engineer Bob Clearmountain playing bass, uncredited, and doing a creditable job.

Song of the Day 9/1/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Tuesday’s song is #330:

The Dead Boys – All the Way Down

The last song the iconic punk band released – on a 12″ single in 1986 – is one of their best (even if it was totally misproduced), a bitter midtempo cautionary anthem about a “poison lady.” If only the guy who sang it had actually taken the lyrics to heart, he might be alive today. Hard to find – some extensive sleuthing resulted only in this dodgy live clip from Florida, 1988.

Song of the Day 2/28/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Saturday’s song is #515:

Rocket from the Tombs – 30 Seconds Over Tokyo

The legendary, theatrical Cleveland proto-punk band that spawned both the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu released two studio versions of this paint-peeling evocation of the WWII Tokyo firebombing raids, one on a lo-fi compilation of tinny digitized 1974 rehearsal tapes and another on the lacklustre 2004 reunion cd Rocket Redux. Best to look for a bootleg: their version from the second 2003 Maxwell’s show is the best we’ve heard.