Hmm, it might be funny to translate the Spanish back into English.

See, if somebody as much into pop music as you only knows Whiter Shade, they really are under-appreciated. Trower I think always tried to pull them into a more hard-rock direction. Broken Barricades is really that way, almost sounds like Black Sabbath at times. I think he left after that album.

Whatever group put out an album last year probably doesn't have much of the original group. They had a lot of personnel changes after their first few albums--one of those bands where the personnel list in their Wikipedia entry goes on and on.

I should trade all my Led Zeppelin CDs in for something more interesting like this, that I have not heard over and over ad nauseum (like your days in the record shop)!

How did some classic rock groups get so much radio play on everything they recorded, while for others it was just a few songs?

I listened to Physical Graffiti recently and recognized most of the songs even though I never owned or even intentionally listened to it.

That's part of the fun--we get to hear about all this good music that we might not have come across otherwise. The other part is the pleasure of talking about the ones we do know (like or dislike).

By the way: we are getting on toward the last quarter of the year. Them as claimed this or that album at the beginning might want to think about writing those pieces pretty soon. I'm kind of tired of doing most of them although I can certainly come up with 15 more if I have to, it being imperative that there actually be 52. If we do something like this next year I'm going to call it "Possibly As Many As 52" things.

Robert, Physical Graffiti was one of their less popular albums, wasn't it? I've never heard it that I know of though I guess there's a chance I would recognize some of it too.

With my age group, at least where I grew up in South Florida, every single Led Zeppelin album was wildly popular.

Speaking of knowing songs by not realizing who might have sung them....last night I watched the Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons movie Clint Eastwood made a few years back, called Jersey Boys. I knew all of the songs, and found the movie to be a lot of fun. I need to ask my mother if she and my father played those records growing up. I'm guessing they did.

Mac, had you planned to do a Sigur Ros album? If not, I'll do one for Oct/Nov.

No, I don't have any definite plans at all. I'm pretty much just winging it week to week. So it's not necessary for y'all to commit to any particular week. If I have something from someone else by Monday or so, I use it, otherwise I do one.

"No, I don't..." above was a reply to Rob--didn't see Louise's comment.

I don't know that I would--don't underestimate my lack of exposure (does that make sense?) to the big hits after about 1975 or so. But yeah, feel free. I probably won't do the Zeppelin thing.

I once read a positive review of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and truly couldn't tell whether it was serious or not.

Heh. I don't remember thinking about it but I guess I assumed they were male.

Frankie Valli's real name is Francesco Stephen Castelluccio.

Lou Christie's real name is Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco.

An Italian thing?

Fun factoid from the movie. Joe Pesci (actor, Raging Bull, My Cousin Vinny) was friends with Frankie Valli growing up, and introduced him to the guy who would end up writing all of his hit songs and become a member of the band.

Finally got the chance to listen to these tracks. Generally speaking I'm not a fan of 60's music, but this is pretty nice stuff.

I said 60's, not 80's! :-)

Yeah, it was just a little before my time, that's all. As a little kid in the 60's I listened mostly to what my parents listened to, which was "popular music." By the time I started listening to stuff on my own it was the top-40 of the early 70's, good and bad. I had a ton of 45's by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade; the first album I ever bought, at about age 12, was Creedence Gold.

Speaking of 60's music, over the weekend I watched that film Searching for Sugar Man, which you mentioned a couple years ago. I had totally forgotten about it, but a guy from work mentioned that he had seen Rodriguez in concert here a few nights back and in the process he referred to the movie. Really good story, and I liked the music as well.

"Seems to be a pattern that the music we hear when we're young imprints itself in some way."

Yes, I've never really thought of it that way but I think you're right. I still remember songs from my childhood that I probably haven't heard in 40+ years.

Yeah, like the Velvet Underground. :-)

I guess this shows the effects of personal taste and possibly also the "imprinting", as I think you're a little younger than I am. For me, speaking *very* broadly, the music of the '70s was a decline. But that's partly because I was interested in people who appeared and did their best work in the '60s, but didn't sustain it much past then.

"...a lot of the commercial rock of the 1970s was just better."

Not a question that can be settled, obviously, but I disagree. There was less of a division between commercial and artsy in the '60s. The Beatles and many others were very much both. The Velvet Underground were an extreme case, pretty much an anomaly.