Friday Night Music Night: Back on the Air

After taking some needed creative time, Friday Night Music is back. Thanks in part to sister Jill for her awesome Christmas present. And another thanks to boss Bob Burns and his CD at work. I'll explain how those two brought us here.
As I was driving to work Friday, I like to jam out. So I looked in my CD lunch bucket case and pulled out a CD Jill made for me for Christmas. Remember those days of "Mixed" tapes? Yes, this was one of those. I remember the other one she gave me and with a slight hesitation I put it in, fearing the worst. (That's another story for a different day.) Heard some great tunes including a Kinks cut. So I wrote to Looney and told him about it and he wrote me back about going to a Kinks concert and the opening act blew him away-Cheap Trick. Well, Bob had a Best of Cheap Trick on his desk several weeks ago and I asked him if I could take it home and listen to it. So Tim had finished burning it that day and when we got home, there was the Cheap Trick CD. So there is the back story now here is how the night started.
Goth girl was looking great and I wanted her to listen to a Pat Benetar song that I thought Adam Lambert should have performed on Idol when doing songs from the 80's. "Hit me with your best shot." So we jammed to that, she knew the words and danced around the basement and air guitared the solos....Looney still has it. Next cut, and Goth girl was so excited...."Carry On My Way Word Son -Kansas....so turn the dial up some more! It was great. The three of us carrying on and such. Next cut (this is off the CD Jill had made it remember?) "Hair of the Dog" by Nazareth. Oh, the great times of high school that song is. Goth girl doesn't know it, asks what's this? and leaves. That means she will check it out later without the parental units watching. Meanwhile, we dig it. Next cut is the Kinks-"Captain America" which cut then leads us to Cheap Trick. Following us now? So we listen to a cut that has Chrissie Hynde "walk Away" which I had never heard before. I had wanted to hear some Pretenders stuff so this was a nice treat. Loon says the Pretenders have a country album out so we really need to check that out. After hearing "She's Tight" "Southern Girls" "If you want my Love" and "Dream Police" we moved on to a band that maybe listened to RUSH......The Police. Great times we listened by all. Played "Answering Machine" by the Replacements, who must have influenced Uncle Tupelo because I hear so many nuances in Jeff Tweedy's music. I hope he is ok with this. I think Paul Westerberg is a genius. Drugs and alcohol is the downfall of a lesser man no doubt. Paul is still doing so stuff out there so look him up readers. I will do more research and see what I find out and post at a later time.
Played "seven Chinese Brothers" -REM. We had a nice discussion about REM. I told Tim I liked them when they were a college band, before they hit it big. He said he thought they were a bit pretenses and too artsy fartsy....my words not his.
I think (a couple of beers and a nice glass of scotch tend to fog up the later part of the night) we ended on the Police's Message in a Bottle-but I can't remember. Oh wait we spun a U2 song (Tim picked-can't remember the name....oh the edge sorry. Wait, Tim is looking it up...."The Fly" off Achtung Baby. And I think I ended it with Sinead O'Connor-"I don't want what I haven't got."
A great night of some of the finer music of the late 70s and mid-80s and into very early 90s. Tune in for updates on our picks.