I decided to hit random on my music library and see what album came up.  Y&T – Down for the Count, I first had this on cassette and I would listen in my 1976 Vega as I was driving around with friends.  It came out my senior year of high school and listening brings back memories — mostly good.

I’ve always liked Meniketti’s voice and appreciated his guitar work and the first track “Born to Rock” does not disappoint.  Some obligatory mid-eigthies keyboards were added to the tracks (I could do without them) including the next two tracks “All American Boy” and “Anytime at All” — which both had very catchy choruses.

“Anything for Money” was a much more traditional Y&T rocker while still maintaining the catchy chorus.

“Face Like and Angel” has a slower start, but kicks in at the chorus with a decent riff that would have been much better with a harder rock production and mix.  The bridge leading up the solo and the solo makes the song worthwhile.

Kevin Beamish’s production was evident on this album as it was much more poppy than previous Y&T albums and it included their biggest hit “Summertime Girls”.  I have to admit that this is one of my favorite 80s songs — listening to it now, it seems more like a “tool tune” as Adam Corolla calls them.  A song you have cranked up until someone pulls up alongside the car when you promptly turn it down.

“Looks Like Trouble” has the classic Y&T riff structure — bluesy with with excellent vocals — a little bit of an AC/DC vibe on this song with some Van Halen thrown in there (with the Panama break-down).

“Your Mama Don’t Dance” — not sure what they were thinking here.  A very crappy remake of a very bad song.  They even threw in some synth drums in this one (for no apparent reason).  But hey, the guitar solo rocks, so maybe that’s the reason for including it.

“Don’t Tell Me What To Wear” was a bad decision with bad lyrics.  Sounds like they were having difficulty filling out the album and just needed something to throw around another good solo.

Ending the album is “Hands of Time” which is a decent slogger that never seems to really kick in.  Better than the previous two songs, but easily could have been left off.  Feel free to stop listening after “Looks Like Trouble”.

A strong album at the time, the mix is a lot muddier an tinny than their other albums.  With a better mix and overall production I would have liked this album much more.  And “Summertime Girls” is one of the best 80s anthem rockers.

This reminds me of a recent Jeff Beck album.  Very well-done, diverse instrumental guitar works.  Good “listen while you work” music.

Looking back on this album, I see it as the first collaboration between Neal Schon and Deen Castronovo. Deen would later join Neail Schon and Jonathan Cain in Journey (as well as many Schon side projects). This group serves as truly an Adult-Oriented Rock (AOR) super-group. Joining Schon, Cain and Castronovo are Jon Waite and Ricky Phillips. A bridge between The Babys (Waite, Cain and Phillips) and Journey (Schon, Cain, and later Castronovo).

There were a couple radio-friendly singles (similar to Journey) in “When I See You Smile” and “Price of Love”. The latter of which could have been plucked from any Journey album in the 80s or 90s. While these songs are the charting singles, my highlights are the more “rocking” songs like “Rocking Horse”, “Forget Me Not” and “Best of What I Got”.

Like many of the Journey offerings, some of the songs are a little too poppy for my tastes; however, you have to respect the writing, hooks and musicianship. Phillips and Castronovo are a very solid and capable rhythm section – they show it on “Ready When You Are”. Cain and Schon are always solid and Waite’s vocals are strong as expected.

Overall, a very solid AOR offering and this should go down as one of the best AOR albums of the 80s (released at the end of the decade). Schon shines as usual with his excellent guitar-driven AOR, excellent leads throughout (although somewhat misplaced on some of the tracks). Castronovo would continue to show up in my collection as he later played with Ozzy, Steve Vai and G/Z/R – before settling for good in Journey.

Looking back, I was just getting out of the Army when this came out. I remember buying the CD in California and it was in heavy rotation in my Nissan pickup as I drove back from California after being discharged. So it definitely brings back some memories.

Playing it now, it’s impressive that it holds up quite well. It’s not embarrassing to have in the collection and I’m not afraid or ashamed to play it loud. Much of what I listed to back in the late 80s and early 90s wouldn’t hold up nearly as well.

4 out of 5 stars – it serves the genre quite well. The only stinker on the album is the final track “Don’t Walk Away” which was one of only two tracks not written by members of the band – the other being the blockbuster “When I See You Smile”.

I finally figured out how to get a nice iTunes media library report.  It’s quite large and I obviously have some cleanup to do. Here’s the report for the completists out there.

With everything going on… I should probably get back to updating my blog.  It’s sad to see just a couple posts in the past couple years.

Andrew and I went to see OK Go last night at the TLA in Philly.  The opening acts were Oppenheimer and Longwave.  The show started a little before 9:00 with Oppenheimer taking the stage.  I had never heard of them before, they are a two-piece band from Dublin that plays short pop/synth songs.  The drummer does most of the singing and between-song banter.  They were high-energy and had some very catchy songs.  While I’m not a fan of the robotic sounding vocals, it fit in with the type of music they were playing.  For a first opening act, they did a fabulous job of warming up the audience… I will definitely sample some of their music online and possibly pick up one of their two releases.

After a short break while they reconfigured the stage, Longwave came on.  They were OK, I would say just “alright”.  Then they mentioned that their regular guitarist was not there due to the birth of his first baby and they got a friend to sit in on guitar all night.  It didn’t sound as if they were playing together for the first time… I may want to sample some of their stuff online as well – there was one in particular “Satellite” I believe that sounded really good – maybe with everyone present it would have been a better overall performance.  The strength of the band (like most in this genre) was the rhythm section.

Then OK Go came on and lit up the house.  They bring such a fabulous energy to their performances, they are a tremendous live band.  They have apparently been recording a new album and this show (the first on their tour) was going to be the big kick-off of that new album.  However, they haven’t finished the album yet.  They talked about not having enough lyrics for a complete album.

They started off with something slow and new – obviously I don’t know they names of their new stuff, but it was pretty good.  They played it again later with more guitar and accompaniment and it sounded phenomenal then.  Then they played “Get Over It” which really got the place rocking.  Damian Kulash (the lead singer) forgot some of the lyrics on this (one of their most famous songs) and later explained it as having never understood all of the old lyrics, he just had them memorized.  You could never tell that this was the first show in a long time from them, they were tight and running well.

They played about 6 new songs and I must say that I am VERY much looking forward to their new release, they all sounded great.  I’m not sure about the folk song they did at one point, but they didn’t say for sure that one is on the new release.

After a short break Damian came out and said that they were going to do something that no one has seen except for maybe at church.  We weren’t sure what to expect, but they put out a table and came out with a set of hand bells and played one of their slow songs on the bells.  They had the white gloves and all… it was oddly cool.

In my opinion, you can never go wrong seeing OK Go live.  They are a highly entertaining and spirited rock band with plenty of catchy pop rock songs to fill a show.  Again, as with most of the bands that I love, the rhythm section drives the band.  Not to say that the remainder of the band aren’t great, it is just a formula for this type of rock that works.  Have a kick-ass rhythm section and the foundation is there.  They sounded better than when I saw them two years ago at the same venue (they opened for Cheap Trick) – but that can be because they were the headliner this time around.

Overall, a very memorable and enjoyable evening.

Now that I’ve completed the ripping process, I’ve been able to go through and eliminate some of the duplicates and do some general cleanup.  Here are the updated statistics on my music collection:

 

Artists	2505
Albums	3463
Genres	44
Years	55
Playlists	18
Tracks	38747
Length (h:mm:ss)	2908:25:03
File size	233.84 GB

After having listened to this CD nearly 100 times in the past two months, I figured it was time to give it an official review.  I’ve always been a bit of a Candlebox fan, not exceedingly so, but I like their music.  I must say that this CD has been in solid rotation for over two months now with no signs of slowing.  I’ve even gone as far as saying that it may be the best thing put out in 2008.

It is by far my favorite Candlebox CD.  Kevin Martin’s voice has never been better, at times slipping into Perry-esque tones (“Lover Come Back to Me”) while still being able to shout as in the first track “Stand”.  I don’t understand why Candlebox are lumped in with the “grunge” genre – other than the era in which they came onto the scene.  They are a decent, if maybe a little dark, rock band.

There are numerous highlights on this CD, the song I play the most is “Consider Us” – so much so that my daughter and son know all of the lyrics to the song.  Maybe a little dark, but hauntingly good.  It’s interesting to hear your kids sing:  “What do we see before we die, is it beautiful? …” ending with “How would you feel if we were lying?”.  Very well sung, produced and performed.

The first track “Stand” is the rocker on the CD.  I love it and I think Martin shows his voice off quite a bit on this one.  The song is even a bit Zepplin-esque at spots, not an unusual comparison considering the strength of his voice.  They get back into Zepplin mode by the fifth track with “Underneath It All”.

The only track that I don’t get is the second track “Bitches Brewin’”.  Just seems out of place on this CD.  Everything else is 4 to 5 stars.

Everywhere I look online, they give this CD horrible reviews… I most definitely disagree and think that Candelbox – Into The Sun is a must-have for any rock music lover.  If not the best of 2008, definitely in the top 5 releases of the year.