Recommended

After Dream Police was released in 1979, Cheap Trick became erratic and consistently inconsistent. Next Position Please was pretty good, but it wasn’t up to the level of the early masterpieces.  And none of the other albums even came close.  Then something crazy happened…  In 2006 — 27 years later! — they released one of the best albums of their career.  It’s called Rockford, and if it had been released in 1980, it would’ve sold millions of copies, and spawned three or four big hit singles.  It’s shockingly good.  The band re-teamed with their original producer, Jack Douglas, but that only goes so far if you ain’t got the tunes.  On this album it all came together, again, many years after most people had stopped paying attention.  Who could’ve predicted such a thing?

The Smithereens, of course, are a great power pop band out of New Jersey, who perform catchy-as-Strep Throat songs, tinged with a bit of melancholy.  Their first two albums are where their legend was made.  They are two of the finest releases of the 1980s. But their third and fourth weren’t quite as good, and their fifth and sixth were kinda dull and workmanlike.  The songs just weren’t there, and near the end of their original run, the band sounded tired. They parted ways, but eventually reformed and began releasing albums of Beatles and Who covers. What the hell, man? Then, in 2011, they dropped an album of original songs, and it’s a good one. Not as good as the first two records, but better than either of the second two…  It sounds like a great lost Smithereens album, from the classic era.  In 2011?  Amazing!

The Church had one radio hit in the United States: “Under the Milky Way,” in 1988.  And, unfortunately, that’s where many people’s knowledge of the band ends.  During the 1980s they released a string of fantastic albums, mostly known to record store-dwellers, and nobody else.  Indeed, there was a time in my life when I considered their second record, The Blurred Crusade, to be one of the greatest albums ever recorded.  It’s a dream-pop masterpiece, and all their albums from that era are nearly as good.  When they had their Big Hit, I hated to share them with the masses.  What did those people know about The Church?  Not nearly as much as I do, that’s what!  The band stayed together, and continued recording original music.  But it wasn’t until 2009, when they released their 23rd(!) album, that I felt the same emotions as I did while listening to The Blurred Crusade, during olden times.  It’s a great, timeless record, which sounds best at 1:00 a.m., or on a rainy Saturday afternoon.  Love it!

This one might be a bit of a cheat, but who’s keeping score?  Unlike the other bands listed here, The Cars were broken up for a long, long time.  So, this album from 2011 is a reunion — without Benjamin Orr, who died of cancer during the off-years.  But it’s better than I was prepared for it to be.  There’s a lot of energy, and the songs are great.  It’s not equal to the debut album, but I’d put it up against any of their others.  And that’s high praise.  I liked the Cars when I was in high school, and bought this record for nostalgic reasons.  I wasn’t expecting much, and got a lot.  The album is a blast, and I still listen to it all the time.  If you were a Cars fan, you need this.  The shit is good.

And finally, the album that really blew my mind…  How is it possible that Madness would release THE BEST album of their career in 2009?  It seems unlikely, I know, but it happened.  The Liberty of Norton Folgate came out of nowhere, and took its place at the front o’ the pack.  It’s not the crazed Nutty Boys ska of the first two albums, it’s more like the middle period, which begat their big hit, “Our House.”  But I happen to like that period…  You can file a lawsuit, if you’d like.  It’s very British, and reminds me of late ’60s Kinks.  The band released an album in 1982, called Madness Presents The Rise & Fall, which never came out in the U.S.  It was, before Norton Folgate, my favorite of all their records.  This album is cut from the same cloth: atmospheric, British, and loaded with great songs.  Better, even, than the 1982 album.  It’s one of the great surprises of the past few years: the best Madness album of them all!

And that’s five from me.  Do you have anything to add to this list?  What classic bands released surprisingly great albums late in their careers?  Abbey Road doesn’t count.  That band didn’t have any dips…  Use the comments link below, if you have anything to add.

See ya next time!

I’m going to blow your mind here.  Ready?  OK, I sometimes read books to experience things I’d otherwise never be exposed to, and to visit places I’ll probably never have an opportunity to see in real life.

I told you.  It’s a revolutionary concept, I know.  I hope you’ll be able to recover.  I hope I haven’t shattered anyone, forever.

In any case, I’m almost finished with a book that falls squarely into that category.  It’s called Film School, and is the memoir of Steve Boman, who went through the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.  It is a school so prestigious and selective, they rejected a young Steven Spielberg three times.

I’ve always wondered what went on inside the famous film schools, and this book helps answer the question.  It’s a great story, told by a man who entered USC at an advanced age (relatively speaking), after having spent many years working as a journalist.  His graying hair made him stick out from the crowd, instantly.  And his wife, three children, and house in the suburbs further differentiated him from the other students.

The book is well-written and funny, and full of details.  It’s not a scandalous tell-all, nor is it a how-to book.  It’s just one guy’s experience inside the most famous film school in the world.  It is exactly what I hoped it would be.

I recommend it highly, for anyone interested in the subject.  I downloaded it to my Kindle for a mere $1.99, which is a steal.  Grab it here.  It might cost more now, but it’s still worth it.

And if you have any non-fiction “I’ll never get to do it” books to recommend to me, I’d love to know about ’em.  Use the comments link below.

See you guys next time!

Green Day is a band I could easily hate.  They hit several of my automatic hate-triggers:

• Massive early popularity, causing the group to be embraced by shitheads with questionable taste.
• Lead singer who is a bit of a jackass.
• Political blowhardiness.

But somehow they’ve successfully navigated all that, and I continue to enjoy them.  In fact, they released three(!) new albums recently, and I can’t stop playing the things.

There’s no discernible politics (if I’m missing something, don’t tell me… I don’t want to know), and all the big theatrical pretensions of the previous two albums have been stripped away.

What’s left are three records full of fun and rocking power pop. Bass, guitar, and drums… three minute songs… giant hooks… It’s right in my wheelhouse.  I recommend all three, without reservation.

Also, if you’ve only dipped in and out of the Green Day catalog through the years, I recommend their best-of CD, called International Superhits.  It illustrates how consistent Green Day has been through the years — even as their popularity ebbed and flowed.  They’ve been pretty damn great, all along.  Regardless of how many people might be paying attention.

Plus, that best-of album sounds freakin’ fantastic while driving.  It’s an almost perfect road record.

So, there you go.  Green Day: a band I could easily hate, yet continue to love.

Buy their CDs/downloads at Amazon:

Uno!
Dos!
Tre!
International Superhits

Yesterday I nearly had a heart attack.  I’m working on a book project, you see, and everything – the first nine chapters and all my notes and outlines – are on a flash drive.  But when I arrived at my super-secret writing hovel, I only had the cap with me; the business end of it was gone.

What the hell, man?!  I tried not to panic, but after I retraced my steps and went through the car with no positive results, I could feel my heart start to pound in my chest.

It’s an expensive flash drive, covered in rubber and supposedly capable of surviving a nuclear attack, or whatever.  That’s great, and all, but the bastard will bounce.  I’ve dropped it before, and watched it get air and go sailing across a hedge.

Yesterday there was snow on the ground, so I was walking along – in the beginning stages of a freak-out – looking for a flash drive-shaped hole in the crust.

But I wasn’t panicking for the reasons you might suspect.  I didn’t care if the drive was ruined, or even gone forever, I just didn’t want it to end up in some stranger’s hands.  And that’s because everything on it was also saved in my Dropbox; all my important files were safe.

In fact, if the writing hovel had internet access… I’d never have to use a flash drive again.  Dropbox goes a long way in making those things as quaint and obsolete as floppy disks.

And it’s free!  I’ve been using it for a long time, and love it.  Once you sign up, and download the program, you have access to a new drive, where you can keep whatever you want.  You start with 2 gigs of space, and can earn more as you go.

It looks like you’re storing information on your computer, but it’s actually in “the cloud.”  Meaning, it’s out there somewhere – encrypted.  So, if your hard drive shits the bed, or a piece of space junk falls on your laptop, it won’t be as painful as it might’ve been two or three years ago.  ‘Cause all the important stuff is saved, off-site.

Also – assuming you have an internet connection – you can access the files from multiple computers.  If you’re, say, writing a book about being an idiot in the 1970s, and find yourself wanting to work on it from two or three different machines, it’s no problem.  Just open the file in Dropbox, do your thing, and save.  Then it’s there, the next time you want to work on it – wherever you happen to be.

While I was writing my previous book, I’d have multiple versions of the same file, on various computers.  I’d start working on what I believed to be the latest version, and realize it was an earlier one.  Then there would be profanity.  With Dropbox there’s just one file, accessible via all your computers.

You can also easily share files.  You just log into your control panel, find the specific item, and generate a URL for it.  Then you can email it to a friend or colleague, and they’ll be able to access it from their end.  No more emails with giant attachments…

Plus, there’s a great app.  I was sitting in Pep Boys a few days ago, proofing my book manuscript on my phone, while the car received an oil change.  It’s fantastic.

And it’s all free.  There’s a paid version, which gives you tons of additional space, but I don’t yet have a need for it.  I have a lot of stuff in my Dropbox, and am using just 2.7% of the available space.  Unless you want to store massive amounts of photos, or video, the free version is more than adequate.

Here’s your link.  Dropbox is Surf Report approved!  It makes life simpler, and might just save your ass. If I’d lost my flash drive while I was working on the previous book, I would’ve been screwed, and might’ve flatlined, right there on the sidewalk.  But yesterday, as stressful as it was, I at least knew my files were retrievable.

For the record… I did find the thing, eventually.  It was inside a pocket, which I never use, on my laptop bag.  I’m not sure how it ended up there, and have made the decision to not waste any energy trying to figure it out.  Life’s too short.

Pass the beer nuts.

YouTube video: What is Dropbox?
My first book: Crossroads Road