10,000 Maniacs - Like The Weather

I was working nights at a group home while attending Colorado State University when I first heard 10,000 Maniacs on college radio — back when college radio still felt like a secret society run by sleep‑deprived anthropology majors who believed deeply in the spiritual power of jangly guitars. Like the Weather wasn’t just a staple; it was the unofficial national anthem for those up and down Colorado weather days.

And every time I hear the line “Shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather,” my brain immediately drags me back to that one day I rode my mountain bike from class in a full biblical rainstorm. I wasn’t just soaked — I achieved maximum saturation, the kind of wet where your socks become philosophical and your backpack starts questioning its life choices. By the time I got to work, I looked like someone who had tried to commute through a car wash on purpose.

So with the weather we’ve been having lately, this song feels cosmically appropriate — like the universe is a DJ who only plays college‑radio deep cuts and decided, “Hey, remember when you were a soggy undergrad with a mountain bike and questionable judgment? Let’s spin that track again.”

 

The Lurkers - New Guitar In Town / Little Ole Wine Drinker me

A powerpop‑punk 45 like this in 1979 Colorado Springs would’ve been about as common as a unicorn working the counter at Woolworth’s. You could scour every strip‑mall record nook, every mall music chain, every dusty rack of “oldies” that smelled faintly of mildew and broken dreams — nothing. Not even a rumor. If someone did have it, they were probably the kind of person who also owned a Japanese import of The Lurkers and insisted British punk sounded better on “proper UK vinyl,” spoken with the confidence of a teenager who had never left the county.

The idea that even the hippest U.S. record store in ’79 stocked this? I mean… maybe. Maybe. But only if the clerk was some visionary who read Sniffin’ Glue, worshipped Stiff Records, and had a cousin in London who mailed contraband 45s in envelopes marked “religious pamphlets.” Otherwise, no — this thing wasn’t crossing the Atlantic unless it stowed away in someone’s suitcase next to a pair of platform shoes and a duty‑free Toblerone.

But The Lurkers are a defiant lot and show up anyway declaring there’s a new guitar in town, like they’re kicking down the saloon doors of punk and slapping a sheriff’s badge on a Telecaster. That guitar really is glorious — all the right crunch, all the right snot, all the right “we recorded this in a room with one working lightbulb and a borrowed amp.” It’s the exact DNA you want from a powerpunk single: fast, loud, catchy, and slightly unhinged.

And they sneak a little chaos on the B‑side. Because of course — of course — they sneak in a Merle Haggard cover. Punk bands in the late ’70s loved doing this: “We’re angry, we’re loud, we’re anti‑everything… also here’s a country tune because we contain multitudes.” It’s not even cover‑version week, but The Lurkers clearly operate on their own cosmic calendar.

 

Ronnie Self -Houdini /Bless My Broken Heart

My first brush with Ronnie Self came when I was about five, living in a drafty old three‑story house in Granby, Colorado — the kind of place where every floorboard had an opinion. In the basement sat my parents’ humble little turntable and Dad’s box of 45s. I don’t remember most of them, but three stood out like neon signs: Johnny Mathis, the Everly Brothers’ Bye Bye Love, and Ronnie Self’s Bop‑A‑Lena.

Fast‑forward a few years, and once I caught the record‑collecting fever, Dad suddenly found himself missing one Ronnie Self 45. I plead the fifth.

Ronnie earned the nickname Mr. Frantic, and his career zig‑zagged across Columbia, ABC, Decca, KAPP — basically every label that existed within shouting distance. Yet only Bop‑A‑Lena cracked the Top 100, landing at #63 for a single week. One week! How does a song come in swinging like a bar fight and then vanish like it forgot to pay rent? It’s not a polite exit. It’s a smoke‑bomb‑and‑sprint exit. It Houdini’d!

His songwriting career shone brighter: I’m Sorry and Sweet Nothings for Brenda Lee are still fixtures of American pop. He was often listed as co‑writer because he frequently borrowed money, and his manager Dub Albright needed a way to recoup the loans.

I’ve got several Ronnie uploads ready to go, and honestly it was a coin toss which one gets to sit in the waiting room for a month. Ronnie lived a heartbreakingly short life, passing at 43 after years of addiction, self‑neglect, and unraveling mental health. A frantic, gifted artist gone too soon, whose story deserves to be told with both admiration and care.

 

Wild Bill and and the Blue Denims - Mona My Love

My back has been as stiff as a surfboard lately — the kind you wax once and immediately regret. I’m doing the stretches, the exercises, and I finally retired my worn‑out work chair, which had all the ergonomic support of a milk crate. I put my new chair together yesterday, and while it’s definitely not the Cadillac of office thrones, I’m hoping the ride won’t leave me shaped like a question mark. I’ve spent enough years hunched over keyboards to qualify as punctuation; I’d prefer this chair not finish the job.

Monday Surf Question: When did surf music actually come crashing onto the shore?  Wiki claims 1958, which means this 1959 rocker sits right at the dawn of the wave — the primordial ooze of reverb, twang, and teenage bravado. Even if Gone Records was based out of New York, surf music didn’t care about geography; it cared about attitude, echo chambers, and whether your guitar sounded like it was trying to outrun a shark.

This appears to be the one and only release from Wild Bill and the Blue Denims — a band name that already sounds like a denim‑clad superhero team. I’m guessing after this single they were politely escorted out of the studio, possibly for excessive reverb usage or for insisting the engineer call them “Wild Bill and the Extremely Blue Denims.”

A noble beginning. A noble end. A perfect surf career arc: show up, shred once, vanish like a wave that refuses to explain itself. 

Van Morrison - Full Force Gale

Van Morrison has built a career entirely on his own terms — mostly by ignoring everyone else’s terms, shredding them, and then setting the scraps on fire while humming a mystical Celtic melody. But Van? Van just is. There’s a whole Van Morrison aesthetic that shows up across his albums: that majestic, mystical, “I have communed with the ancient spirits of Belfast and they gave me a saxophone” vibe. The musical extravagance, the lyrics that make you think deep thoughts you didn’t plan on having such as “Wait, am I supposed to be enlightened right now?”— it’s all part of the gravitational pull.   

So imagine my face when I looked at his ’70s discography and realized those albums — the ones containing absolute classics  — never grazed the US top 10. How did Wavelength or St. Dominic’s Preview not chart higher? Did the charts get lost? Did someone accidentally file Van under “Mystical Weather Events” instead of “Music”? Was FM radio too busy blasting songs about trucks, heartbreak, and questionable fashion choices?

He’s had three US top‑10 albums since 2008 — and I’ll confess, I don’t own them and haven’t heard them. Which means I’m basically the guy yelling “Justice for Van!” while simultaneously contributing nothing to the cause, -I’m part of the problem, but let’s not dwell on that.

And yes, he defiantly (correct spelling, correct attitude, correct level of eyebrow lift) was not a singles artist. Case in point: this weeks mail‑order arrival — a single I genuinely thought I already owned, proving once again that my memory is basically a block of Swiss cheese left out in the sun. I have no idea how Warner Brothers thought this track was going to chart. Don’t get me wrong — it’s fantastic, with those trademark vocals that sound like he’s simultaneously preaching, philosophizing, and gently reminding your soul that it hasn’t done its spiritual homework.

But if you were around in the late ’70s, you remember FM radio. And FM radio was… not this. Not even close. Throw in the spiritual angle and the thing sank faster than a cinder block tied to a crooked politician who thought he could swim his way out of trouble.

Majestic? Absolutely. Brilliant? Without question. Chart‑friendly? Only if the charts suddenly decided to embrace transcendental mysticism, powered enlightenment and the general vibe of a man who refuses to be rushed.

The Byrds - My Back Pages/Renaissance Fair

The Byrds do Dylan better than Dylan — and yes, I say that as someone who genuinely loves Dylan, harmonica wheeze and all. But those Byrds harmonies and chiming, cathedral bell guitars that jangle like a choir of caffeinated angels tapping on mason jars! During this era, the Byrds weren’t just good — they were operating at a level where the laws of physics politely stepped aside.

Even with Gene Clark leaving — which was basically the musical equivalent of losing your star songwriter, your emotional ballast, and the one guy who remembered where the car was parked — they still soared. And then there’s Crosby. Ah yes, Crosby. The eternal philosophical question: Was this the beginning of Crosby becoming Crosby, or was Crosby always Crosby and simply waiting for the right cosmic alignment to unleash maximum Crosby? You know exactly what I mean. The man was a walking personality eclipse and supernova. A chaos elemental with a harmony fetish.

Chart wise, the Byrds came out swinging with two #1 singles and then… promptly decided that was enough chart success for one lifetime. No more top 10s, only seven top 40 hits, and a reputation as “not really a singles band,” which is a travesty of cosmic proportions. Some of those singles should’ve been massive — like “My Back Pages,” which stalled at #30, probably because the public thought the Byrds were running a Dylan cover subscription service.

But the B side? Oh, the B side. Crosby and McGuinn cooked up a gem so good it should’ve come with a warning label. One of the finest Byrds tracks ever — the kind of song that makes you wonder why the charts didn’t simply apologize and start over.

Album wise, they had two top 10 LPs (one being a greatest hits, which feels like cheating, but we’ll allow it) and nine top 40 albums. And those early records? Some of the most beautifully crafted albums you’ll ever hear — shimmering, inventive, and absolutely bulletproof.

I still get geeky about chart positions — a side effect of early collecting days when Billboard numbers felt like sacred scripture — but in the end, it’s always the music. The charts can say whatever they want. The Byrds already wrote their legacy in 12 string ink and filed it under “We Told You So.”

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Ray Rivera - Bend Me Shape Me

Saturday morning, I embark on my heroic quest to retrieve my lawn mower — the mighty grass‑slayer that the repair shop has allegedly reassembled in the correct order this time. May it have a sharpened desire to maul grass. 

While I’m at it, I’m trying to convince my wife that this is the perfect excuse for a date night. You know: “Hey babe, want to eat food someone else cooked and a Movie?” Maybe even pretending we’re people who go out after 7 PM.” I’m pitching it as “community engagement,” which sounds noble enough that she might fall for it.

Meanwhile, Friday Soul is serving up Latin Boogaloo, and this week’s selection is basically the multiverse of cover songs. A cover… of a cover… of a cover… of a cover. At this point the song has had more reincarnations than a Buddhist housecat.

If the timeline is to be believed (and honestly, it reads like someone spilled a stack of 45s and tried to reassemble history from memory), the Outsiders kicked things off in 1966, The Models jumped in during July ’67, the American Breed made it a hit in December ’67, and Amen Corner in January 68 and finally Ray got around to it in March ’68. Truly, this tune has lived a life of chaotic glory.

Ray’s wiki page claims he co-wrote it, but there’s absolutely zero evidence of that — unless “co-writing” means “standing vaguely near Scott English while he cowrote it.” And yes, Scott English is the same guy who wrote Mandy, which means he’s responsible for both Barry Manilow’s first mega-hit and this hydra. So yes, the man who gave the world Mandy also unleashed this eclectic Rock and Boogaloo beast

So please enjoy this Latin Boogaloo take on a song that has been bent, shaped, folded, spindled, reissued, misattributed, resurrected, and hopefully — unlike my lawn mower — assembled correctly at least once in its lifetime.