Tina Turner

Artist: Tina Turner

LP: 7" single
Song: "Break Every Rule"

[ listen ]

Happy 80th birthday to Tina Turner! No one wore denim quite like Tina did in the late 1980s. This title track to her sixth LP was not one of her hits, peaking at #75 on the US charts in May of 1987, when she would have been about 48 years old and I was just about to graduate from high school. You can read all about Tina Turner here.  

 

[Tina Turner ]

Ars Nova

Artist: Ars Nova

LP: Ars Nova

Song: "Pavan For My Lady"

[ listen ]

Here's a nice November-sounding bit of music for today. Ars Nova evidently split up after making this one record in 1968. They reformed with a mostly different cast and released one more record, in 1969, and then disbanded again. I had the good fortune to find both LPs at Georgetown Records this past Wednesday, my one and only day off during the week. You can read more about Ars Nova on Wikipedia here.

Queen City Kids

Artist: Queen City Kids

LP: Queen City Kids

Song: "Kids World"

[ listen ]

From Regina, Saskatchewan, these four guys met in high school and called their group Cambridge before changing their name and releasing this self-titled album in Canada in 1981. It's like the Queen City Kids took everything they loved about hard rock music—the relentlessly driving and screaming guitars, the growling vocals—and then multiplied them by three before putting them on this record. It's fantastic.You can read more about the Queen City Kids here.

Black Fighting Men in Vietnam

Artist: Black Fighting Men Recorded Live In Vietnam

LP: Guess Who's Coming Home

Side One

[ listen ]

Side Two

[ listen ]

Guess Who's Coming Home. It isn't Sidney Poitier. Here's a different sort of Motown Sound from 1972 that I found at Daybreak Records a few weeks ago. It's fascinating that the record is presented as a warning to America that thousands of black men who have been trained in combat and who are handy with weapons will soon be returning to the USA and demanding their equality. At the same time, it's depressing to see what little progress in race relations we've made as a country over the past 45 years. We still can't get past the color of peoples' skin when deciding how to treat them, and are basically in the same place now as we were then. 

I was hoping to get this posted on Veteran's Day, but unfortunately I'm a few minutes late. Happy Veteran's Day to all those who have served, putting their lives on the line and into the indelicate hands of those deciding when and where and how the USA will go to war.