Some Girls is one of the best Rolling Stones records.  It’s sleazy, dirty, punky, and country.  It came out in 1978, and has just been reissued it a nice little collectors package.  You should get it; I know I will.  To celebrate its corporate repackaging, I present to you a thoroughly scandalous fan made music video of the title song from the record.  The video features classic films such as “Easy Rider,” “Backbeat,” “Quadrophenia,” “Death Proof,” “Goodfellas,” and “Dr. No.”  It also has great clips of the Sex Pistols, Blondie, and the Rolling Stones, all vamping it up for one of the Stones most booziest songs.

Animals by Pink Floyd is my absolute favorite Floyd album and one of my favorite albums ever.  For me, this is the highlight of Pink Floyd week as I get to share a live performance of “Pigs on a Wing 1” as an intro to “Dogs,” my favorite Pink Floyd song.  Animals is Pink Floyd’s real masterpiece, with better songs then Dark Side of the Moon, and is way more thematically focused then The Wall.  Animals has 5 songs, with the intro “Pigs on a Wing 1,” being brought back at the end with slightly different lyrics, so its really 4 songs.  The record is mostly the work of Roger Waters, who at this point took full creative control of the band.  It’s a concept album loosely based on George Orwell’s book Animal Farm, mainly a railing against with the oppressive social-political of Great Britain.  The whole thing is a psychedelic progressive folk rock masterpiece.  It is also an angry finely manicured response to the emerging punk rock movement.  Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols famously wore an “I hate Pink Floyd,” t-shirt, and Roger Waters and company wanted to remind the punkers they too emerged from an underground movement determined to unmoor the uptight and conformist British hierarchy.  For “Dogs,” Waters wrote the lyrics, and Gilmour, in his only songwriting contribution to the record, wrote the music.  It was originally titled, “You’ve Got to Be Crazy,” and features some of Pink Floyd’s best lyrics and dynamic guitar solos.  It’s a piece of fantastic psychedelic dark funk, and demands worship.  So check out this live performance and go for the gold by sitting through the whole thing, its worth it.

Part 2 cannot be embedded, so just click this link to be taken to it on youtube.

Here is a clean recording of “Dogs,” but with no live footage.

At last we get to see Sid Vicious performing with the band.  In my last Sex Pistols post, it was Glen Matlock in the promo vid for “Anarchy in the UK.”  It’s probably not Sid playing bass on the actual track, but its cool to see the icon of the group thrashing about in this historic clip.  I’ve been staying in Australia for the last few weeks, and I recently got a coin in my change honoring the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton.  It was kind of horrifying that such a thing is stamped on the official currency, so I had to put up “God Save the Queen,” in honor of such a revolting display of unearned honor.  The song itself is fairly revolutionary, released in 1977, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee.  Johnny Rotten claimed the song was written out of love for the English people’s working class, deriding the monarchy as fascist, and proclaiming that England has no future.  It’s actually a complex idea about class warfare presented in the awesome straightforward punk rock format.  The song is filled with delicious riffs, and a perfect acid tipped vocal delivery from Rotten.  A true classic, enjoy.

Welcome back again to my youtube favorite retrospective part 2!  You know the deal, the list is done, and we’re looking back at all the hits that made us laugh, cry, and die.  Let’s start rolling right where we left off!

#74.  The Ramones, Blitzkrieg Bop – It’s more Ramones, the greatest and most original punk ever playing the shit out of Blitzkrieg Bop, in Germany of all places.  Not bad for a bunch of Jewish guys from Queens.

#73.  The Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK – When I was in college, I actually had a history professor show us this video as an example of historical outliers.  That’s all well and good, but I was just fascinated with how the drummer sat at the front of the band.

#72.  Elvis Costello, Pump it Up – Declan MacManus’s punky little pop jam.  You gotta love Costello for essentially being the reincarnation of Buddy Holly in modern times, both physically, and musically. Read more »

I’m in a punky mood, so for part 73 of my youtube countdown, I have the Sex Pistols with their 1976 classic, “Anarchy in the UK” from their seminal LP Never Mind the Bollocks. There is not much I can say about this record that the video doesn’t give you.  Oh, its Glen Matlock on bass not Sid Vicious, (he must have been MIA.)  I like how Johnny Rotten is staged behind the drummer, you never see that in a band’s stage presentation.  I like this song for its musicality.  It’s got a sludgy almost phasered electric guitar sound, and Johnny Rotten’s vocal delivery has just the right amount of that classic English bite.  Lyrically, the song is genius, with the idea of the song right up front, no metaphor, no bullshit, and its FUNNY!  Most people like to associate danger and violence with the Sex Pistols, but I always associate humor.  They were funny in interviews, their lyrics were clever and sharp, and they were media pranksters.  Pretty cool.