First of all, shucks – my longtime Cleveland pal Len over at Jawbone Radio gave this baby blog a very nice shout-out. Jawbone is a great Cleveland-based podcast that once upon a time, I was blessed enough to be on as a guest. Len is also among other things, a big Star Wars fan, which makes him more than okay in my book. We kept threatening to do some more Cleveland cross-pollination, but alas, life got busy and crazy for me, and Len started drawing Monsters by Mail. Now that I’m back in Lakewood, who knows what could happen?

I swear to God, TJ @ Viva La Mainstream has given about a week’s worth of material to blog about, in the past week. And since I already had at least two weeks of material to blog about already, I guess that means that my mind has been especially musically productive, thanks to TJ, so thanks for that 🙂

TJ JUST saw one of my all-time favorite movies, the great High Fidelity with my much-loved John Cusack in the starring role, and a great cameo by my super-fantastic close-to-favorite-rocker of all-time, Bruce Springsteen.

“You give that big final good luck and goodbye to your all-time top 5 and just move on down the road”
– Bruce Springsteen in High Fidelity.

High Fidelity is a great film, and SO me as a music fan. I’ve had several “that is SO me” moments in the past week, including an unexpected one with Matt Pinfield this past Wednesday night. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to blog about all of that in upcoming posts here, and perhaps not!

TJ threatened a number of Top 5 related posts based on his High Fidelity viewing, and has made good with post #1, a great posting dedicated to the top 5 album opening tracks. I agree with his number 5 choice of “The Pretender” by Foo Fighters, and discuss it in fact, in the comments section – go check that out.

For now, let’s discuss my list. I didn’t really obsess too long over this one. I thought of a few of them while driving in this morning to work, and thought of the rest of them while I was out on my lunch hour walking the office park, doing the exercise thing.

5. The Smithereens – War for My Mind

Public service announcement – the ‘Reens have a new live album coming out on Tuesday. I can’t wait. Go get it. I got into the Smithereens around the time of the 11 album. Made my way through their catalog backwards from that point, and was completely schooled, up to date, and a full-on Smithereens freak by 1994. In that year, I see the Smithereens FOUR times touring for A Date With The Smithereens.

“War For My Mind” is the opening face melting track for Date, and the album is in the category of albums so strong that the band opens a number of shows on the tour with several of the tracks in sequence as they appear on the album, leading off with War.

A Date With The Smithereens is in my short list of great albums that are totally unappreciated.

I went to see the ‘Reens four times on this tour not only because they blew me away as one of the greatest live bands I’d ever seen, but also because this tour was a GREAT tour. And believe it or not, the Date tour was the first time that I had seen the ‘Reens as well, hence my elevated excitement. War For My Mind smokes on the album, and smoked even more in the live setting (check out this live version from the Extended Versions live CD.)

4. Weezer – My Name is Jonas

In the midst of my personal Smithereens world tour in 1994, I saw a new band open for them at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus, OH, who were about to release their debut album. That band was called Weezer, and you now commonly know of that debut album as “The Blue Album.” My Name is Jonas is the Blue Album opener, and was the extremely loud opening shot that I saw from the band, delivered to an audience of about 10 people that had showed up for the first of two opening bands in front of the Smithereens. Click here to check out a ripping version of “My Name is Jonas.”

My disappointment about The Grays being scrubbed from the opening slot quickly disappeared as Weezer played what is still to date the loudest and most satisfying set that I have seen at a Weezer show. I saw Weezer 3 more times on their touring cycle for The Blue Album, and they never touched that show.

side note: Anybody want to see a lot of live video from The Grays, recorded in Denver? Sheesh, check this out. Now, I am kind of disappointed after seeing these vids!!

The Grays – Very Best Years (live in Denver)

3. Sammy Hagar – Little White Lie

“Little White Lie” was the first bit of new music (and first single from his Marching to Mars CD) that we heard from Sammy post-Van Halen. Though it started off as an acoustically based number that had your mind floating in the general direction of Cabo, you knew that it wouldn’t last the song, and indeed, a harmonica solo led into full on guitarmageddon (sorry, just wanted to use that cheesy reference) to musically assure Van Halen fans that were on the fence that indeed, Sammy was still here to rock.

Now, I know that there are DLR Van Halen fans that will debate the amount of rocking that Sammy did with Van Halen, but first – shut up, and second, put on the 5150 album, and shut up. Creatively, Sammy has gone a bit off the rails for me at this point with his more recent stuff, (see: Livin’ It Up) but I respect the fact that he still cares about creating new music at a point when he could just coast on compilations and live albums.

2. Bryan Adams – One Night Love Affair

I’ve already made the argument that Reckless has one of the best “opening album sides” in this previous post, and “One Night Love Affair” is the track that starts the Reckless machine off. I bought the Reckless album on cassette, and it’s one of a few that I distinctly remember going from side to side on my Walkman, which had the coveted “auto-reverse” function, over and over again. It’s always a good moment when this track comes up on shuffle on the Ipod.

1. Van Halen – Poundcake

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge was another album that was solid to the point that Van Halen opened each show on the tour with a number of tracks in sequence. By the time we got a hold of the album, the image of Eddie with the striped drill was burned into our MTV loving minds at a time when MTV still played a lot of videos, kind of.

1991, I was still young enough to be very impressed with my favorite guitar player for finding a way to incorporate power tools into the music making process.

Van Halen – Poundcake (live on the MTV Awards ’91)

And then the runner-ups – so strong and awesome in their own right, that it hurts. But I made a point to stick with my originals as I thought of them, and not debate this list too hard, for once. I was going to give you five more, and then I thought of Social D, so here are six for you.

Aerosmith – “Young Lust” (from Pump)
Eric Clapton – “Pretending” (from Journeyman)
Cracker – “I Hate My Generation” (from The Golden Age)
Social Distortion – “Cold Feelings” (from Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell)
Bruce Springsteen – “Better Days” (from Lucky Town)
U2 – “Where The Streets Have No Name” (from The Joshua Tree) (suggested by my friend Rebecca – great pick!)

Man, we could be here all day talking about this stuff!

What are your favorite album openers? Maybe even your top five? Let me know in the comments.