Click images for desktop size: "Weir Vaudeville Theater, Aberdeen Washington-1920" by Unknown When I said Alkaline Trio are my favorite group I created some confusion. They are not my all time fave group. They are my faves of the moment.
I've never really given much thought to an all time fave band. I guess it would have to include Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps. Johnny Burnette's Rock & Roll Trio, The Everly Brothers, Jan & Dean (hey, there's more than one of them, so that makes them a band, doesn't it? I mean the inverse way that Dick Dale and The Del-Tones don't count, I mean, other than family does anyone know who the Del-Tones were?) The Ramones, The Small Faces.
These guys shouldn't need any explanation. I mean if you don't understand the beauty and poetry of lines like "I was cruising in my Stingray late one night when an XKE pulled up on my right" or, "I smell the flowers growing through the concrete," and "There's a little juke joint just outside of town where the cats pick 'em and then lay 'em down. You get your gal and I'll get mine. We'll get together and we'll have a good time," then there's little hope for the world, little hope at all.
I'd also give consideration to The Kinks. No one has ever written a line like, "While the rich get their kicks with their affluent antics," and actually made it work. That they also made it rock is more than laudable. It's miraculous. The only problem with the Kinks is that their best songs are so incredibly personal, they wheedle into your soul so deeply they become private little treasures. It is almost sinful and cruel that they are also world wide mega hits. Nothing makes something impersonal like universal fame.
And of course Love looms large. You had to mega talents in Arthur Lee and Bryan McLean plus about 5 other musicians who ended up robbing liquor stores or od'ing on drugs. No wonder they could produce a handful of totally classic punk/garage singles including the seminal unforgettable "7 & 7 Is", while also spinning out the unforgettable enduring and endearing album "Forever Changes". That they hated leaving LA, that Jimi Hendrix was considering joining the band, all add up to one powerful force in music.
And any band I spent more than 15 minutes being a member of has to rank pretty high as well.
But the band that I would have to pick as my personal fave would be, The Sonics. I don't know much about them except their music. I've kept it that way.
I know they were from Seattle, wore colorful alpaca sweaters and made a sound that would later be called grunge.
The sound of their records is monstrous. They were a standard combo, guitar, bass, organ and drums but their records were just a pure Phil Spector wet dream wall of sound. Occasionally someone would step forward and solo but like an orchestra there really wasn't a single instrument, the band was the instrument. It was a thick seditious sound that you could excavate and and hold in your hands, a rich throbbing dripping thing. You could slice it with a switchblade knife and watch it pulsate in your hand until, like the Blob, it engulfed you and made your body jerk to its own incestuous beat.
They had hits. The unbelievable "Psycho" that thundered like a mythic dinosaur with Rosalie's leather lunged vocals asking not for pity or understanding. It was rage. (I used to do a great cover of "Psycho" except that after singing it I couldn't talk, let alone sing, for at least an hour and sometimes the rest of the night)

Click images for desktop size: "29 Palms Drive In" by Tim Melidio In "She's A Witch" and "Strychnine" this rage propelled the dancing rhythm into another ionosphere where all your life's experiences were sucked out of you, reshuffled and re-prioritized. In the mega cool "Hustler" and "Boss Hoss" the voice bragged in pride and dared you to cross the line and question him.
In the awesome cover of the Contours hit, "Do You Love Me" the voice became a defiant dare and the bands sound chased along at a fearsome clip.
The final notable cut was "Night Time Is The Right Time" an old R&B standard that most Gen Xer's know from that horrible episode of the Cosby Show when the family lip synced to a creepy version of it.
For the Sonics the standard was anything but cutsey or ready for prime time.
It was a gut bucket howl wearing a Michael Meyer's boiler suit making it demands known and daring them to not be met.
Yeah. The Sonics. Alpaca sweaters.

I'm doing fine. My puppy loves me and my foster dog loves me.
The doctors said that my White Blood Cell count has stabilized.
That's good. Now the biggest thing is to stop the irreversible damage done getting things this way.
I hurt my ankle this morning dodging some idiot in a car who went off the shoulder of the road. They didn't stop.
At first I thought I ruptured the achilles tendon. Its got an interesting knot and still burns fiercely.
I put it off to Friday the 13th. What you going to do?
Me? I worked.
They're refinancing the entire company, which seems odd because it is damn peculiar. They're refinancing through a company that made its biggest mark in the world in Boston during the building bust there, picking up multi-million dollar properties for a dime on the dollar and then just waiting out the bust for the boom. They did it with refinancing . . . Just like Lionel Barrymore in "Its A Wonderful Life". I guess my employers figure they're just smarter than these guys.
The guy who "owned" Freckles took off in the middle of his night, apparently running for his life. Had to be drugs, bad drugs.
I made sure he took the dog with him, or at least didn't abandon the dog someplace where I could fetch her.
That's pretty much it. Work, packing, loving. Sunday another adoption event to try and give away my foster puppy, but only to people who will love her.