And now for something completely different

I have been posting about Illinois' problems and frankly I am tired of the same old song. So with that how about I post some thoughts on some new songs, or rather new music releases I am enjoying. For the record, I have over 30,000 songs in I TUNES and Amazon Cloud, I own around 3000 plus CD's, over 300 albums-used to have over 12 record crates of albums. My tastes are simple-take a line from the British Invasion and draw it to my collection. Bands that I have loved that never were big in the states but still seem to stand the test of time include Be Bop Deluxe, Bill Nelson, the Strawbs, Nick Lowe, Steve Gibbons Band, and others. I have just picked up the following in the last few weeks-Randy Newman Live In London, Dave Davies Hidden treasures, and the Pink Floyd Discovery Box Set. Simple review-buy all four! Randy Newman CD with the live DVD is stunning. Randy is one of the great songwriters of our time, but his singing is an acquired taste, that said it includes a "orchestra" and is real recorded, well performed, with a broad range of his deep song book. Dave Davies-whom I have met, has finally released his "Lost" album, rare tracks, B Sides, etc-songs Kinks fan are familiar with but all remastered, as well as including 3 unreleased songs. This release is of course focused on when Dave was working on a solo career-when the Kinks were banned from the US and making music that IMHO was the equal or more of the Beatles. The remastering is stunning, actually fixed a problem with one song I found to have been screwed up on the UK Arthur release. Again highly recommended. Next-Pink Floyd--for me this was a Discovery. I have all the key Pink Floyd Releases that are the standards-I did not have their full catalogue. I bought it at Costco-for $149 and it is worth every cent. The remastering done is the equivilant of the Beatles EMI releases which is saying alot. I tend to get pissed off when I buy a "remastered release" and it sounds like the first two I bought-not true here. It sounds excellent. Buy this boxed set-it really gives the listener the full history of Pink Floyd-though I still don't know who Floyd was! I could go on for hours on all three of these releases but won't. I also have yet to listen to the Beach Boys Smile release, Stones Some Girls, and new John Wesley Harding-those will be next....I also will post reviews on other new releases which I thought would be great but are dissappointments-such as the new Coldplay....Mr Bill