Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#797 in the Series) is KISS, Monster KISS has recently released their 20th studio album, “Monster,” and every KISS fan in the world is gonna gobble it up, no matter what it sounds like or how it is reviewed. They always have and always will and they are part of the reason the band has been a perpetual marketing juggernaut, regardless of whether they were producing a good product musically, or not. There are basically three versions of KISS; The classic lineup (Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss and Paul Stanley) from our beloved “Dazed and Confused” era from 1974 to 1982 (KISS – Unmasked ). They were amazing trailblazers in many...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#794 in the Series) is Rosie Flores, Working Girl’s Guitar In a musical landscape where you can’t swing a stray cat without hitting a female rockabilly influenced Alternative Country artist, Rosie Flores is the real deal.  With Working Girl’s Guitar, her 11th album and second release on Bloodshot Records, Flores opens up the vault to display on one record most of her influences that include blues, rock, country, rockabilly, even Dick Dale Surf guitar, and for the first time does most of the finger-picking herself. In a brilliant piece of song sequencing the album begins with the title track with the story line unfolding from the perspective of her road worn telecaster...

  The Rolling Stones have released their first new single in over six years. The song is titled “Doom and Gloom” and will be included in their upcoming greatest hits package titled GRRR! The album will see the streets on Nov. 12th. It’s one of two new songs that will be found their. Reviews so far have been mixed. “Received music industry wisdom has it that new Rolling Stones material exists purely to flog compilation albums or tour tickets,” wrote Dan Silver in The Mirror tabloid. The Daily Telegraphs Neil McCormick awarded  “Doom and Gloom”, saying it was “business as usual” for the band and drawing comparisons between the song and the “basement rock” of their acclaimed 1972 album “Exile...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#786 in the Series) is Morse, Portnoy and George, Cover 2 Cover I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a new release that as I was listening to each track for the first time, I kept thinking of more and more people I had to turn on this incredibly unique, won’t believe it until you hear new record from a trio of rock gods that are so talented, I am almost at a loss for words, so let me just say, Transcendent! Neal Morse is the talented singer/songwriter known in the progressive rock community for his work as founder and front man of both Spock’s Beard and Transatlantic,...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#780 in the Series) is Eternal Essence, A Light in the Distance. I don’t know a lot about Eternal Essence and I bet you don’t either, but you should. They could be one of a million best kept secrets, known only to their geography of audiophiles (in this case, Jersey and the East Coast), but gain tremendous popularity and respect for their over the top musical skills in places far and wide. I am guessing, but that could well be the hidden meaning behind the title of this A Light in the Distance, their 6th record, the first five which were all instrumental, the first 3, piano bass and drums. I mean...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#779 in the Series) is The Jupiter Affect, Instructions For the Two Ways of Becoming Alice Ask a handful of music lovers of a certain age about their favorite Michael Quercio moment, and you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with a consensus. Some will vote for “Jet Fighter,” the appropriately soaring opening track off Sixteen Tambourines, The Three O’ Clock’s 1983 debut album, Others prefer the punk-psych swirl of “She Turns To Flowers” by Quercio’s earlier trio The Salvation Army, the D.Boon-approved combo that played a major role in kick-starting LA’s “Paisley Underground” movement. Still others will tell you that he did his best work in the early 90s with Permanent Green Light....

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#778 in the Series) is Firewater, International Orange (Bloodshot Records) If a drinking establishment existed that was a cross between the zombie cantina in Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn and the beach bars in the Bikini Beach movies, Firewater would be the house band and International Orange would be their soundtrack. Firewater feels like a name from the 70’s, sounds like a band from the 80’s and was formed in the 90’s by bass player and band leader Tod A. (aka Tod Ashley) leading a musical collective that has produced seven consistently great and eclectically diverse albums over the years including Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood For the...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#772 in the Series) is King Cannons, The Brightest Light (Capitol) King Cannons are a hardworking band, and they want you to know it. They have fought poverty and hardship every day of their existence to be together. Their songs are full of cliché and nostalgia, being almost exclusively about being flat broke, escaping the oppressive factory dust, and the joys of finding solace in rock ‘n’ roll and the open road. They aren’t exactly original in style or substance, stealing from the slicked-back greaser ’50s style of American rock, to the angry punk-with-a-heart teachings of ’70s Joe Strummer, the anthemic bombast and big drums of ’80s Springsteen, with a sprinkling of...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#771 in the Series) is Ry Cooder, Election Special (Nonesuch) Ry Cooder’s on a roll! After an extended 18 year break from solo work, during which he was extremely busy on soundtracks and collaborations of course, he made a remarkable return to the fray with Chavez Ravine in 2005, a well-received release which was followed fairly quickly by My Name Is Buddy and then I, Flathead, completing what he dubbed his “Southern California” trilogy. Just last year he was at it again when he released the wonderful Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down, making four great albums in six years, a tremendous work rate in this day and age really. At...

  Today’s Cool album of the day(#770 in the Series) is the new self-titled release by The World Famous Headliners. (Big Yellow Dog Publishing) Out of the blue comes an album that I think will be in so many top 10 lists at the end of the year and no one even saw it coming. I think most reviews are going to start with who are these guys? That’s a good question and it’s a great answer but I wanted to start with what really matters, the music. The album’s 15 tracks slip effortlessly from rock and roll to funk, with bits of power pop, country, and 60’s style rock thrown into the mix. It’s a fun from the...