Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#115 in The Series) is Prefab Sprout, “Steve McQueen” (or as it was called in the United States, “Two Wheels Good.” There’s a good chance that you might not be familiar with this band, but let me tell ya, they’re real good! This is the first time I’ve had a release with two different titles. But Prefab Sprout was not allowed to call their album entitled “Steve McQueen” do to a legal conflict. It was called “Two Wheels Good” here in the US. Many great tracks here. ‘Faron Young, Bonny, Appetite’ and the single that you might know, ‘When Love Breaks Down.’ Prefrab Sprout was from England. This album peaked there at #21...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day  is NRBQ’s Grooves in Orbit. This one really fits the bill as NRBQ Grooves in Orbit is indeed a very ‘cool’ album. This one finds the worlds greatest bar band at quite possibly their creative peak. It runs end to end with many tunes that stayed in their live show for years. Decades even. Side one starts with the perfect, “Rain at the Drive In.” A song about a couple that loves to go to the drive in when it’s raining because it’s easier to get the windows to fog. How can you beat that? Just the fact that it’s about a stinkin’ drive in makes it cool! One of my other...

Today’s “Cool Album of the Day” is China Crisis. What Price Paradise. What Price Paradise may have gotten more airplay in my car and living room than any album released in the mid to late eighties. I just fell in love with this when it was released in 1986. I had a chance to see this tour at the Park West in Chicago in 1987. To this day it remains one of the best shows I ever saw. They dedicated an encore track to the great Chicago reggae bar ‘Kingston Mines’ and even segued into Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus!’ Slick sounding, great groove with excellent playing. Maybe think, Steely Dan with a little more edge. In fact, their previous album was...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day is Rockpile’s, Seconds Of Pleasure. Dave Edmunds (guitar) and Nick Lowe (bass) must have recorded about 6 albums together in the late 70’s or early 80’s. However, this was the only ‘official’ release of the band named they used, Rockpile. Due to some weird contracts, they never released another official album. So what they did was take turn releasing solo albums. And then they would play on each others release. So one album would be called Nick Lowe, and it would feature Dave Edmunds and the next would be Dave Edmunds, and it would feature Nick Lowe. Rockpile also included Bill Bremmer on guitar and Terry Williams on drums. Terry Williams went on...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#90 in the Series) is Bodeans.Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams. The BoDeans are still huge in Chicago.  I’m not sure how big they’re ever gotten outside of this area.  It’s hard to tell from the inside. This was their debut release.  I personally like the 2nd album, “Outside, Looking In” better, but I’m featuring this one. This one has many of their concert favorites to this day. “She’s a Runaway, Fadeaway, Still The Night” jump out at you at the top of the disc.  Nice opening to a career boys! BoDeans are basically Sammy Llanas and Kurt Neumann.  They’ve gone thru numerous band members. A little birdy told me that they’re...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day is Luther Vandross, “The Night I Fell In Love.” We’re going back to some R + B today. This is about as good as it gets for some wonderful, smooth, R+B. An absolute masterpiece of the genre. “The Night I Fell In Love” has eight tracks. They are all easily assessable. I’ll highlight a few even thou as I mentioned, they’re all great. ‘Till My Bady Comes Home, If Only For One Night’ and ‘Wait For Love’ are just great! This was released in 1985. It was right before Luther became a crossover star. Give your self some variety and give a listen to Luther Vandross “The Night I Fell In Love.” It...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day  is the debut album by “The Psychedelic Furs.” Dark, eerie, creepy etc etc. This album has been described by all those great words. But I think it’s a wonderful body of music. It’s amazing how many times I like a bands debut album the best. But how many times have I heard the ol’ saying, ‘You have your whole life to write your first album, a year to write the second.’ Great dark sound. Kinda like a pissed off Roxy Music. Some exception saxophone work highlights the sound. Favorite tracks? ‘India’ and ‘Sister Europe.’ The Psychedelic Furs was mostly produced by Steve Lillywhite and the band. It reached number 140 on the Billboard...

Today’ Cool Album of the Day is “Zenyatta Mondatta” by The Police. How great is this piece of music? It’s really hard to pick a favorite from that early Police period, but I’m going with this one. Highlights, we got a few. ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me, When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around, Canary in a Coalmine, Man in a Suitcase’ and my fave mainly because of Andy Summers scorching guitar solo, ‘Driven To Tears.’ This 1980 release peeked at #5 in 1981. It hit the charts again in 1983 and had a cup of coffee at #129. It won two Grammy Awards. The Police were inducted into the Rock...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#85 in the Series) is Talking Heads’, Little Creatures.” This one was maybe a little more commercial sounding than the majority of the ‘Heads catalog. But it always rang true with me! I lovesed it! There are many wonderful tracks here. Two went on to get some major airplay as singles. ‘Road to Nowhere’ and ‘And She Was.’ ‘Stay Up Late’ and ‘The Lady Don’t Mind’ could have been singles as well. Eric Weissberg and his steel guitar were an interesting addition to the Talking Heads sound here. Maybe that’s why I likesed it so much. I remember when I was a ‘record schlepper.’ I played the heck out of this in my...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day is XTC’s, “English Settlement.” I was trying to decide which XTC album to appoint. I’ve decided to go with “English Settlement.” I usually don’t like feature the most popular release by an artist. And I’m not even sure that this is their most popular, but I’m running with it. “English Settlement” is XTC’s fifth studio release. The year was 1982. (What a great period for music. I think this might be about the fifth time I’ve chosen something from that year.) As usual, everything was written by the great Andy Partridge. Not one track stood out from the rest for me. This is one of those discs that just spits ‘em at you....