09
May
2007
The
week of May 12 through 18 is "Bike to Work Week," but if you're
a casual cyclist, good luck.
The Quad Cities have a great trail system along both sides of the Mississippi River - which one day is expected to form a loop on each side of the river. Yet that system is geared more toward recreation than transportation - getting you from home to work. And very few drivers are good at sharing the road with bicyclists in a way that makes both feel safe.
Enter "complete streets."
Steven Van Zandt (of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and The Sopranos) has laid hands on two swaggering CD collections due this coming Tuesday from his new Wicked Cool Record Co. imprint - near-religious extravaganzas that dust the weak and electrify the willing. Fueled by the playlists of his syndicated radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage, the 15 personally selected tracks on The Coolest Songs in the World: Vol. 1 are each monsters in their own right. Blasting off with cosmic power-poppers The Shazam, Cincinnati's favorite sons The Greenhornes, and the wigged-out frenzy of The Forty Fives, the CD also features the snarling Ellie Vie fronting The Charms from Boston, a Mooney Suzuki rouser from 2002, and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's prophetic "Whatever Happened to My Rock & Roll." The sweaty, dangerous fun continues in CBGB OMFUG FOREVER, a tribute to the iconic, now-shuttered club with liner notes by Lenny Kaye. Sixteen tracks made the cut, with hits such as Blondie's "Hanging on the Telephone" from 1978 and The Damned's "New Rose" from 1977, along with a few rare songs including Japanese bonus tracks from Green Day and U2 (which covers The Ramones' "Beat on the Brat").
The
concept of record-label samplers is to introduce a listener to the sound
and artists that a label offers. But too often, these compilations
are nothing more than a hodge-podge of material tied together by a
company name: Either everything sounds the same, making it difficult
to tell one artist from the next, or the compilation is so disparate
that it's impossible to settle in and sit through all of the songs.
