Saturday Night Special: Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "First Snow"

To be honest, it just hasn’t felt like Christmas to me this year. I’ve been super busy with work. The weather where I live, for the most part, has been more like summer. My son’s too old for my annual pilgrimage to the toy stores, and as I write this (a week or so before you’ll read it), my tree sits in my living room undecorated. It’s been a strange year.

Part of the reason, I know, is that Santa Claus ended for my son last year, and I think that also took some wonder and excitement out of things for me. So, in hopes of finding some holiday cheer, I turned to an old favorite, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and they delivered.

Saturday Night Special: Hellbound Glory, "Either Way We're Fucked"

So, if you’ve read my stuff for long, you know I’m not a huge fan of overt politics in music, and I try to keep them off my blogs, too. But I simply couldn’t think of a better song for this week’s election, in which the two major parties took a field of about 20 candidates that most people didn’t really like and winnowed them down to the two worst. Go USA!

Of course, this tune off my personal favorite Hellbound Glory album isn’t at all political in nature. Instead it features songwriter Leroy Virgil’s typically dark sense of humor as it lays out the story of an unhappy relationship in which the two parties decide that “it’s better to stay together, ‘cause either way we’re fucked.”

Saturday Night Special: Raphael Saadiq, "Angel"

So this installment represents two firsts for this blog – an R&B song, and apparently, a fictional song.

Of course, the song is not entirely fictional, at least a part of it exists. But after hearing it on the “Luke Cage” premiere on Netflix, I went out in search of it, only to discover that it doesn’t exist. It’s apparently something that Saadiq recorded for his cameo on the show. It’s not even on the soundtrack for the series, a fact lamented by several commenters on the videos that I found.

Saturday Night Special: King's X, "Goldilox"

King’s X’s debut record, Out of the Silent Planet, stands as easily the band’s most straightforward rock record. Though there were hints at the progressive powerhouse they’d become, the songs here have more in common with other hard rock bands of the time.

At the time I got the record (which was my second King’s X record after the follow-up Gretchen Goes to Nebraska), I was vehemently opposed to ballads. So “Goldilox” didn’t really register for me. I was much more likely to be rocking to “King,” “Shot of Love” or one of the other higher-energy tunes.

Saturday Night Special: Anti-Mortem, "Path to Pain"

I absolutely hate it when a band puts out a completely badass album and then almost immediately breaks up. One of the most frustrating examples I can remember is recent years is Anti-Mortem. The Oklahoma band’s first album New Southern arrived in 2014, and it blew me away. It was a collection of fantastic hard rock with occasional hints of Southern rock and thrash. If Judas Priest hadn’t put out an incredible album that year as well, New Southern would have been, far and away, my pick for album of the year, and it's been a staple in my playlist for the last two years.

Saturday Night Special: Jaco Pastorius, "Crisis"

You may have noticed I don’t cover much jazz here (and by much, I mean any). While I have an appreciation for it and enjoy it from time to time, I just don’t feel that I have the knowledge or qualifications to talk about it intelligently.

I have kind of an interesting relationship with Jaco Pastorius’ work. When I first picked up a bass many years ago, I read a magazine article about him, and decided that I needed to check this guy out. Well, one listen told me that I’d never be able to play a bass even remotely like that, and while I was stunned by his abilities, I really didn’t feel most of the music he recorded. The relatively mellow sounds of Weather Report just didn’t appeal to a metal kid, and still don’t appeal to a metal dad in his 40s.

Saturday Night Special: Bang Tango, "Wrap My Wings"

I’m working on a couple of ideas to try to breathe a little life back into this site. I started with the Sunday Sabbath feature, and now a series I call Saturday Night Special.

If you’ve been coming to the site for a little while, you’re probably familiar with the Saturday Shuffle that I used to do. That kind of ran its course, and though it got good traffic, was a pain to put together with my work and family schedules. So instead, I’m going to try a one-song approach, where I focus on a tune that I heard at some point in the week that maybe I haven’t heard for a while or that just struck me in some different way. We’ll kick things off with my favorite song from an ‘80s band that I consider underrated.