Former Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan currently fronts the band Loaded and writes for Reverb, our music blog, every Monday and Thursday. There he lets us know what’s been in heavy rotation at the McKagan household or on the road. Now comes a taste of that goodness in print:
Fountain of Youth Self-titled demo
On the road, often an artist will receive many unsolicited demo CDs from aspiring bands and the like. Most of the time they are not so good, but I still listen. Mike Squires and I were doing an in-store signing for our amp company at a music store in Birmingham, UK, recently on tour with our band Loaded, when we were approached by a 12-year-old kid and his dad. They gave us a CD in hopes of us having the kid’s band, Fountain of Youth, open for us on our next trip through. Yeah, right! We popped in the CD on the bus later that night. These kids are like the new Subways!!! They’ll get the gig for sure.
ABBA “S.O.S.,” ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits
For some reason, whenever I travel to the more northerly parts of the UK and/or Europe in fall and winter, ABBA starts creeping into my musical mind-frame. You just can’t say no to ABBA.
Sweet “Set Me Free,” Desolation Boulevard
Sweet were the hard-rocking edge of sugary pop back in the ’70s. Where they may have “sold out” with songs like “Love Is Like Oxygen” and “Wig-Wam Bam,” they more than made up for with songs like “Sweet F.A.” and “Set Me Free.”
Iggy and the Stooges “Shake Appeal,” Raw Power
I got myself into a bit of an Iggy phase after reading Watch You Bleed (by Stephen Davis) recently. “Shake Appeal” has one of the baddest riffs ever in the history of rock and roll.
Iggy Pop “Sister Midnight,” The Idiot
Iggy has had many different phases in his career, and his “Berlin years” writing and recording with David Bowie stand out to me as probably the most drastic, and in a way, prolific. “Sister Midnight” is more a state of mind than a composition, but certainly showcases how ahead of its time this song was. The early use of synthesizer in conjunction with real drums and bass were to feed the imagination of a New Wave that was still six years away.
Iggy Pop “Butt Town,” Brick by Brick
Why “Butt Town”? It has a great sense of humor. And, hell, Slash and I play on it!
