Rocking Tunes at Whiskey Jo's on 7-5-2023

When I heard "Rock This Town", it took me back to the days of hearing the Stray Cats for the first time. I was always mystified why their drummer played drums standing up - could he not afford a drum throne? - and thinking he was the only drummer who ever could and would ever play drums standing up. Obviously, this was in the early 1980s when this tune was released and MTV helped me form inaccurate opinions about drumming and drummers in those early days. While The Stray Cats introduced me to the rockabilly genre, I never really invested a lot of time into exploring it.

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https://youtu.be/ qU00W7BcIVI - Rock This Town

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When I heard "Fortunate Son", it took me back to the Spring of 1992 when I was playing drums in a band I've mentioned in the past - Old Stew - and how this tune was sometimes our first song of the night. Playing at Bonehead's on Center Point Road in Cedar Rapids was probably not as glorious as my mind likes to think it was, but that's okay, right? 

The building Bonehead's was in had been Dale's Fruit Market, which I remember the huge walk-in cooler with the automatic doors, before it was transformed into a bar - I don't recall the name of the first bar that opened in the building - before it eventually became Bonehead's, before that closed and was replaced by a Pioneer Food Store. Next to Bonehead's was a bar called "King Tut's Lounge" and it was the first place I heard a band play the Roy Orbison / Van Halen tune "Pretty Woman", though the name of the band is long gone from my memory. Sorry for the side step into the history of that building on Center Point Road in Cedar Rapids, but it felt relevant.

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https://youtu.be/ YQjPZPKr1Qs - Fortunate Son

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