The following piece originally appeared on Overlooked Gems of My Lifetime, a personal blog I have not updated in too long. It's been a downer of a week on many levels, so I capped it off by revisiting this album. Then I thought, Why not revisit this piece and share it with you while I'm at it? I hope your week has not required a spin of this overlooked gem, but if it has, more power to you! Finally, let me make a special shout out to this album's second-biggest fan (not), Townsman General Slocum. Enjoy.

This frequently derided live album marks the end of the road for the The Velvet Underground. It's a cassette-recorded, nearly bootleg affair, in which the band plays to what sounds like a dozen Max's regulars who are audibly more interested in scoring than checking out Lou's last show with the band. Although the band's better-known and cherished 1969: Velvet Underground Live is objectively "better," Max's has always gotten more spins on my turntable.

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Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" was tough, stylish treat on the radio when I was growing up. It wasn't a smash hit on Philadelphia radio in my middle school days, but it would come on now and then and fit right in with the '70s soul and downbeat-heavy rock that I sought out as hormones raged. Later in the '70s, I'd dig rare FM radio spins of songs like "Over You" and "Manifesto." As bad as commercial rock radio was becoming by that time, playlists still allowed for some "play," some experimentation. Those chart-scraping Roxy Music singles occupied a similar place in my heart with other slightly dark, soulful not-quite-hits, like J. Geils Band's "One Last Kiss." Some day I need to gather all those last-gasp, blue-eyed rockin' soul numbers of the late-70s on one mix CD.

I never got around to buying an actual Roxy Music album (or a J. Geils Band album, for that matter) while in high school. The little bit of Roxy Music I was familiar with had qualities I liked, but it required more patience than I could muster. Compared with David Bowie's "Young Americans," a TSOP-influenced song that continues to excite me in an immediately gratifying way from beginning to end to this day, the super-cool "Love Is the Drug" was much more...cool. And I wasn't that cool.

It wasn't until freshman year in college that I first heard the mind-blowing early Roxy Music I'd only read about in magazines and books. An older friend and mentor plied me with some of the tools for deeper understanding before throwing the band's first album on his Bang & Olufsen turntable and and CRANKING UP his super-hi-fi system. I must have been grinning and rocking back like Danny DeVito's Martini from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

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Pinker and prouder

Some of you may be aware of my Overlooked Gems of My Lifetime blog, which has been inactive since - not coincidentally - the launch of this blog version of Rock Town Hall. It's time I put a little work into that concept again - and make sure to celebrate some things I love wholeheartedly, with no intent to confuse and educate readers.

Recently I pulled out my lone album by The Prisoners, A Taste of Pink. It sounded as rockin' and fun as ever, and the vinyl was still pink. It's hard to find the space between songs when placing the needle on a particular song on a pink-vinyl album, but the tracks on this album make the effort worthwhile.

I never bothered to find out much about this '80s garage-mod band from somewhere in England. A friend owned another album by them, but it was not as good as the one I happened to take a chance on. I never bothered hearing another note by these guys. One great album by any '80s garage-mod band is enough. (God, as I type that sentence I sense myself looking in the mirror, holding an unopened box of my band's second record!) Honestly, though, I can only take so much garage and mod rock, especially when the lyrics and fuzz-guitar solos are nothing special. This album, however, is together! Simply put, it works. The guitars are chunky. The organ player cooks up that Deep Purple "Hush"/Steppenwolf stew. The singers pull no punches. I have FUN while listening to it. It's a good time to get my lab coat pressed.

Since this is a rare album I've never spent much time thinking about, I'm going to do nothing more but share some tracks with you. Send your lab coat to the cleaner and check out The Prisoners!

"Better in Black"

"Maybe I Was Wrong"

"Threw My Heart Away"

"Come to the Mushroom"