Is this the price to pay for having made it too far through life without having had your mind blown?

So it’s all over, fans of The Sopranos. What did you learn? That brutal dago mobsters have feelings too? That the root of so many of our problems is Mom? That Steven Van Zandt leads one of the most charmed lives on the planet? That even a wop mobster can enjoy getting head from another man? That killing people on a weekly basis can lead to much anxiety? That family, in its literal sense, is what keeps us going? I hope you enjoyed the ride.

As you might be able to tell, I was not a fan of the 4 episodes of The Sopranos I caught over the years. Now that I’ve got my digs out of the way, what I’m interested in is the concept of the quick-snip ending. I heard that the series ended with the Soprano family sitting in a diner, surrounded by suspicious characters, friggin’ Journey playing on the jukebox, and then a quick cut to black. In musical terms, I’m reminded of the effectiveness of this technique on one of those Sex Pistols songs. Any quick-snip song endings you particularly dig? Were you OK with their lack of closure? I look forward to your comments.

Here’s your chance to shine on one or a number of seemingly dull questions!

A couple of days ago Townsman Trolleyvox passed along an RTH-worthy question that he picked up from WFMU DJ Mike Lupica. Lupica asked, and we will too, What’s the best band that you ever got turned onto by your sweetie? It doesn’t have to be through marriage, it can just as easily be some ridiculously popular or obscure band that you first heard through an (ex/current) boy/girlfriend, or general heart throb of any stripe.

I’ve been listening to a collection of ’80s underground sensations The Embarrassment this week. I’ve long liked them since stumbling on them as the first opener for PiL and Naked Raygun in Chicago shortly before the release of The Flowers of Romance. They were a great, down-to-earth, humorous, punky pop band that never made much of a splash and would lead, in part, to the formation of another down-to-earth, high-spirited, punky pop band that I loved, Big Dipper. Anyhow, listening to them this week has had me thinking of at least three questions:

• What bands around today rock in a “down-to-earth” fashion?
• What’s your favorite precurssor band to a later band that you also love (eg, The Embarrassment to Big Dipper, The Move to ELO, The Beatles to Wings, Uncle Tupelo to Wilco), with emphasis on love for the precurssor band (ie, simply “listing” a precurssor band to show how much you know will be discounted if no sincere love is attached)?
• What’s the best opening band that you stumbled across without warning?

Finally, as we wrap up an entertaining and enlightening week on Rock Town Hall and head into the weekend, let me know what you think of the following songs that, over the last few days, have made me feel there’s still something worth digging anew.

This first one was particularly enlightening. It’s a song I’ve always loved in its original form but I love all over, in a new way, in this version, which I’d owned for some time but which had never previously made an impression on me before.
Barbara Lewis, “Ask the Lonely”

Here’s another number that I’ve known and loved by Al Green, but this one’s cool too.
Eddie Floyd, “I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do)”

Here’s one of the songs I overheard in a Toronto record store in early May that caused me to pull $10 CAN and plunk it down on the counter for my first Hawkwind album – this stuff is totally unlike what I’d expected (ie, something more hippie/prog, along the lines of Gong).
Hawkwind, “Orgone Accumulator”

I downloaded most of a Curt Kirkwood (Meat Puppets) album from eMusic that I had never heard about when it was released. It’s pretty good – much better than the stuff they put out in their ZZ Top phase.
Curt Kirkwood, “Gold”