Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for February 4th

Mick's best lyrics? -- Mac's best album? -- Happy Birthday Uncle Vinny!!!

2/4/1966 (54 years ago today) - "You're father's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax...": The Rolling Stones release one of their mightiest singles of the decade with "19th Nervous Breakdown" and Mick Jagger establishes himself as one of the new generation's premier rebellious spokesmen -- This track is (over)loaded with some of the best lyrics he's ever come up with: "You were still in school when you had that fool who really messed your mind/And after that you turned your back on treating people kind...". Really, every line's a killer, plus there's the buzz-saw feedback guitar riffage of Keith Richards and Brian Jones and the almost-frightening-psychedelic Bill Wyman bass-line at the end. Superb work all around...

2/4/1977 (43 years ago today) - What can we say about this album that you don't already know?: When Fleetwood Mac release the "Rumours" LP on this date, could anyone have predicted 45 million in sales and counting? Weirdly, because it is so over-played, it's actually a rather under-appreciated piece of work. Really. Try this, just close your eyes and pretend you've never heard "Dreams" before in your life. Sublime and magical.

2/4/1948 - Happy Birthday to Vincent Furnier, 72 years old today -- Once there was a time when Alice Cooper was genuinely scary and he/the band were really proto-punk-pioneers that knew how to gloss -- How about this run of records: "Killer" and "Love It To Death" (both from 1971), "School's Out" (1972) and especially the flawless "Billion Dollar Babies" (1973) are all uniformly masterful and excellent (look at those four again, Holy Guillotine Batman!!!), but then you got a past-his-prime/sounds-like-a-cliche Vincent Price guest voicing your stuff (1975's "Welcome To My Nightmare" which, c'mon, you know is way overproduced, doubling as a sort-of-'soundtrack' for a rather dreary and unconvincing TV special) and you follow that up by admitting you really love the game of golf, your career cred inevitably takes a [well-deserved] whacking. We still really like those early albums though...

Share your meanderings with the Calendar here on our web site and on the WBLM Facebook and Twitter pages with the hashtag #TommysCoffeeBreak.

"You were always spoiled with a thousand toys but still you cried all night...", xoxo!