5 Songs to Get You Through the Week #19

5 Songs to Get You Through the Week is a feature I run on Young Ears, Fresh Perspective on Sundays/early hours of Monday morning where I pick out 5 tunes that I think are notable and tell you a bit about them. The point is to give you some rocking music to help you deal with your weekday blues. You can either listen to one each day, listen to them all at once, or any other combination that you feel. As long as you can get through the week without the man getting you down, that's all I care about. Without further ado, here are the 5 tracks I've picked out for this week:

1. 20 Buck Spin, by Pentagram

Now before you go getting the wrong idea, no this is not a devil worship band. If you didn't see this week's Throwback Thursday feature then Pentagram is a doom metal band in a similar vein to Black Sabbath that also got their start in the early 70's. 20 Buck Spin is a bouncy rock n' roll jam that goes instrumental for somewhat extended periods (though there are some vocal parts that are fantastically melodic) for some blistering guitar solos. It's a great tune for headbanging and considered one of the band's classic tunes for a reason.

2. She Sells Sanctuary, by The Cult

Being one of The Cult's biggest hits, She Sells Sanctuary seems to have this mystical presence that starts and the very beginning of the song and carries on throughout its entirety. It is fun and upbeat, but at the same time it makes the hairs on your arms stand up with its almost eastern music sounding parts on the guitar mixed with the added on reverb. At the same time though the song is very representative of its time (the 80's); the near electronic tone of the drums gives that much away. Combine all that with Ian Astbury's powerful unique vocal timbre and you've got yourself one hell of a pop rock song.

3. Rocky Mountain Way, by Joe Walsh

After leaving The James Gang, Joe Walsh went on to have a pretty successful solo career throughout the 70's and beyond. It's pretty astounding how in Rocky Mountain Way Walsh is really just playing the most basic of blues forms and yet somehow making it utterly unique, powerful, and memorable even to this day. It just goes to show you that you can use the same technical aspects of any kind of music but twist it in a different way to make it almost entirely your own. I really have to applaud Walsh here.

4. Na Na Na, by Cozy Powell's Hammer

Drummer Cozy Powell was one of the best hired guns you could get in rock and metal for decades (having been in such bands like Rainbow, Whitesnake, Michael Schenker Group, Black Sabbath, Jeff Beck, etc.) till his untimely death in 1997 due to an automobile accident. That being said, he dipped his hands in TONS of projects; one of them being a short lived solo project in the early 70's called Cozy Powell's Hammer. They released only one single titled Na Na Na. It's a fun song about wanting to be a drummer in a rock n' roll band; not caring about what people think you have to do to get by in life. It's simple, joyful, and will help you kick those weekday blues.

5. Roadhouse Blues, by The Doors

If you want some straight up rocking blues with some balls to it, look no further than The Doors' classic Roadhouse Blues. That twangy brown sounding opening guitar riff augmented by honky-tonk keys just builds up into one of the most jumping and jiving tunes I've ever heard from The Doors. This is some straight up tough sounding man music. Like Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way it is just simple structured blues but with its own edge to it. Many bands since then have tried to emulate the kind of magic that The Doors brought to the blues.