5 Songs to Get You Through the Week #103

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. Ain't Gonna Cry No More, by Whitesnake

This has always been one of my favorite Whitesnake tunes. It's the perfect blend of acoustic and hard rock. Jon Lord's synthesizer solos in this one are pretty cool too. They fit in pretty seamlessly to the song. David Coverdale sings so soulfully, passionately, and honestly in this one. Every last lyric is one you can tell is something he genuinely feels down to his core. You don't hear a whole lot of music like this any more, sadly.

2. Lady, by David Coverdale

This is one of those songs where the moment it comes on it's impossible for me to not have at least the faintest trace of a smile and dance a little bit no matter how blue I'm feeling. It is rather upbeat and has driving around in summer time written all over it. That slide guitar melody is one of the nicest sounds to ever bless my ears. Soothes my soul and puts a smile in my heart for sure. The horn section especially adds a nice bit of sunshine.

3. Love Child, by Deep Purple

I really think the Tommy Bolin era material from Deep Purple is some of the most under rated rock n' roll to ever come out of the 70's. The band really did some of its best work despite the fact that some of them were having problems with drugs and there was a great deal of internal strife within the band (especially due to original guitarist Ritchie Blackmore having left the band recently). This tune in particular kicks a WICKED sexy groove. It was originally meant to be reggae, but they turned it into hard rock. I think the end result is quite nice.

4. Waiting on You, by Coverdale - Page

I find it a crime that the collaboration between David Coverdale and Jimmy Page didn't take off more. The songs on the one album they did together were pretty damn good. They do sound a little too much like Led Zeppelin at certain points, but at the same time it's still a neat throwback. I think it was probably the wrong point in time when they did this collab. This tune has some good slide playing from Page. Kind of matches the old school Whitesnake vibe, but with Page's own stamp on it and with a little more production and balls.

5.  Behind the Smile, by Roger Glover featuring David Coverdale

This tune is kind of odd, but this is one of the coolest outside of Deep Purple projects David Coverdale ever participated in. The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast was a concept album by at the time ex-Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover based on a children's book of the same name. Glover got many performers to contribute to this album including Coverdale even though he joined the band after Glover was fired. The end result is rather mysterious and intriguing. The vocals here have a real smooth whiskey type flavor to them.