Well, what do you know? This one really does go to eleven! (It’ll go a few more beyond that, actually…)

I came across this week’s band thanks to a fan-made music video combining the film “Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind” with the song “Surefire.” (The video’s title? “Giant Armored Maggots.” Well, it does rather neatly sum up a significant element of the movie. Unfortunately I can’t find the video file anymore, which may be for the best considering it was a low-resolution RealMedia effort. One of these days I’m going to make my own rendition with high-quality footage…) Three CD purchases later and I’ve found that Econoline Crush neatly fills the need in my library for a particular kind of vaguely alternative-sounding harder-edged rock sound. There are other bands in the same realm among my collection, to be sure, but I figured most of you wouldn’t be as familiar with this one.

Let’s see what you think of their work. Please enjoy “Surefire,” “Blunt,” and “You Don’t Know What It’s Like.”

Next week we’ll check in with one of the iconic figures of rock ‘n’ roll. Join us, won’t you?

We’re on the home stretch, friends!

This week is just a silly throwback to those heady days of yore. Yes, the 1980s. For good old-fashioned pop/rock stylings with just the right amount of cheese, it’s hard to do better than Rick Springfield. Please enjoy Bop ‘Til You Drop, Dream In Color (from the album that ended his chart run in America, “Rock of Life”) and Stranger In The House (from my favorite album of his, “Tao”).

We’ll go with something rather more obscure and “alternative” next week…

My mother and I don’t have very many things in common, and in fact for quite some time I avoided becoming a fan of Jethro Tull because she liked to play along with some of their songs on her flute. I probably don’t like them in the same way that she does, of course. I listen a lot of their stuff from the ’80s, stuff that most Tull fans turn their nose up at. (They especially despise the Under Wraps album, and I adore it.)

Because the song “Steel Monkey” played on the radio a bit when I was starting my music collection in a big way, I picked up Crest of a Knave, the Grammy winning “heavy metal” album. (There are layers of irony in the fact that so many people were incensed because “Metallica should have won it!” Now, of course, it’s fashionable to loathe Metallica… go figure.) During my later boxed-set craze I acquired the compact disc rendition of the 5-LP box, 20 Years of Jethro Tull, a 3 disc set that seems to have vanished in favor of a single-disc Highlights sampler rather quickly. The 20 Years material guided me through the back catalog, and while I did pick up a couple of their later releases I just don’t have the same fondness for their post-Rock Island work that I do for the “middle years” material. With that said, I do highly recommend the live A Little Light Music album from 1992. It’s worth the cost almost for the stage banter alone. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing sometimes.

I’m a weirdo, in case you’d forgotten.

At any rate, let’s play three of my very favorite Tull tunes. “Broadsword” comes from 1982’s excellent Broadsword and the Beast, “Heat” is off of the highly electronic Under Wraps, and “Part of the Machine” was the sole new piece of music on the 20 Years compilation. (It shows up on a recent reissue of Crest of a Knave as a bonus track, for what that’s worth.)

Next week we’ll come home for some fluffy American ’80s pop/rock music, the kind that Grandma… never used to make, come to think on it.

We’re starting off the back nine eight seven with something silly and not terribly meaningful. I like an occasional bit of Duran Duran, not because they’re the greatest band ever or because of some event in my youth or anything of that sort. No, they just happen to write some songs I like tapping my feet to on occasion.

So, for want of any other criteria for selecting songs, I went with (sort of) a theme. Enjoy “Planet Earth,” “Taste the Summer” and “Winter Marches On.”

We’ll be plowing ahead next week with one of the old masters of the trade. Stay tuned, won’t you?