Rant #1,497: Alternative Top 40

No, the title of today's entry does not refer to some brand new radio station playing the songs that should be played rather than the songs that are being played today.

No such thing. In my mind, all the current music is pure garbage.

But then again, I am an old fogey at 58 years of age.

No, this Rant is going to be one of my every-once-in-a-while blatant plugs for another site that I run, one which I have run for over a dozen years.

It is Alternative Top 40, a music site profiling songs that we all may have forgotten or perhaps never heard before.

It is part of Yahoo Groups, and I guess I felt it was time for a blatant plug of this site.

And I am going to break protocol here.

I am going to rerun a recent Rant--#1,446, from May 27 of this year--to describe the site to you.

The Rant has been updated to the current time, but the aim is the same--to get you interested in what I have done, week after week, just about every Sunday morning for the past dozen years.

Here goes:

"Yes, it is once again time to plug another site that I run that has nothing to do with this site, and nothing to do with Facebook.

It is my long-running Yahoo Groups site, Alternative Top 40.

Yahoo Groups, at this point in time, is one of the most maligned configurations on the Internet, and admittedly, it has brought a lot of this stuff on itself, by changing things way too much for most people to bear, fixing something that wasn't broken.

And then there is Facebook, which made it so much easier to post things like I do there ... but not quite.

Anyway, Alternative Top 40 is the place to find rare and unusual music tracks by some of your favorite artists, as well as some that you may not know too well.

The primary focus of the site is 1964 to 1971, the years that I consider the best in popular music, or at least, the best in rock music, or at most, the best in music in my life span which began in 1957.

Sure, some would argue with me, but the years that I have chosen run parallel to the Beatles' hit years in the U.S., so I will stay with that focus.

The site is a simple one.

I post usually between a dozen and 18 tunes each week, and members vote on the ones that they like the most. They can vote for up to six tunes each week.

The ones that garner the most votes remain available for another week; those that don't do as well are removed.

Simple as that.

On this week's chart, I have some interesting music; everybody from Micky Dolenz of Monkees fame with a solo recording to the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers" tune, one of their best album tracks which rarely gets played on the radio anymore.

It is all there, and everything in between.

I usually put up a lot of single A and B sides, and this week is no exception.

If you want to hear a very rare track, listen to "Pepe" by Duane Eddy. The "Guitar Man" recorded this for one of those all-star films that they used to have in the early 1960s, but you will never, ever hear this song on the radio. Then there is Sonny and Cher with "Plastic Man," a tune that still sounds like it was never finished properly, but was released quickly to push their popularity way back when.

And, there is a lot of other oddball stuff, like Freddy Cannon's "Fractured," Donovan's "Celia of the Seas," and Roger Miller's "Walkin' in the Sunshine."

Other artists on this week's chart include Bobby Darin, the Kinks, the Cowsills, Brian Hyland, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Herman's Hermits, the Four Seasons, Chris Montez, James and Bobby Purify, and the Lincoln Park Zoo.

About 75 percent of the recordings that I upload to the site are from my own collection, the remainder I obtain from other sources, including from members.

So please, take a look at the site. I think that you will enjoy it.

It can be accessed at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/AlternativeTop40/info."

And there you have it. Please visit the site, I think you will find it interesting, and please join up and vote when you do--there are some really interesting tunes posted there!

Anyway, enjoy the site.

I will be taking a day off on Monday for some personal reasons, but I will be back strong on Tuesday.

Have a good weekend--I will speak to you on the day after Monday.