Disco was becoming played out in America at the start of the 1980's but it was just getting started in Italy. Pino D'Angiò landed a YMCA-level Italian hit with the song Ma Quale Idea in 1980. The following year he unleashed the full Power of Pino with his debut LP Balla! This is Italo-Disco at it's Satanic best.

WoV was way too loose with the drizzugs to build any sort of career sustainability - but they managed to uncork the forgotten classic Call of the West along the way - angular art rock that cuts through the collective 1982 whoosh of parachute pants.

The Ghetto Brothers were one of thousands of street gangs that skulked the busted-ass neighborhoods of the Bronx in leather vests during the 1970's. I think they are the only one that formed a band though. Power Fuerza is the lone musical relic left behind by the good-guy gang known as the GB's.

Hair Hunk Titans Poison fought their way thru pubic lice and a universally-perceived lack of talent to crank out their debut - Look What the Cat Dragged In - an overachieving classic squeezed into a 1986 already overstuffed with guitars, drums and spandex pant.

The USA was on fire in 1969 with Vietnam War protests and such. Everyone had a voice and wanted to be heard. But they also wanted to be SEEN. It was a flashy year of afros, flower power, bouncy boob-curtains and bush. The last year of the sixties was an eccentric one - and it was largely soundtracked by the four average Americans of Creedence Clearwater Revival. CCR dropped three in 1969 and Green River gets the gold star on it's forehead. Roots rock classic for your face.

During the 1970's while China and Vietnam were busy playing grab-ass and keep-away with the Spratly and Percocet island chains in the South China Sea, the other countries surrounding the water like Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia funk'd their way into the next decade. Ayo Ke Disco, curated by Alice from Soundway Records, provides us safe listening passage thru this fantastic sea of sound.

LCD Soundsystem is an exhaustive one-hundred minute affair that showcases the best of what the combination of rock and dance music can become when crafted by the hands of an erudite music nerd. LCD eponymous - the start of a relatively flawless catalog that continues into the now.

Marty Robbins' cinematic western music classic was released at the end of a decade that would soon be overshadowed by the one that followed. JFK was about to be President, the Beatles were about to form, but for now in 1959, we have Marty Robbins singing songs about other men. And horses.

So few bands remain that were born during the post-MTV, pre-streaming and social media purgatorial zone of the mid-aughts. Woods are still with us. And despite having one significant kink in their curb appeal, they bring twenty years of codeine-dipped freak folk and high-value return to the listener's ears. City Sun Eater in the River of Light is my favorite of their hot dozen.

The 1980s proved that as big as forty-something millionaire cultural icon Bob Dylan was during the decade, he was not bigger than the ever-evolving and fickle world of rock and roll. ATO Records' A Tribute to Bob Dylan in the 80s contains seventeen covers of songs from Bob's least-celebrated decade.