Folks, I’ll be the first to tell you that our last CHART ATTACK! was just a little depressing. Marky Mark? Ugh! Color Me Badd? Ugggggh! Bryan Adams? Uggggggghhhh! Good news, though: I’m pleased to report that this week’s Top 10 is much, much better — sure, there are some mild clunkers, but the majority of these songs are absolutely fantastic. See if you agree as we attack November 3, 1973!
10. All I Know — Garfunkel 
9. Space Race — Billy Preston
8. Let’s Get It On — Marvin Gaye
7. Ramblin’ Man — The Allman Brothers Band
6. Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat — The DeFranco Family Featuring Tony DeFranco
5. Paper Roses — Marie Osmond
4. Half-Breed — Cher
3. Keep On Truckin’ (Part 1) — Eddie Kendricks
2. Angie — The Rolling Stones
1. Midnight Train to Georgia — Gladys Knight & the Pips
10. All I Know — Garfunkel (download)
Following the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel in 1970, Art Garfunkel removed his focus from the music business; for three years, he focused on his acting career, appearing in Mike Nichols movies such as Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, taught mathematics at a private school in Connecticut, and studied classical music in Europe. Finally, in 1973, he assembled a group of songwriters (what, you thought he was going to write songs himself?) and recorded songs for a new album, entitled Angel Clare. The first single, “All I Know,” was written by Jimmy Webb (the first of many Garfunkel/Webb collaborations) and was his first solo entry on the Top 10 — and by “first,” I mean “only,” though he did have three #1 hits on the Adult Contemporary charts. The song is exactly what you’d expect: musically, it’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” minus the bridge or troubled water, and lyrically, it’s deep into Mellow Gold territory. Art’s voice sounds a touch creepy here on the original, especially any time he gets near a low note. Still, it’s quite pretty, and you really can’t go wrong with songs like these, especially ones that feature Webb’s beautiful piano. The only thing I don’t understand is why, for his first few albums, Art was only billed as “Garfunkel.” Was he concerned that if he added the “Art,” people wouldn’t know who he was? How many Garfunkels are out there, really? If he wanted to capitalize on familiarity, perhaps he should have billed himself as “& Garfunkel.”
I found a nice video of Art Garfunkel performing “All I Know” on Saturday Night Live, but it’s on a Chinese website and I can’t figure out how to embed it. Still, it’s worth a watch; the song is much more effective in this stripped-down incarnation.
9. Space Race — Billy Preston
I personally had never heard “Space Race” before this week, but if you watched American Bandstand regularly, chances are you’ll recognize it as the music played during the mid-show commercial break, from 1974 until the show’s end. It worked great for that purpose, too — a sequel of sorts to 1972’s “Outa-Space,” “Space Race” is a thick slab of instrumental funk with a fantastic groove. But here’s the thing: on American Bandstand, you never got to hear more than a few seconds of the song. At around a minute and a half, it becomes pretty clear that a better title would have been “Holy Crap You Guys, I Just Got a New Keyboard and Look at All the Cool Sounds I Can Make, Wah Wah Wah Wah!” I can’t help but wonder if this song is what inspired Daryl Dragon to buy a Casio, and that just breaks my heart. Still, I can’t give Billy Preston too much grief. Apart from having the world’s greatest afro, the man was an unbelievable talent. And who doesn’t love the hell out of “Nothing From Nothing”?
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There seem to be two camps of people when it comes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: those who feel that rock and roll deserves a permanent place to showcase the important effect it’s has had on popular culture, and those who believe that the intention of rock music was rebellion against the mainstream; that a stuffy old shrine goes against everything the music stands for, and screw you if you don’t agree with them. I belong to the former group, partly because I’m from Cleveland, Ohio and got caught up in the hysteria of bringing the Rock Hall to the north coast, and also because I feel that there needs to be a place where people can look at rock and roll as an art and examine its history. I’ve been to the museum, and could have stayed for days marveling at Hendrix’s guitar and fragments of Keith Moon’s drum kit.![2158f0cdd7a03742aec58110.L._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/2158f0cdd7a03742aec58110.L._SCLZZZZZZZ_1.jpg "2158f0cdd7a03742aec58110.L._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]")
Last week, I took the redeye back from Vegas while still slightly hung over from a blowout the night before. I hadn’t fully recovered a few days later, but that didn’t prevent me from stopping by my regular hangout. I decided to join Giles and Asregadoo on 
Since I started listening to blues, that’s been a hard question for me to answer. It’s important, because it speaks to what blues is, really. Can Clapton play the blues, really? Sure he knows the chords better than most any player, ever, and his technical facility was never in doubt, even before some spray-painting urchin deified him in the famous English graffito.
Mick Jagger
Frank Stallone. The man has his fans — in fact, as you’ll see below, he still tours with the Frank Stallone Band, and once had a hit, “Far From Over,” that certain commenters ’round these parts profess to enjoying in an unironic way — but not even the most cogent, impassioned defense of Frank’s singing career can get around the fact that he’s the black sheep in a family that includes a promoter of women’s wrestling, a male hairdresser, and the man responsible for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Or, for that matter, the fact that Frank released a country album — titled, of course, Songs From the Saddle — in 2005, the same year he appeared as a consultant on NBC’s boxing reality series, The Contender. According to his Wikipedia entry, Frank is “currently building a multi-million dollar estate in Nantucket, Massachusetts,” which is both a testament to everything wonderful about America and our latest reason for wanting to kill ourselves. 