Top 5 gets a little heavier than yesterday’s offering.

5. My Kinda Lover – Billy Squier (1981) – Hey, what do you know, another love song? This one rocks a bit more than any of yesterday’s offerings but love songs come in all shapes and sizes to get your motor racin’.

4. Couldn’t Get It Right – Climax Blues Band (1977) – Contrary to the title, I’d say these guys got it real right with this one. What I couldn’t get was that this wound up being some white dudes from England. At any rate, a standard on the jukebox at Galesburg’s Skate Palace.

3. Magic Man – Heart (1976) – A solid rocker from the Wilson sisters that always brings to mind a bit of trivia offered up by my buddy, John Junk, many years ago. According to John (a bit of a lyricist himself back in the day), this song represents perhaps the first usage of the term “home girl.” Entirely unintended I suspect, but still brings a smile.

2. Crazy Train – Ozzy Osbourne (1980) – Killer rocker that my kids can all identify, perhaps because it appears in the animated film, Megamind, and is sung by the voice of the deer lawn ornament in another animated flick, Gnomeo and Juliet. Hey, I’ll take my kids getting exposure to some classic rock wherever they can get it.

1. Watching The Wheels – John Lennon (1981) – A great tune relating Lennon’s relative absence from the music scene upon his return to the music scene. My favorite Lennon cut ever and probably more than any of my other old tunes, it takes me back to a lot of 80’s places, from carefree days to rough glimpses of mortality. In regards to the latter and Lennon, such a shame we never got to see what more was in store.

Lots more stuff to come in October, hope you’ll stop by again.  Talk to you later.  Troy

How about another scan of the radio dial? An abbreviated version this time around with a “Top 5 Trip Tunes” as the round trip to my Iowa fishing hole is about half the time of my regular Illinois trips.

5. Didn’t We Almost Have It All – Whitney Houston (1987) – Honesty is the best policy but this one feels a little like admitting that I also dig some MeatLoaf or Air Supply. Over the top sort of Broadway number here, but the lady could flat out sing without the vocal histrionics looming on the horizon from the likes of Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men, my departure point from contemporary radio.

4. Shine A Little Love – ELO (1979) – Not being made of money growing up, my vinyl collection was rather limited but the Discovery album containing this cut was worth the investment of some yard mowing money. Just learned an interesting fact about it recently too, as the menacing figure on the back cover is Brad Garrett, later of Everybody Loves Raymond fame, kinda cool.

3. Let’s Go – The Cars (1979) – Ah yes, a junior high summer with this tune playing on cassette over and over, rewind required. And a real high quality version that I recorded by placing my cassette tape player in front of my clock radio and hoping my younger siblings would be quiet or elsewhere for three and a half minutes, right.  (Note: this is the back cover of the Candy O album containing “Let’s Go”, front cover is a classic and more risqué).

2. Brilliant Disguise – Bruce Springsteen (1987) – A pretty dark look at relationships from “The Boss”, a real grownup song. However, my love of lyrics combined with an inability to resist some sophomoric humor finds me forever chuckling as “The Boss” uses “wee wee” in the tune. Of course, his line “But come the wee wee hours, well maybe baby the gypsy lied” refers to late night/early morning. But as a lyrical nut, I can’t resist, just adds a little something extra to what is already a favorite cut.

1. Who Are You – The Who (1978) – Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can catch the uncensored version of this one on the radio which I suspect has prompted many a listener who is unfamiliar with the tune to raise an eyebrow and utter, “What did he just say?” Yep, Roger Daltrey just dropped that “bomb” and in another nod towards never growing up, I still get a kick out of the old school songs with bad words that have long been “snuck by” on the airwaves. This one rocks anyway, just an added bonus that keeps me on the edge of my seat every time it comes on the radio.

Dig my tunes and always fun to head off on a tangent that may be a bit of a stretch for an outdoor blog. But the drive has always been an integral part of any outing, whether fishing, trapping, camping or a family day trip. As I frequently fly solo these days, the radio serves as a welcome outdoor traveling companion. And I’m back on the road to the fishing hole this morning, so…Talk to you later. Troy

And our countdown resumes with the Top 5.

5. Still The Same (1978) – Bob Seger – A great piece about somebody or a collection of somebodies we’ve all met. Maybe you can put your finger on ‘em, maybe it’s just a bunch of bits and pieces of personalities.

4. Hair of the Dog (1975) – Nazareth – Good old rock, lyrics reference “poison ivy” yet avoid the song title entirely, title cut to album with a cool cover, cowbell and yes, still so much fun to hear a bad word on the radio, over and over and over…

3. Travelin’ Man/Beautiful Loser (1975) – Bob Seger – Dig it when you get two songs for the price of one like the live versions of this pair. Another cool look at personalities and memories including some that you may resemble.

2. You’re So Vain (1972) – Carly Simon – While hip hop popularized the “diss track” to disrespect others, this 70’s bit of spite is one of my all-time faves. And you gotta dig a song that includes the word “gavotte” to go along with yacht and apricot, great stuff.

1. One Night In Bangkok (1984) – Murray Head – Tough to explain here so I won’t but this song actually ranks among my favorite fishing songs. Many years ago, high school in fact. Oh yeah, it was co-written by the guys from ABBA, how cool is that?

Well, that was fun. More fishing stuff headed your way over the next week or so with a look back at a classic catch, some video clips from recent trips, a welcome Top 5 update and hopefully a couple more fishing reports.  That sounds like fun, too.  Hope you’ll tune in and talk to you later. Troy

And now, on with the rest of the countdown…

5. “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” – Led Zeppelin (1970) – “Want to tell you about the girl I love, my she looks so fine…” but it’s all downhill for Robert Plant from there as she’s got some bad habits “all day”, “all the time.”

4. “Anyway You Want It” – Journey (1980) – Always dug the guitar-vocal exchange in this tune, takes me back to the classic movie “Caddyshack” (click for link), lives on in advertisements and still stops me in my tracks when surfing the radio dial.

3. “Don’t Look Back” – Boston (1978) – Just a given, I always stop the dial on any tune by this rock and roll band.

2. “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” – Bachman Turner Overdrive (1974) – Not politically correct but the stutter is killer. And what rocker would pass up a chance to hang with the “devil woman” although a trip to the doctor is also referenced. M-m-m-maybe in the 70’s…

1. “Burnin’ For You – Blue Oyster Cult (1981) – Cool band name, solid rock and roll and a staple from the origins of MTV. A primitive video in retrospect but a great piece of rock from the eclectic days that were the early MTV landscape. This one does what music does best, gets you moving, even singing, and takes you back in time.

So, there have it, another attempt to work tunes into an outdoor blog. Not much of a stretch in my humble opinion. For we all know that with any worthwhile adventure, part of the fun is getting there. Talk to you later. Troy

Once upon a time in the 80’s, some friends bestowed upon me the designation of “Stat Boy.”

I was good with that term of affection as it was an accurate moniker at the time. Still is, although these days I believe I may have achieved ‘Stat Man’ status. Neither here nor there I would suppose in the grand scheme of things, but I do have some crazy fishing logs.

Being born a baseball fan, stats are just a part of my makeup. An aspect of that innate allegiance is that I also find milestones pretty cool. So, earlier this year I began to get kind of excited as I approached outdoor posting number 1,000 since taking up writing back on April 30, 2002. Well, it turns out that I got so carried away with the kickoff of this new website and its accompanying social media stuff that I wound up blazing right on by posting #999, just recently realizing that I’d missed out on the planned celebratory posting by a substantial margin.

But since this is my project and I can do whatever I want, including patting myself on the back, we’re gonna take a look at some of what has went down over the last 15 plus years with blog posting #1,054 instead.

4/29/02 The catch that prompted me to write a newsletter to family and friends detailing the “Family Fishing Hall of Fame” record book

By The Numbers

5,596 = Days since my first stab at outdoor writing
1,053 = Total postings prior to this recap.
5.31 = Avg. number of days per blog posting (not bad over a 15+ year period)
69 = Avg. number of postings per year over last 15 years
139 = Number of firsthand fishing reports
7-3 = My largest bass caught since sharing my fish stories
99 = Top 5 weekly updates (project began in 2014)
456 = Total bass submitted to the Top 5 project
26 = Anglers who’ve contributed to the Top 5 project
13 = Bigfoot related postings

Special Guest back in the fall of  2011

40 = Most consecutive days with a blog entry (5/1/17 to 6/9/17)
35 = Emiquon related postings, the most of any fishing hole

Never seen anything quite like The Emiquon Preserve

31 = Trapping postings
2 = Number of Justin Bieber photos to appear on the blog

These new fishing logs were one of my April Fool’s jokes, seriously.

2 = Number of April Fool’s Day jokes
4 = Pop/rock song titles borrowed for blog titles (“Déjà Vu”, “Old Days”, “Like A Rock” and “The Sound of Silence”)
5 = MLB players mentioned in a blog title (Hank Aaron, Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, Ichiro Suzuki)
3 = Textspeak samples used in blog titles (TMI, IMHO, IA LMB PB)
9 = Legendary lure postings

 

Legendary Lures, the good, old Emiquon Special and the Gapen Fishie

Along the way I have somehow managed to reference Snow White, margaritas, Bocephus, roadkill, Freddie Patek and chicken pox in blog postings. I have also paraphrased Navin R. Johnson, created an outdoor version of “The 12 Days of Christmas”, gave my blog to Bigfoot, wrote a fishing tackle editorial utilizing Hall & Oates song titles and have used the words paraskevidekatriaphobia, chalupa, sewage and exposed bottoms in blog titles. Not to mention thousands of pictures and well over a quarter million words.

  

Yep, I’m actually kind of proud of this stuff. Whod’ve thunk that a whim to share some fish stories via email with family and friends back in April of 2002 would wind up getting this out of control? Been a fun ride…

    

I could go on with further stats and nonsense but I will spare you for the time being. After all, I’ve still got a blog in spite of some of that stuff and I certainly look forward to continuing to use it for my amusement and yours if you elect to play along. In fact, I’ve still got close to two hundred postings in various stages of incompletion that have their sights set on eventual public consumption one of these days as time permits.

Anyway, thanks to all who’ve invested a few minutes of your day along the way to read and share your comments. Now go do something productive, like fishing. Talk to you later. Troy