5 Songs to Get You Through the Week #88

5 Songs to Get You Through the Week is a feature I run on Young Ears, Fresh Perspective on Sundays/early hours of Monday morning where I pick out 5 tunes that I think are notable and tell you a bit about them. The point is to give you some rocking music to help you deal with your weekday blues. You can either listen to one each day, listen to them all at once, or any other combination that you feel. As long as you can get through the week without the man getting you down, that's all I care about. Without further ado, here are the 5 tracks I've picked out for this week:

1. We Will Be Together Some Day, by Robin Trower

Guitarist Robin Trower lost his wife within the past year or so. In order to help himself deal with the grief of losing his beloved, he kept himself busy writing music. One of the songs on the new album titled We Will Be Together Some Day not only shows that the man after all these decades still has his chops and his ability to put pure emotion into sound, but it also pays better tribute to his lost wife than anything else ever could.

2. Kill the King, by Rainbow

This was if I remember correctly one of if not THE first Rainbow song I ever heard. If you ask me, this song right here was the birth of power metal. It's powerful, driving, melodic in the guitar work from Ritchie Blackmore, and has killer vocals from Ronnie James Dio singing about taking down a tyrannical king. It just pounds and rumbles from start to finish. Had Rainbow and this tune in particular never existed then metal as we know it would be entirely different.

3. Back From Cali, by Slash

Before Myles Kennedy was hired on as Slash's solo band singer the two of them did a couple of tracks on Slash's solo debut record Slash. One of them was Back From Cali - a bluesy finger picked tune that then builds up into a powerful full band wall of sound kind of experience. It's not exactly what you would expect from the guitarist who was in Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver to play. However, if you actually give it a chance it's pretty good.

4. Wind in the Trees, by Joe Satriani

This has always been one of my personal favorites by Satch. It came from his 2010 release Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards. I highly recommend listening to this one with headphones because only then will you get the full experience of feeling like you're sitting up in a tree with the wind blowing gently through the leaves at night. It's such a calm, relaxing soundscape to get yourself lost in. It really is something you have to check out for yourself.

5. Doctor Doctor, by UFO

Doctor Doctor has to be UFO's biggest tune of all time. At least their most famous and most radio played anyway. It has this loud, proud, rumbling intro that builds up into an uptempo swing with dual harmonized guitar melodies going on. Surprisingly there is no guitar solo in a tune as epic as this, but I guess when you have enough of the right stuff you don't necessarily need to have on in there. Definitely some of Michael Schenker's best guitar work.