5 Songs to Get You Through the Week #138

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. Mama Kin, by Buckcherry

While the Guns N' Roses cover is far more creative, driving, and original this cover by Buckcherry is pretty faithful to the original Aerosmith masterpiece. It's loud, bluesy, and fun. In all honesty, that's all it really needs to be considering this is bare bones, no frills attached rock n' roll. Buckcherry is perfect for covering Aerosmith and quite frankly I'm surprised I haven't heard them do it before they put out this EP/collection of singles.

2. Catcher in the Rye (Demo Version), by Guns N' Roses

Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if Guns N' Roses and Queen joined forces for a new song? Wonder no further! This demo of what would be a track from the Chinese Democracy album features guitar work from Queen guitarist Brian May, most notably on the solo. It's unfortunate that May's parts didn't make the final cut of the song because although I like Bumblefoot's playing, May's solo suited the song so much more.

3. Almost Easy, by Avenged Sevenfold

I'll admit that I'd forgotten completely about this song for a while, but when I rediscovered it, it pumped me up just as much as it had back in the day. If you're in serious need of some heavy metal that will get your blood pumping, your heart pounding, and your spirits raised then you have most certainly come to the right place on this one. They somehow manage to make this kind of metal fuse with piano flawlessly and it's perfect.

4. Live Wire, by Motley Crue

If you're looking for a more old school way to do the same thing that I mentioned in the song above, then this first single from Motley Crue's debut album ought to do the trick. It's got everything a good 80's hair metal tune needs: flash, balls, and some damn fine high ranged vocals. This song always brought me right back up whenever I needed to get lifted up as a teen/early tween. You can tell they were hungry and out to make a name for themselves with songs like this.

5. Open My Eyes (Acoustic), by Rival Sons

Rival Sons while promoting their album Great Western Valkyrie did an acoustic session at Juke Joint. They put a lot of their tunes, even some of the more loud thundering ones with serious balls to them into a stripped down state where they could shine in a different way. This version of this particular tune has just as much soul to it as the regular plugged in version that they had originally recorded for the album. It's its own thing though, which makes it even better.