Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

The reissue of Thunder's Back Street Symphony sound sufficiently great to make me dig out my old copy of Their Finest Hour, a sixteen tune 'best of' from '95 bought at the Tower firesale in Pasadena.

The original copy, which I'd reviewed for a newspaper around fifteen years ago, was a repackaging for the US market. Didn't look at all like the UK version. This one had a photo of Harry James, the drummer, dressed in a tutu and, I think, was made up to capitalize on the video for "Dirty Love." Anyway, the reissue is the original UK cover art.

"Dirty Love" was a tremendous party tune, even included 'na-na'-na's', and at least half the record is just about on a par with it. It probably saved Thunder from being totally wiped by grunge in the US market although they lasted here until '95 and never seemed to be able to build on what "Dirty Love" furnished them.

It's all meat-and-potatoes very hard rock and pop. Thunder could write nice hooks and not humiliate themselves in the lyric department. "Englishmen on Holiday" is fairly amusing for its story of Brit hooliganism at Euro resorts. "Distant Thunder," which closes the album is great metal boogie. "Love Walked In" was the obligatory ballad, something Thunder did well without much sop.

Along with the best of has made me consider picking up the other two from their first three.

Also great over the holidays were SPV's reissues of the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, one of the pieces of the British blues boom that didn't make it. Surprisingly, four albums on two double CD sets. Sometimes they imitated all the people that did last, for a couple songs you swear it's Savoy Brown, for another Ten Years After. Cover art by Hipgnosis, production made to sound like Mike Vernon. The first album has "Chevrolet," retitled as "Watch and Chain." Foghat would get much more use out of it years later. Dr. Dunbar's Prescription was their most second and most successful album. It looks a psyche LP but it's still mid-tempo white boy blooz with a heavy Hammond sound. If you're a fanatic for this Brit stuff, these reissues hit the spot.

Aynsley Dunbar is one of the Zelig's of hard rock. He seems to have been in many really big bands just, infrequently with indifferent results, most notably Journey, I think (although he seemed to be in the right place at the right time for Whitesnake). Notable Frank Zappa sideman, also on some Jefferson Starship LPs.

Repackage of Iron Butterfly's last two mid-Seventies albums, Scorching Beauty and Sun and Steel. Great album art but only two original members, guitarist Erik Braunn and drummer Ron Bushy. Not at all like the psych organ 25-million sold In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida Butterfly.

Completely different, showing some yen to do Brit-style glam pop. Almost unbelievable.
Guitarist Erik Braun sings, sounds like a poor man's Brian Ferry or someone in Badfinger's back line, or Cockney Rebel with loud guitar. One or two things sound like early Yes or Badger, the rest interspersed with US-centric boogie so they could still entertain in the bars without frightening people screaming for the oldie. Makes for a diverse listen in the 70's hard rock genre. Utterly panned. Didn't sound like anything else in the market at the
time. If you liked the odd mid-70's losers like Captain Beyond or Pavlov's Dog, this stands a good chance of scratching that itch.

16 weren't properly heard in their prime. Chalk it up to poor distribution and a mighty sound that didn't exactly fit the style, being far more violent in riff and concussion than the great stoner mean. 16 smoked in an unfastened way, like the guy with an irrational number of burning cigarettes stuffed in his maw on the cover of their first album, Scott Case.

Bridges to Burn is their new one. Because it's on Relapse, it will have better play than anything they did in the intervening fifteen years or so. And, wowza, they haven't aged a bit, being just as pounding and enraged. Good album, see here for a longer write.

got the new vines album in the mail the other day. you remember them, right? saviours from the last "rock" "revolution" along with, um, i dunno, the datsuns and the white stripes or whoever. anyway, it's unlistenable. in the red oversaturated horror show. i literally can't listen to it cuz of the sonic hell it puts you through. and it's reason enough to listen to old iron butterfly albums. lord knows, the snowboarding highlight clip industry needs rock bands like the vines to keep them in montage music, but no ordinary human needs them anywhere or anyhow. singer supposedly was diagnosed with asperger's syndrome a while ago and i would have given them at least a smidge of cred if they had named their album *Welcome To Ass Burger, How May We Help You?* but they are too lame to be funny.

A little write-up on hearing Patto's "The Man" from their 1970 debut as part of trailer music for Seth Rogen's mall cop movie, "Observe and Report". Here. Good band, good album, vanished without much trace. Good to see someone in Hollywoodland listens to it.

SWEET PERFORMS AT HOUSE OF BLUES ON APRIL 30TH

The UK Rock Band Behind Fierce Hits Ballroom Blitz, Fox On The Run, Love Is Like Oxygen, Little Willy, Hellraiser, Teenage Rampage, Blockbuster And Action Will Perform In LA

WHO: UK rock band Sweet led by bassist/vocalist Steve Priest and joined by guitarist Stuart Smith, singer Joe Retta, drummer Richie Onori and keyboardist Stevie Stewart

WHAT: Concert to perform their 70s hits Ballroom Blitz, Fox On The Run, Love Is Like Oxygen, Little Willy, Hellraiser, Teenage Rampage, Blockbuster and Action, among others.

WHERE: House of Blues Sunset

8430 W. Sunset Blvd.

W. Hollywood, CA

323-848-5100

WHEN: Thursday, April 30th

9 p.m. show

Doors open at: 8 p.m.

So what is the general consensus on Cold Chisel? I'd never listened to them before, at least not consciously, but I paid $1 for a copy of their 1980 Elektra LP East (their only LP ever to chart in the U.S., went to #171) at Austin's citywide garage sale a couple weeks go, and I have to say that -- in terms of my experience with usually much more brutal late '70s/early '80s bogan-rock -- I'm kind of disappointed with it. At least half of it seems like medium-rock attempts at meaningfulness somewhere in the vicinity between the Police and Midnight Oil (with obligatory white-reggae bent and fetishes on Asian girls). But I like "Rising Sun"'s Faces-style rockabilly (Faces being a big Rose Tattoo influence too I suspect), and the tough Viet-vet AOR drama of "Khe Sahn," and esp. the killer surf-to-Police-to-Slade closer "No Time To Cry."

Jasper and Oliver, though, peg East as sort of a sellout: "changed style...to a radio-bias AOR sound." They call their earlier stuff "Australian hard rock with r&b tints," which might land them closer to AC/DC/Rose Tattoo/Angels territory. Or is this just wishful thinking on my part -- just like I assume Elektra was thinking wishfully by giving them one shot in the States in the wake of Back In Black's blockbusting. (What other Aussie bands get released in the States then? Looks like Midnight Oil didn't chart hear until 1984, a few years later. Though Angel City did first chart twice in 1980, before Back in Black but after Highway To Hell, which was AC/DC's commercial breakthrough. Rose Tattoo also only charted at the tail end of 1980, fwiw; Rock N Roll Outlaw got to #197.)

Also, new albums I've liked this year that might somehow pass muster as "hard rock" (though some are probably more "past-expiry" than others, and some of the country ones are inconsistent about rocking). Order of preference, more or less, and leaving out some less explicitly old-school-oriented metal stuff:

(Various Artists) – The Chiswick Story, Part 1 (Ace reissue ‘08)
Ian Gillan – One Eye To Morocco (Eagle Rock)
Rufus Huff – Rufus Huff (Zoho Roots)
Rodney Atkins -- It’s America (Curb)
Death – …For The Whole World To See (Drag City reissue EP)
Sarah Borges And the Broken Singles – The Stars Are Out (Sugar Hill)
Zero Boys – Vicious Circle (Secretly Canadian reissue)
Pat Green – What I’m For (BNA)
Thin Lizzy – Still Dangerous: Live At The Tower Theatre Philadelphia 1977 (VH1 Classic reissue)
Sinner – Crash And Burn (Candlelight USA)
X (Australian Band) – X-Aspirations (Aztec Music reissue)
Eric Church – Carolina (Capitol)
Steadlür – Everything Is Nothing (Roadrunner)
The Reds – Early Nothing (Tarock)
Wicked Witch – Chaos 1978-86 (EM reissue)
(Various) – Keep Your Soul: A Tribute To Doug Sahm (Vanguard)
Edguy – Tinnitus Sanctus (Nuclear Blast)
(Various) – Heavy Metal Killers (Earache)
Saxon – Into The Labyrinth (SPV)
Dead Man – Euphoria (Crusher)
Keith Urban – Defying Gravity (Capitol Nashville)
Elder – Elder (Meteor City ’08)
Fires Of Rome – You Kingdom You (The Hours)
The Answer – Everyday Demons (The End)
Billy Thorpe And The Aztecs – Long Live Rock and Roll (Aztec Music reissue ’08)
Living Things – Habeas Corpus (Jive/Zomba)
16 –Bridges To Burn (Relapse)
Gene Dante and the Future Starlets – The Romantic Lead (Omnirox Entertainment)
Jason Aldean – Wide Open (Broken Bow)
Meercaz – Meercaz (Gulcher)

Hell, maybe toss in the new Buckwheat Zydeco album Lay Your Burden Down on Alligator, too -- includes songs previously done by Led Zeppelin ("When The Levee Breaks," originally Memphis Minnie), Brownsville Station ("Let Your Yeah Be Yeah," originally Jimmy Cliff), Gov't Mule (the title track), and Captain Beefheart (his long-ignored-probably-due-to-its-normalness Southern soul move "Too Much Time," always one of my favorites by him) -- though only the five-minute "Levee" really sounds like hard rock, at least so far. Anyway, I never cared at all about Buckwheat before (he's been around forever it seems, and his voice seems pretty average), but I like this record. Best original so far: "Throw Me Something Mister," which basically sounds like mid '60s funk-band instrumental with party-chant interjections.

By "mid '60s funk band" I guess I mean Meters, duh. Who didn't actually chart til the late '60s. Also, I get the idea that, in general here, Buckwheat employs his accordion like an organ, so I'm not sure how "zydeco" any of it really sounds. (Not that I'm a zydeco expert myself, and not that anybody reading a hard rock thread might care one way or the other.)

Skyhooks were an Aussie band with a release schedule in the US around the same time as Cold Chisel. They were an odd glammy band with an unusual look. Big in Australia, they went over like a lead balloon here. I have a lot of their stuff, dig it out once in awhile. Iron Maiden covered one of their songs. Skyhooks required an unusual sense of humor to 'get', which is why they got no traction in the US heartland, which took them for fags if they took them at all.

Living Things actually made it to a second record?

Zero Boys must be a reissue of their first which was paint-by-number US punk rock, although a very good paint-by-numbers things.

And reviewed, an interesting and very funny comic/personal memoir worked around the legend of GG Allin.

Yeah, no idea how the Living Things lasted to see another release (on the same major label); it's not like their debut (which took years to come out in the first place) even came close to taking the world by storm, and the live sets I was seeing a few years back didn't exactly suggest guys who seemed destined to survive as a band, or maybe even survive as human beings. New album seems more compromised, somehow, and forces their protest angle even more incoherently, but still works as catchy semi-punk. Could become either a major annoyance or a revelation if modern rock radio picks any of it up.

And right, that's a Zero Boys debut reissue; had never actually heard the album before, and was surprised by how much I like it. Secretly Canadian also just put out a singles-etcetra comp by them called The History Of which is not nearly as tuneful in its paint-by-numberness; they seem to have subsequently gone more slamdancey, which didn't make them sound more urgent, just more average.

SWEET PERFORMS AT HOUSE OF BLUES ON APRIL 30TH

OK, a friend saw The Sweet last year (on a bill with Showaddywaddy and The Rubettes!) and said they were appalling. Nowhere near as appalling as the Brian Connolly-led version (when he was still alive), but at least he had the excuse of being a human trainwreck.

So anybody know what the deal is with this other LP I bought for $1 a couple weeks ago -- a Kansas album called Bringing It Back on the Design Ltd. Music (whatever that is) label, copywritten 1980 though all of its titles seem to be drawn from Kansas' 1974 debut album, except in a different order and without "Death of Mother Nature Suite"?

Hadn't listened to the debut (which I've got on CD) for a while, so I relistened, and decided "Belexes" (erroneously spelled "Believes" on the LP cover) and "Journey From Mariabronn" are by far the hardest rocking songs, with an almost Zep type kick to them. "The Pilgrimage" and "Apereu" are wimpier, but it's charming how Kansas managed to work sorts of hillbilly fiddle hoedowns into their Yes imitations, like they instinctively realized (which for all I know they may have) that lots of that high-flown British classical foo-foo started off as jiggy dance music to begin with. And then there's the J.J. Cale cover "Bringing It Back," a kind of rustic choogle that doesn't really fit at all with what people think about Kansas. Let me know if I have this wrong.

Anyway, I'm still interested in what the heck this LP is. Seems like some weird bootleg or something. It doesn't get listed in Kansas's AMG entry or Wiki page; there's no copies for sale at amazon and ebay, and it's barely mentioned on the web at all. Crazy.

Also no photos of the band on the back or front cover, btw. Which is a shame, because on the actual back of Kansas's debut CD, they look like real good ol' boys standing out in the farm field, some even wearing overalls. Get the idea they ditched that hick look before they became superstars, though. (Back of 1975's Song For America, they're cleaned up, a couple ready to hit the disco with their polyester and pants-bulges. One guy still has suspenders on, but even he seems more cosmopolitan.)

Actually, a couple copies of the LP (but not much more information) are here, so at least I know I'm not dreaming:

http://www.musicstack.com/album/kansas/bringing_it_back

secret soft spot for Kansas right in here (my chest that is.)

Well really, obviously, what they looked like (in 1974) was a Southern Rock band. But they sure didn't sound very much like a Southern Rock band. Eight-minute "Death Of Mother Nature Suite" (had to pull out the actual CD for that one) is definitely heavy and doomy in intermittent parts, however.

Buckwheat Zydeco
cranks up his accordion
like a metal god

Saw him close a show
with "Hey Joe" back in the day
Shredding feedback hell

I saw Kansas quite a bit around the time of their first three albums. Belexes is the best song off the first. It's built off a Uriah Heep-type figure and it was a high point of their early show. Back then they all looked like hicks who just got off pitchforking hay at the local farm, Walter Brennan Real McCoy suspender dungarees and all. Second album has a pair of hammerdown blooz stomps, one fast, one slow ("Down the Road," which is very Charlie Daniels 'suvvern' and "Lonely Street.") Then the rest of it, now overwrought hand-wringing prog trying for nobility, "Song for America" shtick, with another fast tune, "The Devil Game" stuck in near the end. I never heard much of a Yes influence in these. Starcastle was the mid-western band that sounded like Yes.

"Masque" was the third album and was the best marriage of their styles, raging guitar heavy hard rock, hoedown fiddle interludes, overwrought but fairly catchy prog. Next, "Leftoverture" broke them big through "Wayward Son" but marked the end of the road for my interest in them.

I bet this is the stuff from Kansas (mark II) now called Proto-Kaw. http://www.protokaw.com/index.php?pageid=1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006IXGD probably bootlegged or shady contract release.

I had that a few years ago. Didn't last long until given over to trade credit. Take even more of the boogie stomp out of major label Kansas, add more prog, lose the singing voice for the radio, that was Proto-Kaw.

I don't think that's what the Bringing It Back LP is, though. Haven't played it and the debut back to back to make sure, but I'm pretty sure these are the same recordings, just in a different order.

What do you think of the Meercaz album, xhuxk? Haven't seen any mention of it anywhere else except the Gulcher site. All I know is that it's got a dude with an afro on the front and it's on Gulcher, but it's new, right? Looks acid rock.

And this might be one for the Krautrock also-rans poll, but has anyone heard the Dschinn s/t record? Might be barrel-scrapings, but I hear they did a pretty decent Sabbathy/Lone Crow-ish hard rock type thing.

Popovic Popoff gives it 6/8 in his 70's book which makes it solidly better than average but not quite spectacular. The review indicates it comes down on the side of rock, rather than art, which is usually a good thing with regards to the early-70's.

So what was it about Uriah Heep and the Midwest? Was that where their biggest market was, or something? They clearly had some bearing on certain of the louder early songs by Styx and Kansas, and I've been playing Head East's Get Yourself Up from '75, and "Jailer" turns out to be full-on unmistakable Heepish organ-sludge. "The Victim" and "Trouble," also on Side Two, are likewise loud (and, in the former case, doom-ridden) enough that I think Martin Popoff should've included the album in his '70s metal book. (As is, he only featured Head East's '79 live album, which I've never heard, though he ended with a perfectly apt line I really wished I'd written myself: "drenched in electricity, paryting like harvest is done with.") First side of Get Yourself Up (a recent used $1 purchase, with a jeep hauling an Afro-shaped load of weed on its cover) dwells in more good-timey, early-Speedwagon territory (I dunno, did R.E.O. have any Heepful moments themselves early on? I'd have check), with shore sounds opening and closing "Sailor" (rhymes with "Jailer"!) and a brief funky Afro-Caribbean percussion breakdown at the end of the ladies' choice "This Woman's In Love" -- reminds me of the Stones circa "Monkey Man," though actually Head East save their own "Monkey Shine" to open Side Two.

What do you think of the Meercaz album, xhuxk?

Marginal. Fuzzy. Unproduced. May well have actual rock songs buried in the acid fuzz, but if so they're hard to get to. So basically, I need to listen to it more. Seriously doubt I'd recommend anybody spend money on it, but I got mine for free, and it's still here. Here's what Stigliano wrote (scroll down -- though he doesn't say so outright, I get the feeling he's somewhat ambivalent as well):

http://black2com.blogspot.com/search?q=meercaz

Someone ought to reissue Get Yourself Up. It's made for Wounded Bird or that company that did the Tommy Conwell two-fer. It was mid-70's, by which time Heep was in decline, so all to the good that someone was still interested in recycling their good style.

Both Styx and Kansas went through sharp style changes. The four Wooden Nickel Styx records, and Equinox, are all organ/synth boogie records descended from the style of Heep. And to a lesser extent, Kansas was. Then Styx picked up Tommy Shaw, jettisoned one of their older guitar players, and went off into Grand Illusion territory, a lot more weighted toward getting on the radio with sappy stuff, ala "Lady." Kansas turned the corner on the past with Leftoverture.

xp Speaking of Dschinn (as ambient bangers was a few posts up), here's Metal Mike Saunders a couple months ago on another German early '70s band that Popoff mentions in his Dschinn review. (I've never heard either band myself; the opinion Metal Mike was dissenting to, as I recall, was actually George's):

i just played the entire 2nd Tiger B Smith (american pressing, cheesy thin Janus vinyl) and i have to file a wildly dissently modern opinion. it is HOOKY, top to bottom. 11 cuts/35 minutes (8 cuts are < 3:30, and the other 3 are > over 5 min; really nice mixture of track times thereof). It has a thin/distorted-pedal guitar sound kinda like 1971-72 Uriah Heep, "heavy" but nowhere heavy metal. it plays all the way through, not one tune w/o strong guitar riffs or hooks. the singing is, uh, functional (rhythm section ditto). rhythm guitar is the loudest instrument in the mix, just like early early 70's hard rock/metal album should be. it's an A- or B+++++ as Robert Christgau might opine in his 1972 front sitting-room. "every listen has given me pleasure or made me tap my foot." uh sure, Bob, tapping my foot to the The Band is my favorite pasttime suuure. why stop there? why not the 1952 Weavers? or some of those crazy Pete Seeger early solo sides? never mind, i made up that quote.

What Mike had written a couple days earlier:

i actually have/bought a 10-cent bin copy of the 2nd lp, american pressing (on Janus) at Moby Disc on ventura blvd, late 70's. funnny, it was spot-checked/audited once only, and misfiled it (forever, until just now) into the "crap, what is this?" misc uncategorized section. since it had a rather confusing cover, not clear if it was a real act or some "fake band" or "rock/disco studio creation, not a band" (as late as the late 70's, america had not yet figured out that the "fakeness" of much UK74 glitter rock was actually a badge of "authenticity," ie fake being a criterion for true UKglitter's 2nd-wave. and don't forget that lousy In-Betweens 45s. or the earliest (and lousy) Bolan and Bowie 60's 45s.

when they're actually a German heavy rock/prog rock thing that jumps into "glitter rock" in 1974 (like all the UK hasbeen/neverwas schlubs in 1973-74).

May well have actual rock songs buried in the acid fuzz, but if so they're hard to get to

As in, sounds like they're miked through a municipal aquarium's worth of murky water full of dead fish. And most feel too wobbly and sickly and unformed and mush-mouthed and aimless to be called "rock songs." But if you've got an abnormally high tolerance for, say, shittily recorded live tapes of mid '70s Ohio or Maryland accidental-punk psych-blooze guitar-and-rant lone wolves (thinking George Brigman in the latter case) trying to match Funhouse or the Groundhogs while shooting cock rockets into deep space and not quite getting it right but coming off somewhat endearing anyway, this might be up your alley. Not that it's half as meaty as Brigman or any famed Cle legends. But for something released in 2009, it's closer than you'd expect; the wah-wahs curdle recognizably even when songs are inaudible, and "Unlust," at least, could almost be some weird lost homemade punk 45 from days of yore. (Looks like the Meercaz aka Mozzley M dude plays most of the instruments, with pals helping out here and there. And yeah, his Afro photos make me want to like him.)

In other news, what the hell is a "Gydget"?

via email today:

UFO

"The Visitor" - Gydget

http://www.spv.de/gydgets/ufo-thevisitor.html

Please spread it!!!!!

See UFO live 2009

31.05. D-Gelsenkirchen - Rock Hard Festival
01.06. D-Bad Salzungen - Presswerk
03.06. D-Leipzig - Theaterfabrik
05.06. SE-Sölvesborg - Sweden Rock Festival
06.06. I-Udine (Osoppo) - 23 rd Biker Fest International
07.06. NL-Uden - Nieuwe Pul

09.06. GB-Brighton - Concorde 2
10.06. GB-Cambridge - The Junction
12.06. GB-Belfast - Spring&Airbrake
13.06. GB-Glasgow - O2 Academy
14.06. GB-Newcastle - Academy
16.06. GB-Leeds - O2 Academy
17.06. GB-Nottingham - Rock City
19.06. GB-Wolverhampton - Wulfrun Hall
20.06. GB-Manchester - Academy 2
21.06. GB-Bristol - O2 Academy
23.06. GB-Southampton - The Brook
24.06. GB-London - Shepards Bush Empire

26.06. D-Speyer - Halle 101
27.06. D-Ulm - Ulmer Zelt
28.06. B-Dessel - Graspop Metal Meeting
03.07. D-Mössingen - Mössingen Rockt!
30.07. D-Wacken - Wacken Open Air
07.08. GB-Stratford Upon Avon - Bulldog Bash

Are they worth seeing without M. Schenker? They had one of the alltime great runs of LPs from '74 to '79. Damn was some of that stuff awesome.

What's important is they do the songs from the Schenker period, particularly "Too Hot," "Only You Can Rock Me," "Rock Bottom," etc. That said, they've done live stuff for their last couple CDs which includes 'the hits' and while I haven't kept up (I already have the entire UFO catalog up until they first called it quits, which includes all the material with Schenker's replacement, who was pretty good), it should be simple to check used. The guitarist they currently have was one of the hot shot late-Eighties US shredders, I think.

I just looked at that tour schedule and noticed that it's only a European tour. but i would definitely see them now. I grew up in Chicago in the 70s and 80s and they were absolutely huge there, though I don't think they put much of a dent in the US market otherwise.

UFO accrued an impressive reputation live. That, in turn, along with Schenker as one of the first emerging metal guitar heroes, kept the label -- Chrysalis -- really interested in them. Ron Nevison was brought on as a producer to give them more of a guiding hand and it certainly worked for Lights Out and my favorite in the cat, Obsession. That's about where they peaked, along with Strangers In the Night, the live album. However, it's gotta be noted that George Martin produced their next studio record, the first after Schenker left and was replaced by Paul Chapman. That was No Place to Run and it's a very listenable record. There you start hearing more of the band's fannish enjoyment of Bruce Springsteen, believe it or not. Actually, you could start hearing it on No Heavy Petting when they covered Frankie Miller who was a Bruce Springteen-esque Brit guy.

Then they entitled an album The Wild, the Willing & the Innocent which was not at all like Jersey rock. The final one before the first break-up was Making Contact, and that's a favorite of mine, too. Some great hard rock songs on it; Phil Mogg does a tremendous job putting them over. But the heart of the catalog is still from Force It to Obsession and Strangers in the Night.

At one point, I think Chrysalis started pushing the Babys ca. 76-81 and it caused some friction because UFO thought, naturally, they had been there first and were doing better material. There are some merits to this argument, but the Babys got the grease toward the Eighties, were sent Keith Olsen to produce, and he put them on the radio with a couple hit singles, something UFO never enjoyed.

Interesting. Ive never heard of the Babys but they should be post #1 on the terrible names thread.

Strangers in the Night absolutely smokes.

You never heard "Midnight Rendezvous"? That was their e-ticket, John Waite and the boys dressed in black plastic gayware on the cover of Union Jacks. Actually, they were a pretty good band, early distinctly in the vein of Free. Then it was mandated they appeal more to girls and such, hence the 80's black shiny black plastic clothes for the sake of a presumed coolness. I bet John Waite flinches when he sees that now.

The Babys send album also has a cover to make you flinch. They were definitely pushed as pretty boys, similar to John Waite's 'look' when he went solo. Although it's hard to take him seriously as something girls'd want to wrap around.

Ironhouse self-titled album, 1979 (also cost $1) -- Being portly past-their-prime Canucks, these Randy Bachman-led bufflo-bisons naturally get made fun of by Popoff, but I'd say this album is more subtle than he lets on, inasmuch as BTO alumni can be subtle. The obvious new wave ketchup moves are fun (deadpan backup vox in dance-oriented "Jump Into The Light," weird "Roland synthesizer guitar" effects in "Stateline Blues"); I like how the single "Sweet Lui-Luise" (just barely went Top 40 in the States, and vaguely recall it getting some minimal AOR airplay in Detroit at the time) so unashamedly recycles Randy's old riff from "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet", and like Popoff points out, "Old Fashioned" (great title for old farts) and "There Ain't No Cure" are legitimately heavy, in ways BTO may or may not have even been themselves. Could see some latter-day cowpunks like say Restless Kelly killing for a tune like "Tumbleweed," which is partly built around a "Gudbuy T'Jane" riff, proving once and for all that BTO were the Slade of Canada. Hearty meat-and-tater riffs throughout, in fact.

More Canucks: Headpins, Line Of Fire, 1985, actually splurged and paid $2 (!) for this one based on a couple people's recommendations on this board and elsewhere, and while I wouldn't say it's quite worth that exorbidant amount, it's definitely worth a buck at least and hence a keeper. Get the idea I might've liked it more had it been recorded a few years earlier (never heard the band's '82 debut -- they were a Chilliwack spinoff apparently); as is, you can really detect the codifying of early-MTV/pre-hair '80s metal in the arrangements and songwriting. As such bands fronted by pretty girls go (Jasper and Oliver on the scratchy screecher here: "the delicious Darby Mill, who makes Kate Bush seem positively unattractive"), 1994 or Shakin' Street's hooks packed considerably more idiosyncatic punch. But the songs all rock regardless, side openers in particular. "Mine, All Mine" even seems to have a little bit of Girlschool's version of "Live With Me" hidden in it somewhere. Nifty hockey hair as well!

My gut feeling was that Turn It Loud, the debut -- was a bit better. Sort of the
same as Shakin' Street, in which the French debut was a bit better than the US remake and add-on with Ross the Boss and Sandy Pearlman producing, although the latter was way more common.

Headpins probably not as good as 1984, another in the delicious female front sweepstakes. Also suffered a dropoff for the second.

I actually like both Shakin Street and 1994 LPs; hard to imagine judging from that followup that Headpins' debut could be nearly as classy as either of those other bands's second ones, but I'll still pick it up if I see it for a buck.

Biggest surprise on Derringer from 1976 (also $1) is the almost-disco band-funk track "Envy" at the end of side one; Rick was a Celina boy, guarantee he was digging the Ohio Players then. Best and hardest rocking tracks, though, are "Sailor" (better than the Head East song with that title) and "Beyond The Universe," in the middle of side two. And actually, he'd always been pretty funky in his own way to begin with, as I recall. Can't believe nobody gave me shit for not including any Derringer LPs in Stairway (just had "Rock and Roll Hootchie Koo" as the #82 single, jeez).

I'm sure I've knobbed about Derringer previously. And I'm also positive I mentioned Derringer reissues in Rolling Hard Rock the year before. I was going to mention the new Derring Live in Cleveland, which was a radio gig at the Agora promoting the first album. Blue Sky probably only made it available as a promo to radio because Derringer Live, which is about the same but including material from Sweet Evil was what the formal release was. It's on Wounded Bird which occasionally resurrects things which were never issued domestically when they were fresh.

Anyway, every Derringer band album smokes, the first and fourth being the most pop. Popovic disses the first one but he doesn't much like things like songcraft which the first really hits drills on. You mentioned "Envy." There's "Let Me In" which is great, and the double wah-wah incineration duel on "Sailor." "Across the Universe" is the 130+ beats per minute see what we can do with our fingers thing.

Me from the 2007 thread:

Derringer Live is a fairly hot example of what the guy was doing in the mid-70's, which was be in a band, as opposed to solo. Danny Johnson is on second guitar so there's a lot of shit hot axe dueling, like on "Across the Universe." "Sailor" is a fairly good slice of hard and fast rock with hook and great wah-wah solo to the beat in the middle. Version of "Teenage Love Affair" is good, too. "Hootchie Koo" is long, drawn out for concert show-boating. The band was great if you saw 'em, completely thrashing Aerosmith at the Spectrum when Steve & Joe were getting into their totally wasted before going onstage habits.

However, this didn't translate to sales. Proving ground for Danny Johnson and Vinnie Appice who went off to Axis who did the very Derringer-like "It's A Circus World and I'm an Animal." That lasted a few months and then Appice was in Black Sabbath.

Rick Derringer replaced them with Neil Giraldo and Myron Grombacher, who'd in turn get lifted for Pat Benatar's band, the rest of which is history. Before that Derringer did "If You Weren't So Romantic I'd Shoot You" with them which is as good, often much better than the first.

Searching isn't exact on ILX no matter how improved, so I can't resurrect all the material I'm sure I addressed.

Headpins surely don't outclass 1994 but for cheap it's worth a listen or more.

Here's something to read and it has nothing to do with music or hard rock but I didn't
know where else to put it. I offered a story on torturing of people in the war on terror to the Village Voice, based on my experience with it as per my involvement as a consultant to a famous terror trial in 2005. In the process of making themselves most attractive for New Times,
the Village Voice turned it down. "We don't do stories like that anymore," I was told. Yeah, good call. Being New Times attractive didn't help. They were all fired anyway.

Now here we are today with the New York Review of Books and the Obama administration, and many others, revealing in unexpurgated terms what a lot of people knew was happening years ago but couldn't get into print because we have such a 'free' press.

Sorry for the side track. Back to the regular program. Don't be troubled.

Boy, and this is absolute fact, I put on Derringer right before this! A bang up record
ended and I thought I'd take a moment doing something else. Now I'll put on the new Boxmasters CDs.

Cool to see you guys talking about Headpins, they were a good band. Saw them a couple times in the mid-80s (once opening for Helix in '85, a terrific Can-Rock bill), and have been cranking "Just one More Time" on the mp3 player as of late. My favourite tune of theirs.

Their first album was really big in Canada, "Don't it Make Yoou Feel" was a huge single, while their third album was a lot slicker, with a synth-heavy, Fairbairn-esque gloss to it.

"We don't do stories like that anymore"

At least they're honest, though it's surpising they'd be so blunt about it. But yeah, pieces like the one you pitched are one of the things that went by the wayside as soon as Michael Lacey took over. I need to catch up with the Banner New York Review Of Books that somebody linked to from your blog. For what it's worth, today's NYT front-pager on the interrogation memos actually managed to work the word "torture" way up in the third graph. Jumped to almost a full page on A-10 inside, including a large sidebar chart detailing techniques, rationalizations, and permitted combinations.

Back to hard rock, there was a little discussion on another thread today on '90s stuff by D Generation and Hoodoo Gurus, based on songs I'd put on a mix tape for myself over a decade ago. The D Generation song referred to is "Capitol Offender"; James K Polk says later the (far better) Hoodoo Gurus track "Mind the Spider," sadly, was uncharacteristic for them:

Song Lists From Ancient Mix Cassettes I Just Pulled Out Of Storage After Several Years

What do you folks think of The Answer's Everyday Demons? I reviewed it for Outburn, some really solid "kids doing classic rock" stuff with some catchy songs and good riffs, but a little too much filler and modern rock influence. Definitely some keepers on it, especially the opening track, "Demon Eyes," which Kirk Miller in decibel panned as being too much like The Darkness, but to me it has a ridiculously catchy chorus and that's good enough.

I like the Answer's album; here's what I wrote about it for Spin:

http://www.spin.com/reviews/answer-everyday-demons-end

And what the heck; also did the new Datsuns album (which I don't like nearly as much) for them:

http://www.spin.com/reviews/datsuns-headstunts-cooking-vinyl

The new hard rock band album I've liked most lately is the one by Last Vegas, who are scheduled to open Motley Crue's tour. Haven't decided yet how much I like it, but I definitely like it a lot more than Crue's album from last year.

And the new Cobra Verde album (worse than the Answer or Last Vegas, but better than the Datsuns. Also worse than at least a couple previous Cobra Verde not to mention Death of Samantha albums):

http://www.blender.com/guide/new/55405/havent-slept-all-year.html

But yeah, pieces like the one you pitched are one of the things that went by the wayside as soon as Michael Lacey took over.

Which is why we're in a pickle now. "Not doing stories like that" guys aren't so shit
hot as watchdogs. Eh, prisoners being tortured in dungeons? Borrring. BTW, the Village Voice's website is almost as awful as that of the LA Times. It's the we're so desperate will screw it up with so many flash and scripting ads you'll think your computer just hung. "Meet New York Sex Bloggers," "Hot for Teacher: Sex with a Naughty Professor," "There's a Hot Lesbian Party and You're Not Invited," "The Raw Intensity of New York's Elite Youth Basketball," "Teens Grapple with Rihanna and Cris Brown," Ask a Mexican, a column by a guy who lives in Orange County, the Off Broadway version of The Toxic Avenger, the rich/poor gap is the largest in 17 years (that's really astute), etc...

The new hard rock band album I've liked most lately is the one by Last Vegas, who are scheduled to open Motley Crue's tour

They won a Guitar Center contest/promotion which involved a shopping spree at GC, too. And that amounts to quite a windfall of good fortune.

Hoo boy, xhuxk. The Datsuns, damned by faint praise.

BTW, here's the next torture thing on a mirror blog I'm running off the DD domain. It trails the original by a few minutes but was necessary because Blogger has become more and more unreliable and fraught with 'oh, snap!' moments if you use it to publish to a server not under the control of Google. Which is what a lot of people do with their own domain.

Anyway, it's WordPress and while I've not used it long enough to comment, I would recommend people stay away from Blogger if they're serious about long-term use under their own
name or on their private net property.

More torture!

Busboys American Worker (released 1982, purchased for $1 2009) is, as I've heard rumoured for more than a quarter century, a definite failed AOR (out of Chuck Berry-styled new wave) move by a black band dressed like Louis Jordan (and also like actual busboys I guess), though the only remotely heavy (as in say Living Colour-precursor) cuts are the excellent "Yellow Lights" and especially "I Get Lost" on Side Two. Otherwise, a surf semi-parody, some (slightly Thin Lizzy inspired?) protest reggae corn ("Opportunity"), and sundry attempts at corporate fake-wave, Tommy Tutone/early Huey Lewis-style -- most notably Chin/Chapman-written hard-pop "Heart And Soul," which Exile had taken to #103 in Billboard the year before and Huey himself would take to #8 a year later. All of which is News (nyuk nyuk) to me; always assumed it was a Huey original. Guess they just kept throwing it bands til they finally found one that could make a hit out of it.

Oh yeah, title track "American Worker" probably a failed attempt at having a populist early-Reagan-era recession "Working For The Weekend" type anthem: "In every American city/In every American town/Let's go dancing/We work hard all week/To put some money in our pockets/Now we can afford to dance to the beat." Which just goes to show that black guys could write blue-collar rock lyrics as dumb as any white guy.

Also totally missing the punchlines (the one where whites move in so there goes the neighborhood, the one where they join the KKK, the one where "I bet you never heard music like this by spades") of their '80 debut. So not as good, but I still like it. (First album charted higher -- #85 to #139, so the sellout didn't work. Their closest thing to a "hit" didn't come til '84, with #68 "Cleanin Up The Town" off the Ghostbusters soundtrack.)

I just spent four days hanging around Dublin and Belfast with The Answer. They're good guys and put on a great live show; the bassist is their secret weapon. Whenever the main riff seems pedestrian, check him out - chances are he'll be doing some crazed Entwistle/Geezer Butler spinoff thing in his corner. The drummer's a monster, too, played for almost two weeks with an undiagnosed broken hand until finally having to cancel a gig on Monday night. I agree they incorporate a few too many modern rock influences in some of their songs, but at least they've got a rhythm section that actually rocks (and swings), which is more than most big-selling rock bands can say these days. The first album, Rise, is good too, though not released in the U.S. (it's from 2006, and there's a double-disc deluxe edition at this point filled with acoustic versions, live tracks, covers etc.), and they're selling a live EP on tour that includes some guest vocal work by Paul Rodgers. They'll be back in the summer, still opening the AC/DC tour but in outdoor stadiums this time with a third act added to the bill. Current contenders in Rumorland include Jet or possibly the new incarnation of Wolfmother.

I like The Answer a lot more than Wolfmother. At least the rocking doesn't seem like a pose with them. And while rock 'n roll doesn't necessarily need to be "authentic," it's always nice when the group seems like they actually love what they do.

Not sure why you'd doubt that Wolfmother love what they do (hey, it beats milking kangaroos, right?), but maybe you know something about them I don't. (Never read an interview with them. Just figured they were a mediocre hard rock band, and hard to hate, just like their countrymen Jet; there are far more worthy targets out there, as far as I can tell.)

Played the Last Vegas album twice in a row all the way through yesterday, and it just keeps sounding better to me. The hooks really sink in. When's the last time there was a sleaze/glam album this good -- 15, 20 years? Second Faster Pussycat album maybe?
(Not sure whether Love/Hate or Cinderella's Still Climbing or The Spaghetti Incident? count; anything else obvious I'm not thinking of?)

I haven't heard the Last Vegas album, but I liked both of the first two Buckcherry discs.

I liked those okay (and their last one too actually), but the Last Vegas album is much, much better than any of those. (Also better than the more garagey indie album they put out themselves a couple years ago, which I may or may not still have in a storage box in my closet.)

Well, you know I don't trust you at all when you use words like "better," but I'll maybe check it out in an idle moment.

Also better than those Buck Cherry albums (which were ridiculously spotty, truth be told -- they could use a best-of someday if that ballad hit last year didn't suck so bad): Michael Stanley Band, Heartland (1980, $1). George had made me a real good CD-R called The Thumbnail Michael Stanley a few years back, highlighting what I took to be his hardest rocking songs, but the only one from this LP that's on there seems to be his early-Bryan Adams/Rick Springfield-type hard pop smash "He Can't Love You" (Stanley's biggest hit -- went to #33) -- which might not even be the best track here, and definitely isn't the hardest rocking. Really like the tough Diddley beat "Working Again," the even bigger-rhythmed "Voodoo," and the midwestern praire rocker (as in Head East/REO) "Save A Little Piece For Me" (where "save a little piece" sounds more like "sentimental bitch"). And "All I Ever Wanted" hits me as some kind of middle ground between Mitch Ryder (he's listening to a Detroit station, like when Mitch covered the Velvets' "Rock and Roll") and Eddie Money nostalgia classics like "Take Me Home Tonight" from a few years later. A couple extremely furry mustaches in the band, too. Still doesn't seem to have broken them far beyond Cleveland much more than momentarily, though. (On the CD-R that George made, last time I checked, my favorite tracks were "Rosewood Bitters" -- Joe Walsh on guitar I believe, "Heavy Weight," "He Can't Love You," "Hard Time," near-hit "My Town," and "Fire In The Hole.")

Wolfmother always seemed like they were going through the motions to me, like "Look at us, we are playing rock music, please to give us record deal." Just never really struck me as having a rock 'n roll soul, and you can usually tell when bands are forcing it.

Tried really hard to connect with Jackson Highway's 1980 self-titled LP on Capitol (also $1), thanks to the timely title "Rock And Roll Man (Hung Up On A Disco Girl)," but after a few listens I'm convinced Jasper and Oliver were right in dismissing them as "very commerical Southern boogie, not hard enough to stand alongside other outfits in the genre." Except they can't stand alongside the the best commercial stuff in the genre (like say .38 Special) either, plus they're as much would-be late '70s Seger (sans songs or hooks) as would-be Southern rock, to my ears. The closing track with a bunch of Blackfoot guys guesting on it is long (4:43) but not especially brutal; deadliest thing on the LP is probably the guitar-squall intro of "Hook, Line And Sinker." "Nobody To Love" (in which the singer can't find nobody to love) plays fast and loose with double negatives. Buddy Holly "Rave On" cover is just passable. Rock guy dealing with disco song, best thing on the album, could afford a funkier beat.

Truth be told, a track or two on that Bus Boys LP I blurbed about a few posts up come closer to heavy Southern boogie rock (in the Mother's Finest sense in Bus Boys' case) than anything by Jackson Highway.

This is my jam right now. 1971 hit Australian single I'd never heard before a friend of mine put it on a mixed CD for me. Sounds like the Bob Seger System mellowing out to some Canned Heat or something. Or Brownsville Station on a beach Whatever it is, I played it six times in a row while cleaning out my basement last weekend.

(sorry I didn't read enough of this thread to know if this fits. just the australian bands mentioned above + "past expiry" made me think of this)

Yep, I bought a (early '80s reissue) 12-inch of that for $1 last month, too. Didn't get it at first, but I came around. This is from another thread:

amazed to learn "Eagle Rock," which is really no great shakes, was a gigantic hit in 1971 in Australia, where it somehow topped the charts for ten weeks. Maybe I'll force-feed it to myself a couple more times, but I doubt it'll hit. (Copyright on my 12-inch single says '82, so I guess it's possible this is a re-recording.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 12 April 2009 01:14

Turns out Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" does have some kind of archival riff and primal structure to it, best overheard loud from the next room over after a couple beers (which is how it was probably often heard in Australia at the time, I bet.) So not as great a pub-boogie single as say "Teenage Head" or "Smokin' In the Boys Room," but still not bad. (And the lyrics to their B-side "Daddy Rocks Off" basically go something like "boogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie woogie boogie.")

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 April 2009 16:06

Has great rhythm thump and guitar turnarounds without being heavy. Song used in the opening sequence of "Wolf Creek", Australia's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," mostly for its bonhommie in the car with three students, one guys/two girls, on their way for a tour after a night of excessive drinking and barfing with friends.

― Gorge, Thursday, 16 April 2009 02:59

(Actually bought it for 50 cents. Not that anybody cares.)

THERE IS A NEW UFO ALBUM COMING OUT.

not that i really care...

In constructing this new album, legendary rock icons UFO composed more than 35 new tracks in advance of hitting the studio, 13 of which were short-listed and produced at the studio, and 10 of them making the final cut. The final product; the band's new album, The Visitor.

The current UFO lineup continues to consist of the three original members, Phil Mogg (vocals), Paul Raymond (guitar, keyboards), and Andy Parker (drums), as well as American world-class guitarist Vinnie Moore. Bass legend and original member Pete Way is currently suffering from a liver disease and was unfortunately not available for the studio production.

"All those who have been into UFO for a long time will find all our characteristic trademarks on The Visitor, and anybody new to the band will be impressed by our enthusiasm and dynamism," frontman Phil Mogg enthuses on the subject of the new songs. The Visitor sees the band benefiting especially from their collaboration with Vinnie Moore, who joined UFO in autumn 2003 and has made an excellent impression on the albums You Are Here (2004) and The Monkey Puzzle (2006), and on the band’s tours. Mogg continues,"Without running down previous UFO lineups, it's been a long time since we had a team as strong as this one. Vinnie contributes his youthful energy and amazing guitar technique, and in Andy's return we've seen the reappearance of a musician who has always been very important to the band's original sound."

Cracks me up that you guys were already talking about Eagle Rock this month. Guess I should have done a search. It was a grower with me too - took me a few times now I can't get enough.

chuck, have you ever heard/owned the Buster album I bought last weekend. mid-70's glam rock/pop. do a killer cover of Born To Be Wild. You would love it.

Bands who had their heydey in the '70s (and UFO was fucking awesome) always go overboard in trying to say that their newest album is a return to form.

RIP Pete Way

the album by New Adventures i bought was kinda cool too. 1980. thought it was gonna be more punk pop, but it's definitely got more of a rockin' soloin' vibe. they were dutch, i think. they just got new wave haircuts is all. the titles tell it all: drive me wild, spacelab cowboy, if your mamma don't like it, rock & roll woman, back to the pit.

Bands who had their heydey in the '70s (and UFO was fucking awesome) always go overboard in trying to say that their newest album is a return to form.

The most recent Uriah Heep album was pretty solid.

I need to listen to that new Uriah record. (Was actually thinking of tracking through it on Rhapsody yesterday, but I am always slow when it comes to on-line listening.)

Have never heard Buster, Scott. Will keep my eyes peeled, though!

i'm listening again, and the Buster album is a dream. Such amazing production. And such an uncanny mix of awesome 60s-era sunshine pop and 70's glam. It doesn't hurt that my copy is a super-clean british rca pressing. don't know if it came out in the states, but if it did it was probably on crappy dynaflex vinyl. the guitars and the drum break on born to be wild are friggin' awe-inspiring.

Pete Way apparently not dead yet. But unable to get back into the US because of the war
on terror.

I'm guessing what happened is: Like many British rockers, Pete has a few drunk driving, drunk & fighting, drunken disorderly, or drunk with drugs in the US. Petty stuff when no one cared and the label, Chrysalis, had a lawyer to come down pay your bail, work out any outstanding warrants and convince a judge you weren't a threat to society. Same with Phil Mogg who had trouble getting into the US a few years ago on the same thing.

So Pete leaves the US to record and play back in England with Waysted. And now not only is he sick, but he can't get through Homeland Security because DHS now routinely denies entry to anyone who has or once had the taint of undesirable or a history of arrests. I'm wagering this is now commonplace and if you're not wealthy and famous and with big lawyer, like f'r instance,
Ozzy or what's left of the Stones, this is now a huge hassle for old rock musicians. And it would probably be worth a news story.

GWOT collateral damage: Old Brit drunks denied entry into US as potential terrorists.

Actually, I'm surprised Pete Townshend can still get into the US. I bet his lawyer is always busy.

It's too bad about Pete Way, both the illness and the visa troubles. I have a couple buddies in the music business who know him somewhat well, and they say he is an absolutely great guy.

Well my attempts to get a response about this guy hasn't provoked anything on the Dadrock thread.

http://www.winterband.com/

I'm hoping this inspires some Fussell-styled analysis from Dick Destiny. Used to live nearby this guy. Wild.

Best song titles:

9. Trinity Schminity
13. Jesus Ain't No Hippie

He really doesn't go for the father/son/holy ghost thing.

Also, uppity women:

We were honored to be able to give a CD to Senator Zell Miller and he was kind enough to let us take a picture with him and drummer Philip (and to give permission for us to put it here).

For the couple of fans of Dave Gilbert, the Rockets and New Order, Dennis Thompson has a new blog and explains how DG messed up a showcase in front of Mercury Records. Neal Merryweather even makes an experience at the Starwood.

Here. For those who don't know, Gilbert left New Order and was taken up by the Rockets. The Rockets' second album featured a semi-FM smash, "Oh Well." A little success went to the head. Subsequent albums, while good, did not get as much traction. Gilbert became more erratic, eventually derailing the band. Mostly known for being big in bars around Detroit. Truly a great classic rock 'n roll voice. Dead now.

As for Winterband, hmmm, there's a lot of heavy crazy in the US now. F'r instance, fits right in with the special manias of the Lehigh Valley Biblical Neo-Nazi, the scripture-spouting anti-union ex-union steward.

These are the class of people, now almost all the GOP or loosely associated with it, who voted for decades to instate as leaders the people who've wrecked the economy and made the American brand name into a joke. For reasons difficult to explain other than just plain stupidity and susceptibility to manipulation, instead of now hating on those who've done the dirty
work, they hate on the allegedly Godless, or homos, people they think want to take their guns, union workers, 'socialists,' 'commernists' or other people in their same economic slice.

If you lived in Italy prior to WWII maybe you'd have something pungent to say about this, seeing how Benito Mussolini seems to be the kind of savior they're looking for. In fact, the end of Mussolini's power could be a metaphor for the GOP now. The rest of Italy sensibly refused to fight the Allies after the Sicily landings, forcing the Wehrmacht to take over and employ Otto Skorzeny to rescue the Duce. Except the GOP has no modern Otto Skorzeny, no Wehrmacht to reconstitute the old law and order.

Talked about this a little in Rolling Country, too: The cosmic illogic of John Rich pushing his Detroit song on Sean Hannity's America.

Completely different than when Pete Seeger went around singing "This Land is Your Land."

Okay, I'm now COMPLETELY obsessed with "Eagle Rock" -- insidious earworm! Googling turns up an alternate early video, a boozy reunion version, and animated Wiggles. But here's how to play it on the balafon:

xp For what it's worth, I edited or oversaw pieces at both the Voice and Billboard (connected to a Cat Stevens a/k/a Yusuf Islam cover story in the latter case) about foreign musicians having Visa problems post-9/11, but George is right -- a piece specifically about aging, now fifth-tier rock guys whose terrorism-unrelated civil misdeeds are being used aginst them, and who can't afford to fight it, surely seems like it could be interesting.

Speaking of UFO, I got an advance of the new album in the mail yesterday, and made it about halfway through it. A couple songs seemed okay (third one was even fast I think), but I can't say they were exactly holding my attention. Nice guitar parts here and there, though. I'll get back to it eventually.

Did listen a couple times today though to this $1 album Spitballs, which came out on Beserkley in '78 and has all the wimps and weirdos on the roster (Modern Lovers, Greg Kihn Band, Earthquake, Rubinoos, and UK pub rock guy Sean Tyla, supposedly, though no names are credited on my domestic copy) covering their favorite '50s and '60s oldies. Guess the label was the cloesest thing to a Stiff in the U.S.; the camaraderie feels comparable to me (and I read once that Earthquake had recorded a cover of Ian Dury's "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll"; not sure if it ever saw the light of day). Favorite spitballs are mostly versions of songs I never heard before or at least never thought that much about -- "Gino Is A Coward" (?), "Over & Over" (Bobby Day?),
"Let Her Dance" (Bobby Fuller Four sort of imitating Buddy Holly I think), "I Want Her So Bad" (no idea, but it's easily the most punk rock thing on the album.) Most mainstream-'70s-hard-boogie cuts are probably "Knock On Wood" and "Feel Too Good," the latter credited to Roy Wood so I assume it's a Move number. And the rendition of the Who's "Boris The Spider" make it seem like an Alice Cooper precursor. Side closers are "Telstar" and "Batman," pretty neat.

Isn't Earth Quake's "Mr. Security" and the Vanda & Young cover of "Friday On My Mind" on that? Or do they do "Head Held High?" Earth Quake did lotsa covers, "Rte. 66," "Kicks", "Ma Ma Ma Belle". "Knock On Wood" ain't bad but, as I recall, it's really only about half a song, the band sounding like it knocked it out between takes just screwing around and decided to keep it after redoing the vocals to pro spec.

The things that need reissuing are Earth Quake's live album, which was their first for
Beserkely, and it's almost all covers. And a double live Beserkely done for a German TV rock show with Earth Quake, Tyla Gang, Greg Kihn and someone else. The first two, which made up one vinyl LP of a 2-fer, smoked. Tyla Gang actually was a Stiff artist at one point. They made one or two for Stiff, as spin-off of Ducks Deluxe, doing a stoked R&B pub boogie and pop style. Which wound up on one LP called "Yachtless," too, which was on Beserkely but which might not have seen domestic release. That was a definitive. Great single, probably from Stiff days, called "Styrofoam." "Moonproof," which followed -- was domestic and on B, and I recall not liking it at all.

foreign musicians having Visa problems post-9/11

This belongs in the metal thread, but the Swedish black metal band Marduk are playing NYC on 5/21; it's their first U.S. tour since February 2001.

Isn't Earth Quake's "Mr. Security" and the Vanda & Young cover of "Friday On My Mind" on that? Or do they do "Head Held High?"

Nah, none of those are on Spitballs. (And it's hard to figure out which bands/artists are doing which songs anyway, since as I said, they're not credited. I don't get the idea that any of the tracks are, say, just Earthquake, per se'; it's not a compilation so much as a tossed-off collaboration, or at least that's what it looks like to me. My copy doesn't even list the names of the performers on the cover, though Scott Seward says he has an UK import copy that does. But yeah, "knocked it out between takes just screwing around" is pretty much the aesthetic of the entire album, not just "Knock On Wood." Though that aesthetic definitely goes along with the whole we-might-as-well-be-having-a-pickup-softball-game feel of a lot of these bands' music, including Earthquake's, in the first place.

The Earthquake LPs I have on my shelf, fwiw, are Rocking The World from '75,8.5 (as in Richter Scale) from '76, and Leveled from '77 (easily the one I play the most, thanks to their covers of "Kicks" and Hot Chocolate's "Emma").

Been listening this weekend, or trying to, to the self-titled '75 Columbia LP ($1 used promo pressing) from Zuider Zee, who'd probably wind up the second-to-last musical artist on my alphabetically ordered LP shelf if I decided to keep the thing, but I don't think I'm going to. Just too twee and weedy in its late-Beatles (& maybe Wings) appropriations; could defintely use way more proto-Cheap-Trick powerchords, in other words, though I have a feeling Geir Hongo would go for it. George might even like it more than me, too; I'm just not Beatles-obsessive enough. Basically, the singer usually does a McCartney thing, and they also put his voice through filters or whatever to give him gruffer Lennon-like parts (unless those are two different guys, which I tend to doubt). Do like intermittent sections of the two longest/archest/proggiest songs, five-minute humorously titled "Zeebra" (featuring boogie-woogie piano and Motown bassline and hard rock guitar interludes) and almost-eight-minute "All That Is" (an all-over-the-place mess including a minute or so where it gets loud and fast and stays weird and thus anticipates Tin Huey to my new wave ears). And being Beatles fans, they don't lose the melodies when they get complicated, a good thing. But the only time they stay vigorous enough to hold my attention for an entire song is "Haunter Of The Darkness," at the tail-end of Side One. (They also do something called "The Last Song Of Its Kind," a very deceitful title seeing how it's just a bad flimsy ballad, and I've heard many more bad flimsy ballads since 1975.)

And speaking of end-of-the-alphabet rock, this came in via email at the end of last week. The Hill and Beard quotes at the bottom are pretty amusing:

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played "stump the band" with the audience on April 21 at TD Banknorth Garden in Boston. They were not stumped by a fan's request to perform ZZ Top's great "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide" as this account confirms. (There's video of the performance, too, so check it out):

\http://www.nj.com/springsteen/index.ssf/2009/04/boston_video_of_bruce_springst.html

Bruce had performed the song only once before at a regular E Street Band show, on Sept. 15, 1984 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
He did play it an handful of times at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park in 1984 and 1987

Here's the E Street Band's earlier (1984) crack at the ZZ evergreen (audio only):

Lastly, here's the band's account of how the song, which first appeared as a track on their 1979 release Deguello, came to be:

Billy Gibbons: “We saw a performance one evening, featuring Freddie King. At the conclusion of the show, we were attempting to describe the fierce intensity of that night’s experience – that kind of omnipotent ‘badness’ that is of a universal proportion. This seemed like the way to go.”

Dusty Hill: “You don’t want ‘I’m Bad, I’m Regional.’ People know that bad isn’t really a negative. Are you bad in a little pond? You could be bad worldwide, but it doesn’t sound as good as ‘nationwide.’ I like the ‘gold-tooth-display’ line. A lot of bling.”

Frank Beard: “’Gold-tooth display’ was ahead of the curve.”

Awesome.

I recall seeing Bruce around then at the Spectrum. Beer fell like rain from the upper decks, the restrooms were a catastrophe and the man had discovered weight-lifting.

Plus the habit of repeating popular choruses fifty times and the art of making a four and half hour show seem like six, right in there with Hot Tuna.

That Spitballs comp sounds cool! In response to Chuck's (?) - Gino Is A Coward is by Gino Washington (not to be confused with Geno Washington), a Detroit R&B greasy soul stomper type, big regional hit, I think. Great song. His "Out Of This World" is pretty awesome too.

Glad to hear someone else is on an Eagle Rock kick!

Listening to a tour-only live disc by The Answer, recorded in December 2007. They're joined by Paul Rodgers on two songs - covers of "I'm a Mover" and "The Hunter."

new dolls album is out. does anyone care?

Considering how hard the last one sucked, probably not.

I got the new Rhino Bucket album in today's mail. Current drummer is ex-AC/DC, current guitarist ex-Kix. Haven't listened to it yet, but it's a safe bet that it sounds like late '80s AC/DC.

I'd definitely be more interested in hearing the new Rhino Bucket (whose 2006 album rocked) more than the new New York Dolls (whose 2006 album didn't.) (I was going to call it Rhino Bucket's "previous" album, but apparently they put out two more albums last year I never heard of. So when did they get rid of Jackie Enx, their transexual drummer? She was good --which is not to say Simon Wright is chopped liver.)

Meanwhile, Talas's 1982 Sink Your Teeth Into That (on Relativity, bought for $1 of course) might fit in better on Rolling Metal than here if people on Rolling Metal talked about old stuff much. They were the first band featuring Billy Sheehan to get recorded; this was their second album, between a limited edition self-released one and a live one that Martin Popoff claims were worse. (I've never heard those.) I have a vague memory of reading a review in Option or somewhere else non-metal in the early '80s that compared them to Blue Cheer, which is silly -- They're not even all that noisy, and they're not very bloozeful either. Maybe whoever wrote it was just looking at the picture on the back. "Hit And Run" has a wee bit of Bad Company vibe to it maybe, but mostly they're closer to a U.S. power-trio equivalent of NWOBHM. (How come there was no NWOAHM, btw? Is the point that metal had never died in the US? But it had never really died in the UK either, right? I guess they just like inventing new genre names more there.) Fastest songs are probably "High Speed On Ice" (how come pre-thrash '80s metal bands -- up through Metallica, I guess -- liked ice so much? Though this title brings to mind hockey more than freezing to death) and "Shy Boy" (which Sheehan later brought to David Lee Roth's first solo album, which makes sense since it basically sounds like a fast Van Halen track.) "NW4 3345" is just Sheehan wacking off on his bass, the only time he really does that (so I don't know why Popoff complains about the band being bassist-led so much.) "Smart Lady" seems to concern a lady smart enough to take her clothes off for money, but I didn't attend to it closely enough to make sure. And closer "Hick Town" concerns growing up in one and needing to get out, and is kind of cool because Jason Aldean's first metal-guitared country hit a couple years ago had exactly the same name. Anyway, like lots of early '80s indie-label metal from both sides of the pond, this LP is endearing in its low-budget cluelessness. What a weird time for the genre.

Talas was such a big deal in upstate New York back in the 80s.

Head East, self-titled album, 1978, A&M, $1: So has there ever been a government-funded study about the relationship between mid/late-career self-titled albums (when in a perfect world only debuts should be allowed to be self-titled) and record labels "putting their foot down"? Maybe there should be. Because that's kind of what this sounds like, at least compared to earlier Head East LPs I've heard (including one I talk about above) where you get the idea the band was having way more fun. So maybe it's also just that they were getting tired, or had a contract obligation to meet. In some ways, it's more consistently "hard rock" than those earlier albums, but also more by-by-the-book/four-square about it for the most part, give or take the excellent 5:41 heavy closer "Elijah." Still worth hanging onto for that, and for what's technically their biggest pop hit (if not their obvious legacy song), i.e., their take on Russ Ballard's hard-pop readymade "Since You Been Gone," which Rainbow also just missed going Top 40 with a year later. Otherwise, I actually think I might prefer this record's second side (where they get a little bit more ballady and jazzy, less run-through-the-motions meat-and-potatoes) to the first.

It's difficult to dress up Talas albums. No one in the band could write. There wasn't an iota of charm in anything committed to vinyl. At best, one might say Talas was a live showcase for Billy Sheehan. I had them. Understand why they were big in bars and as openers in upstate New York. They were "rock musicians." They had lotsa equipment. Someone was going to make it out of there and do OK.

Okay, this is for you chuck! seeing as how i have a promo copy of spitballs with the promo press release inside it with all the info. for the record, 14 Beserkley artists performed on the album and THEY ALL PLAY INSTRUMENTS ON EVERY SONG. so, every song has 7 or eight guitars playing, four drummers, etc. Here is who SANG LEAD on every track:

i can only give you everything (them) - royse ader (rubinoos)

gino is a coward (gino washington) - larry lynch (greg kihn band)

over and over (bobby day) - steve wright (greg kihn band)

life's too short (the lafayettes) - greg kihn

feel too good (the move) - john doukas (earth quake)

boris the spider (the who) - donn spindt (rubinoos)

way over there (the miracles) - asa brebner (modern lovers)

just like me (paul revere & raiders) - john rubin (rubinoos)

chapel of love (dixie cups) - jonathan richman

batman theme - d.sharpe (modern lovers)

bad moon rising (ccr) - sean tyla (tyla gang)

knock on wood (eddie floyd) - sean tyla & john doukas

i want her so bad (psychotic pineapple) - tommy dunbar (rubinoos)

let her dance (bobby fuller 4) - gary phillips (earth quake)

telstar (tornadoes) - lead guitar by dave carpender (greg kihn band)

there, more than you will ever need to know about Spitballs!

also, my press release comes with a lengthy august 28th, 1978 review in New West by Greil Marcus. he really liked it. "Probably Spitballs will be no more commercially successful than the invisible tunes it celebrates - and that is altogether fitting. The Bee Gees will not make room on the charts for it. But then, there are those who feel that the charts no longer make room for THEM."

(although Greil would only have to wait until the beginning of 1979 to see a cover of "Knock On Wood" take over the universe...)

Hmmm, "Knock On Wood" is on the Earth Quake best of, Sittin' In the Middle of Madness. It's definitely John Doukas on vocals, not Sean Tyla. Mebbe he played guitar.

Asa Brebner more 'well known' for being in Robin Lane & the Chartbusters.

Station break: My current events funny pages. Be sure not to miss 'Sit Home and Rot.' Which, yes, was tkane from Murphy's Law, from the best song Jimmy Gestapo ever wrote.

Got a book recommendation for y'all: Steve Waksman's This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk. It's basically a slightly more academic and way less polemical Rock and the Pop Narcotic, talking about the points of conjunction between metal and punk from 1970 through the mid-1990s. I'll list the chapter titles so you'll get where the guy's coming from:

1. Staging the Seventies: Arena Rock, Punk Rock (in this one he talks about Nuggets and Grand Funk Railroad)
2. Death Trip: Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, and Rock Theatricality
3. The Teenage Rock 'n' Roll Ideal: The Dictators and the Runaways
4. Metal, Punk, and Motörhead: The Genesis of Crossover
5. Time Warp: The New Wave of British Heavy Metal
6. Metal/Punk Reformation: Three Independent Labels (the labels covered are SST, Metal Blade, and Sub Pop)
7. Louder, Faster, Slow It Down!: Metal, Punk, and Musical Aesthetics

I'm midway through the Alice 'n' Iggy chapter, and it's great. The guy's writing style is engaging and never academia-dry, and obviously the subject matter is right up my alley (shit, I thought about writing this book at one point; I'm still planning on writing a book arguing that rock and soul from 1970-75 are vastly better than rock and soul from 1964-69, and that it's been all downhill since '75).

Hmmm, "Knock On Wood" is on the Earth Quake best of, Sittin' In the Middle of Madness. It's definitely John Doukas on vocals, not Sean Tyla. Mebbe he played guitar.

Definitely fucked myself up on this one. Phil's entry made me drag out my Earth Quake stuff, because it is so rock and soul, and -- boy -- did I mess up.

It is Sean Tyla on vocals. John Doukas of Earth Quake backs him up... and that's the reason it
works. Tyla doesn't have the Mitch Ryder voice. But Doukas does. And it comes through enough to make this stdio vamp work.

Now, Martin Popovic slags Doukas in his 'metal' books because he doesn't really get Earth Quake. Earth Quake's lead singer is John Doukas. Doukas sounds to me like he was mostly imprinted by Mitch
Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. And Popovic has never understood Detroit rock 'n' soul.

Like Christgau's blindspot blocking him from writing anything credible about hard guitar music,
Martin Popovic doesn't 'get' any singer from Motown in a hard rock format. Instead, he 'gets' Ted Nugent's worst vocals as being the best of a Detroit thing. Someone who is like Mitch Ryder, to Popovic, sounds like someone having pitch problems.

And that may have been Earth Quake's sin, to Popovic. They did hard rock and soul with a Mitch Ryder-esque singer right in the middle of the Seventies. Right when that stuff was not gonna get any
kudos or push.

As to G. Marcus writing something favorable about Spitballs. Wow. That would have been
the kiss of death, all things considered in terms of who was writing about what in terms of hard rock. Seriously.

There are some people who, if you take them seriously, are just the kind of people who would
discourage you from writing enthusiastically about hard rock music. They are virtual poison
re hard rock.

Griel Marcus was one of them. He's the antithesis of someone who would have liked hard rock when it was being formed. He's not even a serious heavy duty journalist.

Believe whatever shit pseudo-scholars tells you. Or not.

I'm still planning on writing a book arguing that rock and soul from 1970-75 are vastly better than rock and soul from 1964-69, and that it's been all downhill since '75.

i would gladly buy this book.

Ha ha, I totally disagree with Phil's thesis on multiple levels ("all downhill since '80" might have validity, though), but I'd enjoy seeing him try to make the case. (As for that "metal and punk crossover and conflict" book, I already wrote one of those, and mine had more conflict built into it. But if I see this one cheap, I might check it out...)

Been listening to American Beat's new CD reissues of three Del-Lords albums from the '80s, which don't start out hard rock but sort of end up there, plus Scott Kempner from the Dictators and Eric Ambel from Joan Jett's Blackhearts were in the band, so I guess they belong here more than on the country thread.

Big surprise is how dull the 1984 debut Frontier Days (a Christgau A-, and a ridiculous #26 -- 12 places higher than the Del Fuegos! -- in the 1984 Pazz & Jop Poll) is, compared to their two later Neil "Mr. Benatar To You" Geraldo-produced later albums (both Xgau B+'s), and especially 1988's indie-label Based On A True Story, which Kempner's liner notes claim was their biggest seller "by quite a bit" and which "spawned the almost hit 'Judas Kiss'," which I like (it's about a buddy hooked on crack I think), but which didn't make the Hot 100.

Anyway, the acclaimed debut sounds surprisingly bland to me, and really pissed me off when I first put it on even though I'd always assumed the band kind of stunk -- almost proto-alt-country, like an attempt at Jason and the Scorchers-style cowpunk but with no rock hooks left, or like the washed-up later Replacements a few years early; the Reagan-recession-era update of Blind Alfred Reed's '20s depression blues "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live" is a clever idea, I guess, and "I Play The Drums" and "Mercenary" might come off as smart songs if somebody had actually sprung for a production budget. 1986's Johnny Comes Marching Home is where they first get Geraldo, and it sounds better (especially the rockabilly/Stones economy-commentary back-to-back "No Waitress No More"/"Some Summer") but still not good enough. But on Based On A True Story (with cameos from Benatar, Syd Straw, Mojo Nixon, and the Pandoras' Kim Shattuck) the sound finally gets fleshed out, and the band comes off both looser and more confident, and their Bronx/ Lower East Side greaser schtick finally has humor in it. The pretty melodies finally click, too: "Ashes To Ashes" reminds me of the great early '80s Terri Gibbs blues-country song of the same name, but the one whose jangle puts a lump in my throat every time is "Cheyenne," re: "a city boy in God's country."

Also been listening to Shot In The Dark, the sophomore LP from England late-pub-rock garage wavers the Inmates, who'd hit pretty big on Stateside rock radio with their cover of the Standells' "Dirty Water" the year before. (That single went #51; debut LP First Offence went #49, and two other songs from that debut -- "Mr. Unreliable" and "The Walk" -- got AOR airplay in Detroit, though possibly not anywhere else.) Anyway, the second LP is good, but never charted. Sounds like the main attempts to follow up "Dirty Water" were a good cover of another famous garage nugget, the Music Machine's "Talk Talk" (which lots of new wave bands did around that time) and the hard early-Stones-style "Stop It Baby"; they also interpret Jagger/Richard's "So Much In Love." And maybe they figured Michigan was where to shoot for, so they do versions of the soul perennial "(She's) Some Kind of Wonderful" (previously covered by Grand Funk) and Junior Parker's "Feelin' Good" (previously covered by Brownsville Station as "Martian Boogie," though I personally prefer it with martians.) Plus they pull off a respectable J. Geils-type soul-rock ballad called "Sweet Rain." (Geils were even bigger in Detroit than in their hometown Boston, as I recall.)

(First Inmates LP was 1979, btw; second was '80, and cost me $1.)

All I could remember by the Del-Lords until you mentioned them longishly was "I Play the Drums" and "Judas Kiss," both making the biggest impression live when I saw 'em open for the Georgia Satellites. (Who, obviously, were really really really better.) Third, I guess, "How Can A Poor Boy". Had the albums, probably thought most of the first, now don't miss them at all. For supposedly bringin' the vintage rock and roll, they really didn't. Too mild-mannered, too reverential, I dunno. Bad time for getting someone to produce, mix and master stuff like that so it worked and I'm not so sure they were up to the do-it-yourself thing. A Mutt Lange was needed. That said, they're natural for American Beat. One might say they no are a poor man's Tommy Conwell & the Young
Rumblers, who did get appropriate production and mixology years later. And maybe that was all the difference.

last night i listened to:

fandango - last kiss (rca - 1978) starring the king of aor joe lynn turner. great red lips picture disc. approaches lite-bad company territory at times, but it's mostly smooth and slick. actually sounds like they were listening to a lot of little feat when they made this album.

original mirrors - s/t (arista - 1980) kinda new wave poprock. need to listen again sober.

alexis - s/t (mca - 1977) looks promising and it sorta rocks, but mostly dud songs.

easy street - under the glass (capricorn - 1977) capricorn album i'd never heard. not bad. not great. some okay southern guitar stuff on it.

josh leo - rockin' on 6th (WB - 1983) detroit by way of L.A.? springsteen everydude rock - songs like "workin' class", "two car garage". but check out his backing vocalists: mary clayton, bonnie raitt, timothy b. schmit, j.d. souther, wendy waldman. kinda looks like a young dick destiny on the cover.

bandit - partners in crime (ariola - 1978) kinda thought this might be cool too what with the blazing six guns on the cover, but it's mostly mellow stuff.

shakin' street - s/t (cbs - 1980) you are all familiar. solid as a rock was my jam last night.

flame - s/t (rca - 1978) not bad jimmy crespo rock with female vocals, but this don't sound like stevie nicks. or aerosmith.

so, weirdly, the surprise of the night for me was listening to a shadowfax album from 1976 on passport. watercourse way. SERIOUSLY high flying guitar prog that will make you dizzy. i dug it. i'd only heard their later stuff and that stuff is way more mellow and serene. this shit is prog noodle heaven. if you like that sort of thing.

I like that Shadowfax LP, too! I never even listened to them at all before, but Lalena had her copy in a giveaway pile when we were about to leave Queens, and I checked it out and was really surprised. (Why the heck my wife had a Shadowfax LP is a really good question, though she's a major prog fan. She said she hadn't listened to it in a long time, and wasn't sure why she'd kept it. Anyway, it's mine now.)

The Flame LP I have (their only one that charted) is called Queen Of The Neighborhood from '77. I like it, or did last time I listened to it, and it has a really hot Brooklyn-tough-chick-on-the-stoop- with-her-'hood-pals LP cover to match the title.

Not sure whether I ever owned Original Mirrors, but I can picture its bespectacled LP cover in my head. And I love that Shakin Street LP more than George does. (He's a Vampire Rock purist, I believe.)

Actually, the Shadowfax Watercourse Way LP I have is a vinyl reissue from '85, on Windham Hill! Making its likeability even more surprising to me.

dick destiny's younger brother, maybe?

http://i9.ebayimg.com/08/i/001/45/fc/923b_1.JPG

Speaking of Dick Destiny, could've sworn his alter ego wrote up a roundup of Nutz reissues once whilst I was at the Voice, but Google is not helping me locate it, so maybe I just dreamed it. Either way, Hard Nutz (A&M, 1977, promo pressing, $1) is quite possibly as hard-rocking an album as any on this thread, but it's also proggier (or at least pompier) than I'd anticipated, given their seemingly punkish moniker. Reference points would perhaps include Heep, Nuge, Faces/Humble Pie (for "Pushed Around"), heavy Suvvern funk rock (for "Sick And Tired" of rock'n'roll it turns out); closer "One More Cup Of Coffee" makes White Stripes' version sounds like kindergartners in comparison and probably out-heavies any Dylan cover I've heard this side of Nazareth's "Ballad Of Hollis Brown." But the real shitkicker -- honestly, probably belongs on any historical short list of hard-rock classics when you get down to it -- is Side One closer "Wallbanger," which probably has nothing to do with interrogation via the method of swinging torturees by their necks and banging them against walls, but sort of sounds like it could. Oliver and Jasper call the Brits "a proverbial support band" and say "Wallbanger" was "their most impressive cut"; apparently this was their third LP out of four, including a live one.

Popoff compares the album to REO and Head East, too (along with Humble Pie and Ted), looks like; he seems to be saying Nutz's earlier albums were better, but this one is heavier. (He gives it a 7/6; mentions Sensational Alex Harvey/Skyhooks/Atomic Rooster/Budgie in his review of their '74 debut; adds Sweet and Queen for their '75 followup and Bad Company for their '77 live bow. I never heard those.)

Golden Earring, The Hole (21 Records, 1986) -- No "Radar Love," no "Twilight Zone," no "Candy's Going Bad," and much of it sounds phoned-in, so not a great Golden Earring LP, but not a bad one either (and I've never heard one that was). They really seem their own thing, somehow, naturals to adapt to dance-oriented '80s AOR even if some songs here seem like they're trying to keep up with Phil Collins-platinum-era Genesis (those cheesy horn charts in "Love In Motion") and maybe the Police. But they're always totally listenable, and always have interesting rhythmic ideas (most obviously here in the 6:30 "Jump & Run.") Still not sure to what extent English was a foreign language for them. Alan Neister in the Rolling Stone Record Guide approved of them, but called them "hopelessly derivative," saying they borrowed their main riffs from Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull, but I'm honestly not sure I've ever heard the connections; those groups were way artier, for one thing. (And I say that as somebody who actually thinks Tull did plenty of rocking stuff.) I did always like how Neister branded "Radar Love" "a fusion of Canned Heat and Kraftwerk," though, even if my ears tell me otherwise. Bottom line, I don't think any critic I've ever read has ever gotten to the bottom of the Earring aesthetic. Which makes them neat, somehow.

Actually, reading back, that does sound like I'm kind of damning The Hole with faint praise -- and if I were to grade all the G.E. LPs I'd heard on a curve, it would admittedly not fare so well. (Also just noticed that Popoff devotes more than two whole pages to 11 of their albums in his '70s book; I should re-read those reviews sometime, probably.)

Skimming, I notice Popoff mentions Pink Floyd a few times, too; so it must be there somewhere. Maybe I'd notice it more if I listened to Pink Floyd more. (Also should note that The Hole is definitely not as metal or loud-guitared as much of their '70s output, but that never stood in the way of their earlier '80s LPs I've heard. Actually think GE's long career trajectory has something in common with Slade's. And I like Slade's '80s LPs too, actually.)

The Flame LPs, there were two, should be reissued. Marge Raymond, I think, was the name of the vocalist. And she was really somethin'. On one of them, she sang "This Old Heart of Mine."

dick destiny's younger brother, maybe?

Eesh, no. Actually, the guys on the cover of the first and second J. Geils Band
albums were more of a template.

As for Nutz, I mentioned the first album in passing for the 9/11 issue. And the first was the best of the four. They changed their name and simplified for the NWOBHM, becoming Rage. But that didn't work, either. They did so many things, they never had a unified tone, which was impressive in its musicality, but no some much for leaving an indelibe impression with at least one side of relentless anything. Some boogie, some prog, some hard pop, undistinguished singer, good guitar player. Didn't have much of a yen for big hooks.

I've put Flame's "This Old Heart" on several mixtapes. Can't remember any other song on the LP.

I've hung on to "Hard Nutz" through numerous purges of the collection (mostly 'cause it wouldn't sell for anything) and yeah, the two cuts I remember are "Cup Of Coffee" and "Wallbanger."

"It's All Over," the album closer, was also good stampeding rock. Not only semi-famous for contributing Jimmy Crespo to dissipating Aerosmith, but Thommy Price on drums eventually into Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Where he still is, I think.

For some reason, I always thinks of 1994, too, when Flame comes up. 1994 in same
vein for debut, some Aerosmith influence, some Heart, a great deal of dramatic orchestrated arrangement. Less dirty rock 'n' roll than Flame but they got more mileage out of it. But not that much more. By the time of their album, the first band had been sacked for others -- some nondescript bunch called the Sunset Bombers -- to back up the woman in spandex and leather with wailing voice. Tried for a single with a title cut, "Please Stand By," which after said album when radically downhill compared to the first.

By the time of their album

By the time of their -next- album, actually...

Still not sure to what extent English was a foreign language for them.

G.E. singer (since 1967) Barry Hay was born and raised (including an English education) in India and came to Holland when he was ten years old. He speaks Dutch with a slight English accent, although I'm not really sure whether it's genuine or just faux-r'n'r posturing.

1994!! Wow, I have both albums, plus Karen Lawrence's earlier band LA Jets (not very good at all) and later foray into new wave with The Pinz. Plus a 45 of "Prisoner (Captured By Your Eyes)" which was a nice rock ballad from the flick "Eyes Of Laura Mars." Guess i was a lille obsessive for a while there! Streisand even covered "Prisoner," but I've never heard that.

Tried a few times to get into First Water by Sharks (MCA, 1973, Andy Fraser from Free on vocals and bass, a pre-punk Chris Spedding on guitar), but no dice -- it's just all gruffy stodged-to-the-gills midtempo medium-level blues snooze, like Joe Cocker or somebody. Maybe a couple nifty time-changes in "Follow Me" or "Snakes And Swallowtails," and maybe a halfway interesting lyric in "World Park Junkies," but more likely not. No hooks to speak of.

but you tried! and that's what counts.

You did 'get' the best two tunes, "World Park Junkies" and "Snakes & Swallowtails."
Do not advance to second album, "Jab It In Your Eye," with Busta Cherry Jones replacing Fraser, which is worse. Busta Cherry Jones. Hard to believe, but true, there was a doof who actually called himself that and people in bands stupid enough to let him get away with it.

Do not advance to Baker-Gurvitz Army, which is where Snips -- Sharks singer -- went afterwards when Baker and the Gurvitzes realized they couldn't sing. Except for "Mad Jack" which wasn't sung, anyway.

i like the baker-gurvitz army albums with snips. but i am an unabashed gurvitz fanboy. and snips could sing. but songwriting, along with singing, was also not baker/gurvitz strong suit. actually, adrian wasn't THAT bad a singer. he even had a hit in the 80's with a ballad that he wrote and sung.

Yeah, I bought Baker-Gurvitz Army by impulse, while looking for Three Man Army, also barely remembered a favorable Creem reviews from their more credible years, and thought it was okay (well worth the fifty cents). Busta Cherry Jones was a valued pick-up muso (hence the name?), for inst, subbed at the last minute on a Gang Of Four tour, which the other Three were dreading, but he learned their catalogue immediately and they thought shows with him some of their best ever. Sharks was frought, imploded quickly, prob didn't get along in the studio at all, no wonder bout album. Another advantage of living down in the boobdocks is getting to hear bands like these(although I haven't heard much of their studio work; this is another of my show previews)

When American Dog first humped Columbus, OH in 1999, their territory was already well-marked. Not only did they follow in the pawprints of a roving pack, sniffing the roaring remains of biker-blessed metal and southern rock, they also shredded their own anti-pedigree. Singer-bassist Michael Hannon had gotten way off the chain with Dangerous Toys, Salty Dog, and especially Hilljack, those graphically unrepentant, burning poster children who continue to inspire American Dog’s eternally dying breed. Hannon still growls strenuously and sardonically, while equally experienced guitarist Steve Theado and drummer Keith Pickens chew through anything.

but songwriting, along with singing, was also not baker/gurvitz strong suit.

Heh. 'Nuff said. Album art was over half the sale. If you liked murkily produced hard rock art and jazz, they did that well. As said, I think "Mad Jack" was their high point, an elongation of Baker's "Press Rat & Wart Hog" story-telling about the weird style.

Baker-Gurvitz Army were one of those bands theoretically designed to appeal to progressive FM radio.

One can imagine them as part of the subject in the segment from "That Thing You Do" where the Wonders get sent to an obscure jazzoid radio station and Ronnie Howard's brother asks them what 'broke their cherry.' And everyone has an inane answer except for Shades who says, 'Del Paxton,' and Howard nods and says, 'Yeah, Del Paxton, baby!' Fast forward six or seven years, and one of the band members says 'Baker-Gurvitz' and the Howard character, in the same tone, replies, 'Yeah, Baker-Gurvitz, maaan.'

honestly, it's all about the guitars for me. and i do love ginger's thumping. he's a jammer. songs just get in the way. although he certainly knows how to back up a good tune. a la cream or my fave masters of reality album sunrise on the sufferbus. i need to listen to that album he made where fela kuti shows up out of the blue. i like that one. i remember buying those airforce albums when i was a little kid cuz i loved the covers and being bored to tears by them.

plus, i just think it was cool that the gurvitz bros found another freaky redhead to bond with. and, wait, was snips a redhead too? he had a bad redhead-esque fro.

I hadn't thought about "Pressed Rat and Warthog" in years, or any of Cream's twee output. Was my favorite songs for about a month when I 14.

Sunrise On The Sufferbus is indeed a hoot, mon! Checkitout.

you guys like the werewolves? andrew loog oldham's attempt to create a nu-stones. i only have the second album and i like it. interweb descriptions of the first album say it's not as good or as rockin' as the 2nd album. 2nd album is from 1978. gorge must remember them.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UKcphlQpavE/R3xhXWv4cWI/AAAAAAAAALM/3XErSColQ1w/s400/Cover.bmp

and some of their stonesy moments, like on the song "summer weekends", are way better than, like, black crowes stonesy moments. tighter and poppier and less shaggy.

this seems a little hard to believe, but i'd never heard the suicide commandos make a record on blank before until recently. i really dig it. i was gonna sell this copy for my brother, but they don't sell for a ton and i think i might have to keep it. plus, then, i would own the entire blank records discography of two albums.

I have never heard the Suicide Commandosor the Werewolves, I don't think! And here I thought I was up on new wave hard rock. I am so out of it.

I do own the other album on Blank, though (and even know what it is.)

Btw, Don, George definitely did an American Dog writeup at the Voice a few years back (he's an even bigger fan of them than I am), but I haven't been able to track down a link on the Internets.

And in case anybody missed it, here is another thread where Golden Earring were discussed this week (followed by an old thread started by George before that I didn't think I'd ever seen before, but I must have, seeing how I eventually posted on it and all):

Stand Up and Be Counted in the Epic Golden Earring Showdown: Radar Love vs. Twilight Zone

Where is the love for Golden Earring?

suicide commandos album is really great. in the same vein as my fave akron bands rubber city rebels and bizarros. they even have a song called kidnapped! they were from minneapolis though.

best video ever made by any band ever:

interweb descriptions of the first album say it's not as good or as rockin' as the 2nd album. 2nd album is from 1978. gorge must remember them.

They're rubbish, the ratings, not the Werewolves. I had both, listened to the first one more because it had better songs. The second may have been a bit harder sounding. They were in the same vein as Tears who are in need of a very limited edition remaster.

Look up my Monster Records sampler review. That's where American Dog was dealt with.

This made me laugh. What the Internet is really good at: Making sure the most obscure sidemen get their hagiographic biographical entry on Wikipedia. Erik Cartwright, guitarist for the really shitty Foghat LPs was one of the guys in Tears. And another journeyman band, Bux, who wound up being sidemen for Joe Perry and Kim Simmonds in one of the shorter-lived incarnations of Savoy Brown.

xp Actually Outlaw Records. (Monster was the label that reissued obscure heavy sludge bands of the early '70s, as I recall):

http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-01-14/music/ride-hard-die-hard/

oh and i meant to post this info about the suicide commandos video:

"one nightin the fall of '77, the Minnetonka Fire Department burned down the condemned Utopia House--the legendary Commandos HQ that the band had rented for $30 a month. Knowing it would happen, the band wrote one of its finest anthems for the occasion--"Burn It Down"--shooting a video for the song with the flaming house as a live backdrop"

Holy moley! Every time I go out to the Village Voice they've worked even harder at making the website user hostile. I didn't think it was possible, but the webmasters keep upping their game. If they work even harder, maybe Google can be persuaded to put a little "This website may be harmful to your computer" warning on search results from it.

Have to have a really old computer that does not grok the fancies. Links in original aren't enabled, I'd be informed too much BBCode.
Ride Hard, Die Hard
Under-the-Table-Again Rock
George Smith
Tuesday, January 14th 2003
photo: Dee Lippingwell
Randy Rampage is not a dead boy.
Randy Rampage is not a dead boy.
Details:
Raw Trax 02: 100 Proof Ass-Kicking Rock & Roll
Outlaw Entertainment import
Raw wrath and metal roll always win out. No matter how retro or staid, the best hard rock in 2002, by far, came from those who instinctively grasped that respect must be paid to ground broken in the mid '70s, not only by the big guns but also by the toilers and failures. Which brings us right to Raw Trax 02, a compilation whose contributors fall so neatly into the category of biker rock that one envisions them all deeply influenced by AC/DC, Nazareth, Moontan Golden Earring, and the Don Brewer-produced Godz.
Four bands deliver; a fifth is rotten, and will be shunned for the duration of this review. (They're at the tail end of the disc, so no one has to endure them to hear the good stuff.)

But first off is American Dog, of the corny name but distinctly un-corny bluesoid metal. The beats on "TV Disease" and "Shitkicker" are locked in, living on the highway. Blown out of the water as Salty Dog a dozen years ago by the Nirvana revolution, the sound is now stripped anti-Hollywood middle-American. The band knows that their place isn't selling anything but live music for the near to down-and-out, and they do it pretty well. They probably work in tattoo shops that are infrequently closed down by health inspectors.

And even that's not as scary as Billy Butcher, an old-fashioned Billy Gibbons-style songwriter and axman who acts like the last decade never happened. Way beyond the Black Keys, "Stateside Walking Shoes" squanks along like an engine with one scored cylinder backfiring against the other five—in a good way. Even better, when you expect Butcher to get all hackneyed and start singing about leaving trunks or one bourbon, one shot, and one beer, he reaches for the Benzedrine. Johnny Winter And . . . is hidden under the pillow, too, I bet.

Related Content
April 27, 2009
More About ...
Billy Butcher
Eric Moore
Nazareth
Johnny Winter
Billy Gibbons
I thought Randy Rampage was dead and apparently everyone else did, too, because Raw Trax goes to great lengths to assure the listener his contributions aren't posthumous. He used to be in DOA (or the Subhumans, maybe, or Annihilator?), and he's Canadian, I think. So he names a song "Bytor," but it doesn't sound like Rush. I bet he always wanted to do that. Rampage also does AC/DC with a barrelhouse electric pianer tinkling along in the background. Plus a Dead Boys cover, which every decent gin-joint act should be up to.

And, finally, what would an accidental monument to the Godz be without a God?

Raw exhumed Eric Moore, who many believed deceased, too. But he was probably just in jail, judging from his song "Criminal Mind." Moore's Godz remain true-blue meatheads, still playing "Mongolians" from the mid '80s, a song probably left off of 1979's Nothing Is Sacred. The Godz remain the missing link between Black Oak Arkansas and David Lee Roth—a dubious classification except to those who like to imagine hirsute fiends scaring tourists in Hollister between recuperative naps in the back of a squad car. In other words, Godz-metal is the rock and roll you get from a bunch who are a hybrid of the exaggerated plug-uglies Phillo Beddo harassed in Every Which Way but Loose and Billy Jack kicked in the teeth in Born Losers. Indispensable.

(More by George listed after this credit for something)
Outlaw Entertainment International Inc., 101-1001 West Broadway, department 400, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 4E4, outlawentertainment.com

Recent Articles
More by George Smith
Zolar X's X Marks the Spot
A bewitching and bewildering glam resurgence

Bludgeoning Riffola, Suitable For When Fucking the World
She Wolves's Mach One: The Early Days

Party-Time Surf Rock for Your Pre-bar-fight Reveries

Left to Their Own Devices
In dubious battle: The military's love affair with technology, from video game to secret weapons

Yikes!

Back in the analog world: New England, self-titled LP, Infinity, 1979: Supermelodic (like, post-Boston at points, also maybe a little post-Queen to go with the inevitable post-Styx etc.) pomp AOR, complete with a superdupermelodic hit single "Don't Ever Wanna Lose Ya," which just barely squeezed into the Top 40. But my two favorite cuts are probably the OTT-tempoed "Shoot" and the maybe even more so "P.U.N.K.," which stands for "Puny Undernourished Kid" and I swear revolves around a subliminal (maybe accidental?) (maybe imaginary? you decide) Sex Pistols riff. But of course it's all Billy Joel-style resentment about the stupid younger-brother generation: "You've got chains for brains/When you eat 714s for supper/Hey kid, you're only 16/And you've got too many lovers/Don't put salt in your wounds/If you're trying to make things better." Good advice! (And 714s were of course 'ludes, at least as much a metal drug as a punk drug where I grew up.)

Also talked a little about a live CD by them a couple years ago:

Rolling Metal Thread 2007, Part II

Hey hope I didn't get to presumptious posting that, Gorge. Great piece, anyway, I'll have to check out that comp (and Zolar X! WE need a glam thread!)

Re the Zolar X reunion, Make sure you don't pay full price. It's entertaining but ... one of those things you won't wind up listening to more than a handful of times. Kind of like the original. It shares the glam as done by the Lee Harvey Oswald Band phenom: You put on Blastronaut, listen to "Surrender Earthlings" five times in a row, exclaim 'This out-Spiders the Spiders from Mars!' and an hour later you put on Ziggy and never come back to them.

Jasper and Oliver label '70s threesome American Tears "plod pomp" in their book, and listening to Tear Gas (Columbia, 1975), I'd have to say they hit the bullseye with that one, even though a couple moments (the title track, and parts of "Serious Blue Boy {Sail On}" before it starts sounding like "Jesus Christ Superstar") pick up at least a little beyond plodding. Not much power -- especially guitar power -- to their power trio, either. Too bad, since I like their gas masks on the cover, and they have pretty intriguing song titles (also "The War Lover," "Franki And The Midget"), and my $1 copy caame a neat sheet of band stickers inside. Not sure off hand if they're better or worse than, say, Bighorn or Aviary (both of whom came later), but either way their prog lacks much to grab ahold of.

Don't recall much about American Tears 'cept didn't listen to it much after first purchase. Later changed named to Touch and, for a brief time, went down a storm in England.

loving this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41DNF9RKM3L._SS500_.jpg

acording to sleazeroxx.com this was teaze's 4th album, but the first to be released in the u.s. jeez, you would think they were from finland or something and not canada. can't believe some suit didn't take a chance before then. anyway, i dig it. lotsa super-catchy rocking and some interesting touches. from 1979.

A bit on Teaze's
first album on my blog a year and plus ago. They were indeed fairly neat.

Feel kinda bad about this one, and George is welcome to chide me about how wrong I am about it, but I gotta say I'm pretty severely bored by Chicken Shack's 100 Pound Chicken, from 1969 (Blue Horizon, another recent used buck purchase.) They look like really funny goofballs on the cover, all dressed up in renaissance faire robes and leotards in the woods 'til they all get bloodily killed by a big chicken fallen from the sky on the back (very Monty Python, now that I think of it), but none of their sense of humor seems to translate into the music -- which just mainly strikes me as your usual arid blues-rock stodge, not memorable and not especially heavy, with maybe some guitar parts that are "good" but not particuarly interesting (at least not to me, as a non-guitarist.) They also do a couple passably reverent funk and soul vamps, but somehow they manage to drain almost all the flair out of those, too -- not a fair comparison, I know, but I played the album back to back with Wilson Pickett's Wicked Pickett from 1966 this morning, and they're not even close to the same ballpark. (Also, their "Midnight Hour" is not his song either, fwiw.) Strangely, I've had a CD reissue collection by them for a couple years (From the Vaults on Sanctuary, 2003), and it always sounded okay in the background; not sure if the material is better there (doubtful) or if the vinyl just forces me to listen closer to the dull details.

Nah, you're not wrong re your likes. Chicken Shack's 100 Pound Chicken isn't very fiery at all. Christine Perfect had left -- their best song and the only one to chart was "I'd Rather Go Blind" with her on lead vocal, and it's very pre-Fleetwood Mac. So they started getting harder, Stan Webb wouldn't to do more heavy music, and Mike Vernon wasn't much into that. And, as a result, that record was transitional. Their last album with Vernon producing was Accept Chicken Shack and that was louder still. "Telling Your Fortune" from it was real influential on me. It's classic thumping blooz rock and the album mixes that style with folky blues and some instrumental things. Chicken Shack left Blue Horison and pared down to a trio for the next record, Imagination Lady, which ups the voltage even further, redoing "Telling Your Fortune" as a crunching freak-out which is more an excuse for Stan Webb to walk out on his 100-ft guitar cord live than an actual song.

The first four albums were recently repackaged in a box set. Their first two featured Christine 40 Blue Fingers Freshly Packed and OK Ken. A lot of people prefer them because of McVie's great voice and piano playing; she and Webb split vocals evenly and the latter just doesn't have a distinctive voice by comparison. I like Chicken Shack but they were definitely lodged somewhere between the second and third tier in the Brit blues boom after the initial success of the "Blind" single wore off. Mike Vernon, however, did a great job with them for four albums, and he was always high on them. So if you really like Mike Vernon-helmed stuff, they still offer much to enjoy.

But, in the long run, they certainly weren't Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac or Savoy Brown.

Ah, I mean Stan Webb wanted to do more heavy music, little of which shows up for 100 Pound Chicken, a lot more of which is on Accept Chicken Shack.

chuck, do you have *The Great Metal Discography* by martin strong? another weird book. same dude wrote the great rock discography. i don't think i've actually used it for anything. has discographies for 800+ groups. so, i guess it's kinda cool to check out the discographies for bands like For Love Not Lisa and Four Horsemen and Freak of Nature. kinda curious about Princess Pang now.

Picked up reissues -- not that recent -- of Chilliwack's Wanna Be a Star and Opus X.
Band straddling Eighties AOR pop rock moving into metal, pulled by guitarist Too Loud MacLeod
and bassist Ab who wound up pulling it in the direction of Headpins, their other band with Darby Mills, until it became obvious they were more into the latter.

Both are good albums, Wanna Be a Star having their only single to chart significantly in the US, "My Girl," which I don't remember well. I presume that's because it got regional play in varios areas, and southeast Pennsy wasn't among them. Opus X turns into Headpins without Darby for it's second half, which crashes out with hard AOR arena rock guitar and ensemble vocals appropriately. Liner notes indicate that this was thought to be for the US market but, truly, there was a glut of this sound in 1982 and the competition was fierce even when you had the material. It actually might have been a little too much for audiences into Journey, Starship, The Babys, etc.

Since it was, according to the biographer, decried in the Canadian press for being too much like Headpins, I dragged out Play It Loud and concluded, yeah, that Headpins did Headpins better than Chilliwack doing Headpins with Bill Henderson instead of Darby. But the difference is in increments and and some minor style choices. Less big harmony vocals, almost none really, in Headpins, but more riff and no singles aimed obviously at airplay. But some of the songs just smoke, like "People" and "You Can't Leave Me." Opus X, on the other hand, has a couple singles, "Watcha Gonna Do" and "Secret Information," before dispensing with the restraint for riffage in the last twenty minutes.

One appreciates the over the top singing and high studio sheen coupled with clubbing, often van Halen stiff-necked guitar on Opus X, there to an even greater extent on Play It Loud. It was a good combination and it must have worked for them in Canada for awhile, although far as I can tell, aside from "My Girl," neither band made much of an impression in the states.

gorge, there is a fierce debate going on in my e-mail box. i ended up on this e-mail list of hard rock/metal dudes, and the debate - such as it is - is about who was the fiercest boogie rock band of all time. martin popoff sez it was status quo. some say savoy brown. some say foghat. others say zz top. i might give it to the quo just for sheer singlemindedness, but i want you to weigh in if you feel like it. basically, who blows all others away when it comes to hi octane boogie.

Point Blank? (Though not for a long term, obv.)

"My Girl" -- maybe because the band were Canadians -- definitely got AOR airplay in occasional suburb-of-Ontario Detroit. As did, I've realized in retrospect, "Fly At Night (In the Morning We Land)," off Chilliwack's 1976 Dreams Dreams Dreams, which seemed brawnier more often than Opus X or Wanna Be A Star to me, last time I listened, though I might think differently if I spun them all back to back. I've got all three LPs on vinyl; also a 45, which I wrote about (along with some musings on the band itself) at this permalink:

Mostly German Old Used 45s That Metal Mike Saunders Mailed To Me

Hey Scott, I don't have The Great Metal Discography, though it sounds familiar, and potentially useful. Definitely kinda liked the one Princess Pang LP I bought for $1 last year -- aren't they L.A. sleaze metal guys fronted by an immigrant Swedish or Finn gal (who could easily pass as a sleaze-metal guy dressed up as a gal on the cover)?

Been listening, obsessively, to Coloured Balls and Buster Brown reissue CDs (Ball Power and Something To Say respectively) that came out on Aztec a few years ago. They're totally great; can definitely see them as blueprints for Oz AC/DC/Rose Tattoo/Angel City bogan boogie bands that came later (which is where some of their personnel wound up obviously.) Angry Anderson (their singer) talks in the liner notes of the Buster Brown one about how their audience mainly came from a rowdy Aussie working-class streetwise kid subculture known as "sharpies," a term I don't think I'd ever heard before. Buster Brown also have Phil Rudd on drums; Coloured Balls' guitarist is Lobby Loyde. But when Jasper and Oliver say under both bands' entries in their book that Buster Brown were originally called Coloured Balls, they're wrong; on these two albums, the lineups don't intersect at all -- and in fact, they were known to play on the same bills. Though it seems at least one Coloured Balls guy wound up in a later version of Buster Brown, and Loyde produced them. (Not clear from the liner notes whether he was an actual member; Jasper and Oliver claim he was.)

Lots of other Aussie bands from the time mentioned in the liner notes also, including Skyhooks a bunch of times. Kind of curious now about the Dingoes, who I've always heard of, but never heard. Any good?

Btw, so far my favorite Coloured Balls track is "Human Being," easy, which just kills. And just noticed that the Coloured Balls booklet (just got these a couple days ago) has a longer essay (which I only skimmed just now) about Sharpies - "bored suburbanites whose main access to almost everything was by train," with a gang revolving around every town near Melbourne that had a station. Overseas acts popular with them were the Faces and Slade (both of whom did major tours, clearly influencing the Aussie bands), Suzi Quatro, Bowie, Lou Reed, and other glam acts from the UK. Sounds like the sharpies actually dressed kind of mod, and (the liner notes say) "in many ways it was more Clockwork Orange droog than archetypal skinhead." Also says they came from "all ethnic backgrounds" (though what that means Down Under I'm not sure - -hard to imagine that many aborigine kids joined up), and ranged from young teens to "well into their 20s."

George on that Coloured Balls reissue, a couple years before me:

Rolling Metal Thread 2007, Part II

Also had no idea until reading the liner notes that Stephen Malkmus (!?) had cover a Coloured Balls song ("That's What Mama Said") on one of his post-Pavement albums in 2001. Kind of scared to check out that remake myself, but curious if anybody knows it.

Drunk & fighting rock audiences, perfect for those bands, although they mostly served it better live than in the studio.

I like Lobby Loyde's Obsecration better than the first Coloured Balls record. The first fifteen minutes bring a lot more with Mandu as a singer, then it kind of start's flopping around like a gaffed fish for a long instrumental which they musta thought was great at the time.

Re boogie bands, Status Quo definitely not the fiercest boogie act. Saw them live on an odd bill at the the Sprectrum in their prime. It was Black Sabbath headlining, then Slade, and Status Quo at the bottom. In the UK, it would have been reversed a bit, Slade and Status Quo at the top of the bill. Anyway, Slade took the cake for aggression and spectacle, and Noddy Holder's voice blew the doors off the place. Ozzy was pretty incommoded with substance and Black Sabbath's show, in support of Sabotage, was pretty languorous. Status Quo put on an entertaining set, but when their mannager, Bob Young, joined them onstage to play harmonica on a couple songs, they looked like Sha Na Na.

Don't get me wrong, I like their records, but live they definitely didn't have the heft to put it to the wall like Slade, or more accurately, the boogie acts which were gangbusters in the heartland, like Foghat. Foghat just killed live and I saw them many times in Harrisburg and Philly. No one ever followed them onstage. Once "Fool for the City" became a climbed into radio, they'd hit the stage with it and the attack was merciless. Lonesome Dave had one of the most distinctive voices in hard rock in the Seventies. Francis Rossi of Status Quo, by comparison, well -- there is no comparison. And Quo never really had a lead guitar player, since it wasn't important in the context of what they were projecting. That said, they were huge beyond huge in England and if you have the Anniversary Waltz DVD, you see just how big. It was their 25 year anniversary and the show on it -- well, no one does anything like it. They play with the velocity of the Ramones and condense their songs into long medleys, with 1:30 devoted to each number's central boogie lick and chorus. And since most of these were big hits in the UK, it's quite remarkable. Couple with the Status Quo tone, which is two Telecasters straight into Marshalls, it's distinctive. Even through that, compared to Foghat and early ZZ Top -- and I'll get to Savoy Brown -- they just aren't in the same league of heavy ferocity.

After Tejas -- or maybe even a bit before -- ZZ Top had ceased being spectacular live. They were, however, a spectacle. They towed around this huge set from Texas for the stage and spent a lot of time jamming in which they'd often lose the beat somewhat. Saw them and the show, while it had its moments, often broke down into long stretches of snooze.

Savoy Brown, since for a good long while was Foghat with Kim Simmonds and Chris Youlden, had a similarly ferocious live boogie show. The live sides on Blue Matter and A Step Further pretty much destroy Quo's Seventies
live album, even though that record is quite good. Again it's the attack, and the singers -- Youlden and Lonesome Dave -- plus Kim Simmonds, who in the Seventies was a very loud and heavy axeman, which turn the trick. Those ingredients puts a lot more drama, dynamic and brute force into the boogie numbers. And Status Quo's style was different from that.

Now if you want some relentless boogie numbers, Quo certainly had them: Caroline, Railroad, Roll Over Lay Down, Don't Waste My Time, Big Fat Mama.

But they don't actually exceed the classics like Slow Ride, Fool for the City, I Just Want to Make Love to You, Drivin' Wheel, Honey Hush, The Boogie (SB), Tell Mama (SB), Let it Rock (SB), Lousiana Blues (Foghat and SB), Poor Girl (Foghat & SB), La Grange, Tush, Down Brownie, Just Got Paid.

And if it's really brutal live boogie you're looking for, there probably isn't a recorded performance that exceeds Savoy Brown in Central Park sometime in the very early Seventies with Dave Walker on vocals. It was put out by Relix and during the last twenty minutes, the band just clubs the audience with boogie rhythm and hot riff. If it weren't just rock 'n' roll, it would have been a proto-metal performance, particulary a version of Hip Shake. It's such a remarkable thing that what's left of Foghat, or Foghat II, now do it live and have recorded it twice in the last year and a half.

And we haven't even begun to talk about Humble Pie, right?

And for you real obscurists, after Foghat and Kim Simmonds parted company, Simmonds replaced them with Chicken Shack minus Stan Webb, and that's the band plus Dave Walker on vocals for the Central Park recording. So, yeah, Chicken Shack could sure be heavy, they just didn't do it until that date after they weren't Chicken Shack anymore.

i was just listening to humble pie.

i think a case could be made for cactus as well. not that i ever saw cactus live, but i've heard the tapes of the original line-up live and they were pretty bad-ass.

Yeah, the first double CD off Rhino Handmade makes a case for that very successfully. At the time, the live side of Ot n Sweaty did, too. "We're gonna do a boogie called SWIM, so get your socks a'rockin', baby..." And that was the second version of Cactus. It was mostly all in the rhythm section.

And Ten Years After always gets left out, sadly. After Alvin Lee did "I'm Going Home" at Woodstock, everyone thought he WAS the Man with the Ph.D. in boogie.

I gotta agree with George on this; based on the beginning of this discussion, I downloaded Quo's Pictures: 40 Years of Hits (the 2CD, not 4CD, version) and listening to it now, I'd rank 'em well behind Savoy Brown, Humble Pie and Foghat - in fact, I'd probably just consign 'em to my "Fuck It, It's An English Thing" list alongside T.Rex, Slade, and Sweet.

totally true about ten years after. it is forgotten that they were the heavy blooze rock kings for a friggin' decade.

but t.rex and slade and sweet were great too, phil! you kids today...

I've tried all three and they do exactly nothing for me. T.Rex literally sounds like a Kidz Bop version of early '70s hard rock - the same idea as more traditional hard rock/boogie bands, but sugared up and dumbed down for five- and six-year-olds. The way Kiss was aimed at ten-year-olds, but even younger-skewing. T.Rex are like the Raffi of rock.

Yeah. Bolan just was to twee for the US market, but then Bolan appealed to women in the UK, too, I think. He was also damaged by a dreadful performance on In Concert which went nationwide. He was apparently stewed and turned in a long performance of Jeepster which just fell apart.

Early Seventies boogie acts which did well in the US turned in performances that were poison for female audiences, not like modern country. I never recall many women up front at Foghat shows. If so, they were long suffering and very patient with their boyfriends, or of the type inclined to attend extremely drunk and ready to doff their tops if asked to "Show us your tits."

Pictures: 40 Years of Hits

If this is what I think it is, a good deal of it is pretty bad, selected from charting material from the string of albums where Francis Rossi wanted to do Jimmy Buffet/Kenny Loggins-type yacht rock.

i can't imagine trying to sell T.Rex to someone at this late date. so i won't try. i'm a huge fan of all of marc's many incarnations, that's all i'll say.

I'm not as hard on Bolan as Phil but, for me, he's pretty DOA after about a third of Tanx. And I had almost no use for that album when it was originally issued. Bona fide pop star, not much as a hard rocker. Most of the readers on this thread would get more use out of famous 'huh's?' like Hustler's Play Loud or High Street.

This video from 2007 shows how to still do Savoy Brown and not be lame. Ugly old man with Flying V mixing thud, crunch and an almost discordant blues change to a thumping beat. The vocals, originally by Chris Youlden, held up the song, too, but the album also put the number to a horn arrangement. Both versions work, actually. The hair-parting crunch coming off the stage, if my experience at these types of 'for boomers blooz shows' in the LV was any barometer probably annoyed the heck out of about half the audience. And sent the women packing.

There's almost no good old Savoy Brown tape on YouTube, which is kind of common state of affairs for a lot of
these types of bands. On the other hand, there's lots of worthless homemade videos in which the fan makes a slideshow of old amp covers and publicity photos set to a cut from the original vinyl. Those are truly worthless and plentiful.

there IS this on youtube though, and it's worth its weight in friggin' gold:

SO AWESOME!!!!

seriously, that just blows my mind every time i see it.

Yeah, I'd been looking at that and you beat me to it. Surprisingly, almost everything else is from 1993 or the Foghat II. Lonesome Dave in his shiny gold/silver suit. That looks like from when they were in support of Rock 'n' Roll Outlaws.

Offsite, today: The Poor Man's Jimi Hendrix

re: The Martin C. Strong Great Discographies are ridiculously useful. Half-Price Books had all of them several years ago. "Alternative & Indie", "Metal", "Psychedelic" and "Rock". Massive books with complete Discographies, memberships and histories of bands you never heard of and the most famous.

A random list of acts in Metal Marshall Law, Mary Beats Jane, Massacre, Masters of Reality, Max Webster, May Blitz, Mayhem, MC5, Duff McKagan, MDC. The writing has some humor and opinion to keep it from getting too dry, but I think I most enjoy reading about all the second and third tier UK musicians and how they moved from group to group throughout the 70s.

Have just been listening to the recent reissue of Shakin' Street's Vampire Rock, allegedly only '999'
copies, off a Euro imprint. The US debut, their second -- which repeats some of the numbers from this -- was produced by Sandy Pearlman of BOC and had much more of polished heavy metal whoosh to it, plus Ross the Boss, who added standard grade excellent Ross the Boss solos. Vampire Rock has a much rawer, violent sound. There's no big cushion of arenaverb on the guitars, so it actually fits the tone of the time better than the Pearlman produced thing.

No "Suzie Wong" -- Shakin' Street's best tune. But substitutes more speed and boogie, "Celebration 2000,"
"Love Song," sounding much more recorded under the influence of sulfates. Plus nothing on the second on CBS quite like "Blues is the Same," where Shine plays a little harmonica. Come to think of it, the original solos by Frenchmen sound very Ross the Boss-ian, either indicating they listened to the Dictators a lot, or they just alike melodically, or they were yanked from their duties for who knows now what reasons.

Like Telephone, Shakin' Street showed the French could do hard rock 'n' roll real good. However, the chirpy and fluty singing style which seemed to go with French acts of the time was met with no curiosity or patience here.

Lotsa crunch and crash on this record, though.

And if you think my posts look dyslexic in spots -- they do -- it's because of ILX's crippled format, or mine, depending upon your point of view. The ILX message box slides off the right side of my browser screen into a blind spot. And I'm sick of constantly having to readjust it with style sheets changes in the 'preferences' tab, changes which don't stick because of buggy software, on my end or its end, who cares.

But back to Vampire Rock -- which still kills thirty-one years later. Version of the Stones' "Yesterday's Papers" which also surpasses most of the imagination shown on the Pearlman-produced domestic release. I knew I liked the first record more for many reasons -- see xhuck's gut feeling upstream re my taste -- and these are some of them.

See here now, xhuxk, Uriah Heep's "Look at Yourself" is a fast shuffle,
not a Latin beat although I see where you'd get that in 'tinge' from the drum break and coda played by the dudes from Osibisa. Who were from Africa.

And, actually, Pete Townshend's flurrying guitar style is, and he's done it on TV, derived from flamenco playing. The fast da-d-da-daa stuff in open and
down strokes which is present on just about all Who recordings -- which apparently was picked up from someone in his family, like dad (?) or early lessons.

in open and down strokes

Make that 'in up and down strokes'.

The current most vital poor man's Jimi, as per above. The CD Baby offering of the Anthony Aquarius Mystery. It's no mystery his lyrics are a hoot, perhaps unintentionally so. "Love Bathed Experience" and the piece de resistance, "She's All Sheep."

"He even plays left-handed. Strung upside down as Jimi did. A great CD fom (sic) start to finish."

Lenny Kravitz, quit now.

Our boys in uniform try to rock. Oy vey.

Born to be mild

Hooo boy.

I once compared Iggy Pop solo albums to episodes of the old Bill Shatner series,
T. J. Hooker. Most of 'em are as unlistenable as episodes of Hooker were unwatchable. Now he has a new rival, the reruns of "Land of the Lost" on the Sci-Fi Channel, set to coincide with the movie remake and a commemorative box set. "Land of the Last" is uniformly dreadful. I dare you to watch more than five minutes of it sober.

So today's Calendar section in the LA Times devotes two of its three frontpage stories to "Land of the Lost" and Iggy Pop's new solo album. Keep in mind, I used to write almost an entire features section at a Tribune property, then Times-Mirror, the Morning Call in Allentown. And while that paper was mediocre and one was confronted with total crap from the entertainment industry on a daily basis, in the early Nineties it wasn't required that you pretend it always be something it wasn't, as is now SOP.

I'll reprint this graf, on Pop and his new album, Preliminaires.

It's hard to imagine a human being writing it with a straight face.

"Rockers who start second careers by singing jazz have become an industry cliche but
Pop, no surprise, doesn't just rework the standard songbook. Using 'The Possibility of an Island,' Michel Houellebecq's 2005 existential sci-fi novel about a dissolute, desolate icon as a springboard, 'Preliminaires' follows the poete maudit traditions of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and the sunny show tunes of Gershwin."

Considering Iggy Pop's 'singing voice,' or facsimile of it, I'd say caveat emptor.

I've heard the record. (I've also read the Houellebecq book, but that's unimportant to this discussion.) Based on your post, I can't tell if you've heard the record or not. It's not terrible, and it is somewhat jazz-influenced (though one song is a conventional rock band arrangement). Iggy can pull off the low-voiced crooner thing when he wants to. It's not something I can really envision myself listening to very often, but neither is Avenue B (his "poetry" album) or Zombie Birdhouse.

Anybody have any thoughts on Mi-Sex? Another Aussie band, early '80s, never charted in the States though their 1980 Gary Numan/Telex-style synth-robot new wave single "Computer Games" (not to be confused with Yellow Magic Orchestra's same-year "Computer Game," though that was easy to do at the time) got plenty of college radio and Sunday-night new wave show play at the time. Which doesn't make the sound very hard rock, I know, except that I was playing the Computer Games LP a few days ago and was surprised to be reminded that lots of it is hard rock -- in tracks like "Not Such A Bad Boy" and "Stills, really eccentric, arch, off-kilter hard rock, like the early Tubes, or how I imagine George's OZ faves Skyhooks (who I've never heard) sound. Thing is, after their quasi-hit, Mi-Sex seem to go in a more new-wave-synth direction in general (with some traces of say early '80s pop-period Rush) on later 1980's (still nonetheless quite catchy) Space Race, and by 1984's Where Do They Go they've clearly sold out (unsuccessfully) to a way more tired, bored, pragmatic commmercial medium-rock sound, like some amalgamation of Robert Palmer, Foreigner, and (maybe inevitably) their countrymen Men At Work, but without hooks good enough to justify it. What I'm most curious about is their earliest Australian stuff -- apparently Computer Games shuffled tracks (including the title track) from a somewhat obversely titled Australian 1979 album called Graffiti Crimes. According to Volume: International Discography Of The New Wave, they were "originally a hippy band known as Fragments Of Time from New Zealand. Moved to Oz 8/78 and became a commerical 'punk' band." Hmmmm...

And speaking of old Aussies, I've also been liking this Aztec Records reissue of Mighty Kong's All I Wanna Do Is Rock, from 1973, by guys from the (aforepraised upthread) Daddy Cool gone heavier boogie. (Typically great Aztec liner note booklet too, including plenty of Daddy Cool's own history.)

Also, while I'm here, catchiest '79-style skinny-tie powerpop album I've heard in many moons comes from Portland, Maine's The Leftovers, who I never heard of before and whose Myspace link is below; guests on Eager To Please include sundry people from the Donnas, Fastbacks, Romantics, and Rubinoos:

http://www.myspace.com/theleftovers

Well, typically, now you've made me more curious about MIghty Kong.

And, from today's dose of antic fun, here.

xp Actually though, subsequent listens to that Leftovers CD suggest to me that "catchiest '79-style skinny-tie powerpop album I've heard in many moons" might be rather faint praise. They've got the melodies and the energy; less convinced they have the voices and riffs -- which aren't bad; just not good enough to've ranked anywhere near the new wave era's best, had they come out then. Not yet sure about their songwriting (which is about girls, duh.)

So, anybody want to convince me that my LP copy of Triumvirat's Spartacus from 1975 shouldn't be transferred into the sell pile? For lack of better signposts I can think of it at the moment, I'd call it a nonrockingly sort of weak-guitared German ELP/early Genesis pastiche concept album about the Roman Empire, with only one third of a track (the highly percussive "Italian Improvisation" midsection of Side Two's nine-minute "The March To The Eternal City") I particularly give a shit about. Am I missing anything? Looks like another track was sampled once by some rap guys (see link below), but I'm not hearing anything all that funky there either:

http://www.the-breaks.com/search.php?term=triumvirat&type=0

Haven't heard Spartacus, but I saw Triumvirat open for Fleetwood Mac in '73. Their set was the entirety of Illusions On A Double Dimple, and they were pretty good at what they did: total ELP clones. I never listen to ELP anymore, so decided I didn't need Triumvirat on my shelf.

So, anybody want to convince me that my LP copy of Triumvirat's Spartacus from 1975 shouldn't be transferred into the sell pile?

No. I had the reissue on CD and it wasn't very good. Long gone now. Double Dimple was their best. A segment of it was actually contained a catchy tune which picked up a good deal of hoity-toity FM radio back when it wasn't too long after ELP had been the biggest band in the US.

Actually, the Rolling Stone Record Guide claims Triumvirat were Finnish, but Joel Whitburn, who I trust more, concurs with my German guess, and adds the singer/guitarist commited suicide in 1977.

So another important question: What were the best/ most rocking City Boy albums? I've only got Book Early from 1978, their last and highest charting of their three that charted in the U.S., and though their only Top 40 single "5.7.0.5" is the charming 10cc soundalike everybody says they were, at least four or five cuts qualify as hard rock in my book - especially on Side Two, where "Do What You Do Well" almost sounds midwestern American in a Head East sense, and the weird late-Beatles/loud-rock mix in "The World Loves A Dancer" and "Moving In Circles" could almost pass for a British version of Crack The Sky. Also very much like "Cigarettes"'s six catchy minutes of hard prog, and the funky powerchorded pop of "Summer In The School Yard," about singing along to the Beatles' yeah-yeah-yeahs in 1964. Are those anomalies, or what? They don't make the Jasper-Oliver book at all, so I wonder.

their debut album is really good! and quirky too. they had a lot of albums. haven't heard them all. i'm selling a copy of the first album in my store if you want it. i could sent it to you.

http://www.recordsale.org/cdpix/c/city_boy-same.jpg

actually, chuck, e-mail me your address anyway, i've got all kinds of stuff i can send you for free. good stuff.

i just bought a ton of sealed tapes for my store. i sell a lot of tapes! it's always good to have some backstock. here are some of them:

Agent Steel - Skeptics Apocalypse
Anacrusis - Manic Impressions
Anastasia Screamed - Laughing Down the Limehouse
Angel Witch - Frontal Assault
Arc Angels - Arc Angels
Aversion - Fit to be Tied
B-Thong - Skinned
Band of Susans - Veil
The Beast - Carnival of Souls
Heretic - Breaking Point
Jailhouse - Alive in a Mad World
Mass - Voices in the Night
Mercyless - Abject Offerings
Messano - Messano
Mind Over Four - Half Way Down
Nevada - Beach
Overlord - X Versus the World
Andy Prieboy - Upon My Wicked Son
Prophet - Recycled
Prowler - Prowling Death Squad
Sacred Child - Sacred Child
Shy England - Misspent Youth
Sidewinders - Auntie Ramos Pool Hall
Sister Psychic - Fuel
Skank - I Never Said That
Slapshot - Step on It
Spinal Tap - Break Like the Wind
Sweet Pain - Sweet Pain
Sword - Metalized
T T Quick - Metal of Honor
Tesla - Bust a Nut
Tiny Lights - Stop the Sun I Want to Go Home
The Titanics - The Titanics
TMA - Beach Party 2000
The Toll - Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones
Toxik - Think This
T'Pau - The Promise
Tyrant - Too Late to Pray
Victory - Don't Get Mad, Get Even
Violent Playground - Thrashin' Blues
Wreck - House of Boris
YLD - Window Shopping in a Fools Paradise
Zed Yago - Pilgrimage
The Zeroes - 4-3-2-1....

The Accused - Grinning Like an Undertaker
The Angels - Live From Angel City
Apocrypha - The Forgotten Scroll
Assassin - Interstellar Experience
The Bang Gang - Love Sells.....
Banshee - Cry in the Night
Black Sabbath - Children of the Grave
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Black Sabbath - We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'n' Roll
Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metalicus
Cinderblock - Greatest Hits
Death of Samantha - Come All Ye Faithless
Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn
Diamond Rexx - Golden Gates
Doomwatch - A Symphony of Decadence
Enuff Z'Nuff - Animals With Human Intelligence
Exodus - Pleasures of the Flesh
Jonathan Grell - Winterkat: The Struggle
Heathen - Breaking the Silence
Mekong Delta - The Music of Erich Zann
Numb - Christmeister
John Palumbo - Victim of the Nightlife
Piledriver - Stay Ugly
Raven - Nothing Exceeds Like Excess
Slik Toxik - Doin' The Nasty
Sodom - In the Sign of Evil
The Splatcats - Feelin' Bitchy
Spinal Tap - Break Like the Wind
Stone - Stone
Straitjacket Fits - Hail
The Suicide Twins - Silver Missles and Nightengales
Joey Tafolla - Out of the Sun
Tesla - Bust a Nut
Trash Broadway - Trash Broadway
Victims of the Pestilence - Born To Leave
Wartime - Fast Food For Thought
The Weather Prophets - Judges, Juries & Horsemen
The Zeroes - 4-3-2-1....
The Zeroes - Names, Vol. 1
Zoetrope - Amnesty
Zoetrope - A Life of Crime

Adolescents - Brats in Battalions
Atom Seed - Get in Line (promo)
Aversion - The Ugly Truth
Bad News - Bad News
Belladonna - Belladonna (former Anthrax vocalist!)
Blue Steel - No More Lonely Nights
Candlemass - Live
The Cherry Bomz - 100 Degrees in the Shade
David Coverdale - Whitesnake / Northwinds (double length)
Dancing Hoods - Hallelujah Anyway
Deathrow - Raging Steel
Doctor's Mob - Sophomore Slump
Doughboys - When Up Turns to Down
Drop Acid - Making God Smile
Exodus - Fabulous Disaster
Extreme - III Sides to Eevery Story
Genocide - Black Sanctuary
Gillan - Mr. Universe
The Godz - The Godz
Holy Soldier - Holy Soldier
Hype - Burned
Illusion - I Like It Loud
Impellitteri - Stand in Line
Iron Cross - Iron Cross
John Jarrett's Tribe - John Jarrett's Tribe
Julliet - Julliet
Leviticus - Setting Fire to the Earth
Little Angels - Young Gods (promo)
Lostboys - Lost and Found
Mad Parade - Thousand Words
Manikin Laff - Manikin Laff
Motley Crue - Motley Crue
Noisy Mama - Everybody Has One (promo)
Powermad - Absolute Power
Quiet Riot - Terrified
Raging Slab - Slabbage / True Death
Sky "Sunlight" Saxon - Fire Wall
Seduce - Too Much Ain't Enough
Spinal Tap - Break Like the Wind
Too Much Joy - Son of Sam I Am
Victory - That's Live - Tour '88
Wild America - Tora Tora
The Zeroes - Names, Vol. 1

might be some repeats in there. but that oughta give you an idea. and there is more where that came from. i know i'll break down and open a bunch of them out of curiousity.

it's my goal to have the coolest tape department on the eastern seaboard.

>>The Beast - Carnival of Souls

Probably not as good as "The Beast...Has Arrived!" Famous punk rock goon record, done by a guy fond of jumping off the stage onto the head's of others. One song, the first, must have been played a few hundred times at the store where I bought it, burning the line ... "I'll break youyr fucking back!" into my head.

Not quite as good as the first Nihilistics LP.

>>Slapshot - Step on It

F------' Ay! Slapshot! Every album by Slapshot is necessary if you're fond of beating people up!
Don't you need Choke in your bedroom, threatening to hit you in the teeth with his hockey stick?!

>>T T Quick - Metal of Honor

Regular jobbers at the Airport Music Hall in Allentown. I gave this a bad review in the newspaper and they cursed me from the stage.

>>Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn

Rod Evans-era DP!

>>John Palumbo - Victim of the Nightlife

Get back to Crack the Sky or avoid.

>>Stone - Stone

Famous IRS Metal release from the label infamous for doing not-metal. That went well.

>>Blue Steel - No More Lonely Nights

Bad power pop album.

>>Dancing Hoods - Hallelujah Anyway

Something my ex-wife would have liked.

>>Gillan - Mr. Universe

Not bad. Gillan doing his raging hard rock thing.

>>Powermad - Absolute Power

David Lynch directed their video. "I thought he would have a rat on his head," one of the band members told me in interview. That was the most interesting thing about 'em.

>>Raging Slab - Slabbage / True Death

True Death is good, Slabbage not so much.

>>Seduce - Too Much Ain't Enough

Another IRS Metal special, so see Stone. I thought xhuxk once reviewed their self-made debut in his Creem column or in the reviews section of that mag, shortly before it went out of business.

>>Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn

Rod Evans-era DP!

^ any good? i like both gillan and coverdale dp, and captain beyond. i have always lived in total fear of the pre-gillan days.

Spotty. "And the Address" and "Wring That Neck," were two good ones, both Blackmore instrumentals. And "Hush" is a classic, still in DP's repetoire. Don't know if they were all on Taliesyn, off hand. I had the advantage, thirty or forty years ago, of getting it and "Shades of Deep Purple" in an old recompile called Purple Passages, which is worth getting cheap if you can find it in used vinyl. And it should be fairly common.

interesting. i know wring that neck from some of their live stuff. its a jam. literally.

And today's backwards delving, once again on 1994, plus Trigger and Laurie and the Sighs.

Here, in The Thin Line Between Great and Sub-Mediocre.

i like that trigger album too. that's a good one.

i have some 1994 45s, but i've never heard the whole album. the singles never did much for me.

In my mailbox this week: a two-DVD set by Deep Purple including tons of performance footage by all four lineups from '68-'76, and a two-CD Ted Nugent disc supposedly documenting his 6000th live performance. I question the recordkeeping that went into that determination; is he counting all the way back to pre-Amboy Dukes high school bands?

Got the only album by South African stomp-blooze quartet Suck, Time To Suck, in today's mail. Reissued on Shadoks. Features one original and eight covers, as follows: Grand Funk Railroad's "Aimless Lady" and "Sin's A Good Man's Brother," King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man," Donovan's "Season Of The Witch," Free's "I'll Be Creeping," Deep Purple's "Into The Fire," Colosseum's "Elegy" and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs."

Good, now I can buy it. Missed the Leaf Hound reunion disc.

I reinstalled the turntable a couple weeks ago and have been actually using it more than the CD player.

Last night's playlist:

Dave Edmunds Rockpile

Ten Years After Rock 'n' Roll Music to the World Boo! 'Choo Choo Mama had developed a skip.

First side of Humble Pie's Eat It "Good Booze and Bad Women" and "Drugstore Cowboy" were the highlites.

First side of Nugent's Double Live Gonzo: "Just What the Doctor Ordered" (St. Holmes' only vocal on the thing, I think), "Yank Me Crank Me," "Gonzo" and "Baby Please Don't Go."
Boy, Ted's rhythms were faster back then, particularly on the last.

"In my mailbox this week: a two-DVD set by Deep Purple including tons of performance footage by all four lineups from '68-'76"

Very cool

It's not bad. Garagey, crude and angry-primitive. I like it better than the Nugent live thing, though that's got its merits too; nice version of "Wango Tango" and a briefly diverting run through various guitarists' styles and/or trademark riffs (Chuck Berry, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a few others). He's still pretty fast.

I just tried out Ten Years After for the first time this week; downloaded Ssssh. Didn't care for it - too much psychedelic foofery, not enough raw blues-rock madness. Do I need contemporaneous live recordings instead?

get undead, or cricklewood green, or watt, or a space in time, or recorded live, or rock & roll music to the world.

yeah, get recorded live. the double album. that's got some serious jams.

Get Recorded Live and skip right to "I'm Going Home." That's the most crunching high velocity version of it. Plus, there's lots of blooz thud and guitar craziness on the rest of the double.

I suspect you'd also like Undead which is TYA's first live recording, done at a small club, Klooks Kleek, which was part of the British blues boom. It's raw and shows off a lot of jazz noise, something Lee was into but which he downplayed once he became an arena god.

"Boogie On" from Alvin Lee & Co. is also a great thing to hear in this vein.

A Space In Time has TYA's most famous song, "I'd Love to Turn You On" -- but that isn't really a hard rock number, having been mostly used for flavoring as a song in Vietnam-era, or harkening back to Vietnam-era, movies.

Scott and I concur.

i never bought that live at the fillmore set that came out. i'll bet i'd love it though.

did i mention that i love ten years after.

stonedhenge is actually my fave album, but i'm not recommending that one on purpose. cuz that album has a whole different vibe compared to most of their albums.

I have the Fillmore set. It's really almost identical to Recorded Live, only
much longer. You would definitely like it although it's not critical since you have all the other LPs.

Ten Years Later was also a great album, although the original band was gone.

this is what i was loving yesterday:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_CeTfgCKjnlo/Rp_oZxCZN_I/AAAAAAAAAcI/nUuMOZII2Hs/s320/Canned_Heat_-_Hallelujah_-_Front.jpg

some seriously cool guitar on that record.

All right, I'll give Recorded Live a listen. Thanks!

you might want to rent that isle of wight festival documentary too. they are awesome in it. and it's just a good movie.

people i would have loved to see at the isle of wight festival directly or indirectly related to this thread:

mighty baby

black widow

the groundhogs

howl

terry reid

taste

family

cactus

ten years after

the doors

the who

free

jethro tull

jimi hendrix

hawkwind

pink fairies

fairfield parlour

procol harum

Man, I lost track of this thread quick. Briefly: I did indeed review (and probably entertainingly overrate) Seduce's self-released debut in Creem Metal in the mid '80s. I got that new double Nuge set in the mail this morning; may not get to it right away. Always liked Ten Years After's Watt, though should probably explore them more sometime, which isn't to say I'll get around to it. Need to pull out my copy of Trigger; not sure if I've unpacked all my "T" LPs yet or not (half of vinyl collection still in boxes beneath the stairs until I buy shelves -- top of the master bedroom closet now full.) Like the second 1994 LP more than George does, but right, not nearly as much as their first one. Have never actually heard Laurie and the Sighs, though I'll now be on the lookout for it.

Played DC3's 1985 This Is The Dream this morning -- first album by Dez Cadena-guitared-and-vocaled not-as-powerful-as-I-wish SST label power trio who say in the liner notes they want to make an album like their favorites by Deep Purple, Captain Beyond, Humble Pie, and Mountain. They don't pull it off -- singing and guitaring is too thin (though the title track and "98 Malvern St" do okay in the latter department), songs seem too hippie-sloppy and marijuanified and not-quite-finished, Spot production murk probably doesn't help -- but for punk rockers remembering the '70s sludge they grew up on so early in the game, it strikes me as a valid attempt. Remember liking their later The Good Hex more at the time (#314 in Stairway), but I don't have a copy of that anymore. Weird to think the first DC3 album is now 24 years old, though -- We're as close to it now as it was to 1961, wow.

Liking a couple new stoner-doom-type albums okay this week, too, for the first time in some time -- the ones by Snail and Black Pyramid on Meteor City (also liked the one by Elder on that label late last year) and the (more Answer-type '70s mainstream rock revival I guess) one by Grand Union on Rise Above. None of them are great; can't promise I'll still be listening to any of them even a couple weeks from now. But for now, they're sounding not bad. (The other three or so albums I got from Meteor City last week didn't quite cut it for me, though.)

ps) Oh yeah, I need to look over Scott's tape list above sometime. As for the first City Boy LP, I'll pass for now, Scott; on a budget. But if I ever see it somewhere for $2 or less, I may snatch it up.

Albums on Scott's tape list that I actually own (on CD):

Anacrusis - Manic Impressions
The Zeroes - 4-3-2-1....

May or may not own that live Angel City album on vinyl. (+ some Sabbath and Godz ones, duh.)

Been curious about Mekong Delta ever since Popoff compared them to Voivod in his book. And I didn't like that latter-day Death of Samantha album when it came out, though maybe I would if I heard it now.

Sidewinders - Auntie Ramos Pool Hall

This is the late '80s band (who I know absolutely nothing out), not the Billy Squier powerpop one from the '70s, right? Awesome album title, either way.

Taste and Cactus were at Isle of Wight? Cool, Jim McCarty and Rory Gallagher on the same stage. Two underappreciated guitar geniuses.

Today is Wishbone Ash day at my record store. I've already played their debut three times in a row today. ESSENTIAL ALBUM FOR ANYONE READING THIS THREAD. i mean, you all knew that, but just in case there are lurkers.

Dragged out the TYA Fillmore East set over the weekend. It is as I remembered, much like "Recorded Live" but longer. Not essential unless you're really really nuts for TYA. But if one can't find RL, then it's a more than adequate demonstration and substitute, at a somewhat more intimate venue -- although not by much -- than the ones where the former where recorded in Europe.

And not related to this thread, but in case you'd like to hear what I sound like these days, from a radio show.

Weekend $1 purchase Coup De Grace by Mink Deville from 1981 is mostly not hard rock enough for this thread, except maybe "Love Me Like You Did Before" (only cut with Thom Panunzio rather than Jack Nitzsche co-production credit), and then only marginally and it's nothing special otherwise. Rest of the LP is sub-sub-Springsteen bar-band soul even less distinctive than the two Southside Johnny LPs I bought cheap copies of recently, with occasional glimmers of sax or Drifters-style Latin rhythm, and a more or less passable Arthur Alexander cover, but no riffs or songs as memorable as M.D.'s "Cadillac Walk" or "Rolene" or especially "Spanish Stroll" elsewhere. Strange how Willie Deville could look so eccentric with those Parisian features and that pencil thin mustache, yet usually sound so un-.

I never 'got' Mink DeVille, either. Had to have been an exclusively Manhattan thing. Had Coup de Grace and a solo album -- Le Chat Bleu? -- and neither got much play after I'd heard mostly what seemed to me to be a Parisian or Iberian peninsula
bar-type thing.

Was he big from Paris to Lisbon or in Barcelona?

I can definitely see/hear him as background in that Russell Crowe movie, A Very Good Year.

Well, just checked Amazon and Le Chat Bleu received five five-star reviews, so if you were into his voice, you must have thought it great. I completely missed it but he did, apparently, have enduring appeal in Europe. I do remember it was not, initially, released domestically, as my copy was an import.

no reason to listen to mink deville when you can listen to thin lizzy. or bruce springsteen, for that matter. or phil lynott solo. or friggin' tonio k, my hero. listening to tonio's amerika album recently, i was once again blown away by his tribute suite to kurt schwitters. so great! and years ahead of george kranz's tribute.

though, of course, george kranz's tribute is totally genius too. much respect.

I have totally been on a Tonio K kick lately! But I dunno, seems to be Amerika has nothing as great as Mink D's "Spanish Stroll" or "Rolene" (much less Moon Martin's "Rolene") on it, and neither does the La Bomba EP (which I like better than Amerika.) And both of those records obviously pale up against Life In The Foodchain, one of Scott's and mine's favorite albums in the history of the world. (But that goes without saying, right?)

Only George Kranz song I've ever heard is "Din Da Da," shamefully enough. I clearly need to hear more.

Le Chat Bleu received five five-star reviews

It gets four out of five in the 1983 blue edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide where Marsh calls it a "near masterpiece" and Deville a "late Seventies Mitch Ryder, with tripled angst." Pretty sure I've never heard that album; maybe I should. Marsh gives the other three albums up to that point three stars each. But that's under the D's; under the M's, both Mink Deville and Return To Magenta get four stars each from John Milward -- one of my favorite editing fuckups in record guide history. (Milward claims Deville "sounds like everyone from Lou Reed to Isley Brothers," which sounds interesting but I'm also pretty sure is bull.)

Speaking of Mitch Ryder, I noticed that Nugent covers "Jenny Take A Ride" on his new live double, paying tribute to a hometown hero with Johnny Bee helping on drums. No idea why he thinks BB King, Albert King, Freddie King, and Stevie Ray Vaughan constitute "Motown soul," though. But I did really like his "Bo Diddley" homage, and his "Soul Man" is more substantial than the brief one that was on last year's gratitious live album. Also, Ted yells "freedom!" a lot and covers the "Star Spangled Banner" ('twas a 40th anniversary show recorded at the Pontiac Silverdome last July 4.) Also brags a lot about his venison-barbecuing prowess. Very fun CD to blast with the windows down at all the bikers cruising through Austin for their convention this weekend, obviously. Though just as obviously, I'm pretty sure it won't get much play from hereon.

Oops sorry; not Silverdome, the "DTE Energy Music Centre," whatever that is -- apparently in Clarkson. (A clue!: If you type "Pine Knob" into Google, DTE is the default. Hey, I've been gone a while.)

speaking of mitch ryder...this video is the weirdest thing I've seen in awhile. from 79, w/backing band who look like the prototypical midwestern bar band of the period. and mitch is like... pardon the expression...mincing around on stage. is he gay? not that it matters. anyway i was looking for some footage of the 1970 DETROIT band and found this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MisLnQjKP00

oh and I've decided that the rockets' first album love transfusion is some kind of lost classic.

What you guys think of the Chickenfoot? I know Chuck isn't a big fan of the Red Rocker, but I found it a lot of fun. For pros jamming in the studio, without trying to be An Important Supergroup.

mitch is like... pardon the expression...mincing around on stage. is he gay?

Yep. Well, I'm not 100 percent, but I'm pretty sure Marsh wrote about this in the '80s, and Ryder may have even sang about it on that mid '80s LP that John Cougar produced, where he covered Prince...

Chuck isn't a big fan of the Red Rocker

Hey, I gave "Mas Tequila" a glowing review in the Voice when it came out a few years ago (along with Metallica's "Whiskey In The Jar")! Also like the first Montrose album. And "Why Can't This Be Love" even. So I'm not a big NON-fan, either...

Sorry. You just make fun of him a lot in Stairway (I believe the operative word was "Putz")! I thought it was a fair assumption. So what do you think of the Chickenfoot?

Reviewing that Nugent live one for AMG. It's an entertaining enough thing to listen to once (pretending they still broadcast concerts on the radio), but I doubt I'll be returning to it and it damn sure won't be taking the place of Double Live Gonzo! in my iPod. (Neither will Sweden Rocks, though that was a pretty good one, too.) I think I've mentioned this before, but when I interviewed Nugent last year he was able to rattle off just about every piece of gear Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels were using back in 1966; the guy's a serious gear geek.

You just make fun of him a lot in Stairway

As opposed to all the people I don't make fun of in Stairway? ...Well, okay, maybe I make fun of Sammy more than some. But I make fun of lots of bands that I don't actually hate of in that book!

Haven't heard Chickenfoot, though. (Or even knew they existed, to be honest, 'til you mentioned them.)

Hey George, I think you might like the Backsliders. Tough-gal singer, 10 songs in 23 minutes on new album, including a cover of "Keep A Knockin'" by Little Richard. Haven't decided yet how good it is, though. I liked their album from last year, but then never wound up returning to it after I reviewed it.

Their myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/thebacksliders

So what do you think of the Chickenfoot?

Haven't heard it except for the promos running on local TV ads for BestBuy. That sounded OK but I haven't bought anything by Sam Hagar in awhile. Actually, I bought all the albums on Capitol, when he was still calling himself Sammy and really was 'the Red Rocker.' In fact,
Sammy Hagar -- his second, might be my favorite album of his. Includes the touchstone party stuff, "Rock & Roll Weekend," "Cruisin' & Boozin'," "Red". Then there's "Trans-Am" and "Plain Jane" from Street Machine and "Turn Up the Music" and "Reckless" from Musical Chairs. Put them all together with his live cut of "I've Done Everything For You" -- which Rick S. must've sent him lots of royalties on -- and you have one really
great soCal sun hard rock and pop album. And that's all from his Capitol catalog.

Saw Ted acting in Toby Keith's Beer for My Horses -- a mostly dreadful and corny straight to video movie in which the biggest gags are supplied by Rodney Carrington who is about as funny as an audible wet fart. The biggest star was Ford's biggest pickup truck. Running gag in which the son of a Mexican drug lord is regularly knocked unconscious by Keith throwing an elbow into his face. The Nuge's part was as the movie's good guy posse speechless
weapons man. Must have been hard to do that, for Ted, not the weapon's part, but the
silences.

"In fact,
Sammy Hagar -- his second, might be my favorite album of his."

Are you including his stint in Montrose? Some of that stuff is so effortlessly good it's indescribable.

No, first album Montrose is classicly righteous, and that's in a league by itself, if only for "Rock the Nation" which really could have. Second, Paper Money, not nearly so good although "I Got the Fire" and the title cut, slammed together on a live YouTube clip of the band are fist-waving material.

That I Got the Fire solo is insane

The Backsliders' myspace page bit me, so I went to their domain. Am listening to the album now and it is, indeed, really good rock 'n' roll with a tough girl singer. And, blimey,
they can write songs. Twenty plus minutes is just the right length. But for some reason, their website design is toxic, too, crapping out on the LP play halfway through, or somewhere before "Keep a Knockin'." I smell too many Mac users spoiling the soup. They can't do anything right. Whoever Isotope Interactive is, the Backsliders should ask for their money back and
plus damages.

Liked "Maybellene Don't" a lot although the YouTube video of it doesn't do it justice. Just another desperate afternoon at a walk-in festival in Texas, I guess, turn down or you'll scare the kids in strollers. And why isn't the camera at the front of the stage? Fuck, it's not lkem there's a crowd one would get in the way of.

There's a fragment of a show from SXSW that shows 'em digging into a Yardbirdsy-style
real good.

Damned by faint praise in USA Today. They should've not sent the review copy. Thanks, Ken, I'm sure they thought.

USA Today April 24, 2008

THe Backsliders, You're Welcome (out now): Dallas band with a highly promising singer in Kim Pendleton and a few impressive songs, mostly front-loaded (the remainder slide down into mere adequacy). Definite growth potential.

-Ken Barnes

Damn. It is damn near impossible for me to type a message into the ILX reply box without it scrawling off the side of the screen and forcing errors.

A couple old records randomly pulled out for replay while unpacking boxes recently turn out to accidentally work as matched pair. But one is better.

The Janitors Thunderhead EP, In Tape UK, 1986 -- gallant but failed apparent Brit attempt to keep up with mid-American fake-hard-rock pigfuckers of the Killdozer/Scratch Acid persuasion, but with an even more inept singer and rhythm section and sense for writing tunes. Topics, inasmuch as they can be made out, concern stuff like (of course) mass murderers who (of course) kill with their bare hands. Still, pretty beefy for Brits at the time, especially guitarwise; they may have even passed for blues-based if you let blues mean Beefheart or the Birthday Party. Side openers "Thunderhead Johnny" and "Really Shining" are the most memorable tracks. Singer is an off-tune one-note whiner in usual '80s Brit fashion; sounds like the guy in Age Of Chance. Prodcuer Jon Langford from the Mekons and Three Johns (the latter of whom did catchier if less self-consciously quasi-dangerous loud quasi-rock) was spending a lot of time in Chicago at the time; I'd be surprised if he hadn't been exposed to say Big Black, or some of the noisy Touch 'N Go bands from then. Many of whom (just like Green River etc from Seattle) seemed refreshing from an indie-rock perspective at the time for not being wimps, but few if any of whom actually made convincing hard rock.

There's way more convincing thunder on Thundermug's 1973 Strikes, which I bet I picked up for $1 somewhere along the line because of their name, and because the band members on the back all look like total hang-dog hippie slobs, one of them with a neck beard, and the fattest one wearing a ponytail. Turns out, according to Martin Popoff, they came from London, Ontario. And they really do get that big-bottomed BTO buffalo-burger hockey-rink funk into their sound -- in "Jane 'J' James," "Where Am I," the start of "Garden Green" before it goes more hard pop. "Africa," too, though as the title suggests that one pulls of some nifty fake jungle polyrhythms (and may or may not mention "the colored man," I'm scared to go back and make sure.) Closer "Bad Guy" has the most bad-assed sound, approaching heavy Nazareth. And they do Beatles and diddybop harmonies elsewhere, when the mood suits them, plus a loud Kinks cover and something called "Mickey Mouse Club" that I gather might be political. Overall -- idiosyncratic, confused, rocking, with hints of prog and glam like they didn't know what they were. I like it a lot -- wondering if George or Scott have ever heard it. (Popoff liked it, too; gives it a 5 for heaviness and 8 for quality, and compares it to not only BTO, but also early Trooper. Though if I'm reading him right, his copy has different side-openers than mine. Maybe they shuffled the track order for American release, which was on Epic.)

the 2nd thundermug album is pretty collectable. harder to find.

thundermug means toilet, right? in some places. probably canada. or chamber pot.

xp Another inspiration on the Janitors at the time might be the Screaming Blue Messiahs, also from the UK and signed to Elektra; they put out their debut LP in '86 but an EP the year before (and some guys in the band had released an album as Motor Boys Motor as far back as 1982). Janitors feel sonically noisier, but that's the only way they're better -- Messiahs had more boogie, a singer, tunes, lyrics.

" And they really do get that big-bottomed BTO buffalo-burger hockey-rink funk into their sound..."

^I love this

also, the U.S. copy of Thundermug Strikes is actually songs from their first two albums. Strikes and Orbit. for instance, "Mickey Mouse Club" is on Orbit.

I sold a Moxy album yesterday! This guy said, "where did you get all this weird Canadian stuff from?" and i said, Moxy aren't weird, they're cool!

i bought myself a present on ebay. the only album by Texas band Houston Fearless. ten bucks for a sealed copy. 1969 hard rock. i dig it. a minor album. great rockin' cover of "mr.soul" on it.

http://www.popsike.com/pix/20060509/4877841590.jpg

finally got a really nice clean copy of the first Isis album. for 50 cents!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xQ-zn51BoTk/Rc_zdBHdk7I/AAAAAAAAAAs/cWEWfy3EzKo/s320/Isis-Isis.jpg

For half a buck you can't go wrong, I guess, but I remember that record being pretty dire. I probably sold mine about the same time I got rid of Fanny's "Rock and Roll Survivors,"

i had a crappy copy of the isis album and i liked it. it's kinda bonkers. how often do you get to hear all-female psych/jazz/funk/folk/rock albums anyway.

This album I bought for $2 last year (and wound up not totally hating despite itself) sort of applies (notes from the '08 buy-that-for-a-dollar thread):

The Deadly Nightshade F&W (Phantom, 1976 -- all-woman -- all-lesbian, maybe? -- power trio. I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to be very good, but they look really badass on the cover, plus they apparently do songs about Mary Hartman and an Irish bar, and they cover "Little Old Lady From Pasadena")

Deadly Nightshade F&W = "Funky and Western."

Deadly Nightshade almost mind-boggingly shitty so far; not all that funky or western -- and closer to show-tuney than folky, despite the discofied program music of the Mary Hartman theme (which may or may not be a cover); covering "Dancing in the Streets" is entirely pointless, maybe not worse than Bowie/ Jagger but definitely a lot worse than Van Halen's.

almost look like they could be a metal band on their LP cover by the way, especially given their very goth-metal name).

the isis album is totally funky. and has great guitars. and wicked flute solos. if someone doesn't like horns or horn rock i can see them not being into it. but, seriously, suzi ghezzi was an awesome guitarist.

plus, i think they pre-date Les Rockets as an all silver rock band.

plus, meco did the strings. and shadow morton produced. and allen toussaint produced their second album. and they have a song called "do the football". and one called "cocaine elaine". and bongos. and they thank three dog night and Crawdaddy on the back cover. and they are completely naked.

Christgau seems to prefer Isis, too:

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=isis

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=deadly+nightshade

you gotta hear the epic "servant saviour" by isis. serious p-funk/hendrix shredding guitar solos by suzi.

i'm really glad to hear this again after years.

now i'm listening to the first album by Talas, Billy Sheehan's old band, but i think i have to take it off cuz it's pretty bad. the no-budget production is horrible. they try and sound slick for a dollar and it just sounds like a dollar being wasted.

Alright, listening to the clips available on youtube, Isis is better than the BS&T knockoff I remembered. Probably as good/better than some of the half-dozen Cold Blood records I own. Plus, Scott's description = LOLOL!

"I probably sold mine about the same time I got rid of Fanny's "Rock and Roll Survivors"

Another really dire record. If you actually liked some of Fanny's first four
albums, this one's really bad by comparison. 'Course, not quite the same band, anymore, either.

I wrote about Talas up above (see permalink below), but by "debut", Scott, do you mean their 15,000-run self-released debut from '79 (which I've never seen; only know it existed because of Popoff's book)?:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

(x-post) I think I would still rep for Fanny's "Butter Boy" single (It's been years since I heard it, but it was no "Charity Ball" in any case.) Can't recall another note of the music on R&R Survivors. Like the naked/silver Isis cover, I may have been swayed by Patti Quatro's legs. She is apparently as tall as her sister is short.

isis album is WAY better than that fanny album. i have that fanny album for sale in my store. and i have suzi quatro albums for sale in my store. AND i have a mike quatro album for sale in my store. i'm covered when it comes to that family.

"Scott, do you mean their 15,000-run self-released debut from '79"

yeah, that one. it's bad.

this album is really good though. listening now. yes, i did receive my four zillion tapes in the mail today.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zvKZzfB66eE/RtM9TSutxvI/AAAAAAAAAJs/jqetw_L1QWs/s400/Assassin_Interstellar%2BExperience.jpg

assazzin's cover of "pipeline" might even be better than JFA's version.

2.0 out of 5 stars comical overtones but with fairly solid music, May 21, 2009
By Funeral of Gravewurm (VA) - See all my reviews
a somewhat poor follow-up to the great "Upcoming Terror" album. ok so the music is decent enough overall (even with the surf-rock cover song), but the lyrics are just unfocused and not very metal-minded. "Junk Food" ? why would a serious thrash band write a song about junk food? Well because they weren't serious. In similar vein to the band Tankard who started out strong, just went in a more comical approach to their thrash...not bad, but not as strong as the debut.

21 bucks for an import copy of that assassin cd. 25 cents for a sealed tape copy. you do the math.

this album by The Accused i'm listening to is on Nastymix, Sir Mix-A-Lot's label. I love that label. Nastymix got bought out by Ichiban, my fave gutbucket soul/blues label.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/52/b8/95dd225b9da04b7bb696e010.L.jpg

chuck, please tell me you own this album it's great!

http://www.earthwaverecords.com/pictures/albumimg/b/a0078243.jpg

great songs, great pop, great southern rock, it's got it all! great production. great guitars.

i love it. here i am in 2009 opening a tape that was factory sealed in 1979 and digging the hell out of it. life is good.

found this on the web:

"In '78, I started another band, "Blue Steel". We recorded an album, "No
More Lonely Nights"(Infinity Rec.), and toured with the Eagles on their "Long
Run" tour in 1980. In the middle of the tour, our Record company folded.
We regrouped, went to another label, cut a second album, "Nothing But
Time"(Elektra Rec.), and then the band folded. I decided to move to
Nashville to write songs. The "band business" was just not working out.

[4] 1982 through 1998

I hit Nashville in the fall of '82 and met a songwriter named Sandy Pinkard.
He'd had several hits and wanted to write together. It didn't work out.
We started having too much fun making up stupid lyrics to our own songs, as
well as others, and without really trying, we found ourselves with a comedy
act. It worked out. For lack of a better name, we called ourselves "
Pinkard and Bowden". We recorded four Warner Bros. albums, "Writers In
disguise", "PG-13", "Live, In Front Of a Bunch Of D-dkh--ds", and "Cousins,
Cattle and Other Love Stories". We toured the country making people laugh
for almost 16 years. We were frequent guests on all the great morning radio
shows and eventually got our own late night TV commercial (the kind I really
hate but secretly always wanted to have), for a compilation album called
"Gettin' Stupid". Our songs can still be heard today and our records are
still available on the web at http://www.pinkardandbowden.com/.";

No More Lonely Nights (1979)

1. No More Lonely Nights (3:51)
2. Bulldog (3:18)
3. Guitar Song (3:19)
4. Baby, You Can't Dance (3:42)
5. Twist One Up (4:43)/
6. Shark (2:20)
7. I Should Be Sleeping (2:27)
8. Honey Dew (3:02)
9. Take Me (3:09)
10. Willie & Waylon (3:11)
11. Hoo-Doo-Voo-Doo (3:11)

Members & Other Bands:
Leonard Arnold - Guitar (Lavender Hill Express)
Richard Bowden - Guitar (Austin Lounge Lizards, Pinkard & Bowden, Shiloh, Cold Steel, Maines Brothers Band)
Howard Burke - Guitar
Marc Durham - Bass (Buckwheat)
Mickey McGee - Drums
Michael Huey - Drums (The Swingin' Medallions)
Ken Perry - Mastering
Jimmy Watchel - Album Design (for Dawn Patrol) & Cover Photography
Michael Curtis - Cover Photography
Rose Ware - Group Photos
Intrepid Productions - Direction
Noah Shark & Max - Producers

I had that album! Don't recall liking it much but it was '79 and I was probably listening almost exclusively to Robin Trower, still hoping for one more -g00d- Foghat album, and punk rock.

And today's funny paper: Stumble and fail.

i read that fancy beer and wine sales have gone way down and that sales of the cheap stuff is soaring. people stocking up on gallons of vodka instead of their precious microbrews. i don't think i could drink night train though. yuuuuughh.

After getting used to Thunderbird, I'm now a little skeptical ZZ Top were actually fans rather than just singing a song about the jingle they heard in the city. It's just not something that really goes with a huge spread of Mexican food.

this is what i used to drink in high school. 1.5 liter jugs. i would carry one around with me at parties like a security blanket.

http://www.grape-nutz.com/soldiers/labels/images/carlo.gif

by the end of the night i would be pretty snockered. i liked cheap whiskey too. i got into beer after high school when i lived in philly. that's when i lived on meister brau, iron city, blatz, olde german, yuengling, etc. i could get a 12 pack of olde german in west philly for $5.99.

I liked the jugs of the chablis, but same concept. And I liked blatz,i thought it tasted pretty good, esp. the dark one.

From the 'Stumble & Fail' entry:

"The experience did awaken some old engraved muscle memory. Back in the good ol’ Eighties, the early days of grad school, DD spent Friday nights in Pine Grove, listening to new records at a friend’s home on Wideawake Street. He always had something like Night Train, sometimes T. J. Swan, or combinations of these and Black Velvet or Seagram’s Seven. The morning’s after tended to be much worse, though."

Generally, we'd be listening to things like his old copy of Billion Dollar Babies -- the AC band minus Alice which, at the time, was rare. Now it's a lot easier to find mint copies of vinyl -- I have one -- and it sounds a lot better than it did then, primarily because after 'Welcome to My Nightmare,' ol' AC put out many, many albums much worse than the debut of the Billion Dollar Babies. Which actually, on many cuts, still sounds close to the best material from the old Alice Cooper band. I mean, they were still trying. And then we might follow that with Chrome's Half Machine, or the Dictators, or a Nutz record. Nutz were marginal but the art on the first album, and the last, was good. It was an eclectic mix of relative nobodies.

Speaking of which, I dragged out my pristine copy of the debut of Hookfoot.

It baffles me that a CD reissue of it would go for $40.00

http://www.amazon.com/Hookfoot/dp/B000FGGVPC?SubscriptionId=06KMPSHEDSXXQMQVT482&tag=askcom-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000FGGVPC

The five star gurgle is equally astonishing.

Hookfoot was associated with Dick James Music (DJM) and Elton John. And on the first album, the band shows it can't really write, but it can play. So there's a pastiche of things which reflect their influences in an enthusiastic manner. Primarily, that was California singer/songwriter done in a band context, by Brits. The best tune is Stephen Stills' "Bluebird," the second best, Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down." Both are electricfied. Plus, there's a lot of Steely Dan-esque stuff and a couple nods to hippie-fied Jethro Tull.

Hookfoot answered the question, can a black guy -- Caleb Quaye -- play the part of a white addled California guitarist still a bit entranced with the Summer of Love, mystic ladies, golden eagles, and what not... Answer: Damn straight he could!

Listen to this and it's pleasant but you know why they never went anywhere, despite being pushed for for at least three whole albums.

Although Quaye and drummer Roger Pope were in and out of the backing bands of big stars -- Elton John, Hall & Oates, etc..

Just wanted to pop in to tell you guys that I love reading this thread, even though I can't contribute anything to it. In the past week I've picked up that Last Vegas record and Ten Years After's Stonedhenge based on your guys. Still lukewarm on the first (couple really great songs, but feels spotty) but LOVING the latter.

Love this! I was gonna put it out for sale, but i think i need to keep it:

http://tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:xMbN-6bu8UVflM:http://www.musicobsession.com/Pictures/s/l/slaughter134678.jpg

i need a good slaughter & the dogs collection. i know there are a couple of 2 disc sets.

I have the live LP, with the interview disc - think you had to be there!

Went Googling for Slaugher's Bite Back and found this instead, at the top of the results:

http://punknotprofit.blogspot.com/2008/02/dogs-77-bite-back.html

The Dogs were French, not at all like Slaughter & the Dogs, and I'm not even sure the thing profiled and ripped is even a real album. But it does collect much of their best
material.

The best of which was Go Where You Want to Go, an EP I found in '78 or '79 and was surely one of my favorites that year. They were heavily influenced by Detroit in the same way Flamin' Groovies ca. Teenage Head, only they played lots faster. Almost everything they did early was never slower than 130 bpm, the top cuts from the EP being "Here Comes My Baby,"
"My Life" (the guitar coda on this is, to use a bit of hyperbole, 'bitchin'), and
"You're Gonna Lose Me." It was put out by a French record shop called Melodies Massacre, I think.

The Dogs made a bunch of records, some of them on Euro-divs of majors, and were
successful in France. I had one of their later records, too, which might have been more common domestically: Too Much Class for the Neighborhood. It was a bit of a power pop thing and I didn't much care for it.

However, "Go Where You Want to Go" and their very first 45 are on the Punk site collection, and they're terrific, very much concise sneering hard rock 'n' roll with a great rhythm section, all song around 2:30 or less.

A fair amount of video of the Dogs is on YouTube, most of it lacklustre in comparison to their recorded high points.

With Shakin' Street and Telephone, you have a trio of French bands, all doing rock 'n' rll mostly taken from US sources, really well.

And included is this

http://sonsofthedolls.blogspot.com/2007/11/little-bob-story.html

which is Little Bob Story's first EP, on Chiswick, which was swept up by the UK punk rock scene in the late-Seventies because of its pub rock sound.

Both bands appeal to fans of the Vibrators' first record.

i'm a fan of the first Vibrators album.

what i like about that Slaughter album is that is has the conciseness and snarl and thump of punk, but also great freespirited hard rock guitar solos. i like the punk + 70's hard rock combo. neither one or the other. lord knows, there are enough albums that fit that bill, but i'm pretty insatiable.

played the Starz debut yesterday for old time's sake. that first side is so great i had to play it again. (though i'm always a little bummed out when fallen angel ends the side.)

i've listened to The Dogs on youtube and seen their albums but for some reason i never picked one up.

listening to and loving the second Piledriver album today. from 1986. what an apt title too. can't get enough of the crunchy two dollar guitar sound on this album. two dollars canadian, even.

wikipedia says that the two original Piledriver albums have sold over 500,000 copies!! i had no idea.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/c6/f2/5348808a8da0170a742d5110.L.jpg

Didn't Buffin from Mott the Hoople produce that Slaughter album? Or was it a different
one?

Heck, one of the guys -- the one in the pink coat -- looked like he could have been in early Mott the Hoople.

no, that was him! Dale Griffin. He produced some Hanoi Rocks record (or maybe more than one) that i had. he certainly knew how to make guitars sound cool.

did he produce the british lions record?

according to wiki, he produced a lot of the john peel sessions from the early 80's to the 90's. i did not know that.

Good long Ted Nugent cover story feature in the current issue of Texas Monthly -- lots of early biographical details I wasn't aware of, and John Spong talks to Ted's brothers about Ted and about their Dad, and Ted opens up to him to a certain mad extent, and Spong manages to put Nuge's gun-nut megalomania in balanced context. Looks like it's only readable online to subscribers, though.

New Cheap Trick album -- available even on 8-track, as Scott mentioned in another thread -- is better than I would have predicted, though maybe only because I haven't been paying as close attention as I should to their other recent output. Favorite track so far "When The Lights Are Out" sounds very Slade; "California Girl" (not to be confused with "California Man" from 31 years ago) is wild old time r&b-style rock'n'roll. Heaviest track seems to be "Everyday You Make Me Crazy," which also seems really short. Frillier Beatlesque pop cuts may or may not kick in later; right now, I'd say the album is uneven, but playable all the way through anyway.

Also been rocking a couple more old dollar LPs -- Be-Bop Deluxe Drastic Plastic from 1978 and City Boy Young Men Gone West from 1977. Sounds like City Boy may have gotten even heavier and more idiosyncratic as they got funnier and more songful, though it's also possible this later (fourth I think) LP by them was a fluke; it's good either way, even if my wife keeps saying "Bordello Night" (about crossing the Mexican border to pay for nookie -- "burn the midnight oil/you're on foreign soil/that somehow makes it alright" -- sarcastic maybe?) sounds like they're saying "Potato Night." Favorite cut so far, and fastest, is probably "Dear Jean (I'm Nervous)." Lots of jazz worked into the sound, too.

Bebop Deluxe LP is definitely a new wave move, but (unlike I think George), I'm not hearing that as a decline for them -- I pulled out Bill Nelson's Red Noise LP from 1979 a few weeks ago, and that sounded really good to me, too. Heaviest track on Drastic Plastic is probably "Love In Flames," loud prog at punk tempo, as is "Posession," which could almost be one of those weird Cleveland pre-punk art-rock bands like the Mirrors or Styrenes (with even a little MX-80 in the chorus.) Lots of weird loopy Taking Tiger Mountain-era Eno treatments to the guitars and vocals throughout, too, but Eno never rocked like these guys. Also sounds like they were listening to funk, and (in "Japan") maybe Yellow Magic Orchestra. And "Dangerous Stranger" starts with the same riff the Clash would use a year later in the cover of "I Fought The Law," then turns into bubble-prog with deep Coasters-style vocal asides. So, not very metal anymore, but still a load of fun.

PS to Scott -- I got the LPs you mailed; thanks! They look cool. So far I played East Street's Under The Glass from 1977 on Capricorn. Melodic naifs trying to be jazz-rock but not knowing how, with wah-wah parts? Pretty wacky. Pretty sure I like it; definitely dig the LP cover picture where they are all shrunken and trapped in a glass of milk.

Oops, they're called Easy Street, not East Street. (Though in their book Jasper and Oliver call their 1976 debut East Street too! Not sure if that's a typo or not. Say they're "commercial pop/hard rock with a touch of pomp.")

And uh, actually, Yellow Magic Orchestra didn't put out their debut album 'til 1979, it turns out. Which means Bebop Deluxe's Asian-souning techno-pop-rock predated them (though I'm not doubting that Ryuchi Sakamoto came up with the idea on his own anyway.)

I've picked up that Last Vegas record ...couple really great songs, but feels spotty

Yeah, I have to admit this album paled a little bit on subsequent listens; still good, but probably not destined to be one of my '09 favorites in the long run. And now that I think of it, Silvertide's Show and Tell from 2004 might ultimately be a better '00s hair/sleaze/glam CD. (Though I'd still take them both over any that Buckcherry's made.)

And oh yeah, here's a 15-song playlist of $0.69 hard rock downloads Rhapsody asked me to make for them. (More than I'd tend to spend on music myself, but what the hey.)

http://www.rhapsody.com/playlistcentral/playlistdetail?playlistId=ply.28785284

Most popular below-the-bleachers wines at my high school (suburban Detroit, mid/late '70s) were almost definitely Boone's Farm and Annie Green Springs. Never developed a taste for those myself. I'm guessing Stroh's was the favored beer, though maybe I'm just romanticizing its Detrotiness, who knows.

Also been rocking a couple more old dollar LPs -- Be-Bop Deluxe Drastic Plastic

I don't understand what you like about this. It's their worst record, the only one in the catalog I actively hate. Red Noise I did like. It actually stiffened up the guitar again and became abrasive and raw. It was the last record with rock in it that Nelson made for a long time, decades. I'm not sure he actually made any more rock recordings but he is on the Mick Ronson Memorial Concert CD box, a live set, doing the hard guitar hero stuff for a few tunes.

Don't think Annie Green Springs exists anymore.

Boone's Farm certainly does. It's in multi-colors at the no-name bumwine market on Villa. However, it's a bit low in alcohol content, forcing one to buy a couple bottles to get any bang.

Cisco, on the other hand, is the modern equivalent of Lehigh University frat party grain alcohol and fruit juice punch. The frat men would mix this up at about 20 percent alcohol and the co-eds would think it was mildly boosted fruit juice. They'd overserve themselves and wind up blind and rubbery by midnight, blacked out over what went on the next day. It was a date rape drink.

The FTC compelled the makers of Cisco to stop marketing it as a wine-cooler for just these reasons. It's marketing slogan, however, was total truth in advertising and, actually, admirably clever and challenging: "It will surprise you."

The diff between Cisco and frat party grain punch is that the former has a bit more thickness to it, probably due to the addition of brandy as the alcohol booster, rather than
straight reagent grade EtOh, the chem dept's old designation for grain.

After trying it on for size, I can vouch Cisco has a much better taste and finish than Night Train, and it is far superior to Thunderbird which, in retrospect, is true organ-shaking stuff. Since it is that way, it's a bit too easy to drink to a quick destruction. The market sells it in 375 ml bottles, two of which cost a little five and some change, and that's more than enough.

Was War's 'Cisco Kid' named after this, or the other way around, or no connection?!

I checked with my UK colleagues and the hit-the-skids choice is Buck Fast Tonic Wine, made by Devonshire monks or something. Authorities have frequently tried to ban it, since it is the beverage of choice for "neds" (Non-Educated Delinquents) in Scotland, who then get in fights. It has a long tradition as a fighting drink, but so does beer. So what is an 'educated delinquent, an 'ed'? Unlike bumwines in the US, Buck Fast Tonic Wine and its makers have quite a lobbying group and booster organization, so ordnances to ban sales in various locales don't get very far.

Anyway, I think that's what I was told.

This is a horribly cynical but accurate description of the grain punch/Ariba/Cisco raison d'etre, from the urban dictionary:

=========
(They) had a reputation as a "sneaky Pete" because you could slip them to a date who could normally guzzle the 11% beverages all night while keeping her mouth running and her knees together. With a six pack of (Ariba or, now Cisco, which were/are 36 proof, as opposed to the much less 22 p of the 11 percenters) you could get her home from the drive-in movies by one and just dump her and her clothes out on her front lawn and go home and get a good night's sleep.

do people still drink mad dog 40/40?

or god help you this stuff with the fruit at the bottom:

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/eatmycharlotte/files/2009/06/whiskey-rock-n-rye.jpg

i had a lost weekend on this stuff once. ouch what a headache. i think they actually bannned it cuzza the whole indian thing.

http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/native/alcohol/Crazy_Horse_Malt_Liquor.jpg

http://www.40ozmaltliquor.com/images/cases/crazyhorsecase.jpg

there ya go.

Powermaster was the other scary malt liquor. they tried to ban that too. colt 45 made it. i drank so much of that one night that i blacked out and the next thing i knew it was noon and i was lying naked on the kitchen floor.

i'll still rep for mickey's and haffenreffer private stock though. they are decent malt beverages.

the local brew pub here - the people's pint - now makes a craft-brewed 40 oz malt liquor! it's a big hit.

http://beeradvocate.com/im/beers/43401.jpg

"i had a lost weekend on this stuff once."

Man, i lived in NYC for two years (93-94) and barely remember any of it due to Crazy Horse.

do people still drink mad dog 40/40?

http://bumwine.com/md2020.html

Yes.

Damning photography.

http://das-prompt.livejournal.com/356444.html

http://www.speakeasy.org/%7Ecraige/wine/kellycisco.jpg

This girl is ready to rock!

Speaking of past expiry hard rock, I discovered Fear's 78 Paradise Demos, a bit of a misnomer since they were recorded and produced pretty seriously. The rip's on Punk Not Profit, and I'm slightly surprised by what they've managed to get away with, probably because of the egalitarian nature of the 'enterprise' and the obscure provenance of what it posts.

Anyway, all told, it's a really good album and if you hadn't heard "The Record" first, you might wonder why this just didn't get taken to vinyl. It's more of a hard rock production and the rip's levels are poor because the recordings don't look to be mastered. So I corrected that and it sounds like really great mid-70's hard rock was supposed to sound before people made bad style decisions due to commerical pressures. Plus the subject matter is appropriately taboo -- a lot of stuff on beating women, being put to the gas chamber, and the famous 'let's have a war'...

Much more about it later. It was written during Reagan and hasn't aged a bit in terms of cynicism and brutality. Great record, wish you could hear my copy. Fear were never going to be huge, being the first at this, and it would still scare the moms and dads of mall punk
fans. But Lee Ving and Co. should have been able to do more. For the time of this production, 1978, it's something no one else, except maybe the Angry Samoans, were willing to do.

In the US, that is.

City Boy Young Men Gone West from 1977. Sounds like City Boy may have gotten even heavier and more idiosyncratic

Uh, not sure what I was thinking of here -- There are definitely not as many bordering-on-loud/heavy songs as on Book Early, which actually came out a year later, so both my math and my ears were wrong, apparently. Still wonder if whoever wrote in the RS Record Guide that Young Men Gone West (their third record apparently) is where they moved toward "a unique style" might be on to something, though I'd have to hear those first couple albums to make sure. Good, eccentric record, either way -- maybe conceptual, since it starts and ends with songs about Mexico, but also maybe not. (Also, "Dear Jean I'm Nervous" only starts out fast and hard; turns sundry more ornate corners after that. Would have preferred if it stayed fast myself.)

As for Be Bop Deluxe's Drastic Plastic, it's definitely not a great guitar album, so I get why George gags at it. Guess I just have a higher tolerance than him for rock guys copping to geeky new wave hooks (Flush the Fashion still being my favorite post-1974 Alice Cooper album and all.)

Speaking of which, I'm definitely liking Chris Spedding's '77 RAK UK Hurt (also $1) way more than that early '70s Sharks LP I mentioned upthread. Had only ever heard "Get Outa My Pagoda" before. Like his versions of Bo Diddley's "Roadrunner" and Garland Jeffreys' "Wild In The Streets," the latter of which everybody and their mother seems to have covered in the late '70s/early '80s, and it's such a great song I like it just about whoever does. Just wish the Spedding LP had "Pogo Dancing," the single he did with the Vibrators, apparently in late '76.

Though "Get Outa My Pagoda" (a hit in Europe somewhere, I think) is still easily the best thing on the album. And Spedding seems to put his heart and guitar a lot more in his fairly generic quasi-punk hard rock originals (esp "Silver Bullet," "Lone Rider," "Stay Dumb") than into the Garland Jeffreys cover. (Wonder if it's just one of those songs that biz types had everyone cover because they just knew it would eventually be a hit if the right person got ahold of it -- even though, as far as I know, it never was. And no version I've heard improved on Jeffreys' original, either. Though I just noticed that Mott spinoffs British Lions went to #87 in the U.S. with their version in 1978; don't think I've ever heard that one, oddly enough. Jeffreys had apparently peaked at #115 in 1974 with his.) Also should caveat that Spedding attempts a sort of half-hearted Tex-Mex tune called "Woman Trouble." (Also, City Boy do a sort of half-hearted reggae number on their '77 LP, if you're bugged by that sorta thing.)

Hurt[i] was my first intro to Spedding after the Sharks debut.

The change is radical. Sharks were an attempt to duplicate Free. Post Sharks was Spedding latching into new wave and punk rock.

And [I]Hurt is a part of the Spedding as a 50's greaser rock 'n' roller leather jacket thing. Has tunes, most notably the title cut, with Chrissie Hynde singing back-up ala Detroit before she was the Pretender.

"Hurt" was great. So was "Wild Wild Women." "Get Outta My Pagoda" was definitely a top shot, not to my mind better than "Hurt!" "Lone Rider" and "Stay Dumb" were OK, in the same veinas the best from the next alb, Guitar Grafitti, which featured "Miss Betty."

"Hey, Miss Betty/Miss Betty, hey!" -- to a rockabilly greaser pseudo-metal punk boogie
thang. Very Vibrators, his apex, which is the same reason one likes Hurt.

Hurt is set off a monkey beat, something fast and early ZZ Top who also checked into the same rhythm. Difference being: Spedding with a much more 'Memphis' tone and a declining
dissonant lead line in the middle eight (xhuxh tell em, it lasts about five seconds).

But xhuxk left out comment on the reliance on Bo Diddley rhythm, integral to Spedding during this period. Prior to this he was a studio hack great at imitating other famous people like Fripp, Page, etc...

I mean, this doesn't mean anything to you guys, but '78 and these albums meant a lot to me.

I'd just shown up in conformist grad school and I had gone out to stores which had small racks of punk rock imports, very rare in southeast PA, and one had things like the
Dog's Go Where You Wanna Go[i] and Spedding's [i] Hurt[i] and an EP out of NYC by the Idols (which was half the Dolls prior to the Heartbreakers), and these and other things made you just want drop the classic rock thing and get the biker jacket and leather pants, and cut your hair.

And play "Pipeline" real loud, ala heavy metal. The tunes on [i]Hurt[i] with Hyndes and others doing the big heavy soul background vox, even though they don't make up most of the album, really make for a big record.

There were a number of records in this vein, all independent, vanity or satellites on
US majors, another notable being the debut of [/b]Teenage Head[/b], which was a combination of
130+ bpm boogie and rockabilly dressed up into punk. That was a Canadian release. Johnny Thunders' best solo album, [I]So Alone, also comes to mind.

Spedding and Thunders were into doing pop tunes people could sing and dance to, no matter how greaser and outlaw they looked or were. In fact, I always thought Spedding ripped off Thunders' gig because Thunders was too busy being a junky.

Eight years later, the big thing would be Nightranger doing "(You Can Still) Rock in
America" with two shredding guitars and Jack Blades on vocals, which is not so far off -- outside of production values and major label glitz.

And in the early Nineties you'd get Damn Yankees, a band I generally detested, with
"Coming of Age," which -- live -- when Ted Nugent was still clean shaven and
interested -- just killed onstage. As I saw it, pure Detroit rock action, Tommy Shaw
included. You had an ignored revolution of big rock tunes played by people who didn't get resources, to the same kinds of big rock 'n' roll tunes pumped up played by superstars.

God damn! On my side this interface slides off to the side, squirms out from under my cursor, and randomly fucks up hand-coded HTML -- which I'm very good at. Jeezus christ! If
you look at my own blogs, using two different pro interfaces, they're neat and clean. And this bulletin board just makes me look like a ninny.

So on third (and probably last for this week) listen to that Spedding LP, I concede that George is definitely right about "Wild Wild Women" and "Hurt By Love" being standouts. Diddley thump across the board is frequently too subtle for me to pick up on though, I have to admit. Guitar riff all the way through "Wild In The Street" is one Blondie used a year later in "One Way Or Another"; I was already thinking that when Lalena pointed it out to me -- not sure whether that means Blondie were Spedding fans, or they share some undetermined source, or what. Also, "Woman Trouble" isn't half as half-hearted as I suggested above, and might not be half as Tex-Mex, being something of a Chuck Berry "Sweet Little Sixteen" rip that builds as it goes on.

i always liked motor bikin' a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0GCpQUuDY

Actually, I probably should have added Spedding's greaser catalog contains quite a bit of electric rockabilly use, too. Last CD I saw in the store having to do with him was a team-up with Robert Gordon.

Had hopes for Ellen Foley's Nightout from '79 as a sort of prototype first-couple-Benatar-LPs thing, especially with Mick Ronson producing and guitaring (plus theortetically decent studio rhythm section Martin Briley/Hilly Michaels), so I paid $1 for a used Austin Public Library copy. And strangely enough, it actually opens with a song called "We Belong To The Night" that's not the one Benatar hit with five years later. But starting with that song, the LP turns out to be proto-Benatar in a totally wrong way -- almost all wide-screen pseudo-Spector showtune crap way less audacious than "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" (which is obviously singular even though I kind of hate it in a way). Even the closing Ian Hunter ballad "Don't Let Go" borders on unbearable. Best cut is probably "Hideaway" by one Fred Goodman, also in '79 the only non-Grushecky credit (and I believe the single/AOR airplay track) on the Iron City Houserockers' debut album; Foley's version of the Stones' archetypally sexist "Stupid Girl" (which sort of makes sense sung by a girl) also rocks well enough. And her take on Graham Parker's "Thunder And Rain" is maybe passable, but no patch on the original. That's about it, though.

I just noticed a couple ripped copies on the usual blog sites, so she had some overly charitable fans.
Cover art always looked good, that's about it, one supposes.

Back to the 1978 record, Paradise Demos, by Fear. It has a song called "Fetch Me One More Beer," written by guitarist Philo Cramer. Lo', it's the same as "Johnny, Are You Queer," by Josie Cotton. And the story goes, Josie Cotton's directors used "Fetch Me One More Beer" but wanted to change the lyrics and offer Cramer a writing credit. But, for some reason, he let them use the song but didn't have his name put on it. The reasoning seeming to be that if Fear's soCal punk fans got wind of the fact someone in the band had
written "Johnny, Are You Queer," it would have been thought not punk, and meant bad things for Fear. He should have taken the credit.

Anyway, the chorus in "Fetch Me One More Beer" is virtually identical to the Cotton version: "Fetch me one more beer, boy/You're a fuckin' queer, boy"

Side benefit of Michael Jackson death 24/7 coverage on all entertainment networks: Spinal Tap
'reunion' record, interviews with the bloats, and notice of appearances blown away in the wind.

The quality of mercy dispensed by Ted Nugent has always been pretty strained. Citizens who want revamped health care are 'bloodsuckers.' They need to stop eating junk food, stop smoking crack, stop drinking and get off the couch. If you do that, then you don't need healthcare. It's all about the healthy Ted lifestyle.

I think Ted should be one of the next GOP presidential hopefuls.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32399&s=rcmc

movie about ac/dc fandom. have you dudes seen this? trailer is so friggin' long you probably won't need to see the actual movie:

http://www.currentmotion.com/beyond_the_thunder/
'

For a band that's the definition of the anti-pompous, the seemingly endless trailer really brings the pompous in its capacity to examine the American dipshit's love of turning everything that others do better into
annoyingly fucked-up novelty, useful in commercials or commercials strung together into 'movies'. (Hayseed Dixie, John Rich, Jack Black, Pat Boone, Nike/Gap commercials, dozens of talking heads with stubble emitting inane variations on 'everyone wants to be a rock star in AC/DC,' pro baseball players, military men revving themselves up to some AC/DC song...)

The only thing that seemed missing was Lenny Dykstra spitting out a wad of chaw to AC/DC.

Or we used AC/DC played real loud 24/7 to torture the ragheads at Bagram and Abu Ghraib. Haw haw.

NWOLANWOBHM (= New Wave of Los Angeles New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) video of the year, I assume (and their EP isn't bad, either):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-zehtCs7U

"I can't stand my neighbors/Screaming all the time/If I wasn't blasting Sister Ray/I would lose my mind!"

Okay, "New York,New York" on the Manitoba's Wild Kingdom album is the coolest thing I've heard in weeks.

http://brooklynrocks.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-wizzard-high-speed-gto-cd-ep.html

The new version of the band is amusing, too. "There's always some church-burning Norwegian warlock in the forest who's badder than you."

"Does White Wizzard attract the lady folks?"

Ans: "So far it's been a couple of tranny hookers."

Actually, the stoner Pasadena old town bartenders partying at the apartment complex pool yesterday were playing stuff that sounded a bit like this.

Saw Wild Kingdom a bunch of times, before and after the release of the 'album,' which is only around twenty minutes long.
Usually they were great. Once, in Jim Thorpe, opening for the LA Guns, they were tired, awful and beaten down by the indifference of the Lehigh Valley crowd. Interviewed them for Creem Metal before it went out of business. They tried for years to get a major label contract, during the height of hair metal, which should have worked. Finally scored, near the end, not that it made much difference. Still have it on CD and whip it out for a play every now and then. As Adny Shernoff's take on thrash metal, it's cool. Brings the tunes. What else was contemporaneous with it in NYC.

Blitzspeer, I think. I have a Blitzspeer EP, a live thing on Epic which was decent.

if you guys don't already have it, both you and chuck need the 1987 Uncle Sam album, Heaven or Hollywood. I can't get enough of it. Punky, snotty, trashy, cruddy production. and it rules! alice cooper-esque at times. i don't know how hard it is to find. i got it in one of those big batches of budget tapes i bought. On Skeller Records!

from over the email transom:

WHITE WIZZARD BASSIST EXPLAINS LINEUP CHANGES, WARNS OF WHITE WIZZARD
IMITATORS

The lineup featured on WHITE WIZZARD's September 8th debut
mini-album, HIGH SPEED GTO is much different from that of the current
lineup whom will be recording a full length album set for release in
2010. Recently, several ex-members from the previous lineup have begun
making headlines in a newly signed band who's former name shared an
eerily similar theme with that of WHITE WIZZARD's. WHITE WIZZARD
bassist, Jon Leon has written a statement to clear up any confusion
about the band's lineup changes and to serve notice that there is only
one WHITE WIZZARD.

"WHITE WIZZARD has had a line up change since the recording of the WW
mini album in 2007. I wrote some songs and formed the first
incarnation of the band rather quickly and went into the studio. The
mini album was a quickly thrown together ep of the first songs just to
get WW started. It turned out well for how quickly it was done, and
the seeds were sewn for the next phase.

Upon completion, the band played a few shows with the first line up.
It was quickly obvious that the line up that was formed to do the
first recordings was not going to work for the long term. The current
line up of WHITE WIZZARD is preparing to record the full length album
that will be out worldwide in early 2010.

Some of the ex members that were in WW for a brief time have a new
band. This band is in no way associated with WW. WHITE WIZZARD has
never split up. WHITE WIZZARD is stronger than ever and fully armed
and operational. As for any ex members we wish them well, but we also
want to stress that in the end, they were not right for WHITE WIZZARD
and are trying to use their WW roots for extra publicity.

We just want to set the record straight. Please look for our full
length album in early 2010 on EARACHE RECORDS worldwide. Also please
enjoy the Mini album, which is a fun sample of early WW songs and only
a taste of what is yet to come. Thanks to all of our early fans for
the support. Please spread the word!! Hails! - Jon Leon"

Named after their trademark anthem, HIGH SPEED GTO features 7
high-energy tracks recorded by the original WHITE WIZZARD line-up in
2007. Originally only released to a select number of fans as a demo,
the title track "High Speed GTO" was then featured on Earache's HEAVY
METAL KILLERS compilation, and now the whole album is ready to be
enjoyed by the world with its catchy riffs and true heavy metal vibe.

The full track listing for HIGH SPEED GTO is as follows:

01. High Speed GTO

02. Celestina

03. Into the Night

04. March of the Skeletons

05. Megalodon

06. Octane Gypsy

07. Red Desert Skies

HIGH SPEED GTO is available now in Europe on and will be released in
North America on September 8th, including the fan-favourite music
video for the album's title track, "High Speed GTO", as a bonus.

Myspace page of the original White Wizzard's singer's new band (who I haven't listened to yet):

http://www.myspace.com/holygrailofficial

White Wizzard story is all too familiar. Lots and lots of guys go through it.

I recorded the first Dick Destiny album sans a real band because no one wanted to do the tunes. After it got some notice, shlubs who I told to play the 'parts' were easy to find. After a year of touring indie dives, their resilience cracked. By the time of the second album, I had an entirely new band except for the drummer. And I had to play everything for the studio stuff again.

Fairly SOP.

Still trying to make sense of the '70s British sort-of-glam band Smokey. Their tracks kept showing up on the compilations I talked about in the thread linked below -- and as I say there, who those songs mostly reminded me of, bizarrely enough, was Dr. Hook more than any glam band*. But last month I picked up their self-titled 1975 MCA LP from a garage sale in my neighborhood, and turns out they could actually do hard rock -- though not especially glammy hard rock. Opening cut "Pass It Around" has as much Free as Slade in it, Side Two opener "We're Flying High" isn't far from the post-Uriah that metal bands like Head East were churning out in the American Midwest, "Don't Turn Out The Light" suggests Yes trying to do reggae of all things, and closer "Going Tomorrow" sounds a lot like Nazareth's version of Joni Mitchell's "This Flight Tonight" from the year before (all the way down to scratchy post-Janis male vocal.) But the singles I recognize from those comps ("Don't Play Your Rock'N'Roll To Me", "If You Think You Know How To Love Me") are more mellow, and somebody has written the following in black ink on the back cover: "Smokey sounds like America, displaying excllent lyrics, vocals, and production." Except they don't sound like America, not to me anyway -- no fake-Neil-Young in them at all. Well, maybe "Umbrella Day" could be America crossed with the Hollies (who also liked umbrellas), but that's it. And then there's "Give It To Me" which opens with martial arts interjections straight of Carl Douglas's 1974 chart-topper "Kung Fu Fighting." So I have no idea whether Americans who heard them considered Smokey (later spelled Smokie apparently -- that's confusing too) a hard rock band. (Their only U.S. Top 40 hit, "Living Next Door To Alice," which I always used to confuse with Dr. Hook's "Sylvia's Mother," came out a year later.) And if it was America fans falling for them in America, what would they have thought if they realized that Smokie were actually, theoretically, Limey glam-rock phonies with most songs credited to Chapman-Chinn? (Though they don't look glam here -- they're wearing flannel shirts, jeans, long hair, even one cowboy hat. One guy does have a sort of Bay City Rollerish looking scarf on, though.)

I Have Never Heard Entire Albums By These Bands Who Have Excellent Songs On Late '70s/Early '80s European K-Tel-Style Compilations

* -- Though apparently Dr. Hook occasionally used to dress up as a fake glam-rock band and open shows for themselves and get booed offstage by their own fans, just for kicks. Pretty sure I read that once anyway.

They were kind of iffy. Chart stuff in England. Oddly, Kim Simmonds' Savoy Brown copies some of their stuff for the Rock 'n' Roll Warriors' album in '81, which was an attempt at poppy hard rock. "Lay Back in the Arms of Someone" which was apparently a hit.

Bought Cheap Trick's [i]The Latest yesterday. Good album. Best song is the cover of Slade's "When the Lights Are Out" from the old In Flame movie/album. The original hard rock is mediocre, particularly "Sick Man of Europe." They're now much better at Beatle/John Lennon Sgt.Peppers/Magical Mystery Tour orchestrated pop. I swear they must put one variation of the 'Imagine' riff on each record, sometimes more, but -- for them -- it works, Robin Zander having such a great voice for that kind of thing. I'd rate it as better than Rockford, the last one, but not as good as Special One, which came before that.

As per usual with Cheap Trick, they should stick to the old vinyl LP days time limit. Anything much over 35-40 minutes/per disc is pushing it, asking for the listener to hit the skip or eject button.

Ha, up above I had written that my "favorite track so far 'When The Lights Are Out' sounds very Slade," and it somehow hadn't clicked with me that it's an In Flame cover. (Though I swear it would have clicked if they'd covered "Them Kinda Monkeys Can't Swing" instead.) Do agree it's a good album, though.

Interesting (and I assume coincidentally, but who knows), George reviews the In Flame DVD together with a live Cheap Trick one five years ago:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-12-07/music/flamboyant-and-amusing-legends-of-hard-rock-show-their-homely-faces/1

Ah, and I do believe Cheap Trick was in the audience the same time I was for Slade in the Philly Spectrum in support of In Flame, which flopped mightily in the States. They lasted one more domestic release after that, I think, another good one called Nobody's Fools. But, at the Spectrum, Slade was tremendous, Holder blowing the doors off the place with his leather-lunged voice. Slade left a smokey burnout on the brains of quite a few that night, also eventually showing itself in the late-Eighties major label surge of Philly chancer/hair metal/glam bands.

And here's my review of Rockford a couple years ago. I seemed to have been nicer to it than I might be now.
About half good, though, which is less than The Latest's ERA.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/07/every-cheap-trick-in-book-faced-with.html

So either Scott and/or George probably advised me otherwise at some point (and Martin Popoff, who gave the album a 5, definitely did), but I wasted $1 over the weekend on a copy of Royal Court of China's 1987 self-titled debut LP. Album just never picks up, and has basically no rocking guitars to speak of -- sounds like a cross between Rubin-period Cult and cowpunk (they came from Nashville, and vaguely sound like it), but without the speed or riffs, and with every song a midtempo that you forget as soon as it's over. Somewhere toward the end of Side Two there's a sort of pretty Brit-folk thing, but by then it's too late. Popoff says they improved with their next album in 1979, which he compares to Kings of the Sun, but I'd have to hear that to believe it.

For some reason listening to that one inspired me to pull out my old 93-cent copy of T.S.O.L.'s Engima sleaze-metal sellout Hit And Run from the same year, figuring they were coming from more or less the same place. Which they kinda were (albeit with maybe as much Danzig as Astbury influence in the howling), but T.S.O.L. won the battle on every level -- Fake Angus riffs, coherent songs, variety, etc. Favorite was probably "Sixteen," but a bunch had meaty hooks to them -- "It's Too Late," "The Name Is Love," "Where Did I Go Wrong." Didn't even hate the totally sappy closer about how it's hard to help people who won't help themselves. Thing is, Popoff gives this just a 5, too, and Revenge from the year before a 6. I don't own any other albums by them; have no idea whether their earlier punk-era stuff holds up better, or worse, or what.

i found the cooooooooolest record today. High Street by Hustler. You guys have it? 1974. Uriah Heep keyboards + Bad Company cockrockitude. love it. and i found it in a dumpster, so it's even cooler, cuz it was free. got a perfect promo copy of Artful Dodger's Babes On Broadway too.

http://991.com/NewGallery/Hustler-High-Street-337831.jpg

Ha ha, Popoff kinda raves about those guys in his '70s book (compares them to Humble Pie/Quo/ Krokus/Purple/Geordie plus AC/DC of course). How the hell did you know which dumpster to look in for old hard rock LPs though??

this kid came into the store with records and i bought some and then he told me there was a dumpster around the corner with thousands of records in it! so, i locked up the store and spent an hour and a half in a dumpster. my friend maggie joined me. she got some cool stuff too.

i posted a bunch of stuff that i got today in the dumpster on the vinyl board:

I Love Vinyl! Recent Haul/Score/Purchase Thread (2009)

I usedta have the two Hustler records. High Street was the first. Both were good to great.

Here's 'Get Outa Me 'Ouse' which seemed to leave a bit of a memory in Blighty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_4eKzFhZk

"No daughter of mine's goin' out with a ninny/Or a scruffy lil' bleeder like you!"

ha ha

how to store, away from cat

FINALLY someone brings a clean copy of pat travers live to the store. i've wanted to hear boom boom out goes the lights for months. it was worth the wait.

So, anybody but me got any love here for COUCHOIS? Five Huntsville, Alabama boys who look like Canadian hockey players on the cover of 1980's Nasty Hardware where they're jovial and partying with uh VERY BIG SHEETS OF ALUMINUM FOIL (???) over their heads (and one guy's got a beer and another's spraying aerosol into his hat) not to mention like total douchebags on the back cover -- especially the three Couchois brothers Pat, Michael, and Chris. Jasper and Oliver claim "there are enough brothers in this band to start a football team" but I'm pretty sure they miscounted. A foosball team, maybe. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've never heard their allegedly ballad-heavy 1979 debut, but the aforementioned 1980 followup has a whole bunch of super catchy and very very chunky AOR pop-rockers somewhere midway between the Babys and Bad Company (esp. "Trudy You're a Bad Girl," "Pretty Young Girls," and "Innocence" all on Side One), and ends with some awesome five-minute Foreigner-going-disco called "Visbility Zero." Also something called "Roll The Dice" that Jasper/Oliver say was covered by Rage (that the ex-Nutz band, right?) My copy still has an $0.69 sticker from Platic Fantastic. Here's more:

http://www.glorydazemusic.com/articles.php?article_id=2061

I remember seeing the debut in cut-out bins a lot. The Glory Daze reviews references make the one you're talking about sound pretty lite: Pablo Cruise, Player, Firefall, Eagles' 'Already Gone' (which is actually not a bad place to be)... Lot of Firefall is, though.

Here's 'Roll the Dice' in YouTube homemade slideshow glory, including novelty grass and hump dice pics, the kind of things on sale at the Eighties mall store which specialized in black lights, their posters, sugar pills advertised as hangover cures and aphrodisiacs, the tabletop fountain that looks like a faucet suspended by a column of water in mid-air (cf the Peter Sellers movie, "The Party"), etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkolX-n9G0E&feature=related

Sounds like the way xhuxk described. An earlier tune, 'Walkin the Fence,' however, is firmly in Firefall land. Guess it was on the first album.

Ted Nugent's weekly dose of healing balm and kindness of spirit.

http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/07/26/07262009wacnugent.html

Old Home Weeks

http://www.freep.com/article/20090713/ENT04/90713042/Derringer--Foghat-booked-for-Riverfront-festival

Really like these guys' album (out today), fwiw. They're from L.A. ("ex-members of sleaze/psyche semi-legends like Streetwalkin' Cheetahs, B-Movie Rats and Jesters of Destiny"), but fans of Aussie bogan bar-fight rock might well want to check them out.

http://www.myspace.com/anguskhanrocks

Oh yeah -- should also note that it starts with a cover of Sensational Alex Harvey's "Midnight Moses."

Meanwhile, these (more extreme doom whatever and not bad at it I suppose) dudes from Tokyo cover Sir Lord Baltimore's "Master Heartache" on their new album, though I can't promise that any originals match it:

http://www.myspace.com/churchofserialkiller

Also, so far, liking the upcoming album by these far rootsier longtime Georgia also-rans. After two listens, I get the idea they're rocking harder than they used to, though my opinion may change. And their best songs have never necessarily been their hardest rockers anyway; truth is, I've always wanted to like them more than I usually wind up doing:

http://www.myspace.com/drivinncryin

That Angus Khan website is one of the worst I've seen, ever. And that's up against some pretty stiff competition. Wretched. Shun. Avoid like plague.

Here they are in a less annoying visual presentation. Members of the band are familiar. The last
time I saw them they were backing Thor at the Knitting Factory about three or four years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGQZCL9gOfk

Frank Kogan asks the question "What male singers over the age of fifty or acts fronted by a male singer over the age of fifty have made great popular music in the last decade?" I nominated six hard rocking acts (Rick Springfield, ZZ Top, Ted Nugent, Rose Tattoo, Deep Purple, Kentucky Headhunters) and mentioned lots of other middle-aged acts (hard rock and otherwise) who I thought had made pretty good if not quite great music in the '00s. Agree with some of Frank's choices, too. But I'm curious who might not have been mentioned yet:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/156151.html

New Heaven and Hell record, if not great, is pretty damn good considering.

Don't have time this morning to go through that link, but what I've heard of those last two Ian Hunter records sounds really good to me; don't know how popular sales wise.

I was thinking of Ian Hunter as well. Also, though not fitting on this thread but relevant to Kogan's question, the last two Robyn Hitchcock & Venus 3 albums are probably the best things he's done in twenty years. Joe Henry is 50 next year and doing his best work; Wino is 48 so nearly eligible.

Lemmy in Motorhead, Phil Mogg of UFO. Not all of their albums have been godd, but some of them
have been so. Mogg has been a consistantly good hard rock singer.

At least one Status Quo record in the past couple of years has been good, which drags in Francis Rossi and Rich Parfitt.

Suzi Quatro was over 50 when she did Back to the Drive which was a good album.

Quatro only excluded because not white male, obviously.

John Waite -- The Hard Way and the Rounder thing, which included older stuff, too.

That last Uriah Heep record was really strong, too.

Yeah, Kogan mentioned Waite himself, and I seconded it, on that thread. And I said I'd heard good things about that Heep album; still need to check it out. Really need to hear that Quatro now too, which I didn't even know existed. But personally thought the last couple Ian Hunters sounded competent at best (prefer his new one to his previous one, though.)

As per recent announcement of purchase on "I'd buy that for a dollar!" Nothin' on the Boyzz album reaches the mania of these local TV clips from a show at the Agora in Cleveland. If they record company had been able to capture --this-- on vinyl, they might have actually made it to a second and third record.

"Two kick-ass rockers, "Destined to Die" and "Wake It Up, Shake It Up", fly solo among a bunch of overblown boogie-rockers and half-baked Southern biker rock. At times sounds kinda like the so-so first side of OTT bikers The Godz's debut album, but lacks any of that record's ferocious second side bite. The real deal-breaker here though is the production, featuring horns and back-up chorus girls on all but the best songs ..." --sayeth someone on Rate Your Music, pretty accurately. I don't remember who the producer was but the approach was moronic in the context of what the band was like live.

"Too Wild to Tame" -- their best song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_MwihQSO50

Hang around for Dirty Dan Buck pulling the Hammond on top of himself, and the keyboard player trying to yank it off him with band in ful cry. Nice recovery. And what's that -- a short guy playing harmonica, blown out by the rest of the band?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fioT7ws-AKU

CD reissue of the album, now out of print, going for 80+ dollars on Amazon, stupid money.

There was Iggy, back in the mists of time, with the rest of these guys -- doing bad languid blooz. The singer/harmonica player spawned allmusic.com

Eesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MngsVYSd1C0

Big Balls and the Great White Idiot on YouTube, doing something from 1997's "The Big Waltz," which
is decribed by the band:

1997 followed with the Balls’ soundtrack for the cinema film „Die Mutter des Killers“ (the killer’s mother). This film received the best award of the „Münchner Filmfestspiele“ (Munich film festival) and subsequently became a long-running success in cinema and television. The soundtrack was released as „The Big Waltz“ on CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViBBk06xIKI

Stick around for the shot of the girl kicking some guy soundly in the balls.

For Germans, I still think they sound astonishingly like an Aussie fightin' bar rock band.

Sehr gut. And ja, wunderbar 'nads-kicking too. Plus, wonder they seem Aussie, given their seemingly AC/DC-derived moniker. As I've said elsewhere, for decades I regularly confused Big Balls Etc. with actual Down Underites the Coloured Balls just from seeing both bands' names and descriptions in old new wave guidebooks, but that was before George ripped me a Big Balls Big Waltz (I think it's called) CD-R and Aztec reissued Coloured Balls' Ball Power. But I still swear they're cousins, somehow.

The Boyzz' Too Wild To Tame, too, is pretty much as George described it -- Lots of brawny biker boogie fun, peaking with the title track, but they didn't exactly have much a knack for writing catchy choruses beyond the title track. Actually, I hear as much Black Oak Arkansas as Godz in their grease chain somehow. And I do like when they finish one song by quoting "Chantilly Lace." And the LP cover (and inner sleeve, depicting a biker war) kicks ass.

Actually been listening more this week to the biracial (two black guys, two white guys, with one of each switching for a different guy of the same race on their second album) late '70s Island Records funk/fusion/space/prog foursome Automatic Man, whose pair of LPs have each set me back a buck in recent months. Here's George's prediction from a different thread in January, after I bought the first album:

Don't know if you'll like this. Requires more than one listen. Extension of Stomu Yamashita's Go, sort of, which was an experiment on jazz and middle of the road hard rock, the latter furnished by Pat Thrall, who made a lot more money with Pat Travers later but quit that, too, after co-writing "Smoking Whiskey, Drinkin' Cocaine." Anyway, Automatic Man is nothing like that. It's very spacey, often almost frictionless, sometimes veering into prog. One of the members -- singer/bassist, I think, is now much more famous as a songwriter/producer under another name. Plus Michael Shrieve's in the band as a kind of poor man's Jan Hammer. I like it but was there at the beginning. Definitely an acquired taste but not so convincing that you'd have stuck around for the second album, which was colored pink instead of blue, like this one.

But I ended up liking the album more than he figured; Pink Floydy space treks named for Atlantis and interstellar tracking devices thickening into fake-Hendrix territory, with wah-wah parts and vocals that sound like the black guys singing liked the same things about Jimi that people in Living Colour and King's X later did. Second album Visitors from 1977 (with as George suggests the same alien cover as the debut but just a different colored background) is the real surprise, though -- a whole Side 2 of prog (sounds like they were Gentle Giant fans too, and they do a song about Neptune) getting heavy by the end, but on the first side they go all out funk-disco (with hard rock guitar solos) in the first two songs then go total, unmistakable Steely Dan. And the prog itself is pretty funky. I can see how somebody might hate it, but I don't. Way better than the Ambrosia album I bought a few months back (which wasn't bad, and crossed over in at least vaguely similar ways, which is why I mention it.)

Actually, the front cover of Too Wild To Tame seems to be a faily blatant Marlon Brando in The Wild One homage, if that wasn't already obvious. Pretty neat for 1977, I guess. (Publicity bio still inside my copy claims they were the biggest regional band in Chicago at the time besides Cheap Trick, and praises "the astounding lead vocal pyrotechnics of Mr. Buck, whose style borrows from Bob Seger, Robert Plant, and an electric chainsaw in overdrive.")

Popoff is iffy about the album, yet a fan (likes the six-minute "Destined To Die" and compares "Lean N' Mean" to fast Purple), and says their spirit lived on with Four Horsemen, Raging Slab, and Brother Cane.

Also, I think it's funny that some members of the band went on to form a band called B'zz (who I've never heard) -- so, what, Boyzz with oi! taken out?

And I meant "NO wonder [Big Balls] seem Aussie..."

don't remember who the producer was but the approach was moronic in the context of what the band was like live

"Produced by Ron Albert and Howard Albert for Fat Albert Productions." "Executive Producer: Steve Popovich." And yeah, the four-man brass section on a few songs definitely precludes their sound from attaining the ferociousness of those live clips.

on to form a band called B'zz (who I've never heard) -- so, what, Boyzz with oi! taken out?

More or less. No Dirty Dan, more to the light pop metal side of things. Still no knack for song-writing, despite the more pop direction. Maybe one good cut, which was actually featured on Dave Clark's American Bandstand once. Had the album, don't miss its absence. Worth 25 to 50 cents if you ever see it.

Was able to net a digital copy of Big Balls' second album, from the late Seventies, Foolish Boys.

Way more poverty case punk rock-sounding, somewhere between Teenage Head and any miscellaneous bunch of second tier UK punk rock bands. "Punk" songtitles like "Hang Yourself from an Apple Tree," "Submission to Violence" and "Gonna Be a Rat." Meh -- not nearly as good as The Big Waltz, twenty years later. Has that nascent Aussie yob sound, though, only you can hear the German accent a little.

Actually, "Too Wild To Tame" on the Boyzz LP is the song that ends with the Big Bopper quote; also has Dirty Dan doing sort of Steve Tyler shrieks to a certain extent. It may well be the band's best actual song per se' as George says, but on record at least, I think I might like the heavier and less horn-drooped "Destined To Die" and "Lean N Mean" more -- former is an extended organ-driven wailer. Don't mind the band's chooglier and more good-timey songs (in fact I swear "Hoochie Koochie" and the under-two-minute "Good Life Shuffle" sound almost like distant Charleston-contest cousins of Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes), but if the heavy tracks were more typical of their live sound, it's pretty clear why fans heard the LP as a big letdown.

this looks cool.

RELEASES ON OCT 27, 2009:

YOU WERE’T THERE: A HISTORY OF CHICAGO PUNK 1977-1984

"Truly great documentaries not only evoke a period but resurrect them wholesale. That's the case with You Weren't There - A History of Chicago Punk 1977-84, a blood-spattered valentine directed by Joe Losurdo and Christina Tillman."

-- Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune

YOU WERE’T THERE: A HISTORY OF CHICAGO PUNK 1977-1984 is a rare glimpse into a truly one-of-a-kind American underground music scene that documents the impact that the Punk movement on the Windy City. Though overlooked in the annals of rock history, Chicago served as an important early supporter of this burgeoning and controversial scene that could be violent and unsavory at times, but always tempered with large doses of humor, art, and intelligence.

USA 2009, 130 min (+ 29 min of Extras), Color/B&W, 16mm/HD, 1.78:1, English

Featuring: Naked Raygun, the Effigies, Strike Under, Big Black, Articles Of Faith, Silver Abuse, Mentally Ill, Subverts, Negative Element, Tutu & the Pirates, DA, Rights of the Accused, Savage Beliefs, End Result and more

DVD Features: Deleted scenes and rare performances by Articles of Faith, Mentally Ill, Negative Element, Tutu and the Pirates, Jeff Pezzati, Rights of the Accused, and Steve Bjorklund

LP/DVD Features: 20 track vinyl LP of rarities from Chicago’s finest, poster, and standard DVD features

LP features tracks by: Naked Raygun, Articles Of Faith, Negative Element, Tutu & The Pirates, Mentally Ill, Buzzards, The Way-Outs, Painterband, Strike Under, DA, Subverts, Toothpaste, End Result, Trial By Fire, Verboten, Rights Of The Accused, Savage Beliefs, Nadsat Rebel, Seismic Waves, and Effigies

Catalog # FTF-003

DVD UPC: 082354250522 Price: $24.95

Limited Edition UPC:082354250621 Price: 34:98

http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/ftf3/

A curiosity scored a feature on the LA Times Calendar sectio today, entitled "Punk and Islam? Get Over It"

Okay, I will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUCg-v4ScFk

Dreadful stuff, by this example.

But the titles in the story made me laugh: Sharia Law in the USA, Suicide Bomb the Gap, Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay.

Kominas and taqwacore subject apparently flypaper for Rolling Stone, Newsweek, the New York Times -- the latter two which one would expect. Also News of the Weird.

This is too choice.

The Waco Tribune gets more conservative right wing ownership, looks to revamp editorial page. Editor contacts Nuge with friendly suggestion to tone down name-calling and attacks, Nuge agrees to try in e-mail, promptly posts an attack on editor on his website. Gets canned from newspaper.

http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/08/16/0816wacsanchezFINAL.html

"The irony of this disagreement with Nugent is that I have been one of his biggest defenders.

"Two years ago, I sustained a strong attack from the left that demanded that I pull his column after a concert he had in which he held up what appeared to be some semi-automatic weapons on stage and unleashed on candidate Barack Obama, 'You might want to suck on these, you punk.' "

Nuge compares paper to Nazis here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/stateofmine/?p=1647

Noticed by Romanesko, too:

http://www.poynter.org/article_feedback/article_feedback_list.asp?id=168572

Ted Nugent & Sean Hannity skedded to do "Yay Coal Day" in West Virginia, paid for by coal company.

"The site will be a reclaimed surface mine.

"A little background: [Massey Cola Energy] is the scourge of the United Mine Workers, which holds its annual Labor Day rally in Racine, Boone County."

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2009/08/11/sean-hannity-will-save-the-coal-industry-on-labor-day/

John Rich added, maybe to sing 'Shuttin' Detroit Down' for the anti-union sponsors advertised as a jobs rally.

http://www.wtvr.com/news/dp-wv--jobsrally0817aug17,0,4017160.story

Opinion divided over Nugent dismissal at Waco newspaper. Nuge compared to Maureen Dowd, except on
right.

http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/08/18/08182009wacletters.html

So somehow I wound up playing the Marcus album on United Artists from 1976 three times in the past two days. Just didn't want to hear anything else, at least not in the living room, where the turntable is. Guess I like it a lot -- on a second Hounds or Streetheart album level, almost! Not sure what else to say about it right now (except that I paid $2 for it at The Thing in Greenpoint, Brooklyn a year or two ago), so I'll let somebody else say it for me:

http://phrockblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/marcus-marcus-1976-us-detroit-obscure.html

i need the marcus album.

chuck, do you run into this guy down in texas?

the lead singer, i mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd9IZlQAh58

Listening to Marcus right now. The blog entry made it sound somewhat more than it is -- one of those many club bands successful locally and very capable of making a good hard rock album if given the
resources.

Reminded me of the bands on the CD with Popoff's book, particularly Cain -- although not nearly as cutting, with some Head East and Wooden Nickel-era Styx sans reliance on keys.

Every cluster of counties in the US had bands like this during the mid-Seventies, often quite good when doing their own material.

Pretty obvious why it was in for substantial fail. Terrible packaging, which is minor. African-Americna lead singer is the other show-stopper, unfortunately, for the time. Thin Lizzy had the one get out of jail free card, probably because of "The Boys are Back" which got on radio bigtime before the kids realized there was someone named Phil Lynott.

So outside the area, the white kids who'd buy this on spec would have never gone for it in the stores, even though it sounds really really white, even the ostensibly hard rock funk bits. "Gypsy Fever" good example. They're just not that good when they tip over into slightly more funky stuff, too frictionless, not at all like Aerosmith. There was one guy who was 'it' doing funky hard rock 'n' roll with a heavy axe in the mid-Seventies and it was Pat Travers.

I'm not hearing any Glenn Hughes in the vocals at all, which would've made 'em a little like Trapeze and "Come Taste the Band" Deep Purple.

"Highschool Ladies, Streetcorner Babies" is probably the closest it comes to Aerosmith. But the sing-songy verse parts do it in a bit.

Unusually named "Pillow Stars" comes closest to Lizzy in some of the harmony guitar parts.

That Texas Hippie Coalition video left me speechless.

gorge did you see my jukin' bone thread? are you a fan? album kills me every time i play it:

JUKIN' BONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"That Texas Hippie Coalition video left me speechless."

hahaha! same here!

That Jukin' Bone record has the '71 shit -- a bit of trying to be everything, some Grand Funk, maybe a lot of Grand Funk, the pot smokin' guy halfway between being a hippie and a slacker, they even do "Goin' Down! Everyone has to do "Goin' Down" or you don't get your hard rock union card. And "The Hunter," that the was the optional choice. They do both! Oww!

Check the lede photo. The reviewer was also rendered relatively speechless, judging by the entry.

You spend too much time describing it, uncharitable adjectives could creep in.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/reverb/2009/04/07/live-review-texas-hippie-coalition-cervantes-masterpiece-ballroom/

This is entertaining.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:73VCtUggHiYJ:www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/ReaderComments/%3FContainerID%3D224831+texas+hippie+coalition+review&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Best comment:

The words WHITE TRASH is racist. I am proud to be white trash.

CDBaby:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/texashippiecoalition

Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/texashippiecoalition

Hmmm...Don't see any Austin shows scheduled for the next few months, but I'll keep an eye out. They're playing San Antonio in October, though. The month of giant pumpkins, which seems somehow appropriate. (Judging from "Leavin," which sounds to me like Alice In Chains with a better singer, I'd probably have to see them live to truly appreciate them. Though maybe some of their other songs are more Southern rock, less downtrodden grunge, who knows.)

I got their CD in the mail when I was still at Metal Edge; I remember it being a combination of Pantera's and Black Label Society's worst qualities, with some substandard modern hard rock (think The Four Horsemen) thrown in. They've got nothing going for them but visual spectacle, but I imagine if you're in a third-tier market, starved for loud live music, they'll be more than entertaining enough.

i always liked Agony Column. my fave Austin, Texas hellbilly metal band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbPqAI_wFzY

Been browsing through some of the rips of old stuff I used to have on the mustanghardrock blog. Reminds me of how hit or miss the material was and how much it has been inflated by niche web writing.

Black Sheep -- Lou Gramm's band before he was Lou Gramm. Well, he was pretty much himself, anyway, prior to Foreigner. The poor man's Foreigner and Free -- one song, "Power to Heal," you'd swear was Free if you didn't know the entirety of them in a blind test. And that's about the high point. Too much trudging which doesn't do much for Lou's overwrought style of singing.

Leslie West Band -- What Mick Jones of Foreigner was doing, playing second fiddle to Leslie, before getting together with Lou for Foreigner. It's the Leslie West show, it rocks, you know what it sounds like if you like the guy. He's a master of consistancy as well as constancy.

Broken Glass -- Stan Webb and a bunch of guys from Keef Hartley and other Brit blues outfits just post Savoy Brown's Boogie Brothers, which was the same thing almost, if this means anything to you. One totally ruling and catchy blues rock cut, "Standing on the Border," and the rest is genre slush, competently done, with some jug band and quiet bits thrown in.

With the exception of Leslie West, Jukin' Bone -- also ripped on the blog -- is the best of the lot.

Not sure I have the energy to revisit all of it. Features all FIVE Babe Ruth albums. All SIX Chicken Shack albums. Almost the entire Stray catalog. "Hearts of Fire," their 75 or 76 album, contains two excellent southern rock tunes, one of which -- Mr. Wind" -- you'd almost swear is Skynyrd.

<img src=http://www.dickdestiny.com/cwt.JPG />

Actually, CWT's The Hundredweight does live up the hype, as fun as Jukin' Bone. Brit power trio on a German label, doing straight power trio stuff with horn backing which in no way sucks.

I'd never heard of this. Kind of like Chicago with the guitar turned up louder and no pop radio stuff like "25 or 6 to 4." Pre-heavy metal cover of "Signed DC".

"Steam Roller" just as title sounds, stud bull hard-man ranting.

Ah!

http://wwww.dickdestiny.com/cwt.JPG

Dammit.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/cwt.JPG

Blog novelty tune:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2009/08/funky-rock-n-roll-friday-hey-craig-man.html

xhuxk, do you have the new Weird Al CD, Internet Leaks? I was browsing cable music videos today and his spoof of "Riders on the Storm," "Craigslist," was spot on. He could also have done a wonder fully hilarious X-rated riff on the same theme. Captured perfectly the inanity of the posts.

And the CWT album continues to astound. Six tunes on it, all of them early Seventies brutality with the horn charts, get better the more I listen to 'em. And I was a bit harsh on Broken Glass. It's probably Stan Webb's most hip mid-70's Chicken Shack album that's not Chicken Shack. Half of it fair to good blooz rock, arranged so his weak voice trading off with Miller Anderson's, another perennial blooz rock sideman, is actually good. One edits out the jug band country, reggae and sensitivity and it's a solid fifteen to twenty minutes of genre.

Henry's Funeral Shoe Everything's For Sale -- A winner in the Dept. of Naming, guitar and drum blooz & boogie, downtuned a step or maybe two so that it always sounds stud and 'roid rage he-manly.

Works a bit better than the last two Black Keys records, mostly in rawness, brutality and groove. Hearing a song now where the guy goes from stud bull to US college nerd, quite a span for a band from Cardiff, Wales.

Nasty crunching slide throughout, the down tuning lending a bit of a stoner rock vibe to it. "Empty Church" is the high point, having the best groove. It's at cut seven and after that the vein-busting apoplectic hard blooz man on vocals is about all the prescription you need. The song's riff smokes.
"Hand Prayer" uses a bit of Ten Years Afters' old "Choo Choo Mama" riff. Last tune goes folk, sounding a little like hippie dippie Donovan.

If it was aiming for early-Seventies fuzztone density, mission accomplished. Style is great, but once you get past the attack and wallop, there isn't one damn song with a catchy or memorable hook to it, just as with the Black Keys. Well, the Black Keys have a couple, like what was played for the Black Cat Moan movie and the tune Hung's using for its opening theme.

Nothing about Radio Moscow on the whole thread? Brain Cycles is pretty good two-man psychedelic retro blues stuff, its feet are on the ground but its head is in like outer space, baby.

Well, yeah -- they certainly fit re Henry's Funeral Shoe, only they're 'merican. But after spending some time watching their vids -- they have a lot of exposure -- I felt a bit like the guy in the crowd who yells, "Play your other song."

For some reason, many of the two man bands have this feature, even the most famous.

Starting to run through Riding the Blinds' Start Running from a year or so ago. Power trio to the Crazy Horse singer/songwriter side of things. This is a good thing, as it means the band does songs as opposed to riffs, vamps and feels -- which, after a lot of examples, never pans out in bands which
don't do some type of metal.

Good version of "I'm Going Down" on YouTube, which you might not think so of during the first thirty seconds, when the singer/guitarist is a bit of college nerd voice. But then it snaps into place and the groove works, and they do it as finely as anyone else since Jeff Beck made it popular.

Never heard of them prior to yesterday. So I'm surprised at the total lack of press other that some local blurbs and, even moreso, by the stupid sum of money wanted for a copy of their first release on Amazon reseller.

Me on White Wizzard, in the Voice, of all places (and yeah, the headline's kind of weird):

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-08-25/music/all-hail-white-wizzard-and-the-new-wave-of-british-heavy-metal/

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AJcpmbP_Sow/RqRacNSNEcI/AAAAAAAAAP0/HtLxi5kMoMs/s320/folder.jpg

Blown Free Maximum Rock 'n' Roll from the late Seventies, a white label homemade affair.

Terry Knight Grand Funk and the early Seventies didn't end in the early Seventies for these guys. A fine curiosity, plenty of fuzzy, blasting brassy guitar and corny arrangement. "We play rock n roll music/The band was outasite!" For some of these songs, they are.

Oh, and here be a link:

http://robotsforronnie.blogspot.com/2007/07/blown-free-maximum-rock-and-roll-1978.html

Ha, good job recycling the church-burner quote. They oughtta put in onna T-shirt.

Yeah, or a bumper sticker at least. I owe you one for pointing out that interview to me, George. But I couldn't resist.

This robotsforronnie blog (named for a Crack The Sky song, right? Or are they both referring to some sci-fi thing I'm not nerdy enough to know about about?) stuff looks promising. I'd run across it before while googling individual albums, but never really explored it much. Guess I'll have to now.

Youtubed that new Weird Al Craigslist Doors parody George mentioned a few posts up, and I second his approval of it. Anybody who hasn't heard it, do so.

Spent some time in the past couple days, for the first time in 23 years I guess, with the first Georgia Satellites album, which I probably underrated in their time. Actually preferred the followup single "Battleship Chains" to the big goofy hit back then; I was wrong about that, I think, but "Battleship Chains" is still good. But I guess "Railroad Steel" is the album's heaviest track; "Can't Stand The Pain" and "Nights Of Mystery" the most Stones-sliding; "Over And Over" a good "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" rip; and they don't censor the lines about "slant eyed ladies" in their "Every Picture Tells A Story Donut" cover. Suddenly I'm curious, though -- Obviously they hit on the basis of what was more or less a novelty hit (like say Timbuk 3 or whoever), but what audience, if any, were they originally marketed to? A few years later you could see anybody from hair-metal (esp say Faster Pussycat or Rock City Angels) fans to country (esp say Kentucky Headhunters -- and John Anderson actually covered "Keep Your Hands") fans going for them, not to mention Black Crowes fans a few more years after that, but in 1986 was their audience supposed to just be people who were still buying Stones and ZZ Top albums, or who? They really seem like an anomaly for that era, unless I'm not thinking of somebody. (Replacements fans? Jason and the Scorchers fans? Screaming Blue Messiahs fans? As if those bands even had that many fans to begin with.) (Okay, I got it -- Mellencamp fans, right?)

I don't know their two subsequent LPs at all. Metal guy Popoff thought they got a bit better (his scores go 6 to 6 to 7); old Stones and Skynyrd supporter Christgau thought they got slightly better then worse (B to B+ to C+). I don't know who to believe.

did you like any of the dan baird solo albums? i only really remember his early 90's hit, i love you period.

"but in 1986 was their audience supposed to just be people who were still buying Stones and ZZ Top albums, or who?"

yes. stones and zz top fans. and even ac/dc fans. rootsy/retro/southern rock is something that major labels have always pushed because it is something they know how to sell and it doesn't confuse them. and they like it! and its why the 80's were littered with the bones of Treat Her Right and The Brandos and all the cowboy Long Ryders/Jason & The Scorchers bands.

Well, the labels don't push it now! (Oh wait, yes they do...they just call it "country music" now instead of "rock," duh.)

So I guess you're saying the Satellites weren't an anomaly in '86 after all, and who knows, maybe you're right. (Were Treat Her Right and the Brandos any good? I never gave either of them a moment's thought. Never heard Baird's solo stuff, either.)

Also, you know who probably would have loved the Satellites? Tom Petty fans! They could have totally toured with him, and for all I know maybe they did.

i got in a copy of the first Junkyard album at the store. gonna play it tomorrow. haven't heard that stuff in years. brian baker boogie is the only boogie. hahaha!

you know who are the only people breathing a LITTLE easy in major label land? people dealing with country albums and acts. they still sell! they're easy! it's fun to hang out backstage at country gigs! no whiney grunge druggies. it's really the last of the old time biz. they can still sell a million chesney records in walmart.

okay, i'll be more specific. people in 1986 who bought that Georgia Satellites album MAY have bought one or more of these albums that also came out in 1986:

david and david - boomtown

stan ridgway - the big heat

corey hart - fields of fire

eddie money - can't hold back

bruce hornsby - the way it is

bob seger - like a rock

billy squier - enough is enough

dennis deyoung - back to the world

steve winwood - back in the high life

jackson browne - lives in the balance

elvis costello - king of america

billy joel - the bridge

brian setzer - the knife feels like justice

steve earle - guitar town

eric clapton - august

southside johnny and the asbury jukes - at least we got shoes

the del lords - johnny comes marching home

the smithereens - especially for you

timbuk 3 - greetings from timbuk 3

kansas - power

steve miller band - living in the 20th century

boston - third stage

the rolling stones - dirty work

dwight yoakam - guitar, cadillacs, etc, etc

rem - life's rich pageant (their mellencamp record)

huey lewis and the news - fore!

paul simon - graceland

bon jovi - slippery when wet

bruce springsteen - live/1975-85

bangles - different light

bodeans - love & hope & sex & dreams

green on red - no free lunch

talking heads - true stories

a VERY serious post-born in the usa amber waves of grain standing in a field on your album cover yankee doodle vibe to 1986. the statue of liberty, you name it. u.s.a number one! for some reason. even with euro acts. the eurythmics were practically a bluegrass band in 1986!

i LOVED keep your hands to yourself the moment i heard it. and they played the video every hour on mtv. probably one of the only big rock hits of that year that i loved. all i was listening to that year was sonic youth and crass and rap. and bad hardcore records. and reign in blood.

still one of my favorite songs to hear on a car radio ever. top ten, maybe. it's right up there with stranglehold, don't fear the reaper, back in black, and basically anything by b.t.o. or steve miller.

what audience, if any, were they originally marketed to?

There was a Georgia Satellites EP I had that was done by their first manager, an Englishman named Kevin Jennings. They'd broken up and Jennings took some tape to England, where it was made and garnered some attention. Then the US label, Elektra, got interested and the band was put back together. Or perhaps vice versa.

I saw them frequently, mostly head-lining. On the beach in Asbury, with Joan Jett in support. Great show, lost one lens from my glasses in the sand in the front of the stage.

By their third album, the audience had evaporated. At one the Cabarets, they were headlining over some faddy Todd Rundgren-produced act, the Pursuit of Happiness. Couldn't have been more than twenty people in the place. They told me MTV wouldn't play their video because it had a hardcore porn star in it, Kitten Natividad.

Dan Baird was a big fan of the Replacements, I think.

His solo albums are fair, like the Yayhoos albums. They all sound the same. If you like the drawling vocals and the unadorned Telecaster playing boogie licks straight up into a big amp, you like him.
First solo album is probably the best although the second also has some better than average songs including a great cover of Joe South's "Hush" done ala Deep Purple. Lead-off cut, the album was called "Buffalo Nickel," has a song pretty obviously inspired by the Replacements, called "Younger Face."

but in 1986 was their audience supposed to just be people who were still buying Stones and ZZ Top albums, or who?

Well, me. I was still buying ZZ Top records, not Stones records.

>>Jason and the Scorchers fans? Screaming Blue Messiahs fans? As if those bands even had that many fans to >>begin with.)

They didn't really have any fans, as you've noted. Georgia Satellites were one-hit wonders, with all that entailed. When they were all over MTV, they might have done some opening dates with the Bangles on their national tour, which was probably very odd. In England, they opened for Status Quo, who were gigantic in the mid-Eighties. And that's a pretty good match.

I always thought the second album, Open All Night, was marginally better than the debut, if you cancel the impact of the hit single. The third album, "Land of Salvation and Sin," just repeating
things.

Great version of "Almost Saturday Night" on a best of CD. Musta been a B-side or promotional thing. They also had added longevity due to "Hippy Hippy Shake" in the Tom Cruise movie, Cocktail.

Always felt they should have done a live album as a swan song and last stab at revival.

were littered with the bones of Treat Her Right and The Brandos and all the cowboy Long Ryders/Jason & The Scorchers bands.

You forgot the Del Fuegos. All these bands were much better live than on LP, while the Satellites were really good on record and even better live -- plus the benefit of a hit played everywhere. I remember seeing the Del Fuegos was a revelation compared to their records, which did absolutely zilch for me.

Oh yeah, the BoDeans belong in this category too.

I wonder if the Georgia Satellites got their big break in any way from the association with "Money Changes Everything" by the Brains (G.S. member/writer) and the Cyndi Lauper connection.

Maybe the label was looking for the next Hooters.

TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

Probably mentioned it above somewhere, but the new Drivin & Cryin album Great American Bubble Factory is actually pretty enjoyable -- I get the idea they were noticing the Drive By Truckers' modicum of success and figured, "hey, we can do that," so they did (and better than the DBTs have done lately, I'd say.) Lots of Crazy Horsish atmosphere in the longer and slower songs, which can admittedly get wearing, but I mainly like the short fast ones -- Opener "Detroit City" (which namedrops the MC5), "(Whatever Happened to the) American Bubbble Factory, "Get Around Kid." And those first couple songs, coupled with "Midwestern Blues" and "This Town" and "Preapproved, Predenied," seem to indicate an apparent recession theme, though I haven't had time to listen to the album enough to figure out whether they've got anything especially insightful to say about it. Consistently pleasant melodies, though, and good washes of guitars. Have a feeling they've been pretty consistent as Southern rockish also-rans over the years, so I'm not claiming this is the best thing they've done; still wish I had a good best-of of their earlier output to refer to, though I've always been fairly fond of 1993's Smoke (which had more AC/DC boogie in it than their earliest albums) and 1999's Essential Live. Main Achilles Heel has always been the vocals, which are a bit mush-mouthed; not saying that problem's necessarily been rectified 23 years into their career (debut was 1986, just like their fellow Georgians Georgia Satellites), but at least on a lot of the new album they annunciate enough to get by.

Fwiw, Popoff gives their 1988 Whisper Tames The Lion and 1989 Mystery Road both 9's, and 1995's Wrapped In Sky an 8 -- pretty certain I've never even heard those, so it's not like I'm any kind of expert. The other three albums he grades in his 1997 metal guide get 6's and 7's (the latter for Smoke), so he apparently thinks they're fairly consistent, too. I'd still be surprised if I'd like them as much as he seems to, though.

I like a lot of Mystery Road; "Honeysuckle Blue" was the big hit in GA but I take it they never broke anywhere else. "Wild Dog Moon" was a deep cut big in my Georgia high school also, and "Straight To Hell" (not a Clash cover) was sung around many a campfire in those days. They were bigger in Atlanta than anyone save REM for a few years (I saw a benefit Kinney played with Peter Buck around this time, closing that circle). I never figured out how they got signed to Island, though.

Popoff gives their 1988 Whisper Tames The Lion

Probably for "Powerhouse" which is the only number on the LP I liked. D&C was a fave of my ex-wife, which is how I was introduced to it.

In other matters:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/28/escape_from_blogger/

i've always felt like drivin' & cryin' were an underrated band that i, nonetheless, never felt like listening to. see also: thin white rope.

Thin White Rope are so good - I'm going to put some on now - I'll bet someone like Josh Homme digs 'em ...

This robotsforronnie blog (named for a Crack The Sky song, right? Or are they both referring to some sci-fi thing I'm not nerdy enough to know about about?) stuff looks promising. I'd run across it before while googling individual albums, but never really explored it much. Guess I'll have to now

Yep. It's a bit to go picking through, particularly astounding because he appears to have gone to the trobule to reupload quite a bit of the out-of-print material after various parties had it flagged off file-sharing sites. So he is nothing if not utterly committed. And it underlines the fact that it's almost impossible to be a completist. There's always another hundred or so never-wuzzes and it-seemed-great-at-the-times to be found.

I'll say it again: If you'd told me in 1985 that, for instance, both Bulldog vinyl albums -- including "Smasher" -- would someday be put on a network and I'd have them again (after my insane parent tossed out my record collection in totality) if I wanted, I'd have called you nuts.

That said, Bulldog's "Smasher" isn't quite what I remember it as being.

But the first two Thundermug records, which I'd never heard, owwwwwwww! Orbit! Now that was
some LP.

And why were they never allowed into the American market? It's a mystery.

Really, robotsforronnie is for those listeners who really really really want to hear all of Bad Boy's albums, the band Milwaukee made famous. Seriously. That's me.

Actually got two promo CDs in the mail today that made me happy that I still get promo CDs in the mail (which honestly hardly ever happens anymore):

Fabulous Poodles Mirror Stars/Think Pink (American Beat)

Laughing Dogs Laughing Dogs/Meet Their Makers (American Beat)

I don't even know if the Laughing Dogs were ever any good (pretty sure I've owned their debut LP before, and never liked it enough to keep it), but I'm still happy. American Beat is just about the best label in the world, I swear.

Oh, and by the way, lest some readers want to let fly on blogs like robotsforronnie and others.

They hook to file-sharing sites. And not infrequently, although not always, these links expose you to
malware.

It doesn't happen all the time. For me, it's about a ten percent ratio. It doesn't affect me much because, having been in at the dawn of virus-writing on the net, I can see them as they arrive and peel them off the machine without anti-virus software.

But that's not the case with everyone. So surf with caution and safely. It's not the music blog faings which are responsible. It's the phenomenon in which filesharers are easily poisoned with malware seeded into their advertising.

That's "music blogs failings"...

Duff McKagan's pic ready for serving as the illustration to go with the dictionary's definition of
"the dilettante." Of course, he's not a dilettante at hard rock. But he sure is at everything else
as man-goes-to-collij-now-that-it-no-longer-matters and I-is-writing-a-music-column-now-for-alternative-weekly.

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2009/09/my_records_of_the_1970s.php

Some exceprts. Seriously.

"All I knew, however, was that there was music I loved, some I didn't, and some I outright despised."

Do tell us more.

"ZZ Top, Tres Hombres: Kick-ass American blues from down Texas way. Yeah, I know that I've pimped these guys a lot lately . . . but I really can't say enough about just how great they were and are."

Belabor the obvious, guy, why dontcha!

"Led Zeppelin, anything: These guys put a soundtrack to my life not only in the '70s, but also now and again to my life now."

"Thin Lizzy, Dedication (The Very Best of Thin Lizzy): Oh, Rosalie! I really, really love this band>"

The <A HREF="http://www.theonion.com/content/columnists/view/anchower";>real Jim Anchower</A> giving the ol' brain cells quite a workout.

"Badfinger, anything: A magical band with a tragic ending. Some say that Badfinger was cursed."

"The Ramones, anything: Do I really have to say anything at all?"

Please stop, Duff! Please! Mercy!

"AC/DC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Along with the Saints and Radio Birdman, AC/DC kicked our asses from all the way Down Under!"

Duff McKagan's promise of quality: I really am as dull as I look. Here's proof.

Yeah, that was terrible. What a bad article.

Returning to the subject of the Satellites for a moment, I owned their first album, and also owned the following titles from Scott's list:

david and david - boomtown
stan ridgway - the big heat
jackson browne - lives in the balance (didn't actually own this album, but the title track was on one of the Miami Vice soundtrack albums, the second one I think, which I got for Christmas, and I liked that)
elvis costello - king of america (the only song I liked on this was "Glitter Gulch")
the rolling stones - dirty work (don't think I liked anything on this)
dwight yoakam - guitar, cadillacs, etc, etc
paul simon - graceland
talking heads - true stories

In 1986 I was listening to Motörhead's Orgasmatron and Ted Nugent's Great Gonzos a lot (got both for my 14th birthday), as well as Black Flag and Run-D.M.C.

More from the real Jim Anchower, Duff McKagan. Some comedy value when you grasp that he's absolutely serious when he submits this shit, seeming to think he's quite the talent.

"1999, Prince: Ah yes, the summer of '83 is when I finally realized that I was one sexy
son of a bitch."

"It's Only Rock and Roll, the Rolling Stones: This cassette was the soundtrack to the summer I decided to move from Seattle to Hollywood."

"The Joshua Tree, U2: This record was by all means not just the soundtrack for my summer of '87."

"The Real Thing, Faith No More: The summer this record came out, I was sort of stuck in Chicago ..."

"Young, Loud, and Snotty, the Dead Boys: This must have been the summer of '79, when my young ears were just coming of age ..."

"Live at Budokan, Cheap Trick: Duh!"

"Music of course has so many genres and sub-genres that I could easily keep doing this type of column for the next few years, and we would still only be getting at the tip of the audible iceberg."

"So in the summer of '89, I was in Chicago with Slash."

"OK, now the table was being set. It was a foregone conclusion that bands like Warrant, Poison, and Brittany Fox [sic] had used up and abused their reign of substance-challenged and
retarded pop-rock."

"Korn, self-titled: The first record by Korn was as groundbreaking as anything since Chuck Berry sang "Maybelline."

"Faith No More, The Real Thing: Enough said."

"I have left out many here on purpose. Maybe some of you think my choices are crap. The beauty of music, though, is that we all find inspiration in different presentations and packages. Have fun this week. I've been having fun writing these."

No -- Duff -- it's not your choices we think are crap.

"Mötorhead, Aces of Spades: Uh-huh."

"Judas Priest, British Steel: Yeah? Suck it..."

"Led Zeppelin: The Complete Led Zeppelin: I own the Zep catalogue on vinyl, cassette, and CD ..."

Naw...

"Thin Lizzy, Dedication (the Very Best of Thin Lizzy): On this last tour we did in Europe in June, we had a Thin Lizzy concert DVD on ..."

"The Dead Boys, Young, Loud, and Snotty: "Down in flames, down in flames"!!!!!!!"

"The Beatles, anything: It almost goes without saying."

Then why not spare readers?

"Summer is fast approaching, and parents everywhere are faced with the perennial dilemma: What are we going to do with the kids?"

"In an attempt to flesh out some stories that may one day become a gateway to a larger literary body of work, I'm going to write some short pieces of my own."

In interviews Duff has said he is attending collij in Seattle. Hmmmm.

Duff didn't gradji-ate from high school. This is believable.

Don't know if it goes here or in the metal thread but I got an Ace Frehley solo disc in the mail today called Anomaly and so far there has been a song about Ace coming down from outer space to protect a zombie girl from post-human jerks, a vampire song I think, a tune called "Foxy and Free," and a cover of Sweet's "Fox on the Run." We are now into a lengthy tune called "Genghis Khan."

If this ends up on my top ten for the year I will be super embarrassed but also kind of thrilled.

Also the CD folds into a 3-D pyramid but there's no way to get the disc out if you do that, kind of like the elaborate Spinal Tap Back From the Dead special edition packaging.

(the CD package, not the CD, that WOULD be pretty wild but no)

hahaha--i want!

Anybody (esp George) have any thoughts on either Streetwalkers or the Steve Gibbons Band -- stodgy blues-rock groups with smart reps from pre-punk mid '70s England, led by gruff tough guys said to be at least mildly eccentric? Neither band put a single album in the Billboard 200. Critics in general at the time seem to have found them both passable, for what that's worth (not much I know), but I never gave them much thought til I bought both their debut LPS for $1 each a few weeks back.

Streetwalkers' 1975 self-titled LP really isn't sinking in. Some decent guitar parts ("Crawfish" vaguely reminds me of "Green Eyed Lady" or "Black Magic Woman"), and I like the funky talk box in the opening "Downtown Flyers," but if Roger Chapman had a personality beyond being just another post-Cocker coot, I'm not hearing it. Maybe it kicked in on later albums. Here, the songs just don't seem memorable.

I like Gibbons's 1976 Any Road more (and still need to get to his subsequent Rollin' On, which I also picked up for $1, though supposedly '78's Down In The Bunker is where he peaked), but the Bob Seger comparisons that some critics threw around at the time may have been overstating the issue. Greasy outlaw rocker "Johnny Cool" probably comes closest, and his funk is funkier than Streetwalkers (and his songs more songful -- closer to pub rock I guess), but I still feel like I'm missing something. Assuming something's actually there.

Neither band made Jasper-Oliver's book, fwiw, though Popoff calls Streetwalkers' guitars "riffy and loud" in the appendix of his '70s metal guide (and says he almost considered them heavy enough for the main pages); Christgau calls the debut "Aerosmith for adults," a major exagerration, and later calls the band's music "art-rock-cum-heavy-metal," though that's stretching it from both ends too. (Chapman had been in Family in the early '70s, who I've also never heard much.)

man, went to my brother's apartment in hudson, new york and he had 4 or 5 different issues of andy shernoff's old teenage wasteland zine. so fuckin' cool. and funny. so snotty too. pre-punk fuck you punk! wish i had had time to read them all cover to cover.

love this wiki list of bands who have recorded andy's songs. i haven't heard a lot of them other than the obvious ones:

The Dictators, Master Plan, The Ramones, Dee Dee Ramone, Joey Ramone, Mary Weiss, Dion DiMucci and The Little Kings, Turbonegro, The Hellacopters, Drivin and Cryin, Baptized By Fire, The Del-Lords, The Toilet Boys, The Young Fresh Fellows, The Nomads, The Untamed Youth, 69 Eyes, The Golden Arms, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Fastbacks, The Vikings, The David Roter Method, The Streetwalkin Cheetahs, Teengenerate, Texas Terri, Tom Clark, The Screaming Tribesman, The Smugglers, The Meatmen, Sex Museum, The Sons of Hercules, Electric Frankenstein, The Prissteens, Park Central Squares, The Alter Boys, The Hudson Falcons, Metal Mike, Tesco Vee, The Mighty Ions, Sismicos, Lawn Vultures, The Statics, The Persuaders, The Scared Stiffs, Furious George, Powder Monkeys, Parasites, Wanda Chrome & The Leather Pharohs, Los Vivos, the Phanthom Fliers, Labanak, The Wretched Ones, Angel Corpus Christi, Rick Blaze & The Ball Busters, Asteroid B612, Electric Frankenstein, Fifi & The Mach III, Jeff Dahl, Shock Treatment

Scott, you should totally start re-printing choice snotty Teenage Gazette excerpts here. I've always heard of it, but never read it!(Did Metal Mike write for that? Seems like he should've, if he didn't.)

Estimate that I've heard songs by about half of those Shernoff-covering bands (some of which I recall being infinitely better than some other ones.) Doubt I've heard many of their actual Shernoff covers, though.

Re Streetwalkers: If you liked Family, you might like them. For me Family was an often iffy
proposition. Hey, early Euro-art, mostly rock format, dramatic but almost no roll.

Streetwalksrs were supposed to be even more rock. What they were was louder. I had Red Card which was the one which have the most obvious interest for people on this thread. Couldn't write songs, definitely not at all like Aerosmith, almost no groove. Loud and oblique with Roger Chapman. Sometimes painful and easy to ignore or immediately take off, unintentionally so.

There was a live album. I have never heard it.

Steve Gibbons I just can't recall. There's a cover of "Tulane" on YouTube and it's pretty Sha Na Na, with a lighter side of pub rock feel.

Thanks George.

xp Teenage Wasteland Gazzete, I mean. (Googling the phrase indicates there's a book PDF you can download? Is that a compilation of fanzine pieces or what?)

Anyway, from that list, I recommend the Nomads to anybody who doesn't know their stuff. And Texas Terri.

BTW, scored a copy of Suzi Quatro's Back to the Drive from 2006. It's produced by Andy Scott of Sweet and with Quatro, it's given all the bells and whistles that came with the original glam recordings.

The title cut is the best song, but "15 Minutes of Fame" cops Slade's "Hey Ho Wish You Well" which in turn cops "Run Runaway" or vice versa. Normally, I detest versions of Neil Young's "Rockin' In the Free Word," but her take on it manages not to suck. She turns it into old pop heavy metal, less ponderous than Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder.

"I Don't Do Gentle" is true to the old glam rock take on Elvis stuff, which was pretty common on her records and those of others. Could easily work on country music video.

Good album, not infrequently great. Startling how she's past fifty but doesn't sound like it.

thanks to my brother i FINALLY got a copy of the Marcus album. happy about that.

right now listening to the first Strapps album on Harvest from 1976. i dig it. especially when they go for full-on mott the hoople. funny songs. even one entitled "rock critic" all about how awful rock critics are. "I'm gonna make it as a rock critic/gonna sling some mud/gonna make it stick/gonna make you suffer for the things that the good lord never gave me!" first song "school girl funk" is funny dirty funky hard rock and it's a keeper.

Yeah, the Strapps were cool. The CD I have of it has some pic of the band in a "hire car" -- as they say in the UK -- with a hooker in between them. There went any sales in the US or placement in stores south of the Mason-Dixon line.

http://waytoyoursoul.blogspot.com/2007/10/strapps-strapps-1976-hard-rock-256.html

Absolutely made for this thread. There's a lot of Streetwalkers floating around in the usual rip off joints, too, not that it matters. (Vicious But Fair and Red Card) Some of it even streamed, reminding me it was everything I thought it wasn't.

http://waytoyoursoul.blogspot.com/2007/12/microwave-dave-american-peasant-2004.html

Ripping off a guy who plays cigarbox guitar live is a bit lowdown.

"Burnin' For You" covered by Shiny Toy Guns in new Lincoln car commercial. You can YouTube it. Sung by this lady:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisely_Treasure

Utter dogshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlDmV2pD9P8

Straight James Williamson showing he's still got some the 'Raw Power' chops. Even playing through a Vox, which really goes back to the unique sound on that Stooges record, considerably different
than Ron Asheton.

There's more here, including Raw Power and Search & Destroy:

http://www.straightjameswilliamson.com/JWvideo.html

"Cock in My Pocket" yet -- technically from Metallic KO. A CD of this show with a better mix and tone would sell a few.

Was curious about a couple of the bands on KZOK: Best Of The Northwest 1981 (Starstream, 1981), which I bought for $3 a few years back. The liner notes claim that "no band has rocked the Northwest harder or longer than Jr. Cadillac", whose "Something Strange" sound like hardassed Bishops/Feelgood-style pub rockabilly with an Elvis-inspired singer; a couple links are below, and apparently they're still around, though the first couple songs I'm hearing on line don't nearly match the one on the compilation.

http://www.jrcadillac.com/

http://www.pnwbands.com/jrcadillac.html

http://www.visionarydance.com/SFS/jrcadillac.html

And "Lookin Out For #1" by Ictus is hard biker boogie with a mean mama singer, probably somewhere in the vicinity of early 1994 or Headpins.

http://www.pnwbands.com/ictus.html

Ictus music career started in Bremerton WA 1980 with a very heavy sound and big production. They recorded their album, Icarus, in Seattle and had a very popular song "The Ice Age Cometh". They played in front of sold out houses in the greater Kitsap areas and Olympia. They then started playing concerts and night clubs in the Seattle market and branched out to the mid west which included Denver, CO.

I like the idea that they were able to make Denver part of the Midwest!

The rest of the comp is okay, but those are the great ones. The Heats are average or better powerpop. Legs do a rocking version of "30 Days In The Hole" with a Joplin style singer who I'm pretty sure doesn't get all the words right; their originals are said to be "hard-driving rock/blues with AC/DC/Trower/early Zeppelin influences," but I haven't heard any.

Also been playing Diesel's Watts In The Tank, also from 1981. Oddball Dutch band, had one (really great) U.S hit with the new wave pop disco metal whatever "Sausalito Summernight," which peaked at #25 that year. No idea what Dutch guys knew about Sausalito, but it worked. The closest band I can think to compare them to is (early '80s) Golden Earring, and I'm pretty sure that's not just because they're from Holland. But they also have a Styx/Queen/Foreigner pomp thing going on here and there, and "Down In The Silvermine" is a total jig-rock (like Horslips maybe? But catchier. Uh...Men Without Hats??) about how down in the mine the days are long but the work is fine. At least I think that's what they say. I doubt the work is actually very fine, though.

"I Hear You Knockin'" -- ala Dave Edmunds -- and "Riot in Cell Block #9" is done ala the Feelgood's on Malpractice. So I guess that gets Jr. Cadillac into pub rock territory. "Too Much Monkey Business" wasn't bad, either. The Edmunds cover is definitely the best I'm hearing. "Sea Cruise" also has the Engli Edmunds pub rock vibe going strong. All of these are from one of their '74 shows at the 'Evergreen Ballroom.'

Oh, and if you were on the New York Times website at the wrong time today. Big 'Oof!'

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2009/09/new-york-times-sunday-virus-adventure.html

hey, chuck, have you ever heard the 70's Brit band Burlesque? I think you might like them.

I mention them on this thread:

a thread for great bands (and artists) that just didn't...quite...fit.

Don't think I've ever heard Burlesque, Scott, though now I'm curious! And I saw that thread the other day -- looks cool! -- and I have some bands I can add to it if I find a free couple hours somtime, ha...

Some Williamson interviews:

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/09.02.09/music-0935.html

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_13209265?source=rss&nclick_check=1

he still sounds great judging from the youtube clips of that gig.

Ted Nugent-ization in Heevahava Country

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2009/09/in-heevahava-country-if-you-are-to-seek.html

hey guys. i just recently listened to Buffalo's Volcanic Rock for the first time, and i think i kinda love it. sorta CCR (or maybe just Fogerty, really) gone 'eavy--only five tracks!!!. what should i look for next, oh wizened masters of all things rawk?

Well, you'd probably like two other Buffalo records if you see 'em: Dead Forever and Only Want You For Your Body.

The bass player from Buffalo went into Rose Tattoo to play guitar, who became far bigger -- in Australia, anyway. Rose Tattoo were probably the heaviest and most extreme boogie band, ever, all their songs taken from the brutish and seamy side of life, delivered by Angry Anderson, a little bald guy with a ferocisou voice and the demeanor of someone who'd just been released from hard time in prison.

now playing: The Rods - Wild Dogs

now playing: Tommy Bolin - Teaser

Wondered what happened to Tsar. Still don't know. But my original line was that if they were gonna do glam in
1999, and that's what they were doing, they should've revolted when handed Tim Lord-Alge as the mixer for their
debut. What turned out to be great for the Jonas Bros. seven years later didn't do the best job for them.

http://wilfullyobscure.blogspot.com/2008/11/tsar-king-of-school-ep-2001-sbn-session.html

So here's a promotional thing Hollywood put out, with stuff Lord-Alge didn't mix away into mooning sissyland.

Odd Kiss-like cover of the Backstreet Boys' Larger than Life. King of the School and You and Jim Would Hit It
Off hit the old glitter rock vibe right, the spine not all squeezed out. Afraidio makes it sound like there was a hard rock band underneath it all along.

Some live stuff included, all closer to the sound they'd deliver on Band-Girls-Money before bust.

Here's the bona fide bad idea, encapsulated in the Allmusic review...self-explanatory in an unintentionally hilarios way.

"Tsar brought in producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls, Eric Clapton) and mixer impresario Chris Lord-Alge (Duran Duran, Savage Garden, Stevie Nicks, Hole)."

Yep, some Duran Duran, Savage Garden and Stevie Nicks -- just what they needed. Perhaps they thought it was a good idea at the time. Maybe they never did, being compelled to it by the record company.

listening to Rose Tattoo's Assault & Battery: damn, this is potent stuff! punkier than early-AC/DC, too. oh well, live an' learn.

now playing: Graeme Edge Band - Kick Off Your Muddy Boots

A review of a live record of Rose Tattoo's done a few years ago. This when Pete Wells, the guy from Buffalo, was
still alive and in the band.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2001-04-03/music/dung-jumpers-down-under/

now playing: Earl Slick Band -- Razor Sharp

was listening to Earl the other day! "PJ Proby" has to be one of the strangest tribute songs ever written by anyone.

got this from my brother. it's great! local columbus ohio pressing from 1983. you can't quite tell from this picture, but they are total new wave glam metal warriors. thought it might be fun to play once, but i really really like it. very diverse mix of hard rock, pop metal, new wave, you name it. a lost gem if there ever was one. can't find anything on the internet about the band.

http://www.popsike.com/pix/20080604/320259978674.jpg

later 1985 album. i'll keep my eye out for it, but it would be total luck to find one.

http://www.popsike.com/pix/20080604/320259977167.jpg

what i wasn't expecting was how well-written the songs are and how rockin' the rock is. and then to throw in some oddball punk/new wave songs just sweetens the deal. i'll do a track by track post when i get to work tomorrow.

I got curious & started googling. It looks like there are copies of their 2 records (on cd, maybe?) and a 25th anniversary reunion cd available here:

http://www.mattavery.com/downloads.html

ooh, good find. that reunion cover is, um, really something. i wonder if those are cdrs for 15 bucks. probably.

I thought the newest had one had great song selection. "Don't Pull Your Love" by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds and "Hot Razors in My Heart" by Crack the Sky, which is quite a span.

Can't say much for his taste in drunk heevahava T-shirts but Matt Avery's quite the tunesmith.

Performed on stage with Kato Kaelin at "The Gathering" at The Continent, Columbus OH which aired on Extra TV 1995

!?

He also played guitar for Tiffany.

Speaking of Buffalo upstream, dug into my stacks for the Count Bishops, who shortened it to The Bishops for "Live" on Chiswick in '78. Dave Tice of Buffalo as the front man, and the live record the band's usually tough sound from the very hard man side of pub rock. Lots of Chuck Berry guitar, the performance on sulfate. One of their best was "(I Want) Candy!" by the Strangeloves, four years before Bow Wow Wow took it worldwide. If you're on this thread, you'll muchly prefer the Bishops' take on it.

Their 7-inchers, of which that was one, were also very good.

Lotsa Bishops on my shelves, much of it reissued on CD by Ace between 1995 and 2006: Self-titled album, Cross Cuts (under the name Bishops), Rollin' With EP, The Best Of, Speedball Plus 11 (which is early stuff from 1975, before Tice was in the band.) Just take your pick; not much of it doesn't rock ferociously. Personal favorite track is probably "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In" on Cross Cuts, the old Fleetwood Mac song that the Rezillos also covered, but nobody made it kick heads in like these pub-punk thugs did.

Speaking of head-kicking thugs, a few things that surpised me (or I was happy to be reminded of) upon playing the first Point Blank LP (from '76, one of George's all-time favorites I know) a couple times this week, after I bought a $1 copy to replace the one I'd gotten rid of after I wrote my metal book: (1) How "Free Man" seems to be a pro-police song except when they try to confiscate the bands' pills (it's kind of ambiguous about taxation I guess); (2) The high crazy Little Richard yelps in "Moving" (how many other rock bands have even pulled those off, since the early Beatles I mean? And anybody else even half this heavy?); (3) The heavy but ornate jig rhythms through "Wandering"; (4) how "Distance" is also basically a heavier version of early Kansas style prog; (5) the real short outlaw guy in the band on the far right in the inner sleeve photo -- either he's a dwarf, or everybody else in the band is very tall, I'm not sure which (or which guy he is, either). Killer album; deserved a much higher ranking than #291 in my book.

Also re-bought for $1 #311, Jean-Paul Bourelly's Jungle Cowboy from 1987, the Stairway rating of which is more sensible than Point Blank's, but it's better than I would have guessed -- perfectly respectable fake Hendrix by a bluesman (you can tell as much by his singing as his guitaring) ostensibly doing a harmelodic jazz thing, but more tuneful and song-oriented than most music in that refined sphere.

As for more recent releases, I mentioned that Laughing Dogs reissue on American Beat upthread a little, and yeah they're hacks, and fake corporate new wavers totally outclassed artistically among the smarty pants CBGB crowd, obviously, but I like it anyway. Heaviest track is probably "Get Outa My Way" from the 1979 self-titled LP, with its Tyranny And Mutation riff, but they do lotsa catchy Cheap Trickish hard pop ("Johnny Contender," "I Need a Million") and '70s Midwestish pomp AOR ("It's Alright It's OK," "Two Who Are Willing.") Cover the Animals' "Don't Bring Me Down" as good as Petty did, and cover Dionne Warwick's "Reach Out For Me" so it sounds like the Rubinoos. Seems the debut was more hard rock, the '80 followup slightly more powerpop.

What I really love, though is Mondo Rock's Primal Park, another Aztec Music reissue filling in another piece of the mysterious Aussie rock puzzle -- One-1980-album (plus B sides and spare change)-band revolving around former Daddy Cool/ Mighty Kong guy Ross Wilson. The best songs ("Down To Earth," "Toughen Up," "The Fugitive Kind," "Love Shock") sound uncannily like American Fool-and-earlier John Cougar corndog greaser rock (which I take to be a weird case of parallel marsupial evolution rather than any direct influence), to the extent that "The Fugitive Kind" has basically the exact same riff scheme as "I Need A Lover," and is even expansive in the same way in its arrangement (which the country bands aping early Cougar have never much tried.) But other cuts like "The Rebel" are more Angel City meets Southern rock, and by the end, Wilson is getting songwriting help from this guy Stephen Cummings, who wound up singing for great lost Aussie new wave band the Sports, whose single "Who Listens to The Radio" hit #45 in the US in 1979 basically because it sounded like a harder rocking version of hot rookie Joe Jackson (it got airplay in Detroit, I'm not sure where else.) And Mondo Rock's "Telephone Booth" sounds a lot like that Sports hit; the Sports also apparenly later recorded their own version of "Perhaps Perhaps," of which there's a demo here. Liner notes say the band also has a Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons connection, if that means anything to anybody. (All I remember is my college radio station used to play that band and I confused them with the Jags at the time: So, early Costello imitators, maybe?) And Mondo Rock got to open for the Commodores during their late '70s Oz tour, at which time Lionel Richie compared Wilson to Mick Jagger. Also, back in 1973, Marc Bolan allegedly told him that Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" was a ripoff of T. Rex's "Ride A White Swan." And Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" is in turn said to be an "Eagle Rock" rip!

Also, fwiw, a couple Rhapsody reviews I hacked out about new/recent albums. (You need to scroll down pages to read the blurbs)....

Status Quo

http://www.rhapsody.com/status-quo/in-search-of-the-4th-chord

Anvil

http://www.rhapsody.com/anvil/this-is-thirteen

(The Anvil album is actually more fun, and less serious, than I give it credit for there, btw -- "Worry," which is about, uh, worrying, cracks me up for some reason. One problem I think I had was that I listened to the new album right after listening to 2004's Back To Basics, which is actually a lot goofier, not mention more concise and more consistently catchy. Both albums are good, though. Haven't seen the movie yet, but it's in my Netflix wait queue. Also need to catch up with their early albums, which I ignored back then, one of these days.)

Also, not sure whether I ever posted this one from earlier this year; Saxon:

http://www.rhapsody.com/saxon/into-the-labyrinth

And Ian Gillan (who isn't very hard rock any more, but I kind of like this album anyway):

http://www.rhapsody.com/ian-gillan/one-eye-to-morocco

I definitely wouldn't say any of those four albums are anything like absolute must-hears, btw; not like lots of the old $1 LPs that have been mentioned here. But they're all worth checking out at least once if you can hear them cheap. Anvil seems the most noteworthy, if only because this is clearly their year in a way, though the Status Quo one might actually prove a better listen over time; hard to tell.

Re Point Blank, worth emphasizing here for those into the really hard man's hard end of the genre:

Point Blank's debut had five bulls-eye shotgun blasts (in eight cuts) of impolitic sentiments delivered via twin-guitar riffage, a blooz shout-screamer and shuffle rhythms mined from Rio Grande Mud-tone ZZ. If our president had a house band from the days he was a power drunk, dancing on tables and delivering cheap shots on the playing fields, Point Blank was it

Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, an area Kevin Phillips says repeatedly in American Theocracy is demographically, ideologically and politically like Texas, South Carolina or Tennessee (he's right), the Point Blanks were so iron-fisted, Old Testament and misanthropic, I felt I knew them from fights in gym class and post-football game dance orgies.

More here:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/05/bad-texas-bees-beat-your-women-b-and.html

Speaking of American Beat reissues, I dug out the first Fools album -- Sold Out -- yesterday. Never heard Heavy Mental which was also supposed to be out on a AB twofer.

Sold Out was sent into the world at the same time as Get the Knack, and they opened for them on tour, so you can guess how well the Fools did in the long run. Surprisingly great album though for those into the poppy end of hard rock. They were packaged as powerpoppers but I just took them for bar band luggans whoo changed their clothes and always had a good grasp on writing hummable tuneage with amusing lyrics, mostly about getting drunk, chasing girls and -- Mutual of Omaha -- setting up some plan to defraud an insurance company, a sentiment we can all still get behind.

Class line: "I don't want to grow up/I don't want to be a jerk."

I've got three 12-inch vinyl Fools slabs (the two albums you mention, plus an EP which I believe has their early Dr. Dementofied poultry-clucked Talking Heads parody novelty "Psycho Chicken") in my box of "F" LPs, which is still unpacked underneath the stairs (a shelf-space issue). Remember liking those first two albums a lot, and yeah, they for sure gave off the vibe of crass bar-band semi-hard rockers latching onto new wave as their ticket onto the radio in the wake of their Boston homeboys the Cars. Their closest thing to real hits were "It's A Night For Beautiful Girls," which went to #67 off the debut in 1980, then a cover of Roy Orbison's "Running Scared," #50 in 1981. Also just realized I put a picture of the Sold Out LP cover in my second book (the non-metal one), next to a Kingston Trio LP cover of the same name, even though the Fools are mentioned nowhere else in the book. And now I'm kinda pissed at George because I want to dig the albums and listen to them all again now too, but they're barely even accessible.

Actually, almost positive I liked Sold Out considerably more than Heavy Mental, though I wish I could verify that now.

Also, one Mondo Rock caveat: They do have a certain predilection for a kind of cod-reggae that pales next to their tougher, more Cougar cuts. (Not that I have anything against Aussies doing reggae, necessarily, but Men At Work later did it with way more hooks, plus a saxophone.)

I'm surprised American Beat didn't send the Fools reissu to you. It was supposedly out in July
or August. Apparently they did the A's, too. But that doesn't really surpass the A's CD-R best of done by Rick DiFonzo last year.

I'll need to bug them for those, if I can figure out who to bug.

Also, for some reason the Fools (because of the novelty hit/fake metal angle) are making me think of Blotto (who did "Metal Head" and "I Wanna Be A Lifeguard" c. 1980-ish) and the Commericals (who did "I'm So Heavy Metal" in 1980). Couldn't tell you off hand how good or bad they were, but I do have a Commericals album, and the "C"s are not in storage, so I'll play that soon. Don't own a single Blotto record to my name though.

I used to see Blotto a lot, they were popular at one club in the LV. Basically, "Metal Head" was just like "I Wanna Be a Lifeguard." They were entertaining for one 45-minute set, once. You never had to see them again though unless the idea was just to get shitfaced drunk to somewhat costumed guys doing
amiable frat band-style rock.

The Commercials, Compare And Decide, 1980 -- Not very heavy metal. Not even in their metal parody song, where they ineptly attempt some macho hesher shrieking, though at least that one is more rock than the rest of their poppy sung-through-the-nose nerd wave. "X Girlfriend" and "Suburban Girls" and "Bongo Party" (about what not to bring) are clever songs, though I wish I could actually hear the credited two guitars/two synths/drums in any of them; that there's only two guys pictured on the album cover is a hint, probably. Definitely has the feel of a "band" that didn't do many live gigs. Only time they come up with much of a beat is "Chains For You," sort of post-B-52s/Dury dance-oriented disco-rock. They also cover Abba's "Mama Mia" okay and do some cute fake Europop in "El Disco Es Cultura." But nothing worthy of this thread. (Like Fools, they were from Massachusetts, albeit Salem.)

That Anvil record is much better than I thought it would be. The two main guys can really play, the drummer in particular, and Kudlow's voice reminds me of Ian Gillan's in good ways.

Another good Cougar "I Need A Lover" soundalike is "Mean Streets," last song on the Rockets' '82 Rocket Roll, which turns out to be a pretty decent set despite lacking anything as undeniable as "Oh Well" or "Turn Up The Radio" to get it onto the radio (at least in Detroit) the way 1980s's No Ballads did. That album peaked at 50 nationwide; this one, two albums later, didn't even chart. And you can definitely hear them slipping into utter hackdom, but they're not quite there yet. Lots of blatant sub-Seger Chuck Berry rippage (most entertainingly in "Born In Detroit" probably), some borderline metal ("Gonna Crash"), a rocking early P-Funk cover ("I Wanna Testify"), a good pop AOR move that sounds like early '80s new-wavified Rush with hornier and more meat-eating vocals ("Kid With The Heart"), a dumbass ride-me-baby boogie-woogie that I bet nonetheless sounded great live especially if they filled in the rhythm breaks with funny spoken parts Thorogood/Travers style ("All Night Long.") And a pretty good, kinda heavy Mitch Ryder rip called "Gimme Love" that actually sounds to me like a lot like "Bow Wow Wow," the song that Mitch sang a year later on Was (Not Was)'s Born To Laugh At Tornadoes (which also featured vocals by Ozzy, Mel Torme, and the Knack's Doug Feiger btw), though I bet it's more that they both copy some '60s Mitch song I can't place.

And of course, Jim McCarty and Johnny "Bee" Badanjek had both played in Mitch's Detroit Wheels in earlier days. But it's still kind of a bummer that Rocket Roll makes for a more rocking Mitch Ryder album than its fellow recent dollar-bin purchase Never Kick A Sleeping Dog, Ryder's album from the same year, which was actually produced by John Cougar, who also wrote one of the better songs ("Rue De Trahir.") Larry Crane and Kenny Aranoff from Cougar's band also back Mitch up, and he covers Prince's "When You Were Mine" and does a duet with Marianne Faithful. So there's diverting stuff there; I'm keeping the thing. Just wish its overall feel wasn't somewhere between a second-rate Robert Palmer record and a third-rate Cougar record. Not sure what Mitch was going through at the time, but his heart doesn't seem completely in it. (And speaking of white rock guys who could do Little Richard, he was obviously top of the list on his '60s albums. But it apparently isn't a skill he was able to retain into his late 30s.)

Actually, that Ryder LP was '83, not '82.

And come to think of it, I'm also actually not positive that Travers or Thorogood are known for humorous spoken monologues during rhythm breaks live; just seems like they would be, judging from "Boom Boom (Out Go The Lights)" and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer." (If not, maybe I should have said Peter Wolf instead. Or even Ted Nugent.)

I personallly think Travers craps all over Thorogood. I cant stand Thorogood, Travers is great. I heard a live version of Snorting Whiskey on XM the other day and it fucking rocked.

Mitch Ryder played the Bethlehem Music Fest either '91 or '92, just before I moved to Pasadena. He'd bleached his hair blonde and looked like a beefy Euro-fag, sort of like Peter Stomare in the VW unpimpp ze auto commercials except in black and with longer and more hair. Bdanjek was on drums and McCarty was slated to be the guitarist but was out of the band because of illness.

The show was definitely as hard-hitting as the Rockets, who had also been to the Valley in the Eighties.
It was a bit out-of-place, too loud, at the Music Fest, which was still pretty gentile as all the boomers had not quite aged to the point where they were there en masse, forcing the bookers of the new oldies acts to bring in hard rockers. These days, it's Pat Benatar, George Thorogood, Blondie, whoever's left in Foghat, etc.

Anyway, the show parted the hair, much to the dismay of many patrons used to bringing their wooden lawn folding chairs to these things. "Money" was particularly bludgeoning, as well as a cover of the Stones' "Heart of Stone."

Okay, so if Mitch fits here, maybe his fellow (though not nearly as wild) '60s frat-soul rocker John Fred from Shreveport, Lousiana is also not too much a stretch for this thread? Okay, actually he is, so be forewarned, but what the heck. Found a $1 copy of his first album, John Fred and his Playboys from 1966, and it's solid if hardly world-shaking stuff, mostly covers (Wilson Pickett, Willie Dixon, etc) that probably went over real great at toga parties. (Maybe why his old LPs aren't hard to find in Austin?) Plus they cover "I Just Want To Make Love To You" (just called "Making Love To You" here) six years before Foghat, albeit less heavily. They also do a good ominous cover of the Stones' "Play With Fire," and a decent blue-eyed-funk workout on James Brown's "Out Of Sight" (credited to "Naker Phelge" and "Ted Wright," respectively, which were apparently pseudonyms for "Mick Jagger" and "James Brown.") Best cover, though, might be "Night Owl," apparently originally done in 1955 by Tony Allen and the Champs, whoever they were. I get the idea that Fred was a better singer than the Playboys were players, though. He's kinda great; they're competent.

And then in 1967 they had an immortal hit with the quasi-Beatles-parody "Judy In Disguise With Glasses" (one of my favorite singles of all time), and changed their name from the Playboys to the Playboy Band, and otherwise got too ambitious after hearing late Beatles records so they stopped playing frat-soul and maybe gave up beer for pot and started turning all ornate and Salvation Army bandy. I used to have a copy of '67's Agnes English (the album with "Judy In Disguise" on it) until I decided the rest was too prissy and undanceable, and the $1 copy of 1970's Love My Soul I found here a couple months ago is even more twee, more of a chore to get through. I guess I can see why they tried to branch out (it's not like their soul covers were all that distinctive, and they never had the power or energy of the Detroit Wheels like I said), but they still seem like a good reason to wish Sgt. Pepper's didn't change the world.

They also do a fairly convincing cover of John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" (as "Boogie Children") on that first album. And they credit Dixon's "Making Love To You" (aka "I Just Want...") to "Gourrier," which was actually John Fred's real name. Also just found out in the Whitburn book that Fred had had a #82 hit with "Shirley" in 1959, when he was 17. "He appeared on Alan Freed's show, but when Dick Clark asked him to sing on American Bandstand, Fred had to turn him down because he had to play in a basketball game," Wiki says. (He played for LSU and Southeastern Lousiana University, not sure what position, though I assume when "Shirley" hit he was still finishing up high school.)

Uh, back in a more legitmately hard rock realm, I tried real hard to like that new Ace Frehley album that I think Matt Cibula mentioned upthread. But while it was endearing in theory ("Fox On The Run" cover, total Bronx-bowling-alley vocals, lots of nice and seemingly Christian songs about angels and children, the most creative 2009 CD packaging this side of the Boxmasters), the hooks just weren't sinking in.

Speaking of the Sweet, though, I have been enjoying Live In America, recorded late last August in a California casino. Mostly all songs you've heard a million times, in their younger days, but they're all great songs, and there's actually a fairly heavy stretch in the middle ("Windy City," "Turn It Down" "Sweet Dream") that I either never heard before or (more likely) just never noticed before; not even sure what era of the band's career they're from, but they pretty much justify the indulgence of keeping the CD. Can't even tell by looking what the record label is -- My best guess is "www.thesweetband.com".

The people calling themselves "The Sweet" here, fwiw, are named Steve Priest, Stuart Smith, Richie Onori, Joe Retta, Stevie Stewart -- Priest being the only guy left from the original lineup. (According to Wiki, there is also a different touring incarnation of the band in the UK, consisting of people named Andy Scott, Peter Lincoln, Steve Grant, and Bruce Bisband -- Scott being the only actual oldtime member there.)

finally getting to hear the big hard rock move from the cockney rejects! their album The Wild Ones from 1982. Pete Way production. I dig it, of course. How could I not? Opener "Way Of The Rocker" is awesome. "City Lights" is thin lizzy as only a former Oi! band could do thin lizzy. they lose some momentum by the second side, but its pretty solid and i might even like it better than that hard rock slaughter and the dogs album i was going on about upthread.